Technology areas to watch in 2012 through 2016

Source: NextBigFuture
Date: 12/24/2011

1. Energy Revolution - Mass produced fission, fusion, and maybe cold fusion
2. Memristors and other significant computing and electronic improvements.
3. Robotics
4. Urbanization Broad Group skyscrapers, Tata flat packed buildings
5. Space
6. Supersmartphones, exoskeletons and wearable systems
7. Hyperbroadband
8. Energy Efficiency - superconductors, thermoelectrics, improved grid
9. Additive manufacturing
10. Not so mundane - neuromorphic chips, quantum computers, photonics
11. Automated transportation (leading to robotic cars and planes)
12. Supermaterials
13. Improve medicine and public health
14. Synthetic biology and recombineering
15. Sensors everywhere
16. Education transformed and accelerated innovation

The most controversial has the highest potential impact

1. Energy Revolution - Mass produced fission, fusion, and maybe cold fusion

There is the highly controversial possibility of Rossi-Focardi Energy catalyzer.

Brillouin Energy is another cold fusion contender

There is also work in this area by Brian Ahern and NASA and other agencies are investigating it.

EMC2 Fusion, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, General Fusion and/or Tri-alpha energy could develop a first full scale prototype commercial system by Dec, 2016. Those are also somewhat controversial, but less so than the cold fusion. Australia Star Scientific with a claimed breakthrough with muon fusion.

A desktop high frequency fusion system has been proposed for space propulsion and energy generation.

In Chapman’s aneutronic fusion reactor scheme, a commercially available benchtop laser starts the reaction. A beam with energy on the order of 2 x 10^18 watts per square centimeter, pulse frequencies up to 75 megahertz, and wavelengths between 1 and 10 micrometers is aimed at a two-layer, 20-centimeter-diameter target.

High frequency lasers are an area that is rapidly progressing.

I think high frequency lasers and General Fusion are the most likely to succeed. The High frequency laser approach needs to get a deep pocketed champion.

China is well underway with their first pebble bed reactors. The first one will be done by about 2015. This is not controversial and the construction project is underway.

Other small modular nuclear fission reactor projects are underway but most will not have their first units built until 2018-2020 or later

China could have a prototype molten salt thorium reactor by Dec, 2016.

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Debt-Free United States Notes Were Once Issued Under JFK And The U.S. Government Still Has The Power To Issue Debt-Free Money

Source: The Economic Collapse
Date: 12/19/2011

Most Americans have no idea that the U.S. government once issued debt-free money directly into circulation.  America once thrived under a debt-free monetary system, and we can do it again.  The truth is that the United States is a sovereign nation and it does not need to borrow money from anyone.  Back in the days of JFK, Federal Reserve Notes were not the only currency in circulation.  Under JFK (at at various other times), a limited number of debt-free United States Notes were issued by the U.S. Treasury and spent by the U.S. government without any new debt being created.  In fact, each bill said "United States Note" right at the top.  Unfortunately, United States Notes are not being issued today.  If you stop right now and pull a dollar out of your wallet, what does it say right at the top?  It says "Federal Reserve Note".  Normally, the way our current system works is that whenever more Federal Reserve Notes are created more debt is also created.  This debt-based monetary system is systematically destroying the wealth of this nation.  But it does not have to be this way.  The truth is that the U.S. government still has the power under the U.S. Constitution to issue debt-free money, and we need to educate the American people about this.
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Quantum Entanglement Links 2 Diamonds

Source: Scientific American
Date: 12/1/2011

Usually a finicky phenomenon limited to tiny, ultracold objects, entanglement has now been achieved for macroscopic diamonds at room temperature

Diamonds have long been available in pairs—say, mounted in a nice set of earrings. But physicists have now taken that pairing to a new level, linking two diamonds on the quantum level.

A group of researchers report in the December 2 issue of Science that they managed to entangle the quantum states of two diamonds separated by 15 centimeters. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon by which two or more objects share an unseen link bridging the space between them—a hypothetical pair of entangled dice, for instance, would always land on matching numbers, even if they were rolled in different places simultaneously.

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