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• The Future is Now September 27 - 02:06 pm
• E.T. info... or not. May 19 - 06:38 am

The Hubble telescope will be decommissioned by 2010 and made to fall back to Earth, to be replaced a year later by the newer generation James Webb space telescope to continue peering into where no man had peered before. Is this the right future science?

In the BBC article, 31 July, 2003: Eyeing a post-Hubble Universe, talks about the transition from the old space telescope to the new. In fact, Hubble has contributed many new observations of our universe with unprecedented clarity, everything from a clearer image of our nearest neighbor Mars (now on 27 August about to come closest to Earth in human history), to gravity lensing images of galaxies 13 billion light years away. We have greatly increased our knowledge, though not necessarily our understanding, of our cosmos. Would the new generation of space telescopes not be better put to use to increase our understanding of what it is we see? For example, shouldn't we be looking for evidence of gravity not being a universal constant, but a variable instead? Also, shouldn't be we trying to better understand cosmic light redshift, rather than simply assuming that it represents distant galaxies moving away from us? Why are we once again at the "center" of the universe, why does there have to be a Genesis like Big Bang? I would think the new generation of space observational instruments should explain more than we currently have come to accept, since we are very likely wrong.

To look 13 billion light years into our cosmic history is phenomenal, since it is like an open book of time. However, we should try harder to understand what that book is saying, and not simply assume that using constants that work on Earth are equal everywhere else. It could be that in seeing 13 billion years ago, or the light released then only now reaching us, is no more than if we were stationed out there, 13 billion light years away, that we would be seeing the same thing from our region of space. The universe is changing same as all things change, so that spin, lightshift, and other measures of passage of time are markers that may work everywhere equally, but only markers and not the answers we are seeking. Therefore, in seeing through the book of cosmic time, we may be looking at ourselves in the present, which leads to the question: Was our universe long ago more dust and less stars? Or are they still the same as they were 13 billion years ago? I think this is a key question to understanding cosmology, because one answer says the universe had a probable beginning, but another will say that it is infinite in space and time.

Editors, Humancafe.com

PREDICTIONS ON HUMANS IN SPACE

RE: E_m*c = hc/l = h/l(e_om_o)^1/2= (B_m)c² = (1-g)c² = Energy

--which is the Axiomatic Equation.

I would go so far as to say that someday, someone much smarter than me, will figure out how this equation continues further to show how the 0-1 calculations of our electronic computers work. And if all mass is already traveling at lightspeed c in relation to the electromagnetic energy from which it is formed, from those regions of space so far away as to be invisible to us, in some distant future, we may even show how all things in the universe are interrelated in relation to infinity, some unimaginable totality of all that is. Perhaps then we will understand how organic compounds form into living things. Then the Axiomatic Equation will become a very long chain showing how all things are related into a unified mysterious whole....

But this is still very far away. For now, we only need to find that energy affects how manifests gravity. We will know this if we discover that Pluto is mostly water ice, a big dirty snowball in a gravity dense space far from the sun, and that Mercury is a planet where most of the nonmetallic elements had been burned off, so that it is like a big metal ball around the gravity weak region of our star (which appears massive in gravity because of its great size). And if this proves to be so, then we will discover that canceling photon lambda, such as at the center of any spherical energy, creates a most powerful version of the Casimir force naturally. So our immediate future is to find these first baby steps, because if we do, then we can travel at light speeds by using a continuously accelerating, infinitely abundant, force of what space is already made of.

The most distant prediction is that when we do all these, we will Terraform Mars by dragging large snowballs in space to the planet's mass to give it both oceans and atmospshere... but that may be thousands of years away. By then, we will already have "talked" to all our galactic neighbors (via Quantum "ghost energy holes"), so they will have told us how to do this.

Ivan

FUTURE ENERGY NON-NUCLEAR?

In the BBC article "Is the future nuclear?", questions are raised as to how viable is nuclear for our energy needs. The major issue is that in our eagerness to find a "clean" fuel, science turned a blind eye on the highly toxic byproduct plutonium, so that the benefit of clean fuel is grossly negated by deadly waste. Expectations were that in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, we would have inexhaustible supplies. To date, however, there seems to be no real solution for the radioactive waste generated, which is highly toxic for hundreds of thousands of years.

