Friday, October 28, 2022
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
A normal and terrifying thing about chemistry
Sunday, October 16, 2022
Predictions for the year 2122
Good advice.
"I suggest a picture of this world a hundred years hence, and venture as my first guess that the world at that time would be remarkable to one of our ghosts, not so much because it was so different as because it was so similar. In the main, the changes which we may expect must be brought about by science."
"It is easier to bring about a revolutionary scientific discovery such as that of the X-ray than to alter in the least degree the quality of emotion that arises between a man and a maid. There will probably be many new rays in 2022, but the people whom they illumine will be much the same... I am convinced that in 2022 the advancement of science will be amazing, but it will be nothing like so amazing as is the present day in relation to a hundred years ago. A sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station. For Jefferson knew nothing of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, automobiles, aeroplanes, gramophones, movies, radium, etc.;"
To follow up on the predictions made by W. L. George, I am going to make an educated guess as to what things might be like in the year 2122. The problem is that it is not hard to see where trends will take us over the next 50 years, or to a much lesser extent to the year 2100, but new trends will emerge that we cannot predict, making any prediction about the year 2122 far from complete.
For example, George knew nothing of computers, the Internet, and how they would change the world. He knew nothing about television, but he did imply that new communication methods would be possible.
Unlike the prediction made by George about the year 2022, technological change will accelerate over the next hundred years to such an extent that our ghosts might find the world unrecognizable a hundred years hence. Within 50 years machines will be smarter than people, but even before then, they will help us develop new technologies at a faster pace. We will see huge advances in material science, medical technologies, energy, and anything digital. Medical technology will improve our health, our mental state, and our abilities. It is very likely that in the year 2122, people will age very slowly or not at all.
All transportation will be automated. Airplanes will not need pilots. Cars, trucks, trains, and ships will not need drivers. A driver's license will be a thing of the past.
Unfortunately, most jobs will also be automated, with a fraction of the population supervising the machines that do all the work. Society will have to be reorganized, with many people not being able to obtain work. This could create great political turmoil, along with booms and busts and financial collapses, causing a few nations to fall apart and reorganize into something else.
War will not go away, but it will be mostly carried out by machines. It is very likely that nuclear weapons will be used over the next century, with devasting consequences over large areas, which will greatly increase the need for defensive systems.
Most fossil fuels will be gone by the year 2122. The future will depend upon whether we can develop nuclear fusion, which is likely. If so, we will have abundant relatively-clean energy, although not necessarily cheap at first. If we can't develop cost-effective nuclear fusion, and this is a distinct possibility, then a hundred years from now we will be facing energy shortages, and relying mostly on nuclear fission power and some coal, while maximizing renewables which by themselves won't be nearly enough to supply all our energy needs. Every home and business will have solar panels. We will see more windmills, more hydroelectric, and more geothermal energy production.
Material science might solve the energy storage problem, but maybe not completely. We might also have to rely on synthetic fuels, because this may be the most efficient energy storage method.
Natural resources will become more strained and therefore more expensive. The world population will expand slightly, level off within decades from now, and then slowly decline as resources become more scarce.
People will find their behavior more tightly controlled, not just by the government, but also by other people. Surveillance will be everywhere, including in the home. Crime might become impossible to get away with, but personal freedom will suffer. I predict that there will be a backlash against this, and perhaps a political movement to protect privacy.
Movie theaters will disappear within decades. Movies will be more like video games, or video games will replace movies altogether, with the user participating in the story, possibly with multiple endings depending upon the choices the player makes. Realistic virtual reality should be possible, with many people spending most of their lives in virtual reality. Some stories could take weeks to finish.
More computer technology will be integrated into people, allowing them to experience augmented or virtual reality, and increase their access to information.
People might choose robotic pets, or even virtual ones, which could be made realistic but easier to care for. Robotic pets might have additional features, serving as crude household robots, in addition to the other household robots that people will most certainly have in a hundred years' time. Some people will have robotic friends which will provide emotional support almost as well as a person, if not better. And they will have relationships will robots.
"Reality" in the future is going to be much less real, with people spending much time in virtual worlds, having artificial companions, and experiencing the world through augmented senses.
John Coffey
Saturday, October 15, 2022
Saturday, October 8, 2022
Thursday, October 6, 2022
Electrical carbon capture
Begin forwarded message:
Subject: Electrical carbon capture
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
astrophysics - Is it possible that black holes are also neutron stars?
Saturday, September 17, 2022
Black Holes May Be Covered in Vortex Structures According to New Study
John Coffey:
Anything that approaches infinity tends to be a problem scientifically and maybe mathematically. I have long suspected that matter might have a maximum density, making Black Holes not a point with infinite density but a tiny sphere. It seems plausible since our mathematics tends to break down when discussing singularities.
Perhaps Black Holes could spin so much, or have a high enough energy that these would counter the collapse? Maybe the time dilation becomes so great that it never becomes a point?
I am wondering if this is something that can be proved one way or the other using observations?
Alondro77:
It might become 'solid' at the point where the gluons are pressed into the quarks, shoving all these particles into a TRUE solid, where the particles are totally crushed together and no space at all remains. I don't believe we could simulate that, because the energy required to compress quarks and gluons in such a way would be beyond our capacity to generate.
