Fantasist's Scroll

Has been found!
Yep, using a relatively new technique measuring the way light from a star “wobbles” as it’s bent around a planet, a new extra-solar planet has been found in a previously unconcieved of situation. Until the astronomers at the California Institute of Technology found what the call the “Tattooine planet”, scientists didn’t think that binary or trinary star systems could support a planet of any reasonable size. They felt that such systems, which outnumber single-star systems like our own by 20 percent, were just too unstable to maintain a planet. But, now they know better. This discovery, of course, opens a whole new realm of possibilites for space discovery and colonization. Not to mention gives a whole lot of validation to the space opera writers who’ve imagined multiple suns setting in alien skies since the early days of science-fiction.

“We can rebuild him.”
Researchers have hit the Next Big Thing in prosthetics: a bionic arm that feels. According to this article on the Chicago Tribune website, biomedical researchers have come up with an artificial arm that has sensors built in which allow its user to feel. The “fellings” are actually relayed to a tiny computer, which in turn relays the signals to “plungers” in the prosthetic’s harness. These “plungers” stimulate nerves which are interpreted by the brain as being attached to the hand. It allowed an experimental patient to “feel” someone touching the back of his “hand”. The sensors and relays are sensitive and accurate enough to let the patient identify individual fingers and tell researchers which one was being stimulated.
An amazing development that, to me, reads like science-fiction. No wonder William Gibson has all but given up writing science-fiction and slid into general fiction with Pattern Recognition. Everyday life has become science-fiction!

Amazingly, that’s not science-fiction.
At least, not according to this article on the UMass Amherst News site. Researchers there have found a bacteria that excretes nanowire. Apparently, these are actually natural conductive materials that help explain how these microbes clean up ground water, among other things. Note that the scientists didn’t induce this behavior, but simply discovered it. Still, it’s pretty revolutionary. Could this be the begining of fully organic computers? Maybe bringing us one step closer to a living, self-repairing robot or android? The possibilities are endless.
Especially if you’re a science-fiction writer who’s a little fuzzy on the details.

Geez, don’t these guys watch B-movies?
Apparently, the scientists at Pittsburgh’s Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research have succcessfully brought technically dead dogs back to life. According to the article on News.Com.AU, the scientists replaced the dogs’ blood with a very cold saline solution of unknown properties, though I suspect it was more than just saline. Three hours later, they put the blood back and gave the dog an electric shock to restart its heart. Apparently, they were quite successful and the dog showed no ill effects. They eventually plan to try this on humans.
I realize this is all about getting a process for suspended animation, but the idea of bringing something back from the dead… Well, I’m sure I’m not alone when I find this a little disturbing. And, seriously, I wonder if they’ve seen Reanimator. Maybe they should be require to before they get human test subjects.

Think about that this weekend and enjoy your freaky Fun Friday Link!

Where’s Majel Roddenberry when you need her?
According to the Technology Review, we’re only three years away from a quantum computer. What does that mean? Calculations on an unimaginable order of magnitude greater speeds than any we’ve know so far, among other things. At least, the speeds and calculations are unimaginable to me! Really fast stuff. And, also, these computers will be able to factor all kinds of horribly complicated equations that we can only just concieve of now. Truly, it will result in a computer not too far removed from that of the U.S.S. Enterprise, which was able to calculate all sorts of obscure probabilities from pretty fuzzy word problems asked by the crew. Indeed, this might be the first step towards true machine intelligence.
Eventually, that is. The computer they’re predicting in the next three years won’t be anything close to that, but, apply Moore’s Law to that and consider the difference between the 8088’s of ten or twelve years ago to the Pentium 4’s of today. The possibilities are endless.

No, this is not a bad acid trip.
Actually, it’s a pretty interesting web comic set in the not too distant future. What’s even more interesting is that it takes place in an Islamic-centric desert country torn by war and terrorism. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought it might. And, trust me, this is a very different look at how that dynamic works. Very thought provoking.
So, check out The Spiders and get ready to be blown away.

Have a fun freaky Friday!

Today is the birthday of Robert Heinlein.
Mr. Heinlein was born on this day in 1907 in Butler, Missouri. He wrote numerous novels and collections of short stories. He is best known for his novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, about a boy born during the first manned mission to Mars. It’s filled with values from the 60’s, including free love, new religions and “different” views on marriage. It was quite ground-breaking in its day and can still be startling to our modern, but still quite Puritanical, society. Heinlein called his books “speculative fiction” rather than “science fiction” because he liked to emphasized the idea that he was writing about things that could, possibly, come true. He tried to stick to only the scientific laws that we knew and their reasonable extrapolation. I think that’s why his work stands the test of time.
So, go read some of his work today, in celebration of his birthday.

Danger Will Robinson!
Accordingto this article on MSN, those inventive Japanese are at it agian! This time, they’ve created another piece of science-fiction: The Security Robot. According to the article, they will patrol shopping malls looking out for potential trouble. In the picture, they show a security robot putting out a fire, so I’m assuming they’ll have some safety features, like fire extinguishers. No word on whether or not they’ll have firearms built in, but I doubt it, considering the laws in Japan regarding that sort of thing. Of course, they may develop that for export…
Oh, that’d be scary. A robotic mall security guard with a gun. Like the human variety isn’t bad enough already. I just hope the designers have read Asimov’s Laws of Robotics!