I have seen the future.

(Thanks: The Keyhoe Report.)

Milestone for Aeroscraft ML866 project

Along with a range of more than 3000 miles and a top speed of 138mph, it boasts some unique properties for a craft of its size including the ability to hover, take-off and land vertically, complete autonomy from airports, not to mention incredible aerial views.

The mammoth 5000ft square cabin area also opens up a range of possible applications for the aircraft, from cargo transport and mining to use as a luxurious private sky yacht or a fully functional conference center.

One Avatar, Many Worlds

DAZ 3D, a company based in Draper, UT, that makes software and models for creating 3-D art, recently announced the MogBox, a program that would allow users to design a high-resolution 3-D character and transport it as an avatar to multiple virtual worlds. MogBox is designed to maintain the same look and feel for the character from one location to another, while adjusting for the graphics capabilities and styles of different virtual worlds. This typically means scaling down the high-resolution image, simplifying the textures on the surface of the character, and adjusting the figure's polygonal building blocks to follow the rules of different digital worlds.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

India-Pakistan Nuclear War Would Cause Ozone Hole

Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would cause more than slaughter and destruction -- it would knock a big hole in the ozone layer, affecting crops, animals and people worldwide, US researchers said on Monday.

Solar System's 'look-alike' found

Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting a distant star which looks much like our own.

They found two planets that were close matches for Jupiter and Saturn orbiting a star about half the size of our Sun.

Martin Dominik, from St Andrews University in the UK, said the finding suggested systems like our own could be much more common than we thought.

And he told a major meeting that astronomers were on the brink of finding many more of them.

SETI Is For Chumps (And Other Reasons Why We Have Yet To Hear From Aliens)

(Yet another SETI.com post.)

Here it is: the most devastating and articulate summary of Whitley Strieber and his works that I've ever read. Neither facile dismissal nor endorsement, Rigorous Intuition's analysis is propelled by a sincere interest in Strieber's writings that illuminates the often schizophrenic nature of his alleged experiences.

A sample:

When it comes to understanding the question of Ufos and alien abductions -- and specifically that of "the Grays" -- the essential thing to remember is that none of this is what it seems. And although I am quite sure Strieber would be the very first person to admit this (at least on a good day) -- has been at pains for years to convey this very idea -- for all of that he seems unable to resist the urge to talk and write about the phenomena as if it were, finally, apprehensible to reason. As a result, Strieber spends half his time arguing against simplistic, literal-minded, "good or evil, angel or devil" interpretations, and the other half either damning the beings as demons or advocating them as angels. Apparently, this is all part of the aliens' chosen method of presentation: a positive perspective, a negative one, and finally a synthesis of both. Yet Strieber follows this approach in such a haphazard, slipshod fashion that at times he seems unaware of doing so. It is almost as if he has been programmed by his "visitors," and that, in order to be effective, he must remain in the dark himself, at least until he reaches the third perspective, and achieves synthesis of his various, fragmented selves (assuming he ever does).

Repo Man Delivers One of the Best Scientology Parodies Ever

Actually, this is more of a New Age send-up, complete with references to Bermuda Triangles [sic], UFOs and time machines. Heavy, dude.

Meteorites delivered the 'seeds' of Earth's left-hand life

Breslow simulated what occurred after the dust settled following a meteor bombardment, when the amino acids on the meteor mixed with the primordial soup. Under "credible prebiotic conditions" -- desert-like temperatures and a little bit of water -- he exposed amino acid chemical precursors to those amino acids found on meteorites.

Breslow and Columbia chemistry grad student Mindy Levine found that these cosmic amino acids could directly transfer their chirality to simple amino acids found in living things. Thus far, Breslow's team is the first to demonstrate that this kind of handedness transfer is possible under these conditions.

Universe Today, a blog I've always enjoyed, does a piece on my recent SETI post:

If ET Calls, Would We Be Told?

If a verified message from aliens is ever received, would the public be told about it? SETI -- the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence -- does have an international protocol that if an alien signal is ever received, it would be disseminated among the astronomical community and made public. And of course, says Mac Tonnies at the SETI Blog, "international cooperation might be necessary in order to distinguish a legitimate alien signal from any number of phenomena capable of generating false alarms." But what if the signal is more than just extra-terrestrials saying hello? Tonnies believes SETI's plans for full disclosure only makes sense if the message is fairly benign. If the signal was a notice of impending doom from a black hole, supernova, or alien invasion -- something we on Earth had little power to do anything about -- Tonnies questions whether governments would choose to make such information public. But could something of this magnitude really be kept under wraps?

