That’s the surprising conclusion of a NASA-funded study by the National Academy of Sciences entitled Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts. In the 132-page report, experts detailed what might happen to our modern, high-tech society in the event of a “super solar flare” followed by an extreme geomagnetic storm. They found that almost nothing is immune from space weather—not even the water in your bathroom.

Full Story: NASA

(via OVO)

Sky-watchers in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific islands welcomed a surprise guest Monday: an asteroid that passed just 41,010 miles (66,000 kilometers) above Earth.

Discovered only days ago, asteroid 2009 DD45 zipped between our planet and the moon at 13:44 universal time (8:44 a.m. ET). The asteroid was moving at about 12 miles (20 kilometers) a second when it was closest to Earth.

“We get objects passing fairly close, or closer than this, every few months,” Timothy Spahr, director of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, said in an email.

“Also, though, note these are only the ones that are discovered. Many more pass this close undetected”—as asteroid 2009 DD45 nearly did.

Full Story: National Geographic

(via Xtal)

Q: What can we expect?

A: Pretty much what you read about in New Scientist every week. Climate change, dust bowls caused by over-cultivation necessitated by over-population, resource depletion in obscure and irritatingly mission-critical sectors (never mind oil; we’ve only got 60 years of easily exploitable phosphates left — if we run out of phosphates, our agricultural fertilizer base goes away), the great population overshoot (as developing countries transition to the low population growth model of developed countries) leading to happy fun economic side-effects (deflation, house prices crash, stagnation in cutting-edge research sectors due to not enough workers, aging populations), and general bad-tempered overcrowded primate bickering.

Oh, and the unknown unknowns.

Q: Unknown unknowns? Are you talking about Donald Rumsfeld?

A: No, but I’m stealing his term for unprecedented and unpredictable events (sometimes also known as black swans). From the point of view of an observer in 1909, the modern consumer electronics industry (not to mention computing and internetworking) is a black swan, a radical departure from the then-predictable revolutionary enabling technologies (automobiles and aeroplanes). Planes, trains and automobiles were already present, and progressed remarkably well — and a smart mind in 1909 would have predicted this. But antibiotics, communication satellites, and nuclear weapons were another matter. Some of these items were mentioned, in very approximate form, by 1909-era futurists, but for the most part they took the world by surprise.

We’re certainly going to see unknown unknowns in the 21st century. Possible sources of existential surprise include (but are not limited to) biotechnology, nanotechnology, AI, climate change, supply chain/logistics breakthroughs to rival the shipping container, fork lift pallet, bar code, and RFID chip — and politics. But there’ll be other stuff so weird and strange I can’t even guess at it.

Q: Eh? But what’s the big picture?

A: The big picture is that since around 2005, the human species has — for the first time ever — become a predominantly urban species. Prior to that time, the majority of humans lived in rural/agricultural lifestyles. Since then, just over 50% of us now live in cities; the move to urbanization is accelerating. If it continues at the current pace, then some time after 2100 the human population will tend towards the condition of the UK — in which roughly 99% of the population live in cities or suburbia.

This is going to affect everything.

It’s going to affect epidemiology. It’s going to affect wealth production. It’s going to affect agriculture (possibly for the better, if it means a global shift towards concentrated high-intensity food production, possibly in vertical farms, and a re-wilding/return to nature of depopulated and underutilized former rural areas). It’s going to affect the design and layout of our power, transport, and information grids. It’s going to affect our demographics (urban populations tend to grow by immigration, and tend to feature lower birth rates than agricultural communities).

There’s a gigantic difference between the sustainability of a year 2109 with 6.5 billion humans living a first world standard of living in creative cities, and a year 2109 with 3.3 billion humans living in cities and 3.2 billion humans still practicing slash’n'burn subsistence farming all over the map.

Q: Space colonization?

A: Forget it.

