Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Future Bodies: The Technological Future of Human Evolution (CNN Futures summit)

Rich — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:35:00 -0700

a technological optimistic look at future bodies in which human flesh is seamlessly inserted into machine...

James Howard Kunstler: April 28, 2008 - A Collective Psychic Bubble

ronjon — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:00:00 -0700

...This has been a pretty remarkable month, actually, with all the problems of "The Long Emergency" accelerating impressively. Oil is now testing the $120 mark, the airline industry is imploding (largely over fuel costs), the housing scene has reached a degree of collapse unseen since the 1930s, food shortages have strayed out of the Third World and begun to affect Japan and the USA, bats are dying of a mysterious disease in the Northeast, and the Arctic sea ice is shrinking away to nothing.

We're in a strange collective psychic bubble. We'd like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up -- what's wrong with that?

But there's an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We're on the edge of something. We're at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you're spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There's no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days? ...

• "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future," by SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kotke

ronjon — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:51:00 -0700

I just received an email from SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kotke announcing the publication of the first reprint of his underground classic: "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future," first published in 1993. I just downloaded the E-book version (for just $6.95) and after a quick scan through its 600+ pages, I'm convinced this is a significant read for those SCIY readers concerned about Earth's sustainability crisis. As an Amazon reviewer said:

"This is an incredibly well documented and prophetic book. Prophetic in the sense that when I first read it over ten years ago, I was skeptical of many predictions. They have all turned out to come true. This book is indigenous and inspiring in the sense that it offers practical earth friendly strategies that affirm the possibility that man is part OF nature, not apart FROM it. Well written! Real history and facts, vitally relevant, and hence empowering! Good medicine for all earthlings. A powerful gift! Thanks Bill!" ...

Japan’s Second Defeat after the Second World War

RY Deshpande — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:06:00 -0700

If we have seen the possibilities and pitfalls in Big Science given to us by the American model, we also notice its results in other places,—for example in Japan. Japan's first experience with high-level business and industrial development forms a good illustration to see how one can get trapped on the economic path when something alien enters into the system. Yoshiro Hoshino writes: “There is nothing worse than war for bringing about the destruction of nature, human beings, factories, housing, and transportation systems, and for causing starvation and sickness, the discharge of untreated factory wastes, and the destruction of farm lands. When environmental destruction is understood in its broadest and most fundamental sense, the original culprit is war.” America, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, invaded Japan in another way. It looks as though the evil found another soil to grow and flourish in a vigorous manner. The present article Japan’s Second Defeat after the Second World War forms a chapter of my yet unpublished book Big Science and its Impact on Society....

Arlington Institute Report on Global Demographic Shifts

ronjon — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:48:00 -0700

...the emergence of a new demographic trend has largely been ignored. Today, worldwide fertility rates are at an all time low, and in the decades following 2050 the global population is actually expected to stabilize and possibly decrease. The two factors driving this new pattern are the emergence of women’s rights on a global scale and the expectation among parents that all their children will survive to maturity.

Fertility rates, the best indicators of long term population changes, refer to the average number of children a woman will have. In order for a given population to replace itself, its fertility rate must be at 2.1 or higher. Graph 1[2] illustrates the decline of fertility rates that has occurred in the last fifty years, and shows projections for the next fifty years. ...

Maya May Have Caused Civilization-Ending Climate Change—by Anne Minard

RY Deshpande — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:29:00 -0700

A new analysis of satellite images suggests that the ancient Maya used certain areas for agriculture, inducing drought that caused the downfall of the civilisation. The image, taken by the commercial satellite IKONOS, also reveals yellow discolorations in the dense forest canopy—probable sites of ancient Maya buildings. …

'Tipping Points' in Global Climate Change: Latest report from AGU SF Mtg. of Dec.07

ronjon — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:28:00 -0800

This recent report, from the session on 'Tipping Points' at the important Dec.07 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, illustrates the complexity of current technical discussions about the validity of the increasingly disruptive climate change scenarios being projected by various Climate Change computer models. The bottom line is that our models may be seriously underestimating the rapidly of the coming changes, as indicated in the previously posted article re the melting of arctic sea ice. ~rj

...In Hansen's talk, he did try to clarify what he meant by a tipping point. His notion of this has less to do with what mathematicians understand as "bifurcations," and more to do with a kind of inertia in the climate system. He means things like having passed a threshold of CO2 which, given warming in the pipeline and the lifetime of CO2, commits a certain discrete event — e.g. loss of perennial sea ice or the Amazon rainforest– to occurring even if we were to later reduce emissions to zero. He tried to distinguish between reversible and irreversible tipping points...

