In eind 2007 Britse academisch, Dr. Keith Seffen van de Universiteit van Cambridge, publiceerde nieuw wiskundige analyse van de instorting van het Centrum van de Wereldhandel - nochtans bevat het document verscheidene belachelijke eisen. Nu is een formeel verzoek gemaakt door M.J tot Zwartere MSc IMI, die onlangs het document, aan Dr. debunked. Chris Burgoyne, het Hoofd van de Afdeling die van Techniek bij de Universiteit van Cambridge, deze fouten benadrukt en om het het misleiden te verbeteren document verzoekt.
Het verzoek wijst erop dat het document van Dr. Seffen's verscheidene zeer belangrijke wetten van fysica, d.w.z. tart. behoud van impuls en behoud van energie.
Het verzoek van M. Blacker's geeft ook op:
„Alle vloeren boden de zelfde flimsy weerstand aan, toen elk in feite verschillende bouwkenmerken had, is voorbij om het even welke logica aangezien de lagere kolommen van de vloerkern over dubbel de dikte in vergelijking met de hogere vloeren.“ waren
Dergelijke het schitteren fouten zouden een verlegenheid moeten zijn aan één van de oudste en meest prestigieuze universiteiten van de wereld.
Het document van Dr. Seffen's beweert hoofdzakelijk dat een dalend lichaam door de weg van de meeste weerstand kan vallen. Zulk een eis is ludicrous en tart al logica of eerlijke de wetenschappelijke integriteit.
Een andere onnauwkeurigheid in het document is het feit het niet met de energie nodig rekening houdt om de 300.000 ton beton en staal in stof om te zetten.
De „analyse Seffen is gebaseerd op de kolommen die een holle doosbouw zijn. Wat over het dwars vastbinden?“ staten M. Blacker.
Het „document Seffen beweert dat de brandende straalbrandstof in lucht ALLE staalbalken kan gelijk verzwakken (vandaar symmetrische instorting toe te schrijven aan ernst van alle kolommen volkomen), nog waren beide einden van deze buiten en binnen massieve kolommen buiten de brandstreek aan verschillende graden vandaar zou de hitte op en neer zeer efficiënt aan verschillende tarieven geleid hebben, en vele kolommen werden niet zelfs onderworpen aan enige significante brand. Zijn wij die werkelijk worden verondersteld om te geloven dat de brand staal ondanks de kernkolommen kan gelijk verzwakken efficiënt leidend hitte aan variërende tarieven vanaf gevari�ërde gebieden van temperatuur?“
Simply put, for the University of Cambridge to continue supporting this absurd theory is to present a fictional view of physics.
Scientists performing experimental brain surgery on a man aged 50 have stumbled across a mechanism that could unlock how memory works.
The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man’s appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man’s brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of déjà vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated.
Scientists are now applying the technique in the first trial of the treatment in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. If successful, it could offer hope to sufferers from the degenerative condition, which affects 450,000 people in Britain alone, by providing a “pacemaker” for the brain.
Three patients have been treated and initial results are promising, according to Andres Lozano, a professor of neurosurgery at the Toronto Western Hospital, Ontario, who is leading the research.
Professor Lozano said: “This is the first time that anyone has had electrodes implanted in the brain which have been shown to improve memory. We are driving the activity of the brain by increasing its sensitivity – turning up the volume of the memory circuits. Any event that involves the memory circuits is more likely to be stored and retained.”
The discovery had caught him and his team “completely by surprise”, Professor Lozano said. They had been operating on the man, who weighed 190kg (30st), to treat his obesity by locating the point in his brain that controls appetite. All other attempts to curb his eating had failed and brain surgery was the last resort.
The treatment for obesity was unsuccessful. But, while the researchers were identifying potential appetite suppressant points in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain associated with hunger, the man suddenly began to say that memory was flooding back.
“He reported the experience of being in a park with friends from when he was around 20 years old and, as the intensity of stimulation increased, the details became more vivid. He recognised his girlfriend [from the time] … The scene was in colour. People were wearing identifiable clothes and were talking, but he could not decipher what they were saying,” the researchers write in Annals of Neurology, published today.
The man, who has not been identified, was also tested on his ability to learn lists of paired objects. After three weeks of continuous hypothalamic stimulation, his performance on two learning tests was significantly improved. He was also much more likely to remember a list of unrelated paired objects with the electrodes turned on than when turned off.
