BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us

Subject: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 11:24 PM

For the Inventing Minds Among Us

Human history is replete with plateaus of acceptance as we utilize and become accustomed to accomplished (Couldn't find a spot for 'occurrence' *g*) innovations that are then, often suddenly, followed by surges of inventions that revamp – often radically - the status quo. Without much hesitation or resistance we incorporate the new into the known and go on. Often the new development spurs other innovations which we then also utilize. Then occurs another plateau. Followed by another surge.

What surge do you foresee?

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Peace
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 11:41 PM

The internal combustion engine.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: MarkS
Date: 28 Feb 09 - 11:43 PM

Nanotechnology, with a trend to nanobiometric implants.
If you get to speculating about whatall is going on in this playground, the possibilities are endless.
Mark

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 12:10 AM

Well! I expect this will happen to me a lot. I had to look it up.

From Wikipedia:

"There has been much debate on the future of implications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has the potential to create many new materials and devices with wide-ranging applications, such as in medicine, electronics, and energy production. On the other hand, nanotechnology raises many of the same issues as with any introduction of new technology, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials [1], and their potential effects on global economics, as well as speculation about various doomsday scenarios. These concerns have led to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether special regulation of nanotechnology is warranted."


Biometrics, on the other hand, may be closer to what I thought nanotechnology is. Didn't look it up- but is that the field of molecular innovation that will regrow limbs and other body parts?

If so, that seems a likely surge.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 12:24 AM

Picture Vinyl LPs with animation loops, or, as my Rog calls them, "The New Vinyl Trad!" **BG**

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Amos
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 12:49 AM

The immediate front for nanotech will be (already is) nano-materials, enabling qualities of interest to be created in materials or increased in material much the way a spider's web exceeds the qualities of steel cable for strength/mass. Fabrics, building materials, conductiors and the construction of informational circuits are examples for starters. Beyond that, nano-scale electro-mechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS) will enable some remarkable advances such as self-assembly, biotech devices small enough to inject into tissues or cells, and so on.

These are expected, but what is aalso likely to happen is another whole realm of quantim mapping and quantum computing enabling devices of thousands of times the computing power now available to be built into small structures, because the bits of binary logic are replaced with 32-base choices per bit instead of two.

If these areas open up, another possible surprise will be the maturation of string theory or its replacement facilitating transitions across huge spaces without the energy costs associated with moving mass through spacetime under present systems. Compare the difference between freight hauling today with the same functions in a time when all extra power came from organic sources (oxen, camels, and horses and elephants). No-one dreamed of a carbon-based internal combustion engine and a whole economy based on it. Such a world, in 1750, was essentially so far ahead of the current state of affairs as to be almost unthinkable. But within 200 years, it changed to becoming the default standard in all transport and heavy moving.

Mastering quantum analysis and spacetime modulation will have similar unpredictable benefits that would seem like science fiction to us.


A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 02:09 AM

I keep thinking back to other high tech developments in the past. For instanc3e, when the 'common' people first heard about electricity I'm sure they told each other something like "Huh! For rich people, maybe."

And they may have scoffed at the idea that you would stick a couple of wires in the wall to get light or power or heat.

Will we/I be any better?

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Amos
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 02:23 AM

We at least have achieved a bias in favor of new learning and understand the accelerating rate of change in a way the Luddites never did. We have a culture (which they did not) that has been thoroughly colored by the art of futurism and science fiction--a whole class of thought that did not much exist except as mysticism prior to Jules Verne. (With a few exceptions).

It will still be the case that the inconceivable will arrive and it will be hard to swallow--but the lag will be less than it was in the nineteenth century.