...where things get interesting is where you try to explain a magnitude of signal this big in terms of basic physics. This is important because there is a perception that GCM's vastly underestimate the amplitude of the response to total solar luminosity, leading to a perception that there is some "missing physics" (whether it be exotic amplification of a stratospheric response, or something like clouds and cosmic rays)...

But — the take-home point is that at this point the study of solar cycle response very strongly supports the notion that there is no need to invoke any mysterious or exotic missing physics (like cosmic ray modulation of clouds) in order to represent the response of climate to solar variability. If some models underestimate the response, this is likely to have more to do with errors in the vertical mixing of heat than any missing fundamental physics. ...

Jet From Supermassive Black Hole Seen Blasting Neighboring Galaxy

ronjon — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:55:00 -0800

A jet of highly charged radiation from a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy is blasting another galaxy nearby -- an act of galactic violence that astronomers said yesterday they have never seen before.

Using images from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other sources, scientists said the extremely intense jet from the larger galaxy can be seen shooting across 20,000 light-years of space and plowing into the outer gas and dust of the smaller one. ...

"What we've identified is an act of violence by a black hole, with an unfortunate nearby galaxy in the line of fire," said Dan Evans, the study leader at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. He said any planets orbiting the stars of the smaller galaxy would be dramatically affected, and any life forms would likely die as the jet's radiation transformed the planets' atmosphere. ...

Al Gore, UN Climate Panel Share 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

ronjon — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:18:00 -0700

Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to publicize and understand human-caused global warming. -- The Norwegian Nobel Committee this morning announced that the former U.S. vice president and the United Nations' climate panel will equally share the prestigious award for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

Gore and the IPCC were chosen from a list of 181 candidates to split the prize, worth 10 million Swedish kronors (about 1.5 million U.S. dollars). -- The award committee, based in Oslo, Norway, said their decision was intended to bring into sharper focus the actions "necessary to protect the world's future climate and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind.

"Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man's control," the committee added. ...

The Speeding Star Mira: A Johnny Appleseed of the Cosmos?

ronjon — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:23:00 -0700

A new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. The star, named Mira (pronounced my-rah) after the latin word for "wonderful," is shedding material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life as it hurls through our galaxy.

Mira appears as a small white dot in the bulb-shaped structure at right, and is moving from left to right in this view. The shed material can be seen in light blue. The dots in the picture are stars and distant galaxies. The large blue dot at left is a star that is closer to us than Mira.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered Mira's strange comet-like tail during part of its routine survey of the entire sky at ultraviolet wavelengths. When astronomers first saw the picture, they were shocked because Mira has been studied for over 400 years yet nothing like this has ever been documented before. ...

What Caused the Great American Extinction?

ronjon — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:00:00 -0700

Scientists have been arguing for years about what caused the die-off of both North American culture and many large animals near the end of the last ice age, about 13,000 years ago. Did hunters wipe out the mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, and giant sloths? Or did a huge drop in temperature freeze out both the animals and their hunters?

Neither, says Luann Becker, a geochemist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Becker, along with two dozen–odd scientists, is studying a thin 12,900-year-old geologic layer across North America that she believes holds the legacy of a major extraterrestrial impact roughly half the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs. -- After reviewing evidence of the blast—magnetic dust, trapped extraterrestrial gas, glasslike carbon full of tiny diamonds from the heat, and a layer of iridium from outer space—the geologists concluded that the North American fireball was a whopper. Specifically, they suggest that a three-mile-wide comet moving at 135,000 miles an hour blew up over Canada with the force of a million nuclear bombs.

