Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have proposed a new approach to making objects invisible, by tuning special materials such that they cancel the scattering of light. The technology has a few drawbacks — it only works for specific wavelengths of light at various scales — but it’s a start. Objects that are rendered "invisible" [...]

A group of respected mainstream scientists are forming a venture to commercialize a device that can generate a gravity-like force that they call "AC Gravity" — an interesting project.

I was fortunate enough to wander across this amazing online Flash presentation that reveals the hidden meaning of the film, "2001." It’s a thoroughly engaging, brilliantly produced, fascinating production — one of the best uses of Flash animation that I’ve ever seen. It also makes some really interesting points about human evolution, our relationship to [...]

Big news coming — a radical high-performance, ultra-miniaturized parallel processing chip is about to go mainstream in a variety of consumer devices, giving Intel some serious competition… Semiconductor designers from International Business Machines, Sony and Toshiba will reveal on Monday the inner workings of a “supercomputer on a chip” they claim could revolutionise communications, multimedia [...]

It’s finally happening in the USA — your cell phone is about to morph into a credit card, and soon will evolve into your digital wallet. Read more.

Here is a fascinating article about DARPA’s "high risk, high payoff" quest to develop an exotic new Hafnium bomb — a new kind of weapon that emits huge amounts of gamma rays from a very small package. This thing packs the bang of a conventional nuke in a package as small as a hand grenade [...]

The New York Times has published a wonderful and fascinating set of mini-essays by leading scientists about their beliefs in the unknkown and unexplained — from consciousness, to God, to life on other worlds, and the existence of true love.  There are some terrific thoughts in it — one of thoses rare articles that breaks [...]

If you are interested in alternative energy, here’s something new to look at — a new magnetic motor based on ideas that originated with Nikola Tesla. The makers claim it is an "economical solution for the world’s power and energy needs." Well, we’ve heard that before, but it’s good to keep an open mind — [...]

Ben Hammersly has come out with a video of his talk explaining the Semantic Web for beginners. It’s a great resource to explain what the Semantic Web is all about for people who are new to the subject or simply interested in the underlying technology of RDF, the concept of triples, etc. It is also [...]

Change This, a project that helps to promote interesting new ideas so that they get noticed above the noise level of our culture has published my article on “A Physics of Ideas” as one of their featured Manifestos. They use an innovative PDF layout for easier reading, and they also provide a means for readers [...]

It’s official, the US Air Force has looked seriously at teleportation. This recently released Air Force report details the history of teleportation science, the present state-of-the-art, as well as several new directions for research and an extensive bibliography. Fascinating reading!

A Russian academician has predicted that bird-flu will stem to humans and kill up to one billion people around the world within 6 months of an outbreak. He says it is highly probable that a pandemic could take place within the next year. There is no evidence cited for his claims however he refers to [...]

New research has found that running a mild electric current through your brain can significantly boost your verbal skills, with no side-effects, as far as anyone knows so far. Very interesting. It appears to decrease the firing threshold of neurons in the path of the current. This research was applied mainly to the frontal lobe [...]

This is pretty cool stuff — growing brains using live tissue and then teaching them to control software: from an article in Slashdot: “Scientists at the University of Florida made a living ‘brain’ by extracting 25,000 neurons from a rat’s brain and culturing them inside a glass dish. Then, the neurons began to extend lines [...]

Disclaimer: I try to keep this blog non-political. I am essentially a political centrist — I tend to judge each politician, plan and party on its merits rather than by any rigid ideology or party-line. I generally find most politicans, political plans and political parties to be less intelligent and less long-term-oriented than I would [...]

A leading researcher claims that he is certain that some humans alive today will live to be 150 due to changes in the human lifespan. He even bet money on it. Meanwhile another study has found that certain mutations in our DNA may be causing shorter lifespans. I guess if you combine the enhancements with [...]

Great find from Rob Usey at Psydex Corporation: This article is a survey of the emerging field of “sociophysics” which attempts to apply statistical mechanics to predict human social behavior. It’s very cool stuff if you’re interested in social networks, memes, sociology and prediction science. The article discusses recent progress towards Isaac Asimov’s vision for [...]

Ok, just got back from seeing Primer – a very cool new indie sci-fi flick that you probably haven’t heard about yet, but will. If you liked the film, Pi, or you like your sci-fi with a double shot of science, then you are going to LOVE Primer. There are several things about this film [...]

My friend Maribeth Back builds reading machines — devices that provide new ways to read and experience written text. It’s part art, part technology. For example, she has one reading machine that lets you drive through texts, changing direction as you go — but only seeing one line at a time — at super high-speed. [...]

Via my friend, Lee Stein: MIT researchers may have found a gene that enables mice (and humans, potentially) to live 30% longer without caloric restriction. It is already known that cutting down food intake by 1/3 can result in up to 50% longer lifespans. Here is a terrific article on the possible implications of this [...]

Recent data indicates that the pace of C02 buildup in the atmosphere is moving faster than expected, raising speculation of the dreaded “feedback effect” kicking in. Computer simulations have predicted this, now it may be happening — or it may just be a temporary anomaly. In a few years we will know, once we have [...]

All you consumer marketers out there — there’s a new fad in the tradition of breakdancing and skateboarding that’s going to be big called Parkour. Parkour is gaining traction around the world and will soon become mainstream. It involves death-defying acrobatic stunts on the street, parts of buildings, and various landmarks. Here are some videos [...]

A very cool new nanotech material has been invented called Metal Rubber. It is conductive and metallic yet pliable and shape-retentive like rubber. An amazing array of new products could be created with this stuff.

Following up on my earlier post about storing messages in DNA it might be interesting to explore ways to encode large volumes of data directly into parts of the human body. Messing with DNA is risky — it may be safer to store data in other parts of the human body (with the one potential [...]

Just read an interesting article about the coming end of the world, in which the author traces the recent history of rapid climate change, government cover ups, and secret preparations for the polar ice-cap melting which now seems pretty much inevitable. Fascinating read. I think it’s definitely time to go watch Waterworld again (yes, it [...]

A Russian scientist proposes turning all that wasted blood out there into yogurt, milk, cheese, etc. To quote the film, “Soylent Green is Made of People….!!!” Thanks, but I’m not hungry.

I was having lunch with my aunt today and she complained that her earrings were always getting in the way of her cell phone. I suddenly said, “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if your earrings were your cellphone!” The basic idea would be to make earrings that had bluetooth, a speaker and a mic in [...]

I just received the following internal release from a company that starts alternative energy companies (Magnetic Power, Inc., which I am an investor in). MPI has a number of interesting alternative energy devices under development. My investment was in their superconducting project (ROOTS) — which focuses on room temperature superconducing polymers. But anyway, the article [...]

by Nova Spivack, http://www.novaspivack.com Original: July 8, 2004 Revised: February 5, 2005; February 28, 2010 (Permission to reprint or share this article is granted, with a citation to this Web Page: http://www.novaspivack.com/science/a-physics-of-ideas-measuring-the-physical-properties-of-memes) This paper provides an overview of a new approach to measuring the physical properties of ideas as they move in real-time through information [...]

Is it possible to send messages backwards in time? This may actually be a testable hypothesis today. Here is a possible way to test it. Let’s assume this is possible and that at some point in time in the future, humans on earth develop this technology. We can test whether or not this actually will [...]