17. august
German scientists claim faster-than-light speed
Can you break the lightspeed barrier? Experimental physics has never been able to establish that a particle--or wave--can actually travel faster than the speed of light (in a vacuum--light can be slowed down in dense media) but science fiction stories abound about "hyperdrives", "warp speed", "wormholes" etc. where by some strange mechanism, one can "bend" the rules of physics to provide FTL travel. Now 2 German Scientists have claimed to "broken the speed of light"--if this is true, then I can finally build my long-range transporter! We will be following this story with interest! The speed of light is not constant--for example the speed of light in a vacuum (186.,000 mps) is not the same as in water, air or other dense media. Here in Denmark a physicist has actually slowed down light quite a bit, so the question is, can it be speeded up, as we know from Star Trek's "warp drive"?? The Koblenz experiments involve single photons over a very short distance, so this is far from a hyperdrive, but of course we will be following the experiments closely, and they will be printed in the New Scientist shortly (only a preview of the article is on the newscientist.com site today). Scott 'We Have Broken Speed of Light' NIC FLEMING, Science Correspondent - Telegraph (U.K.) Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary proof. We will have to wait and see if replications are reported. A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second. However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory. advertisement The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart. Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving. The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws. Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of." fron the New Scientist: Article Preview Photons flout the light speed limit * 17 August 2007 * Mark Anderson * Magazine issue 2617 IT'S a speed record that is supposed to be impossible to break. Yet two physicists are now claiming they have propelled photons faster than the speed of light. This would be in direct violation of a key tenet of Einstein's special theory of relativity that states that nothing, under any circumstance, can exceed the speed of light. Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen of the University of Koblenz, Germany, have been exploring a phenomenon in quantum optics called photon tunnelling, which occurs when a particle slips across an apparently uncrossable barrier. The pair say they have now tunnelled photons "instantaneously" across a barrier of various sizes, from a few millimetres up to a metre. Their conclusion is that the photons traverse the barrier much faster than the speed of light. To see how far they could make photons tunnel, Nimtz and Stahlhofen sandwiched two glass prisms together to make a ... London, Aug 16 (ANI): Two German physicists from the University of Koblenz claim to have broken the speed of light. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second. However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, say have possibly breached a key tenet of that theory. They say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - traveled “instantaneously” between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to three feet apart. The duo say being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving, they said. The scientists said they were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws. “For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of,” the Daily Telegraph quoted Dr Nimtz as telling New Scientist magazine. (ANI)
Friday, August 17, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
mobile monday--coming soon to a city near you!
Mobile monday comes to Denmark—and soon to a city near you!
by Scott Hill M.E.E.
Frontier sciences group
Copenhagen
frontiersciences@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/frontiersciences
Monday the 4th of June 2007 was a special day in Denmark—the day the mobile monday came to Copenhagen. I was invited to the first meeting of the Copenhagen chapter of the mobile monday network, and showed up not knowing what exactly to expect at the IT University in Copenhagen to see what it was all about. The program was sponsored by Crossroads Copenhagen (www.copenhagencrossroads.dk) and Danish Computerworld (www.cw.dk).and attracted about
60 guests, including students from Copenhagen University and the IT University as well as
participants from industry in Denmark and Sweden. .
One of the founders of Mobile Monday in Finland, Jari Tammisto, held the keynote address and explained the background for the network.
What is mobile monday?
Mobile monday was started in Finland last year with telecomms companies like Nokia and Sony-Ericsson as corporate sponsors. A grassroots movement, with no paid salaries to anyone, and run entirely on volunteer labor, has spread like wildfire throughout Europe and the rest of the world, with chapters springing up weekely in new member countries. Jari explained that in 2007 mobile monday
will arrange over 500 events in different cities with a planned attendence of over 100,000 participants.
The local chapter arranges the event, and local customs are included so that each MoMo event is differnt. Jari showed slides from a MoMo event in India, where participants say on cushions on the floor, with their mobile phones at their sides, sitting around and drinking chai and dressed in saris and local dress, a rather informal setting compared to the IT University lecture theater.