Just one reason Centauri Dreams deserves to be bookmarked:

Dyson Spheres: Hoping to Be Surprised

In trying to understand hypothetical alien cultures, we're assuming we can extrapolate forward from our own technology to what we would do if we had the necessary tools. Thus Dyson's sphere, maybe 150 million kilometers in radius, a meters-thick shell rotating around its star. We can see this as a desirable outcome, so we assume aliens would as well. But would they? Perhaps a Type II society would have made breakthroughs in energy management that would render a Dyson sphere a historical curiosity, like some early 19th Century idea of a flying machine powered by flapping wings and a steam engine.

No, I can't imagine what those breakthroughs would be, but then, that's the point. How accurate can we be about predicting what science will find down the road?

Time-Lapse Video: Retreating Glacier

This remarkable image sequence captures a series of massive calving events at Columbia Glacier near Valdez, Alaska. Composed of 436 frames taken between May and September of 2007, it shows the glacier rapidly retreating by about half a mile (1.6 kilometers), a volume loss of some 0.4 cubic miles (1.67 cubic kilometers) of ice or 400 billion gallons (1.5 trillion liters) of water.

This just might make your jaw drop a bit.

Blog of the day: Mars in the Morning

(Don't miss Carol's take on io9's "First Realistic Martian Woman.")

Blast-Door Art: Cave Paintings of the Nuclear Era

Welcome to the mordant, jingoistic and occasionally crude -- but rarely before seen world -- of "blast-door art."

Like the garish and cheeky illustrations etched across the noses of World War II aircraft, these images in launch control centers across the United States testify to the bravado of the men (and, from the mid-1980s onward, women) of what has been called "America's Underground Air Force." But they also reflect the sometimes surreal pressures faced by two-person missile crews on 24-hour duty alerts, waiting for a call to turn their missile launch keys and perhaps end civilization as we know it.

Once again we encounter the inevitable pairing of robot and housewife, a staple of retro-futuristic media purporting to herald the Next Big Thing.

Is it just me or is there a certain veiled eroticism at work here?

Will advanced humanoid robots be (gulp!) made out of meat?

Peter Watts offers this observation:

It seems that snot is essential to trap and distribute airborne molecules so they can be properly parsed by olfactory sensors. And that in turn reminds me of this earlier article from Science, which reports that sweat might also be an integral part of robot makeup, since evaporative cooling can double the power output of robot servos. The same paper reviews current research in the development of artificial muscles. I wonder how many more wet and sticky and downright organismal traits are going to prove desirable and efficient for our robot overlords. Is it possible that fleshy terminators and death-fetish replicants and even hot Cylon chicks look and taste and feel like us not merely for infiltration purposes, but because form follows function?

There's something strangely wonderful about the prospect of "robot sweat." I have a very real desire to smell the stuff.

Film legend Charlton Heston dead at 84

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing "Ben-Hur" and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84.

Forget that biblical drek. Here's the moment that cements Heston in my memory:

Robot aliens? Space opera gets it right

And for once I find myself in general agreement with Seth Shostak.

Blog of the day: Intangible Materiality

USC's Superbot, modular robot systems

USC's ISI's Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory's Superbot is a new type of robots that are modular, multifunctional, and easily reconfigurable. Its modules can be dynamically configured into different robots to fit the user's needs.

For example, it can crawl, walk, roll, climb, carry, fetch, or survey. The reconfiguration and module exchanges are easy and do not require any special knowledge or training.

The best UFO photos of 2007?

(Thanks to UFOMystic.)

Not familiar with RepRap? Take a look:

Look at your computer setup and imagine that you hooked up a 3D printer. Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust, think Lego bricks and you're in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

Humanizing Animals: Is it wrong to make intelligent animal slaves?

Setting aside the fact that no one has any idea of how to actually uplift, that is, to dramatically boost the intelligence of animals, would it be moral to do it? How would a dumb animal give its consent to being uplifted? Since no human being gives his or her consent to being born with whatever level of intelligence or health he or she has, why should prior consent be required for uplifting animals? Dvorsky actually thinks that it is more moral to uplift already born animals so that we can ask them before-and-after questions. Perhaps they would recall their pre-sapient state and tell us if it were preferable to the anxieties of self-awareness. But what if uplifted chimps and dolphins told us that self-aware intelligent language using is not all that it's cracked up to be and that they'd rather go back to their state of natural innocence?

