A couple of weeks ago, i came across this and this article in New Scientist magazine. Of course it intrigued me.
This incredible circuit element, the memristor has been around theoretically since 1971. I say theoretically because the guy who proposed the idea, Leon Chua presented a paper to the IEEE Transactions on Circuit theory and the idea lay dormant until Stan Williams of Hewlett-Packard Labs in California created a memristor quite by accident in 2008, when they drew up their equations they found the circuit element that Chua had predicted over 30 years earlier.
The memristor is a resistor with a memory i.e. it can remember the last voltage you sent through it. When you switch the circuit off, the resistors state stays the same so when you switch the circuit back on you return to where you just left off. The amount of resistance is dependant on the last voltage that was sent through it.
The most intriguing thing for me about this missing circuit element is that it can "learn". A team sent three voltage pulses through a memristor and even without a fourth pulse, the memristor had "learnt" a pattern and produced an electrical current without a voltage stimulus. This happens within our own electrical circuits, the neurons that send the analog sound coming in to our brain will fire an electrical current even without a stimulus present.
This circuit element behaves like a synapse in the brain. I mean finally we could possibly model the brain, we could actually figure out the way we process sound, images. We could even get as far as figuring out what conscious thought is.
I play tennis quite a bit when I'm at home. I occasionally go into "The Zone" - i would love to know what that "Zone" actually is. I know I'm not consciously thinking and my body is essentially on auto-pilot although i sometimes i get a random conscious thought when i'm in this heightened state which will tell me what shot to hit. I hit it well who am I to argue with the Zone? The majority of the time these are shots that i have no business making yet everytime I'm in the Zone, i make them.
Finally we may be able to figure out the answer, finally we may be able to build a brain-like computer. But in order to be able to build a brain we'll have to model it in software first using a computer that isn't quite up to scratch.
Now, i think the race is on to find a practical memcapacitor and meminductor for these theoretical devices can actually store energy. These could be the way the brain stores our memories.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Space, Time, Gravity and the Universe
So I've been meaning to write a blog post for ages. I'm going to try and post more often.
Today's topic is inspired by one of my mate's blogs. Have a read here.
I've been reading about time and space quite a bit recently because it is one of those fascinating subjects that if i see a blog post, a TED video or a tweet about it, i can't resist opening the link and finding out a little bit more about how the Universe goes a long.
One such TED video is by Sean Carroll on the arrow of time. Part 1 of the video can be seen here.
By the way Sean Carroll has a book out called "Eternity to Here" which I am itching to read but as I'm changing country in a couple of months, i'm trying to resist the itch.
The most popular scientific theory is that the Universe is expanding and that expansion is accelerating. Now that means not only does the Universe have an edge which is almost hard to perceive as when we look out into the heavens all i see is the Universe going on forever yet i would also perceive like the early astronomers that the Earth is the centre of the Universe when its a mere speck in a picture of our galaxy the milky way. That's just the milky way not even the Universe. I understand why astronomers come back and say we are insignificant yet we are here in a seemingly lifeless Universe and we are striding out amongst the stars. That can't be insignificant. The achievements of the men and women before me have been astounding. I hope i can live up to them and seem just as amazing to future generations.
Of course there are many other theories, Sean Carroll goes into some of them in his video. he talks about the universe being one of many, which is possibly what i believe in. Its an enchanting idea isn't it? That somewhere out there there are not just other worlds but other universes. Now that would be amazing if it could be proven. Who will be clever enough to do that is the question?
Did time exist outside of the Universe, my mate thinks not, coz how can you have time without matter but then again there is this dark matter which makes up 90% of the Universe which we know nothing about, perhaps that is there before the big bang or whatever happened to create the Universe. Something had to create the universe after all. I mean you can't create something out of nothing so something had to exist before this Universe.