It is for this reason that finding a new energy source for our future is so critical. If the new physics of the Axiomatic Equation is correct, then a whole new world of energy opens up for us, one using a small amount of electromagnetic energy to unlock the vast and inexhaustible potential of deep space gravity.

Of course, if this new energy works, will we use it to send off past Pluto all the highly toxic waste we had generated? Let us hope not. For now, this is still a future science yet to be discovered. We will know better when we get to Pluto.

Asteroid to hit Earth March 21, 2014, and send us
the way of the dinosaurs?

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/6674108.htm

Should we be worried? Nahh... we have Bruce Willis.

FAKIR DOES NOT EAT NOR DRINK

Well, perhaps this is but another 'rope trick', but it sounds ligit, that a 70 year old man in India needs no food or water, that he recycles his body fluids, has lived this way for several decades, and is in perfect health... what are the rest of us doing wrong? Is this Fakir an evolutionary quirk, or are we all going there eventually?

Without exaggeration, if we were half plant and half animal, we might achieve this feat handsomely.

BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3236118.stm

Happy Thanksgiving!

I*v*a*n*

SCIENCE, THEN AND NOW, AND THEN AGAIN

We now have over three millennia of science behind us, knowledge painstakingly built up upon the shoulders of great men, and women, that has brought us from some dim recess of fear and superstition to a world of verifiable observation and predictive formulation. When the ancient Greeks first conceived their world, on the shoulders of Egyptians and Chaldeans who preceded them, the universe was made of air, fire, earth, and water, right down to the mysterious singularity of the atom, and up to the star filled heavenly canopy that circled the flat Earth. Their European Medieval successors saw the great design of the Creator with our world at the center of the great universe of God, represented as His kingdom on Earth in the Church, a world no longer flat, but still at the center of the firmament. Not until the Renaissance did we finally understand the logic and mathematics of our heavens, the forces of nature that could be calculated to harness their power, and to displace Earth from its central role and put into its place around the Sun. In each age there were great men who were revered for their knowledge, who would be attended to in scholarly circles almost to the exclusion of the great unlearned masses who could not possibly understand them. We today have this same heritage with us, where the mysteries of the universe, of Quantum Mechanics and General or Special Relativity, are cloaked in some arcane language not understandable to common reasonable men and women, but the exclusive domain of those who had made it their lives' purpose to understand these things, a modern scientific priestly class. Today it is no longer a world of gods, nor one of angels and a God who personally runs heaven and Earth, but rather a world of forces and energy that power our reality. But there ends the dissimilarities, for it is still a mysterious world of forces that defy intelligence, forces so mysterious that to accept them borders on the incredible, on magic, on pure faith. Obviously the ancients were wrong in their assessment of the world and the universe we live in, same as there are errors in our thinking of these today. The Earth's magnetic field remains a mystery, same as do the basic building blocks of matter made of quarks and mesons, and subatomic particles so peculiar we name them by color and spin rather than by how they build the world; where their singularity is surpassed only by the greater mystery of galactic blackholes. Stranger still are Strings and Branes. We had come full circle, where once again we are rotating within the sphere of our ignorance and cloak ourselves in such mystery as to leave out any intelligent being who might be curious and venture too near. We do not know, so we protect ourselves in what scraps of knowledge we had gleaned with a shield of silence, so none may enter this sacred circle except those who had passed the tests of proper initiations into these dark mysterious crafts. Years, a lifetime of study, is demanded to enter, to be admitted into this esoteric circle where believers speak only to each other, sometimes in language so counterintuitive as to border on the absurd. We laugh at the ignorance of our distant ancestors while we fail to laugh at ourselves and our own ignorance. This is the place we are now in science, a strange force driven world closed to outsiders, except in vague layman's popular explanations that defy rational thinking. This is not acceptable, for it is not science. The universe is not so complex that it needs to be interpreted to us by scientific priests, for in the end it will prove simple enough that any intelligent rational being will understand it. This means that we still do not know. And though millennia preceded us in our quest for understanding, we had not yet arrived at Truth's door. There is no harm in studying the absurd notions of modern science, but nor is there reason enough to believe them, for their knowledge is more philosophy than science. They do not know, and hence they will continue to cloak themselves with a circle of silence until something truly meaningful is finally understood. And when this is done, then all of us will partake in the free gift of knowledge, not through arcane initiations into some magical mathematical arts, but through simple and understandable reason. I think this is the next step in science, to bring us to that threshold of Truth where the mysterious becomes evidently clear. But the time, the then to come, is not yet.