John Coffey:
@Alondro77 We know that subatomic particles are fluctuations in Quantum Fields. Although we haven't defined a limit to the amount of energy that a Quantum Field can have at any particular point, it seems to me that there could be a limit where either it is not possible, or the field breaks, or it changes into something else.
I don't think that we know what the fields are made of and probably will never know, but there might be properties at higher energy levels or densities that we will never be able to test.
Friday, September 16, 2022
🔢 How to count to 10 in Latin
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Re: Watch "You're Immortal And I Can Prove It" on YouTube
A "Thoughty" video.
Sunday, September 4, 2022
Monday, August 29, 2022
Sunday, August 21, 2022
Effect of mRNA Vaccine Boosters against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Infection in Qatar | NEJM
Study shows probability of getting COVID for mask wearers vs. non-mask wearers
Monday, August 15, 2022
A brief history of humanity
In the year 1800, about 90% of the United States population was needed to produce enough food through farming. In the early 1900s, it was about 35% and in the year 2000 it was 3%. Six decades ago when I was very young, farmers were held with some regard. These people worked the land to produce the food that we need. Today, farmers are considered rednecks. It is not too surprising that many early cartoons from almost a hundred years ago mostly took place on farms involving farm animals. In the 1960s there were many popular TV shows nostalgic for a more rural time, perhaps a simpler time compared to life in the big city, such as The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry RFD, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and The Real McCoys. By 1972 all these shows were obsolete and canceled.
The Earth has been cooling down for about 50 million years. For at least 40 million years the atmospheric CO2 level has been in steady decline. The two go hand in hand since the temperature affects the vapor pressure of CO2 on the surface of the ocean. As it gets colder, the oceans absorb more CO2. Calcifying marine organisms learned to take calcium carbonate, which is made from calcium and CO2, and turn it into shells, which later get sequestered as limestone. This is where the CO2 has been going.
Climate change over the last 9 million years affected human evolution, forcing arboreal apes to come down from the trees and cross on foot the newly formed grasslands to find food. We entered the Pleistocene ice age about 2.5 million years ago which continues to the present because we still have ice at the poles. Also around 2.5 million years ago, in eastern Africa, a half-ape early human named Homo Habilis, meaning "Handy Man", learned how to make a stone hand ax. This remained the highest level of human technology until about 50,000 years ago. It is thought that early humans engaged in persistence hunting, where the human ability to sweat allowed them to chase an animal in the hot sun for a couple of hours until it collapsed from heat stroke. Then they could kill it with their stone ax and have a meal for their tribe. However, 50,000 years ago mass glaciation in Europe caused Africa to dry up. What was left of the human race was about 7,000 humans living on the southern coast of Africa. For the first time, they learned how to build permanent dwellings, much better tools and weapons, and how to fish. This was the beginning of the Upper Paeleolitch Period or the third stone age.
For about 90,000 years we had mass glaciation across the northern hemisphere. Due to changes in the Earth's orbit, in what are called the Malankovich Cycles, we get a warm period roughly every 100,000 years, and the last one started about 10,000 BC. We are currently in the year 12,022 in what some people call the Human Period. This was the beginning of the Neolithic Period or "new stone age." It is no coincidence that all of human civilization arose during this brief warm period. The Fertile Crescent, a region that follows the Nile River and extends over to Iraq, blossomed with grains even more so than today, and humans learned how to make use of those grains. Roughly 12,000 years ago humans learned how to make bread. Roughly 500 years later they learned how to make beer, and the world would be forever changed.
The Sumerian Kingdom, which started around 4100 BC in Iraq between the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, invented farming, although roughly about the same time that it got started along the Nile River. They also invented civilization, writing, clay pottery, and money. Although called a Kingdom, it was more like a collection of powerful city-states, which is how most power structures worked in the ancient world. They persisted for an amazing 2,400 years until they were overthrown in 1,700 B.C. by roaming nomads called the Amorites, who built a new powerful city-state called Babylon.
The era of the Pharaohs started around 3100 BC when the northern and southern kingdoms along the Nile were united by force. They would be conquered by Rome in 30 BC.
The Egyptians were expert beer makers, and beer was a regular part of their diet. The pyramids were built by workers who were paid in beer. For a day's labor, they were given a clay chip worth a gallon of beer. The chip could be exchanged for other goods.
Rome was founded in 753 BC, and it was such a powerful city-state that it would conquer most of Europe, but it would be conquered in 476 AD by the Barbarians, which were groups of Germanic tribes. This period is referred to as Ancient Antiquity, where Rome was the military power, but Greece was the intellectual center of the world.
Roman militarism was brutal, often killing or enslaving the people they conquered. Sometimes soldiers would be rewarded with land from the conquered territories because most people survived by farming. Around 146 BC, in the Third Punic War with Carthage, a city-state of a million people in ancient Tunesia, the Romans killed 750,000 people and burned the city to the ground.
The fall of the Roam Empire lead to the dark ages that lasted 900 years until the 1400s. The Christian religion dominated Europe and took a negative view of science. Much of the old manuscripts by the Greek Philosophers had been lost until some of them were rediscovered and printed thanks to the invention of the printing press. This helped lead to a more enlightened era.
During the middle ages, Italy continued to be a few powerful city-states constantly at war with each other. The country wasn't united until 1861.