A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Skivee
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 05:33 AM

I foresee each person having their own personal assistant computer, interfaced through a stylish headpiece. No more laptops...Skulltops. Tapped into the net while walking about. An inyrawebs based neo-society. The technology will not be compatable with your old CD player.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Paul Burke
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 07:53 AM

Cold fusion, table top kind, for clean cheap energy with decentralised control. Sadly it probably won't happen.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: MarkS
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 09:47 AM

Wow Amos, right on. But if you want to start speculating about upcoming developements in quantum technology and string theory, you should have a mega sized bottle of Excedrin on hand.
This stuff is absolutely mind boggling, and I at least do not even have the vocabulary and smarts to even discuss it never mind understand it.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 10:50 AM

More use of High-temperature_superconductors to aid in computers and such.

LOTS more progress in low-power lighting technology, with many savings consumption.

But those are hardly difficult predictions. What I want to see is breakthroughs in education, making it possible to DO that old 'holy grail' of direct transmission of data while we sleep...electrode-cap learning. Maybe languages are a 1st step.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 11:00 AM

"transmission of data"- OK, but would that lead to wisdom and good judgment?

Technology without vision is kind of scary to me.

A sci-fi idea that seems possible in the fairly near future is whole-wall, life-size, inter-active television, enabling face to face meetings of all kinds.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Amos
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 01:45 PM

I think it would be seriously far more important to re-work the whole fundamental in education--that it is not the transmission of data which is important, but a strong sense of how to think with, acquire, and interpret and extrapolate data with good results.

Data is cheap. Competency with data is priceless.

Rush Limbaugh has access to more data more quickly. for example, than H.L. Mencken ever dreamed of. Which one turned out to be a complete flaming asshole?



A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 02:15 PM

I foresee a lot of movement in laxatives........

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 02:56 PM

Probably only in your bathroom, Spaw. (Most of us get rid of ours easily.) :)

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 04:55 PM

Faced with an ongoing food shortage and the inability of alternative energy sources to compensate for rapidly dwindling fossil fuels, the decision will be made to use genetic engineering to reduce the average size of human beings by 90%, thereby increasing the effective yield of all natural resources by 1000%.

The idea will work just fine until, one day, emboldended ravenous hordes of chickadees, squirrels, hedgehogs, and walking catfish attack in a coordinated mass assault, thus driving the human population to the point of extinction within six weeks.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 06:54 PM

lol You paint an alarming picture, bdub.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 07:58 PM

",,,but would that lead to wisdom and good judgment?"

Oh, I forgot to mention....there would be classes in 'thinking'...logic and philosophy....designed by ME ...from 5th grade thru college. (I'm only partially being silly here...a friend and I have discussed for years why "decision making" is not taught, and is not required for government service.)

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Amos
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 08:32 PM

Bill D:

Designed by you?? Who are constantly falling back on your fixed assumptions? For shame, sirrah!!! Every man knows the world should think as he does, and would, too, if only they all knew what he knows.


A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 08:34 PM

Well, here's just a few of 'um that one day will be old hat...

1. Time machines

2. Beam-me-up technology... Will make cars and airplanes obsolete

3. Re-creation technology so when something quits workin' then it is re-created... New heart??? No problemo...

4. Solar powered robotic but sexy womenz that do all the good womenz stuff but none of the bad, you know, like ask questions for which men have no answers...

5. Knowledge pills so rather than have to spend hours in school ya' take an Advanced Calculis pill and call it a day...

6. By 2100 animals won't be eaten anymore... Yeah, Beezer is right... Man will have the option of downsizing himself to save food or quit eating animals... It takes 16 pounds of vegetable protiens to make 1 poind of animal meat... Of course the vote will be close but I prexdict that folks just won't go for downsizing over a change in diet...

7. Single world governance...

8. Self tunin' geetars is the one that I am looking forward to 'cause with a chip implanted in the brain the brain can tell the geetar which tuning you want so between (or during) songs you can just think what tuning you want to be in and the geetar will tune itself perfectly to that tuning...

9. Along the same lines and also related to #5, instant recall of all the verses of even the longest songs...

and...

...the biggie...

10. Satillites that can pick up brain waves of copy-cat posters and send down a lazer beams to wipe those folks out before they so much as begin typing out their juvinilistic copy cat thread title...

Yup, that's the way it's gonna be, you gonna give yer love to me...