Mammoths didn’t stand a chance, says Northern Arizona University space scientist Ted Bunch: “If the fires and the shock wave didn’t get them, there was a nuclear winter that blocked out the sun and made eating difficult.” The heat may have also melted vast stretches of retreating glaciers, kicking off a cold spell by slowing ocean currents. ...

The universe will destroy the evidence of its origin

ronjon — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:23:00 -0700

... Modern cosmology has revealed a universe teeming with dark matter and unseen energy, entering a new stage of inflation. ...

According to a paper that will appear in October, we're lucky to be able to reach this understanding—literally. The authors of the paper run the clock forward 100 billion years and reveal that it's going back to the future, a conclusion clear in the paper's title: 'The Return of a Static universe and the End of Cosmology'. ...

The authors go on to ponder what this means in terms of the anthropic principle: the idea that we exist in a universe that's got conditions favorable to life largely because anything else would preclude any life arising that could ponder the universe. They suggest that there's another layer of complexity on top of that, namely that we only recognize that there is an anthropic principle because we came along at the right time. Too much earlier, and we wouldn't be able to detect that the universe is in a new inflationary era, which tells us that it's dominated by dark energy. Too much later, and we wouldn't be able to know that there's a universe at all. As the authors put it, "we live in a very special time in the evolution of the universe: the time at which we can observationally verify that we live in a very special time in the evolution of the universe!" ...

Eta Carinae: New [Chandra] View of Doomed Star [may explode at any time]

ronjon — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:51:00 -0700

Eta Carinae is a mysterious, extremely bright and unstable star located a mere stone's throw - astronomically speaking - from Earth at a distance of only about 7,500 light years. The star is thought to be consuming its nuclear fuel at an incredible rate, while quickly drawing closer to its ultimate explosive demise.

When Eta Carinae does explode, it will be a spectacular fireworks display seen from Earth, perhaps rivaling the moon in brilliance. Its fate has been foreshadowed by the recent discovery of SN2006gy, a supernova in a nearby galaxy that was the brightest stellar explosion ever seen. The erratic behavior of the star that later exploded as SN2006gy suggests that Eta Carinae may explode at any time. ...

The Birth of Dark Energy

ronjon — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:57:00 -0700

Even weirder than dark matter—the invisible stuff constituting most of the mass of the universe—is dark energy, a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate. Weirder still is a recent discovery that dark energy has been around for most of the history of the cosmos. “Nine billion years ago, dark energy was already wielding its repulsive influence on the universe,” explains Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Adam Riess. But the repulsion didn’t win out against the force of gravity until 5 billion years ago, when cosmic expansion kicked into high gear and began accelerating. ...

Disappearing Common Birds Send Environmental Wake-up Call

ronjon — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:00:00 -0700

...A new analysis by the National Audubon Society reveals that populations of some of America’s most familiar and beloved birds have taken a nosedive over the past forty years, with some down as much as 80 percent. The dramatic declines are attributed to the loss of grasslands, healthy forests and wetlands, and other critical habitats from multiple environmental threats such as sprawl, energy development, and the spread of industrialized agriculture.

The study notes that these threats are now compounded by new and broader problems including the escalating effects of global warming. In concert, they paint a challenging picture for the future of many common species and send a serious warning about our increasing toll on local habitats and the environment itself.

“These are not rare or exotic birds we’re talking about—these are the birds that visit our feeders and congregate at nearby lakes and seashores and yet they are disappearing day by day,” said Audubon Chairperson and former EPA Administrator, Carol Browner. “Their decline tells us we have serious work to do, from protecting local habitats to addressing the huge threats from global warming.” ...

Automatic Telescope in Chile Spots Light-Speed GRB Explosions

ronjon — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:47:00 -0700

Some dying stars smolder into darkness while others quickly shed their coat of hot gases. But some go out with a bang, propelling their remains through the cosmos at more than 99.9997 percent of the speed of light--the maximum speed limit in the universe.

