Beyond the Beyond points the way to an important essay that acknowledges the reality of catastrophic climate change yet questions the wisdom of fear-mongering as a wake-up call to jaded coast-dwellers. I can relate. For no matter how heinous the likelihood of an underwater Miami, there's little point in arguing that such a prospect ignites a small bit significant vicarious thrill. In a media-dominated world of ever-receding frontiers, we've begun to crave ecocalypse on a level we scarcely dare acknowledge.

2 Human Ancestors Probably Co-Existed

A fragment of upper jaw and a skull found in Africa are helping rewrite the textbook on how mankind came to be millions of years ago.

Gone is the step-wise theory of one ancient species, Homo habilis, dying off as another, Homo erectus, takes over -- to give rise later to modern-day Homo sapiens.

In its place are two fossils uncovered in Kenya that appear to show habilis and erectus lived together in close proximity for more than half a million years, about 1.5 million years ago.

(Via The Anomalist.)

And on a nominally related note, here's a video of a Japanese television audience shocked to discover a man with a vestigial "tail":



Anyone seen "Jacob's Ladder"?

Martian Skies are Starting to Clear

The dire condition of the Mars Exploration Rovers has improved a bit in the last few days. That series of dust storms circling the planet has eased off a little, and the skies are started to clear up. This is giving both Spirit and Opportunity a much needed boost to their solar powered electrical systems.

Technology Review: Electric Fields Kill Tumors

Bruce Sterling writes:

If somebody at some coffee-shop told me that "electrical fields can cure cancer," I'd instantly dismiss him as some kind of tinfoil-hat crank... But check out the illustrations in this plausible TECH REVIEW piece. If I'm not mistaken, that cancer-survivor on the park bench there is wearing what is basically an upgraded tinfoil hat.

Click here to go directly to the Technology Review piece.

Virgin American turns air travel into a participatory multimedia experience.

Eight-million-year-old bug is alive and growing

If confirmed, this means ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life as ice melts due to global warming. This is nothing to worry about, say experts, because the process has been going on for billions of years and the bugs are unlikely to cause human disease.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Pollution closes record number of beaches: study

The number of U.S. beaches declared unsafe for swimming reached a record last year, with more than 25,000 cases where shorelines were closed or prompted health advisories, an environmental group reported on Tuesday.

Chinese dolphin 'probably extinct'

The long-threatened Yangtze River dolphin in China is probably extinct, according to an international team of researchers who said this would mark the first whale or dolphin to be wiped out due to human activity.

Centauri Dreams on the probability that we'll recognize alien megascale engineering:

Some years back, I was doing an interview with Michio Kaku and made a confident statement that we 'knew that no Kardashev type III civilizations existed in the intergalactic neighborhood,' to which Kaku responded with disbelief. Why should I think I knew what alien technologies would be like given the time frames we were talking about? His point was that we would be no more likely to recognize such engineering, based on our own assumptions, than an ant colony would be to understand that the superhighway running past nearby was an artifact and a sign of a superior intelligence.

I tend to agree with Kaku. In any case, I'm far from sold on the validity of the so-called "Fermi Paradox," presently the subject of George Dvorsky's thought-provoking Sentient Developments. In my opinion, Dvorsky's undisguised disdain for the UFO phenomenon only undermines an otherwise systematic attempt to fathom the alien psyche.





Past posts suggest that Dvorsky's appreciation for the UFO problem is rooted in the idea that UFOs, if real, must necessarily be nuts-and-bolts spacecraft piloted by diminutive caricatures of ourselves (a meme that's survived among ufologists despite challenges posed by Jacques Vallee and others of a less literal bent). But the phenomenon's multiplexity and apparent mythic syntax allow for contact scenarios in keeping with the Cosmos of Centauri Dreams, Kaku and Dvorsky.

Instead of relatively limited Bracewell probes, for instance, imagine an intelligent technology capable of engaging emerging civilizations in an excruciatingly patient (by human standards) form of theater. Many UFO encounters seem less like chance sightings of extraterrestrial hardware than staged events conceived by an overarching intelligence that may have little to do with the will of perceived "occupants." Just as a Bracewell probe's agenda involves instigating a simple dialogue with an emergent civilization (or at least its technological ambassadors), the more robust capabilities and resources at the disposal of a galaxy-spanning post-"Singularity" intelligence should be more than up to the task of communicating with us.