The main goal of the MoMo network is to help mobile entrepeneurs on their way to the international market and attract venture and development capital to the new mobile digital market. Several of the speakers at the Copenhagen event focussed on industry-related digital content, such as
location-based services, mobile services accross borders, WLAN (wireless LAN) telephony, 3G and EDGE mobile education and free hotspots for metropolitan area networks, such as are being implemented in the U.S. , U.K. Germany and Sweden including Karlskrona, Stuttgart, London and San Francisco where the city provides free hotspots for citizens. With the proliferation of smartphones, WLAN PDA's and mobile devices with built-in GPS, these services are of interest to an increasing number of subscribers and is clearly the wave of the future.
Information on the different activities of the MoMo chapters can be found on the homepage
www.mobilemonday.net
The homepage is available in several European languages.
Mobility in Denmark
The speakers at the first MoMo event in Denmark came from several sectors, including the telecoms industry, university research , and mobile content providers.
Pauline Middelton, driector of Crossroads Copenhagen and co-sponsor of the conference, talked about the future of digital content in our lives, and expects that the MoMo concept will take off in Denmark, as it has in other countries, when people hear more about it.
Morten Christensen, CEO for ”3” in Denmark, talked about 3's plans for a turbo 3G net in Denmark, which is already being rolled out in major cities. Present tests indicate a bandwidth of 7.2 Mbit/sec can be reached in areas with good coverage, and this may be increased in the future. However, the penetration of 3G phones has had a slow start in Denmark, due to the high cost of the handsets.
Kelly Ann Kenan from TeleDanmark (TDC) announed that they have now 750 active hotspots in Denmark, in airports, hotels, coffeshops and municipal areas, but as these are paid services, they are of course not used by everybody yet. However, in response to qustions she assured us that TDC would provide the infrastructure for free hotspots ”if somebody was willing to pay for it”.
Johann Tilly from The Cloud taleked about an open business model for public WiFi hotspots, and about The Cloud's plans for 10.000 hotspots worldwide. Lars Lannuan from 3rd Person, talked about mobile gaming innovation and interactive mobile soaps produced by his company which are a hit among teenagers. An increasing number of mobile digital content providers are springing up in Europe, such as O2, Gameloft, and Misselead, and mobile service providers such as British Telecom (BT) Vonage, and Vodaphone are already offering such mobile content to subscribers.
Presentations from the speakers can be seen on the Copenhagen chapter homepage, www.mobilemonday.dk
The next mobile monday in Copenhagen will be held on 3 September at the IT University
(www.itu.dk)
The Jaiku project
One of the spinoffs of MoMo which I find interesting is the Jaiku project (www.jaiku.com) which is a free community service for exchanging informaton between computers, mobile phones, smartphones, PDA's and other handsets. If you have a smartphone or smart mobile device, such as WLAN PDA's, the Nokia E-series phones or S60 symbian phones, or a handset which supports SMS and MMS messages, you can send messages for free to any member in the Jaiku net, no matter which telephone or operator you have. Normally it is difficult, if not impossible, to send text messages (SMS) to phones outside your own country, where your local operator has no coverage or roaming agreement.
For example, just sending an SMS from Denmark to Sweden—a distance of only a few miles—requires a paid service or an SMS-to-email server to work!
Jaiku also includes blogs from major mobile leaders in the industry and reasearch, and, of course all the latest gossip on new phones such as the Nokia 800 Linux tablet with WLAN (VoiP works without SIM-card or operator account!), the iPhone, and the latest in 3G phones and PDA's. Jaiku's ”bloghive” is a gold mine of information for potential mobile developers and investors. There is also a debate section, newsletters, and information from the different MoMo chapters.
The Flocboard
During the MoMo conference a large computer screen was set up on the wall behind the speaker's podium, a so-called ”Flocboard”. Floc is a service which allows people with SMS-enabled mobile phones to communicate with the speakers – and other participants-- including those visiting the conference on the internet, by displaying SMS messages on the Flocboard. A rotating display frame ensures that the latest messages are posted first, and then replaced on the display as new messages are received.
