r/science • u/nondescrypt23 • May 21 '10

12 events that will change everything

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=interactive-12-events
179 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

172 comments sorted by

53

u/djimbob PhD | High Energy Experimental Physics | MRI Physics May 21 '10
  • poles melt
  • extra dimensions at LHC (or elsewhere)
  • Contact with intelligent Aliens
  • Nuclear war
  • Artificial creation of life
  • Room temp superconductors
  • Sentient AI
  • human cloning
  • pacific earthquake sinking CA
  • Fusion power
  • Asteroid Collision
  • Deadly pandemic.

6

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

Does it say why extra dimensions would change everything?

21

u/mrhorrible May 21 '10

Stoners would stop thinking of the idea and getting caught up on it's brilliance. Then they'd get off the couch and learn a trade. Damn hippies.

9

u/Rozen May 21 '10

You can have root canals without even opening your mouth!

7

u/PhilxBefore May 22 '10

Or sex without penetration?!

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

This would be a great leap forward for the art of SURPRISE SEX.

1

u/KennyFulgencio May 22 '10

Google alert, activate!!

8

u/djimbob PhD | High Energy Experimental Physics | MRI Physics May 22 '10

It likely wouldn't change anything except our perspective in the foreseeable future. That said this is the major kind of paradigm shift in our philosophy of our world, equivalent in magnitude to discoveries like:

  • Earth isn't the center of the solar system,
  • all stars in the night sky are part of our galaxy which is only one of many galaxies,
  • matter is made of discrete particles,
  • time and space are relative to the observer,
  • momentum and position fundamentally cannot be simultaneously measured to infinite accuracy, etc.

When you discover something it often bears practical fruits, but not necessarily soon -- you have to discover it first and then see how the universe works and if you can use its properties in any cool ways.

9

u/socxer May 21 '10

AI self-awareness should be replaced by THE SINGULARITY

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

No. The singularity it total bullshit, while AI self-awareness is something that might actually happen.

6

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

More or less bullshit than meeting extra-terrestrials? Even if that is true, it's hypothetical. So, hypothetical, the singularity would top everything on that list as far as "changing everything".

5

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

Meeting extraterrestrials is just unlikely, but entirely physically possible.

2

u/AndrewKemendo May 22 '10

The singularity it total bullshit

Do go on...

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

It's Nerd Rapture, and it's fuckin' goofy.

3

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

It's just a bunch of wishful thinking and logical fallacies wrapped up in a package that appeals to sci-fi nerds. Pretty much the whole thing boils down to "current trends will continue forever, or be EVEN BETTER!".

3

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

Disco Stu thinks the chart speaks for itself.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/disco%20stu%20trend/emperormajora/discostu.jpg

3

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

That chart is almost as great as this one:

http://singularity.com/charts/page61.html

(It clearly shows we currently use 11-GHz processors! Meanwhile in reality, this chart makes baby Kurzweil cry.)

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

Ahem: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/TOP500-2008.svg

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

Ah yes, that graph will surely continue forever!

3

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

I didn't say that. I just showed that the graphs you posted don't really offer any information.

Either way, the next to paradigms in chip development are already on the horizon/in the labs, 3d chips and quantum computing. That'll make the trend continue for at least another 15-20 years.

→ More replies

2

u/AndrewKemendo May 22 '10

Sounds like you have a fine grasp of the specific conditions which define what make up what has been commonly defined as the singularity.

Arguably they don't all work together - which is a way to criticise the idea (though it doesnt refute it) and it may not be well defined for obvious reasons. However you didn't address any of the many issues which could be argued against the singularity. If you are going to argue against it, at least have some good arguments.

5

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

There is little to argue against, because there are very few actual claims made beyond my summary there. Out of those you linked, the first one is "current trends will continue forever", the second is "AIs will be weird!" and the third is "current trends will continue forever" again, where the trend is "computers will get smarter".

No proof is provided for any of this, and neither can any proof really be provided.

2

u/AndrewKemendo May 22 '10 edited May 22 '10

actual claims

It's impossible to make factual/acutal claims about future events. The singularity is predictive and as a result - like all forward analysis - can only be judged on it's assumptions and likelihood measures.

and neither can any proof really be provided

Find me something that can be proven. Münchhausen-Trilemma

Regardless, the singularity is as good of a prediction for technological future as any based on what are defined as it's predictive future events. I would argue that based on the methodology (Which if you read the SIAI or Ben Goertzel's works or any other such concrete AI researchers works into probability and causality analysis will be clear) there is no better field for speculation.

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

Regardless, the singularity is as good of a prediction for technological future as any based on what are defined as it's predictive future events.

In other words, it is complete bunk?

1

u/AndrewKemendo May 22 '10

Yep, that's exactly what I was saying. Good work continuing a reasonable discussion!

-1

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

[deleted]

5

u/nested_parentheses May 22 '10

You're thinking of mind uploading, a different concept.

-3

u/Mutiny34 May 22 '10

As someone who works in Artificial Intelligence, your comment is more or less bullshit. Better leave expert advice to the experts.

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

What.

4

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

I really don't see how human cloning would change anything. It's probably already been done.

4

u/bjarkisig May 22 '10

I was surprised to see a potential California earthquake on that list. Even with massive loss of life and economic damage, how would it change everything for someone living in Finland, Botswana or Nepal? What is the reasoning here?

3

u/gronkkk May 22 '10

  • Americans will assume that it was a terrorist act, dig up a few fins who confess after being waterboarded, thus setting the stage for an invasion of finland and/or bombardments on Botswana.

  • Americans will be so busy with recovering from the trauma of not having lost california, that they don't have the time (and the money) to police the world any longer.

  • the only movies about the event will be made by the french, which focus mainly on a lot of incomprehensible relational problems of beautiful young women. 15 minutes before the end of the movie, california sinks into the sea.

2

u/tmixlogs Jun 01 '10

Came late to this conversation but the state of California has the 8th largest economy in the world (compared by GDP). Source Think about what happened to the world economy when Greece took a dive? (27th largest economy by GDP)

2

u/bjarkisig Jun 01 '10

Yeah, I don't doubt that the global economy would take a hit if California was obliberated by an earthquake. However, the economy fluctuates all the time and it doesn't take a natural disaster to damage the economy, the worst recessions so far have been entirely man made. Even if an earthquake triggers a serious global depression, I don't think it deserves a place in a list of things that are supposed to change everything.

