Big Experiment Underway - Stage 1 Successful

strawberry float nanobots, I've seen Agent Cody Banks.

AND The Outer Limits.

End well it will not.

In seriousness, surely the effect on the world's economy of having virtually all need for manual labour eradicated could be a little...problematic...

This future stuff is creepy, just one more way for them to spy on you.

I predict some form of Luddite revolution.

Rightey wrote:This future stuff is creepy, just one more way for them to spy on you.

You should check out Kurzweil's little timeline here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_is_Near

Spent ages last night reading through gooseberry fool like this. Within our lifetimes the world could be radically altered through the creation of human-level A.I.s.

Rightey wrote:I predict some form of Luddite revolution.

It'll happen, the luddites will have a huge movement, but progress on a scale like this cannot be denied for long.

It's called an EMP bomb, then all your circuit boards are useless!

Stu wrote:
If they're able to generate dark matter, hopefully they'll be able to harness that power and we'll have lots of energy from it.

But they might use it for evil purposes, then someone'll have to create a JRPG to deal with it.

To be honest, if it was so risky as the media makes it sound (which it isn't), then it wouldn't be worth it. After the experiment, we'd know all about the origins of the universe, but what use is that to us? We can't do anything with that information. They're doing it to find out about all the different types of matter in the universe and other things like that.

TheTurnipKing wrote:I think I'd probably see about building some kind of colony ship instead, but this way works too.

Even thats more useful than my 900 foot tall statue of me in heroic pose made of solid platinum.

To be fair some theories said that the Atomic Bomb would ignite the entire atmosphere killing everyone in a rather horrific way. Scientists will always be able to come up with worst case scenarios that have only a minuscule chance of happening but that do theoretically have a chance.

Rightey wrote:It's called an EMP bomb, then all your circuit boards are useless!

EMP Bombs do not presently exist, and the area of effectiveness for existing large scale EMP devices is not greater than those of the EMPs emitted by nuclear devices, though I wouldn't be surprised if efforts were being made to weaponize them like that.

I thought the power of a black hole comes not from it's size but the density of it

Alvin Flummux wrote:EMP Bombs do not presently exist, and the area of effectiveness for existing large scale EMP devices is not greater than those of the EMPs emitted by nuclear devices, though I wouldn't be surprised if efforts were being made to weaponize them like that.

Peoples fear of EMP attack massively overestimate the power they have. If you believed the hype all you need to do is explode a large Nuke at high altitude to knock out all electronics in an area the size of the US which is just plain bonkers.

Peter Crisp wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:EMP Bombs do not presently exist, and the area of effectiveness for existing large scale EMP devices is not greater than those of the EMPs emitted by nuclear devices, though I wouldn't be surprised if efforts were being made to weaponize them like that.

Peoples fear of EMP attack massively overestimate the power they have. If you believed the hype all you need to do is explode a large Nuke at high altitude to knock out all electronics in an area the size of the US which is just plain bonkers.

The EMP of a nuke detonation at a high altitude probably wouldn't even reach the ground directly beneath it.

Alvin Flummux wrote:

Rightey wrote:This future stuff is creepy, just one more way for them to spy on you.

You should check out Kurzweil's little timeline here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_is_Near

Spent ages last night reading through gooseberry fool like this. Within our lifetimes the world could be radically altered through the creation of human-level A.I.s.

Let's make a bet Alvin - planet-sized computers by 2045? It's not going to happen, and I'll give you a fiver if it does.

I especially like the succint predictions this guy makes:

The process of "waking up" the universe could be complete as early as 2199, or might take billions of years depending on whether or not machines could figure out a way to circumvent the speed of light for the purposes of space travel.

Oh, so it might take less than 200 years or a couple of billion. Great stuff.

And:

Because of this, A.I.s convert more and more of the Earth's matter into engineered, computational substrate capable of supporting more A.I.s. until the whole Earth is one, gigantic computer (but some areas will remain set aside as nature preserves).

Well, at least Dartmoor might still be around.

It's all just speculative science-fiction grounded on the loosest of facts and technological know-how. I'm not exactly a Luddite (I have no inclination to cause a World War, incidently) but this sort of thing is always predicted and only a fraction of it actually happens. Just look at what was written in the 50s; we should all be living like The Jetsons now, and be living in space, having a moustachioed boss shouting at us constantly and a foxy teenage daughter.

Just because it doesn't exist now doesn't mean it will never exist.

Alvin Flummux wrote:

Rightey wrote:This future stuff is creepy, just one more way for them to spy on you.

You should check out Kurzweil's little timeline here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_is_Near

Spent ages last night reading through **** like this. Within our lifetimes the world could be radically altered through the creation of human-level A.I.s.

Rightey wrote:I predict some form of Luddite revolution.

It'll happen, the luddites will have a huge movement, but progress on a scale like this cannot be denied for long.

wow, fascinating stuff there. Keep the theories and discussions coming guys

This has probably been discussed to death before but what are people's personal opinions on the universe? Obviously our theories may not even scratch the surface of whats really out there but it's interesting to see what people think.

I think that there's definitly more life out there somewhere. Whether this is more human life, i don't know. For all we know there could be a copy of life here somewhere(but with you and me being completly different to what we're like here)

Rightey wrote:Just because it doesn't exist now doesn't mean it will never exist.

Well, yes.

Obviously.

Parksey wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:

Rightey wrote:This future stuff is creepy, just one more way for them to spy on you.

You should check out Kurzweil's little timeline here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_is_Near

Spent ages last night reading through gooseberry fool like this. Within our lifetimes the world could be radically altered through the creation of human-level A.I.s.

Let's make a bet Alvin - planet-sized computers by 2045? It's not going to happen, and I'll give you a fiver if it does.

I especially like the succint predictions this guy makes:

The process of "waking up" the universe could be complete as early as 2199, or might take billions of years depending on whether or not machines could figure out a way to circumvent the speed of light for the purposes of space travel.

Oh, so it might take less than 200 years or a couple of billion. Great stuff.

And:

Because of this, A.I.s convert more and more of the Earth's matter into engineered, computational substrate capable of supporting more A.I.s. until the whole Earth is one, gigantic computer (but some areas will remain set aside as nature preserves).

Well, at least Dartmoor might still be around.

It's all just speculative science-fiction grounded on the loosest of facts and technological know-how. I'm not exactly a Luddite (I have no inclination to cause a World War, incidently) but this sort of thing is always predicted and only a fraction of it actually happens. Just look at what was written in the 50s; we should all be living like The Jetsons now, and be living in space, having a moustachioed boss shouting at us constantly and a foxy teenage daughter.

If you look at what Kurzweil wrote in the 80s though, he predicted pretty much every technological breakthrough we've had since then, mobile phones, the internet, wireless everything, effective cancer treatments, small cheap computers in every home. He sounds like a nut-job, but he is in fact, an uber genius.

No but the point is people are far to optimistic and have the absurd notion that just because technology has advanced at a furious pace for 100 years it always will. The next 100 years will see a gradual increase in what tech can do I feel.

sorry for butting in Parksey but I had to add that.

Shadow wrote:If you look at what Kurzweil wrote in the 80s though, he predicted pretty much every technological breakthrough we've had since then, mobile phones, the internet, wireless everything, effective cancer treatments, small cheap computers in every home. He sounds like a nut-job, but he is in fact, an uber genius.

I have a feeling most tech experts can have a good idea what will happen in 20 years but much more than that and no one knows.