Today I like to talk about a few different things that are happening. First predicting the future. When somebody uses this phrase most of us think about people like Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce. This is not the type of prophecy which I am talking about. A few years ago scientists came up with an idea. The idea was to examine the Internet and glean things which people were discussing. They took this boatload of data and examined it meticulously and found out if they use this data correctly, they could predict some things which were going to happen. This has been given a term, it is called a hive mind. Today this idea has been given new life. A project called Meticulous has been started and essentially is doing the same thing scientists did years ago. Two physicists and a postdoctoral student are testing the possibility of being able to predict the future by examining conversations many people are having on the Internet and asking questions. This time they are examining people who sign up for their project. Questions are being asked which require a yes or no answer, such as will we have self-driving cars by 2018. It will be interesting to see the accuracy of the predictions.

There has been a lot of talk lately which compares our brains to computers. The brain is a strange thing, for example someone may ask us how we feel and we say fine and yet if we are asked this question again our answer might be different. This is not very computer like. It is not easy to predict human nature, yet it is easy to predict what a computer might do under a given set of circumstances. A computer is following a given set of instructions known as a software program or operating system, because of this if we ask the computer how much is one plus one we will always get 2. If we asked the same question of a human being we might, under certain circumstances, get a different answer. Some scientists now believe our brains are what is known as quantum fields. This theory states this field gambles with our feelings and biases and it produces competing thoughts, ideas and even opinions which a computer is not programmed to do, therefore comparing our brains to computers is the wrong type of comparison.

There has been a lot of talk about creating better electric cars. By better I am talking about electric cars which have a decent range and can recharge in a reasonable amount of time. Today the only electric car with a decent range is a Tesla and it is said it can be charged using a supercharger in 20 minutes, but this is not a full charge, it is only ½ of one. Volkswagen is claiming it is going to release an all-electric car which can travel 300 miles and only take 15 minutes for a full charge. This is the same company that led us to believe their diesel cars were getting incredible mileage using nice clean diesel engines and we all know how that turned out. As most of us know, promises are made to be broken and when this car finally does come out will we learn the range is a lot less and the charging time a lot more?

Since I’m talking about vehicles, I have to mention the fact driverless ones are starting to hit the road in a few different places. Finland has announced they are putting a driverless bus on one of their routes. I can imagine how the first passengers are going to feel. I suppose this bus will not be traveling very fast however and making frequent stops which should ease a lot of the anxiety. Singapore now has driverless taxis. The company putting them on the road is named nuTonomy and ironically this company came out of MIT so one would’ve thought the United States would have been first with these taxis. It is only a matter of time before driverless vehicles become far more common than the ones we have to drive. While most of us may be skeptical about getting into a driverless vehicle today, future generations will think nothing of it. The military is testing all sorts of driverless vehicles and it is said some have been used on the roads in Iraq. One of the ideas is to get truck drivers out of trucks and let computers drive, which will make it much safer on dangerous roads. Before we know it there will be hardly any humans on battlefields. Once trucks become autonomous, the next step will be tanks, armored cars and such and these vehicles may not contain any humans inside even though some are transport vehicles. They will be carrying a load of robots.

There are certain patterns in crystals which are called forbidden symmetry. The reason for this is scientists believe they could never appear in nature. A 4 ½ billion-year-old meteorite was found in Chukotka, Russia. Scientists examined this meteorite and were shocked, because the crystals exhibited this forbidden symmetry. When scientists talk about forbidden summitry they are talking about the unorthodox arrangement of atoms. An example was given which states if one was to use four or six sided tiles on their floor they would fit together perfectly but the same would not be true of five sided or 10 sided tiles because they would leave gaps between the tiles. That is what is happening with the crystal and that is why scientists always believed this was unnatural and could never happen.

I think most of us know in drug tests some of the people who were given placebos either recover or improve their condition. There is a new theory among scientists for why this happens. There are certain types of diseases where placebos are even more effective and those are depression and stomach complaints. In one third of the cases of people who have these complaints placebos will help them, of course they have to think they are getting real medicine. It is also been shown the more expensive the medicine in the tests, the better the placebos work. Intravenous placebo injections are more effective than oral medication and scientists think this is because people feel they are getting a lot better care. One study showed more natural painkillers known as endorphins being released into a person’s body when they believe there were getting the real medicine. Another study found the level of dopamine in the brain contributes to the placebo effect. Since there is no money in producing placebos don’t expect the drug companies to do much research into this.