Time. Whether it is a physical field akin to gravity, electromagnetism, and dark energy, or simply a quirk of perception, is one of the greatest debates of our age. Studying time is very much like trying to grab air with our hands; there's SOMETHING there, but without the proper tools, we can not hold onto it long…

The day is coming when the hold religion has over this world will break. The dark days ahead will do much to make people see that while religion can be good for community building, it brings disaster for the world at large. Of course, it's easy to blame religion for all of the world's ills, when in reality it has been…

I've dedicated my life to one goal: the creation or discovery of a wormhole. I wish I had set myself upon this goal sooner, instead of wasting my twenties wandering aimlessly through life. It'll be a decade before I get my PhD in physics, and I sincerely hope that donors will be receptive to a 40-year-old postdoc with…

Long before the Offshoots and the Malanites branch off from the trunk of humanity, our civilization will spawn a prototype sentient species. Not one of flesh and bone (not at first, anyway), but of metal and nanomachines. The path from "dumb" machines to machines that can think for themselves will be a lot longer than…

I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes, as many people my age did. My daughter loves the strip even more than I did, and I'm sure she isn't alone in this. The little boy and the wise tiger have transcended generations, and they will take their rightful place amongst Gilgamesh, Achilles, Odysseus, and Shakespeare's…

There's a possibility that humanity is the only sentient species (sentience in this case being narrowed to mean building cities and creating artificial technology) in the galaxy. There may be no other civilization in the galaxy. For some odd reason, humanity could be all by itself, the lone success amongst billions of…

Forty-five years ago, humanity landed on the Moon for the first time. Back then, 2001 was very much in everyone's minds, and they all believed that by the real 2001, we'd have space colonies, cities on the Moon, and settlements on Mars. They failed to realize that the future is often at the mercy of the whims of money…

It's easy to be pessimistic about the future of Earth, and humanity, in the face of all the problems that plague us. The idea that the world will ever be made pristine again is almost laughable, so total is the damage that's been done. Rivers and lakes have dried up, there are garbage patches the size of Texas…

The elimination of roads in favor of elevated rails and underground transit tubes will necessitate the complete redesign of cities. Fortunately, since most cities will have been either destroyed during the war or abandoned due to climate change, this will be a far easier task since new cities will have to be built…

150 years ago, the world was one of wagon trails and rudimentary roads. Cities were far smaller than they are now, their roads little more than cobblestone streets. Horses were the apex of transportation, though giant new machines set on metal rails were rising from the depths of industry. Most people in that era had…

The postwar period is a crucial time for the course of many industries, not the least of which is energy. Immediately following the war, with coal and oil gone and the last reserves of natural gas dwindling, solar and wind power explodes. Geothermal and tidal energy become extremely prevalent. Hydropower and nuclear…

It is a century from now, maybe two. The most horrific war to ever touch the world has ended, the forces of justice and equality barely prevailing over the servants of avarice and despair. The price, however, was terrible. Cities lie in ruins, poorer regions obliterated by the machine hordes of the super-rich,…

I believe a war is coming. Call it World War III, the Great Class War, the World Revolution, whatever you like. But one day, whether it's a year or a century from now, the wealthy of this world will go too far, and push the underclass into violent action. They won't have a choice. All the protesting and begging right…

In my previous post, I went into exhaustive detail about the problems facing the world. It was a very pessimistic post, and this post is won't be much better, mainly because the way we are going to get out of this mess is going to be very difficult, messy, and unpleasant. It will require us to turn our backs on…

In my last post, I talked about my optimistic view of humanity's future. I also mentioned that we will survive and prosper despite the many obstacles in our way. Since I didn't go into much detail about those obstacles or their seriousness, some felt I was not aware of just how prevalent those problems are.…

We die. This is inevitable, and there's absolutely nothing we can do to prevent it. Oh, we can delay it. We can work on all those great gene therapies and telomere extensions and push death further and further back until centenarians become millenarians, but eventually everyone will die. Our bodies will rot, and our…