So will any USB stick just automatically run a program? I'm on MacOS10.9.5 will it really just run an application?

These kinds of experiments don't really say much about how large scale matter behaves in real world applications. It might have applications in quantum computing but these things are statistical or probability effects that easily collapse. This is important because you still can't send a 'coherent' message faster than light. The signal to noise ratio ends up making the result to noisy to get a signal.

It seems to be that storage of energy is really the more critical factor. If we focused on something like rotational fly-wheel storage systems that would be a better strategy. To be able store terra watts of power for weeks or months at a time would be ideal. Then solar would be able to just feed into that store. Of course the engineering challenges of keeping a large disc spinning at high RPMs would be immense I suspect.

Isn't the whole point of this area is that is anomalous? at least in comparison to all the other areas of the CMB? yes there are other 'cooler' areas but this seems to be the only one of this magnitude. If this was a common feature across the whole CMB then the cold spot could be considered as part of the standard cosmological model surely?

I still think the scale of human mars missions are too small. They need to first develop the engineering to make rotating spacecraft to produce around minimum 0.376 g ( mars gravity), but 1 g craft would be more helpful longer term. To be rotating at less than 1 rpm to avoid nausea means a radius of over 200metres though. But at least with that set up there is more potential living/storage space. The more living space the more people and isolation becomes less of a problem. The larger scale the more protection (especially against radiation) and redundancies of systems can be in place in the event of failures along the way. Ultimately you want a long term project that goes back and forth from Mars to Earth on a regular basis. Something like an extension of the ISS.

The concept of a full autonomous driving car is still really far way, I estimate in the range of 20-30 years or even more. My understanding is that current autonomous vehicles don't cope with rainy or unknown conditions. The more interesting aspect would be how augmentative safety technologies might reduce insurance premiums, or even reduce certain kinds of legal requirements. For example if your vehicle has auto assisted braking could that allow some one to drive at a different alcohol limit range? It might be that autonomous vehicles at first must be licensed to travel on specific routes. So you would have to register your autonomous vehicle only on specific routes you have 'taught' it first. Only then you could allow it to be 'autonomous' and be able to pay no attention while being transported ( i.e. you don't need a license to be in the vehicle).

but what if the basic income allows people to generate things? those people are not necessarily idle. The idea of a basic income is that they don't have to 'worry' about income. So they can go and focus on doing something they enjoy like create art, make an app, write a book etc, that they can potentially sell and supplement their basic income. You could receive a basic income and still get paid to get contract work from time to time for example. Most people want to be creative or engage in society in some way, even if it just contributing to the social spaces they operate within.

Wasn't the idea of a Dyson sphere proposed years ago? That would be the closest thing to something astronomical sized 'creature/civilisation' that would consume stars?

This function had a 'don't want to see' button/option/dropdown menu, a little triangle on the righ side you could choose not to see it, like most ads. You could get rid of it pretty easily.

Agreed. The classic example of fire fits almost all definitions of life. The reason fire isn't 'alive' is because it doesn't contain the ability to evolve via natural selection via some sort of informational content.

May be this is where the 'internet of things' could be useful. You can get a cheap/free kettle that serves up ads on a little LCD screen telling you about different products you can boil.

I think we need Jean-luc

Would having nuclear power as an option be better?

This is something called the metric expansion of space. The metric value is changing at a local level where the measurement is taken. I think it is misleading to talk about space as a dimension moving at some speed, because speed is really distance per unit time. the expansion of space is just space per space changing. We tend to embed our explanations as if the universe expanded from a point on a piece of paper, it doesn't really work that way, the paper in a sense is being generated as it goes along. The speed of light is just some measured velocity value that happens to be pretty close to c when we measure it at various places around the universe, light goes through the metric of space. The metric of space doesn't really say much about what that speed is. So c just goes along the metric as the metric is generated.

Could we be saved by M-Theory or Brane cosmology then? The Higgs boson energy may get dissipated in someway by leaking into the 'bulk'? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...