Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (13 page)

In 1993, Bernhard Blümich and his colleagues, when they were at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, hit upon a novel idea that could create tiny MRI machines. They built a new machine, called the MRI-MOUSE (mobile universal surface explorer), currently about one foot tall, that may one day give us MRI machines that are the size of a coffee cup and sold in department stores. This could revolutionize medicine, since one would be able to perform MRI scans in the privacy of one’s home. Blümich envisions a time, not too far away, when a person would be able to pass his personal MRI-MOUSE over his skin and look inside his body any time of the day. Computers would analyze the picture and diagnose any problems. “Perhaps something like the
Star Trek
tricorder is not so far off after all,” he has concluded.

(MRI scans work on a principle similar to compass needles. The north pole of the compass needle immediately aligns to the magnetic field. So when the body is placed in an MRI machine, the nuclei of the atoms, like compass needles, align to the magnetic field. Now a radio pulse is sent into the body which makes the nuclei flip upside down. Eventually, the nuclei flips back to its original position, emitting a second radio pulse or “echo.”)

The key to his mini-MRI machine is its nonuniform magnetic fields. Normally, the reason the MRI machine of today is so bulky is because you need to place the body in an extremely uniform magnetic field. The greater the uniformity of the field, the more detailed the resulting picture, which today can resolve features down to a tenth of a millimeter. To obtain these uniform magnetic fields, physicists start with two large coils of wire, roughly two feet in diameter, stacked on top of each other. This is called a Helmholtz coil, and provides a uniform magnetic field in the space between the two coils. The human body is then placed along the axis of these two large magnets.

But if you use nonuniform magnetic fields, the resulting image is distorted and useless. This has been the problem with MRI machines for many decades. But Blümich stumbled on a clever way to compensate for this distortion by sending multiple radio pulses into the sample and then detecting the resulting echoes. Then computers are used to analyze these echoes and make up for the distortion created by nonuniform magnetic fields.

Today, Blümich’s portable MRI-MOUSE machine uses a small U-shaped magnet that produces a north pole and a south pole at each end of the U. This magnet is placed on top of the patient, and by moving the magnet, one can peer several inches beneath the skin. Unlike standard MRI machines, which consume vast amounts of power and have to have special electrical power outlets, the MRI-MOUSE uses only about as much electricity as an ordinary lightbulb.

In some of his early tests, Blümich placed the MRI-MOUSE on top of rubber tires, which are soft like human tissue. This could have an immediate commercial application: rapidly scanning for defects in products. Conventional MRI machines cannot be used on objects that contain metal, such as steel-belted radial tires. The MRI-MOUSE, because it uses only weak magnetic fields, has no such limitation. (The magnetic fields of a conventional MRI machine are 20,000 times more powerful than the earth’s magnetic field. Many nurses and technicians have been seriously hurt when the magnetic field is turned on and then metal tools suddenly come flying at them. The MRI-MOUSE has no such problem.)

Not only is this ideal to analyze objects that have ferrous metals in them, it can also analyze objects that are too large to fit inside a conventional MRI machine or cannot be moved from their sites. For example, in 2006 the MRI-MOUSE successfully produced images of the interior of Ötzi the iceman, the frozen corpse found in the Alps in 1991. By moving the U-shaped magnet over Ötzi, it was able to successively peel away the various layers of his frozen body.

In the future, the MRI-MOUSE may be miniaturized even more, allowing for MRI scans of the brain using something the size of a cell phone. Then, scanning the brain to read one’s thoughts may not be such a problem. Eventually, the MRI scanner may be as thin as a dime, barely noticeable. It might even resemble the less-powerful EEG, where you put a plastic cap with many electrodes attached over your head. (If you place these portable MRI disks on your fingertips and then place them on a person’s head, this would resemble performing the Vulcan mind meld of
Star Trek.
)

TELEKINESIS AND THE POWER OF THE GODS

The endpoint of this progression is to attain telekinesis, the power of the gods of mythology to move objects by sheer thought.

In the movie
Star Wars,
for example, the Force is a mysterious field that pervades the galaxy and unleashes the mental powers of the Jedi knights, allowing them to control objects with their mind. Lightsabers, ray guns, and even entire starships can be levitated using the power of the Force—and to control the actions of others.

But we won’t have to travel to a galaxy far, far away to harness this power. By 2100, when we walk into a room, we will be able to mentally control a computer that in turn will control things around us. Moving heavy furniture, rearranging our desk, making repairs, etc., may be possible by thinking about it. This could be quite useful for workers, fire crews, astronauts, and soldiers who have to operate machinery requiring more than two hands. It could also change the way we interact with the world. We would be able to ride a bike, drive a car, play golf or baseball or elaborate games just by thinking about them.

Moving objects by thought may become possible by exploiting something called superconductors, which we shall explain in more detail in
Chapter 4
. By the end of this century, physicists may be able to create superconductors that can operate at room temperature, thereby allowing us to create huge magnetic fields that require little power. In the same way that the twentieth century was the age of electricity, the future may bring us room-temperature superconductors that will give us the age of magnetism.

Powerful magnetic fields are presently expensive to create but may become almost free in the future. This will allow us to reduce friction in our trains and trucks, revolutionizing transportation, and eliminate losses in electrical transmission. This will also allow us to move objects by sheer thought. With tiny supermagnets placed inside different objects, we will be able to move them around almost at will.