Using a robotic telescope at the European Space Organization's La Silla Observatory in Chile, called the Rapid Eye Mount (REM) telescope, astronomers have measured once-theoretical speeds of the explosions known as gamma-ray bursts for the first time.

"This is very exciting," said Stan Woosley, an University of California astronomer and astrophysicist who was not involved in the research. Woosley said the energy found in the bursts "strain the models" dictating how fast matter can go. ...

“We are in a race to save humanity,” by Ervin Laszlo

ronjon — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:34:00 -0700

"...Today, we are facing two crises, one in the biosphere and the other in human consciousness. If we are going to cope with the challenges facing the biosphere, there must be a new human consciousness. It must recognize we are as much part of this planet as the birds and trees, and evolve in response to that. Once we feel this, we will automatically try to preserve our planet.

Another way to reach this is that we must sense our unity, we must feel connected, both to each other and to the biosphere. ... To my mind, there is an almost miraculous acceleration of this new consciousness, which I sometimes refer to as planetary consciousness. Even in biological terms, I’m sure that the genetic code of the children born today is different from ours. As living systems are open, as there is always an energy interchange between them and their environment, the new generation’s DNA must have been modified by the crisis we are living through, perhaps making them more able to adapt and survive. ...

But still we need to buy time; to delay the coming of the ‘chaos point’ regarding the biosphere until this new consciousness has fully established itself. If the crisis happened today, we would be as unprepared for it as we were for the tsunami. -- This is where places like Auroville can play a vital role. For as this new consciousness spreads by what the scientists term ‘adaptive resonance, wherever you have a higher concentration of people who sense and act upon their unity, it can be picked up by receptive people anywhere. This is why those who are engaged in living and developing this planetary consciousness bear a tremendous responsibility for the evolution of all humanity. ...

Fish virus hits Great Lakes

ronjon — Sat, 26 May 2007 15:53:00 -0700

A highly contagious and deadly disease that has plagued fish in the Great Lakes for at least two years is ravaging that lake system and has spread to fish in other freshwater lakes and rivers in the region, prompting officials to issue emergency rules and strengthen existing regulations to slow its march. -- The virus, viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), is not native to the Great Lakes region, so it's hard to predict how damaging it will be to the area's fish, said Rod Getchell, who studies fish diseases at Cornell University's aquatic animal health program. "It's [infecting] naïve hosts, and it's a pathogen that's in a new environment,' he told The Scientist. "That's the scary part. We don't know what kind of effect it's going to have on populations.'

Many fish species die soon after being infected with VHSV, but the disease seems particularly virulent in the Great Lakes, where it has killed several hundred tons of fish over the past two years in Ohio, New York, and Michigan, according to USDA statistics. -- The virus has already spread to the Saint Lawrence River, and managers fear that the disease could make its way into the Mississippi River drainage system. ...

"Brightest Supernova Ever" Reveals New Kind of Star Death

ronjon — Tue, 08 May 2007 16:01:00 -0700

The brightest star explosion ever seen has been spotted about 240 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus, researchers announced yesterday. -- The distant event, which so far has remained brighter than an ordinary supernova for more than 200 days, likely represents a new and extremely rare type of star death that occurs only in supermassive stars.

"It's no surprise that a very massive star will eventually collapse," David Pooley, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of a new study on the supernova, said during a press briefing. -- But what surprised scientists is that the brightness of the explosion couldn't be explained by the faint amount of x-rays emitted by the blast.

Normally when a large star dies, the explosion sends shockwaves through surrounding cooler gases, creating regions that emit large amounts of x-rays—the source of a supernova's light. -- But the explosion of SN 2006gy, which is thought to be nearly 150 times as massive as the sun, showed few x-rays. ...

Is China Slowly Poisoning the World?

ronjon — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:35:00 -0700

...So then what exactly is causing the recent spate of pet illnesses and deaths? As a scientist I must initially conclude that there is not enough data to come to a firm conclusion. However, that does not mean that we cannot make well educated assumptions. Because melamine is not particularly toxic and is not known to cause kidney failure, it is logical to assume that there are other contaminants in pet food in addition to the melamine.