But are we confident that such communication will be limited to electromagnetic exchanges? In light of Ray Kurzweil's amply demonstrated law of accelerating returns, perhaps it's just as likely that our first conversation with extraterrestrials will take the form of a complex psychosocial experiment (in which unconventional flying objects may play only a partial role). Although undoubtedly physical, it's an open question whether "real" UFOs are metallic spacecraft in the familiar sense (although in the early days of the phenomenon researchers quickly fastened to the idea, sensing appealing parallels with our own aerospace ventures). Dispensing with the conventional notion of "mere" ET craft allows us to view the UFO problem as a manifestation of technologies ranging from von Neumann machines to "utility fog."

If the ET intent is to test our reactions to its presence (or something more profound, as the phenomenon's impact on our mythology might indicate), quickly assembling "ships" and even "aliens" from raw materials would enable the disparity of forms seen in the sky. The flexibility of nanotech construction would allow the UFO intelligence to respond to our preconceptions in "real time," thereby ensuring a permanent foothold in the collective unconscious while maintaining plausible deniability -- at least among those tasked with policing potentially subversive memes.

Anthropologists have remarked on the inability of less-advanced cultures to profitably adapt to the arrival of more sophisticated cultures. UFOs, with all their attendant pageantry (including violation of military airspace and other airborne theater) are consistent with a form of deliberate invitation, perhaps imposed by an intelligence that -- like the Monolith-builders from "2001" -- promises to elude human comprehension.

A rare video of the late conspiracy maven William Cooper addressing the extraterrestrial menace:

The Resurrection of the "Great Mother"

More interesting still, is that modern humans seemingly equate the circular form with all that is "alien" and somehow reflective of advanced knowledge, either heralded from an enigmatic, futuristic technology, or emerging from some intra-dimensional, parallel plane.

'Strong Probability' Outbreak Originated in Labs

There is a "strong probability" that the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain was caused by viruses that escaped somehow from a pair of veterinary laboratories where vaccines are made, a government report said today.

Yet another near-miss seemingly culled from our collective filmic unconscious.

NASA plans 'Armageddon' spacecraft to blast asteroid

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has designed a nuclear-warhead-carrying spacecraft, to be launched by the US agency's proposed 's Ares V cargo launch vehicle, to deflect an asteroid that could threaten all life on Earth.

The 8.9m (29ft)-long "Cradle" spacecraft would carry six 1,500kg (3,300lb) missile-like interceptor vehicles that would carry one 1.2MT B83 nuclear warhead each, with a total mass of 11,035kg.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Existential risk? I'll show you existential risk!

The Other Side of Truth and Posthuman Blues are now Korff-free, but the Kal K. Korff Watch is just getting started.

The mission statement sums it up:

Throughout time, we have watched the universe, observing its inhabitants and events. We are The Watchers. I am Katu, the Watcher assigned to observe the being known as Kal K. Korff. Normally The Watchers do not take interest in such a homely and lonely earth creature, but this Korff amuses us. Watching and examining this futile little being will provide this Watcher with much humor and a change of pace from the real crises that threaten the universe.

New Theoretical Model Eliminates Barriers to Time Travel

A Technion-Israel Institute of Technology physicist has developed a theoretical model of a time machine that could enable future generations to travel into the past. In his paper published in the July issue of Physical Review, noted time-travel theorist Professor Amos Ori provides practical solutions to a number of criteria long seen by other experts as obstacles to the realization of time travel.

(Via Unknown Country.)

Water way to go: Funeral bosses plan to boil bodies to dust

In the new process a silk coffin enters a chamber and is submerged in hundreds of litres of water mixed with potassium hydroxide, an alkali.

The body is then brought up to temperature. In two hours it turns into white dust.

Chemically, the process is similar to - but much faster than - natural decomposition.

Company Now Selling Real Flying Saucers

Right now, only $90,000 stands between you and ownership of your own flying saucer.

Yay! Finally!

Except it won't take you to Venus --

Uh-oh -- here it comes . . .

-- it looks like flying saucer but it's really a car-sized hovercraft intended to fly no higher than 10 feet.

And to think I was beginning to get excited.

(Thanks, Nick!)

Two notable space items:

Galaxies clash in four-way merger

Four gigantic galaxies have been seen crashing into one another in one of the biggest cosmic collisions ever seen.

[. . .]

The clashing galaxies are expected to eventually merge into a single, behemoth galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way.

Team finds largest exoplanet yet

An international team of astronomers has discovered the largest known planet orbiting another star.

The "transiting" planet - meaning one that passes in front of its parent star as seen from Earth - is about 70% larger than Jupiter.

But the presumed "gas giant" has a much lower mass than Jupiter - the biggest planet in our Solar System - making it of extremely low density.

Looks like the Hilly Rose Show is running an "encore" of an old interview with me -- so old I'm not sure I even remember doing it. It's about Mars and my 2004 book, "After the Martian Apocalypse."

