A recent study has proved that humans are evolving much faster than suspected. Why is this happening? While no one can be sure, I think it might have something to do with our new technology. We seem to be using our brains more as we play our complicated games and use our devices. The down side is our physical being seems to be getting weaker. When I was a kid most of us looked a lot stronger than the average kids do today. The reason for this was we were always playing sports. Today that time is devoted to video games. We seem to be evolving at the same time our technology is advancing and I have to wonder if our technological advance is feeding off of our evolution. A new genetic study found that just about every man alive today can trace his origins to a common male ancestor who lived about 250,000 years ago. This is 100,000 years more recent than first expected. What is interesting is according to scientists this male was alive at the same time the woman who all women can be traced back to was also alive. This certainly sounds like Adam and Eve doesn’t it? Tests like this have been done before with varying dates being found.

Have you ever wondered why after thousands of years we still fight fires mostly the same way? We put water on them. Sure we have used other agents in our more recent history, but basically if you want to fight a fire it is water which is used. It always seemed to me there was not enough research in this area to find a better way, but now a new way may have been found. What do we know about fire? One of the most important things fire needs besides fuel is oxygen. If there is no oxygen the fire will not burn. A couple of engineering students at George Mason University have invented a device which puts out sound waves which can be used to fight fires. The pressure waves push the oxygen away which in turn will stop the fire from burning. DARPA investigated using sound waves to put out fires a couple of years ago but nothing seemed to come of it. When the students sent ultra-high frequency waves toward a fire it did nothing, but when they switched to lower frequency sounds it did put fires out. What is left now is creating a sound wave fire extinguisher for small fires and a way to use this technology to put out big fires.

I am not completely sure how I feel about recreating extinct races of animals and plants using genetic means. The reason I say this is we might also be recreating some disease these plants and animals were carrying which we have no defense against today. I hate to sound like gloom and doom, but one cannot be too careful when it comes to these things. The same is true when we bring back objects from space or from other planets to earth. Who know what viruses or diseases they could carry? We know some of these things can exist in space and have found algae living on the outside of our space station. Anyway scientists are working on a way to bring back the Woolly Mammoth. They claim they have taken a huge step when they inserted over a dozen Woolly Mammoth genes into the DNA of a live elephant. A new method known as Crispr was used and allows accurate changes to DNA. Scientists are working on rebuilding the entire mammoth genome which will allow them to someday reconstruct a living Mammoth. There is more known about Woolly Mammoths than any other prehistoric extinct animal due to all the frozen bodies which have been found.

Lately we have been hearing a lot about Einstein’s idea of spooky action at a distance. This is where it is said one atom can be changed to affect another instantly, no matter how far away it is. A recent quantum experiment was conducted and is said to verify this theory. An experiment was devised using a single particle. “According to quantum mechanics, a single particle can be described by a wave function that spreads over arbitrarily large distances, but is never detected in two or more places. This has been verified using two laboratories which were far apart. What we might be seeing with these experiments is the very beginning of figuring out a way to communicate over millions and billions of miles of space instantly and if there is other advanced races out there this might be the way they communicate.

While 3D printing is a great revolution in creating objects, it still takes a lot of time to build up layers of polymer into an object. A new way of creating objects with 3D printers has been found and is about 100 times faster. Rather than build things in layers this process is much different. The new method uses a pool of resin. A laser is used to trace out the object to be created. The UV light cures the resin at the bottom of the vat making a layer to build upon. There is also another method vying to be the premier method. It is called Digital Light Projection or DLP. It projects a full cross section from below the vat onto a plate which is slowly pulled upward to cure the next layer. The fastest process, the one which is 100 times faster is called CLIP. CLIP stands for Continuous Liquid Interface Production. It used DLP but a very fast form. CLIP can create 40 inches per hour.

There is a new electrode in town and it creates hydrogen fuel more efficiently than it has ever been created before. The electrode takes the hydrogen out of water. Why is this new electrode so important, we have done this before? To answer that question you have to realize the process has been far too expensive to make it useful, but this new electrode is made from cheap foam material thus decreasing the cost. The electrode is coated and allows oxygen bubbles to escape very quickly and this makes the process very efficient. One of the scientists on the project said, “Our electrode is the most efficient oxygen-producing electrode in alkaline electrolytes reported to date, to the best of our knowledge.”

Scientists are trying to verify the existence of parallel universes. I have nothing against this and I am sure most of you don’t. It is the way they are going about it that bothers me. They want to create mini black holes using the Large Hadron Collider or LHC, which is the world’s largest particle collider. Why would anyone want to create a black hole on purpose when it is probably the most dangerous and uncontrollable thing in the universe, if indeed it really exists? They say if they can do this it will prove parallel universes exist. I fail to see how this will prove anything other than the fact we have created something which could wipe us out. We have reached a stage in our technology where we have to start to think about what ramifications some experiments can have on us. A recent example was the experimenting with the virus which caused the great pandemic in the early 1900s. A scientist used this to create an even more powerful virus. Can you imagine if this ever got out into the air? Scientists have to be more responsible in what they plan to do and not just do something because they can.