Obviously, Chinese farmers, chemical producers, and food additive distributors have no compunction against putting harmful or even toxic compounds into products that are to be consumed by either animals or humans. China has a history recently of putting business interests far ahead of human interests. Manufacturers in China have few restrictions on how they operate and whether or not they are permitted to pollute the air and water. Cancer rates have soared in many parts of China that have become industrialized. It has been noted by Western journalists that the smog is so thick in some Chinese cities in that you can stare at the sun without worry because it looks like a dim orange ball in the sky.

Another assumption that we can make based on what is known about toxicology is that it is not uncommon for two mildly toxic compounds to have a cumulative effect that is far more toxic than either compound alone. As such, it seems quite likely that other chemical contaminants originating in China, which have not yet been identified, are also present in Chinese food products. Melamine would almost certainly put a strain on the kidneys because it contains a great deal of nitrogen, and one of the major functions of the kidneys is to clear excess nitrogen from the body in the form of urea (present at high levels in the urine). If Chinese farmers and food product distributors have been putting other toxic compounds into their products for similar, nefarious reasons as they have been using melamine, then it seems quite possible that two or more mildly toxic compounds are having a synergistic effect in causing kidney damage, and eventually failure. ...

What is happening to the bees? (NYT)

ronjon — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:32:00 -0700

More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.

As with any great mystery, a number of theories have been posed, and many seem to researchers to be more science fiction than science. People have blamed genetically modified crops, cellular phone towers and high-voltage transmission lines for the disappearances. ...

Scientists Extract Proteins from 68-Mil.-Year-Old T-rex

ronjon — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:00:00 -0700

This is one chicken I wouldn't like to meet in a dark alley! - ron
________________________
Scientists have managed to extract proteins of collagen 1 from the bones of a 68-million-years-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil. It was previously thought the protein in bones had a shelf life of around a million years. By comparison, DNA "survives" less than 100,000 years.

The collagen protein was discovered in a thighbone unearthed four years ago under 20 yards of rock on a cliff in the Hell Creek Formation, which spans the Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas in the northwestern U.S. Reporting in two papers in the new issue of Science, the team of researchers announced that a chemical analysis of the T. rex peptides suggests the king of the lizards is most similar to a present-day chicken. ...

The Club of Rome, System Dynamics & Limits to Growth

ronjon — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:31:00 -0700

Part of my grad school study was with the System Dynamics computer simulation group under Prof. Jay W. Forrester at MIT. Working with the Club of Rome sponsored "Limits to Growth" global modeling project awakened me to the complex "world problematique" rushing tsunami-like out of humanity's future. This realization led to my ongoing concern with sustainability issues, which in turn was part of my motivation for co-founding SCIY. -- I'm happy to see that the Club of Rome continues with its important work. ~ ron

The Club of Rome’s mission is to act as a global catalyst of change that is free of any political, ideological or business interest.

The Club of Rome contributes to the solution of what it calls the world problematique, the complex set of the most crucial problems – political, social, economic, technological, environmental, psychological and cultural - facing humanity.

It does so taking a global, long term and interdisciplinary perspective aware of the increasing interdependence of nations and the globalisation of problems that pose predicaments beyond the capacity of individual countries. ...

"New Zeal for Old Galaxies" cosmology conference in NZ

ronjon — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:23:00 -0700

Where did we come from? It's a question as old as the universe and, says Garth Illingworth, Professor of Cosmology at the University of Santa Cruz, if you want to understand how life formed on this planet, you have to step back and ask how the planet formed, then step back again to ask how the star around which it orbits formed, how the galaxy formed and then all the way back to the beginning of the universe to ask how the first galaxies came into being.

This is exactly what he and more than 100 international astrophysicists have been doing for the past week at the "New Zeal for Old Galaxies" cosmology conference in Rotorua. ...

Professor Rosie Wyse of Johns Hopkins University says, "The real fundamental issue in astronomy today is what is the nature of dark matter and one of the good ways of getting to that is studying the galaxies in the Local Group [of about 30 nearby galaxies, including the Milky Way and Andromeda] and trying to understand the merging history."

