What are some Scientific & Technological Advancements you hope to see in your lifetime? I am 34 now, and, lets be optimistic and hope I live to 2060. I would like to see:

A cure for AIDS, Malaria & Cancer.
Manned missions to Mars (Mars Trilogy Style).
Lunar Outpost (NASA Base Style).
Basic Asteroid Mining.
Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) in its infancy.
Commercial Nuclear Fusion, bringing to an end of the harmful, radioactive and risky Nuclear Fission business.
Countries starting to go carbon neutral and negative (Sweden, Norway, New Zealand).
Computers more powerful than a human brain.
A population of no more than 9 billion.
Our international oil dependency gone.

Questions I want answered:
What is the meaning, if any, of Ulam's Spiral?
Is Extra Terrestrial Life out there?
Do other structures of the cosmos exist? Such as Multiverses?
Is there a once predicted, but still theoretical, Island of Stability?
Is Pi an irrational or rational number? If it is the latter, where does it end?
Can wormholes, if any, in space be used to transport matter, time and energy?
What caused the Tunguska event?
What do Earth's geomagnetic poles reverse? And why on seemingly irrational timescales? How long until the next reversal? What will be the consequences of said terrible cataclysmic event?
How did life on earth begin and originate from? Did a molecule gain the ability to make copies of itself (replicator theory)? If yes, what did it substitute for DNA?
What is the meaning of dark matter & antimatter?
Where does a black hole lead to? Where does all the matter, light and energy go? Even though the conservation of energy law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed?
What is sleep? How does it give us energy?
Why does an OOBE occur? What is the meaning of an OOBE? How is a OOBE caused?

And the BIG one.
Why are we here? Why does EVERYTHING exist? Shouldn't there be just nothing?

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I'd love to see all your opinions on this. Propose theories, add questions, add advancements. I love futurism.

- Luke.

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- Luke.

For me, the big question is: What is time?

Physics has a fairy good grasp of what space, matter and energy are. An at best hazy understanding of Gravity, dark energy and dark matter. But time, while it seems to be a function of space/energy, defies accurate definition. It doesn't seem to be needed, but does seem to exist. So, what is it?

Question: By OOBE do you mean 'Out Of Body Experience'? If so, I don't think that it exists as any meaningful thing. I've been 'dead' twice (once, five years ago in a car accident, no pulse for approx 6 minutes, second last January due to post surgical infection, no pulse for approx 3 minutes.)

In neither case was there any white light, tunnel, or floating above my body. There was just nothing.

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

For me, the big question is: What is time?

Physics has a fairy good grasp of what space, matter and energy are. An at best hazy understanding of Gravity, dark energy and dark matter. But time, while it seems to be a function of space/energy, defies accurate definition. It doesn't seem to be needed, but does seem to exist. So, what is it?

Question: By OOBE do you mean 'Out Of Body Experience'? If so, I don't think that it exists as any meaningful thing. I've been 'dead' twice (once, five years ago in a car accident, no pulse for approx 6 minutes, second last January due to post surgical infection, no pulse for approx 3 minutes.)

In neither case was there any white light, tunnel, or floating above my body. There was just nothing.

Hemingway has described it in "A farewell to arms" as he experienced it when hit by an Austrian grenade on the Isonzo front in the First World War.
Tullio

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A good question that I always assign to my physics students for their first bout of Homework. It's hard to define without using the word Time.

Time is an illusion that can be measured as being so many cyles of a repetitive and invariant event by which we can order events in our lives.

A good question that I always assign to my physics students for their first bout of Homework. It's hard to define without using the word Time.

Time is an illusion that can be measured as being so many cyles of a repetitive and invariant event by which we can order events in our lives.

Yes, but that still isn't a strict definition of what it is. "Time is Dog's way of preventing everything from happening at once," is just as valid a definition.

We can measure time with fair accuracy, but even there we don't know the limits of that measurement. No upper limit so is there a lower limit?

Some think that the smallest increment of time is the Plank second (if memory serves, somewhere around 5.5e-44 seconds?) and that the universe lurches, plank-second to plank-second, in discrete steps, line a movie frame. Others say that it is seamless and that the limits of how small a piece of time that can be measured is limited only by the technology used to do the measuring.

Even still, not a definition of what time is.

