Your protagonist will see and hear icebergs see the link for some standard classification. I had a short cruise around Valdez, Alaska that left a stunning impression of how pretty ice can get. Notable were the amazing blues of glacial ice floes, wildlife, whales were taking a nap until we passed a little too close to them, and various birds. Also,…[Read more]

There is quite a bit of moisture in the air, this can be harvested at 12 km (end of tropopause) where a single liter would possess about 117 kJ of potential energy to collect at the base or along the way. I imagine a simple mechanism of conduit and turbine for power conversion that requires little maintenance but provides electrical power and…[Read more]

What if we had brain activity data, as from a functional MRI, collected from our brain all the time? Expand this to a database from many people’s brain-state data. Will these be tools for manipulation or greater self awareness? Not exactly telepathy, but not so far from it…
Check out this link to Smart neural dust.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.2196

I am all for keeping green spaces, the more the better. Yet I am concerned about how such space would be managed. I recently went camping in the Brown County State Park of Indiana. This well kept park was packed with campers and RVs and was orderly, clean, and clearly very popular, as it hosted numerous events harmoniously and smoothly. While this…[Read more]

Perhaps other buildings could form a supportive perimeter. I am picturing a huge central tower situated in the center of a dynamically controlled air space where a toroidal flow pattern converges as guided by powered air flow towers in the periphery. The airflow pattern may provide shelter from weather (which could have some really bad…[Read more]

My first thought is of electrical power generation as a crucial first step. Something like a small scale reactor is very feasible, especially if political/legal concerns get waved away somehow for a hotel anyway, https://www.nuscalepower.com/default.aspx, might be a good start for power info. From there a massively insulated structure with a…[Read more]

Your dualistic view of robotic and cosmic brought to mind Karl Popper’s “Three Worlds”. Below is a link should you have missed it 🙂

https://www.thee-online.com/Documents/Popper-3Worlds.pdf

In the context of Popper’s three worlds, language and ideas coexist with bricks and energy in separate worlds, world 2 vs. world 1 respectively, which may…[Read more]

If a human could consciously control their body at the cellular level and beyond that to the molecular level, even if it was just a few brain cells and the one atom they interface with, the link between our thoughts and quantum states of matter would be established. Who can prove that we don’t already do this?

Graphene and graphite are anisotropic, meaning that the strength, flexibility, conductivity, etc. are not equal in all directions. The formation of nanoscrolls hints at this as they are rolled up graphene. I’m afraid unless the block is very small, a strong pressure differential (a vacuum) would deform the block. Structural additions such as…[Read more]