X-Message-Number: 20847
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #20832 - #20846
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 10:31:14 -0000

> From: Stephen Ritger <>
> Subject: Re: CryoNet #20829
> Yvan,
> century or two, the gap becomes even more apparent.  Your claim that
> there hasn't been any technological progress in the last 40 years is
> absurd.  Predicting the future is a woefully inexact science, yes, but
> being optimistic is not being a "sheep".  Don't be silly...

If he did claim that there had been no technological progress, then yes,
that is an absurd claim. But as Yvan is an avid reader of physics, I suspect
that what he claimed was that there had been no fundamental discovery along
the line of Maxwell's equations of electromagnetic radiation and so on for
the past 40 years. There has been nothing that gives rise to a new **branch
of**engineering. There have, for example, been speculations about tachyons,
but there is no engineering discipline called "Tachyonics" whereby people
can routinely send messages to the past, as in Gregory Benford's novel
"Timescape." Such ideas remain fantasy. Fantasists can write about warp
drives or matter transporters, but this remains fantasy not physics.
[Transporting one elementary particle is "boldly mentioned" in the press,
but I would expect serious physicists to put an infinite distance between
that and Star Trek.]

There has been enormous technological advance, and with nanotechnology and
quantium computing there will be lots more. But this is all based on old
physics. I am sure that there will be genuine new physics, but maybe it
requires substantial engineering structures such as space probes or adaptive
imaging telescopes before such discoveries can be made and which can be
verified by independently repeatable experiments.

--
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, Holistics, de Rivaz genealogy,
Nomad .. and more

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