18 Billion Suns!

Scientists have determined the mass of the largest things that could possibly exist in our universe. New results have placed an upper limit on the current size of black holes - and at fifty billion suns it's pretty damn big. That's a hundred thousand tredagrams, and you'll never get the chance to use that word in relation to anything else.
Black holes are regions of space where matter is so dense that regular physics just breaks down. You might think physical laws are immutable - you can't get out of gravitational attraction the same way you can get out of a speeding ticket - but beyond a certain level laws which determine how matter is regulated are simply overloaded and material is crushed down into something that's less an object and more a region of altered space.
While there's theoretically no upper limit on how big a black hole can be, there are hard limits on how big they could have become by now. The universe has only existed for a finite amount of time, and even the most voracious black hole can only suck in matter at a certain rate. The bigger the black hole, the bigger the gravitational field and the faster it can pull in matter - but that same huge gravitational gradient means that the same matter can release huge amounts of radiation as it falls, blasting other matter further away.
Based on this self-regulating maximum rate, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts, and the European Southern Observatory, Chile, have calculated an upper limit for these mega-mammoth masses. Fifty billion suns, that's 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg, otherwise known as "ridiculously stupidly big" and triple the size of the largest observed black hole, OJ 287.
There are potential problems with this calculation. Based as it is on the radiation outflow from a black hole, new discoveries could change this estimate - though only from "insanely massive" to "ridiculously ginormous."
Luke McKinney.
Do you like it? Read more...
18 Billion Suns -A Galaxy Classic: Biggest Black Hole in Universe Discovered—and it’s BIGNeutron Stars: New Discovery Proves Einstein's Space-Time PredictionsMystery Neutron Star DiscoveredAndromeda Galaxy & Its Mystery Core: Destined to Merge With the Milky Way?Neutron Stars & The Physics of Star TrekNew, Revised Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyBlack Holes Key to Mapping the Evolution of the UniverseNASA Finds Bizarre Planet-Mass Orbiting Neutron Star in the Constellation SagittariusThe Milky Way's X Factor: Rogue Planet Devouring Black Holes
Sources:
Upper limit on black hole size The biggest black hole yet seen

Neurotechology

>> The Future of Computer-assisted Cognitive Therapy
Cognitive therapy is one of the most researched types of brain training, especially in dealing with depression and anxiety. Why don't more people benefit today from it? The lack of a scalable distribution model may perhaps explain that. We predict that technology will help complement the role of therapists, helping more people better cope with change, life, anxiety, and a range of cognitive and emotional challenges. Without any stigma. Just as naturally as one trains abdominal muscles today.

South Korea´s new cultural tower

The concept for Cheongna City Tower in Incheon, South Korea, differs from other highrises in both purpose and message. Designed to emanate a sense of hope throughout the world, GDS Architects’ ‘invisible’ 446m tower design (aka Tower Infinity) illustrates a humbleness and innocence from which a cultural centre, observation deck and other community facilities will function.
GDS beat 146 entries from 46 countries to win Korea Land Corporation’s design competition in March with their crystalline shard design that they gave the slogan ‘In the absence of matter is the presence of hope’. Read more...

To archaeologists and those who like their history, a ziggurat is a terraced pyramid (image), native to the ancient Mesopotamian valley and Iran. Used as shrines and for escaping from rising flood waters, the ziggurats have revealed much about the culture surrounding their construction.
However, the ziggurat is about to enter the common vernacular, hopefully, as something a little more modern.
Under the watchful eye of Dubai-based Timelinks, an environmental design company, a new project entitled Ziggurat is being proposed as a sustainable city of the future. Able to hold up to a million people, but taking up only 2.3 square kilometers – a tenth of the original land needed for such a group of people – the designers believe that the power of nature will support the Ziggurat. Read more...

The World's 1st Blood Factory

This isn't a scene from "Hellraiser XXV: Dear God The Franchise Is Still Going", but a major breakthrough in medical technology. With the ability to grow blood in bulk we might never have to sit through another "Please please give blood" ad ever again.
A combination of commercial and academic researchers have produced ahundred billion blood cells by emulating the blood production system inhuman bone marrow. While that's only 1% of the blood in a human body,once... >> Read more...

The Foundation For The Future

For more than a decade the Foundation For the Future, in Washington (USA), has pursued its mission to increase and diffuse knowledge concerning the long-term future of humanity.

