CT2 points out that in the near future someone with a gazillion cycles of computing power is going to use all the tourist photos on Flickr to synthesize a 3D model of every large photogenic city.
There are more than 2 million photos on Flickr tagged with Rome. They capture almost every nook and cranny, every column and doorway, of the old city. If you had a lot of computer power, and the right smart software, you could take these 2 million views and compile them into a single unified 3D portrait… The movie below does that same thing with huge piles of photos taken off of Flickr.
IBM makes the news with the first image of a complete molecule. It looks a lot like I thought it would…
Using an atomic-force microscope, scientists at IBM Research in Zurich have for the first time made an atomic-scale resolution image of a single molecule, the hydrocarbon pentacene. Atomic-force microscopy works by scanning a surface with a tiny cantilever whose tip comes to a sharp nanoscale point. As it scans, the cantilever bounces up and down, and data from these movements is compiled to generate a picture of that surface.
Solar satellites (a favourite of mine). Japan’s plan – a $21 billion solar-powered generator… to produce one gigawatt of energy, or enough to power 294,000 homes gains a few partners.
Mitsubishi and IHI are joining a research group containing 14 other countries to tackle the daunting task of getting Japan’s four square kilometer solar space station up and running in the next three decades. By 2015, the Japanese government hopes to test a small satellite decked out with solar panels that beams power through space and back to Earth…
What about Solar roads? Replacing the existing 25,000 square miles in the US would provide at least 3x the current electrical demand for roughly the same cost as the current road and power systems. The top layer is etched glass, the middle layer solar cells, the bottom layer power and data distribution. No discussion at all on how to store the power for night-time use. The plot would seem to call for a globe-spanning super-conducting ring…
The Solar Roadway™ is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all current petroleum-based asphalt roads, parking lots, and driveways with Solar Road Panels™ that collect and store solar energy to be used by our homes and businesses… The Solar Roadway™ becomes an intelligent, self-healing, decentralized (secure) power grid.
Researchers at NASA and the Department of Energy recently tested key technologies for developing a nuclear fission reactor that could power a human outpost on the moon or Mars… To generate electricity, the researchers used a liquid metal to transfer the heat from the reactor to the Stirling engine, which uses gas pressure to convert heat into the energy needed to generate electricity. For the tests, the researchers used a non-nuclear heat source. The liquid metal was a sodium potassium mixture that has been used in the past to transfer heat from a reactor to a generator… The system performed better than expected, generating 2.3 kilowatts of power at a steady pace.
The previously top secret reusable reentry vehicle for the Soviet “Almaz” manned military space station will form the backbone of a major new U.S./Russian commercial venture to carry paying research crews on one week missions into Earth orbit by 2013… The reusable Russian hardware purchased to initiate the venture was built more than 30 years ago as part of a large Soviet space reconnaissance program… In addition to buying several Almaz reentry vehicles, the company has also bought two complete Almaz space station hulls… The several Almaz reentry vehicles were never launched or returned manned because of conflicts in the Russian space program between the military and civilian sides…
Excellent essay in Edge on the interaction between digital evolution and analog economics anticipated by Von Neumann.
What prices are going up the fastest? Health care — the cost of maintaining human beings. What prices are going down the fastest? The cost of information and machines… Financial systems exhibit the Gödelian incompleteness characteristic of all sufficiently powerful formal systems: within the given system it is possible to construct statements (or financial instruments) whose value appears to be sound, but cannot be proved within the system itself…
Using light to switch circuits comes a step closer…
Demonstrating a fundamentally new optical phenomenon, researchers at Yale University have shown the second half of an optical force that could make silicon photonics devices–such as those used in high-speed communications, network cards, even video and TV cables–faster and more capable… Scientists theorized in 2005 that tiny beams of light confined on a silicon chip could attract or repel each other when placed in close proximity, similar to the electromagnetic forces between positive and negative charges. Last year a group led by Yale University professor Hong Tang first demonstrated the “attractive” side of this optical force. Now the group has demonstrated the second side of the force, repulsion, which makes its effects reversible… The accomplishment opens the possibility of using light to manipulate light in microphotonic devices, rather than using mechanical elements like microheaters or power-hungry optical crystals… The group used two identical waveguides–the optical equivalents of electronic wires, encasing the light beams moving through them–and suspended them in a central coupling region to allow them to move freely under the influence of the optical force. Then the researchers sent in a beam of laser light, split it in half, and forced one half through a longer path than the other. When the two halves of light recombined, they were out of phase because of having traveled different path lengths. The researchers found that when the light beams were out of phase, their waveguides repelled each other, but when the light was in phase, the waveguides pulled closer together.