Free Energy, Yeah Right?

Topic this round? One of my favorite topics. Free Energy.

This is one of my favorite videos on the subject, I found it when I was doing my undergradute at

U. Maryland




First, let me put my cards on the table. One, I have no doubt that “free energy” would change the world in almost every conceivable way. Two, I don’t think that free energy exists, as such. The physical laws of energy have shown time and again that energy can not be created ex nihilo (out of nothing). Something can’t come from nothing. However, something (i.e. energy) can come from something that we don’t understand. Let me be explicitly clear: I don’t believe free energy exists (as such) and I don’t believe that anyone has found a way to create it anywhere or anyway to my knowledge… and yes, I’ve done a fair amount of Youtube searching, haha.

Perpetual motion generators and ultra-unity, or over-unity, generators seem promising in concept. However, there are a number of issues. One, their general mechanics are such that they encounter too much friction. Even if a generator did create more energy than it took to run it would have to do it in such a way that it were practical to market. Also, how is it that you would apply such a technology? Store energy in batteries? The issue is that batteries loose life and they have limited charges. One battery can only be recharged so many times. While there is some use in keeping the idea in the background, you still are using non-renewable resources. So basically, although free by laws of physics (in a way) by the laws of economics, it still would not be “free”, just cheaper than imaginable.

Even if one can build a perpetual motion machine, that is, a machine that can sustain its self on its own power. It really wouldn’t matter that much on its own. What would be needed is excess energy. It would have to create enough energy so that it could run something. A Ferris wheel that runs all the time is useless. A Ferris wheel that runs a house (or many houses preferably), that is worth something. A guy named Aldo Costa, no not the driver for Ferrari, claims he's made just that.  Now, to clarify, by something here, I mean specifically a Nobel Prize in physics, economics, and peace. Not to mention the billion or possibly trillion dollar business that could be created around such a technology.

Magnetic principles are also used, often times they are just components to perpetual motion or over-unity generators. Magnetism can also magnify input and output. Many of these designs all seem to be based on Tesla's invention, theTeslacoil. The problem is that yes, you can change the output of a machine using magnetism. However, there is an inverse relationship between current (the flow of energy) and the resistance, known as Ohm's Law. So while you can take a small input of energy and lower the resistance so that it has a larger current, it would seem that there is more energy when really it was just manipulated.

However, the idea of Zero-point energy is intriguing. I don’t know that this is actually free energy; I’m also not a physicist. However, it might be possible that energy could be tapped from a source that is yet to be understood. How could we go about tapping such a force? Well it would seem that the miniscule scale that it operates on would mean that conventional means are right out.

Arthur C. Clark did seem hopeful that we were on the verge of a breakthrough, as do I. However, we are going to have to get our heads away from thinking about machines and energy in “gear-head” terms. If we can tap it, it will probably come from somewhere else.

I think that we already have a breakthrough of basically free energy. Wind power. The Earth is, in itself, a perpetual motion machine. It has wind currents and water currents that are self-sustaining because of the thermal dynamics caused by the gravitational interplay between the Sun and the Moon. This causes winds that don’t stop and currents that always flow. Now, we have tidal generators. One company (Verdant Power) has already put tidal generators in the East River of New York City in order to generate energy for Manhattan; they have similar projects starting in the St. Lawrence, Puget sound, and of course China (See here for more info).  Also, Vesta Wind Systems (VWS:Copenhagen stock price; a major player in the market) and Far East Wind Power (FEWP:OTC BB; a turbulent stock, but judging by its push into China may have a future if the country doesn’t tank the company) both are using these technologies. There are also a number of solar companies, my personal favorite being SolarCity, the company that installed the solar panels for Ebay and is creating a way to charge electric cars with solar power. Of course I love that they're doing it with Tesla Motors.  And they're one of many other Silicon Valley companies doing the same thing.

Basically, all this really means: We have discovered free energy. Not zero point energy, or perpetual motion, so to speak, but free, renewable energy. Yes, the wind turbines and solar cells cost money. You know what though? If you think that the person who does discover a over-unity engine will not market the idea and give it away like good ol’ St. Nick, you’re crazier than those who believe they’ve found it.

The Force Becomes Reality Using an EEG Brainwave Reader

Alright, its about time I actually posted up something about one of the coolest things happening in the world today: Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI).

Basically, (if you didn't click the wikilink) a BCI is simply a way for a human to communicate with a computer using their brain instead of a mouse or a keyboard.  While this idea has been around for decades, it really has started to take off commercially and is completly non-intrusive (so they're not plugging you into the matrix).  There even seem to be a ton of conferences on BCI all over the world.

