A Vision For Tomorrow - To Boldly Go
What if we could build a ship that could take hundreds of people to the moon in just three days? How about Mars in 90 days? What if we had a telescope more powerful than the Hubble, that could be moved wherever we wanted? How about being able to deliver probes, science equipment and landers to the entire near solar system within a few years?
This guy thinks it can be done. More specifically, not only can it be done, it should be done. BuildTheEnterprise.org (an extremely deeply detailed website, btw) is a 20 year plan to build a $1 trillion space cruiser. It could have ion drives, a rotating gravity disk, crew quarters for hundreds of scientists and tourists. It would probably have one of those machines where you could call order any food you wanted and it would materialize in front of you. And it would look exactly like the Enterprise from Star Trek.
Of course, it doesn’t have to look like the ship from the sci-fi series. Why not make it look like something else? Maybe something more … traditional? Think about this: if that world and those adventures have been able to capture the imaginations of the world, young and old, for decades … what better inspiration could we ask for? The schematics and build schedules call for $50 billion a year over 20 years, which is a drop in the bucket of our national budget. It would transform economies and unite the world’s innovators to create this ship - the pinnacle of human achievement.
But most of all, it would serve as a bridge between our dreams and reality, and a seed for the scientific dreamers of tomorrow.
It’s part thought experiment, part pipe dream, part social statement and part why don’t we just give this a shot already??? The project has a funding plan, complete conceptual designs, and ship specs. More than you can say for a lot of Kickstarter projects.
It’s nice to dream a dream like this, based in a vision of the future that’s not as far off as your first glance makes it seem.
Bonus: The time that they almost built a life-sizeEnterprise in Las Vegas. Morons. YOU SHOULD HAVE.
(via BuildTheEnterprise; This artwork was done by me, and is proof that I shouldn’t be given access to Illustrator and booze after dark)
Oh hi, aliens, I didn’t know you were coming over. I would have cleaned up.
SMBC takes a look at a future Earth, where we’re all a bunch of bachelors and an alien race is coming over to our pad to visit.
We’ve got some cleaning up to do. Hint: It doesn’t go as planned. But it ends with hope. Check out the full saga.
“Perhaps it was good that we believed aliens were coming. Perhaps we should always live as if we’re about to invite an otherworldly mate over to dinner. Perhaps… perhaps… for a moment, we all inhaled the chamomile odor of perhaps.”
Apparently this is how xkcd creator Randall Munroe pays his Verizon bill.
That’s one way to stick it to the man. It’s also awesome.
(Edit 5/20: The original version of this included a caption saying the math worked out to $536.49. But there’s a typo in the caption. It’s iπ, not 2π. Now that I am awake enough to do the math, it works out to equal 0.002, and is a reference to this facepalmingly dumb experience with Verizon’s billing department. Original here.)
Explore An Interactive Human Microbiome
Who’s in you? SciAm introduces you to the microbes that not only outnumber the cells in your body, but make you human (click through for interactive version).
(via Scientific American)
I’ve never been lucky enough to see one of these, have you? Make no mistake, though, they’re real. The technical term for the fire rainbow is a circumhorizontal arc.
High in the atmosphere, cirrus clouds form as wispy layers of ice that can stretch on for hundreds of miles. As light from the sun hits it, it refracts as if it was being shone through a prism.
This refraction happens because when light goes from one medium to another, like from air to water or air to ice, it can be bent. Different wavelengths are bent to different extents, separating white light into its component colors.
Want to know more? Check out this Khan Academy lesson on refraction.
(via Kuriositas)
Eureka! When a Blow to the Head Creates a Sudden Genius
Could a brain injury unlock an unknown talent? A look at the phenomenon of the “acquired savant”:
It sounds like science fiction. But the reality may be even more outlandish. Now that scientists understand how savant syndrome occurs, new research is turning to the underlying origins of the special abilities themselves. Most of it remains a mystery — a loose collection of questions more than anything resembling answers. For example, how is it that somebody like Derek Amato, who’d never demonstrated any musical talent before hitting his head at the bottom of a pool, could suddenly handle jazz and classical pieces of astounding complexity without training? How is it that someone can suffer a stroke and wake up later only to discover that their English is tinged with a foreign accent?
Q:Hello, Joe! Speaking of the upcoming eclipse, I've been wondering: All my life, I've been warned not to look directly at an eclipse. I'm perfectly happy to obey this, but I'm wondering now about how bad the damage is compared to looking at the sun when it is unobstructed. Are you not supposed to look at the eclipse because there's still enough of the sun showing to cause its usual amount of damage (and people just stare longer)? Or is the sunlight somehow more damaging during an eclipse?
There’s nothing more dangerous about viewing the eclipse with your naked eye than looking at the whole sun. Because they are both INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS. Your eye has a lens that focuses light on your retina. To replicate this, take a piece of paper and a magnifying glass outside. Just don’t look directly at the sun, ever. Even with shades like mine.
dellpafalla asked you:
Hey! I’m right in the path of the annular solar eclipse on sunday, and I was wondering if you had any tips for the amateur photographer! I’d really like to be able to take pictures of it, and I was wondering if there were any solar filters that you’d be able to recommend, or even some diy sort of things to do/use for viewing in general. It’s something I’d like to try to experience by myself instead of relying on the experts, and mass media coverage and whatnot, haha. I love your blog! Thanks! :D
Witnessing a solar eclipse is a truly remarkable experience. It’s powerful. Powerful enough that our ancestors thought it meant that perhaps the great fiery sun god was putting his hand over his face, ashamed of his subjects, and most likely damning the crops should they not provide a human sacrifice.
