Forget black holes, could the LHC trigger a "Bose supernova"?

Nobody is exactly sure how these explosions proceed which is a tad worrying for the following reason: some clever clogs has pointed out that superfluid helium is a BEC and that the LHC is swimming in 700,000 litres of the stuff. Not only that but the entire thing is bathed in some of the most powerful magnetic fields on the planet.

So is the LHC a timebomb waiting to go off? Not according to Malcolm Fairbairn and Bob McElrath at CERN who have filled the back of a few envelopes in calculating that we’re still safe. To be doubly sure, they also checked that no other superfluid helium facilities have mysteriously blown themselves to kingdom come.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Science Non-Fiction for the Star Wars Fan

SpaceX Successfully Launches Falcon 1 to Orbit

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) announces that Flight 4 of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle has successfully launched and achieved Earth orbit. With this key milestone, Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.

(Via Futurismic.)

This video warms my heart.



(Thanks to David Biedny.)

Project Mogul takes yet another hit.

Bayes, Moravec and the LHC: Quantum Suicide, Subjective Probability and Conspiracies

The recent transformer trouble at the LHC has got many commenters to remember the somewhat playful scenario in Hans Moravec's Mind Children (1988): a new accelerator is about to be tested when it suffers a fault (a capacitor blows, say). After fixing it, another fault (a power outage) stops the testing. Then a third fault, completely independent of the others. Every time it is about to turn on something happens that prevents it from being used. Eventually some scientists realize that sufficiently high energy collisions would produce a vacuum collapse, destroying the universe. Hence the only observable outcome of the experiment occurs when the accelerator fails, all other branches in the many-worlds universe are now empty.

(Via Sentient Developments.)

Illusionist Derren Brown achieves unsettling results with a staring contest. Any idea how he does it?

China hails spacewalk 'heroes' and sets eyes on moon

"We still do not have an exact timetable for a manned mission to the moon, but I believe a Chinese (astronaut) will set foot on the moon in the not too distant future," an unnamed official told the Communist Party mouthpiece.

It followed remarks Sunday by Wang Zhaoyao, spokesman for the manned space programme, who said it was "necessary" for China to put a man on the moon.

"We believe that as long as we can make further progress in science and technology, we can achieve the dream of a manned space flight to the moon in the near future," he told reporters.

For rent: Reversible Destiny Lofts (w/ video)

To NY-based architect-poets and "reversible destiny" philosophers Arakawa & Gins, comfort deserves only a limited role in the home. In their vision, a home that keeps its inhabitants young and healthy should provide perpetual challenges. A tentative relationship with your environment, they argue, is key to "reversing the downhill course of human life."

The Bittersweet Art of Cutting Up Books

Even Burroughs didn't take it this far.

Found Image #19

Underwater exoskeletons mimic dolphins and penguins

The University of West Florida's Institute of Human and Machine Cognition has released designs of biologically inspired aquatic exoskeletons – robotic suits that enhance the user's strength and allow them to mimic the efficient swimming styles of penguins, dolphins and turtles.

Carbon dioxide output jumps to record level in 2007

The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday.

The new numbers, called "scary" by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007.

Minority Report Reality: 'Pre-Crime' Detector Shows Promise

Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.

Well, if the DHS says so it's good enough for me.

Fake Disney movie trailer for the Sarah Palin story

This spoof doesn't miss a beat.

Rudy Rucker on sex and science fiction.

I like it.

io9 on the conceptual illustration of B. Börkur Eiríksson:

Welcome to Your New City, Where You Will Live in Stacked Boxes

"It is 900 years after the Great Nuke and the roles of women have changed dramatically, much to the displeasure of men and mutants."

Chris Wren has seen the light!

Space exploration is an arrogant extension of patriarchal imperialism, a relic of the cold war and a squandering of dwindling resources that distracts us from the exploration of our inner selves. Once we all become vegans and practice mass voluntary sterlization, we'll be at peace with the earth and won't feel this insane need to rape the cosmos.

Apparently all you need to massacre star-hopping aliens is some farm machinery (although I suspect the country music alone would do the trick).



(Thanks to Katie at Flobbergobber.)

Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive

Shawyer stands by his theoretical work. His company, Satellite Propulsion Research (SPR), has constructed demonstration engines, which he says produce thrust using a tapering resonant cavity filled with microwaves. He is adamant that this is not a perpetual motion machine, and does not violate the law of conservation of momentum because different reference frames apply to the drive and the waves within it. Shawyer's big challenge, he says, has been getting people who will actually look into his claims rather than simply dismissing them.

Such extravagant claims are usually associated with self-taught, backyard inventors claiming Einstein got it all wrong. But Shawyer is a scientist who has worked with radar and communication systems and was a program manager at European space company EADS Astrium; his work rests entirely on Einstein being right. The thrust is the result of a relativistic effect and would not occur under simple Newtonian physics.