One of the "hot" issues about dark matter is whether it is cold dark matter (CDM) or merely warm, as a group led by New Zealand astronomer Gerry Gilmore at Cambridge University suggests. ...

A New Timetable for Mammal Evolution

ronjon — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:17:00 -0700

After a monster meteor crashed into Earth some 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs and the vast majority of all other life on the planet, it took millions of years for the pace of evolution to pick up and the ancestors of modern animal species to begin diversifying rapidly and radiating throughout the world.

The timing of species development after the crash has long been a mystery to scientists, with many believing that the Great Extinction allowed an immediate speedup in evolution's pace.

But an international research team, creating a "supertree" to chronicle the evolution of nearly all the 4,500 species of mammals alive today, has concluded that the meteor disaster was followed only by a brief interval of evolution and extinction. It took tens of millions of years after that for all the mammalian species -- and probably the birds, too -- to begin their full-paced evolutionary advance, they say. ...

Everything You Know About AIDS is Wrong

ronjon — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:36:00 -0800

...Oster argues that health is an investment. If you’re expecting to live a good, long time, you might be more inclined to make health investments than if you expect to die soon. If your life expectancy is only 40-50 years due to environmental factors, you might be more willing to take this 3% risk than a gay man in America who otherwise expects to live almost 80 years.

To test this effect, Oster looked at sexual behavior rates in countries that had high, low and medium levels of malaria. In countries with low malaria, there’s a very strong correlation between prevalence of AIDS and change in behavior - in countries with high malaria, there’s no correlation, or in fact, an opposite effect. There’s a similar correlation with maternal health and child mortality. This suggests that if you want to combat AIDS, you also need to deal with malaria, internal air quality and maternal health. ...

How to Think Differently About Climate: Imagine not just radical change, but transformation

ronjon — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:24:00 -0800

...So, climate negative. Any plan which doesn't measure itself against that bar is no plan at all. To get a sense of how difficult our task will be, take a look at the boldness and complexity of Energy [R]evolution, a blueprint for reducing global CO2 by 50% worldwide by 2050.

Cutting our CO2 in half, the authors say, will take major breakthroughs in solar, wind, geothermal, bioenergy, hydropower, and advanced fossil fuel technologies. It will take behavioral changes. It will take policy shifts, changing the way we tax energy and pollution and incentivize innovation and investment to level the playing field. And it will take proceeding on different paths in different places. It will be, in short, a massive undertaking.

Now imagine that as a half step, and one that will come too late. Imagine not just radical change, but transformation. ...

Stephen Hawking to take a zero-gravity flight

ronjon — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 15:18:00 -0800

On April 26, Dr. Hawking, surrounded by a medical entourage, is to take a zero-gravity ride out of Cape Canaveral on a so-called vomit comet, a padded aircraft that flies a roller-coaster trajectory to produce periods of weightlessness. He is getting his lift gratis, from the Zero Gravity Corporation, which has been flying thrill seekers on a special Boeing 727-200 since 2004 at $3,500 a trip.

Peter H. Diamandis, chief executive of Zero G, said that “the idea of giving the world’s expert on gravity the opportunity to experience zero gravity” was irresistible.

In some ways, this is only a prelude. Dr. Hawking announced on his 65th birthday, in January, that he hoped to take a longer, higher flight in 2009 on a space plane being developed by Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic, which seeks to take six passengers to an altitude of 70 miles. ...

Foreword to James Gardner's "The Intelligent Universe," by Ray Kurzweil

ronjon — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:26:00 -0800

Ray Kurzweil wrote this article as the introduction to James Gardner's new book, "The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET, and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos." It's a good summary of Ray's latest thinking. Though its very techno-optimistic view is contrary to the post-modern skeptical flavor often presented on SCIY, I've been following Ray's thinking for years and continue to be impressed with his erudite scholarship. -- In any case, I believe it's an important function of SCIY to present viewpoints that are contrary to our own; to be skeptical of our own skepticism.