(Thanks to The Daily Grail for the heads-up.)

Blog o' the day: The Curio

William Gibson on the Past and Future

If you could build a little binary time-travel switch between 2007 and 1967, and you toggle back and forth, the biggest difference is the Internet. And it's one of the things that you just couldn't have imagined from 1967. That's a very interesting thought experiment, by the way. I recommend that to anyone: Sit down and choose a year -- it doesn't have to be 1967, of course, but it only really works if you choose a year in your own life -- and compare it to your sense of where the present is and look at the difference. What most people experience when they do that is vertigo. It scares them. They say, "Oh, it's really changed a lot," and suddenly feel like they ain't seen nothing yet.

Feast your eyes on the the world of the future, Nazi-style. Very scenic, but ultimately my sentiments toward this technocratic wasteland are with John Brownlee.

Space Settlement and War

Space settlement can make resource wars a thing of the past, something we only read about in history books, because space settlement can deliver far, far more resources at far, far less cost. Less money, less death, less destruction, and infinitely less stupidity.

Resources and territory are not the only reasons for war, but they cause a lot of them. The U.S. has spent far more defending oil access in the Mid-East than it would cost to build space settlements. Perhaps it's time to change direction. Perhaps it's time to make Earth a bit healthier for children and other living things. Perhaps it's time to choose life over war. Perhaps it's time to start building space settlements.

(Via Futurismic.)

The "drones" inspire Rudy Rucker to fake his own UFO photo.

Terence McKenna: "Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness."



(Hat tip: PAG E-News.)

In a Strange Universe, We Stick to Search For Familiar Life

Black holes inhale entire galaxies. Gamma-ray bursts release more energy in a blink than our Sun can produce in a billion years. Super-nova explosions scatter elements, like pollen, on the stellar wind.

In the face of so much strangeness, it may be only human nature to seek out the familiar. Those searching for extraterrestrial life, however, ought to abandon the assumption that alien organisms would utilize the same biochemical architecture as life on Earth, a research panel recently urged.

"It is clear that nothing would be more tragic in the American exploration of space than to encounter alien life without recognizing it," said University of Washington oceanographer John Baross. He is chairman of a National Research Council panel that recently issued a report called "The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems."

If J.G. Ballard ever decided to pursue the UFO lecture circuit, I'm confident his prose would invite comparison with British fortean philosopher Colin Bennett, who takes on the "CARET" mythos with his usual dexterity and wit.

An exemplary excerpt:

But CHAD is not, as some have suggested, pre-publicity for a coming CD game. Its focus is limited, much more narrowly specialised, and it represents a political programme of an entirely new type, meant to appeal almost exclusively to thinking folk. As such, it is structured, and it does not align itself with those things which most thinkers pretend they despise: non-cerebral mass media, pop culture, and consumerism. Despite being almost extinct as a lost tribe, no culture, society or indeed time itself can move forward without thinkers. Without the much-abused intellectuals, we would have a two-dimensional tapestry world, a medieval wall-painting showing the entire world to be a billion Simpson characters frozen in media time.

And even more to the point:

As distinct from SERPO, CHAD is a very subtle high-level multi-media operation with better internal balance, backed up by a massive and well-financed support base. It applies just a little fantasy, not too much, something only a few moves away from the supposed real. Then it adds something of the perceived contemporary real. When looked at closely, this now-you-see-it now-you-don't flicker-technique produces raw intellectual eroticism of a superb variety.

Keep writing, Colin!

Gulf of Mexico Plagued by Record "Dead Zones"

Researchers have found 9,650 square miles (24,990 sq km) of "dead zones," or oxygen-depleted water, in the Gulf of Mexico this summer, the biggest area since tracking of the annual phenomenon began.

Here's what Stephen Bassett isn't telling you:

"THE SECRET ALIEN PLAN FOR HARVESTING HUMANITY"

There is a race of beings from a planet on the farther reaches of the galaxy, the HEMORG, who cultivate various planets so that they can harvest the species on them, once the dominant species reaches a population “saturation point”. The harvest is for physical and psychic consumption purposes, both. Subspecies created as 'cultivators' and 'observers' who were left here to maintain detection devices, and which are seen in the saucer shaped vehicles you have observed (these subspecies are essentially artificial creations, flesh robots), will assist in the harvesting process.

A humorous mixed-media animation mocking British Mars exploration:



One can only hope a similar fate won't befall the just-launched Phoenix.

