In 1924, German mathematician David Hilbert published a paper noting a pretty amazing side effect to Einstein's relativity: a relativistic particle moving faster than about half the speed of light should be repelled by a stationary mass (or at least it would appear to be repelled, to an inertial observer watching from afar).

This extraordinary force was more or less forgotten over the decades, but Franklin Felber, a U.S.-based physicist, has resurrected it and flipped the idea around, theorizing that the relativistic particle should also repel the stationary mass. That repellant force is no mere nudge either; Felber predicts the particle could launch the stationary mass to an even greater speed than that of the particle. Moreover, he thinks as long as we're launching stationary masses to more than half the speed of light, they may as well be spacecraft.

The idea behind Felber's "hypervelocity propulsion" is grounded in the notion that the relativistic particle can provide a specific impulse even greater than its own motion through space. Felber also believes these otherworldly velocities could be reached without putting severe stresses on a spacecraft or those inside because the spacecraft follows a geodetic trajectory, meaning tidal forces are the only forces causing stress on the craft.

Though it's far from reality, Felber wants to prove his theory in the freezing underground tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider, which has the capacity to accelerate particles to the high-energy velocities that could generate this repulsive response (when it's not broken, that is). A resonant test mass next to the beam path could test for the repellant force without disturbing the particle beam experiments.

If Felber is correct, deep space travel could become an order of magnitude closer to reality. It's not exactly hyperspace, a la the Millennium Falcon, but it's a start.

[MIT Technology Review]

Brain-computer interfacing, or BCI, isn't new. Researchers have used computers to read signals from the brain before -- DARPA is sponsoring initiatives to use such technology to develop prosthetic limbs that respond to neural commands -- but Dr. Christopher James at the University of Southampton has taken BCI a step further, showing that person-to-person communication is possible through true brain-to-brain interfacing.

In James's experiment, two people are hooked up to EEG amplifiers that measure activity in specific parts of the brain. The first person generates a series of zeros and ones, imagining moving his left are for zero and his right arm for one. The first subject's PC recognizes those thoughts as ones and zeros and transmits them over the Web to the second subject's PC, which flashes an LED at two different frequencies for one and zero. The EEG extracts the LED light's information from the subject's visual cortex and parses it back into binary code. Thus, brain-to-brain communication is achieved.

While this initial step is clearly rudimentary, the transmission of ones and zeros via the brain mimics the transfer of data by computers, albeit at much lower volumes (for now). For those suffering from severe muscle wasting ailments or "locked-in" syndrome, brain-to-brain communication could open a channel for conversation with the world around them, and even Dr. James admits it has Existenz-esque implications for gaming.

If that's not sci-fi enough, consider this: the person receiving the data via the LED flashes doesn't even know whether the light pulses represent ones or zeros. The differences in the light patterns are too subtle for the human eye to detect, but using human optics as a conduit, the computer can extract the patterns in the light and decode the message. That's right, singularity devotees and conspiracy theorists: the machines are using you.

[Science Daily]

Boyle and Smith started their career together at Bell Labs, and in 1969, created the foundation of digital cameras. Utilizing the phenomena that won Albert Einstein his Nobel, Boyle and Smith devised a way to measure the electrons knocked lose when light strikes silicon. This essentially created the first digital camera pixel.

When Kao began working on fiber optics, the most advanced cables could only carry a light signal about 65 feet. By determining how the purity of the glass and the manufacturing methods influenced the transparency of a fiber optic cable, Kao laid down the principles that would lead to a half-mile-long cable within 4 years.

With these three wins, the number of American Nobel Laureates rises to a world-leading 76. Britain remains in second place with 21 wins. Which is to say, USA! USA! USA!

[via The New York Times]

But IBM hopes to change all that. IBM scientists have developed what they call a "DNA transistor". The transistor is a tube only a couple of atoms in diameter that pulls the DNA through, while sensors in the walls of the tube read the base pairs. This process simulates natural protein pores in cells that evolve specifically to read DNA strands. By running an entire genome through the tube, IBM hopes to lower the cost of sequencing an entire genome down to $1,000.

IBM, best known as a computer and industrial machine company, entered the field because of an emerging view of genetic medicine as a kind of information technology. IBM has a great deal of experience in information technology, and figures it could easily take the lead in this new market.