One of the leading companies on the market is called Emotiv. Emotiv is a company that has created a headset that you can wear that connects wirelessly to a laptop and allows one to send the computer commands simply by thinking them.

To see a demo check out Tan Le's TEDtalk:



It only takes one 8 second trial to train the system to react to a certain brainwave pattern.  While its INSANELY complicated when it comes to the algorithms, and those I haven't been able to find yet (let me know if you can).  What is fairly easy to understand is that the technology uses P300 event-related potnetials that are picked up on the scalp.
In English: when your brain thinks and the neurons fire the machine picks up the sparks.

While Emotiv is probably the most talked about technology on the market, they aren't alone.

A new Silicon Valley startup called NeuroSky is also producing a similar product but rather than having 14 different pickups on the headset, they've got one, right on that third-eye region of the forehead (where you would apply that really annoying "Head-On"... Directly to the forehead).  The NeuroSky picture is first, the Emotiv follows later.

NeuroSky seems to be taking a bit more of a consumer approach oriented towards children and non-computer dorks.  Their headset has a set of headphones on it:

While It reamains to be seen which one of these headsets is more appropriate, it seems that the NeuroSky headset is taking the lead for now, possibly because its development package is free.
However, Emotiv shouldn't be discounted, their popularity is awesome and their development package (with developers headset) is less than $1,000!

And this interview, with NeuroSky's CEO Stanley Yang does make it sound like a practial venture that might be here to stay.



Either way, its a great battle to be watched.  NeuroSky in the Silicon Valley corner and Emotiv in MIT Mindlab's.

Either way, I'm getting one. Keep and eye out for a followup post.

Twitter Can Predict the Stock Market?

Hello and happy Halloween!

So, I was on my friend Brian's website TruTricks, which is filled with all sorts of little tidbits of information and nifty things to make life generally more awesome and I stumbled upon this little bit of information:

Wired recently released that Twitter can be used to predict the stock market. I found that rather neat!

Basically, what they found is pretty straight forward. That Twitter, being a website that functions as millions of little mini-blogs can give an acturate reading of people's mood.  Although this is by no means an exact science, it makes sense that Twitter and the "blogosphere" in general (I'm not sure how I feel about that word, but we'll use it) can give a thermomoter read on how hot or cold people's general temperment may be.

Now, the interesting thing is that they found that Twitter can accuratly predict the Dow Jones Industrial Average at a REDICULOUS 86.7 percent.  Now, if one could reliably come up with a way to read Twitter, Facebook, and the "blogosphere" their reading would be much larger if the Law of Large Numbers can be used.

Next post, I'll mention how one might be able to use a similar technique, and new software from Microsoft that would help track and map individual ideas and concepts on the Internet.  This could be used for a lot of applications, but I'll frame it in the idea of investing and a few others to get the point across.

Now go get some candy.

I LOVE ELECTRIC CARS!!!!!!!!! ..... !!!!

No, I'm not kidding.  I really do love electric cars.  The very idea of them, I think, is revolutionary. While the very idea that we don't already have them, is revolting.
--- Sidenote: watch Who Killed the Electric Car the director even has a blog (I haven't read it YET) ---
--- ... sweet, he's making a sequel!---

Anyways, I digress. I saw today, whilst purusing the New York Times, that the Chevy Volt is starting a bit of a buzz.  Now, I don't really want to rain on its parade, but heres the deal, the Volt uses -get this- a Voltec engine platform. Which is not really an electric engine.  Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, it uses gas to generate electricity.  I call that a hybrid.

The Volt also has a dirty little secret.  An average range of 40 MILES PER CHARGE! However, an interesting article on the volt reveals that GM is no longer saying that low miles to a single charge is a problem. Now they're citing that most people don't drive much more than a few miles at a time.

Yes, that's correct.  Isn't that also what you used to kill all previous attempts at electric cars? Wait, wait, sorry, I forgot... the Volt isn't an electric car.

Most people didn't forget however that there is a completly awesome, badass, and American made full electric car hitting the markets very soon: the Tesla Model S.

