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Loose relation (to the Bloomberg embed) Star Trek Federation:
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.
Thursday we lost comedian, actor, writer and painter Jonathan Winters. I've been a fan of his since the early days of the Tonight Show, hosted by Jack Paar.
Winter's improv talents were an inspiration to me from the very start, and made him the inveterate story teller. To be able to create a story, a world even, on the spot with no backup other than one's own fertile mind was an enviable talent.
As a novelist and screen writer, these skills were not as important as during my time as an on-air radio personality, and later as a stand-up comedian; improvisational creation was a skill I cherished even as I tried daily to become more facile with its use.
It's a shame that lazy journalists list Winter's short stint as Murph on Mork and Mindy as the biggest footnote of his remarkable career. Though he was not as visible on stage, or on the air, as in previous decades, I will miss him and mourn his passing.
Great review by author Susan Keefe...
..."The author has an amazing imagination and insight into cyberspace. This book is fast moving and exciting with enough imaginative future technology to keep even the most demanding technophobe happy."
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Stars in the outer regions of spiral galaxy M74 move much more quickly than expected if they were held in orbit only by the visible matter. The best explanation is that they are being pulled by a large halo of unseen, dark matter. (Credit: Gemini Observatory/GMOS Team) |
Five-sixths of the universe is missing. That statement feels strange to write, and I’m sure it feels pretty strange to read as well. Given the vastness of the cosmos–and given how little of it humans have explored–how can we know for sure that anything is out of place? The claim sounds positively arrogant, if not delusional.
And yet scientists have assembled a nearly airtight case that the majority of the matter in the universe consists dark matter, a substance which is both intrinsically invisible and fundamentally different in composition than the familiar atoms that make up stars and planets. In the face of staggering difficulties, researchers like Samuel Ting of MIT are even making progress in figuring out what dark matter is, as evidence by teasing headlines from last week. Time to come to terms, then, with the new reality about our place in the universe. Here are seven key things every informed citizen of the cosmos should know.
- Dark matter is real.
- Dark matter can be visible...sometimes.
- Dark matter might show up here on Earth.
- We might be able to create our own dark matter.
- Dark matter is a totally different thing from dark energy.
- The dark stuff really dominates.
- The dark universe might have a life of its own.
Discovery Out There: Your 7-Step Guide to the Shadow Universe, Cory S. Powell
A little more warming could lead to a little less of this (or, at least a higher price):
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| East town |
That bottle of Bordeaux you put aside may become even rarer in the next few decades as climate change could reduce wine grape production in traditional parts of the world and move it elsewhere, researchers say. Danish Cabernet, anyone?
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.
LA Times: French wine could get pricey, climate change study says
I am very proud to announce my eBook, How to Publish on Kindle, Smashwords, & Nook the Easy Way! will be coming to an e-outlet to you soon. I don't have a date yet as I'm lining up some promotions (more on that in the coming weeks), but I hope to have a few giveaways.
This is a book for new and first-time self-published authors who don't know how to negotiate the on-line aspects of publishing. Nook just turned away from the Pubit! website and first-timers might still be trying to go there to no avail. But the book will also cover where people can go for effective, eye-catching covers and marketing.
I'll be teaching a class on publishing at local libraries that will cover much of the same information. Hopefully, I can cross a few state lines and do some classes too, but we'll see!
Please like my Facebook page for more information, including future dates where I'll be teaching: http://on.fb.me/14iRWPY
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1036306318/afronauts
July 1969. It’s the night of the moon landing. And a ragtag group of Zambian exiles are trying to beat America to the moon.
Based on a true story.
Now Available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C0NTLJG Preview the book before you buy!
Now Available on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C0NTLJG
Preview the book before you buy!
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| Levitation via superconductivity - Wikipedia |
I fear ignorance and greed have tied us to fossil fuels until like the Lorax...you know the rest.
Superconductors can radically change energy management as we know it, but most are commercially unusable because they only work close to absolute zero. A research group at EPFL has now published an innovative approach that may help us understand and use superconductivity at more realistic temperatures.
Superconductors are materials that allow electrical current to flow with no energy loss, a phenomenon that can lead to a vastly energy-efficient future (imagine computers that never overheat). Although most superconductors work close to absolute zero (0°K or -273.15°C), some can operate at higher temperatures (around -135°C) – but how that happens is something of a mystery. Publishing in a recent PNAS article, Fabrizio Carbone’s Laboratory for Ultrafast Microscopy and Electron Scattering (LUMES) at EPFL has developed a method that can shed light on “high-temperature” superconductivity.
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| NASA Astronaut and Associate Administrator for Education, Leland Melvin, talks to children during STEM event at Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Arlington, Virginia, Jan 13, 2013. CREDIT: NASA/Bill Ingalls |
By now, I hope you've heard that NASA has put into suspended animation many of its educational and non-media public outreach, including their STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education programs. This is until it can review all of those programs.
It sounds like an April Fools' Day joke, doesn't it? Believe me, it’s real. If you hadn't heard about all this, it’s probably because the various news media haven’t covered it much. It seems to me that the American people (and the world) ought to know what's happening.
I understand that NASA was forced to make some cuts in order to abide by the sequester. But, I’d never have thought our space agency would even consider pausing or deleting so much of something so important to the future of NASA and of the United States as education and outreach.
