Author Archives: Phil Bowermaster

The Thrust of the Matter

New Scientist provides a list of 10 possible propulsion technologies for deep space technologies, ranging from the ion thruster (plausibility: just a few years away) to wormholes (plausibility: almost certainly impossible.)

It’s a great list. My sentimental favorite has got to be the Bussard ramjet — a fusion drive that runs on hydrogen collected in deep space along the spacecraft’s route, ramming fuel into the ship’s maw using a vast scoop. Cool! But I think the most realistic choices, for interstellar travel, anyway, are the ion drive and beam-driven space sail technology.

Something like a fusion drive would be great for moving big Starship-Enterprise style craft around the solar system, but I think that’s as far as we’ll want to go with what I’m going to call Macro Human Space Travel (the original term for this idea was “manned spacecraft.”) Nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will enable us to explore interstellar, and perhaps eventually intergalactic, space much more efficiently using very small space vehicles.

How small?

With sufficiently advanced nanotechnology, we could fit all the equipment required to explore a star system and build several new ships to continue the mission, as well as the computing power required to run an interesting virtual world on the ship, along with a crew of several thousand downloaded explorers on something the size of an iPhone — or smaller. The real limiting factor would be how small we could make an effective ion drive or how accurately we could hit such a small target with a propulsion beam across vast distances.

Closing in on the Solar Singularity

The near future may be nuclear powered, or it may be thermonuclear powered, or it may be powered by geothermal energy or algae-derived biofuels or wind power or tide power or (most likely) some interesting combination of all these, plus the big one, plus some additional sources of energy thrown in for good measure. The big one of course is solar power. The sun is out there, blasting our planet every day with far more energy than we could need or (right now) even think about using.

Ray Kurzweil says that our current level of solar power use is bout eight doublings away from being great enough to power our entire civilization. will we achieve those doublings?

If we do, it will be because of developments like this:

Hot Electrons Could Double Solar Power

For decades researchers have investigated a theoretical means to double the power output of solar cells–by making use of so-called “hot electrons.” Now researchers at Boston College have provided new experimental evidence that the theory will work. They built solar cells that get a power boost from high-energy photons. This boost, the researchers say, is the result of extracting hot electrons.

The results are a step toward solar cells that break conventional efficiency limits. Because of the way ordinary solar cells work, they can, in theory, convert at most about 35 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity, wasting the rest as heat. Making use of hot electrons could result in efficiencies as high as 67 percent, says Matthew Beard, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO, who was not involved in the current work. Doubling the efficiency of solar cells could cut the cost of solar power in half.

1. Figure out a way to get power from the sun.

2. Improve that process by driving the price down and the efficiency up

3. Repeat.

Hey, it worked for computer chips.

FastForward Radio — Countdown to Foresight 2010 (Part 1)

Futurist Michael Anissimov and nanotechnologist Ralph Merkle join us as we begin a special series leading up Foresight 2010. The conference, January 16-17 in Palo Alto, California, provides a unique opportunity to explore the convergence of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Foresight Institute.

About our guests:

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Michael Anissimov is a
science/technology writer and consultant. He is the creative force
behind one of the leading futurist blogs, href="http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/">Accelerating
Future. He is a co-founder of the Immortality
Institute and the Media Director for the href="http://singinst.org/">Singularity Institute for Artificial
Intelligence.

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src="https://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/michael.anissimov.jpg">
Ralph Merkle received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1979 where he co-invented public key cryptography. He joined Xerox PARC in 1988, where he pursued research in security and computational nanotechnology until 1999. He was a Nanotechnology Theorist at Zyvex until 2003, when he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Professor of Computing until 2006. He is a Director of Alcor, on the faculty at Singularity University, a co-founder of the Nanofactory Collaboration and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. He was co-recipient of the 1998 Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology for theory, the ACM’s Kanellakis Award for Theory and Practice, the IEEE Kobayashi Award and the 2000 RSA Award in Mathematics. Dr. Merkle has fourteen patents, has published extensively and has given hundreds of talks. His home page is at www.merkle.com.

drralphmerkle.jpg

I Knew They Couldn't Be Trusted

Tomatoes are carnivores.

