WORMHOLES
I feel like this is a bigger deal than just some Collgehumor video.
Electronic Tattoo Display runs on Blood
Remember getting your mind really blown by new technology?
Clive Thompson on Science Fiction
"If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best — and perhaps only — place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas."
Have you ever wondered what space smells like? Yeah, me neither.
NASA beams the Beatles into space
NASA broadcast "Across The Universe" into outer space using the Deep Space Network. Asked to comment, Paul McCartney wisely noted, "Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens."
The Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer (ENDURANCE) is a $2.3 million project funded by NASA's Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets Program. It's autonomous underwater vehicle designed to swim untethered under ice, creating three-dimensional maps of underwater environments, and ostensibly is a test for exploring Europa, the icy Jovian moon that just might harbor life.
The Archive of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences: as amazing as it sounds.
Literally!
I love it when the New York Times gets all tripped out on science stuff.
Hugest Black Hole Ever Discovered
18 billion times the size of our sun!
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October 2006 Archives
Reptilian Agenda
Archived From October 31, 2006 (14) Comments
This just in from the NASA news wire: 11,000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Sagittarius, a massive galactic snake is slithering across the Universe. Of course, it isn't a real lizard (the appellation is just some weird NASA Halloween humor) but the core of a sooty cloud larger than a dozen of our solar systems, which happens to be shaped sort of like a snake. Disappointing, I know; it would be nice, for once, to have something more interesting than dust, gas, and cold rocks bobbing around in the great beyond.
What if, maybe, outer space just isn't where the action is? The human race has been glued the stars for centuries, eagerly seeking out radio bursts, blobs of light, and little green dudes; most of us feel the inevitability that if anything ever happens, it will come from the cosmos. This makes sense, of course: for all our textbooks about neutron stars and dark matter, we basically know diddlysquat about space, besides that it's completely unlike anything we have down here.
In my daily research, I have recently come across a whole underworld of conspiracy theorists and alternative knowledge gurus who are convinced that outer space is so ten years ago. No no, they argue, in quest of the answer to the age-old question (Are We Alone?) we must not look to the outer reaches of the Universe, as we have been conditioned to do, but rather into the belly of our own seemingly benign planet. Space, they propose, is a 'classic magician's distraction.' The real higher intelligence ain't sending flying saucers from Zeta Reticuli or using its advanced star maps to navigate to Earth and mind-probe us; rather, it lives under the Earthen surface, in thousands of miles of underground tunnels, caverns and cave systems that date back from dinosaur-times.
Who are these higher beings? Not skinny, almond-eyed, bobble-headed aliens, which, incidentally, are referred to as 'Greys' in the Ufology community. They're not little green men, Space Brothers, Venusians, Nords, or Pleiadeans, either. They are, according to a staggeringly large subset of the conspiracy theory Universe, reptilian humanoids. Right: intelligent, supernatural, and highly developed reptile-human hybrids, or Reptoids, which are capable of shape-shifting and allegedly control all the major secret societies, royal bloodlines, and governments on Earth.
Fuck space, right? Seven foot-tall subterranean-dwelling lizards are a galaxy more interesting.
The main proponent of this theory, or at least the most colorful one, is the impressively deadpan David Icke, who is somehow both a former professional soccer player and the former head of the UK Green Party. Icke, in a slew of books, speaking tours, and videos, claims that reptoids are the driving force behind a Da Vinci Code-style worldwide conspiracy that controls humanity. Not one to just dip his toe in the pool, he takes the concept all the way to the deep end, contending that everyone from George W. Bush (most believably, really) to the British Royal family are blood-drinking lizards with extra-terrestrial origins. Sure, it isn't a huge stretch to imagine the entire Republican Party as a scaly crew of reptilian bastards (actually, it's kind of fun), but the Queen of England as a minion of the lizard lords? Come on, the woman is not exactly a party animal.
Icke, for whom the reptoid/reptilian thing is only part of a much larger world view involving global conspiracies, borderline anti-Semitism, CIA mind-control, Masonic rituals, and general New-Age philosophy, claims he put together this theory after people world-around confided to him their experiences witnessing powerful political figures morph into lizards and back again. In a particularly lengthy and in-form interview, Icke declares, "I keep meeting people who tell me that they've seen people shape-shift into bloody reptiles."