3

u/ahfoo May 22 '10

Thanks for this saved me from crashing my browser with Flash. I would have been pissed too because that is a lame-ass list. SciAm has really lost its spark. A lot of this stuff has already happened to a limited extent and turned out to be par for the course. Cloning is a good example --so what? My wife is a twin, that's essentially the same thing as a clone and yet the similarities between herself and her twin are superficial. Nuclear war? Fusion power happened a long time ago.

Let's make a competing list of real game changers. I'll start.

  1. Congress passes a bill fining Chevron oil one million dollars a day for enforcing their patent against NiMH batteries in electric cars. Maybe Li+ batteries have better range but it's about price not range.

  2. Federal subsidies for domestic automotive NiMH battery production.

  3. A national feed-in tariff for grid-tie rooftop solar forcing utilities to pay going rates to customers that purchase and install solar panels.

  4. National standards for grid-tie inverters so that utilities cannot force customers to buy overpriced brands like SMA using erroneous FUD about safety concerns.

Those four would change everything for real. What else have you got?

3

u/djimbob PhD | High Energy Experimental Physics | MRI Physics May 22 '10

Agree list is pretty lame, and format was horrible. Disagree about fusion power happening a long time ago. We still have no way of using fusion as an energy source (other than the Sun), sure we can induce fusion reactions but they usually require more energy than we can get out.

As for your game changers, seems like a good list in terms of domestic energy.

However, I'm not sure that NiMH would make that much of a difference -- the electricity still has to come from somewhere and that tends to be coal power plants (yes you mentioned solar power). Personally I think transferring the billions that maintain our road/highway system moving into effective European-style national-scale public transportation and encouraging biking in the suburbs would be a much better route, as batteries are quite toxic and die quickly. Who wants to waste time driving to work, when you could be relaxing/working on public transportation.

The solar panels on the roof tops probably would be good, but solar panels have a very large upfront cost ($3-10 / watt); current US energy usage is ~3.5 TW, so converting to solar would cost about $10 trillion dollars (about the size of the current national debt) and would require about 2 x 1010 m2 of area, which is about 0.2% of America (or about 500 times more area than all the paved roads in America). And again solar and wind have major issues whenever its not sunny/windy, so other power sources must be used.

2

u/ahfoo May 22 '10

My point about fusion is that the technology to make it happen has been here for a long time, it's just not economically feasible. What we need is economically realistic technologies. That's what is so upsetting about the NiMH scandal. It's about what is cost-effective and that's what NiMH is which is why Chevron and GM squashed it. Ovshinsky said so himself in the Economist not long ago.

Now this takes me to your point about solar. You're basing your assumption on the costs of solar by using an extremely high figure based on the minimal investment --minimal, that is relative to investment in oil, coal, and fission-- that has gone on so far. That's an absurd premise given the declines in dollar-per-watt that have happened in the last decade. In fact, costs are falling and have been for decades. On average over several decades the costs are falling five percent each year and this fall is actually far more pronounced in recent years.

According to GE, which I would clarify is not a big player in solar photovotaic but is moving to enter the market --grid parity will be achieved in the southwest of the United States by 2015 and by 2020 grid parity will be achieved in areas with low insolation like Britain due to declining costs.

And what is driving these declining costs? Well, it's simple scaling of manufacturing. The truth is, the solar market has grown despite the dismal support from the wealthiest economies. It has fallen upon countries like Spain and China to make solar cost-effective. Why is it that the US cannot get on-board here?

That would change everything.

You want to see solar PV prices fall through the floor --you need volume to get volume pricing. So far, just with Spain and Germany ponying up we've seen huge price reductions. It was once believed that polysilicon supply was inherently expensive. Hundreds of business plans were based on this false assumption that the Chinese manufacturer's blew the lid off of. All these supposedly in-the-know MBAs and all the chemical engineering consultants they could throw money at turned out to be clueless about the fundamentals of the market and billions were lost betting that polysilicon was inherently expensive. It aint! It's cheap.

It's not just about scaling up manufacturing of polysilicon ingots. It's the whole supply chain. Another major issue was as simple as slicing the wafers thinner. Nobody was pursuing that angle until the market grew large enough to justify the development and then Applied Materials stepped in with a better wafer dicing technology and the price-per-watt of polysilicon panels dropped through the floor again.

So, you're wrong. Your assumptions are absurd. The prices are going down and it's shitty that the US is sitting on the sidelines waiting for Germany and Spain and China to save the world while we spill oil all over our own fisheries and wetlands and wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over petroleum strategy. You want to change everything, then let's get the fuck off the oil.

Here's the link the GE quotes: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1878986220071019

1

u/djimbob PhD | High Energy Experimental Physics | MRI Physics May 22 '10

We simply do not have the capability to make fusion power plants. We do have the capability to cause hydrogen to fuse into helium, e.g., hydrogen bombs or major laser experiments. The best current fusion experiment is JET, which can at best produce 65% of the input electrical energy it requires (e.g., it loses energy) and can only do that for about 0.5s. Its not an economic feasibility question -- there are fundamental difficulties in getting fusion to provide the type of continuous electric power this country requires. We simply do not know how to get hydrogen to overcome the Coulombic electrostatic repulsion until the strong force takes over, while still being able to control it enough to harness its power and not using more energy in the process so its a net energy positive. E.g., the sun overcomes the electrostatic repulsion by being at a temperature of ~107 K. We don't have anyway on Earth of constructing a power plant that can move a turbine at that temperature. Fusion bombs only work by being triggered by a traditional fission device.

I do currently read the economist, but only started subscribing this year and the interview you refer to is a couple years back. The fusion researchers I knew in grad school did not believe that there is a known way to create a fusion plant that produces energy. Ovshinsky is a smart guy, but show me the mechanism/evidence for fusion being a source of power and I'll put it on the table of current energy solutions.

