Gravity & Nuclear forces.

Would someone out there that's smarter than me please comment on:

The theory of everything:

As I understand things:
- There are strong nuclear forces within the atom holding it together.
- Gravity is understood as an unrelated force that acts on large bodies, and is much (much...) weaker than the strong nuclear forces.

Theorists are searching for a single theory that explains the behaviour of these forces.

Question:
Has it been proved that gravity is not simply the sum of a body's nuclear forces radiating out over vast distances? In other words is it possible that the nuclear forces that hold the atom together extend way beyond the extremities of the atom to pull (as gravity does) on neighbouring atoms - even at vast distances?

I imagine that gravity exists between any two bodies, even at the size of individual atoms, so why is it necessary to define the attracting force between these two atoms as gravity? Why can't we just say that the "short-range" nuclear force is very strong - so strong that it pulls & holds the atom together, and that at "long-range" the same force (although weakened by distance) pulls at other matter, and is experienced as gravity?

Why the iPhone won't rock your world

The Observer | Business | John Naughton: Why the iPhone won't rock your world

No doubt Apple is concerned about the effect that properly equiped and designed MP3 phones will have on it's very lucrative iPod. However no one company can thwart the progress of this technology for long. It won't be long (maybe two years) before there are dozens of mobile phones that support 1GB - 4GB of storage, and an easy to user media player, perhaps with dedicated (play, ff, fr, & pause) buttons.

The cat is out of the bag - there is money to be made in mobile MP3 devices, and I believe most people will weight up the convenience of iPod's clickwheel, against the burden of carrying a 2nd device, and will choose a phone with iPod-like features.

Apple's challenge is to deign a user interface that is equally suited as an iPod & mobile phone. It's not easy to do, but they have no choice.

The Nano is smaller & lighter than previous iPod's, so it will no doubt sell like hot cakes, but unless they can make the next version even smaller, they had better think about building a "genuine" iPhone.

Parasites brainwash grasshoppers

New Scientist Breaking News - Parasites brainwash grasshoppers into death dive



A parasitic worm called a hairworm develops inside a land-dwelling grasshopper or cricket, and then somehow takes control of the grasshoppers brain, forcing the grasshopper to seek out water and take a death plunge.

The hairworm then emerges to start it's new life as an aquatic adult.

The grasshopper / cricket usually drowns.

4G prototypes run @ 1Gbit

New Scientist Breaking News - 4G prototypes reach blistering speeds



Japanese engineers have developed a new mobile phone network capable of speeds of 1Gbit/sec while stationery and 100Mb while moving. These speeds are about 250 times faster than 3G technology.

DoCoMo of Japan hoped to launch a commercial 4G network by 2010.

"Music Genome Project"

Discover Music - Pandora



Here is the manifestation of an idea I had a couple of years ago, un/fortunately Pandora had the same idea 6 years ago.

My idea was to build an artificial intelligence system (which is no doubt far beyond my capabilities) to study a users selection of top ten songs, and then present the user with music that matches their taste. Another way I thought to do this was to ask a network of users to upload their song lists with ratings to a central server which would then cross-reference that selection with other users on the network.

Pandora have beaten me to it. They have a working system at www.pandora.com which is simple to use, and from what I can determine so far, quite intuitive in it's selection of songs.

Musings:
This technology could be further developed for use with Books, Movies, and who knows what else.

The tower of Google!

Google Translator: The Universal Language



Here is an interesting article about the "Google Machine Translation System" (not to be confused with the current Google Translator).

Apparently Google's new translator is capable of the following translation from Arabic:
From current Google on-line translator: "Alpine white new presence tape registered for coffee confirms Laden"
From New Google translator: "The White House Confirmed the Existence of a New Bin Laden Tape."

The Google Babelfish: "It would be a smart device you plug-in to your ear, and it would have speech recognition and Auto-translation built in. You can now visit a foreign country and understand people who talk to you in languages you never learned. For them to understand you as well, either they would also have a Google Babelfish, or there would be the need of a second gadget you speak into, which then translates what you said. While the needed text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies are far from perfect at the moment, they are still realistic possibilities."

If the technology is as good as the claim, this is going to bring the world together like nothing else. No more language barriers!

I can't speak for anyone else, but I suspect that we all feel less connected and less compassionate with people speaking languages - that to our ears - sound like gibberish. I wonder how different we would feel hearing cries of anguish from Iraqi people in English.

Another immeasurable benefit will be to global education. Language has been the key to human success. We use language to share ideas, skills, and to communicate years of aggregated knowledge. Until now the most limiting quality of language is that we don't all share the same one. We could learn so much more quickly if we only spoke the same language.

Musing:
Will Google herald the next human revolution.
Knowledge + Communication = World Progress

Scientists probe anti-ageing gene

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Scientists probe anti-ageing gene



What would the world do if we stumbled across a chemical or biological agent that halted the aging process, and offered us almost eternal life?

Would the drug be given away freely, sold to an elite few for millions of dollars, or would it be locked away in vaults and treated with the same dread as chemical and biological agents used as weapons of mass destruction?

I want a science fiction writer to invent a world where science has unlocked the secret to eternal youth, routinely treats cancer by injecting nanobots, and offers cheap industrialized cloning to infertile couples. IE What happens to the world if we never die and continue to propagate?

Multi-core CPU's

Does Moore's Law still work?








Like everyone else I know (thats my age) I feel time is speeding up. In my teens the weekend was 48 hours, in my 20's it was shortened 24 hours, now, in my late 30's I wake up on Monday and wonder if it's groundhog day. So why does it feel like I'm waiting forever for my next PC upgrade?

I've usually replaced my system every 2-3 years or when the lastest CPU is twice as fast as my current system - whichever comes first. But this time it's different, I have the same P4 2.4 I had 3 years ago, and I see no reason to upgrade. There's nothing out there thats significantly faster!

The recent news of the next generation of CPU's with multi-core dies finally brings some promise and excitement. The only question I have is; will Moore's law be fed exclusively on a multi-core diet? Duel core in 2006, quad-core in 2008... let's see that's "1KB core" by 2024 :)

Hello World!

For those of you not in the computer industry "Hello World!" is not a declaration that I have delusions of grandeur. It's my way (as a programmer) of testing that my first Blog actually works.

Look it up in Wikipedia