Huh???

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 08:41 PM

lol

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Gurney
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 09:53 PM

Specialisation. We will specialise more and more completely on more tightly defined subjects until everyone will know everything about virtually nothing.   Labelling people like me 'dinosaurs.'

Factory farming. Not animals, but shovelling feedstock into yeast tanks to harvest foodcake for the proles.

Private transport. When fuel runs out, highways full of landyachts.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Riginslinger
Date: 01 Mar 09 - 11:05 PM

Amos makes a good point. We keep piling up more and more information and data, but haven't really developed a better way to transfer this knowledge to young people. Advances in education could put the whole planet in 5th-double-over.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Little Robyn
Date: 02 Mar 09 - 01:18 AM

Ebbie said "We incorporate the new into the known and go on. Often the new development spurs other innovations which we then also utilize."

Somewhere I heard "Every cause is the effect of its own cause!"
Or should that be "Every effect is the cause of its own effect!"
Something like that.
It sounded good at the time.

Robyn

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Sawzaw
Date: 02 Mar 09 - 01:27 AM

Nuclear heated toilet seats with built in toilet paper recyclers.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Mar 09 - 01:36 AM

"Built in"? You mean, inserted? :)

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 02 Mar 09 - 03:24 AM

I'd be happy with a set of headphones that a) fit my ears, b) don't break after 8 weeks and c) don't get caught in my hair every damn time!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Mar 09 - 10:52 PM

The air lines say that new cost cutting measures will include pay toilets on the plane.
Combined with water shortages and necessity being the mother * of invention... I invented the personal toilet that can be used even in airplane ailes. First a shower curtail that fits on your shoulders and a folding stool and bag.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among US
From: Amos
Date: 02 Mar 09 - 11:04 PM

TIme travel as such will not occur, because time is not a place. However, of multiverse theory and quantum foam scale wormholes are "correct" then we may be able to translocate quantum encoded structures through wormholes into parallel universes where different events are still going on much as we knew them in our own past, which amounts to the same thing. It won't be traveling to a different time, but a different universe. Amounts to the same thing, just as dangerous except for freedom from temporal paradox, I imagine.


A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Mar 09 - 11:53 PM

Donuel, a friend of mine says that before long they will have airplanes that divide the sexes - and everyone will fly in hospital gowns. And separate planes for the luggage. :)

But not toilet stools in the aisles, OK?

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Gurney
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 01:09 AM

Ebbie, I had the same thought as your friend when hijackings began. Everyone in supplied gowns and the luggage in a trailer behind the 'plane, no access to the cockpit from inside the 'plane (let 'em make their own coffee!) or even no communication from cabin to cockpit. Bloody hard to hijack a 'plane through an aluminium sheet, waving a fist.
With you, against Donuel's invention, too.


After you with the wormhole, Amos.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: bald headed step child
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 03:10 AM

Amos, that's scary that we could go to all the trouble of getting to another universe and have to go through the last 8 years again.

BHSC

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Stu
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 03:33 AM

A cure for tinnitus.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 07:50 AM

One development on the horizon that just needs some sort of gimick to get it into every home alongside the PC is the 3D printer.
The resolution is approaching the point where they are useful to model-makers for creating originals to cast replicas from and all it needs is some sort of "make your own cartoon favourites/doll's furniture/action man accesories/etc. in 3D" craze to bring the price way down.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 09:52 AM

new materials are key

http://globaldialoguecenter.blogs.com/jbgoodnews/2008/12/1-buckypaper-super-strong-and-super-light.html



carbon buckey paper is stronger than steel.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 10:01 AM

And at present a lot more expensive to produce, despite the cost of the molecules being lower. But self-assembly will make a big difference in that respect when it gets licked.

Smart materials, aside from just different ones, will also enable material responses to conditions (e.g., windows that close when they sense rain or darken when they sense too much sunlight, or structural members that track and report how much stress and strain they are exposed to.)

