However, the current consensus of the scientific community is that this is not possible, and that the specifications that have been given for Blacklight seem to violate quantum physics as we know it today. This could just be the standard inertia that exists in academia, particularly when something as basic and widely accepted as quantum mechanics is threatened, or it might be the case that all these other scientists are correct and Blacklight might just be a con (conscious or not). I would expect to see the establishment attempting to disprove such an invention as not only does it violate principles physicists hold dear, it would also massively threaten the current status quo in the power industry, especially the oil producers. These guys have a lot of money, and I’m sure they wouldn’t be adverse to encouraging anyone who might feel the need to attempt to prevent such an invention getting financial backing.

Since Blacklight are now into the final phase of commercial negotiations for installations for their fuel cells, we can look forward to learning more over the next year. I really hope that this works, because I’d much prefer to have power plants running on water than running on nuclear fuel. Let’s hope for a revolution.

There is, however, a lot that we can do to try to avert this situation. It is scary to think that California’s oil consumption (for transport, at least) is more than that of China – so 3,700,000 people use more oil than 1,3000,000,000 people, which is absurd if you think about it. Part of the problem, in the US at least, is that car manufacturers have failed to make any noticeable improvements to their products recently, whilst Japanese and European manufacturers have worked hard on fuel efficiency for at least 30 years. This has lead to General Motors, one of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world, to be significantly at risk of bankruptcy at the moment. Car sales worldwide have slowed recently, with car usage also showing significant drops as people take to foot, bike or bus to beat the rising cost or fuel. Over the next few years, as oil prices remain volatile and generally head upward, it is likely that only those manufacturers who can provide viable alternative energy sources for their vehicles will be able to ride out the coming storm.

As I have mentioned previously, the entire Peak Oil aftermath can be avoided if we can provide alternative methods for producing energy and for transport. Hydrogen fuel cells are a good option, and appear far more likely than cold fusion, but hydrogen fuel cells are usually only invoked for transport solutions, and electricity supply is possibly far more important than transport. It really is time to ask your government representative when the nuclear option is going to re-evaluated and increased, and it needs those NIMBYs who have tried to prevent nuclear power stations from being built to shut up and face facts. If a nuclear power station is built on your doorstep then there is a small chance that it will fail and cause terrible problems for you (remembering that if you take 2 weeks holiday a year then that’s 4% of the time you won’t even be in the vicinity); however, a lack of nuclear power stations at this time, when there is still no real viable alternative to oil for power generation, is certain to lead to some very drastic doomsday scenarios once Peak Oil is reached – which won’t be long.

Peak Oil is a term used to describe the time when the world’s oil production is exceeded by the world’s demand for oil. This is something that I never worried about before because I was aware that there was plenty of oil still waiting to be pumped, and never thought the day would arrive when the oil producing nations would struggle to meet demand. Even thought the price of oil has been rocketing recently, I still had confidence in the reserves of oil available being able to to meet demand and remaining viable through the next 20-30 years (which will see me to the end of my life). I remained confident until I read this article from Business Week.

In brief, this article states that Saudi Arabia, which is still the holder of the world’s largest oil fields, has promised to ramp up production in order to alleviate the current high price of oil, but it seems that this promise will not be met. It is in the oil producers best interests to keep the price of oil high, but not too high, because that way they make good money but don’t force people into using alternative power sources. So, whilst Saudi Arabia would love to up production now that the rest of the world is in shock over the recent rise in oil prices, it would seem that they are unable to actually pump and process any more oil – which makes their supply stagnant.

Sine the rest of the oil producing nations are already running at full production rates, and may even be failing to produce at all over the next week, then we may well be at that fabled point of Peak Oil, which means that things will go downhill from now on. The impact will not be felt immediately, but continuously rising costs and fuel shortages will lead to spiraling costs and shortages of other goods. These factors will cause businesses to fail, leading to higher unemployment, but the government will receive less money and so will not be able to support these victims. Rising costs and no government support lead to rising civil unrest and crime, which puts civilisation on the slippery slope towards anarchy. This might sound far-fetched to you, but the steps involved will be small and seemingly insignificant, but they will combine, in a logical manner, to create the possible collapse of society as we know it. You can read a lot more about this whole process here.