I hope that these cuts are temporary, a way to force Congress into repealing the sequester for NASA. If it's not, and these cuts are made permanent, the world will lose something special — that NASA magic. [Petition Asks White House to Reverse NASA Outreach Sequester Cuts]
The end has begun as Pandora 001prototype personal android returns in the last week of April! HEPHESTUS CORP's premiere product finds her arrival on the 'Super Earth' AIPOTU is received with unexpected (and unwanted) fanfare. If she thought the attention from her 'fan club' aboard DROMEDARY was obnoxious, she is in for a rude awakening down on the planet! But amidst the throngs of admirer's and would be purchasers of her series, there are shocking revelations which may be more than the Galaxy's unique Manufactured Being can bear. While Pandora shows off why and android like her is worth, the PROMETHEUS GROUP Extraction team hatches a daring plan to board DROMEDARY. Unknown to all, time is not on their side as the actions of powerful entities force Pandora into making a critical choice in the season finale of, The PAnd0RA Ultimatum EPISODE FIVE: Ultimatum!
Preview the first chapter at New-Wave Sci-Fi!
Check out customer reviews on Amazon:
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| Black Youth Project - yes, I signed the pledge (see link) |
I've received permission from the author of this paper to post it on this blog. I'm an advocate of STEM fields, particularly in underrepresented groups, especially when graduate schools are seeing a decline in enrollment from foreign students; those same foreign scholars seen as a boost to the economy. So can minority students: United States citizens. I'm not against immigration of STEM talented or labor workers, but our students are here: now.
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.
Survival Strategies for African American Astronomers and Astrophysicists
JC Holbrook, PhD, Astrophysics
University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract
The question of how to increase the number of women and minorities in astronomy has been approached from several directions in the United States including examination of admission policies, mentoring, and hiring practices. These point to departmental efforts to improve conditions for some of the students which has the overall benefit of improving conditions for all of the students. However, women and minority astronomers have managed to obtain doctorates even within the non-welcoming environment of certain astronomy and physics departments. I present here six strategies used by African American men and women to persevere if not thrive long enough to earn their doctorate. Embedded in this analysis is the idea of ‘astronomy culture’ and experiencing astronomy culture as a cross-cultural experience including elements of culture shock. These survival strategies are not exclusive to this small subpopulation but have been used by majority students, too.
Physics arXiv:
Survival Strategies for African American Astronomers and Astrophysicists
Kickstarter:
Black Sun: Documentary Film about the 2012 Solar Eclipses
OK, I'm a Trekkie, but not a "blind faith" Trekkie. On Star Trek: Of Gods and Men...eh. There's a reason things go "straight to video," or the movie given out free if you go to their site. Wait for the Hollywood scriptwriters/producers/etc. The above embed is an inspiring last video of Neil Armstrong and James Doohan ("Scotty") before they both "beamed up."
TV Movie Site: Star Trek Renegades
Caressa felt her way into the water, the coolness sweeping over her toes like a welcoming friend. She stepped gingerly, feeling the smooth, soft squishy sand on the bottom of the lake. The quiet of nighttime disturbed only by the gentle lapping of the water around her. She stepped further into its deceptively gentle embrace...
Read more: http://caressamoon.blogspot.com
“I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. Why is the Moon round? the children ask. Why is grass green? What is a dream? How deep can you dig a hole? When is the world’s birthday? Why do we have toes? Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else: ‘What did you expect the Moon to be, square?’ Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before 6-year-olds, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that we don’t know something? Is our self-esteem so fragile?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
...and the Daleks, Sith Lords, Romulans, etc.
Researchers at The University of Auckland have proposed a new method for finding Earth-like planets and they anticipate that the number will be in the order of 100 billion using gravitational microlensing, currently used by a Japan-New Zealand collaboration called MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) at New Zealand's Mt John Observatory. Their work will appear in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Lead author Dr Phil Yock from the University of Auckland's Department of Physics explains that the work will require a combination of data from microlensing and the NASA Kepler space telescope. *"Kepler finds Earth-sized planets that are quite close to parent stars, and it estimates that there are 17 billion such planets in the Milky Way. These planets are generally hotter than Earth, although some could be of a similar temperature (and therefore habitable) if they're orbiting a cool star called a red dwarf."
"Our proposal is to measure the number of Earth-mass planets orbiting stars at distances typically twice the Sun-Earth distance. Our planets will therefore be cooler than the Earth. By interpolating between the Kepler and MOA results, we should get a good estimate of the number of Earth-like, habitable planets in the Galaxy. We anticipate a number in the order of 100 billion."
Daily Galaxy: Earth-Like Planets in Universe Now Estimated at 100 Billion
The Two Cultures is the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures — namely the sciences and the humanities — and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. (Wikipedia)
I'm afraid little has changed. Our pursuit and fear to avoid the "military-industrial-complex" as warned of by President Eisenhower, has evolved into a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists (that don't have to actually prove their musings; just muse and say them), because myriad of the bewildered herd will purchase their books; attend their seminars; hit their blogs/web sites. We pontificate "Big Bang" and "Evolution" in quotes, and add "theory" as if that disqualifies anything in science (Pythagoras and your geometry teacher would be amused), adding to it machinate controversies from creative, magical thinkers. Must be quite a rush to be an official part of the "dumbing down" of a country.
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."
University of Colorado: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution
