Various experiments worldwide have proven this fundament of quantum theory. However, up to now last doubts could not be ruled out completely. Advocates of “local realism,” by which the classical world is governed, refer to several “loopholes” which have been identified in order to save their world view. Now, physicists from the group of Prof. Anton Zeilinger at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Vienna, Austria, have closed an important loophole in photonic experiments which use quantum entanglement to rule out a local realistic explanation of nature.

The work got theoretical support from Dr. Johannes Kofler from the group of Prof. Ignacio Cirac at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany, and experimental assistance from researchers at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig Germany, as well as the National Institute of Standards (NIST) in Boulder, USA. The results are published this week in Nature.

For today, post a marathon that's existed since 1897, I know nothing else to say...for the sad deaths and injury of innocents. Donne seemed appropriate, as we lose forever collectively our innocence.

"In 1945, Jackie played one season in the Negro Baseball League, traveling all over the Midwest with the Kansas City Monarchs. But greater challenges and achievements were in store for him. In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey approached Jackie about joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Major Leagues had not had an African-American player since 1889, when baseball became segregated. When Jackie first donned a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, he pioneered the integration of professional athletics in America. By breaking the color barrier in baseball, the nation's preeminent sport, he courageously challenged the deeply rooted custom of racial segregation in both the North and the South."

"As the youngest and only son of four children, Edward Alexander Bouchet was born to William and Susan (Cooley) Bouchet in New Haven on September 15, 1852. During the 1850s and 1860s New Haven had only three schools that black children could attend. Edward was enrolled in the Artisan Street Colored School, a small (only thirty seats), ungraded school with one teacher, Sarah Wilson, who played a crucial role in nurturing Bouchet's academic abilities and his desire to learn. He attended the New Haven High School (1866-1868).

As a SyFy novel, it's not for the faint-of-heart, nor slight of attention span, as in you really need to know your Trek Universe. Without giving up too much of the plot, it does raise some interesting caveats: it points out in its fictional realm authoritarians typically want control over others, and fight any change - Warp Drive or 1st Contact, even the kind that insures the survival of the species. This Zephram Cochrane is more like the one in TOS versus the TNG/Borg Paramount version. It's kind of like reading The Pursuit of Happyness, and then seeing the movie (I did). As in "Pursuit," both remarkably different from each other, but each deeply satisfying in their own right.

How does it relate to this post? One way is the well worn cliche "life imitates art," but the other that concerned me as I flew through this enjoyable novel: what forces would try to resist this next "giant leap for mankind?" If I've learned anything, science is political, and our current in-species prejudices could quickly (and disastrously, I'm afraid) become xenophobia.

I'd love to live to see this happen. Wars are either fought over limited resources, or in our nature. Initially, a Moon or Mars base, then further out like Titan, a candidate for microbial extraterrestrial life as well as Terraforming; also a base of operations further from the sun's gravity well, like growing crystals on the ISS in Earth orbit could lead to physics experiments essentially macro scale versions of what's proposed above.

The world (and the universe) would indeed become a very small place.

Thank you Dr. Mae Jemison and Dr. Miguel Alcubierre.

Wine grape production's sensitivity to climate makes it a good test case for what could happen over the next several decades. And the land suitable for viticulture in current major wine producing regions could be reduced by 20% to 70% by 2050, depending on the amount of greenhouse gases produced, the researchers said this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An increasingly affluent global population is likely to create more demand for wine and ensure that wine grapes will continue to be grown in current areas as much as possible and be grown in new areas as well, the researchers said.

The strategies elucidated are not just applicable for graduate school, but the struggle for education and therefore true freedom, a brighter future and self-empowerment ("knowledge is power"), which is beyond one particular subject, or group. I found it enlightening; I hope you do as well, and I sincerely hope it helps inspire action and the next leaders in science.

Sadly, it's not just avoidance of science and/or the conclusions of science: in Snow's day, neither the twain met, and both disdained one another as being without value. His third culture: a merger of science and humanities in the human species, and an appreciation for both (pulled off quite well in Star Trek - take your pick of which version), never materialized.

In the chapter titled "The Rich and the Poor," he couldn't be more blunt:

"Nevertheless, that isn't the main issue of the scientific revolution. The main issue is that the people in the industrialized countries are getting richer, and those in the non-industrialized countries are at best standing still: so that the gap between the industrialized countries and the rest is widening every day. On the world scale this is the gap between the rich and the poor."

An actual example:

We are all part of a "bewildered herd," prodded by the rod and staff of what our socially acceptable stalls are on the "Animal Farm." What we should be teaching is STEM can be as significant as a pillar of fire by night and smoke by day; it can split a sea of reeds and be the modern underground railroad to emancipation. Instead of mastering levels and cypher, we need to master Calculus and Physics!

The numbers are not optimistic. Anthropologists think some 70 billion humans have so far lived on Earth. If we assume that we have no special status in human history, then simple probabilistic arguments suggest that there is a 95 per cent chance that we are among the last 95 per cent of humans that will ever be born. And this means there is a 95 per cent chance that the total number of humans that will ever exist will be less than 20 x 70 billion or 1.4 trillion.

These guys look at the scenario in which many civilisations have evolved throughout the universe, the so-called “universal doomsday” argument. “In that case, we should consider ourselves to be randomly chosen from all individuals in that universe or multiverse,” they say.

Now suppose that the world population stabilises at 10 billion and our life expectancy is 80 years, then the remaining humans will be born in the next 10,000 years. That’s not a long future for humanity. Today, Austin Gerig at the University of Oxford and a couple of pals put forward a new argument with a (slightly) happier ending.

These guys look at the scenario in which many civilisations have evolved throughout the universe, the so-called “universal doomsday” argument. “In that case, we should consider ourselves to be randomly chosen from all individuals in that universe or multiverse,” they say.

In the past, these universal arguments have been no more optimistic than the ordinary ones. They generally state that long-lived civilizations must be rare because if they were not, we would be living in one. What’s more, because long-lived civilizations are rare, the prospects for our civilisation ever becoming long-lived are poor.

This new approach approach allows Gerig and co to take a more fine-grained look at the odds that humanity will survive for much longer in future than it has existed in the past.

The results are complex but their main conclusion gives some reason for hope. “If [the number of existential threats] is not too large, the probability of long-term survival is about a few percent,” they say.