Tomorrow's reality

"Never" does not exist for the human mind... only "Not yet".

Source: NASA

This is the opening intertitle of Fritz Lang's 1929 science fiction movie Woman in the Moon. Just because we do not know how to do something today does not mean we cannot do it ever. Jules Verne in his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon gave a pretty detailed account of space travel. His story served as an inspiration to many scientists later on, and they made it a reality about 100 years later. History has repeatedly proved that ambitious imaginations and grand visions of a few people inspired what mankind has achieved today. It is for this very reason Intel has started The Tomorrow Project. 

This project tries to imagine tomorrow's reality by bringing together science fiction authors, experts and everyday users. The project starts by asking two simple questions:

• What kind of future does man want to live in? Remember the Holodeck from Star Trek. Something like that will be cool, isn't it? With the increase in computing devices (how many devices do you own?), the data we are generating everyday is increasing multifold. To be able to process it and make use of it would be a huge thing.
• What kind of future do we want to avoid? Definitely not something where mankind is ruled by Martians, or sentient machines!

As they say, science fiction is the prototype of future's technological advancements. The more feedback we get on prototypes, the better the design of the end product becomes. Join the conversation and be part of the future.

When aliens contacted Jodie Foster

Ever since my laptop crashed, I have been watching movies in Netflix regularly on my phone . I for one want to get involved in my movie. And since that sense of involvement one gets while watching on a phone is quite less I watch one movie over a period of days. 

The previous two days I watched the movie Contact, a 1997 film starring Jodie Foster based on a book written by Carl Sagan, an astronomer. This movie deals with conflict between technological advances and religious faith when scientists working on SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) receive radio signals broadcasted from Vega, fifth brightest star we can see from Earth. Embedded in the radio signals are engineering plans to build a complex device beyond human capability that can transport a single person from Earth to Vega using a wormhole mechanism, a hypothetical mathematical explanation that allows matter to travel in space-time instantaneously. Dr. Ellie Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, who heads the SETI team takes the responsibility to travel in that device and to interpret humanity's first contact with alien intelligence.

Jodie Foster from the film Contact. In the background is VLA Radio Telescope in New Mexico, an array of 27 independent radio telescopes whose combined power can be used to pick up radio signals from stars. Radio signals are least effected by Earth's atmosphere and hence these telescopes can be installed on Earth without worrying about the loss of signals.

Having read the Space and Astronomy sections in "The New Book of Popular Science - Vol I" very recently, my fascination for these telescopes (my haiku on Hubble Space Telescope) and outer space has no bounds. I was pleasantly surprised with the 3 minute graphics of outer space in the beginning of the movie. I was thrilled to see VLA radio telescope in Mexico live in action in the movie. And using the first video signal ever transmitted into air, Hitler's speech at Berlin Olympics in the 1930s, as the message from aliens, rather Vegans, is smart. Since the star Vega is about 25 light years away from Earth, any electromagnetic signal would take nearly 50 years to go reach that star and come back to Earth. 

I wish I were into astronomy, except for that unexplainable phobia I used to have  as a kid towards celestial bodies. May be I should visit some observatory or space related museum to make sure if I still have that phobia! Do we have a name for this kind of phobia?

 

Celestial spyhole

Mysteries unfold
Celestial grandeur revealed
Spyhole to heaven

A view of Orion Nebula from Hubble Telescope. Ever after this telescope was launched into Earth's orbit on April 1990, enormous number of secrets of our universe were unraveled. And the telescope still continues to serve diligently discovering unknown facts to the mankind everyday. Image Source: hubblesite.org

Written for Haiku Heights.