Vegetarians must be the worst people in the world.

Why do I say that? Well what else could you say about these weird people people obsessed with eating only plants?

OK so I'm exaggerating. With a few exceptions most vegetarians are very nice people and care deeply about the environment. Which is why they should now reconsider their hostility to plants. Plants that, it turns out, give us the secret to limitless supplies of clean energy!

Nearly two years ago MIT chemistry professor Dan Nocera announced a breakthrough discovery in replicating the process of photosynthesis, which plants use to convert carbon dioxide into organic components - mostly sugar - using the energy from sunlight. Nocera found a way to mimic photosynthesis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Normally to do that on a large scale you need enormous amounts of electricity and use water of exceptional purity. Nocera however has been successfully testing his process using untreated water from Boston's Charles River.

The exciting thing about this discovery is that it makes solar energy a truly viable, around the clock source of energy. During the day when the sun is shining, solar cells can power a home and at the same time split water into hydrogen and store it. After sundown, energy is still available from that stored hydrogen for use in a fuel cell - either to continue powering the home or to run a fuel cell vehicle.

Since July 2008 Nocera has formed Sun Catalytix to commercialize the discovery. Read more about it at Scientific America because I guarantee that in a five years you'll be contemplating adding one of these setups to your home.

[Scientific American]

Ray Kurzweil talks about the future of (non)transportation, solar power and BRAIN EATING ZOMBIE NANOBOTS

OK so that last bit was an exaggeration, but maybe not that far off from what Kurzweil predicts we'll be living with in the not-so-distant future.

The inventor, futurist and author of The Singularity is Near in the latest issue of Good Magazine makes some predictions about the future of virtual reality, renewable energy and transportation.

Given the rapid advances we're witnessing in solar energy technology and storage, his belief that within 20 years most of our electricity will come from the sun seems plausible. However, I'm a little skeptical of his suggestion that we'll happily inject nanobots into our brains in order to enjoy better HDTV:

By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain (that will get there noninvasively, through the capillaries) will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. So if you want to go into virtual reality the nanobots shut down the signals coming from your real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were actually in the virtual environment.

Yeah....normally I'm an early adopter of new technology, but I think I'll let others turn their brains into grey goo first before I give it a try. Then again, I vaguely remember spending a good part of my twenties doing exactly that...


[Good Magazine]