Colliding Worlds: The Ultimate Extinction Event

Now we learn about a 'when worlds collide' scenario that seems to have involved two mature, Earth-sized planets in a distant Solar System. The system in question is BD+20 307, originally thought to be a single star with a massive, warm dust disk, but now known to be a close binary orbiting the common center of mass every 3.42 days. Both stars are similar to the Sun in mass, temperature and size. Moreover, the system seems to have an age comparable to our own Sun, and the sheer amount of dust at roughly Venus to Earth distance is quite interesting.

China Launches Space Walk Mission

The three-day mission is part of Project 921, China’s ambitious manned space program, and was expected to include the country’s first attempt at a space walk, which would make China only the third country to accomplish the feat, after Russia and the United States.

World's fastest production car to go electric -- with "several years between charging

(!)

Two new blogs that have caught my attention: Nomadnomo and Space Angels.

OK, very nice. But damnit, I want to see that bot get off the bike! (And maybe make some espresso or something.)

Scientists explore what happened before the universe's theoretical beginning

Respected scientists have proposed a flock of theories to describe what might have happened before the birth of our familiar universe of space and time.

The concepts have fanciful names such as "the big bounce," "the multiverse," "the cyclic theory," "parallel worlds," even "soap bubbles." Some propose the existence of multiple universes. Others hold that there's one universe that recycles itself endlessly, rather as Buddhists believe. Judeo-Christian theologians may have difficulty accepting any of these notions.

Most of the hypotheses are variations on an older idea that the universe has no beginning and no end, contrary to the big-bang theory, which says that our universe originated at a specific point and will end sometime in the distant future.

Although divine creation makes an appearance, the Simulation Argument gets no mention at all.

Exclusive: The methane time bomb

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

[. . .]

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.

Top 50 Hottest Sci-Fi Girls

I confess: while I'm an avid science fiction fan, I never watch TV and rarely watch movies, so I I'm only aware of a handful of the women featured here (and then often only peripherally).





One complaint, however, rises instantly to the fore: How on earth did the editors neglect Linda Harrison, who played "Nova" in the first two "Planet of the Apes" movies?

Drop whatever you're doing and give Tag Galaxy a whirl. As an increasingly avid Flickr user, I think this just might be the coolest photo visualization out there.

In my new column I decide to brave the gauntlet of public derision and come clean with simple yet jarring message: I am an alien contactee.

Blue sky thinking: The 'skyscraper' farms that could be feeding millions by 2050

Not put off, Despommier, has pushed for city planners in America to take his project seriously.

'Vertical farming practised on a large scale in urban centres has great potential to supply enough food in a sustainable fashion to comfortably feed all of humankind for the foreseeable future,' he said.

The interiors of Verner Panton are like participatory cosmological phenomena. I can't get enough.

Found Image #18

MAVEN: NASA's post-Phoenix Mars probe

The craft, modeled on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, will arrive at Mars in September 2014, where it will have one (Earth) year to carry out its investigations. MAVEN will enter an elliptical http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipse orbit around the planet, ranging from 90 to 3,870 miles above its surface, and dipping to 80 miles in order to sample the upper atmosphere.

At this pace we will simply never make it to the Red Planet in person. As in "ever." The present Mars exploration paradigm screams for reinvention.

File under "Perilously Close to Steampunk."

Pinhole Camera Fashioned From 150 Year-Old Skull

Wayne Martin Bleger makes pinhole cameras using a variety of materials including precious stones, metals, human organs, and bone. This piece, entitled Third Eye, features many of these materials, all constructed around the 150 year-old skull of a 13 year-old girl.

Feeling bleak and existential? Meet Henri.

Disgruntled by National Geographic's distinctly unflattering rendering of "Wilma," a supposedly typical Neanderthal woman, conscientious Posthuman Blues reader Michael Garrett has produced a relatively blemish-free version:





She's still no Brooke Burke, but at least now she looks human -- which, being Neanderthal, she's not . . .





On the other hand, the "new" Wilma still looks a lot more appealing than this unsightly chimera, produced by John Fenderson:

My latest from aboutSETI.com:

The "Silent Invasion" Mythos

It was supposed to work like this: the aliens would furnish the government with a list of their human abductees, never going over quota. But soon the horrible truth became apparent: the aliens were abducting more than their legal share of unwitting humans. And to top it off, they were performing grotesque biological experiments with cattle and leaving their handiwork in plain view. Moreover, some of the abductees weren't coming back . . .

6 Brainwashing Techniques They're Using On You Right Now

(Thanks: No Touch Monkey!)

On the subject of UFO kooks . . .

"Walk Unafraid" (R.E.M.):

City Places Orange Traffic Cones Around Space-Time Portal (audio)