... It is remarkable to me that almost all of the discussions of cosmology fail to mention the role of intelligence. In the common cosmological view, intelligence is just a bit of froth, something interesting that happens on the sidelines of the great cosmic story. But in the standard view, whether the universe winds up or down, ends up in fire (a great crunch and new Big Bang), or ice (an ever-expanding and ultimately dead universe), or something in-between, depends only on measures of dark matter, dark energy, and other parameters we have yet to discover. That the story of the universe is a story yet to be written by the intelligence it will spawn is almost never mentioned. This book will help to change the common "unintelligent" view.

So what will we do when our intelligence is in the range of a google (10^100) cps? One thing we may do is to engineer new universes. Similarly, our universe may be the creation of some superintelligences in another universe. In this case, there was an intelligent designer of our universe--that designer would be the evolved intelligence of some other universe that created ours. Perhaps our universe is a science fair experiment of a student in another universe. (Reading the news of the day, you might get the impression that this erstwhile adolescent superintelligence who designed our universe is not going to get a very good grade on his or her project.)

But the evolution of intelligence here on Earth is actually going very well. All of the vagaries (and tragedies) of human history, such as two world wars, the cold war, the great depression, and other notable events, did not make even the slightest dent in the ongoing exponential progressions I previously mentioned. ...

Meeting the Asteroid Impact Threat: Astronauts call for new UN Agency

ronjon — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 23:11:00 -0800

The next known close encounter with an asteroid will occur, somewhat ominously, on Friday the 13th of April 2029. Then, Near-Earth Object 99942--also known as Apophis (Greek for "The Demon of Darkness")--is expected to miss the planet by a mere 30,000 kilometers. The real sweating begins soon after, when astronomers must determine whether Earth's gravity has steered Apophis onto a course for impact seven years later. ...

The human role in climate change (Boston Review)

ronjon — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:50:00 -0800

This is one of the best summaries of the science of climate change and global warming forecasting I've seen. It's by Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT, who was recognized in 2006 by Time magazine as "one of the world’s 100 most influential people." Highly recommended.

...The evolution of the scientific debate about anthropogenic climate change illustrates both the value of skepticism and the pitfalls of partisanship... general awareness of the issue dates to a National Academy of Sciences report in 1979 that warned that doubling CO2 content might lead to a three-to-eight-degree increase in global average temperature. Then, in 1988, James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, set off a firestorm of controversy by testifying before Congress that he was virtually certain that a global-warming signal had emerged from the background climate variability... Most scientists were deeply skeptical of Hansen’s claims; I certainly was...

At roughly this time, radical environmental groups and a handful of scientists influenced by them leapt into the fray with rather obvious ulterior motives. This jump-started the politicization of the issue, and conservative groups, financed by auto makers and big oil, responded with counterattacks... A very small number of climate scientists adopted dogmatic positions and in so doing lost credibility among the vast majority who remained committed to an unbiased search for answers... On the right, the search began for negative feedbacks that would counter increasing greenhouse gases: imaginative ideas emerged, but they have largely failed the acid test of comparison to observations. But as the dogmatists grew increasingly alienated from the scientific mainstream, they were embraced by political groups and journalists, who thrust them into the limelight. This produced a gross distortion in the public perception of the scientific debate. Ever eager for the drama of competing dogmas, the media largely ignored mainstream scientists whose hesitations did not make good copy. As the global-warming signal continues to emerge, this soap opera is kept alive by a dwindling number of deniers constantly tapped for interviews by journalists who pretend to look for balance...

Life Lessons: What can we learn from science? (Guardian Unlimited)

ronjon — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:22:00 -0800

Provocative responses by scientists to question: "What is the one thing everyone should learn about science?" — from Guardian Unlimited via RYD.

Martin Rees Astronomer Royal and professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge

"I'd like to widen people's awareness of the tremendous timespan lying ahead — for our planet, and for life itself. Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4bn years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures that exist then will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

"Our concern with Earth's future is, understandably, focused upon the next 100 years at most — the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. But awareness of this longer time horizon, and the immense potential that human actions this century could foreclose, offers an extra motive for proper stewardship of this planet. ..."

Discovering new life (The Hindu)

ronjon — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 18:43:00 -0800

Thanks to RY Deshpande for referring this article.