Full Story: Charlie Stross’s web page

(via Grinding)

For those who don’t know, tonight is the first Full Moon of the year. It’s also the biggest Full Moon of 2009. It’s “The Wolf Moon”, so don’t be surprised if you hear some people howlin’.

“What does tonight’s first Full Moon of 2009 foretell? This one is called the Wolf Moon, a Full Moon in Cancer, and it is indeed a precursor to a year that will be full of werewolf news.

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” - The Wolf Man, 1941.

The word is slipping out.”

(via Cryptomundo. h/t: The Anomalist)

A little over a month after NASA scientists announced that they were finding more familiar elements than alien ones in the soil on Mars from test results sent back by the Lander, researchers now have discovered evidence that that might not be the case after all. They’re also double-checking to make sure that the Earth-like elements found by Phoenix on the northern pole of Mars weren’t actually brought from Earth and deposited there when the Lander touched down.

“We are committed to following a rigorous scientific process. While we have not completed our process on these soil samples, we have very interesting intermediate results,” Peter Smith, Phoenix’s principal investigator, said in a written statement released today. Smith, who is a senior research scientist at the University of Arizona, added that while the initial analyses from the wet chemistry laboratory onboard Phoenix suggested that Martian soil was like that of Earth, “further analysis has revealed un-Earthlike aspects of the soil chemistry.”

Full Story: Computer world

(via dysnomia.us)

My friend and co-conspirator Johnny Brainwash has been running an excellent blog called Dysnomia (named for the Greek goddess of lawlessness and daughter of Eris). According to the about page, he’s covering “Piracy, space and post-Soviet conflicts. Also treehugging, mayhem and high weirdness. Outbreaks of old-fashioned politics may occur.” And to be clear, he’s not talking about data piracy or cute Disney pirates. He’s talking about real life cut-throat pirates who actually rob ships today.

It’s a great place to get some international perspective and find stuff that might otherwise slip through the cracks.

dysnomia.us

It takes three days to travel to the moon and six months to get to Mars. But the real challenge is not getting there, it’s what to eat.

“Space agriculture is what’s required for long-term space exploration,” Mike Dixon, director of the controlled environment systems research facility at the University of Guelph, said Tuesday during a space conference in Montreal. “We can’t afford to keep shipping water, oxygen and Kraft dinner to the moon indefinitely.”

Full Story: Dysnomia

From the ever wonderful Japan blog, Pink Tentacle:

Space transportation provider Rocketplane Kistler Japan has teamed up with wedding planner First Advantage to begin hosting weddings aboard the Rocketplane XP suborbital spaceplane. A cool 240 million yen ($2.2 million) buys you a wedding ceremony aboard a 1-hour space flight that reaches an altitude of more than 100 kilometers (62.1 miles), as well as a photo and video album, original dress, wedding certificate and other ceremonial items. The otherworldly price tag also includes the cost of transportation to and from the launch site, accommodations, a live broadcast of the ceremony to friends and family at a reception hall on the ground, and 4 days of rehearsal. The space wedding services are scheduled to begin in 2011, but the group will start accepting applications early next month.

(post title swiped from Tomorrow Museum, who saw the post first)

Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on 15 June 2008.
The finding suggests that parts of the raw materials to make the first molecules of DNA and RNA may have come from the stars.

The scientists, from Europe and the USA, say that their research, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, provides evidence that life’s raw materials came from sources beyond the Earth.

The materials they have found include the molecules uracil and xanthine, which are precursors to the molecules that make up DNA and RNA, and are known as nucleobases.

The team discovered the molecules in rock fragments of the Murchison meteorite, which crashed in Australia in 1969.

Full Story: Physorg

(via Warren Ellis)

The launch of China’s third manned space flight, the Shenzhou VII, with a crew of three “taikonauts” has been set for October, state media reported on Thursday.

A short-list of six “taikonauts” or astronauts had already been selected for the flight and would be whittled down to a crew of three before the October launch, Xinhua news agency said, citing a spokesman for the mission.

