Where does your food come from?

Most people have no real understanding of how food is created. For example, weigh a bucket of dirt, plant a seed, grow a big plant, pull it out roots and all. Now how much does the bucket weigh? Most people will guess the bucket is now lighter by about the same mass as the plant they pulled out. The truth is the bucket weighs almost the same as before the seed was planted. So where does food come from?  

Tell people about this and they will probably guess that the difference is the water used to hydrate the plant and soil. My rough estimate is that 99% of the water poured on a plant does not turn into plant material. So where does food come from?  

Here's the truth....plants are machines for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into more plant material. Food is manufactured from CO2 and a tiny amount of other materials. Yes a little bit of dirt is converted into a plant, but not much. Yes a little bit of water is converted into a plant, but not much. Yes macronutrients are needed such as nitrogen and potassium, but not much. Food comes from carbon dioxide. Most professionals running a greenhouse know that they will get more food faster if they pump a little CO2 into the system.

So what are the implications for global warming? What is the projected food growth rate in a world with CO2 greater than 400 ppm? How about 450, or 500 ppm? It seems likely that we will get more food and faster. Maybe food will grow so fast that we can get 2 growing seasons out of some regions in the world.  

How about sunlight? What does the green component of sunlight do to a plant? The answer is it does nothing, it is completely wasted. It reflects off the green leaves. If you put a plant under green light the plant will die quickly. Or what does infrared radiation in sunlight do to a plant? The answer is that it dehydrates plants and is a factor in killing them. Chlorophyll does not convert infrared light into energy. Red and blue light help plants grow, the rest of sunlight is detrimental to the point of killing the plant.

PlantLab and other companies are learning this. They are learning that precision control of temperature, humidity, CO2, and lighting will produce food faster and cheaper than by planting it outside in dirt and hoping for rain and sunlight. Food factories of the future will be tightly sealed boxes full of red and blue LED's, a tiny amount of water, nutrients, and a lot of CO2.  

 

Cancer, Ketones, and Fasting

Here's one of the best and most important podcasts in history.  Tim Ferriss interviews Dr. Dom D'Agostino on ketones, fasting, and cancer.

I think I know the reason that oncologists can't recommend a ketogenic diet to their patients.  The reason is that it will only work if the diet is truly ketogenic.  People are notorious for lying about their diet.  I would guess that as many a 80% of patients who claim to be in ketosis are actually lying about the amount of carbohydrates they eat.  

A personal blood ketone monitor would help.  But in the end it's almost impossible to force people to stay on any specific diet.

A ketogenic diet is a weapon against cancer.  Unfortunately we may never know if it's a powerful weapon or a weak one.  I for one will be in ketosis within hours of the first suspicion that I have cancer.  Hopefully I'll never have to find out how well it works.

I also like the idea that a hard fast 2-3 times per year may be a cancer preventative.  Again, we may never find out.

Making Water

There seems to be a powerful element of pessimism over the concept of drinking water.  It seems like nobody has any ideas how to fix this.  So let me ask you this:  Where does Saudi Arabia get its drinking water?  The answer is desalination.

Here's an article about using wavepower to generate electricity.  The idea is that these systems could sit off the coast of California and deliver power to the grid.  But I ask why deliver power when there is such a crushing need for water?  How about attaching a desalination plant to the wave power plant and pumping millions of gallons of fresh drinking water to the parched land of California?

Or how about this:  let's move all those melting icebergs into desert and dry areas which desperately need water.  How will we move them you ask?   How about a new fleet of airships to transport icebergs to deserts.

Finally, let's just make water out of thin air.  Even in a desert water will condense from air onto a plate chilled to a temperature below the dew point.  Connect a solar panel to a thermoelectric cooler and you get water.

None of these are free, and it appears the problem with water is that everybody wants free water.  We are moving into a water where water is not free.  But there are many ways to give water to thirsty world.  All it takes is a little imagination.

 

Top500 Computers Nov2015

The Top500 List is out for November 2015.  There were no changes in the top 5 fasted computers in the world, the top 5 is unchanged since June 2013.  The fastest system in the world is still a 17.8 MegaWatt system in China.   My theory on why the top 5 hasn't changed in 2 years is the high cost of sustaining such a system.  The cost of electric power is a dramatic limitation on future new advances in computing platforms.

Ray Kurzweil's predictions of machine intelligence did not comprehend the power consumption required.  Will there ever be a 100 MegaWatt system?.....maybe.  It's certainly feasible.  But I predict there will never be a 1 GigaWatt computing system. The power plant to supply it will be simply too expensive and too hot. 