Speaking to The Independent yesterday, Professor Lozano said: “His performance improved dramatically. As we turned the current up, we first drove his memory circuits and improved his learning. As we increased the intensity of the current, we got spontaneous memories of discrete events. At a certain intensity, he would slash to the scene [in the park]. When the intensity was increased further, he got more detail but, when the current was turned off, it rapidly decayed.”
The discovery surprised the scientists as the hypothalamus has not usually been identified as a seat of memory. The contacts that most readily produced the memories were located close to a structure called the fornix, an arched bundle of fibres that carries signals within the limbic system, which is involved in memory and emotions and is situated next to the hypothalamus.
Professor Lozano is a world authority on deep-brain stimulation who has undertaken 400 operations on Parkinson’s disease sufferers and is developing the technique as a treatment for depression, for which he has performed 28 operations. He said the discovery of its role in stimulating memory had wide implications.
“It gives us insight into which brain structures are involved in memory. It gives us a means of intervening in the way we have already done in Parkinson’s and for mood disorders such as depression, and it may have therapeutic benefit in people with memory problems,” he said.
The researchers are testing the approach in six Alzheimer’s patients in a Phase 1 safety study. Three have so far had electrodes surgically implanted. The electrodes are attached via a cable that runs below the skull and down the neck to a battery pack stitched under the skin of the chest. The “pacemaker” delivers a constant low-level current that stimulates the brain but cannot be perceived by the patient.
Professor Lozano said: “It is the same device as is used for Parkinson’s disease. We have placed the electrodes in exactly the same area of the hypothalamus because we want to see if we can reproduce the findings in the earlier experiment. We believe the memory circuits we are stimulating are close by, physically touching the hypothalamus.
“It is a very effective treatment for the motor problems associated with Parkinson’s disease and it has been used on 40,000 people. We are in the early stages of using it with Alzheimer’s patients and we don’t know if it will work. We want to assess if we can reach the memory circuits and drive improvement. It is a novel approach to dealing with this problem.”
British researchers welcomed the discovery. Andrea Malizia, a senior lecturer in psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol who is studying deep-brain stimulation as a treatment for depression, said: “If they had said let’s stick an electrode in the hypothalamus to modify Alzheimer’s disease, I would have said ‘Why start there?’ But, if they have had a serendipitous finding, then that is as good. Serendipitous findings are how a lot of discoveries in science have been made.”
Ayesha Khan, a scientific liaison officer at the Alzheimer’s Disease Society, said: “This is very cutting-edge research. It is exciting, but the initial result is in one person. It will need much further investigation.”
How deep-brain stimulation works
Deep -brain stimulation has been used for more than a decade to treat a range of conditions including depression, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.
It has been so successful in treating Parkinson’s that 40,000 patients worldwide now have electrodes implanted in their brains driven by pacemakers stitched into their chests.
As the devices become smaller, requiring less risky surgery, and the target areas of the brain requiring stimulation are more precisely identified, demand for the treatment is expected to leap. Although it is expensive, the potential savings in care and treatment costs are immense. It does not lead to dependence on drugs and is reversible.
The electrodes are implanted under local anaesthesia while the patient is awake. Before the operation, the neurosurgeon performs an MRI scan and establishes the target location for the electrodes. He then carries out a craniotomy – lifting a section of the skull – and inserts the electrodes and leads. By stimulating the electrodes and checking the patient’s response, the surgeon can check that they are positioned in the right place.
Different areas of the brain are targeted for different conditions. For Parkinson’s disease, they are placed in the subthalamic nucleus; for depression, in area 25 of the cingulate cortex.
Deep-brain stimulation was developed in France and first licensed by the Food and Drug Administration in the US in 1997 as a treatment for tremor. In the UK, the surgery is performed at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, in Bristol, in Oxford and at a handful of other centres.
The name of the procedure is in some ways a misnomer as it often involves inhibiting electrical activity in an area of the brain rather than stimulating it. The technique is as much about restoring balance between competing brain areas which leads to the tremor characteristic of some types of Parkinson’s disease.
“So long as the rulers are comfortable, what reason have they to improve the lot of their serfs?”- Bertrand Russell, 1952 (p61)
Bertrand Russell in his 1952 book The Impact of Science on Society* he describes the effects of “scientific technique” on the increasing control of societies by an ever shrinking number of people. As we will see, “scientific technique” is much more than just the development and widespread use of new technology, but first some of its effects.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872-1970) was a renowned British philosopher and mathematician who was an adamant internationalist and worked extensively on the education of young children. He was the founder of the Pugwash movement which used the spectre of Cold War nuclear annihilation to push for world government. Among many other prizes, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 and UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) Kalinga prize in 1957.
