Undecided

Over at the UK Telegraph, journalists have been talking with programmers over at the Leeds Metropolitan University about a computer program being written to analyze an incoming signal from outer space to determine if it’s audio, video, or raw text.  And, if it’s a language being sent, put a syntax to it to start the process of translating it to something that humans can understand.

According to the programmer, of the 60 languages on Earth that have been evaluated to write this program, all of them have a syntax which is mathematically similar.  Adjectives are near nouns; functional terms that bracket phrases.  Like “if” and “but” (which, when you think about it, are merely linguistic methods of describing mathematical or logical concepts.)  “If these, then this, else that” and “This but not that.”

It sounds a lot like the kind of code breaking that was done during World War II, and if the Germans had possessed something like this back then, they might have realized that the Navajo language used as a code by the Allied forces was in fact a language and not a code…

Likewise, if this program works as described, if we ever discover life in outer space, the odds are that this will help us to decipher what they are saying.

Who would have guessed that all of the imagination that went in to Star Trek would one day bear fruit in reality?

If you know nothing about Buckminster Fuller then I entreat you to visit Wikipedia and read the recount of his life and work.  While it may not be wholely accurate, it will contain many references that can be reviewed for accuracy.  Interestingly enough, although certain geodesic dome patterns were named Bucky Balls after Fuller, the football (soccarball) was an occurance of this geodesic pattern long before Fuller coined the terms or studied the architectural integrity of its design.

Today, as proponents of Fuller have previously suggested, we continue to see expansion on the work of a genius.  In Florida, they’re making Buckypaper which are constructed of Carbon Nanotube which are members of the fullerene structural family.  Essentially, these Carbon Nanotubes are built out of the same geodesic pattern that forms Bucky Balls, but instead of being formed in to a spherical shape, they’re formed in to that of a tube.

According to the scientists who continue to expand on the work named after Fuller, they discover practical applications of his utopian theories.  This breakthrough, if it reaches a commercial application, could result in new structural components for airplanes and cars that are significantly lighter and stronger (approximately 50 times stronger by weight) which means that in order to obtain the same structure integrity as current vehicles, we’d need only 2% of a cars current structural weight.  (A rough calculation: If we assume that a car is 1900 lbs and the engine and other internal components weighs another 1000 lbs, then the car structure could be reduced to 38 lbs and yet still maintain it’s existing structural integrity.)

I don’t know about you, but if you could reduce the weight of a car by a half ton, your fuel efficiency would go way up…  and, you wouldn’t need anywhere near as much horse power to propel your vehicle, so you’d end up reducing the weight of the engine to compensate for the reduced structural weight… which would only drive down the engine weight, the need for additional horsepower, and increase the fuel efficiency.

Plus, with current make engines, you could dramatically improve the structural integrity of a vehicle (making it safer) and still save on weight and fuel.