The reason why i called this blog Space, Time and Gravity is because of my own little pet theory. Einstein made Space Time a continuum in his theory of General Relativity but in his description of space and time being curved and shaped he mentions that gravity is a property of space time and not a force like we all believe. My theory goes beyond that and says that space, time and gravity are linked in a 3Dimensional shape. Due to space being 3Dimensional, i believe that time and gravity are also 3 dimensional. What these extra dimensions are, i'm not quite sure. Whether the extra dimensions in time are past, present and future perhaps the key to this is in Einstein's General and Special Relativity. He says that space is shaped which suggests time is also shaped and due to time being relative that would suggest that again time is shaped. This hints at the 3 dimensions of time being the past, present and future but then again this is confusing because time seems to travel in one direction but then again if you were an ant on a tightrope - there is no up, down, left or right. The other thing that is confusing about those dimensions of time is how can you travel along the past, how can you travel along the present or travel along the future?
Because of this i believe time travel is possible. I believe that space, time and gravity can represent the body, mind and soul or the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I also believe that there is a 3rd dimension to mathematics. For those who don't know, we have the set of real numbers which are the numbers we use in everyday life and we have the set of complex numbers that are so complex we call them imaginary numbers. These complex numbers fall on the y axis of a 2 dimensional graph so we have the ability to rotate numbers into 2 dimensions but i believe there to be a 3rd set of numbers which would allow us to rotate numbers into a 3rd dimension.
Sorry for the long, rambling post with nothing particularly clear.
Today's topic is inspired by one of my mate's blogs. Have a read here.
I've been reading about time and space quite a bit recently because it is one of those fascinating subjects that if i see a blog post, a TED video or a tweet about it, i can't resist opening the link and finding out a little bit more about how the Universe goes a long.
One such TED video is by Sean Carroll on the arrow of time. Part 1 of the video can be seen here.
By the way Sean Carroll has a book out called "Eternity to Here" which I am itching to read but as I'm changing country in a couple of months, i'm trying to resist the itch.
The most popular scientific theory is that the Universe is expanding and that expansion is accelerating. Now that means not only does the Universe have an edge which is almost hard to perceive as when we look out into the heavens all i see is the Universe going on forever yet i would also perceive like the early astronomers that the Earth is the centre of the Universe when its a mere speck in a picture of our galaxy the milky way. That's just the milky way not even the Universe. I understand why astronomers come back and say we are insignificant yet we are here in a seemingly lifeless Universe and we are striding out amongst the stars. That can't be insignificant. The achievements of the men and women before me have been astounding. I hope i can live up to them and seem just as amazing to future generations.
Of course there are many other theories, Sean Carroll goes into some of them in his video. he talks about the universe being one of many, which is possibly what i believe in. Its an enchanting idea isn't it? That somewhere out there there are not just other worlds but other universes. Now that would be amazing if it could be proven. Who will be clever enough to do that is the question?
Did time exist outside of the Universe, my mate thinks not, coz how can you have time without matter but then again there is this dark matter which makes up 90% of the Universe which we know nothing about, perhaps that is there before the big bang or whatever happened to create the Universe. Something had to create the universe after all. I mean you can't create something out of nothing so something had to exist before this Universe.
The reason why i called this blog Space, Time and Gravity is because of my own little pet theory. Einstein made Space Time a continuum in his theory of General Relativity but in his description of space and time being curved and shaped he mentions that gravity is a property of space time and not a force like we all believe. My theory goes beyond that and says that space, time and gravity are linked in a 3Dimensional shape. Due to space being 3Dimensional, i believe that time and gravity are also 3 dimensional. What these extra dimensions are, i'm not quite sure. Whether the extra dimensions in time are past, present and future perhaps the key to this is in Einstein's General and Special Relativity. He says that space is shaped which suggests time is also shaped and due to time being relative that would suggest that again time is shaped. This hints at the 3 dimensions of time being the past, present and future but then again this is confusing because time seems to travel in one direction but then again if you were an ant on a tightrope - there is no up, down, left or right. The other thing that is confusing about those dimensions of time is how can you travel along the past, how can you travel along the present or travel along the future?
Because of this i believe time travel is possible. I believe that space, time and gravity can represent the body, mind and soul or the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I also believe that there is a 3rd dimension to mathematics. For those who don't know, we have the set of real numbers which are the numbers we use in everyday life and we have the set of complex numbers that are so complex we call them imaginary numbers. These complex numbers fall on the y axis of a 2 dimensional graph so we have the ability to rotate numbers into 2 dimensions but i believe there to be a 3rd set of numbers which would allow us to rotate numbers into a 3rd dimension.
Sorry for the long, rambling post with nothing particularly clear.
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