“One member of the flight crew will undergo a space walk and undertake relevant scientific experiments,” the spokesman said.

Full Story: Breitbart

(via dynomia.us)

An, *ahem* slightly less green means to lay the dead to rest but it does have its appeal:

The moon could become a final resting place for some of mankind thanks to a commercial service that hopes to send human ashes to the lunar surface on robotic landers, the company said on Thursday.

Celestis, Inc., a company that pioneered the sending of cremated remains into suborbital space on rockets, said it would start a service to the surface of the moon that could begin as early as next year.

The cost starts at $10,000 for a small quantity of ashes from one person.

Full Story: Reuters

(via Nerdshit)

A new study is challenging the long-standing notion that the whole solar system formed from the same raw materials.

Until now most scientists had believed that the inner solar system bodies-Mercury, Venus, Earth, its moon, and Mars-had the same composition as primitive meteorites called chondrites.

But, problematically, Earth’s chemistry doesn’t quite match.

Now, French researcher Guillaume Caro, from Centre de Recherches P�trographiques et G�ochimiques in France, and his colleagues say that the makeup of Mars and the moon don’t correspond either.

It turns out the three bodies may be more similar to each other than the chondrite-rich asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter.

Full Story: National Geographic

“Dr HongSheng Zhao, of the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, has shown that the puzzling dark matter and its counterpart dark energy may be more closely linked than was previously thought. Only 4% of the universe is made of known material - the other 96% is traditionally labelled into two sectors, dark matter and dark energy. A British astrophysicist and Advanced Fellow of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, Dr Zhao points out, ‘Both dark matter and dark energy could be two faces of the same coin.

‘As astronomers gain understanding of the subtle effects of dark energy in galaxies in the future, we will solve the mystery of astronomical dark matter at the same time. Astronomers believe that both the universe and galaxies are held together by the gravitational attraction of a huge amount of unseen material, first noted by the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in 1933, and now commonly referred to as dark matter. Dr Zhao reports that, “Dark energy has already revealed its presence by masking as dark matter 60 years ago if we accept that dark matter and dark energy are linked phenomena that share a common origin.’

(via PhysOrg)

(Related: virtual tour of the Large Hadron Collider via Popular Science Blog)

“Two groups of man-made cup markings carved on a pair of boulders found in the Italian Alps may represent the Pleiades star cluster, according to the archaeo-astronomer Guido Cossard. The carvings have been found near the Plan des Sorci�res - literally ‘The witches’ plateau’ - at Lillianes, in Val d’Aosta (Italy). According to Mr Cossard, who made the discovery, the series of cup markings have the same shape as the famous star cluster, and it may represent ‘the most ancient star map ever found’. “Even the archaeo-astronomical orientation of the site is a confirmation, because it’s clearly aligned to the rising point of the Pleiades,” added Cossard.”

(via Archaeo News)

Life Extension - As covered previously here on Technoccult, aspirin is the best life extension drug on the market. And it’s cheap. See: Top Ten Life Extension Drugs.

Intelligence amplification - Mind machines and smart drugs never did live up to the hype, which is probably why you don’t hear much about them anymore. I actually conducted some trials with volunteers using a brain entrainment machine for my cognitive science class in college. The results: the machine didn’t do jack. I was only ever able to experiment with self-medication with smart drugs, but my general conclusion is that some of them work as stimulants (piracetum, vassopressin) but they’re not worth the money.

The good news is, there are some new high tech intelligence amplification tools on the market: “brain fitness” games like Brain Age and Lumosity. I’m not sure how much good it will do, though. See Seed Magazine’s coverage.

Virtual Reality - We’re still waiting on decent immersive VR, but the Nintendo Wii has brought some elements of VR to homes.

Brain Backups - There’s no wetware brain backup, but if you want to preserve your knowledge for all of eternity, you can try posting the contents of your brain on the web. Google and the Internet Archive (backed by Amazon) are both attempting to archive and back-up the entire web.