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

For me, the big question is: What is time?

Time is distance, distance is time. That is why it is called space-time.

How far is a light second? That is the clue. Time and distance are the same thing.

We live in this thing (space-time) that is moving at c. We are as stuck inside it as a raisin is in raisin bread. If we sit still in x-y-z then we move at c in the direction of the time axis. If we move in the x-y-z direction then we no longer move at c in the time direction. The vector magnitude of our motion is always c. So if we move at c in the x direction then we must be a zero in the y-z-t directions. Time dilation.

As to that raisin bread, inflation is the same thing as the bread rising. The stuff we are trapped inside moves so we are farther from the next raisin. We didn't move through the stuff so our speed was still zero!

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Even still, not a definition of what time is.

Time is the dynamic that enables all motion, energy, and life.
It's almost like a medium. Motion, energy, and life pass in its wake.
And, space is the place that makes time possible! Thus, space-time.

Without the dimension of time in our universe, everything would be without movement, without energy at absolute zero, and lifeless.

( obviously, I'm more of a philosopher than scientist ;)

... still, not a definition of what time is.

I want to see what will be after reaching techological singularity point
i think it will be the end for the humanity and life on Earth

Even still, not a definition of what time is.

Time is 4-th dimension. Just our world is moving in it. For example, imagine, that you are 2d-dimension creature, a bug living on endless flat surface. You never know what is up or down. But this surface starts to fall down. You'd expericenced this as one-way movement different of 2d-dimension world. It explains why time rarely called a classic dimension. No one understands how to move in it, so they think its not a dimension. Full amount of dimensions in this universe is 12. Maybe more, i'm not sure. And i'm not sure that there only one universe.

And the BIG one.
Why are we here? Why does EVERYTHING exist? Shouldn't there be just nothing?

Where it shouldn't it don't. Space and all this stuff.

The question is incorrect. Something exising only if someone can observe it. Without obsever existance is not possible.

For example, i created an some internet site. I paid for place and forbid it. No one know about it. Even Google. This site is not exist. Is it online or not is doen't matter. It not exist.

And the BIG one.
Why are we here? Why does EVERYTHING exist? Shouldn't there be just nothing?

Where it shouldn't it don't. Space and all this stuff.

The question is incorrect. Something exising only if someone can observe it. Without obsever existance is not possible.

For example, i created an some internet site. I paid for place and forbid it. No one know about it. Even Google. This site is not exist. Is it online or not is doen't matter. It not exist.

Comparatively, so your answer to "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" is No.

Wrong.

Of course it makes a sound!
You don't have to observe something for it to exist. It exists anyway.

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- Luke.

Let's hear your definition--I think that it has to depend on so many cycles of a repetitive process such as a pendulum, oscillator, orbit, laser, mainspring watch movement etc.

Time can be considered to be a dimension only in the sense of "when"

For instance when you tell someone where to find you, you must specify latitude, longitude, altitude (think of a New York high rise) and of course when. "When" is at or about the moment of an agreed-upon counting of intervals from some agreed-upon reference point.

Comparatively, so your answer to "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" is No.

Wrong.

Of course it makes a sound!
You don't have to observe something for it to exist. It exists anyway.

In this case tree does not exist, not only sound.
Existance parameter is an reflection of reality in mind. So, if you are not there, where something happening, this does not exist to you.

Because existance is an reflection, there's so many vary theories about everything. Reflections of reality are different for each human. So what exist for one may not exist for another. Or by other word, you never can explain to blind what is red color. From this point ow view, the every death is local Armageddon and Doomsday. You cannot observe so reality dissapear. Others can live further, but for one who dead this don't exist.

And don't forget about big Bro up the sky. He watches and observes, thats why you can find fallen tree at all. I don't know is it God or Overmind, or something or somebody else, but such place as our world could not be created without hard mind work. It have a rules everywhere, rules is always a sign of mind work. Without rules only chaos can be.

You can ask "What about objective reality?". I can anwser that we have not senses to understand it at all. What people call objective is just what's more simple to understand and what can be reproduced many times. We call objective what seems to most of us, that's all.

Existance parameter is an reflection of reality in mind. So, if you are not there, where something happening, this does not exist to you.

So if we are not in the forest or in any other place, that place does not exist for us.