It’s important to remember that this is the likely course of events given our current state of affairs, and this doomsday scenario doesn’t take into account advancements in technology or governments having the courage to act now to forestall this tragedy. I’d probably put my money on technology advances, which is what the governments are doing, because most governments are too scared to do what needs to be done as this will lose them votes. We NEED nuclear power stations to be built NOW! It takes around 10 years to build a nuclear power station and get it up and running, but if we start now then by the time oil is actually getting short and starting to pose a serious threat to our electricity supply then we would have these nuclear power stations either in operation or approaching completion, and this would alleviate one of the biggest impacts of Peak Oil. I know some people believe that with electric vehicles now starting to become mainstream that this will alleviate some of the coming oil crisis, but where are these vehicles to get their electric charge from when the majority of the power supply is generated using oil? So write to your MP/Senator and ask why nuclear power stations are not being created now; after all they are not reliant on oil, they are the most environmentally friendly way of generating power and they take so long to build that if they’re not started soon then it may be too late.

Another technological advance that would mitigate the impact of Peak Oil is the development of commercially viable hydrogen fuel cells. These would very quickly allow most transport to move to an oil free fuel supply (air transport would need a radical rethink in order to be able to use fuel cells, but all other modes of transport could be converted relatively simply). Hydrogen fuel cells would also allow us to change the way we look at our power supplies as well, as it may be more cost effective for businesses and larger properties to move to generating their own supply via a fuel cell rather than relying on commercial supply. This would, once again, dramatically cut our reliance on oil.

The biggest stumbling blocks to actually dealing with Peak Oil are the oil producing nations, who stand to lose their income if people move away from oil as a primary fuel source; the governments, who need to build nuclear power stations that nobody wants built near them; and the power supply companies, who stand to lose a lot of revenue if individuals could begin to generate their own power. These people all have a vested interest in the status quo and would quite happily carry on, with no moves made to forestall Peak Oil, until it’s too late. So all we can do is prepare for a very rough ride ahead.

It’s good to know that the Russians are selling this technology throughout the world. Kind of renders most armoured battalions obsolete these weapons are anywhere near as effective in the real world as they are in simulations. Combine this type of “intelligent” bomb with long range missiles, UAV’s and stealth technology and it will soon be possible to reduce the military to bunker based techs, a stealth airforce and some grunts to do the house-by-house clear-up afterwards.

Things might be about to change as Boeing have successfully repeatedly fired their new laser for long enough to prove it’s capabilities as a genuine weapon. What’s more, it can scale up to 100KW, which is enough power to make the military sit up and take notice. I would imagine that it won’t be too long before the first military applications of this laser begin testing. What gets me though, is that Boeing are claiming that being powered by electricity makes the lasers highly mobile and supportable on the battlefield. I would imagine this to be true only if you have some very long extension leads or a highly mobile 100+KW generator. Given that there is always some loss as power is transmitted, I’d be interested in seeing how big a generator would be required for the laser to work effectively. More worrying is that having electrically powered mega-weapons like these would encourage the use of battlefield nukes – as the electromagnetic pulse these would give out should effectively disable something that is 100% reliant on an electrical supply.

Still the little or no collateral damage bit should be good – providing American operators can avoid targeting friendly “targets” in future.

Currently Internet traffic is reaching the point where even backbones are starting to struggle; and as traffic is still increasing to reach the ceiling of available bandwidth, then so data carriers are having to invest more money to prevent utilisation and congestion from slowing everything down and causing unreliable connections. Which seems like a perfect time for Internet2 to be reaching it’s official launch in January next year.

Internet2 uses different wavelengths of light to form separate data channels through one piece of fibre. This allows multiple 10Gb/s links to be run down one cable, and currently there are 100Gb/s links between over 200 universities in the US. That’s a lot of bandwidth, and should hold off any congestion problems for a while. We’ll have to wait and see whether Internet2 grows to run alongside our current Internet, or maybe even to replace the current infrastructure.