Space Migration - Like brain backups, this remains vaporware. But space tourism and private space programs are taking off, including one by Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos.

Received a link from Mr. Zaitsev’s comment on the “Who Speaks For Earth” post. Since it’s no longer on this page I thought I’d post the link to his earlier paper for those who would like to read it.

“There is a close interrelation between Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). For example, the answers to the questions “Where to search” and “Where to send” are equivalent, in that both require an identical selection from the same target star lists. Similar considerations lead to a strategy of time synchronization between sending and searching. Both SETI and METI use large reflectors. The concept of “magic frequencies” may be applicable to both SETI and METI. Efforts to understand an alien civilization’s Interstellar Messages (IMs), and efforts to compose our own IMs so they will be easily understood by unfamiliar Extraterrestrials, are mutually complementary. Furthermore, the METI-question: “How can we benefit from sending IMs, if a response may come only thousands of years later?” begs an equivalent SETI-question: “How can we benefit from searching, if it is impossible now to perceive the motivations and feelings of those who may have sent messages in the distant past?” A joint consideration of the theoretical and the practical aspects of both sending and searching for IMs, in the framework of a unified, disciplined scientific approach, can be quite fruitful. We seek to resolve the cultural disconnect between those who advocate sending interstellar messages, and others who anathematize those who would transmit.”

(Sending and Searching for Interstellar Messages)

(Link to other papers written by Alexander Zaitsev)

(Thanks to Alexander Zaitsev!)

“Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth. Though he officially uses it to conduct the Institute’s planetary radar studies, Zaitsev is also trying to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. He believes extraterrestrial intelligence exists, and that we as a species have a moral obligation to announce our presence to our sentient neighbors in the Milky Way-to let them know they are not alone. If everyone in the galaxy only listens, he reasons, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is doomed to failure.

Zaitsev has already sent several powerful messages to nearby, sun-like stars-a practice called “Active SETI.” But some scientists feel that he’s not only acting out of turn, but also independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet. Moreover, they believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness, and if anyone plans to transmit messages from Earth, they want the rest of the world to be involved.”

(via Seed)

US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book published yesterday.

Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in The Final Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both at Nasa and at mission control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have taken place.

[...]

Only four positions were found possible without “mechanical assistance”. The other six needed a special elastic belt and inflatable tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag.

Mr Kohler says: “One of the principal findings was that the classic so-called missionary position, which is so easy on earth when gravity pushes one downwards, is simply not possible.”

Full Story: Guardian.

(via Robot Wisdom)

Isn’t it strange that our mythical Gods and Goddesses live “up there”- as opposed to the terrible spirits and demons who reside in the hot, fiery core of the regions “down there?” Can it be that some part of us has its roots in deep space? Are we descended from a species that is not planet bound? There, again, is the eternal question! Why is there this mass obsession with the sky?

Despite the numerous “saucer flaps,” and the intriguing speculations concerning artifacts of dead civlizations, is it the opinion of this writer that the true revelations which will lay bare our beginnings are still matters for the distant future. Our capabilities for achieving the truth are unfortunately too limited in this age. The hope lies with the evolution of instruments forged in the technical tinker shops of today. When they’ve reached the proper stage, they will guide our hands to the truth.

Full Story: Jack Kirby.

(Thanks James K!)

“How many dimensions space has could all be a matter of perspective. In a school of thought that teaches the existence of extra dimensions, Juan Maldacena may at first sound a little out of place. String theory is physicists’ still-tentative strategy for reconciling Einstein’s theory of gravitation with quantum physics. Its premise is that the subatomic particles that roam our three-dimensional world are really infinitesimally thin strings vibrating in nine dimensions. According to Maldacena, however, the key to understanding string theory is not to add more dimensions but to cut their number down.