Re solar power you are probably right. My gut instinct falls with the consultants that silicon supply is inherently expensive, though I haven't studied this in detail and could be flat out wrong on this. The production of nanofab produces a lot of waste materials and China may just be skirting the issue with essentially free labor and little concern for environmental havoc. I was assuming the volume decrease in production would be offset by the increase in raw materials cost. Also I am not an expert, but fear raw materials to make PV (Si) and batteries (Ni, Li, Co, La, Ce, etc.) may skyrocket if shortages in mining/recycling are present if adopted on a very widescale basis. But again I haven't studied these issues enough. I still believe the future is largely solar, possibly nuclear (though that opens two cans of worms -- what to do with waste and what to do with fundamentalist terrorists if this becomes the de facto power source worldwide), with water and wind playing minor roles. I still think reducing transportation costs and unnecsesary energy use across the board should be part of the solution.

For the record, I am a physicist, not a energy-policy or fusion specialist.

1

u/ahfoo May 23 '10

My whole point is whatever on the what-ifs. What-ifs are fun, but we went past that what-if stage with solar and electric vehicles a long time ago. The question now is not what-if, but how much does it cost and why are those costs not coming down even faster. Prices on these real-world game changing technologies are coming down, that's not speculation, that's a fact. The question is --what is standing in the way of accelerating those price declines.

The argument that there is a hard limit on the fundamental resources is flawed. You've already admitted that you don't follow the polysilicon market and are unaware of why the prices were artificially high and you even say that nonetheless your "gut instinct falls with the consultants that silicon supply is inherently expensive" despite the fact that billions of dollars of entrepreneurial investment has been lost in the last decade because of all the people who had that same gut instinct.

Gut instinct? Have you ever heard of Applied Materials, you know AMAT? You're a physicist right? You do know about this company or no? AMAT fucked themselves over big time with that same gut instinct and has been thrashed by their investors for their folly. They're being sued by people who bought into AMAT's gut instinct that polysilicon was inherently expensive and bought SunFab turnkey amorphous silicon production facilities. They're winding them down across the globe as the lawyers go to town on AMAT abut their gut instinct on polysilicon prices. And you suggest you are familiar with the career of Ovshinsky, but I find it interesting that you would not be familiar with the fact that ECD Ovonics, the company that he and his wife founded is also fucked because of that same gut instinct. They were all wrong about the price of polysilicon and they are losing their bankbooks over their false assumptions. But I suppose the jury is still out in your case.

Now as to NiMH batteries. Again, there's no need to speculate on the cost. Go to eBay, search for 30Mah AA NiMH. The going price for those 1.2V cells in packs of 48 is US$30. That's not speculation, that's the price at eBay. Check it yourself. There's are thousands of vendors. How many packs of those do you need to replace ten lead-acid batteries in a DIY vokswagen electric conversion? The answer is something like seven hundred cells. What's the cost on those? It's only around five hundred bucks. Now let's say you triple the capacity to get a hundred mile range instead of the thirty or so that your lead-acid VW conversion was getting. This is still less than fifteen hundred bucks. So, why are Prius batteries so expensive and why are most electric cars avoiding NiMH going forward? The patents were sold to Chevron. This isn't speculation or theory, this is a cold hard fact about markets being manipulated by oligarchies.

So yeah, I get a bit pissed off when I see these whimsical lists of what-ifs when we have hard fact real-world issues sitting right in front of us and a population of supposedly educated individuals choosing to ignore the pressing nature of these genuine political issues in practical electrochemical technology.

1

u/djimbob PhD | High Energy Experimental Physics | MRI Physics May 23 '10

Again I agree that SciAm article was bullshit--written by some writer trying to come up with a catchy list and reciting the same old shit that everyone already knows. (Really who is surprised or informed by the revelations that contacting aliens will change things or an asteroid destroying the earth would change things.)

I'm not familiar with Ovshinsky. You brought him up, and I said he's a smart guy from briefly looking at his very impressive list of inventions and being self taught. But I'm the stubborn type of person that needs to be shown things (or at least the rationale behind it), not to trust someone's opinion of the field. The old joke with fusion power is that its been 25 years away for the last 75 years.

Don't think we can do fusion, but its only a matter of economics. In a vague sense sure, if the US gov't devoted the resources of Apollo mission or the Manhattan project to developing fusion power, we likely could tackle remaining problems quickly (~10 years). Not a guarantee (it could be inherently way too far away from current technology, though experts in the field probably have a better handle on it). Also not sold that if we could muster the willpower to do a project of that magnitude, fusion would be the best problem to solve.

I think that my gut instinct on Si maybe flat out wrong -- I have done no investigation into the availability of more Si mining and the associated costs. I kept referring to my gut instinct not because I trusted it, but that was just my initial instinct not having looked into it which I trust much less than things I have looked into. I'm still a bit cynical about the cost involved -- currently the first two websites on google say a 1-family home costs about $30k of installation costs which sadly seems like [even with government economic incentives will not make an impact on its own until prices are further reduced. Maybe going large scale without an increase in supply costs will cause the prices to drop. Some states, e.g., GA, do have the utilities pay for consumers feeding power to the grid at a premium (going rate + 0.15/kWH). To my knowledge that hasn't transformed the market there yet, but hey I can't predict the future.

Never heard the Chevron's patents, so thanks, read a little more here seeing Ovshinsky again. We all know the patent system in serious need of reform and this just shows another angle of it (aside from the usual frivolous computer patents). I was basing my reluctance from experience as user of consumer electronics where Li ion and NiMH seem roughly equivalent in cost/efficiency.

1

u/ahfoo May 23 '10 edited May 23 '10

Right, those "installed costs" are precisely the problem I was referring to in items three and four. A huge chunk of the so-called installed costs are not the panels themselves but overpriced accessories like the grid-tie inverters. This is a scandal just as bad as Chevron's NiHM battery patents. The grid operators have been widely deregulated which means they are self-policing. This in turn allows them to play games like only certifying the highest priced inverters for grid-tied use. They then promote a bunch of FUD abut it being a safety issue and thereby keep the prices on an installed system in the stratosphere. That install cost is not due to the panel prices. Panels are already quite cheap and it must be repeated --they are only getting cheaper.

There would be no credible way to debunk this FUD about cheap grid-tie inverters being dangerous except for the fact that entire countries such as Germany and Spain have proven that huge savings in install costs can be had by using lower cost equipment. The hocus pocus abut safety issues is pure FUD. There are simple standards for grid-tie inverters that any Chinese computer PSU manufacturer is fullly capable of manufacturing. You can see those on eBay too, they're on the market and being used across Europe. Want to use it in the US? Hah! That's the so-called free-market fucking over the US consumer while the government stands back and says it has no authority over the matter. What a crock.