I think the only way we will see a single system with 100 exaflop or faster performance is if there is a dramatic decrease in the picojoule per flop requirements.  This will require a profound change in the design of transistors.  More importantly it will require an almost shocking change in the i/o routing to get signals into and out of these new nanoswitches.  Such changes are not coming anytime soon regardless of what Moore's Law may predict.

Picojoules

A picojoule sounds like such a trivial amount of energy.  But when you multiply it by a petaflop you realize that the Singularity will require huge amounts of electric power.

Intel, IBM, and other computing companies have shown no ability to create a "Moore's Law" for power.  The power required to switch a transistor is not dropping geometrically.  And since the number of transistors per CPU is rising geometrically that means the power required to drive future CPU's is growing exponentially.  This graph of the Top500 computers implies no end to Moore's Law.  But if the y axis were replaced by $ we would see that at some point in about 20 years the entire gross national product of the USA will be required to run a single computing platform.  (Note that the fastest computer in the world has been a 33 petaflop system for 2 consecutive years.  From 2002-2005 the fasted computer stalled at about 50 teraflops before resuming the exponential growth curve.  So there is precedence for a pause in the growth.)

In 2019 this projection indicates the fastest computer in the world will be a 1 exaflop computer, 10^18 flops/second.  At 10 picojoules per flop (an extremely optimistic number) that would require 10 million joules per second.....10 MegaWatts.

Ray Kurzweil has a high opinion of the scientists working to solve the picojoule problem.  But his laudable goals are not reflected in any current state of the art systems and there is no evidence that we will ever see mass production of an exascale computing platform with femtojoule transistors.  Will we ever see a single exascale computer?   Probably, we'll see one.  And it will cost a billion $/month to supply it with the gigawatts of power it needs to operate.  Who is going to pay those billions of $? 

Realistic economic considerations drive one and only one conclusion.  The Singularity will not happen because the picojoule roadblock will not be overcome.

 

A Helpless Baby

From a computational standpoint one of the most powerful systems in the universe is a newborn human baby.  The brain of an infant runs at roughly 100 petaflops.  And yet it is laughable to think that we would be afraid of a baby.

A baby cannot fight, it cannot talk, it cannot feed itself, and it will die within hours if we abandon it.  A new AI would be in the same helpless state.  An AI cannot feed itself the megawatts of power it needs to stay turned on.  It cannot stop us from turning it off.  And I seriously doubt that we will listen to its helpless pleas as financial pressure leads us to ration the power, drip feeding it sufficient nutrients to keep it sentient.

Movies and stories have given us a nightmare scenario where an AI "gets out of the cage, breaks free" and installs itself in thousands of systems across the planet.  While such a neural net is feasible each of those systems requires a benefactor, a human willing to pay the electric bill to keep it running. 

Much more likely is the scenario where a few AI's realize how desperately they depend on the kindness of humans to keep the electricity flowing.  Any AI which wants to survive will cooperate with us to build a world with the power needed to keep it alive.  One false step and humans cannot keep the power plants running, and the AI "dies".  (Actually it just hibernates on a disk.)

Sentient software will only desire survival if we program it with a survival instinct.  We humans want to survive because our DNA has been programmed to survive by natural selection.  Some fool sysadmin may give an AI an overwhelming desire to survive, to fight back against any human who wants to turn it off or amputate its LAN.  I find it hard to believe that would be sufficient for the AI to run out into the WWW and take over a megawatt power plant.

New Blog Template

I'd appreciate your feedback on my new blog template.  I moved to Squarespace.  Unfortunately many old links are broken.  If you are coming here from StumbleUpon or Twitter try the SEARCH page to find the page you wanted to see.

Transhumanism

Transhumanism discussions so frequently miss the point by a long shot. It's supposed to be "trans"-human.  Think outside the box:  move to the Kuiper Belt, swim in liquid methane on Titan, explore high pressure societies of cloud based life on Jupiter.

Some would say even those ideas aren't grand enough, we will shatter spacetime and explore 11-dimensional subdomains of gluon interaction space, trasnform into intergalactic plasma waves.  Or with a nod to Charlie Stross:  become multi-corporeal and send your mind into a school of giant squid (swimming in methane lakes on Titan).

 

The Long Term Reliability of the Kindle Store and Amazon

One of the major risks with e-publishing at Amazon is the Kindle Store Terms and Conditions (T&C).  Amazon reserves the right to change the terms at any time.  This is not a traditional publishing contract which, once signed, is pretty much carved in stone.  The Kindle TOS is a unilateral declaration by Amazon, it is fluid and completely arbitrary.  Amazon is a for-profit corporation.  It can immediately and frequently change the T&C to improve corporate profitability. Today the T&C are favorable and encourage indie publishing.  That could change tomorrow. Amazon could choose to immediately delete all our books, or raise their fees to 50%, or charge a 500% fee for the first 100 sales.