Pauline Middelton explained that it was not allowed to raise your hand and ask questions in the usual way, and that only questions sent to the Flocboard would be answered. This resulted in a flurry of activity from the participants, including myself, to be the first to get a message up on the Flocboard.
An interesting way to interact with the audience, which may find its way into the eLearning sector, where cheap mobile handsets (the 10$ PDA) can be used instead of expensive computers and cabled networks with limited range.
Links:
international mobile monday site:
www.mobilemonday.net
the Copenhagen Crossroads project:
www.crossroadscopenhagen.com
the Flocboard:
www.floc.eu/projects/floc-board/
the Jaiku project:
www.jaiku.com
Danish mobile monday site:
www.mobilemonday.dk
The IT University in Copenhagen:
www.itu.dk
The University of Copenhagen:
www.ku.dk
About the author: Scott Hill is an American scientist living in Denmark.
The frontier sciences group is developing advanced digital technologies for eHealth and eLearning
applications in Europe in connection with an EU program on digital mobile content and location-dependent mobile services. You can read more about the Frontier Sciences Group on myspace.com and MSN live spaces, under ”frontiersciences”
by Scott Hill M.E.E.
Frontier sciences group
Copenhagen
frontiersciences@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/frontiersciences
Monday the 4th of June 2007 was a special day in Denmark—the day the mobile monday came to Copenhagen. I was invited to the first meeting of the Copenhagen chapter of the mobile monday network, and showed up not knowing what exactly to expect at the IT University in Copenhagen to see what it was all about. The program was sponsored by Crossroads Copenhagen (www.copenhagencrossroads.dk) and Danish Computerworld (www.cw.dk).and attracted about
60 guests, including students from Copenhagen University and the IT University as well as
participants from industry in Denmark and Sweden. .
One of the founders of Mobile Monday in Finland, Jari Tammisto, held the keynote address and explained the background for the network.
What is mobile monday?
Mobile monday was started in Finland last year with telecomms companies like Nokia and Sony-Ericsson as corporate sponsors. A grassroots movement, with no paid salaries to anyone, and run entirely on volunteer labor, has spread like wildfire throughout Europe and the rest of the world, with chapters springing up weekely in new member countries. Jari explained that in 2007 mobile monday
will arrange over 500 events in different cities with a planned attendence of over 100,000 participants.
The local chapter arranges the event, and local customs are included so that each MoMo event is differnt. Jari showed slides from a MoMo event in India, where participants say on cushions on the floor, with their mobile phones at their sides, sitting around and drinking chai and dressed in saris and local dress, a rather informal setting compared to the IT University lecture theater.
The main goal of the MoMo network is to help mobile entrepeneurs on their way to the international market and attract venture and development capital to the new mobile digital market. Several of the speakers at the Copenhagen event focussed on industry-related digital content, such as
location-based services, mobile services accross borders, WLAN (wireless LAN) telephony, 3G and EDGE mobile education and free hotspots for metropolitan area networks, such as are being implemented in the U.S. , U.K. Germany and Sweden including Karlskrona, Stuttgart, London and San Francisco where the city provides free hotspots for citizens. With the proliferation of smartphones, WLAN PDA's and mobile devices with built-in GPS, these services are of interest to an increasing number of subscribers and is clearly the wave of the future.
Information on the different activities of the MoMo chapters can be found on the homepage
www.mobilemonday.net
The homepage is available in several European languages.
Mobility in Denmark
The speakers at the first MoMo event in Denmark came from several sectors, including the telecoms industry, university research , and mobile content providers.
Pauline Middelton, driector of Crossroads Copenhagen and co-sponsor of the conference, talked about the future of digital content in our lives, and expects that the MoMo concept will take off in Denmark, as it has in other countries, when people hear more about it.