Ivan

FUTURE PHYSICS
http://msnbc.com/news/998391.asp?0dm=T26BT

interesting article on space-travel in the future

SPACE DRIVE
http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/TM-107289.htm

not new but future science

100 YEARS OF FLIGHT

Today marks the centennial anniversary of the Wright Brothers's first heavier than air flight at Kitty Hawk. Due to weather conditions, the exact replica was unable to replicate this flight today, which shows how difficult was that first flight. In the next 100 years, the rocket propelled flights that had taken crafts into space beyond Pluto will likely be replaced by a new physics, a new technology which will take us far beyond where we had gone before. It may very well be that humans will be in space on the furthest reaches of our solar system before the next century is done. And when it is, let us remember those brave pioneers of flight who first gave us our wings.

Hints of new technology, physics: http://www.calphysics.org/articles/merc2000b.html

Editors

THE 'MARTIANS' HAVE DONE IT AGAIN

Beagle 2 has remained silent, for now.
Mars misson 'an inspiration'

There is still hope we will hear from the Mars lander.
Beagle team 'not giving up'

Or maybe the Martians are in New Jersey?
'Maybe we are the Martians'

After the 1976 Viking landers, the Martians decided to keep us guessing.
Are we perhaps not alone?

Then again, it might have fallen down a hole...
Beagle 2 down Mars crater?

HUMANS INTO THE COSMOS

BBC articles:
Rolls on to Martian soil
Bush unveils Moon and Mars Plans

In unveiling the Moon and Mars mission plans, President Bush says: "Human beings are headed into the cosmos." This is a good time to pause and reflect what those words mean. We are heading into space, perhaps at a pace faster than previously anticipated, especially if a new energy form is developed to get us there. Our purpose, in addition to extending our own presence into the solar system, is to look for life. Undoubtedly the first ventures will be modest, merely the Moon and Mars, to test our strengths and weaknesses as travelers beyond our world. Ultimately, we will be looking for signs of early life, perhaps only planetary fossils and bacteria, but the ultimate "Hello!" will be when we encounter intelligent beings. This would be the greatest prize of all, that we are not alone in the universe, and very likely nor the first ones to venture from our home planet. What would be a surprise is to find traces of other visitors to our nearby planets, left over hardware, scientific bases, or just stelae left behind as markers to worlds still unimagined by us. Is there life beyond Earth? I would speculate that it is a near certainly, and with it intelligence as well. The uncertainty will be whether or not such life will lead us to a greater understanding of ourselves and the universe we live in. Imagine a system designed like an near infinite Chinese box of surprises, one that works so well within itself that no matter how far or deep we plumb it, there is still greater wonders to behold, markers that reveal to us that the intelligence we feel in ourselves, that fleeting moment of reason and awareness, is but a tiny fragment of a greater order of things that is intelligent beyond our wildest speculations. This is the real prize of going into space, that we will discover ourselves there not only as neighbors to primitive bacteria, but as future fellow citizens of a universe populated by beings as ourselves, some of whom had already glimpsed into the infinite, and were awed. In our future ventures into space, we will be too.

Ivan

Birth of a Crystal

Interesting computer simulation showing how ions first connect to begin the crystalization process. Of necessity, how the ions come together is a function of where all the other ions are in relation to each other within the liquid solution, how they are interrelated into a whole. Translate this into each ion having a 'definition' of is state in relation to how are defined all the other positions, to totality. The end product is the solidified crystal. In the future, we may be able to define how this interrelationship operates for all things, even to infinity systems like our universe.