This is spooky-cool:

Motion Portrait: Instant 3D Animation From Photos

The Japanese company Motion Portrait Inc. has developed a remarkable program capable of taking still photos of peoples faces and rapidly animating them in 3D. The software is called Motion Portrait and was on display at GDC 2007 this year, where it dazzled onlookers as it animated their photos with real time lip-syncing to a foreign Japanese voice.

Notice that the animated faces have a listless, stoned quality . . . as if, on some impossible level, they realize their own soullessness.

Here's a thoughtful editorial on going car-free. Since escaping the suburbs I use my car much less than before and I'm convinced ditching the thing for good is surprisingly plausible. To say nothing of the health benefits of being able to walk to my destination -- the local library, say, or a local cafe -- rather than constantly keeping my eye on the fuel gauge.

Odd Skull Boosts Human, Neandertal Interbreeding Theory

A human skull from a Romanian bear cave is shaking up ideas about ancient sex.

The Homo sapiens skull has a distinctive feature previously found only in Neandertals, providing further evidence of interbreeding between the two species, according to a new study.

(Via The Anomalist.)

Lift off for Nasa's Mars probe

Nasa has launched a spacecraft on a nine-month journey to Mars, where it will dig below the surface for clues to the existence of past or present life.

The Phoenix probe lifted off at 0526 EDT (1026 BST) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a Delta II rocket.

If everything goes to plan, Phoenix should arrive at Mars in late May 2008.

'Sunshade' for global warming could cause drought

Pumping sulphur particles into the atmosphere to mimic the cooling effect of a large volcanic eruption has been proposed as a last-ditch solution to combating climate change -- but doing so would cause problems of its own, including potentially catastrophic drought, say researchers.

Sulphur "sunshades" are just one example of a "geo-engineering" solution to climate change. Such solutions involve artificially modifying our climate to counteract the effects of human greenhouse gas emission.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

60 Years of UFOs: The Top Ten Cases

In our '60 Years of UFOs' issue we asked a panel of experts to name the case from the last six decades they thought most evidential, and to give their thoughts on the future of ufology.

Good stuff. Stan Friedman's selections are among the best "hard evidence" cases (although one might be inclined to disagree about Roswell), but Greg Bishop's list is my favorite.

(Registration may be required.)

Ladies and gentleman, a Morrissey tune I'd honestly never heard until a few minutes ago:



Apparently an updated "greatest hits" compilation is in the works and this track will be on it.

Just because I'm off the Korff beat doesn't mean Liona Tanaka has lost interest. This morning she phoned from Japan (where she's presenting a paper on nanotechnology) with a link to this. Leave it to Liona to dig up the wackiest stuff!

UFO Flying Formations (Greg Bishop)

The cross image is readily recognizable to almost everyone. It carries with it the symbolism of an entire history of human endeavor, struggle, cruelty and hope. To see this shape floating in the sky, an apparent approval from the Ufonauts, places a confusing and possibly worrisome ingredient into the mix of UFO lore. Someone should look into the history of reported UFO formations for any other symbols that may have been spelled out.

I don't know about Greg, but I do whatever our Space Brethren want me to. I mean, who am I to question their all-encompassing wisdom and celestial insight?

OK, some good news:

New Flexible Plastic Solar Panels Are Inexpensive And Easy To Make

Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. "The process is simple," said lead researcher and author Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting chair of NJIT's Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences. "Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations."

Police can take DNA from every offender

Under the legislation police will have the discretion to demand a hair sample or mouth swab after any arrest, no matter how minor. Police only have to believe that taking the sample will produce evidence linking the offender to a crime. At present samples can only be taken for serious offences such as murder, robbery and sexual assault.

[smug retort DELETED upon request of (insert name of dehumanizing bureaucracy here)]

Today I found a plastic brontosaurus in a parking lot near by apartment. Curiously, I'd found a similar brontosaurus about two years ago, which I kept.

Remember the origami unicorn in "Blade Runner" . . . ?

To quote Zippy the Pinhead, "I don't know what it is, but I want one!"



(Hat tip: Reality Carnival.)

Passenger plane design set to evolve in the name of efficiency and emissions control

The CleanEra project will investigate BWB, high-tech propeller engines and even UFO-style body shapes in their efforts to produce a light, efficient airliner model that produces less noise and cuts carbon dioxide emissions by at least 50% over current designs.

Click on the link to see a picture. It's virtually indistinguishable from a prototyical "flying saucer."

You just know there will be a market for the real thing once genetic technology is up to the task. I'm reminded of the phantasmagorical red-light district in China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station," with its fetishized cyborgs and chimeric prostitutes.

There's a growing mass of vintage William Burroughs material on YouTube. This short film, based on a sketch delivered on the album "Call Me Burroughs," does a fine job of capturing the author's dream-like sense of the apocalyptic.