But, the most important fallout from Maldacena’s intuition has probably been on the field of string theory itself. His work has offered physicists hope that they can make the string idea rigorous by tracing its roots to ordinary quantum physics. Maldacena’s conjecture has energized string theory advocates, occupying the center of a confluence of ideas coming from several branches of physics. “It’s the most incredible discovery in theoretical physics in the last 20 years,” says Harvard University’s Nima Arkani-Hamed. ”

via Streams of Consciousness

Shadow World

(see also Mobius Transformations)

“No, this is not a review of Star Trek. Rather, it is an examination of the possibility of real faster than light travel. And if you think this has nothing to do with the news, then think again.
This week sees the British Interplanetary Society holding a conference to discuss the possibilities of a warp drive, thus making travel to the stars a real possibility. Physicists will be attending from all over the planet - arriving by conventional means, of course.”

(Thanks to Anthony North and Beyond The Blog!)

Beyond the Blog

Warp Drive, When?

“Fears of an alien invasion created greater alarm in the US than the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack, writes Philippe Mora.

In January 1979, The New York Times reported that despite repeated, feverish denials, the CIA had indeed investigated the UFO phenomenon: “CIA Papers Detail UFO Surveillance” screamed the headline. The report is said to have so upset the then CIA director, Stansfield Turner, that he reportedly asked his staff: “Are we in UFOs?” The answer was yes - since the late 1940s, apparently. But exactly how, what, when, why and who remained layered in mystery, leaving grist for the conspiracy mill.

But this year a raft of newly unclassified CIA documents revealed that the remote possibility of alien invasion elicited greater fear than the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack.”

via The Sydney Morning Herald

“Researchers from Austria and Slovenia have developed a device called Brainloop which can be used to navigate in Google Earth:

Brainloop is an interactive performance platform that utilizes a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system which allows a subject to operate devices merely by imagining specific motor commands. These mentally visualized commands may be seen as the rehearsal of a motor act without the overt motor output; a neural synapse occurs but the actual movement is blocked at the corticospinal level. Motor imagery such as “move left hand”, “move right hand” or “move feet” become non-muscular communication and control signals that convey messages and commands to the external world. In Brainloop the performer is able - without physically moving - to investigate urban areas and rural landscapes as he globe-trots around virtual Google Earth. Through motor imagery, he selects locations, camera angles and positions and records these image sequences in a virtual world. In the second half of the performance, he plays back the sequence and uses Brainloop to compose a custom soundtrack by selecting, manipulating and re-locating audio recordings in real time into the physical space.”

(Be sure to check out the video on the Neurophilosophy site)

via Neurophilosophy

Brainloop

“Space exploration is about to enter a third age where nations will cooperate to explore the solar system.

Nicolas Peter, a research fellow at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), told the meeting in Vienna that the era of launching space missions to bolster national prestige was long past and that new opportunities for cooperation had emerged since the end of the Cold War. He predicted that an imminent third phase of space exploration could inspire nations to work together in a spirit of discovery.

The Vienna conference Humans in Outer Space - Interdisciplinary Odysseys on October 11-12, was billed as ‘the first comprehensive trans-disciplinary dialogue on humans in outer space.’ It brought space scientists face to face with historians, lawyers, political analysts, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, writers and others. It was organised jointly by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Vienna-based ESPI.

What Peter described as ‘Space Exploration 3.0′ is about to begin. He said that while humans will play a major role in space in future it would no longer be in the context of competing states but in cooperation between many parties. ‘It will involve industry, universities and other non-governmental organisations. This adventure will be driven primarily by a quest for knowledge, involving not only the hard sciences but arts and humanities as well. We’re evolving towards an open market situation where a lot of new actors will be able to join the new space race.’

via EurekAlert

Scientists have discovered a warm and rocky “second Earth” circling a star, a find they believe dramatically boosts the prospects that we are not alone.

The planet is the most Earth-like ever spotted and is thought to have perfect conditions for water, an essential ingredient for life. Researchers detected the planet orbiting one of Earth’s nearest stars, a cool red dwarf called Gliese 581, 20 light years away in the constellation of Libra.

Full Story: The Guardian.