(Via Sentient Developments.)

I snapped this photo of a latte a few days ago. I'm not sure, but I think I might have received a couple Weird Looks.

'No Sun link' to climate change

Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity.

The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.

Kudos to the BBC for putting quotes around "sceptics." In this case it's wholly deserved.

"Australian Bigfoot" or yet another "blobsquatch"?

Sweat ducts may act as giveaway 'antennas'

Our skin may contain millions of tiny "antennas" in the form of microscopic sweat ducts, say researchers in Israel. In experiments, they found evidence that signals produced by bouncing electromagnetic waves off the tiny tubes might reveal a person's physical and emotional state from a distance.

The research might eventually result in lie detectors that require no physical contact with the subject.

In other words: "Voight-Kampff 2.0."

Why the demise of civilisation may be inevitable

Then when the climate changes or barbarians invade, overstretched institutions break down and civil order collapses, aggravated by tightly coupled networks that create the potential for propagating failure across many critical industries.

What emerges is a less complex society, organized on a smaller scale or that has been taken over by another group, and loss of our hard-earned knowledge.

Possible solutions include distributed and decentralized production of vital goods like energy and food and adding redundancy to the electrical grid and other networks.

I've never considered civilization anything more than a passing phase. It seems essential because it's all we know, but when we look at it squarely we find at least as many inherent flaws as benefits. I say it's time to venture out of the womb and look around.

From my new SETI post:

Lest my concerns seem like so much "X-Files" paranoia, it's worth considering some of the reasons an ET intelligence might send us a message in the first place. Perhaps, as noted, we're due to experience an unforeseen "existential threat" via gamma radiation or the close approach of an uncharted black hole. Or we may be in the line of fire of someone else's war. More extravagantly, we might discover that our section of the galaxy is scheduled for demolition in order to make room for an astro-engineering project -- in which case our stellar landlords could be sending out a most unwelcome eviction notice (albeit one we can postpone heeding for a few thousand years).

How to transform your arm into a wing

Daedalus used feathers and wax -- and we all know what happened to his son when he flew too close to the sun. Instead, you could try surgery, says Samuel Poore, a reconstructive surgeon at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has now described the steps that would be needed to transform human arms into wings.

It sounds like an idea that might come from the underground world of body-modders, who go in for filing teeth to points, implanting horns -- and even more extreme modifications. But Poore studied the mechanisms of bird flight under Ted Goslow of Brown University, Rhode Island, before he began medical school and became interested in hand surgery.

(Via Aberrant News.)

Little monkeys ride tiny motorcycles

Check out these adorable uniformed monkeys zipping along the streets of Thailand on tiny motorcycles.

Cute but strangely menacing . . .

Daily caffeine 'protects brain'

Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why.

A vital barrier between the brain and the main blood supply of rabbits fed a fat-rich diet was protected in those given a caffeine supplement.

UK experts said it was the "best evidence yet" of coffee's benefits.

Cliff Pickover strikes again!

UK's first hybrid embryos created

The Catholic Church describes it as "monstrous".

Then it can't be that bad, can it?

From my new SETI post:

I've always been frustrated by the prevailing assumption that aliens will eschew interstellar travel in favor of radio transmission due to the presumed cost of space travel. While aliens might suffer from constraints posed by limited access to resources, the notion of "cost" is rooted in our own brief, limited experience as social primates. We humans might bemoan the seemingly prohibitive price of manned spaceflight, but a more far-sighted intelligence might possess vastly different priorities. Spared the hurdle of terrestrial economic imperatives, I would expect aliens to prove surprisingly resourceful.

Science fiction megablog io9 has been fretting over the "drone" images, all the while laboring under the assumption that they must be the spawn of a viral marketing campaign (although it doesn't pretend to know for what):

This leaves us with the still-burning question: Whose viral marketing campaign is this? And what are they trying to sell us?

Here's my take: there is no fucking "viral marketing campaign." Like so many other recent CGI hoaxes (remember the Haiti footage?), this was done for the sheer fun of it.