*

Mars 'bed of beads'?
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994654

Gut feelings are that the stone 'beads' are windborne, not product of vestigial water. Patterns of water-like formations may be due to Mars' low gravity and high wind environment carrying spherical nodules sprayed out by ancient volcanoes around the planet, where the stone beads then appear to 'flow' like water. If so, the water locked in the polar ice caps, or deep under the soil, will have to be mined to be useful in future human explorations or colonizations on Mars. Suspicion growing that _no_ flowing waters on Mars.

FUTURE CONTOUR HOMES

http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~khoshnev/RP/CC/Contour%20Crafting.htm

These contour homes are the future, rather than the stick built, tree killing, formaldehyde board homes built today. The future is now.

DNA responsible for evolution?

This makes more sense than mutations, which can create abnormalities. The Pitx1 gene is found to be responsible for mechanism of evolutionary change, which can be relatively rapid. Is it triggered by environmental changes, or is it internally stimulated? See more on BBC Science News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3625235.stm

Shields Up! to protect against harmful cosmic radiation makes sense, especially if an electromagnetic field can be put up around the space craft. If the Axiomatic is correct, such a shield would form naturally around any space craft using cancelled electromagnetic energy in a vacuum globe, since the by-product of such a system is the ejection of positive ions out the axis of the sphere. This would naturally create a protective electrical field around the space craft drawing off cosmic rays into the axis. One unpleasant effect of this positive ion radiation, however, is that unlike negative ions that are psychologically beneficial, like after a rain, positive ions have a neurologically depressing effect. Well, nothing is without cost, even if the energy generated by this Axiomatic mechanism gives non-polluting energy for free.

BBC Science News: "Arctic cores offer climate clues", shows how climate changes in the past may be measured by taking core samples in the Arctic.

This led me to thinking, can it be that past ice ages are a function not only of how ocean currents cooled or warmed the planet's atmosphere, but also whether or not the poles were over land or water? If they are over water, then the moderated temperatures might account for no ice age, whereas over land the temperatures could be expected to be cooler, like the Antarctic vs. the Arctic, so that an ice age might follow? Just a thought, since I had not checked on how the land mass was distributed over the polar regions in previous ice ages.

Ivan

WANDERING POLES REVISITED

I had posted above, that the Ice Ages of the planet may have some connection with whether the geographic poles are over land mass or water, which may have sufficient effect on water and air temperatures to cause an ice age. This web article Changing the Earth's Axis or Orbit explains that the changing poles are due to continental drift.

Though this still falls into 'pseudoscience', combined continental drift with orbital precession may together be enough to cause ice ages, but I suspect that when the poles are over land masses, the planet cools more than when they are over water. At present, the south pole is over land, but the north pole is over water, so we have a balanced condition, with the resulting ocean currents and levels being as they are. If the poles were both over land, the ocean levels would drop as more ice gathered there, and possibly currents warming the northern regions, such as the Gulf Stream current, might cease the warm the same northern areas, which would affect temperature distributions around the planet. Would Earth ice over completely? Probably not, given the solar output of energy reaching here, but it might leave the planet with a thick blanket of ice reaching down from either pole, with a warm band in the middle around the equatorial regions. However, if the ice ages were due to orbital precession, they would have been totally regular. Since they were irregular in time, from what we can surmise of studying ice cores, then there must have been other factors involved, such as continental drifts, to account for it. If we are to assume our local star's energy output had been steady for the past million years, then the periodic icea ages here must be accounted for by event dynamics on the planet, i.e., continental drift.

It would be helpful to find a map of where the continental drift land distributions were in previous ice ages. My search thus far has not produced such a correlation. I did find this article by Rober Watts: Global Change Surprises: Examples from the Past and Possibilities for the Future , which talks about the proximity of land mass to the pole:

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Quote:

"As the continent "drifts" closer to the pole, some ice remains at the end of the polar warm periods, and glaciers continue to grow until some other mechanism, yet to be explained, causes them to retreat after about 100,000 years."