Increasing Organization
From Impact of Science on Society:
“This [the telegraph] had two important consequences: first messages could now travel faster than human beings; secondly, in large organizations detailed control from a centre became much more possible than it had formerly been.
The fact that messages could travel faster than human beings was useful, above all, to the police…” - 33
“Electricity as a source of power is much more recent than the telegraph, and has not yet had all the effects of which it is capable. As an influence on social organisation its most notable feature is the importance of power stations, which inevitably promote centralisation… as soon as a community has become dependent upon them for lighting and heating and cooking. I lived in America in a farm-house which depended entirely upon electricity, and sometimes, in a blizzard, the wires would be blown down. The resulting inconvenience was almost intolerable. If we had been deliberately cut off for being rebels, we should soon have had to give in.” - 35
“But what is of most importance in this connection is the development of flying. Aeroplanes have increased immeasurably the power of governments. No rebellion can hope to succeed unless it is favoured by at least a portion of the air force.” - 36
“In industry, the integration brought about by scientific technique is much greater [than agriculture] and more intimate.
One of the most obvious results of industrialism is that a much larger percentage of the population live in towns than was formerly the case. The town dweller is a more social being than the agriculturist, and is much more influenced by discussion. In general, he works in a crowd, and his amusements are apt to take him into still larger crowds. The course of nature, the alternations of day and night, summer and winter, wet or shine, make little difference to him; he has no occasion to fear that he will be ruined by frost or drought or sudden rain. What matters to him is his human environment, and his place in various organisations especially.
Take a man who works in a factory, and consider how many organisations affect his life. There is first of all the factory itself, and any larger organisation of which it may be a part. Then there is the man’s trade union and his political party. He probably gets house room from a building society or public authority. His children go to school. If he reads a newspaper or goes to a cinema or looks at a football match, these things are provided by powerful organisations. Indirectly, through his employers, he is dependent upon those from whom they buy their raw material and those to whom they sell their finished product. Above all, there is the State, which taxes him and may at any moment order him to go and get killed in war, in return for which it protects him against murder and theft so long as there is peace, and allows him to buy a fixed modicum of food.” [emphasis mine] - 44
“The increase of organisation has brought into existence new positions of power. Every body has to have executive officials, in whom, at any moment, its power is concentrated. It is true that officials are usually subject to control, but the control may be slow and distant. From the young lady who sells stamps in a Post Office all the way up to the Prime Minister, every official is invested, for the time being, with some part of the power of the State. You can complain of the young lady if her manners are bad, and you can vote against the Prime Minister at the next election if you disapprove of his policy. But both the young lady and the Prime Minister can have a very considerable run for their money before (if ever) your discontent has any effect.” [emphasis mine] - 45
“The increased power of officials is an inevitable result of the greater degree of organisation that scientific technique brings about. It has the drawback that it is apt to be irresponsible, behind-the-scenes, power, like that of Emperors’ eunuchs and Kings’ mistresses in former times. To discover ways of controlling it is one of the most important political problems of our time. Liberals protested, successfully, against the power of kings and aristocrats; socialists protested against the power of capitalists. But unless the power of officials can be kept within bounds, socialism will mean little more than the substitution of one set of masters for another: all the former power of the capitalist will be inherited by the official. [emphasis mine]” - 47
“As we have seen, the question of freedom needs a completely fresh examination. There are forms of freedom that are desirable, and that are gravely threatened; there are other forms of freedom that are undesirable, but that are very difficult to curb… The resultant two-fold problem, of preserving liberty internally and diminishing it externally, is one that the world must solve, and solve soon, if scientific societies are to survive.
Let us consider for a moment the social psychology involved in this situation.