The second important subset of Reptoid Research falls under the jurisdiction of the slightly more moderate conspiracist John Rhodes, who was the first to seriously investigate and publicly present claims of reptilian-humanoid sightings by founding the Reptoids.com (seriously, check it out) Research Center in the late 90s. Rhodes contends that these cryptozoologic mysteries are not extra-terrestrial in nature, nor do they have anything at all to do with world governments. That kind of talk is just some knee-jerk collective fear of the current global political climate. His lizard men, rather, are evolved from dinosaurs. Yeah! Think about it: if any dinosaurs somehow survived the supposed meteorite impact that doomed their species, and if evolution were for real, then wouldn't these survivors have evolved into something else? OK, forget about how birds are allegedly evolved from the dinosaurs. Imagine if they became bipedal humanoid intelligences instead! Imagine they still live in ice caves far from human contact! Can you wait until the polar ice caps melt? There will be a whole generation of dinosauroids wandering around, needing refugee housing. What a hell of a drain on the economy: we better call in the seven-foot blood lizard lords to take care of things. Come to think of it, we might as well just stick to the stars, right?
Still, on a sincere note, I know it's easy to poke fun at the lizard men. I research these things as though they were fiction -- it makes it easier, searching for the most salient points -- and write about them as though they were truth, earnestly trying to get the point across. Still, I know it's bullshit: I believe that the world is a feelingless rock with energies and the Universe is a ground for infinites, and nothing more. Sometimes, though, when I'm doing other things, I'm blindsided by the thought that some people really do believe in lizard people, for example, and that for them the world is a darkly malevolent, but purposeful place. This is what devastates me the most.
3:02 AM | Permalink | (14) Comments
Hyperdrives, Superscript: Computers is Real
Archived From October 20, 2006 (3) Comments
A few months ago, in homage to the last puffs of summertime breeze to caress the Pacific Northwest, I visited the largest computer in the world. Not exactly beach blanket bingo, and I probably could have found a more youthful way to celebrate the dog days of summer, but this monument to computational power, too, is unorthodox. Built on a 30-acre plot of land bordering the Columbia River gorge -- a place, up until now, known solely for its excellent windsurfing -- it kicks back 10 million watts of power yearly and hooks into the largest direct DC current in the world, a backbone of fiber optic cable stretching almost the entire length of the Western seaboard. To say nothing of it, this kind of machinery is quite a novelty in the sleepy ex-mining town of The Dalles, Oregon, the type of place you wouldn't have trouble imagining the Internet not even getting to yet.
However, as I discovered on my nerd holiday, the Internet has gotten to The Dalles -- in a major way, actually, because this computer is no hard drive with delusions of grandeur. Rather, we're talking about a highly secretive collection of servers and who-knows-what that might change the way people all over the country use the Web. Why? Because it was built by Google.
From the outside, the structure that locals lovingly refer to as the 'Googleplex' looks fairly nondescript: boxy and silver-paneled, it appears imposing only because of the generally shrubby beigeness of the surrounding landscape. Surrounded by empty parking lots and slipshod construction trailers, it certainly has a long way to go until it hits its information-processing peak. Still, there is something striking about the mystery of the project; it's so mysterious, in fact, that Google insisted city officials sign a non-disclosure agreement and will not allow the facility to be indicated by any kind of sign. For now, the signs dotting the area all say particularly oblique, Michael Crichton-style things, such as PROJECT 02 SITE.
For all its mystery, however, it has had a hell of an effect. The head reporter at the charming Dalles Chronicle confided in me that the housing market has exploded, the community college is boosting its engineering programs, and -- gasp -- people from California are starting to move to the arid hamlet. On one level: business as usual in terms of real estate. Big money attracts more money. It is interesting, on the other hand, to imagine that the growing worldwide demand for instantaneous information, web-based computing and banal activities like G-chatting have snowballed, causing a physical stir in a place as remote as The Dalles. That the citizens of an isolated region in Central Oregon should have their lives changed by the popularity of a website such as Google is remarkable. We really are becoming more interconnected, in ways most of us might never have anticipated.
Of course, it isn't just some fortuitous social networking that brought this community and the Internet so closely together. Central Oregon's proximity to cheap hydropower and existing fiber-optic cable, not to mention huge parcels of undeveloped land, also has a lot to do with it. The explosion of Web-based computer use that we are now experiencing has a heavy, panting, physical counterpart: an explosion of demand by companies like Google for cheap power to serve their growing computer networks. The Googleplex, dependent as it is on the Columbia River's bountiful energy reserves, serves as a good reminder of how real this is. We so often forget that the Internet, which can be abstract and seemingly formless in its daily use, has a serious physical presence in the world. It takes up real space, not to mention a whole lot of energy, which powers the servers that run our frivolous Google image searches. In suit, rising energy costs will inevitably have an effect on our future Internet use. No one's saying that global climate change is going to melt our email, but then again, that isn't as crazy an idea as you might think.
If nothing else, I brought home from my summer daytrip the understanding that nothing in this breathlessly techno-sleek world of ours is as isolated as it seems. Our computers are not islands. As our web use becomes defined by interconnectivity in a new era of tagging, networking, and navigating, we must try to remember that our physical world is also profoundly affected in much the same way.
4:33 AM | Permalink | (3) Comments
Time-Based Tropes
Archived From October 17, 2006 (5) Comments
When our futures become the past, what will they prove to have been like?
As mind-bending as this question is, it lies at the heart of every successful science fiction story. Good writers in this underappreciated genre can be so forward-thinking that instead of asking, "What will the future be like?" they are already devising an answer to, "How will the future become the past?"
It's with this understanding of the malleability of time that good science fiction (which I have trouble feeling isn't the only relevant kind of writing) also manages to deftly place its reader in a chronological context. It is immediately obvious that the reality of a sci-fi narrative takes place in the future of the reader's reality -- and, intrinsically, that the reader exists in the novel's past. Once you get absorbed in a story about the future, you become a character in its past, understanding how time can change states.
Definitely, it's a tricky way to write, and much of its power depends on how easily its readers can imagine that their present day could unfold into the brighter, more efficient, more futuristic, future that they are being presented.
The most common trope of science fiction, one that makes this imagination easier, is a depiction of the 'first generation' of Earthmen and women who move out to the stars. In Ray Bradbury's seminal science-fiction novel The Martian Chronicles (a novel I read in one breathless sitting in my basement when I was 12 years old), the first expeditions of Earthmen to venture to Mars are portrayed as brave, solitary colonists who quickly fall to the superior intellect of old Martian civilizations. Later generations of explorers refer to them as "the Lonely Ones," with the same respect and tenderness that we, culturally, reserve for our nation's "Founding Fathers."
This first generation, so common in the fictional history of future civilizations, creates a kind of time-bridge between the reader's reality and that of the novel. They are closer, chronologically, to us and our present-day -- that is to say, the Future's Past. The brave men and women who first colonize the barren planets make sense to us, because we have forefathers as well. Further, their first foray out into the stars allows us to understand how the present can bring a future worthy of dreaming about; hence they serve as an elegant gateway to the suspension of our disbelief.
Certainly, we all have varying conceptions of what the future will be like. Will it be rounded and comfortable, like movies from the 1960s? Will it be the same as the present day, only dirtier and more populated? Or will it be an angular dystopia mobbed with glitching androids and space warlords? Mark Von Schlegell, science-fiction novelist and critical theorist, once wrote to me that the undefined future might be "conical, both angular and circular." Still, does anyone doubt that the future will take place elsewhere in the cosmos?
I have begun to realize with great sadness that my generation will not be the first generation of the science-fiction stories I grew up on. The future, as far as I see it, is just out of our grasp. Recently, for example, astronomers have been using the Hubble Space Telescope to locate extra-solar planets at such a rapid rate that it seems straight out of a sci-fi novel. Apparently, over 6-billion Jupiter-sized planets exist in our galaxy alone, and it is becoming increasingly obvious that planets are as abundant elsewhere in the galaxy as they are in our Solar System. Alan P. Boss, a theorist at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, noted in a recent New York Times piece that, "we've learned now that planets are everywhere [and] we're beginning to be able to calculate how many Earths there are, how many planets are habitable, if not inhabited."
In the grand scheme of collective time, human exploration of the cosmos is very primitive. Sure, we've sent looking-glasses and little robots into space and managed to find planets by measuring the effect they have on the ether around them. Yet discoveries such as this one, that the number of extra-solar planets is probably infinite, are staggeringly humbling. They remind us that the future as we have always imagined it really will take place on an astral stage, but that we are still very deep in the past of the science-fiction story that will inevitably become our reality.
8:30 AM | Permalink | (5) Comments