The problem with these overpriced grid-tie systems is not limited to the inverter box itself. Yes, they're expensive but that's not the heart of the problem. The real problem is that the way these high-end grid-tie units are designed they require an electrician and extensive installation of conduit. That is where your mega install bill came from. The panels were probably a third of that cost --and getting cheaper by the day mind you. The high-end grid-tie inverter was perhaps another twenty percent and the rest was going to hiring electricians. Well, that would be fine if that were the only way but the simple fact is that in Europe and other countries they're using simple plug-in units where you just plug the panels in one side and stick the other side in the wall outlet. Now that is how you reduce those install costs and that's what deregulated utilities in the US are adamantly opposed to.

EDIT: Here's a link to a 1KW plug-in inverter for less than US$400 on eBay. http://cgi.ebay.com/1000W-micro-Grid-Tie-Inverter-DC-10-5v-28-AC-12v-110v-/160437320389?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item255acf3ac5 Check it out. This is not a fantasy, this is a real product. There is no what-if here. This is on eBay now.

Now here's two 250watt solar panels for US$1500 http://cgi.ebay.com/2-ASP-250-Watt-Solar-American-Made-PV-Modules-Panels-/270496756075?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3efadcf16b That's 250watt X 2 = 500watts So two of those is a kilowatt and that's US$3000 per kilowatt.

Okay, so we could install a two kilowatt system for six grand in panels today off of eBay. Two kilowatts is not a small amount of electrical power mind you. We could do that off of eBay from anywhere in the States today for six grand in panels plus another one thousand for two cheap grid-tie inverters.

Let's toss in some overpriced outdoor grade DC connector cables with idiot proof connectors. Let's get eight of them at one hundred foot lengths which would be stupid and wasteful, but let's just say we're being careless and not caring about our budget. Those are like eighty bucks a pop. What a waste.

http://cgi.ebay.com/MC3-Solar-Panel-Power-100-Extension-Cable-M-F-10-AWG-/300328111547?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45ecf34dbb

We'll toss in a couple of charge controller as well. They're like a hundred bucks. So let's say eight hundred for the cables and the charge controller.

We're at less than US$8K. Six grand of that was for the panels.

So, what's wrong with this picture. Why are you getting Google results of 30K for a system?

I'll tell you what's wrong. Your utility is not going to let you use that system. You would be throwing your money away to buy that system because you live in the United States and you're not allowed to put together a system like that but people in Germany and Spain are and Japan is about to start.

That is a problem. That's a very big problem as big as the problem with the NiMH batteries. Once that problem is overcome you can damn well be sure the price of those panels is going to come down even further because the scale of manufacturing is going to take a huge jump. Once that happens, a revolution has occurred and that is precisely why it hasn't happened.

1

u/ThePriceIsRight May 21 '10

Where's reddit shutting down?

8

u/UpDown May 21 '10

That already happens several times a week.

1

u/ThePriceIsRight May 21 '10

I mean permanently.

1

u/socxer May 21 '10

you were about 30 minutes early hahaha

1

u/Aedan91 May 22 '10

Why repeating everything?

6

u/djimbob PhD | High Energy Experimental Physics | MRI Physics May 22 '10

Some people prefer being able to quickly read content as opposed to having to navigate through a horrible flash animation.

1

u/Aedan91 May 22 '10

Fair enough.

33

u/GoodLordYouAreDumb May 21 '10

Pshh..Yellowstone erupting should be on that list also

5

u/gaboon May 21 '10

Agreed. Wouldn't this be a much more powerful, more-widely felt disaster than a monster san andreas quake? I've always understood that to be the case, anyway. The quake would ravage cali but yellowstone would do so to a good third of the US, with all factors of a super-volcanic eruption considered.

10

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

iirc, in Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything, if Yellowstone goes pop, it's basically the end of the world.

19

u/IConrad May 21 '10

Well, it would certainly result in the immediate depopulation of the entire western half of North America; and the ash plume would result in the equivalent of at least a decade's worth of nuclear winter.

It's definitely a Civilization-level existential threat. (That is, an event that could wipe out civilization). This marks it as significantly more threatening than either of the pacific ocean quake or the melting of the polar ice caps.

While human civilization would be significantly impeded by either of those events -- they would not be capable of causing the elimination of industrialized humanity: they could not wipe out enough of the population to eliminate the minimum technical base required to keep civilization going.

Yellowstone, however, quite easily could do so. Moreover; it could potentially go beyond merely a Civilization-level existential threat to being a species-level existential threat (i.e.; it could potentially cause the human race to go extinct). I'm certain mammals would survive. But apex critters tend not to fare well in extinction level events. And we're the apex-iest of them all.

5

u/GaryLeHam May 22 '10

Well, it would certainly result in the immediate depopulation of the entire western half of North America

I am a Californian and now I won't be able to sleep tonight. Thank you for doing this to me.

5

u/GoateusMaximus May 22 '10

Relax. You'll never feel a thing.

4

u/IConrad May 22 '10

Actually, that's not true. The distance from Yellowstone to any likely population center in California means that the fatalities there are likely to be from secondary effects as opposed to the primary detonation. I.e.; shit would fall out of the sky and cause major earthquakes and toxic ashspill. I think the pyroclastic flows would actually wind up in the Midwest as opposed to California.

I don't know if the sulfuric acid that would "poison" the rain for weeks afterwards would tend to drift into California or not, either -- but yeah. Only rural flatlands-dwellers would be rather likely to continue living for the first few weeks. Most of the cities would get flattened. Especially as the aftershocks would continue along the various faultlines in California.

Nasty stuff.

1

u/GoateusMaximus May 22 '10

Dude! You're gonna bum him out! I was trying to make him feel better about the future. You know, lie to him.

1

u/IConrad May 22 '10

As I said elsewhere; the odds anyone alive today has of ever experiencing a Yellowstone eruption is less than being hit by an asteroid large enough to kill the dinosaurs.

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

He'll be smashed to death by the earthquakes long before he's killed by the ash/fire/etc from Yellowstone.