The biggest challenge is not actually energy and water--these are within reach now as solutions. The breakthrough areas to be conquered are the very nature of mass and space. We have laways treated these as inviolable facts of existence, a sure sign they are not fully understood. They ar eboth terrible addictions.

A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 10:28 AM

Speaking of "inviolable facts of existence", do you suppose that someday gravity will become 'switchable'?

(And when human body parts become renewable and diabetes, most cancers and the common cold become things of the past, what will become the next bugaboo? Actually that is not the track I'm on- I like you guys's expounding on what is on the actual horizon.)

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 10:50 AM

Gravity control is the first foreseeable benefit of understanding mass, which as far as I know is the quality that governs gravity through the intermediation of the Higgs boson, but I could be wrong about that. I do have a real job also!! :D

And your question is important!! Every time we've been pushed into a new region of technology we've found ways to use it to screw other things up. Nuclear power, atomic bomb. Internal combustion, massive pollution. Steam power, start of global warming. Gunpowder, extermination of massive numbers of species. So it behooves us to be alert to the unintended consequences of moving into new territory.

But realistically!! I don't think there is a high risk of massively self-organizing nano-units forming a gigantic rebellion against flesh-based life forms, for example.


A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 11:25 AM

I speculate that Gravity will be found to be a nuclear strong force in an adjacent dimension to ours and that we only feel the effects of gravity in our fabric of space time as the little bit that leaks into our dimension.

Switching from 3D gravity to the dimensions of dark matter laws of physics will be a matter we may one day confront when we can harness enough energy to pierce the veil of dimensional travel.

Meanwhile we will have to wait for the super collider to be fixed and see if higher energy states will in fact "go dimensional".

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 11:37 AM

Recently we have found that our Vayager space craft are being pulled 8,000 miles off course by and unseen force every year. This may be the effect of dark matter gravity. We never noticed it before since we are close to a massive sun which overpowers such observations like a thick atmosphere clouds our view of the cosmos.

We have laso noticed that galaxies spin at their outermost fringes just as fast as they do halfway to to their center. This is impossible to account for since the effect of "normal" gravity dimishes with the inverse square law similar to light becoming 4 times fainter when we observe it twice as far away.

A dark matter dimension, so close to our own but seperate in many ways may be the cause of such a powerful and uniform expression of galactic matter that spins as though there is much more gravity than we can account for in 3D space.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 11:56 AM

Hmmmm.....



A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 12:16 PM

From New Scientist

"Tiny, free-roving micromachines have proved their potential for a range of uses from non-invasive surgery to mini chemical plants. But such small devices present a big hurdle to researchers: they are very tricky to power. The processes we rely on for fuel or power at normal scales just can't be scaled down enough.

Now two new studies demonstrate what could be a solution: using magnetic fields to remotely power and control microscopic machines.

One of those machines is a micro-motor inspired by the corkscrewed spinning tail, or flagellum, used by some swimming bacteria. Built by Bradley Nelson at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and international colleagues, it spins and swims like the real thing, and can propel a mass roughly the same size as real bacteria.

The artificial flagellum is driven by the changing magnetic field produced by three pairs of electromagnetic coils positioned to cover the X, Y and Z axes of 3D space, and positioned around the tank of water in which the machine moves. Its 47-micrometer-long helical tail is fashioned from a ribbon of a semiconductor material and it has a 4.5-micrometer-long magnetic "head" composed of chromium, nickel and gold.
Spinning field

By continually varying the electric current passing through each magnet pair, the team is able to generate a rotating magnetic field. The magnetic head constantly adjusts to align with the changing field, which causes the tail to spin and drives the machine forwards (see movie).

"The fastest [speed] we have achieved with the current setup is 20 micrometers per second [around four-tenths of a body length]," says Nelson. "But with some minor electronic modifications we expect over 100 micrometers per second."