Microscopic Fuzz May Be Best Evidence of Martians

If Martian life existed a few billion years ago, scientists think any plant-like microbes would have left behind a stringy fuzz of fibers.

That's because here on Earth, researchers now say they have found such ancient fuzz, called cellulose, preserved in chunks of salt deposited more than 250 million years ago -- making it the oldest biological substance yet recovered. The announcement comes about a week after a team of planetary scientists announced discovering evaporated salt deposits on Mars and adds another element of hope to the search for alien life or signs of its past biology.

Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks'

Prof Irina Aref'eva and Dr Igor Volovich, mathematical physicists at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow believe that the vast experiment at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, may turn out to be the world's first time machine, reports New Scientist.

The debut in early summer could provide a landmark because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the point of creation of the first time machine.

That means 2008 could become "Year Zero" for temporal travel, they argue.

'They're here': The mechanism of poltergeist activity

Brovetto and Maxia hypothesise that the changes in the brain that occur at puberty involve fluctuations in electron activity that, in rare cases, can create disturbances up to a few metres around the outside of the brain.

These disturbances would be similar in character to the quantum mechanical fluctuations that physicists believe occur in the vacuum, in which "virtual" particle and antiparticle pairs pop up for a fleeting moment, before they annihilate each other and disappear again.

Brovetto and Maxia believe that the extra fluctuations triggered by the pubescent brain would substantially enhance the presence of the virtual particles surrounding the person. This could slowly increase the pressure of air around them, moving objects and even sending them hurtling across the room.

A few off-the-cuff thoughts:

1.) I'm convinced poltergeist phenomena are real and ultimately amenable to science.

2.) I'm automatically wary of attempts to invoke quantum mechanics to explain "the unknown."

3.) Despite my reservations about unwarranted use of the "Q"-word, Brovetto and Maxia could very well be onto something. Assuming they're not pilloried for advancing what can only be an unpopular hypothesis, it's not entirely unreasonable to expect some form of laboratory confirmation.

Ladies and gentlemen, another "alien autopsy" for your consideration:



Personally, I welcome this clip. The diminutive being under the knife is an unsettlingly fine piece of work. I don't think it's real, but the level of technical achievement shouldn't go unnoted just because the video fails to advance the case for crashed humanoids.

Click here for Nick Redfern's commentary.

Elsewhere, Paul Kimball ponders the merits of hoaxing a UFO event. (All for the best purposes, of course.)

R.E.M.'s "Accelerate" comes out today. I have a strange feeling I might buy a copy. In the meantime, here's a live performance of "Until the Day is Done."

Another astonishingly good "fiblet" from Peter Watts. If this isn't the way to get readers to seek out your next novel I don't know what is.

The Keyhoe Report notes an apparent contradiction between Whitley Strieber's "Communion" and "Breakthrough." Take a look.





It seems clear that Strieber is either confabulating or else chose not to include the "juicier" story in "Communion" for whatever reason (which I concede is entirely possible).

Strieber relates the latter version of the story in a recent interview with Dave Navarro. I'm inclined to think the account related in "Communion" was censored by the author, but I'm certainly open to less flattering possibilities.

"I am happy being who I am. If I was cured, I wouldn't be who I am."



I'm not autistic. Not by a long shot. But as an extreme introvert, I'm well aware of the mainstream's sensibility toward anyone who deviates from the "norm" -- and I don't find it remotely encouraging.

I'm especially troubled by the assumption that depression is necessarily a disease to be "treated" with barrages of pharmaceuticals. Is it conceivable that melancholy offers the experiencer a window on reality just as valid as those embraced by the mainstream?

I'm not negating the reality of extreme, incapacitating depression. But the governing medical paradigm, in collusion with consumer society, has spawned a binary that perhaps owes more to economic and social imperatives than actual wellness. And it usually comes in three innocuous-seeming words: "ask your doctor . . ."

I was just about to buy a Quantum Sleeper. Then I clicked to this page and read the bad news:

Presently seeking investors to build new prototypes to test and develop. A working model (made of wood not polycarbonate) is available for demonstration. Venders have provided quotes to produce and assemble the various parts. Fabrication drawings and parts list are also available for anyone interested in investing or buying the Patent (Patent # US 7,137,881 B2).

To the hardware store!

(Thanks to Ectoplasmosis!)