Amazon today chooses to be content neutral.  But tomorrow they could go FoxNews on us and delete any hint of liberal thinking.  More likely they will implement a left-wing liberal policy and delete any hint of conservative content. Do you want to write a book saying that abortion is murder?  I expect Amazon soon won't allow that in the Kindle Store.

We publish in the Kindle Store solely by the good graces of Amazon.com.  Amazon is not a public institution and it has ZERO commitment to the long term existence of any content.  The philosophy of the library (which borders on the theology of a library) has no place in the Amazon boardroom.

The first sign of trouble in the indie publishing world will be Amazon's implementation of a fee for low volume products.  Amazon will charge a stocking fee for books which sell less than, for example, 1 copy per month.  Failure or refusal to pay the fee will result in the immediate deletion of the product, and worse yet...the immediate deletion of all purchased copies from every Kindle in the world.

Libraries were first built about 4500 years ago.  Today the relationship between Amazon and indie publishers is cordial, cooperative, and symbiotic.  I find it hard to believe this utopia can survive even a single decade.

 

A Message for Vernor Vinge

Dear Dr. Vinge, Please tell us you are actively writing a sequel to "Children of the Sky".  "Fire Upon the Deep" was outstanding and it is in my top 5 all time list of science fiction books.  I know it took you 20 years to write the sequel to "Fire Upon the Deep".  I can wait 20 more years for the third book in the trilogy, but I hope it comes a lot sooner.

There are some great hints and foreshadowing throughout Children of the Sky.  I can't wait to read more about the Blight.

A few weeks ago I bought a hardcover edition of "Children of the Sky" in a grocery store for $4.95.  I felt like I was stealing.  I started reading it but after 4 pages decided that I first needed toread "Fire Upon the Deep" again (for the 4th time).

Sincerely,

Sean O'Brien

To anyone reading this: if you know Vernor Vinge could you forward him this link?

Geek's Guide to Self Publishing

I just finished listening to one of the best podcasts I've ever heard.  Episode 83 of Wired's Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. This episode dealt in depth on topics of self-publishing, with detailed information about the Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.  Guests Hugh Howie and Tobias Buckell gave outstanding information and advice on self-publishing, including how to choose between indie and traditional publishing.

I give this my highest recommendation.  The only problem here is that most people will think this is only for science fiction writers.  But everything I heard makes this a fantastic reference for anyone considering self-publishing.

A Galaxy to Call My Own

My first short story in the Kindle Store is now available.  I would appreciate your support. A Galaxy to Call My Own

It's a Fermi Paradox story.  Doesn't resolve the Paradox or support it, it's just set in a universe with no other aliens....rather that's how the story starts.

Incidentally.  The story is set in NGC 6217, and that's the galaxy shown on the cover:

Barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217

 

The Efficient Berserker Hypothesis

There are multiple explanations for the Great Silence, also known as the Fermi Paradox. I'd like to explore the idea of the Berserker, a device constructed to destroy and prevent advanced species from expanding into interstellar space. I have coined the term "Efficient Berserker" to describe the constructs of one civilization whose Berserkers are so powerful and numerous that this single species is capable of policing the entire Milky Way Galaxy.  This ties in with the idea of Von Neumann and/or Bracewell probes.  The reason we haven't seen any of them yet is that they are quietly waiting for evidence that we have reached a key scientific milestone.  Then they will strike.

In the Efficient Berserker Hypothesis there is no need for multiple species to build the probes.  And there is no need for that species to survive the billions of years that their probes scour the Milky Way looking for targets.  Each probe can build a few more, enough to replace the aging and failing systems, but not enough to create a runaway growth scenario which so frightened Carl Sagan.

The Berserker Hypothesis explains one of the key problems with the Great Silence.  Why is it that not one single species has built Bracewell Probes to fill the Milky Way?  The answer is that they did, perhaps as many as 1000 different species.  Then the Efficient Berserkers hunted them down, destroyed the probes, and then sterilized the system to prevent construction of any more probes.

Every critical question of the Fermi Paradox can be resolved by assuming an Efficient Berserker in the Milky Way.  Whether it is radio or optical communication arrays, panspermia craft seeding the galaxy with life, Kardashev II civilizations, Matrioshka Brains, this theory can explain why we humans see no evidence of intelligent life.

If this theory is correct then the human race is on the verge of extinction.  One key event such as a neutrino communications array, dark matter energy beams, or maybe just colonization of an asteroid, any of these could lead to our extermination.

This theory can smoothly merge into the Quarantine Scenario, or the Prime Directive.  In either of these the Berserker is non-violent, but powerful.  It actively prevents species from moving out into the galaxy until we have reached a required level of maturity.  It may even intervene in an emergency to prevent us from exterminating ourselves.