I have a few negative OPs out there, but this is different. Besides of this opening, my effort stops here. So to clarify, I want to know several scientific unknowns like anti-gravity. If we knew how to repel gravity, what could we achieve…
And more ideas - metabolism, transparency of material, telepathy… What walls are there to be broken until we achieve the goal. Please forget the cat and insults, give me ideas.
The question is unanswerable. Our best knowledge of gravity says that antigravity is impossible. Therefore, if antigravity is possible, our best understanding must be wrong, and antigravity would work through some mechanism that is completely outside of what we currently understand. Which means that we can’t have any idea what that unknown understanding could lead to.
Ok I was not to participate in this anymore, but nowadays I’m pretty fed up with Chronos’s lame answers. Is this happening again?
My world is pure waves and electrons. Nothing happens in this world, but the event that is the easiest. Now, electrons spin (I think this is a fact), but their movement does allow only the easiest task to happen. That is the event easiest in the universe. So nothing we do can not happen, if the ELECTRONS, don’t make it happen as the easiest thing in the universe. Ok twice is better. So we are all travellers with no control of nothing, because if we could change things, it would not be the easiest(=with no effort at all).
Chronos, can you moderate yourself out of this?
Chronos’ answer is the only possible answer to this question. You are asking how the world would be different if the laws of physics were different. There’s no way to answer that except by indulging in pure fantasy about imaginary worlds.
By the way, electrons don’t spin. Subatomic particles do have a quantity called “spin” but they are not physical objects that literally spin.
Even though I agree completely with the previous responses, I’m going to play along with the OP.
Of the possibilities the OP lists, I could actually imagine (though barely) some form of limited telepathy. A noninvasive EEG can demonstrate certain types of brain activity using contact electrodes on the scalp. IF (and it’s a huge IF) we had the ability to detect very small voltage changes using our fingers and IF we could interpret them in the necessary frequency ranges, I guess one could “lay on hands” and get some idea of at least the state of consciousness of another individual. One might even get some insight about their emotional state. So, for very limited and distorted meanings of “telepathy,” I could at least imagine it.
But as far as transmitting specific thoughts or memories, absolutely not.
Your problem is that what you are calling “scientific unknowns” aren’t. They are known–known by the best of our scientific models to be not possible. So what you are asking is “if our scientific models are completely wrong, what do our scientific models say will happen.” If it is discovered that 2+2=5, then you don’t continue to use the calculators that say 2+2=4, you throw them away and begin to learn how to build a calculator all over again.
Cheap fusion energy is a possibility lots of people believe in, but currently doesn’t exist. With this we could prevent global warming and do away with the massive health costs caused by fossil fuels (particularly coal).
OP, note that even if we knew how to do some of the things you are talking about doesn’t mean it would be economically viable to have any practical effect.
The things you are talking about are a staple of science fiction. Perhaps you might ask in Cafe Society for books on each you are interested in (a separate thread for each possibility).
I hate to throw more cold water on you, but there’s no answering this without knowing exactly how the breakthrough occurs. What couldn’t we invent if we had magical antigravity? But real-world antigravity would depend on how big the motors are and how expensive they are to run and what kind of fuel they use and whether shielding is necessary and a hundred other issues.
That’s almost exactly what happened with atomic power after WWII. Everybody threw around the miracles that unlimited, nearly free atomic power would bring. The reality meant that atomic power was limited to the very large and very small. Nuclear submarines were built but not atomic cars. Some satellites are atomic powered but mainly the ones who need just a few watts forever. And it all costs huge amounts of money and must be carefully separated from normal use.
The nuclear future never happened. The space future never happened. Flying cars and jetpacks never happened. Humanoid robots don’t walk the streets. Those inventions exist. They don’t contravene physics. They also aren’t cheap and easy and problem-free. You need an invention in your hand before you can predict what it will do. That may sound counter-intuitive but it’s emblematic of all science. Scientists don’t look for the right answers as much as they look for the right questions that can be answered.
Mind reading.
This isn’t quite the telepathy of sci-fi; but it’s similar–and it’s realisitically possible within our known laws of physics. Also, there is a reasonable chance that we will actually be able to do it within 500 or 1000 years.
The one area of biology and health that we currently know nothing about is how our brains work.
We know about DNA, etc, and will one day be able to do genetic engineering.
But the brain is still totally unknown. We have zero understanding of how a few atoms of carbon and hydrogen sulfide store the name of my toy bunny rabbit when I was 5 years old.
Yet it’s reasonable to guess that scientists will figure it out one day.
And if they every do,then it is reasonable to guess that once we know how the memories are made,we will be able to replay the process how they were made.(say, by following the flow of chemicals in the brain).
Which means that we will be able to read minds.
No need,say, for criminal trials–just ask the suspected criminal if he’s guilty. Then scan his brain and read his mind to know with 100% certainty if he’s lying.
No effort at all - that is why I’m still here. I’m basically living in science fiction, because I’m that old. I used to read Perry Rhodan back in the sixties and seventies. So I can imagine, that many more things’ll happen.
About mind reading, I read something like if you think, you are using words. And when you are using words, you send signals to those muscles that make the words come out. So basically mind reading is plausible when you make a sensor to detect muscles.
If we knew how to solve the Halting Problem we could determine the truth of many other mathamatical conjectures by creating an algorithm to find a counterexample and then determining whether or not it will stop.
I’m not a computer scientist, but if P vs nP is ever solved, doesn’t that mean it would make problem solving much easier in general? Creating a solution will be as easy as verifying it, I think.
If one NP-Complete problem is solved, they are all solved, they basically are all the same problem in different domains.
Here is a set of video lectures from Richard Feynman’s lectures at University of Auckland.
It may help explain where we were 40 years ago, and will still allow one to ignore math, which unfortunately is the required language to work on any unsolved problems that are left or to overturn existing, tested theories.
It is important to understand what we think, or can predict now before trying to assume that these ideas are baseless or are somehow incorrect.
To have anti gravity, wouldn’t you need to have ANTI or negative mass?
which is kind of impossible because you can not get any less than 0 mass?
If you had anti gravity and mind reading, you could make flying sex robots that knew when people were getting dangerously horny then fly over and sex them
This is my favorite post of 2018.
I think gravity is the real answer. I know it was mentioned in the OP. But it really is magical (along with the other attractive forces).
For example, suppose I build a lead box with walls 10 feet thick on all sides. Anything that is put in the box will still be affected by gravity. If we could understand the “force” that is able to act through and under those conditions I think there is quite a few inventions we could come up with.
The OP makes no sense (I’m with Chronos here) but, FTR, negative mass does. That is, it may not exist, but if it does it would be a form of non-baryonic exotic matter that would be mathematically consistent with physical laws and could be physically stable. It would have some strange properties, like being accelerated in direct proportion to applied force but in the opposite direction. Kip Thorne has postulated negative mass as necessary to hold wormholes open.
The great robotic rape scandal