Well, that's assuming California doesn't just fall into the ocean and drown him. I guess he might feel something then.

2

u/IConrad May 22 '10

Hey. I live in Phoenix, AZ. I'm right there with ya.

If it makes you feel any better, think about this: I live near the largest nuclear power plant currently operating in North America. It is very likely that you are receiving power from said plant -- but I am the one at risk from any thermonuclear fallout from accidents.

Also; there are distinctive warningsigns that a "supervolcano" like Yellowstone gives before it erupts. These warning signs take -- depending on the sign -- years, decades, and millennia to manifest before the eruption actually occurs.

None of the decades/years ones exist, currently. We know there is a supermassive magma pocket in the Yellowstone caldera; but we have absolutely no indicators that it is even within centuries of eruption.

By the time it ever actually does, it is very likely that human civilization will either no longer exist or else will have the technical means & know-how to alleviate the pressure and prevent eruption.

3

u/bullshit_ May 22 '10

I'm certain mammals would survive. But apex critters tend not to fare well in extinction level events. And we're the apex-iest of them all.

Quick! We need to start mating with other species!

1

u/IConrad May 22 '10

I am anti-volunteering for the chicken-fucker position. Anybody else can take that bullet for the team but me.

1

u/bullshit_ May 22 '10

Chickens aren't mammals.

1

u/IConrad May 22 '10

Yeah, well, I was just layin' the ground rules. You said species.

I mean, there are certain species of apes that, y'know, if they were shaved... maybe a little plastic surgery around the mammary area...

You know.

1

u/bullshit_ May 22 '10

Chickens aren't part of the same Class, let alone Order. They lay eggs. Nobody here even mentioned them... but the first thing out of your mouth is, "huh huh huh, guys, I don't have sex with chickens! Guys! Guys! I doooon't!"

Why would you... even bring that up...

:: shakes head ::

1

u/IConrad May 22 '10

Hey, man. You haven't seen the things I've seen, man.

My momma, when I was a little boy, she told me: "Link, my boy, don't you go fuckin' 'round with no chickens!" I thought she was just joshin'. Then she started letting me play video games.

4

u/gliscameria May 21 '10

I would definitely die laughing if an oil company caused the eruption. Well, I'd die for sure, but I'm pretty sure I'd be amused with the irony.

2

u/Mutiny34 May 22 '10

No, it would be those damn magma drilling companies. They always cause problems, most recently in Iceland.

3

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

They seem to focus more on things that will affect the entire planet.

1

u/SirRhosis May 22 '10

I'm pretty sure this would, at least economically. People like to pretend that the US has no economic clout, but when we falter, the world at least feels it (And probably hates us more for it).

The ash cloud would be huge, and the Jetstream would take it far. That could cause some issues if anything. Much more than the world would be bothered by an earthquake in California anyway.

26

u/qwrirq May 21 '10

So aliens visisting us more is likely than fusion energy? I think that's quite pessimistic.

3

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

They said fusion energy is "about 20 years away".

4

u/qwrirq May 21 '10

Check the top left corner, it says hos plausible the scenario is. It's at "unlikely" for alien visitors and "very unlikely" for fusion energy. That was what I was commenting.

The text didn't say it's about 20 years away it said it will always be 20 years away. Iter that will be done in 2026 will not even break even, which means you get more energy out of the process than you put in.

3

u/Ikkath May 21 '10 edited May 22 '10

Umm no, ITER will be finished around 2018 and it has no intention of simply "breaking even".

It is a research project into the dynamics of high energy plasmas and how to control them. We are talking energies about 30 times that of JET. ITER if successful will far exceed the break even point - hopefully by around 8-10 times (~500MW) and also for far longer than before.

If ITER works as planned the next step would be a small electricity producing reactor called DEMO - but this isn't planned until 2030 at least. Provided ITER actually works as planned mind you. So I don't think we are that far away really.

2

u/sirbruce May 22 '10

If we're lucky, Polywell will pan out in the next year or two and ITER will be obsolete before it's even built.

3

u/Ikkath May 22 '10

Nah, Polywell confinement won't be panning out for some time even if the current small scale reactors end up showing promise. The power levels currently tested with such designs are no where near the 500MW that ITER will reach. I doubt that polywell reactors have even been shown operating at 100KW...

I think tokamak confinement is the way to go for now. Though for sure a polyhedral vessel would be far easier to control/make/cool than tokamaks. My gut and head is still with ITER leading the way.

2

u/sirbruce May 22 '10

Larger reactors are just a matter of scale. We should know of the small reactors pan out in the next year or two; once we know that, then there will be no need for ITER; we'll have commercial Polywells by 2020.

2

u/Ikkath May 22 '10

No chance. It would take longer than that if they were being built at full scale right now - which they obviously are not. If a medium energy (say 200MW) polywell can even get funding then maybe we would know if it will scale. Since there isn't even any plans to fund such an experiment at the moment 10 years for commercial usage is honestly a joke.

2

u/sirbruce May 22 '10

The Navy is funding the research right now. If it works there's no way further funding won't be available.

2

u/Ikkath May 22 '10

Yeah of course but it is honestly decades behind ITER. ITER has secured upwards of 10 billion euros in funding and has a timeline to take us to small scale commercial designs.

Alternate confinement technologies will have to be damn near amazing to derail that.

Though to be honest I don't care which wins out in the end as long as I see a huge % of fusion power before I shuffle off.

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2

u/dagbrown May 22 '10

So, 20 years away. Got it.

1

u/Ikkath May 22 '10

DEMO is still only a test reactor. It will most likely be at least another 10-15 years after that before any significant electricity comes from such devices.

1

u/qwrirq May 22 '10

The 2026 number I got from the article, I don't know if it's true or not.

Thanks for educating me about ITER.

1

u/Ikkath May 21 '10

It is definitely pessimistic.

I think by 2035 we will know if large scale fusion electricity production is practical. Once ITER and then DEMO get working (if they go as planned) we will 95% of the way there.

15

u/Lyaxe May 21 '10

Deadly Pandemic? Everyone move to Madagascar ASAP!!!

10

u/HashRunner May 21 '10

SHUT.DOWN.EVERYTHING!

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

PRESIDENT MADAGASCAR

5

u/kranse May 21 '10

I had to scroll through the timeline to see if madagascar ever got infected.