Morten Christensen, CEO for ”3” in Denmark, talked about 3's plans for a turbo 3G net in Denmark, which is already being rolled out in major cities. Present tests indicate a bandwidth of 7.2 Mbit/sec can be reached in areas with good coverage, and this may be increased in the future. However, the penetration of 3G phones has had a slow start in Denmark, due to the high cost of the handsets.
Kelly Ann Kenan from TeleDanmark (TDC) announed that they have now 750 active hotspots in Denmark, in airports, hotels, coffeshops and municipal areas, but as these are paid services, they are of course not used by everybody yet. However, in response to qustions she assured us that TDC would provide the infrastructure for free hotspots ”if somebody was willing to pay for it”.
Johann Tilly from The Cloud taleked about an open business model for public WiFi hotspots, and about The Cloud's plans for 10.000 hotspots worldwide. Lars Lannuan from 3rd Person, talked about mobile gaming innovation and interactive mobile soaps produced by his company which are a hit among teenagers. An increasing number of mobile digital content providers are springing up in Europe, such as O2, Gameloft, and Misselead, and mobile service providers such as British Telecom (BT) Vonage, and Vodaphone are already offering such mobile content to subscribers.
Presentations from the speakers can be seen on the Copenhagen chapter homepage, www.mobilemonday.dk
The next mobile monday in Copenhagen will be held on 3 September at the IT University
(www.itu.dk)
The Jaiku project
One of the spinoffs of MoMo which I find interesting is the Jaiku project (www.jaiku.com) which is a free community service for exchanging informaton between computers, mobile phones, smartphones, PDA's and other handsets. If you have a smartphone or smart mobile device, such as WLAN PDA's, the Nokia E-series phones or S60 symbian phones, or a handset which supports SMS and MMS messages, you can send messages for free to any member in the Jaiku net, no matter which telephone or operator you have. Normally it is difficult, if not impossible, to send text messages (SMS) to phones outside your own country, where your local operator has no coverage or roaming agreement.
For example, just sending an SMS from Denmark to Sweden—a distance of only a few miles—requires a paid service or an SMS-to-email server to work!
Jaiku also includes blogs from major mobile leaders in the industry and reasearch, and, of course all the latest gossip on new phones such as the Nokia 800 Linux tablet with WLAN (VoiP works without SIM-card or operator account!), the iPhone, and the latest in 3G phones and PDA's. Jaiku's ”bloghive” is a gold mine of information for potential mobile developers and investors. There is also a debate section, newsletters, and information from the different MoMo chapters.
The Flocboard
During the MoMo conference a large computer screen was set up on the wall behind the speaker's podium, a so-called ”Flocboard”. Floc is a service which allows people with SMS-enabled mobile phones to communicate with the speakers – and other participants-- including those visiting the conference on the internet, by displaying SMS messages on the Flocboard. A rotating display frame ensures that the latest messages are posted first, and then replaced on the display as new messages are received.
Pauline Middelton explained that it was not allowed to raise your hand and ask questions in the usual way, and that only questions sent to the Flocboard would be answered. This resulted in a flurry of activity from the participants, including myself, to be the first to get a message up on the Flocboard.
An interesting way to interact with the audience, which may find its way into the eLearning sector, where cheap mobile handsets (the 10$ PDA) can be used instead of expensive computers and cabled networks with limited range.
Links:
international mobile monday site:
www.mobilemonday.net
the Copenhagen Crossroads project:
www.crossroadscopenhagen.com
the Flocboard:
www.floc.eu/projects/floc-board/
the Jaiku project:
www.jaiku.com
Danish mobile monday site:
www.mobilemonday.dk
The IT University in Copenhagen:
www.itu.dk
The University of Copenhagen:
www.ku.dk
About the author: Scott Hill is an American scientist living in Denmark.
The frontier sciences group is developing advanced digital technologies for eHealth and eLearning
applications in Europe in connection with an EU program on digital mobile content and location-dependent mobile services. You can read more about the Frontier Sciences Group on myspace.com and MSN live spaces, under ”frontiersciences”
Thursday, December 7, 2006
welcome to our blog!