If you don't know, Tesla is an electric car company that not only takes its name from Nikola Tesla, the most important inventor of all time, but also holds the record for the fastest fully electric car ever built. It's much faster than the 3 cylinder turbocharged voltec engine with 0-60 of 8.53 seconds (the link even has a video if History channel isn't working) whereas the Tesla Roadsters has a 0-60 of 3.7 seconds.  This makes it a competitor, and a winner, to cars the likes of the Lotus Exige, Porsche GT3, and the Porsche Carrera GT. See Below:





Admittedly, the Tesla Roadster is an unfair match to the Volt, what technology could be? Well, how about the Tesla Model S? Well, with a charging range of up to 300 MILES ON A SINGLE CHARGE and 45 minutes to "quick charge" the battery, a 0-60 in 5.6 seconds, and a top speed of 120 MPH I'd say that the Volt isn't a fair comparison to any of Tesla's cars.  Tesla's cars are just too far advanced for Chevy to even compete.

Also, did I mention that where Chevy outsources a fair amount of work to Mexico, Teslas are all built right here in the good ol' U.S. of A?

Chevy, its called modern technology. Get with it.

By the way, a disclaimer, I'm extremly biased towards electric cars, and Tesla's in specific. I'm not a proud Tesla Roadster or Tesla Model S owner yet, but I have bought some stock in the meantime.  Regardless, don't believe me, do the reserach... the numbers speak for themselves.

Best!

Google... Maybe taking over the world?

So, I saw something in the New York Times the other day that I thought was interesting.  Google, is in its last steps to take over the world.  Worry not, it looks as if they'll be benevolent overlords.  OK, what I'm actually talking about is that Google, once again is trying to break into the social networking world . 

This company seems great at a lot of things.  They basically reinvented the Internet and, like it or not, they gave us the word Google in more parts of speech than is really necessary. They've tried this before though.  Like the article in the Times said (read it, its really good) they've really only been able to do it in Brazil and India.  Not that I'm knocking anything that can be a success in India (the worlds second largest country by population and growing FAST in the computer area) but lets face it, they're not Facebook, they're Orkut... I've never Orkuted anything, so its not great at riding its own coat-tails.

Heres the real deal though, this writer noted, and rightly so, that Google operates on algorithims and that you can't algorithim (verb) a social network.

I disagree.  FLAT OUT.

Heres the thing.  Many different forms of artificial intelligence (henceforth, and forevermore refered to as AI) are great at simulating social interactions in many situations.  The great thing is that many of these programs can even give you the algorithims that they use to do it.  NetLogo for instance, is a multi-agent based system that can be programmed to do all sorts of things.  I'm currently using it to model a number of aspects of religious sociality (to varying success I admit).

Then, theres NodeXL, which has the ability to go into social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and even Flickr if I'm not mistaken and can then construct the actual networks that exist between variables that are searched for and spit it out into an Excel spreadsheet, ready for your analysis however you see fit.

The real good thing about the article... They hinted that maybe, just maybe, its just Google and they can't quite do the social networking thing.  Apple already has Ping, a social network built into the newest version of itunes, as if itunes didn't already revolutionize the way we interact (remember napster? HA, how 1998 of you).

Anyways, point is, its not that social networking can't be done by Google, on Google's terms.  They could start finding some algorithims, they could start programming it, but, could they do it as well as Facebook? OR are they doing it because Facebook has done so well?

What are you on about?

So, basically I just wanted to set some foundation on the first post.  This blog is primarily going to be about some of the new and emerging science and technology behind the brain and computers. Sometimes it will be about the brain, sometimes it will be about computer technology, and sometimes it will be about both.  Hopefully it will be about both a lot because the intersection between neuroscience and computer science is pretty cool.  I'll also include interesting things about studies that concern the topic, especialy ones about cross-cultural studies and the emerging fields of cognitive anthropology and evolutionary psychology.  And, I'll try not to bore you because then you'll just go on facebook and stop reading.

Sure, I'll talk about the singularity from time to time, but in all honesty, I find Kruzweil to be very optimistic. But I want to give him the credit he's due. For all of his... idiosyncracies he does have a lot of interesting information and predictions every once and a while.

Also, I don't want this to just be a blog that reposts TED talks. Will I repost TED talks from time to time? Oh yeah, those things are awesome and a great thing for rainy days if you're a huge dork... which I am. However, you can expect and always demand something a bit new.

Also, I love a good discussion, I have an email listed. If you want to bring something to my attention, please do. Also, if you think that you personally have a technology that is interesting, email me about that. If I think its interesting (and most importantly applicable to what I'm doing here) I'll say something about it. Shameless plugs are fine!

Alright, I'm done. I'll post something worthwhile when I decide which thing to mention.