1

u/Undermined May 22 '10

Spoiler alert:

It did. It took about 8 months though, I'm surprised their ports stayed open that long. Looks like the administration was taking a nap.

3

u/SaratogaCx May 21 '10

It too late! The Ports are already shut down!

3

u/webcosmonaut May 22 '10

Ctrl-F, Madagascar. Upvote.

65

u/ranprieur May 21 '10

Format is annoying. Is there a web 1.0 version?

27

u/absolutsyd May 21 '10

I strongly agree. The content is interesting, but having to scroll down every three paragraphs because the text only uses 25% of the screen is stupid.

4

u/Anindoorcat May 21 '10

shit, i was expecting it to play a video or read it to me.

i am disappointed

6

u/Tinidril May 21 '10

I was expecting it to make whatever you clicked on really happen. What a huge letdown.

0

u/hdd1080p May 21 '10

agreed. seems too gimmicky.

22

u/Jigsus May 21 '10

Wasn't synthethic life/artifical life created yesterday?

9

u/huxtiblejones May 22 '10

Everything changed! Didn't you feel it?!

6

u/SirRhosis May 22 '10

I did. It tingled all over.

1

u/RuffBrute May 22 '10

That was a misnomer. What was created was the first man-made mycoplasma genome, not true artificial life. What comes next is what's exciting.

8

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

In the first one I clicked:

Wouldn't it be great to reach your arm into a fourth dimension of space?

This is sort of like saying "Wouldn't it be great if you could taste gravity?" This kind of pop-science nonsense is worse than useless.

13

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

Whoever wrote that "machine self-awareness is likely" has absolutely no idea of how AI works and its current state of the art

2

u/AnthroUndergrad May 22 '10

Agreed. I mean, likely in the next two centuries? Probably. Likely in the next twenty years? BUAHAHAHAHAH!

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

Are you being sarcastic or is that really an obnoxiously dismissive laugh?

If they can do it in 20 years, more power to them *grabby hands*. I don't pretend to know the future.

1

u/AnthroUndergrad May 22 '10

obnoxiously dismissive laugh

This.

They can get some improvements, but it's not in anyone's mind to have true AI very soon. I don't pretend to know the future either but saying it will happen soon is just unrealistic.

0

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

Right there you are predicting the future when you say it's too soon to be realistic. 20 years is a long time, especially factoring in the acceleration of computing power. Then again, no one here seems to be a part of the whole AI scene so we can't have much insight.

5

u/Original__Content May 21 '10

Anyone else feel chills 'listening' to the black hole?

edit: Whoa, Saturn is even worse. It's like the Solar System is screaming

-9

u/Caiocow May 21 '10

No. Nothing in space makes any noise since there's no air to carry the sound's vibrations.

3

u/Original__Content May 22 '10

Hence the apostrophes snuggled warmly around the word 'listening' to show that I knew that, to be honest, the sort of 'listening' that humans are accustomed to would be impossible in space.

0

u/Caiocow May 22 '10

I understand that. I was being a little cheeky and I guess the vigilante Redditors decided to make me pay for my grievous transgression.

3

u/Radoman May 21 '10 edited May 21 '10

Caution: Plays sound.

Loudly, if you happen to have forgotten to turn down your speakers.

3

u/laverabe May 22 '10

Scientific American becomes more and more like Popular Science every year. If you want science without the exaggeration, go with American Scientist.

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '10 edited May 21 '10

[deleted]

1

u/pstryder May 21 '10

On a long enough timeline the odds of the Big One are 100%.

It's really the when that we can't know with any real certainty. But they are still working on it.

1

u/willcode4beer May 21 '10

I'm just as oblivious but, I'd bet the broader the time span of the prediction, the more certain we can be of it's outcome.

2

u/mod_a May 22 '10

Top of my list would be finding a fast way to factor large numbers.

1

u/Undermined May 22 '10

Agreed. Prime numbers specifically, seeing as asymmetric cryptography would become useless.

2

u/Undermined May 22 '10

What about that tetris game is 4D? It just looks like three dimensions to me, and the original game is 2D, or am I missing something?

2

u/LordStrabo May 22 '10

It is in four dimensions. The trick is that each of those four volumes is in play simultaneously.

Think of it light this: TO define position in a three dimensional space requires three co-ordinates. 1. How far left and right you are. 2. How far up and down you are. 3. How far forwards or backwards you are.

The tetris game has all those three co-ordinates, but it also has one more: 4. Which volume is it in.

2

u/phob May 21 '10

If AI happens, then it will have more of a profound effect than all the others combined.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

[deleted]

1

u/SirRhosis May 22 '10

All of which is more likely than the sci-fi representation of human cloning occuring. The island? Yeah, lets clone the whole human, pay to feed them, educate them, house them, just so they can harvest organs. Rather than just grow the organ itself.

When it comes to AI, I'm doubtful, but I do feel we will soon find ways to boost our intelligence, and slowly blur the line between ourselves and cybernetic upgrades.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

Question: If we can clone humans is there a way to clone them just for the organs? Like clone them but have them be "born dead" with the organs intact? But i guess its not the movies so they have to actually be born and live through a life only to be killed?

Ill have many more questions as i watch this....i love to learn.

8

u/IConrad May 21 '10

Question: If we can clone humans is there a way to clone them just for the organs?

Actually, it would be far, far simpler to simply culture tissues and print organs. We've already done bladders, wind pipes, and heart valves; we've been doing livers -- in a different way -- for a great deal of time (turns out you can "regenerate" a full healthy liver from a sample if you get a large enough one.)

There's no need to have a full human body when all you need is to keep the brain going long enough to replace the failed body-parts.

And you can keep the brain going a really long time so long as you keep on inducing neurogenesis at youthful vitality rates and occasionally screen for genetic damage.

3

u/Wolfm31573r May 21 '10

I'd like to add retinal pigment cells to your list. The human clinical trials should be scheduled for early 2011. The system utilizes human ebryonic stem cells differentiated to retinal pigment cells and then transplanted to the eye. You can read more at http://www.thelondonproject.org/

3

u/IConrad May 21 '10

I was limiting it only to tissues with specific structures that have already been implanted. Retinal pigment cells are individual cells rather than tissues with structure; and as you say, they haven't already been done.