However, opposing the optimism about genetic medicine is increasing evidence that a genome itself does not control medical outcomes as much as previously thought. While genetics certainly plays an important role in determining susceptibility, more and more studies show that diet, environment, and even viruses have a dominant role in causing diseases like cancer and diabetes.

While the push and pull over the value of genetic medicine continues, reducing the the price of genome sequencing can only help bring the age of genetic medicine closer to fruition. After all, if genetic medicine turns out to provide very little help to doctors, it might still find its way into the ER if that help can be purchased for a very low price.

[via the BBC and The New York Times]

It takes real proof to back up even the simplest theories--these 10 studies show that the obvious can have not-so-obvious implications

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/general_sciences/Science_vs_The_10_Most_Obvious_Facts_gallery';

Launch the gallery for our latest roundup of bafflingly obvious studies from the world of science.

And for much more, see our Science Confirms the Obvious posts archived here and our previous Science Confirms the Obvious roundups from the magazine here and here.

Reith, and his partner Gregor Grass from the University of Nebraska, discovered that the bacterium Cupriavidus metallidurans produces special enzymes that convert the gold in the surrounding environment from a form poisonous to the bacterium into the harmless, metallic variety. By placing genes that cause the bacterium to glow near the genes for the detoxifying enzyme, Reith and Grass created a modified bacterium that emits light when it finds gold.

A prospector can seed a claim with the modified bacteria, and trade in his screen-sieve and washpan for a photometer. If the photometer detects the glow from the bacteria, then there's gold in them thar hills.

[via New Scientist]

Need better long-range vision for some friendly night-time sniping from half a mile away? Tweak it. Want one eye adjusted for distance and the other for reading? Tweak it.

Laser-refractive surgery uses wavefront technology, which was originally developed by NASA to help the focus technology on the Hubble Telescope. Now it can map out 250 points on your cornea and iris, and help repair such conditions as halos around lights at night.

Everyone from politicians to professional athletes to military men are taking advantage of the medical advancement, which in turn is helping to make laser eye surgery a commonplace prodcedure (over 20 million served worldwide).

So until we get bionic implants and augmented reality sensors in our eyes, this is the future. The question is: are you next?

[via Times Online]

Three U.S. geneticists claim a 2009 Nobel Prize for discovering the genetic code of cell aging

The announcement comes as researchers race to develop anti-aging medicine or technology that can make humans immortal. PopSci recently covered the Singularity Summit 2009 where none other than visionary Ray Kurzweil spoke of a future when a computer could simulate the human brain.

Merging humans with artificial intelligence remains some ways off, but there's also plenty of focus on extending the natural human lifespan. The latest Nobel Prize winners helped illuminate the aging process by discovering the repetitive genetic sequences on the ends of chromosomes known as telomeres. The telomeres serve as protective caps that gradually shorten as genetic material is copied many times over during cell division -- a process that parallels human aging, even if other factors also come into play.

The researchers who will receive this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and share $1.4 million are: Elizabeth Blackburn, a biologist at the University of California in San Francisco; Carol Greider, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; and Jack Szostak, a geneticist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. This is the first time that the Nobel Prize in medicine has gone to more than one woman in a single year.

Scientific American notes that the prize-winning work has proven invaluable in studies of aging, cancer and stem cells. The researchers also showed the existence of telomerase, the "immortality enzyme" behind the formation of telomeres.

Scientists have since begun investigating possible anti-aging factors, such as a compound known as resveratrol that's found in red wine. That chemical activates proteins called sirtuins that boost the body's defenses against common diseases of aging, as part of a process that typically helps humans survive famines. The New York Times recently reported that Sirtris Pharmaceuticals has begun developing a drug that can activate sirtuins and hopefully mimic the life extension seen in lab rats, who lived up to 40 percent longer on a famine-style diet.

A different study in the journal Science found how to mimic the famine-style benefits of longer life and better health in mice, when researchers disabled a certain gene in a biochemical signaling pathway. Technology Review explains that the pathway typically helps guide the body's response to food, and may now serve as a target for future drugs.

People may also continue to live longer even without radical new technologies. A study in the medical journal The Lancet suggests that more than half of babies born in wealthy nations will live to 100 years, according to an Agence France-Presse report. That assumes the current rise in life expectancy continues, but still falls short of one controversial theorist's prediction that the average human lifespan could reach 5,000 years within the next century.