I thought it important to bring a little personal flashback on recent technological jumps I, and many others, never thought to meet in their lifetime. This is important because we easily forget yesterdays breakthrough when it flickers off the TV screen and just how far we are able to push the limit for what is possible these days.
Remember the saying "the sky is the limit?", well, that limit was broken when landing on the Moon marked possibly the most fantastic achievement of the 20th century. It was a realization of one of mankind's oldest science fiction dreams. But who actually believed a manned mission to the mythical planet Mars would be executed within a lifetime after that? We now have permanent space stations, orbital telescopes reaching far into space and plans of using satellites in grid technology.
From the indivisible atom, to something smaller
When I was a student of biochemistry and learned quantum mechanics, the atom (meaning indivisible) was about to loose its status as the smallest element materials could be broken down to. Quarks were the new buzz word of physics back then (though it was introduced in 1961). So though I was taught that atoms was the smallest "thing" everything was build out of, it is now fairly accepted that we have something called quarks, and that we can build of atoms (nanotechnology). You may even heard about the theory of vibrating strings that is supposed to make even smaller building blocks (still theoretic science). So the smallest thing in the world seems to shrink as the perception and knowledge increases.
Stopping light
One of the most undebateable constants from last century is Albert Einsteins speed of light. Though I have heard claims of people arguing for something travelling faster than light, I have seen no proof of such yet. But it was an eye opener for me when the news brought the news of the Dane Lene Haus teams efforts in
slowing down light beams. They later announced they could totally stop and restart light in its path. I think this is a good example of how "constants" may be dangerous (in the perspective of progress) to view as taboos that has been carved into our civilizations history. The only truth I know is that there are no
single truth.
Moving objects over great distances, broken down into elementary particles, must have been a technology found in the far future for the most of us, if ever possible. I must have been as ridiculous to think of these technologies as a possibility a few years ago - as it must have seemed to build machines of atoms and altering humans on gene level must have been to a scientist 50 years ago. Never the less, last year (2006) professor Eugene Polzik and his team at Niels Bohr, Denmark, published the results of their teleportation experiments in Nature. This is a technology in its infancy, but no less a reality. Remember than nanotechnology is only 20 years old as an active science, but you can now buy products in the shop today where nanotechnology is used to manifacture it.
Industrial Diamonds
Alchemy was a special mix of philosophy, nature, and spiritual aspects. The chemical aspects in some alchemist studies involved the search for the Philosophers Stone, a legendary substance that was supposed to produce silver and gold from other substances. But if someone today say they can produce diamonds most would shrug and say "off course". Well now days we can make diamonds of our
pets or lost family members if desired as a matter of fact. So, maybe the claim that "one can not create gold" should be added a "... , yet".
As you can read here, I do not make this up, it is actual technologies in development. Sometimes I have even given up on convincing people some of these technologies exist, even though they have the luxury of being acknowledged by the science community and media. This is another plea for people to keep their minds open when encountering crazy technology that defies what you know and have learned. I doubt all people are crooks and frauds who want to decieve you.
Fiction is just the next limit our imagination can push our abilities! There ARE people working on time machines (on theoretical level mostly) - but whether they will succeed (or should) can depend on whether people can accept it.
The 22nd of June 2007 the Department of Energy (USA) and The British Library of the United States of America opened the new search portal www.worldwidescience.org which has a Declaration of Intention that moves in the direction of Open Science.