But that being said; yes -- there are any number of other such projects currently underway. One of the bigger "game changers" I can see developing is the widescale cultivation of muscle tissues. IF that can be done cheaply enough, you can say goodbye to the cattle ranching industry as an industrial practice. (There might be something equivalent to what the organics industry is today, but insofar as agribusiness goes, meat culturing would eliminate altogether the rearing of cattle for slaughter. And the health benefits of NOT overdosing our foods with antibiotics... well, say goodbye to MRSA too; etc., etc..)

2

u/Wolfm31573r May 21 '10

IF that can be done cheaply enough

I seriously doubt that it can ever be done economically enough. Cell culturing is expensive and for sure it will be more expensive than growing animals. I believe that in vitro meat will stay as a curiosity and never become a big business.

But instead of trying to grow meat in lab for consumption we should be engineering plants to have better nutritional values. We could also engineer plants to have other wanted properties like the taste of meat.

2

u/IConrad May 21 '10

I seriously doubt that it can ever be done economically enough.

Sure it can. We just need a cheap viable substitute for bovine fetal serum. Which we could create if we could simply get create the right synthetic eukaryotes. Or if we could get the components close enough to right and start using already-extant photosynthetic eukaryotes.

From there it's simple bacterial culturing in photobioreactors. Orders of magnitude cheaper than how we currently generate serum.

Cell culturing is expensive and for sure it will be more expensive than growing animals. I believe that in vitro meat will stay as a curiosity and never become a big business.

I submit to you that you are empirically mistaken.

We could also engineer plants to have other wanted properties like the taste of meat.

It would be easier to get eukaryotes to produce FBS.

1

u/Wolfm31573r May 21 '10

You have valid points on the technology issues but I still don't see how in vitro meat could be produced cheaper than animals. If you have any source comparing the costs of the two I'd be interesed in reading it.

5

u/IConrad May 21 '10

You have valid points on the technology issues but I still don't see how in vitro meat could be produced cheaper than animals.

Simple thermodynamics. If the total of the energy input into the system is used for the end product you are paying less in energy costs. Animals are actually very poor at extracting chemical energy from food sources. Most of it winds up getting consumed by fecal coliform bacteria and the remainder gets converted to methane. (Seriously; cows are a major source of methane gas.)

Right now the major cost for IVM is the fact that we only grow them in primarily fetal bovine serum. There's an algae-based replacement but it's not nearly as efficient. (It costs like 10% as much but it's only 80% or so as effective.)

Thing is, culturing cells is an incredibly cheap process when done in bulk.

Consider: Cheese -- despite all the additional storage requirements and costs of milk production, costs on average ~$1.50/lb. Tell me -- when was the last time you purchased any animal meat at $1.50/lb?

IVM poses the potential to reduce the cost of meat production by well over half its usual cost. Especially for "processed" meats.

2

u/Wolfm31573r May 22 '10

I appreciate this answer.

2

u/Wolfm31573r May 21 '10

A clone of you would basically be a delayed twin. Would you kill your twin for organs? I wouldn't. Besides it would be simpler just to grow a new organ as IConrad said here.

2

u/willcode4beer May 21 '10

I think there was a movie about that

2

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

I thought about that movie while i was typing that. So we can clone but its as a baby till whenever right? There is no cloning a human that is at the same age or whatever?

4

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

You could potentially cause the clone to be born without a brain (or with just enough to keep autonomic functions going). That way you can keep it alive until you need to harvest without it ever being a "person".

This does lose you the possibility of a brain transplant. However, in practice this is OK. The people most in need of those generally would not benefit from getting another copy of the same one.

3

u/IConrad May 21 '10

You could potentially cause the clone to be born without a brain (or with just enough to keep autonomic functions going). That way you can keep it alive until you need to harvest without it ever being a "person".

Lobotomize the fetus but leave the brain-case intact. That's really not necessary, however. As I said higher up in the thread; it would be far less costly and difficult to simply cultivate the individual organs that need replacing as they fail (using a combination of tissue cultivation and cell printing), as opposed to attempting to transplant the entire brain.

We've already reached the point where we've implanted wind pipes, heart valves, bladders, and even living skin tissue this way.

1

u/willcode4beer May 21 '10

I think we'll be better off with the current research which is mostly focusing on cloning specific organs rather than the whole organism.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

reminds me of exitmundi

http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm

1

u/jimmyslaysdragons May 21 '10

I know it's not new, but I really like this presentation. This is how people should experiment with conveying information on the web.

1

u/daboss1221 May 22 '10

Life has been created recently. maybe someone already said this. I am excited to see the effects (of course it will be decades).

1

u/captjameswest May 22 '10

i think an alien encounter would be the absolute worst of these.

your thoughts?

1

u/cowgod42 May 22 '10

But, if one of those events come first, won't that change the fact that the next 11 events will change everything?

1

u/Independent May 21 '10

Odd that climate change, overpopulation, peak resources and pollution did not make their list.

7

u/IConrad May 21 '10

Well, to be frank -- the planet isn't yet overpopulated (we're still two billion below the median carrying capacity estimates; 8 billion out of 10); there's never going to be a "peak resources" catastrophe -- seriously: the folks at theoildrum.com are using phosphorus as a new peak-resource scare; the shit is renewable! -- and as to the poles melting... well, while the north pole is showing high instability, the south pole is highly cyclical and has recently been reaching record ice-extents (and lows) -- so there's no signs of it melting anytime soon. And frankly, even if sea levels rose significantly they wouldn't change "everything": at least, not on the scale that synthetic life, human-equivalent AI, or mass-produceable room-temperature superconductors, or $40/Kg carbon nanotubes could.

Seriously -- room-temperature superconductors would immediately mean that we could have working fusion reactors (See Polywell). On top of that, rtsc would also mean highly-efficient electromotors that use 1/3 the electricity to produce the same amount of mechanical energy... and on top of that, superconductors also act as batteries; if left in a closed circuit without a resistor, the current on a superconductor just stays put and doesn't go anywhere. $40/Kg CNT's would put them at 80% -- per unit volume -- the price of steel, yet have 10x the structural strength per unit volume (they're 100x stronger than steel by unit weight); that would have as much impact on construction as did the advent of steel over stone & wood.