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WHAT'S WRONG WITH SETI?

SETI is our efforts at searching for intelligent life in the universe. But without apparent success we may be looking in the wrong way. If advanced technology, hypothetically, had already evolved beyond electricity for communications, then us sending out radio waves to contact them, or listening on the radio bands, is like our ancestors sending out smoke and fire signals to contact our electromagnetic communications devices. We might notice them, but not respond. If our understanding of gravity has been faulty, and it is a manageable force instead, then perhaps advanced civilizations had already mastered this, so that they communicate via gravity pulses rather than electromagnetic ones. This would make better sense to communicate over great cosmic distances, since gravity is an instantaneous force, unlike electromagnetic traveling at light velocity. Can this be done? In theory, if gravity can be modified using light, where canceling all light wavelengths on a point recreates a very powerful gravity, then controlling the pulses of light on such a point could be used to send signals. These signals would travel in all directions simultaneously, so that they could be received at cosmic distances simultaneously, slowed only by the time the received converts these pulses into electromagnetic waves, which are then converted into audio. This would be a much preferred system of communications than used presently. Of course, there would have to be a mechanism for converting gravity pulses back into electromagnetic pulses, of which we at present remain ignorant. For that matter, since we are still ignorant of gravity, we may just as well send smoke signals to contact other civilizations, and expect the appropriate SETI answer, which is none. The Axiomatic Equation would indicate, if it is correct, that this will be achievable someday. But when we do master this new technology, then we will have to give it a name. Mr. Spok, what would be a good name? How about "subspace-communications"?

Ivan

MSNBC Technology & Science: Earth to E.T.: We're waiting

WHY SHOULD WE ASSUME INTELLIGENCE IS IN THE BRAIN?

We all take it a priori intelligence is in our brain. But should we make that assumption for any other than homocentric reasons? It could be the whole Universe is intelligence, and we are but one tiny spark of intelligence, such as it is, within it. Let me explain why I say this.

Think how it took nearly 3 billion years of life on Earth to give us the flat worm. Truly a lovely specimen, no doubt colorful in its debut, and it could move about at will within its oceanic watery medium. Scientists think its locomotion was in response to external stimuli that affected its DNA composition, so that it could either hunt or flee as life around it became more complex. Complex: read that as more predatory. It seems to take conflict to get us to move, even us humans who would otherwise sit under fruit trees with our mouths open, until the next nap. But when conflict is present, then we are forced to think, to act, to defend ourselves, or if hungry, to go on a hunt. That is where intelligence was born, of conflict.

Now, think of our universe as a conflict ridden place, stars eating stars, galaxies merging with galaxies, right down to multi-celled animals eating other multi-celled animals. So here we are, the product of zillions of years of conflict, with a brain that gives us a fighting chance against predators more powerful than ourselves, and we are unwittingly, and unfortunately, winning this war. So now other species which we admire and would hate to lose are at risk of extinction. But in each moment of this conflict ridden evolution, a moment of decisions was made, something then registered in our DNA, so that we oftentimes had absolutely no idea of what we were doing. But something out there already knew. Something was designing us to win.

It is that other knowledge, that greater universal conglamorations of circumstances that gave us first the DNA, second the brain, and third the ability to succeed to the point where even consciousness arose, and we became intelligent. Think what that means! Really, think about it. Though we were still unconscious of what was happening to us, to our evolution, something out there was already conscious for us, intelligent for us, so that in the end we became its offsprings with a brain that can think. Who is this great Benefactor of ours, so secretive that we cannot see Who it is, and yet so persistent in structuring the universe in ways that gave us not only life, but an intelligent brain? Who is the answer, not what, not where, not when, but Who. And yet this Who is as illusive as can be, since we have no clue.

