The narrowing gap between sci-fi and sci-fact

[[Syl]]

Thought this would be a good subject. First entry...
Imagining Thought-Controlled Movement for Humans

[[Syl]]

Laser Weapons In U.S. Sights


www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/20/tech ... 8998.shtml

[Lord Mhoram]

Interesting article. I think it would be interesting to see lasers of this type defending satellites. Now that China's in space, it's a wake-up call--other nations are going to be in space. What if there is a war in space?

[[Syl]]

Bone Phones
news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1509&u=/afp/20040121/tc_afp/lifestyle_japan_telecom_040121075759&printer=1

[[Syl]]

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3520636.stm

[[Syl]]

Atomic Particles Teleported

In a paper published in the journal Nature, NIST scientists say they were able to transfer the quantum state, or list of active properties, of one beryllium atom to another. The quantum state describes such physical characteristics as energy, motion and magnetic field.

[aTOMiC]

life imitates art. In no time at all we'll be commuting to the office through fiber optic cable. With my luck some over zealous gardener will sever the cable with a shovel just as half my atoms have traversed the line. I can't believe some of the cool things I read about these days. Very neat.

[Warmark]

Interesting article. I think it would be interesting to see lasers of this type defending satellites. Now that China's in space, it's a wake-up call--other nations are going to be in space. What if there is a war in space?

What like a Star War?

[Warmark]

Interesting article. I think it would be interesting to see lasers of this type defending satellites. Now that China's in space, it's a wake-up call--other nations are going to be in space. What if there is a war in space?

What like a Star War?

[Avatar]

I've often thought that a large part of the development of our technology rises from the efforts of Sci-Fi writers.

As I've said before, the techs read the books, and then say, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could actually make this?"

I'm always reminded of Azimov's The Feeling of Power in which "pocket computers" were an everyday tool, long before computers were smaller than building sized.

--Avatar

[Loredoctor]

Reminds me that during the 50s and 60s, writers like Heinlein, Clarke and co were hired by the government to come up with ideas for weapons and defenses.

[[Syl]]

This should probably go in the Medical Science thread, but what the heck...
Man With $6 Million 'Bionic' Arm

[Menolly]

I'm always reminded of Azimov's The Feeling of Power in which "pocket computers" were an everyday tool, long before computers were smaller than building sized.

I believe Asimov once mentioned this himself in one of his monthly articles for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (of which my Dad was a charter subscriber, so I grew up with it in the house). If memory serves, he likend it to the development of the pocket calculator, and even expressed astonishment that he had chosen the correct color(red, in the early LED displays) for the display on the pocket computer he wrote about.

[matrixman]

The article on the $6 million bionic arm makes me wonder just how feasible the idea is of a bionic superman like TV's Steve Austin or superwoman Jamie Sommers. Today, we're still dealing with clunky prosthetics that just approximate human movements--though they're much improved from the early generation models. Yet we have Steve Austin with his bionic vision, Jamie Sommers with her bionic hearing, and both can run faster and leap higher than any Olympic athlete could ever hope to. Not to mention they'd clean up in the weightlifting events.

Is it actually possible to augment the human body with bionics to achieve superstrength and superspeed? Or is it all just a pipe dream? The human body is already a marvelous machine, fine-tuned through millions of years of evolution. So far, technology hasn't been able to truly improve on that organic machine, but merely to provide rough fascimiles of damaged parts of it, in the form of prosthetic limbs or the artificial heart.

[Avatar]

Whether or not we'll ever be able to do that may be uncertain, but at the very least, the "replacement" technology will continue to imrpove, (probably dramatically, given new and continuing advances in robotics etc.), and that can only be a good thing.

--A

[Menolly]

I like the vision of replacement parts that was in the Robin Williams movie Bicentennial Man (based on Asimov's story of the same title) better than the bionics of The Six Million Dollar Man.

[matrixman]

I didn't see Bicentennial Man. Honestly, I didn't feel like spending money on it.

[[Syl]]

I remember nothing about it except for it being long and mostly boring. Kind of like AI, the movie that refused to end (hmm, and Williams was in both... coincidence?).

[Edge]

Fortunately, you have the option of reading the brilliant short-story, instead of sitting through the mediocre movie.

[Avatar]

Yeah, take Edge's advice and forget the damn movie.

--A