The thrilling discovery of 52 species of animals and plants from the equatorial island of Borneo in just one year is proof that the task of cataloguing all life on earth deserves the highest priority. A treasure trove of species, which includes a miniature fish that lives in highly acidic peat swamps, six Siamese fighting fish, a tree frog with bright green eyes, and 16 new ginger plants, has been found in a mountainous area described as the "heart of Borneo." Indexing biodiversity is a discipline with a deadline. Continuing deforestation, habitat loss, the spread of invasive species, and the annexation of resource-rich areas to feed mass consumption leave insufficient time to classify everything. ...

Stephen Hawking warns re "catastrophic dangers of climate change"

ronjon — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:46:00 -0800

Professor Hawking said that we stand on the precipice of a second nuclear age and a period of exceptional climate change, both of which could destroy the planet as we know it...

"As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility, once again, to inform the public and to advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces," Professor Hawking said. "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. ...

The End Is Nearer, Say Atomic Scientists

ronjon — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:21:00 -0800

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which 60 years ago began keeping tabs on humanity’s temporal distance from self-annihilation with the concept of a “Doomsday Clock,” apparently found things sufficiently dire to nudge the minute hand forward two clicks, indicating that we are now “five minutes to midnight” — or Doomsday.

The clock had last been adjusted in 2002, when it was moved from 9 minutes off to 7 minutes. The current position is the closest the group has put the planet to Doomsday since 1953, when the Soviets and the United States were first playing with their newfangled thermonuclear weaponry, and things looked mighty bleak indeed. ...

The Omega Point and the Final Fate of Life

ronjon — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 17:08:00 -0800

How long can life survive in the universe? Can it evolve forever, or will the third law of Thermodynamics lead to universal heat death? Apparently there might be some ways around this fate, if intelligent life is sufficiently clever and tenacious.

Essentially life has to adapt as the universe grows older, changing itself to be able to survive when the stars grow cold. If the universe is open, there will be plenty of time to work in, but energy will become very scarce. Dyson has shown that a finite amount of energy is enough to guarantee infinite survival if it is spent sufficiently slowly (this is called the Dyson scenario).

On the other hand, if the universe is closed, it will recollapse into a Big Crunch after a finite time, becoming hotter and hotter. Life has to adapt and restructure itself to these conditions, and if intelligent beings accelerate the speed of their mental processes accordingly they can even experience a subjective infinite time during the last stages of the collapse (this is called the Tipler scenario).

A third possibility is that the universe may be open or closed, but new baby universes branch off due to natural or artificial causes, and intelligent life can survive indefinitely by migrating into new domains as the old become uninhabitable. This is commonly called the Linde scenario. ...

One Vision: The home of David Ulansey (CIIS Prof.)

ronjon — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:16:00 -0800

My name is David Ulansey. I am a Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and before I came to CIIS I taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Boston University, Barnard College (Columbia University), the University of Vermont, and Princeton University. My specialty is the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, especially the ancient Mystery religions, Gnosticism, ancient cosmology, and early Christianity.

My publications have focused on the ancient mystery religion of Mithraism. ...

Rotten eggstinction: The Permian-Triassic mass extinction

ronjon — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:01:00 -0800

What was the murder weapon for our planet’s biggest die-off? The Permian-Triassic extinction is the ultimate cold case, transpiring 250 million years ago. But some scientific sleuths have sketched out a scenario worthy of the trickiest mystery novel - involving a chain of volcanic eruptions, greenhouse-gas emissions, oxygen-deficient oceans, sulfur-loving bacteria and poisonous hydrogen sulfide, the compound that smells like rotten eggs. There are even those who would throw in an asteroid for good measure. The rotten-extinction theory gets a prime-time airing tonight on PBS’ “Nova ScienceNow.”

The event, which came at the transition between the Permian and Triassic geologic ages, ranks as the most severe of Earth's five mass extinctions (many people say we're in the midst of the sixth extinction). Based on the fossil record, more than 90 percent of marine species died out, along with about 70 percent of all land-based species. ...