I suspect, in the ways of the interrelated universe, that Who is what we are all about, and that in the end, we will discover Who is the Universe. It is not a reality of what or where, but of Who. That is our identity, for it is Who we are. The brain is that wonderful instrument that connects to that Who, even down to single celled animals and plants. And now we are being called upon to go the next step, to forgo conflict, to stop coercion, and as masters of our fate to do by agreement instead. That is a big step, but it can work! That is the next level of our consciousness, of intelligence, not from the brain alone, but from Who out there somewhere in the Wholeness of the universe. Our intelligence is already preprogrammed for us to assume that power, of agreement over coercion, over predation, and to find ways to grow intellectually conflict would never allow. Our DNA is being programmed for this even as I write, for we are to move up the chain of intelligence. The brain is just the organic mechanism that will help us get there. And now in less than a billion years our living species had evolved from the flatworm to presend day life, where in the span of perhaps not much more than a couple of million years, we evolved our modern brain. Why the sudden surge forward? Who is behind this surge?

Our intelligence is truly a very large conglomeration of things that had preceded us from the beginning of our first living ancestors, connected to all reality throughout time, and connected biologically through our parents back to that first living organism that started it all. It is a universal process, far larger than we could ever imagine, and it was never broken, never disconnected, down to every atom and molecule in us, through our DNA, and ultimately through the personality we call ourselves in every decision, every action we take. We are the end product of all this, and it deserves no less than awe. Now to be conscious of it, to understand it with our intelligence, is the next great step in this great surge. Life is an infinite interaction between the living and the universal reality within which we live. Life is not predetermined as some philosophers would have us believe; rather, life is interactive. We are blessed to be here, and to think our intelligence is from our brain is a very small and narrow point of view. We are infinite in our intelligence, for it is from there, from that universal Who, that this intelligence became us. So now choose, neither to be hunter or hunted, but choose instead to be more, to be in agreement, and find that agreement in the other. That is the next big step forward. Then when we succeed in this, we will validate that it is not the brain that gave us intelligence, but something so much bigger, so much more diverse, so much more universal, that it boggles the mind. And then, maybe then, we will be approached by the others who had gotten there before us.

Ivan

Inertial Propulsion Plus Engine

This idea as developed by Richard E. Foster, Sr. may have promise in future applications by utilizing the old F = ma function to offer greater energy efficiencies. It may be a new variation of the 'fly wheel' principle? Worthy of future science.

'Water Factory' may yet ease the need of cities on desert coasts for fresh water. The BBC Science News article says that this new membrane filtration process for removing salt from sea water is price competitive, as developed on Israel's Mediterranean coast. Future science for southern California, or Chile, or Namibia coasts too? All islands short on potable water too.

Ivan

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit’s journey across the Red Planet, between July 1 and September 21, 2004

This Mars Rover winter image shows powdery white stuff, which may be some kind of ice formation. Note how the 'blueberries' are uniformly whitish, as if they excreted water which turned to ice. Not a claim this is so, but it mabye a possibility.

PIX FROM MARS AND ENVIRONS TO WONDER AT:

Anomaly Hunters Image Gallery

Leave it up to your imagination!

Titan remains an enigma?

I think Titan's latest shows ice. The enlarged pix "Black Cat" looks like Earth's polar region from a high flying airplane, except the ice here is probably methane-ethane, not visitor friendly.

ANCIENT GAIA WAS LIFE?

Ancient life thrives in the deep, BBC Science News, says microbial life 400 meters beneath the sea floor is perhaps evidence of how first life formed on our living world. Does Gaia have a secret about its 'immortal' microbes?

Producing and consuming CO2, these may be responsible for generating deep wells of hydrocarbon reserves for its distant future offsrpings, us, who then misused it to raise the temperatures of the planet; buildups of CO2 will now force us to reassess what it is we do to ourselves. Did Gaia already preplan this, long in advance? Who really runs this world? I suspect the 'immortal' microbials...

Ivan

DO ANIMALS HAVE EMOTIONS?

See http://www.sanctuaries.org/
and http://www.animalplace.org/

These two sites will show that our common 'anthropomorphic' misconceptions on animals are misplaced, and ignorant. of course they have emotions, and we had been to emotionally repressed to know this. Now there are people who are breaking through the 'anthropormophic' barriers, to reveal what truly beautiful beings they are, even the common farm animals.