Want to know where and when you can see the eclipse? Check out this map from Eclipse Maps.
Here’s some tips on viewing the annular solar eclipse. This is called a “ring of fire” eclipse, because unlike during the “Supermoon” a couple weeks ago, the moon is now at its furthest point from Earth (apogee) in its elliptical orbit. This makes it appear slightly smaller, not quite blocking out the sun, and leading to images like this:
Sorry, I mean like this:
First of all, DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN with the naked eye, or through an unfiltered telescope or binoculars. Your eyes will essentially act like little magnifying glasses, but instead of an ant catching on fire it will be your retina. Only view an eclipse through a certified solar filter or via a secondary viewing technique.
Photographing an eclipse is much harder than simply observing it. You need a special filter for your camera like this, and lots of practice. I would recommend finding some local experienced solar and astronomy photographers to make sure you do it safely.
But t you can also construct some pretty simple DIY viewing setups. Here’s some based on a pinhole camera design. Here’s another, involving a couple of boxes.
Lastly, if you don’t live in the narrow window of Earth that will be able to see it directly, don’t despair! You can watch it online via the SLOOH Space Camera!!
Let me know if you see something cool, and tweet me or message me with pictures, everyone! And, don’t forget your sacrifice.
Fringe Science
This listing is for the entire series of Fringe science experiment inspired iconography art prints. “Warning: An Experiment of Great Importance in Progress.” Collect all your favorite Fringe science posters and show your friends and family that you believe in the future.
I may just need to build another wall in my house or lab or mad scientist den so I can hang all these up.
Support cool science art and click on the Etsy link!
Space Program: Mars
Mars on the Upper East Side?
Tom Sachs is a sculptor and artist, perhaps best known for his playful takes on cultural icons like the Hermès Hand Grenade and the Tiffany Glock. From May 16 - June 17, he’ll be simulating a Mars mission at the Park Avenue Armory.
Of course, this won’t be like any other Mars sim you’ve ever seen. These young, attractive astronauts will be surrounded by an environment created by Sachs, from vehicles to space suits to exercise facilities. The fourteen astronauts will man the display full time, regularly playing out launch, landing and other scenarios.
I think it’s a very cool exploration of how our culture has turned space missions into pop icons, blurring the distinctions between their intent (scientific missions) and their legacy (real-life science fiction). In our minds, decades after they occurred, the Apollo missions might be closer to 2001 than they are to reality.
If you can’t make it to the show, don’t miss his other videos, like this Al Green-influenced lunar mission. Also, I want those NASA hi-tops. Now.
Craig Venter has been on a tear of invention and exploration. In 2004 he sailed around the world, discovering thousands of new species and sequencing millions of new genes. In 2007 he unveiled his own genome, unexpurgated (it revealed a predisposition for risk-taking, among other things). And in 2010 he announced the first successful synthesis of life—a unique critter borne from two distinct organisms, thus proving for the first time that it is indeed possible to create new organisms for specific purposes and functions. He is, in every respect, the epitome of an icon—a figure who has pushed science forward, sometimes by sheer force of will.
Photo: Joe Pugliese
Everyone’s favorite genome cowboy, profiled at Wired Science.
To get your appetite going, here’s some of his words about how the human genome project panned out, and where we’re going from here (emphasis mine):
“… what most people think about when it comes to genetics is personalized medicine. If we sequence your genome or my genome, what can we interpret, what can we predict for the future, what can we change? That’s in its absolute infancy. We’re at the point where we don’t need one genome or just a few genomes to interpret your genome. We need tens of thousands of genomes as a starting point, coupled with everything we can know about their physiology. It’s only when we do that giant computer search, putting all that DNA together, that we will be able to make sense in a meaningful statistical manner of what your DNA is telling you. We’re just at the start of trying to do that.”
Space Program: MARS
Just a little teaser. You may end up wishing you were in NYC this month.
FUCK YEAH, SPACE EXPLORATION: Alien Still Hasn't Gotten Around To Listening To Whole Voyager Golden Record
47 U. MAJORIS STAR SYSTEM—Roughly 18 months after discovering the collection of common Earth sounds contained on the golden record placed aboard the Voyager probe NASA launched in 1977, extraterrestrial Richard Ellinger, 237, admitted Friday he still hasn’t gotten around to listening to the whole thing. ”The wind, rain, and surf sounds are pretty cool, but I usually sort of zone out when it gets to the crickets chirping, and then I just end up turning it off,” said Ellinger, adding that he will sometimes put the record on as background noise when he’s cleaning his electro-biological habitat. ”And to be totally honest, I almost always skip that track with the mother kissing her baby. It’s like, ’Who cares?’ you know?” Ellinger said he plans on taking a few things he likes off the record—such as the traditional Peruvian wedding song, the humpback whale calls, and the tractor noises—and throwing them on a mix with some Elvis Costello classics.
Only a matter of time before some alien version of Girl Talk just remxies the highlights anyway.
I offered several (unconvincing) reasons why it was reasonable to assume that the subject’s reports of change were credible and not self-deception or outright lying. But the simple fact is that there was no way to determine if the subject’s accounts of change were valid.
I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some “highly motivated” individuals.
Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Spitzer, apologizing for his 2001 study implying that “reparative therapy” could change gay people to straight.
He renounced the study’s findings last year. Here’s more from The American Prospect. Full text of the letter at Truthwinsout.org.
harbard reblogged your quote: … when people thought the earth was flat, they…
HANG on the earth is spherical?
Actually it’s not. It’s an oblate spheroid. We’ve talked about it before.