Self-propelled devices like this could be useful in biomedicine, where they could manipulate sub-cellular objects, or help in targeted drug delivery, Nelson says. "Magnetic approaches have the advantage that they don't require changes in the chemical composition of the environment," he adds.
Guided whirlpools

Alexey Snezhko at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois agrees. "Any mechanism of controlled self-propulsion at micro- and nanoscale becomes important," he says. "Magnetic swimmers constitute one of the [most] promising directions since such swimmers could be manipulated non-invasively."

His own team's studies into magnetic manipulation at the microscopic scale have produced self-assembling magnetic "snakes" capable of ferrying a microscopic cargo across the surface of a liquid.

The snakes start off as individual 90-micrometer-wide nickel spheres floating on the surface of a beaker of water. Magnetic coils placed around the container causes these tiny balls to spin on the spot, generating small whirlpools that drive them across the surface. When two spheres pass sufficiently close to each other they join up due to magnetic attraction, eventually forming long snake-like strings.
Tiny tugboats

The combined effect of the spinning particles in a snake generates stronger whirlpools that act rather like engines, but because the engines are all similar in size and working in opposite directions they cancel one another out and the snake remains motionless.

However, if an object - for example a polystyrene bead - obstructs one of those whirlpool engines then the snake is forced out of balance and is driven across the surface of the water by the others. It's a mechanism that has no analogy in nature, says Snezhko.

Tweaking the magnetic fields provides a way to move around small-scale cargo with precision. "The swimmers can easily push big particles, so potentially they can be used as a tool for targeted delivery," he says. However, it is unlikely that the snakes could be used to deliver drugs inside the body because they only move on the surface of a liquid. They are likely to be more useful to mix chemicals and increase reaction rates, Snezhko says. They could also be used to clean up the surface of a water body, he suggests."...

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 12:26 PM

Here's one I wish someone would invent: reusable paper. I don't mean recyclable paper—we have that already. I mean paper that you could pass through some sort of device that would erase all the ink and make it as good as new, so you could print on it again.

To make it practical, the whole process of printing on the same paper several times would have to be cheaper than printing on several sheets of ordinary paper.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 12:42 PM

Well, I understand that check forgers take a written check and dunk it in bleach and then re-write the check to their own specs. Haven't tried it, though.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: John Hardly
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 12:45 PM

Six string guitar with variable tuning capabilities. Concert pitch, for instance.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 12:48 PM

Ah ha! Another bit of info- What pitch is concert, anyway? Not 440, I gather.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: SINSULL
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 01:41 PM

Life-size holographic movies and videos right in your living room.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 02:46 PM

Reuseable paper exists. It is written on by electronically charging micro-dots which turn black. Like a Magic Slate it can be erased by wiping (I presume this would be with aa magnetic device). Not sure how widely available a commercial version is, but it has been demonstrated in prototype.


A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: GUEST,lox
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 07:43 PM

I sat on the train recently and listened to two friends chatting.

One of them was a research scientist working in the development of a robot eye for the blind.

The technology was in its infancy, but had reached a stage where it was only a metter of time before the first bionic eyes were manufactured for blind people.

He went on to say that of course as technology advanced, bionic eyes would soon become more sensitive powerful and useful than the human eye, with increased ability to see long distances, to examine very small things in detail, not to mention infra red vision, night vision etc ...

They laughed as they considered the very real possibiity of people having surgery to remove a natural eye to have it replaced by a more up to date alternative.

The technology to link up the electronics to the brain already exists - as it does with current early bionic ears.

Looks like we may yet become a race of cyborgs.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 09:48 PM

Concert pitch is either A=440 Hz or A=442 Hz. According to a Wikipedia article "A = 442 Hz is common in certain continental European and American orchestras (the Boston symphony being the best-known example), while A = 445 Hz is heard in Germany, Austria, and China["



A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 09:53 PM

I prefer 441; 440 sounds too low for me, and 442 hurts my ears...: )

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 11:14 PM

My father in law invented the pressure activated paper that you could write on without a pen, the kind that allows contracts with 4 or 5 pages beneath to be all signed at once.

Back then they called it the carbonless carbon paper.

As an employee of Bouroughs, they kept the patent.