This shouldn’t come as any surprise. Sneaky little suckers. They’re actually fruit, you know, not vegetables. And now it turns out that they’re not even vegetarians.

I still like ‘em on dark rye bread with sauerkraut.

FastForward Radio — Nanotechnology in Three (or More) Easy Steps! Part 2

Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon continue their discussion of the milestones that must be achieved before to enable the nanotechnology revolution. In Part 2, they conclude their review of K. Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation and discuss the various scenarios that might get us from our current level of technology to a thoroughly nano-powered world.


Our current focus on nanotechnology continues the discussion we began last summer durig our special series The World Transformed As we noted then…

Nanotechnology promises to change our world in ways that are difficult to predict, or even imagine.

Are you ready for…

…Star Trek style replicators that would allow you to make anything, ANYTHING, you wanted?

…artificial robotic blood cells that will turn an Average Joe into a world-class athlete, or allow you to hold your breath under water for an hour at a time?

…programmable “smart” matter than can take whatever form you want? It’s a suitcase. No, a bicycle! No, a TV! No, a puppy!

Nanotechnology promises all of this plus a lot more. In order to take advantage of that promise, we need to understand and prepare for this coming revolution in how we interact with the material world.

FastForward Radio — Nanotechnology in Three (or More) Easy Steps!

Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon begin a two-part series on nanotechnology. In Part 1, they explore the origin of the concept of nanotechnology and work through the basic concepts as outlined in K. Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation.

The entire book Engines of Creation is available online for free here:


We last spent time on this topic during our special series The World Transformed As we noted then…

Nanotechnology promises to change our world in ways that are difficult to predict, or even imagine.

Are you ready for…

…Star Trek style replicators that would allow you to make anything, ANYTHING, you wanted?

…artificial robotic blood cells that will turn an Average Joe into a world-class athlete, or allow you to hold your breath under water for an hour at a time?

…programmable “smart” matter than can take whatever form you want? It’s a suitcase. No, a bicycle! No, a TV! No, a puppy!

Nanotechnology promises all of this plus a lot more.

In order to take advantage of that promise, we need to understand and prepare
for this coming revolution in how we interact with the material world.

Sensors Detect Danger



Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving
world
Special
Dispatch
November
28, 2009

We’re running BATT’s every day during Thanksgiving week.

There’s an app for that?:

Smartphones
Could Form Chemical Detection Networks

Smartphones already stream YouTube videos and surf Facebook, but they might
also double as chemical sensors that can transmit alerts to first responders
about the release of dangerous chemicals.

A NASA scientist has unveiled a postage-stamp-sized sensor that can plug
into an iPhone and convert Apple’s beloved product into a mobile chemical
detector.

The tiny device can sniff out low amounts of ammonia, chlorine gas and
methane, and send alerts to other phones or computers over regular phone
networks or a Wi-Fi connection.

"Ours is the smallest in the world that can do complete sensing work,"
said Jing Li, a physical scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
Her prior work gave the device a strong NASA pedigree that includes air
quality sensors tested on the International Space Station.

Li also hopes to someday see prototypes in the hands of firefighters or
other first responders, although Homeland Security has yet to decide on
such testing. Regular consumers won’t see the devices anytime soon as smartphone
accessories, but the sensors could sneak into phones down the road – and
they might just save some lives.

The age of the tricorder
is fast approaching. Handheld devices are great for texting, playing music,
gaming and — we’re seeing increasingly — putting critical information into
the right hands in real-time. Equipment that once could fill a suitcase (or
a room) now fits in the palm of your hand. Doctors, law enforcement, firefighters,
and first responders will soon be equipped in ways scarcely imaginable a decade
ago.

If you’re interested in learning more, or in helping to bring this rapidly
approaching future about, check out the Open Source Sensing initiative.


Live to see it!