And if we put a camera in the forest and after we see the video, "I did not understand": we can also see and hear things that do not exist

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And if we put a camera in the forest and after we see the video, "I did not understand": we can also see and hear things that do not exist

No, you will see moving picture, not the tree and you hear sounds from dynamic not the real.
For example, if somebody shows you live video and there's falling tree you'll be sure that if you go to the forest you will find a fallen tree there, right? But what if this person made a fake video? You will find nothing. Because for you only picture existed and your own reflection that this video is true. Even if you placed camera by yourself, you can't be 100% sure that no one has replaced it with a fake, right? Of course the probability of this extremely low, but you certain can't be sure at 100%. So from this point of view every scientific theory is wrong by default. For exapmple, ancients has though that Earth is flat and stars are holes in she sky half-sphere. For them it worked perfectly for sea navigation and etc. Now we know that Earth is sphere, orbiting around Sun and etc. But why whe know? Because ancient knowledge was wrong? No. Because we now have another more difficult tasks and we have a new reflection for them. Old one just no more sufficient. Maybe somewhere in jungles people think that stars are gods and helping them. The phenomena is that that we both right. They don't need to know that Earth is sphere and they don't. This part of objective reality does not exist for them. We don't need to know that stars are gods, so when some warlock from the jungles says that stars healed somebody we think it was an accident. This part of objecive reality does not exist for us. (We call this phenomena "placebo" but we really don't know a thing how it it works).
It what Buddhists call illusion of reality. They believe the everything is illusion and somehow they right, because our senses are also limited to reflection and also lie sometimes.

How long before someone brings up Schrödinger's cat?

Ooops, I just did!

We can argue forever on the true nature of reality when, in fact, you can never be 100% sure of anything. But you do, at some point, have to make the decision that the universe we see around us is real, that is, that it exists as some sort of physical reality.

That is the starting point (and only certainty) in science. Everything evolves from the basic assumption that the universe does indeed exist and, therefore, when a tree falls in the forest, a tree fell in the forest. Witnessing it is not what makes it a 'real' event except from the POV of the human who did (or did not) see the event transpire.

The logical extreme of Alex Filatov's argument seems to be the 'I think therefore I am' but everything else is mere speculation. Possibly true (I can no more prove to you that I exist than you can prove to me that you do) but at some point you have to make certain basic assumptions.

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

I'd like to see a lot of the same things as you. I'm 21 and the number of people reaching a hundred is on the up so i'm optimistic that i'll live to 2090 and perhaps see all these things. I'd actually love to see the turn of the next century. Perhaps by then they'll have phasers, replicators, working teleporters and faster-than-light travel! I actually have a BBC Focus magazine that has an article saying many of these things may be possible within our lifetimes or shortly after, including nanotechnology and computers more powerful than the human brain.

For example, if somebody shows you live video and there's falling tree you'll be sure that if you go to the forest you will find a fallen tree there, right? But what if this person made a fake video? You will find nothing.

Does not matter if the video is true or false. Indeed in both cases we have seen a fact that for us do not exist

Even if you placed camera by yourself, you can't be 100% sure that no one has replaced it with a fake, right? Of course the probability of this extremely low, but you certain can't be sure at 100%.

For exapmple, ancients has though that Earth is flat and stars are holes in she sky half-sphere

It what Buddhists call illusion of reality. They believe the everything is illusion and somehow they right, because our senses are also limited to reflection and also lie sometimes.

So nothing is reality, because everyone sees it as they want?
Everything is reality, only that everyone interprets it as he wishes,so subjective
In fact it is impossible to say objectively what is the correct interpretation

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What´s your wish?

TED2010
What the World Needs Now

Bill Gates unveils his vision of future

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Questions I want answered:
What is the meaning, if any, of Ulam's Spiral?

The interesting thing about the spiral is the gaps. That indicates there are many numbers still undiscovered. It worked for chemists when the periodic table was incomplete. Why should it not work for mathematicians?

Is Extra Terrestrial Life out there?

Is there life other than "as we know it"? Of course "as we know it" changed drastically with the discovery of extremaphiles so it is also legitimate to ask if we know what "life as we know it" is now complete or will continue to be incomplete. What do people think they are looking for and how does that prejudice the ability to find it?

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Unvarnished
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