Hmmmm I think I got a sinister hmmm from Amos. Oh well, unless you incorporate certain ideas like Jules Verne did with action adventure they seem undoubtedly dubious.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Mar 09 - 11:45 PM

What I really would like to see being developed and perfected NOW is a combined energy that would free people forever from heating and cooling their domiciles. Solar, I undestand, depends on the rays of the sun- but why not heat garnered from the heat of the day? Even in winter daytime brings heat.

We tend to think in terms of either/or but who says that is how it must be or that it is how it WILL be? How about something switching effortlessly and seamlessly between wind, sun and water?

If something like that were developed it would open vast areas of the world that are currently not survivable, climatically speaking.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: bald headed step child
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 01:06 AM

Donuel, on your earlier post you mentioned the spinning rate of the galaxies being as fast at the edges as they were further in.

Something mindblowing I read, I believe on the Hubble/NASA site, is that previously it was thought that the further out from the center of the universe, things would slow down. You know, like they taught us in school, the big bang made everything go out and eventually it will stop and fall back in on itself, and keep repeating the process.

They have taken measurements now and found that objects further out are actually accelerating away from the center. I wonder what's pulling them, or maybe they are just falling over the edge?

BHSC

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 04:01 AM

Trsla's energy from the ether....wireless transmission of energy.

The other innovation would be, thinking without being taxed for it!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 04:06 AM

Sorry, typo is the other one...

Nikolai Tesla's energy from the ether....wireless transmission of energy.

The other innovation would be, thinking without being taxed for it!

Intelligence infusions for the far left!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: John Hardly
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 04:54 AM

Traditionally, the season opener begins with some National celebrity throwing out the first concert pitch.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 07:52 AM

We could do with some advances in battery technology. If they had developed at the same rate as PCs we'd have torch batteries that could rival a coal fired power station!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 11:56 AM

John H, I finally 'got' your remark. :) Before, I thought you had miss-posted.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Amos
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 12:19 PM

I designed some time ago, based on hypotheticals, a roofing system incorporating embedded actuators on a nanoscale for harvesting ambient energy whether it was mechanical (wind and sound vibration), thermal (ambient heat) or photonic (solar light across the spectrum), etc. (There is also some core resonant frequency of around 10 Hz (according to some) that is a constant motion rate of the planet itself). ANyway all these things--noise, heat, light, vibration--could be harvested IF the cost of doing so were low enough; so the key to such a system as Ebbie wishes for is nano-scale engineering that enables mass production of the kind of devices that can suck up small local surpluses of energy and do it cost effectively. It really makes no sense, for example, to pay for streetlights by burning coal.


A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 01:05 PM

Thanks, Amos.

Maybe what is needed - first - is a change of mindset as to cost-effectiveness.

For instance, when (most) people turned to gas/electric lighting, I'm sure that a great many people bemoaned the cost of buying and maintaining the new-fangled stuff. Much more expensive than rolling your own drip candles or inserting a wick into a bowl of bear grease.

I have no idea for how long people resisted switching to the new - which is telling in itself. It kind of implies that it didn't take all that long.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Joe_F
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 09:02 PM

Some scandalously inefficient technologies that we are all used to, that have been made nearly bearable by vast effort, and that *might* be gotten rid of with a little luck:

1. Incandescent light bulbs
2. Internal-combustion engines
3. Dentistry
4. Lead-acid batteries

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 10:01 PM

Ebbie I posted my heating colling system last year.

It is an 17 ft underground saline heat exchanger run on electricty from solar and wind.

heat, cold whatever you need, and it only needs 20 feet of ground.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Mar 09 - 11:17 PM

Describe it again, would you please, Don. I don't remember it.

"20 feet of ground" per home? Like, under the lawn? What about cities? And multi-family units?

Subject: RE: BS: For the Inventive Minds Among Us
From: Mr Red
Date: 05 Mar 09 - 05:45 AM

I predict an economic downturn.

And innovations will probably accelerate - as companies find niche products that are cheap but effective, and actually serve the same markets (almost).