In the near future, we will assume that everything has a tiny chip in it, making it intelligent. In the far future, we will assume that everything has a tiny superconductor inside it that can generate bursts of magnetic energy, sufficient to move it across a room. Assume, for example, that a table has a superconductor in it. Normally, this superconductor carries no current. But when a tiny electrical current is added, it can create a powerful magnetic field, capable of sending it across the room. By thinking, we should be able to activate the supermagnet embedded within an object and thereby make it move.

In the
X-Men
movies, for example, the evil mutants are led by Magneto, who can move enormous objects by manipulating their magnetic properties. In one scene, he even moves the Golden Gate Bridge via the power of his mind. But there are limits to this power. For example, it is difficult to move an object like plastic or paper that has no magnetic properties. (At the end of the first
X-Men
movie, Magneto is confined in a jail made completely of plastic.)

In the future, room-temperature superconductors may be hidden inside common items, even nonmagnetic ones. If a current is turned on within the object, it will become magnetic and hence it can be moved by an external magnetic field that is controlled by your thoughts.

We will also have the power to manipulate robots and avatars by thinking. This means that, as in the movies
Surrogates
and
Avatar,
we might be able to control the motions of our substitutes and even feel pain and pressure. This might prove useful if we need a superhuman body to make repairs in outer space or rescue people in emergencies. Perhaps one day, our astronauts may be safely on earth, controlling superhuman robotic bodies as they move on the moon. We will discuss this more in the next chapter.

We should also point out that possessing this telekinetic power is not without risks. As I mentioned before, in the movie
Forbidden Planet,
an ancient civilization millions of years ahead of ours attains its ultimate dream, the ability to control anything with the power of their minds. As one trivial example of their technology, they created a machine that can turn your thoughts into a 3-D image. You put the device on your head, imagine something, and a 3-D image materializes inside the machine. Although this device seemed impossibly advanced for movie audiences back in the 1950s, this device will be available in the coming decades. Also, in the movie, there was a device that harnessed your mental energy to lift a heavy object. But as we know, we don’t have to wait millions of years for this technology—it’s already here, in the form of a toy. You place EEG electrodes on your head, the toy detects the electrical impulses of your brain, and then it lifts a tiny object, just as in the movie. In the future, many games will be played by sheer thought. Teams may be mentally wired up so that they can move a ball by thinking about it, and the team that can best mentally move the ball wins.

The climax of
Forbidden Planet
may give us pause. Despite the vastness of their technology, the aliens perished because they failed to notice a defect in their plans. Their powerful machines tapped not only into their conscious thoughts but also into their subconscious desires. The savage, long-suppressed thoughts of their violent, ancient evolutionary past sprang back to life, and the machines materialized every subconscious nightmare into reality. On the eve of attaining their greatest creation, this mighty civilization was destroyed by the very technology they hoped would free them from instrumentality.

For us, however, this is still a distant danger. A device of that magnitude won’t be available until the twenty-second century. However, we face a more immediate concern. By 2100, we will also live in a world populated by robots that have humanlike characteristics. What happens if they become smarter than us?

Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.
—MARVIN MINSKY

The gods of mythology with their divine power could animate the inanimate. According to the Bible, in Genesis, Chapter 2, God created man out of dust, and then “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” According to Greek and Roman mythology, the goddess Venus could make statues spring to life. Venus, taking pity on the artist Pygmalion when he fell hopelessly in love with his statue, granted his fondest wish and turned the statue into a beautiful woman, Galatea. The god Vulcan, the blacksmith to the gods, could even create an army of mechanical servants made of metal that he brought to life.

Today, we are like Vulcan, forging in our laboratories machines that breathe life not into clay but into steel and silicon. But will it be to liberate the human race or enslave it? If one reads the headlines today, it seems as if the question is already settled: the human race is about to be rapidly overtaken by our own creation.

THE END OF HUMANITY?

The headline in the
New York Times
said it all: “Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man.” The world’s top leaders in artificial intelligence (AI) had gathered at the Asilomar conference in California in 2009 to solemnly discuss what happens when the machines finally take over. As in a scene from a Hollywood movie, delegates asked probing questions, such as, What happens if a robot becomes as intelligent as your spouse?

As compelling evidence of this robotic revolution, people pointed to the Predator drone, a pilotless robot plane that is now targeting terrorists with deadly accuracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan; cars that can drive themselves; and ASIMO, the world’s most advanced robot that can walk, run, climb stairs, dance, and even serve coffee.

Eric Horvitz of Microsoft, an organizer of the conference, noting the excitement surging through the conference, said, “Technologists are providing almost religious visions, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.” (The Rapture is when true believers ascend to heaven at the Second Coming. The critics dubbed the spirit of the Asilomar conference “the rapture of the nerds.”)

That same summer, the movies dominating the silver screen seemed to amplify this apocalyptic picture. In
Terminator Salvation,
a ragtag band of humans battle huge mechanical behemoths that have taken over the earth. In
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,
futuristic robots from space use humans as pawns and the earth as a battleground for their interstellar wars. In
Surrogates,
people prefer to live their lives as perfect, beautiful, superhuman robots, rather than face the reality of their own aging, decaying bodies.