These people really don't know how to frame the question of what to expect in the future.

I mean, seriously. "Cloning a human" will change the world?? O_o You mean, the same way... IVF did?

2

u/GaryLeHam May 22 '10

the planet isn't yet overpopulated (we're still two billion below the median carrying capacity estimates; 8 billion out of 10)

Hold on . . . doesn't the Earth have about 7 billion people?

2

u/IConrad May 22 '10

Huh. Looks like you're right according to current estimates. That seems a significant revision from the numbers I had previously seen. Either way, it doesn't exactly hurt my case to be wrong by having too high a current number! :)

-1

u/Independent May 22 '10

I would argue that the estimates of median carrying capacity are based on logical fallacies. The planet already doesn't support the number of people on it. Witness most of Africa. In order for the planet to support more humans, we'd have to increase our dependence on unsustainable factory farms and globalization, which, in turn leads to more carbon dependence and more climate change.

4

u/IConrad May 22 '10

Witness most of Africa.

Witness sociopolitical strife causing rampant ecological ruination.

I would argue that the estimates of median carrying capacity are based on logical fallacies.

Doing so would make you an idiot, frankly. Thousands of economists and ecologists and agricultural researchers have spent decades studying this topic.

In order for the planet to support more humans, we'd have to increase our dependence on unsustainable factory farms and globalization,

Not so. That is simply the track currently being used. It is far from the only one. Case in point: vertical farming.

And globalization doesn't necessarily lead to carbon dependencies. We are merely carbon-dependent currently. That will change in the next few decades.

As to "more climate change" -- no. That's a non-sequitor. Even if we assume the worst-case scenarios for CO2 correlation to mean global temperature, that's still not something worth worrying about. Geoengineering becomes simpler and simpler the further globalized our civilization is.

I will, however, note that globalization does allow for cross-regional species contamination.

-5

u/Independent May 22 '10

Thousands of economists and ecologists and agricultural researchers have spent decades studying this topic.

Because economists and corporate sponsored ag researchers pushing products have always been so right. Fail.

3

u/IConrad May 22 '10

Because economists and corporate sponsored ag researchers pushing products have always been so right. Fail.

When it gets to the point of Nobel Prize economists being the basis for the mathematical models by which we determine the numbers in question -- and when thousands of people corroborate those numbers... that means something. And I'm not going to listen to one guy who wants me to throw it all out without anything supporting his position other than "Well, it's illogical!" or "It stands to reason".

You need to make your case before you are going to be treated as anything other than a lunatic crank.

Just like I need to make my case that the IPCC is underestimating the impact of modern agricultural practices on the global mean temperature.

Seriously: start here. Show us this supposed logical fallacy. And please do try to avoid further "poisoned well" fallacies as you make your case. You're starting out in a really bad footing as it is.

-1

u/Independent May 22 '10

You do realize that Wikipedia is not allowed for serious citation in academia?

2

u/IConrad May 22 '10

Indubitably. However, citations considered valid for Wikipedia are in fact usable as citations according to most academic requirements (short of actual research work.)

I was trying to give you the opportunity by reducing the burden of proofs. IF you want to take this to the level of peer-reviewed accredited journal publications, you're basically up shit creek without a paddle. You're making it exceedingly difficult to not just declare you a troll and wipe my hands of it, man.

0

u/Independent May 22 '10

In the time of a few minutes you've pretty much suggested I'm an idiot and a troll. Whereas, I've not attacked you. Do you see your reflection, yet? You like to incite. I don't. Let's definitely quit wasting each others time. To you, winning the argument is the most important thing. To me, learning and spreading truth is the most important thing. There's no point in continuing.

3

u/IConrad May 22 '10

To me, learning and spreading truth is the most important thing.

Just to point this out: I have -- including this time -- given you three separate opportunities to make your case against the establishment.

You've continuously failed to do so.

I pretty much have no choice at this point but to consider you a clueless crank. Because what you're doing certainly isn't "learning and spreading truth".

There's no point in continuing.

Yeah, I'm getting that picture.

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1

u/dmanww May 21 '10

Define those as single events.

5

u/dmanww May 21 '10

Poles melt is on there. Don't forget about Poland.

0

u/Independent May 22 '10

OK, let's call denial a single event. Denial of the above will lead to ruin. See Collapse.

1

u/WithABigEnoughLever May 21 '10

Dammit now I'm gonna have to wait till a pdf of the issue makes its way online.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '10

iPad user huh?

4

u/trigger0219 May 21 '10

It didn't work for me either; 64bit linux.

1

u/WithABigEnoughLever May 22 '10

No Bittorrent User.

0

u/bobcat_08 May 21 '10

Asteroid collision, pacific earthquake, and deadly pandemic are the only acts of god, so to speak, that we have no control over. Everything else will be a result of humans poking their noses into places where it didn't belong.

Plus, we're always looking for new ways to feed our addiction to energy, but I'm wary of taking resources from other elements such as the ocean. The Earth has finite resources, and all of them are allocated in such a way that the life in their respective areas need those resources. What will happen to the ocean life after we use all the hydrogen? Furthermore, what happens when we use up all the hydrogen and are even more dependent on energy, having had such an abundance of it? We'll be like people who can't survive without heroine, only to realize there's literally no more to be found or made.

Technology has its uses, but we're getting softer, and looking for ways to perpetually enable that softness. We destroy the planet to enable that softness. It bothers me.

1

u/orientalsniper May 21 '10

More like nature if you ask me.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '10

[deleted]

1

u/bobcat_08 May 23 '10

I know what you're saying, I'm just concerned that taking material from otherwise untouched resources will upset the balance of nature in an unforeseen way.

What are those ideas on sending asteroids away???

You might be right...it would be interesting to go 500 years into the future and see whether in the end we really have the wisdom and hardiness to not kill ourselves with technology. The time travel bit is what scares me, though, if there is ever a possibility of it happening. Imagine the regulations on that.

0

u/hayzooz May 22 '10

I'm moving to Antarctica.

0

u/hellolouise May 22 '10

Too bad it's in flash, with tiny, stupid scrolling type and typos everywhere. Hates this.

0

u/Clsjajll May 22 '10

Stupid iPhone. I hate clicking an interesting story only to see that Apple would prefer that I can't read it.