Dear anon,

Good point, that "anthropomorphic misconceptions" work both ways, whether right or wrong, it is always "our" concepts. So the scientists who claim animals have "no emotions", as they use them for experimentation, are "anthropomorphizing" their conception of their subjects? Wrongly. Smart idea, but how unfair we had been to our little friends, whether on the farm or in the wilds.

Thanks, I agree. Future science. Animals have emotions, and we had been unbelievable dense to not acknowledge them for "who" they are.

Ivan

Just a link to a story about tool using Dolphins...evolution and conciousness are not limted to land primates with hands....

My Best Ed

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/06/06/dolphin.learning.ap/index.html

COMET CRASH CLUES?.. and Early American Footprints.

This BBC comet article falls within my expectations, that the comet is loosely held with a relatively thin crust. If my hypothesis on comet formation is right, and that they scour the outer solar system where gravity G (per mass) is greater than here, we should expect that comets "grow" while out there and shrink and jet out while closer to the Sun, where G is lower. If so, then any body out in the deep of cold space will act as a comet, consolidating whatever loose material and molecules are out there, then gas them out when entering the inner solar system. Out there, they are solid compactors, more like asteroids, while close in they are mushy jet spewing "dirty snowballs". It's the comet's peculiar habit of traveling so far out there, sometimes past the Kuiper Belt, and then back in again in their extremely elliptical orbits that makes them unique. Still so much more to learn, so the next Rosetta encounter in 2014 will be also very important.

This other article same day, on early American footprints seems to indicate that natives to the American continent came here a lot earlier than currently theorized, that they may have come by sea rather than land, by about 30,000 years. My hunch had always been that people traveled along the edges of the icepack, following migrating game, or hunting for marine animals in crude skin boats. Eventually, they'd find land at the other end, and say "to hell with this traveling life, I like the blossoms in Spring, I'm staying!" I am sure out distant ancestors, whether or not they left Africa 40,000 years ago, or twice that, were not stupid.

Ivan

COMET - UPDATE ON DEEP IMPACT

Here is a very nice description from BAD Astronomy on what had been observed by the Deep Impact probe after the impactor slammed into Tempel 1. Powdery stuff supports my idea of comet as a space "vacuum cleaner", picking up loose molecules in space as it travels from our low gravity region, where this stuff is released, back into higher gravity space, where it is again accumulated. Awaiting more data, very exciting!

Ivan

Mars "living" corpuscles?

This picture was worth revisiting, now that Water on Mars is confirmed from several sources.

Ivan

More on the importance of Space Shuttle future, per BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/4130788.stm

As a friend who sometimes consults for NASA said recently, this may have been the last landing. I hope not, but robotics may be more effective at a lower cost. He may be right, alas.

Mine, from the above:

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Quote:

On Tuesday morning I got up just before 0500, turned on the news and realised the space shuttle Discovery was in re-entry. I went outside about seven minutes before landing and looked up at the sky, which was still dark. There were absolutely no planes anywhere in sight, but suddenly out of the south-west came a small dot of light. It got brighter, passed almost over the house, and then banked left to land perfectly at Edwards Air Force Base. After it passed, there was a faint rustling sound in the air, like a far away jet airliner, but quiet with no engines, as it was gliding in. Oddly, a small meteor flash crossed its path just after it passed! I'm glad I woke up early. Because of bad weather in Florida they decided to land here in California. What a treat!

Ivan Alexander, Orange County, CA, USA

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Space Elevator Concept Undergoes “Reel” World Testing

A 'space elevator' where tourists can ride up to the edge of space is so super cool!

Tech diffiulties like electric charge buildup, harmonic oscillations, high altitude winds (or jammed elevator?), all could possibly impact the safety of this enterprise, but if resolved, they are well worth the risk.

Ivan

LIVE SCIENCE articles.

Origin of Oil
Abiogenic oil may be as abundant on our planet as methane is for the outer planets, just how the universe built us.

End of the World?
Natural cycles of cataclysmic events is only natural, not the Apocaplyse.