The Foundation conducts a broad range of programs and activities to promote an understanding of the factors in the social, genetic, biological, medical, psychological, physiological, cultural, technological, and ecological fields that may have an impact on human life during coming millennia.
To fulfill its mandate, the Foundation For the Future:
• Promotes public awareness of and education in futures issues.
• Convenes seminars, workshops, and symposia that focus on issues associated with the long-term future of humanity.
• Publishes scholarly works that address issues concerning the factors that will affect the future quality of human life.
• Awards the annual Kistler Prize (cash and gold medallion), the Walter P. Kistler Book Award (cash and certificate), the Walter P. Kistler Science Teacher of the Year Award (cash and certificate), and the Walter P. Kistler Science Documentary Film Award (cash and certificate).
• Provides financial support to scholars’ research through Research Grant Awards.
• Facilitates a Student Education Program that encourages young scholars to think about the future.
The Foundation’s benefactor and founding President is Walter Kistler. A Board of Trustees oversees all Foundation activities and is supported by an Executive Director, two Deputy Directors, and a small administrative staff.
The Foundation has assembled teams of prominent scholars and humanists to serve on the Foundation’s Board of Advisors and on the Kistler Prize Advisory Panel.
The Foundation is sustained in perpetuity by a permanent endowment.

The Purpose
The Kistler Prize was created out of concern for the long-term future of humanity.
Leaders of human societies – constrained by relatively short-term problems related to economics, education, poverty, trade, and international affairs – often show little interest in addressing issues that have consequences for the long-term future of humanity. This attitude has been prevalent from the beginning of the industrial revolution and continues today. At the same time, because of wondrous technological achievements and political ideologies, we have affected reproduction, resulting in higher growth rates of population. The rules of Darwinian selection are being changed, thus affecting the evolutionary processes that have determined the human genome.
Our goal is to raise concerns about the future, to end the “head in the sand” attitude that seems to prevail in human organizations, private and public. Unbiased research into the connection between the human genome and human society, culture, and tradition is urgently needed. The role of nature and of nurture in the development of a human being needs to be better understood.
The purpose of the Kistler Prize is to acknowledge and encourage scientific research that demonstrates the connections between current genetic trends in human populations and the long-term impact on the viability and survivability of the human race, society, and culture.
The Award
The Kistler Prize consists of a US$100,000 cash award and a specially designed 180-gram gold medallion seated in a leaded glass sculpture. It is named for Walter P. Kistler, originator of the award program and benefactor of the Foundation For the Future.
The Prize is awarded annually to a scientist or research institution that has, with courage and wisdom, pursued the truth and made original, substantive, and innovative contributions in the study of the connections between the human genome and human society.
Please go to the NOMINATION PROCESS page for eligibility requirements.

How to manage what we don´t know!

Risk management is a core strategic discipline! There are two categories of risks in business decisions: knowable (and therefore learnable) and unknowable.

Learnable risks are the ones we could make less uncertain if we had the time and resources to learn more about them.

The crucial distinction between learnable and random risks is not about how to manage them. In fact, there is always something to learn about managing every risk. We can improve response times, train people to recognize signs that something has gone wrong and even control the size of our exposure. Whether a particular risk is learnable or random thus has little to do with our ability to manage it.

Random risks would be the ones where nothing we could learn would reduce the uncertainty behind them.

Scoring your risk intelligence:

Rule 1. Recognize which risks are learnable.

Rule 2. Identify risks you can learn about fastest.

Biblio: Apgar, David, Risk Intelligence, Harvard Business School Press, 2006

Future Memory: is it possible?

Some researchers believe that our brain/mind system can live the future before it occurs! They propose a new category be established under mods of futuristic awareness. Author P.M.H. Atwater describe this category as follows:

Future Memory >> to prelive in advance (subjective/sensory-rich). The ability to fully live a given event or sequence of events in subjective reality before living that same episode in objective reality. This is usually, but not always, forgotten by the individual after it happens, only to be remembered later when some "signal" triggers memory.
For them, the present moment can be past tense! It is more a process of memory than anything psychic. They actually remember the future, just as they remember the past, even though that memory is not based on previous "constructions" (the brain´s ability to adapt actualities to accommodate whatever is precedent). They do not predict. They are just people who now live in a different reality system than before, where the understanding of time and space has shifted from the norm. Other researchers often misinerpret and misunderstand this phenomenon, thinking it to be something it is not.

In business we use forecasting. It is to predict in advance (objective/logical). Depends on mathematical projections made from detailed facts and figures to provide information. But some futurists use another kind of phenomenon: precognition. It means to know in advance (subjective/feeling). Is the act of knowing or feeling the future before it happens; occasionally called "sensing". Refers too advance knowledge suddenly known without precursory promptings or impressionistic stimulus of any kind.