The frontier sciences group is based in Copenhagen, Denmark and run by biophysicist Scott Hill.
The first institute of frontier sciences was founded in Philadelphia, PA. in 1989 by my partner, Dr. Beverly Rubik, who also founded the journal "frontier perspectives". Beverly now runs the Frontier Sciences Inst. in Oakland, Calif and has received funding from the National Inst of Health (NIH) "Complementary and alternative medicine research program" NIH-CAM. The Frontier Sciences European Network combines both of our networks into a worldwide organization to stimulate research in frontier sciences.
In future blogs, we will be presenting fascinating details of the latest research in frontier sciences
from around the world.
Scott Hill and Beverly Rubik have written several books on frontier sciences:
The Cycles of Heaven: Cosmic Forces and what They are Doing to You by Guy Lyon Playfair, Scott Hill - 1978 - Find libraries Pan Books, London 1978, Avon books, NY 1979
Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing - Page 293by Jane Katra, Russell Targ - 1998 - 272 pagesBeverly Rubik and Elizabeth Rauscher, “Effects on Motility Behavior and Growth Rate of Salmonella Typhimurium in the Presence of Olga Worrall.” in WG. ...Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
The Near-Death Experience: a reader - Page 40by Jenny L. Yates, Lee Worth Bailey - 1996 - 409 pagesDr. Beverly Rubik, a bio-physicist and founding Chair of the Center for Frontier Sciences at Temple University, has also tested ...Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing - Page 293by Jane Katra, Russell Targ - 1998 - 272 pagesBeverly Rubik and Elizabeth Rauscher, “Effects on Motility Behavior and Growth Rate of Salmonella Typhimurium in the Presence of Olga Worrall.” in WG. ...Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
The Near-Death Experience: a reader - Page 40by Jenny L. Yates, Lee Worth Bailey - 1996 - 409 pagesDr. Beverly Rubik, a bio-physicist and founding Chair of the Center for Frontier Sciences at Temple University, has also tested ...Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
The first institute of frontier sciences was founded in Philadelphia, PA. in 1989 by my partner, Dr. Beverly Rubik, who also founded the journal "frontier perspectives". Beverly now runs the Frontier Sciences Inst. in Oakland, Calif and has received funding from the National Inst of Health (NIH) "Complementary and alternative medicine research program" NIH-CAM. The Frontier Sciences European Network combines both of our networks into a worldwide organization to stimulate research in frontier sciences.
In future blogs, we will be presenting fascinating details of the latest research in frontier sciences
from around the world.
Scott Hill and Beverly Rubik have written several books on frontier sciences:
The Cycles of Heaven: Cosmic Forces and what They are Doing to You by Guy Lyon Playfair, Scott Hill - 1978 - Find libraries Pan Books, London 1978, Avon books, NY 1979
Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing - Page 293by Jane Katra, Russell Targ - 1998 - 272 pagesBeverly Rubik and Elizabeth Rauscher, “Effects on Motility Behavior and Growth Rate of Salmonella Typhimurium in the Presence of Olga Worrall.” in WG. ...Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
The Near-Death Experience: a reader - Page 40by Jenny L. Yates, Lee Worth Bailey - 1996 - 409 pagesDr. Beverly Rubik, a bio-physicist and founding Chair of the Center for Frontier Sciences at Temple University, has also tested ...Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing - Page 293by Jane Katra, Russell Targ - 1998 - 272 pagesBeverly Rubik and Elizabeth Rauscher, “Effects on Motility Behavior and Growth Rate of Salmonella Typhimurium in the Presence of Olga Worrall.” in WG. ...Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
The Near-Death Experience: a reader - Page 40by Jenny L. Yates, Lee Worth Bailey - 1996 - 409 pagesDr. Beverly Rubik, a bio-physicist and founding Chair of the Center for Frontier Sciences at Temple University, has also tested ...Limited preview - Table of Contents - About this book
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