…The armed forces of one’s own nation exist - so each nation asserts - to prevent aggression by other nations. But the armed forces of other nations exist - or so many people believe - to promote aggression. If you say anything against the armed forces of your own country, you are a traitor, wishing to see your fatherland ground under the heel of a brutal conqueror. If, on the other hand, you defend a potential enemy State for thinking armed forces necessary to its safety, you malign your own country, whose unalterable devotion to peace only perverse malice could lead you to question…
And so it comes about that, whenever an organisation has a combatant purpose, its members are reluctant to criticise their officials and tend to acquiesce in usurpations and arbitrary exercise of power which, but for the war mentality, they would bitterly resent. It is the war mentality that gives officials and governments their opportunity. It is therefore only natural that officials and governments are prone to foster war mentality.” [emphasis mine] - 51
“I incline to think that ‘liberty’, as the word was understood in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is no longer quite the right concept; I should prefer to substitute ‘opportunity for initiative’. And my reason for suggesting this change is the character of a scientific society.” - 68
More Organization is More Power
“The effect of the telegraph was to increase the power of the central government and diminish the initiative of distant subordinates. This applied not only to the State, but to every geographically extensive organization. We shall find a great deal of scientific technique has a similar effect. The result is that fewer men have executive power, but those few had more power than such men had formerly.” [emphasis mine] - 35
“We have seen that scientific technique increases the importance of organisations, and therefore the extent to which authority impinges upon the life of the individual. It follows that a scientific oligarchy has more power than any oligarchy could have in pre-scientific times. There is a tendency, which is inevitable unless consciously combated, for organisations to coalesce, and so to increase in size, until, ultimately, almost all become merged in the State. A scientific oligarchy, accordingly, is bound to become what is called ‘totalitarian’, that is to say, all important forms of power will become a monopoly of the State.” [emphasis mine] - 56
“In the first place, since the new oligarchs are the adherents of a certain creed, and base their claim to exclusive power upon the rightness of this creed, their system depends essentially upon dogma: whoever questions the governmental dogma questions the moral authority of the government, and is therefore a rebel. While the oligarchy is still new, there are sure to be other creeds, held with equal conviction, which must be suppressed by force, since the principle of majority rule has been abandoned. It follows that there cannot be freedom of the Press, freedom of discussion, or freedom of book publication. There must be an organ of government whose duty it is to pronounce as to what is orthodox, and to punish heresy. The history of the Inquisition shows what such an organ of government must inevitably become. In the normal pursuit of power, it will seek out more and more subtle heresies. The Church, as soon as it acquired political power, developed incredible refinement of dogma, and persecuted what to us appear microscopic deviations form the official creed. Exactly the same sort of thing happens in the modern States that confine political power to supporters of a certain doctrine.” - 57
“The completeness of the resulting control over opinion depends in various ways upon scientific technique. Where all children go to school, and all schools are controlled by the government, the authorities can close the minds of the young to everything contrary to official orthodoxy. Printing is impossible without paper, and all paper belongs to the State. Broadcasting and the cinema are equally public monopolies. The only remaining possibility of unauthorised propaganda is by secret whispers from one individual to another. But this, in turn, is rendered appallingly dangerous by improvements in the art of spying. Children at school are taught that it is their duty to denounce their parents if they allow themselves subversive utterances in the bosom of the family. No one can be sure that a man who seems to be his dearest friend will not denounce him to the police; the man may himself have been in some trouble, and may know that if he is not efficient as a spy his wife and children will suffer. All this is not imaginary, it is daily and hourly reality. Nor, given oligarchy, is there the slightest reason to expect anything else.” [emphasis mine] - 58
What is Scientific Technique?
Scientific technique is much more than just the impact of new technology on the machinations of society. It is the use of science, in its most calculating and inhumane ways, to analyze, control and guide societies in a desired direction. This topic was elaborated on in a couple of talks given by Alan Watt (here and here) particularly through the writings of Jacques Ellul.
The rest of the articles in this series will also elaborate on other aspects of scientific technique, especially its application to education and human breeding. But first, I will examine Bertrand Russell’s views about the stability of scientific societies and the possibility of a scientific world government.
*Quotes from Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952). ISBN0-415-10906-X
Note: I first heard about this book from talks given by Alan Watt at Cutting Through The Matrix.com, an individual well worth looking into.
India’s largest automaker is set to start producing the world’s first commercial air-powered vehicle. The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre for Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air, as opposed to the gas-and-oxygen explosions of internal-combustion models, to push its engine’s pistons. Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets in August of 2008.
Barring any last-minute design changes on the way to production, the Air Car should be surprisingly practical. The $12,700 CityCAT, one of a handful of planned Air Car models, can hit 68 mph and has a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units; MDI says it should cost around $2 to fill the car’s carbon-fiber tanks with 340 liters of air at 4350 psi. Drivers also will be able to plug into the electrical grid and use the car’s built-in compressor to refill the tanks in about 4 hours.
