[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('diemos', 'H')e's a True Believer(TM)

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('diemos', 'H')e's a True Believer(TM)

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('diemos', 'H')e's a True Believer(TM)

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'W')ell, no peak oilers are very forthcoming about making a prediction about WHEN we will see an end of our current booming trend in Science & Technology. They just don't want to think about it - because it interferes with their own religious beliefs derived from charts and graphs extrapolating petroleum depletion into the future.

You can't have an Olduvai Gorge if Sci/Tech is streaking forward at mind-boggling rates.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'W')ell, no peak oilers are very forthcoming about making a prediction about WHEN we will see an end of our current booming trend in Science & Technology. They just don't want to think about it - because it interferes with their own religious beliefs derived from charts and graphs extrapolating petroleum depletion into the future.

You can't have an Olduvai Gorge if Sci/Tech is streaking forward at mind-boggling rates.

[davep]

I give up.

No, I'll engage once more.

You think that Fast Breeder or Thorium reactors are currently being built? Where? No current commercial nuclear plants being built are Fast Breeder or Thorium.

This bit is important. Read it and try to understand. Science and technology can continue to improve while everything is hunky-dory. So you have the horse before the cart. Why? Well let me explain.

If and when things do start going batshit mental, science will suffer. It's not the progress of technology itself that ensures we lead secure, energy abundant lives. Science and technology only prosper because we lead secure, energy abundant lives. And if it can't deliver your silver bullet over the next few years, the conditions for continuing progress in science and technology will be lost. Science and technology do not exist in a vacuum outside of society.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'I') give up.

No, I'll engage once more.

You think that Fast Breeder or Thorium reactors are currently being built? Where? No current commercial nuclear plants being built are Fast Breeder or Thorium.

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'I') give up.

No, I'll engage once more.

You think that Fast Breeder or Thorium reactors are currently being built? Where? No current commercial nuclear plants being built are Fast Breeder or Thorium.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('davep', 'I') give up.

No, I'll engage once more.

You think that Fast Breeder or Thorium reactors are currently being built? Where? No current commercial nuclear plants being built are Fast Breeder or Thorium.

[Carlhole]

Dr. Hanson is listed as one of the directors of the Science Council for Global Initiatives.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..
9. The IFR creates a huge economic opportunity for the US to be the leading clean energy supplier to the world. Nuclear is the lowest cost scalable energy technology we have. The IFR is our best nuclear technology. If we focus on the IFR and invest in ramping up the volumes and reducing the cost, the IFR will be cheapest power source that every country will want everywhere. Our economy will benefit and our planet will too.

[Carlhole]

James Hansen keen on next-generation nuclear power

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The Australian 03/10', '[')b]RENEWABLE energy won't save the planet so it's time to go nuclear, according to one of world's most high-profile climate scientists.

"We should undertake urgent focused research and development programs in next generation nuclear power," said atmospheric physicist James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York.

While renewable energies such as solar and wind were gaining in economic competition with coal-fired plants, Professor Hansen said they wouldn't be able to provide baseload power for years to come.

Even in Germany, which pushed renewables heavily, they generated only 7 per cent of the nation's power.

"It's just too expensive," said Professor Hansen, an expert in climate modelling, planetary atmospheres and the Earth's climate.

"Right now, fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy, except for operating nuclear plants," he said on the first day of a lecture tour in Australia.

According to Professor Hansen, because the threat of global warming was so serious, nations such as the US, China and even Australia must crank up support for so-called third and fourth generation nuclear systems.

"Current nuclear plants are the second generation. The third generation is ready to build now," he explained, pointing to conventional light water reactors, which generated heat by the fission of uranium fuel. Two fourth-generation technologies are on the drawing board. Fast reactors use liquid sodium metal as a coolant for the fission of metallic solid fuel, including existing nuclear waste and weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.

Thorium reactors use fluoride salt as the medium for the energy-producing nuclear reaction, so they don't require production of fuel rods.

Professor Hansen admitted he was a late convert to advanced nuclear power. "But fourth generation solves two of the problems that made me sceptical," he said. ...

[davep]

Fourth Gen nuclear indeed sounds interesting. But you can't get it in Walmart.

[NickyBoy]

There are a number of interesting trends in regards to the singularity event, but I doubt it will involve any form of true AI.

What is far more likely is a form of DI (dependant intelligence) that has fantastic computational/adaptation abilities but still requires an organic partner to provide a 'sentient' component.

As technology shrinks and human life comes to rely on IT systems for socializing and information retrieval in greater and greater amounts it is only a matter of time before we are directly and physically partnered up. A utility with data storage, data retrieval and communication technologies whose adaptability is designed to support our whims (rather than being used to generate a unique intelligence) is a natural progression of current day technology when blended with human requirements.

Those expecting a singularity event should not be looking at supercomputers or AI development. You should instead be looking at smart-phones and social networking infrastructures.

If I may make a set of bold predictions (at me to some 'list' if you like )

1.Within the next 10 years I would expect hands-free kits to shrink to the point where they can be unobtrusively worn as a series of distributed components (contacts, ear-beads and throat sub-vocalisers) on the head 24/7 without anyone noticing them.

2.Improvements in internal artificial replacements for human body parts will eventually result in these unobtrusive hands-free kits being worn as sub-dermal (beneath the skin) accessories.

3.A generation of children will grow up with these accessories (much like the current generation with smart-phones and my generation before them grew up with home PC's) and their bodies/thought processes will adapt to them like any other tool introduced to humanity (this trend can be seen today with mobiles - children have incredibly well developed and dexterous thumbs in comparison to their grandparents...all thanks to using mobiles from a young age). This 'new generation' will learn to use the sub-dermal accessories instinctively without any need for advanced 'scifi' neural interfaces.

4. Social networking infrastructures and designs will improve to the point where every facet of a humans life can be shared in real-time. Think 'blog combined with webcam combined with forums' running all the time and shared with all your friends.

5. We now have a network of sentient machine-aided intelligences that can interact with each other on an instinctive level forming a larger 'meta-mind' whose intelligence increases alongside technology. The singularity approaches and humans are bang smack in the middle of it. We have, in fact, reached what modern day AI developers seek to create (a network of intelligent nodes with dynamically forming connections, the ability to learn and an imagination) without the need for an actual AI.

These 5 steps are all possible with technology available today its just hideously expensive (and in some cases dangerous). Give us 30 years for the technology to become common place and for a generation to grow up with this new kit and way of thinking and point .5 is almost a certainty. Nothing short of a societal/technological collapse is going to stop this.

[Carlhole]

A Scientometric Prediction of the Discovery of the First Potentially Habitable Planet with a Mass Similar to Earth

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he search for a habitable extrasolar planet has long interested scientists, but only recently have the tools become available to search for such planets. In the past decades, the number of known extrasolar planets has ballooned into the hundreds, and with it the expectation that the discovery of the first Earth-like extrasolar planet is not far off. Here we develop a novel metric of habitability for discovered planets, and use this to arrive at a prediction for when the first habitable planet will be discovered. Using a bootstrap analysis of currently discovered exoplanets, we predict the discovery of the first Earth-like planet to be announced in the first half of 2011, with the likeliest date being early May 2011. Our predictions, using only the properties of previously discovered exoplanets, accord well with external estimates for the discovery of the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet, and highlights the the usefulness of predictive scientometric techniques to understand the pace of scientific discovery in many fields.