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L’incontournable moteur de recherche Google a présenté il y a 15 jours PowerMeter une nouveauté issue de ses “laboratoires”. Son objectif : lutter contre le réchauffement de la planète en aidant les gens à réduire leur consommation d’électricité.
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Imagine a world where you could defy any laws of physics, from gravitation to electromagnetism. Not a world of superheroes in comic books, but a world where liquids and solids would become super-cool matter.
In this world you would plug magnets under your feet and levitate to go to work. Electrical wires would never get hot and any liquid would squeeze through impossibly small holes. Spinning your glass of wine at a Friday night party would have it mimic a Swiss cheese pattern. Instead of seeing a single whirlpool at the center of your glass, you would observe a multiple of tiny vortices. Public parks would host water fountains spouting upward under the simple action of a light beam. You would have to watch after your coffee to make sure it doesn’t flow out of your cup by itself. And passing through walls to go from one room to another would just be routine.
In October of 2006, I interviewed Jonathan Whitlock, a post-doctorate associate at the Picower Institute at that time. On that day, he lighted up my fascination for memory, and its mechanisms in the human brain. At the end of the interview, he launched that he was erasing rats’ memory. And the whole story began.
In a small and dark laboratory at the Picower Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a rat sits comfortably in a shine black plastic box. His long white and massive tail impress the visitors. He looks like a hybrid animal coming out of a Star Trek picture. A small metal chip implanted into his minuscule brain delicately deforms his scalp. Through that implant, scientists can record his neurons activity.