Of course, the Air Car will likely never hit American shores, especially considering its all-glue construction. But that doesn’t mean the major automakers can write it off as a bizarre Indian experiment — MDI has signed deals to bring its design to 12 more countries, including Germany, Israel and South Africa.
House Democrats and Republicans traded rhetoric Monday over a new report claiming White House officials sought to suppress scientific views of global warming that clashed with Bush administration policies.
The report — originally undertaken as a bipartisan effort — leads to what the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee calls an “inescapable” conclusion that “the Bush administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming.”
The report is the result of a 16-month investigation by the committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Republicans on the committee quickly dismissed the report as a “political attack” and issued their own findings that question the Democrats’ conclusions and investigative methods. The White House called the allegations untrue.
One of the issues addressed in the report released by the Democratic majority is whether the White House Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ, required approval of all media requests to interview government climate scientists.
The report states that “by controlling which government scientists could respond to media inquiries, the White House and agency political appointees suppressed dissemination of scientific views that could conflict with administration policies.”
The report repeatedly cites the testimony of Kent Laborde, a career public affairs officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Laborde told the committee that the White House CEQ insisted on approving all news media requests to interview NOAA climate scientists — a practice Laborde said has only recently ended.
“According to Mr. Laborde,” the report said, “climate change was considered a high-profile issue, and anything that was very high profile, anything that related to policy, anything that particularly related to a current policy debate or policy deliberation’ had to be routed through CEQ for approval.”
White House approval for interviews with journalists became more prevalent after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, according to the report; scientists who denied a link between stronger hurricanes and global warming were given approval over scientists who suggested such a link.
Laborde told the committee that climate change seemed to be the only topic that garnered this special attention by the White House, and if the CEQ disapproved of an interview, “it would have not gone forward.”
The Republican minority report criticized Democrats for relying so heavily on Laborde’s testimony.
“A thorough investigation would have sought further evidence to complete the record before drawing conclusions based on the uncorroborated statements of one individual,” the Republican report said.
Keith Ausbrook, the committee’s Republican general counsel, told ABC News the report from Democrats led to conclusions “they had already decided on.”
Ausbrook said the report ignored the role that policymakers play in drafting policy and communicating it to the public.
“These guys are doing science, and that’s what they do,” Ausbrook said of government scientists. “And political appointees and other senior officials are responsible for developing policy and programs and taking that science and doing things with it.”
White House press secretary Dana Perino dismissed the Democrats’ report as “rehashed rhetoric.”
“I think that it’s inescapable that they issued the report on a day where [the] U.S. would be represented at the Bali conference, where we are currently talking about the next step for our framework after 2012, which is when Kyoto would end,” Perino said.
Perino was asked whether the White House told employees at federal agencies like NOAA to suppress climate science information.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Perino said. “I do not believe that is true.”
Bank customers could soon enter their PIN codes at cash machines just by looking at the numbers in the right order.
The system is designed to beat fraudsters looking over your shoulder to see which keys you press.
The technology, called EyePassword, is being developed in America - and High Street banks in Britain are already interested in using it.
It works by shining an infrared light on your eye. This stays in the same spot on your eye no matter where you look.
As you gaze at the cash dispenser key pad, your pupil moves. When your eye comes to rest on a number, a camera compares the position of your pupil with the fixed light in your eye.
The system is then able to work out which direction your pupil has moved in and how far and, therefore, which number you are looking at.
EyePassword has a three per cent error rate and it can take six times longer to enter your pin.
But Lloyds, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland have expressed an interest in the technology.
However, its inventor, Manu Kumar, of California’s Stanford University, warned: “There are lots of issues to be resolved, probably the biggest one being cost.”
Computer security specialist Dr Jeff Yan, of Newcastle University, said cash dispensers using EyePassword could cost £5,000, £3,000 more than a conventional ATM.
Benefit claimants and job seekers could be forced to take lie detector tests as early as next year after an early review of a pilot scheme exposed 126 benefit cheats in just three months, saving one local authority £110,000.
Last May, the Department for Work and Pensions asked Harrow council in London to undertake a year-long, £63,000 pilot of the ground-breaking Voice Risk Analysis (VRA) technology.
‘We will wait until the end of the formal evaluation period to make a final decision about rolling the technology out across the country but this early review by the council is very positive,’ said a spokesman for the DWP.
Article continues
‘If our own review comes to similar conclusions to Harrow’s, we would like to see this technology rolled out across Britain as soon as possible.’
VRA technology works by measuring slight, inaudible fluctuations in the human voice known as ‘micro-tremors’ that indicate when a speaker delivers words under stress, and when those moments of stress are generated by an attempt to deceive. Voice patterns are analysed and displayed on a computer.
Normal speech ranges in frequency from 8 to 12 hertz. When they are being honest, the average sound is below 10 hertz. When they lie, the stress causes the frequency to rise to above 10 hertz.
‘This technology is successfully used in the insurance industry and analyses changes in a caller’s voice, giving an indication of the level of risk that they are lying,’ said Richard Sheridan from Capita Group which owns the technology and is helping implementation for Harrow council. ‘These changes are measured against the caller’s “normal” voice which is recorded at the beginning of the phone call, ensuring that nervousness or shyness is not a trigger. If the technology flags up a caller as being suspicious, they will be asked to provide extra evidence to support their claim.’
The technology is being tested on people claiming housing or council tax benefit but will be extended at Harrow Jobcentre for other benefits this year. The government claims the technology also improves services.
‘Operators trained in intelligent questioning and behavioural analysis will use the system to identify suspect cases at the start of the claim process, enabling low-risk claimants to be fast-tracked,’ said a DWP spokesman.
Over the past two years the procedure for claiming benefits has been reformed. The claim often begins with a telephone interview, after which people may need to provide evidence and sign forms.
Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, said the system ‘adds to the demonisation of claimants’.
‘Whatever their views on welfare policy, anyone who cares about science and reason should also be alarmed: lie detectors do not work, they are as likely to finger the innocent but nervous as the genuinely guilty,’ he said. ‘Innocent people will account for a majority of those whose claims are delayed while they provide extra evidence.’
Experts in America, where the most comprehensive scrutiny of the technology has taken place, warn that the technology is far from failsafe.
David Ashe, chief deputy of the Virginia Board for Professional and Occupational Regulation, said, ‘The experience of being tested, or of claiming a benefit and being told that your voice is being checked for lies, is inherently stressful.
‘Lie detector tests have a tendency to pass people for whom deception is a way of life and fail those who are scrupulously honest.’
A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.
However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.
The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled “instantaneously” between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.
Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences.
For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.
The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.
Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: “For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of.”
· Research is aimed at producing green fuel · Critics warn of terrorists creating new bioweapons
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday June 29, 2007 The Guardian
Photograph: Getty Images
Scientists have converted an organism into an entirely different species by performing the world’s first genome transplant, a breakthrough that paves the way for the creation of synthetic forms of life.The team, led by Craig Venter, the man who raced to sequence the human genome, wants to build new microbes to produce environmentally friendly fuels.
The group’s study, details of which were revealed in the US journal Science yesterday, proves it is possible to transplant a complete set of genetic instructions into an organism, in effect turning it into the same species the DNA was taken from.
The proof of principle experiment solves the first of two big difficulties which have hindered the creation of artificial life. The team, based at Dr Venter’s not-for-profit institute in Rockville, Maryland, now hopes to overcome the second hurdle, by designing new genetic codes on computers and transplanting them into organisms to produce new life forms.
The team is focusing on creating micro-organisms which produce green fuels as natural waste products. “One of the goals we have is trying to see if we could design cells to manufacture new types of fuel to break our dependency on oil and coal and try to do something about carbon dioxide,” Dr Venter said. “We look forward to trying to have the first fuels from genetically modified and even synthetic organisms, certainly within the decade.”
The work is at the cutting edge of synthetic biology, which is rapidly becoming one of the most contentious fields in science. Researchers have developed the tools to recreate the devastating 1918 flu virus, and are working on ways to genetically modify human cells and understand the most fundamental mechanisms of life.
But critics fear the field is progressing too fast for society to grasp. Some are concerned that artificial organisms could escape and damage the environment, or that maverick scientists or terrorist groups could create powerful new bioweapons.
Dr Venter’s team commissioned an 18-month study into the bioethics of their research, which gave strong approval but echoed concerns about the dangers.
In the experiment, researchers extracted the whole genetic code from a simple bacterium, Mycoplasma mycoides. They squirted the DNA into a test tube containing a related species, Mycoplasma capricolum. They found that some of the bacteria absorbed the new genome and ditched their own. These microbes grew and behaved exactly like the donor.
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