Oops! No New Life Form On Saturn's Moon

Two days ago I mentioned here a Gizmodo article concerning a NASA press conference scheduled for later this afternoon. At the time, the educated guess was that arsenic had been discovered on one of Saturn's moons, Titan. Further speculation generated the possibility that there may have also been evidence found of an arsenic-based bacterium living on Titan.

Well, looks like everyone was WRONG! The announcement, in fact, was about an experiment conducted on bacteria dredged up from a a poisonous, arsenic-filled lake in California, which had the phosphorous element of its DNA removed and replaced with arsenic. Bacteria have been known to process arsenic before, but never to actually be made from it. The fact that this bacteria was able to propagate after the replacement has broad implications for the possibility of life existing on other planets where Earth conditions are not the norm.

So, sorry. No alien life forms discovered. But, for biologists, this is actually a very cool moment. It was previously thought unlikely that anything could live based on arsenic. Now we know better, and thus we learn that life doesn't have to be unique to Earth.

That's pretty awesome in my book!

For more info, check out this article in today's Popular Science update.

Two Pics Worth The Price Of A Chuckle Today

Upon checking out Gizmodo this afternoon, I came across this article mentioning some important NASA press conference scheduled for this Thursday concerning a possible "astrobiology finding" on one of Saturn's moons. In this case, Titan, which we already know has liquid on its surface in the form of the hydrocarbon ethane. Could there actually be life on this moon?

Anyway, in the comments at the end of the article, I came across two embedded pics which had me ROTFLMAO -- and which adequately displays my frustration at NASA's previous "important" announcements:

That's so wrong . . . and yet, so RIGHT! LOL! On a tangent note, but also offering up equal hilarity is another pic I found in the comments, which so perfectly sums up my annoyance sometimes when I read my science magazines:

That right there is so on the money! I subscribe to three scientific mags -- Discover, Scientific American, and Archaeology -- as well as pick up the occasional Astronomy and National Geographic when the mood strikes my fancy. I can't tell you how many articles I'm starting to skip now because this is how they almost always turn out. The headline presents a provocative supposition of some potentially ground-breaking paradigm shift . . . only to end up being a "wouldn't it be cool if?" spec piece, or containing a flat out "yeah, keep dreaming" conclusion. ARGH!!! So aggravating! But such is the nature of the game of science journalism. Ground breaking discoveries are not made every day, and yet they still need to sell subscriptions.

Anyway, I guess I'll be keeping my ears peeled for Thursday's announcement. I agree with this Jason Kottke person that it will mostly likely be about the discovery of arsenic, which has already been theorized before as a likely candidate to be found on Titan. Don't get me wrong, this will be great news. Even better if they actually do have evidence of some kind of bacteria living off the arsenic. But then, NASA has gotten my hopes up before. So for now I'll just remain cautiously optimistic and wait to see what comes of it.

Are you excited by the possibilities?

Back To [My] Future

I was reading this news article today in The Hollywood Reporter about the 25th Anniversary trilogy box set of Back to the Future, which is coming to Blu-ray later this month (oh yeah!). In it, they brought up a factoid that many of us fans already knew: that the original Marty McFly was played by none other than Eric Stoltz for a period of about five weeks before they pulled the actor and went with Michael J. Fox instead.

Click on the link above and catch a clip of Stoltz in a few of the now iconic scenes we all love and cherish. I really, really like Eric as an actor, don't get me wrong. Hell, he's frakking AWESOME in the "Battlestar Galactica" spinoff, "Caprica," now running on the SyFy Network. But Marty McFly he was NOT!

Phew, they really lucked out by snagging the plucky Canadian off the set of Family Ties long enough to make this now seminal sci-fi flick. And I'll be sure to snag my copy of the entire set come Oct. 26th. Can you believe I never owned these films on DVD? Good thing, too, because for once I won't have to double dip!

Anyway, it got me to thinking about time travel again, one of my favorite day-dream subjects as of late. I've been trying for years to work out a viable time travel premise for a short story or novella, yet so far all my attempts have been duds. But that doesn't mean I can't still fantasize about what it would mean for me, personally, to be able to travel back in history.

What usually ends up happening when I think of such matters, though, is that I'll come up with two different time travel scenarios:

On the one hand, I imagine a traditional vector wherein the time traveler uses a device to take him back to any point in Earth's timeline.

On the other hand, I imagine the traveler can only travel back within his own personal timeline, and only while occupying the body and mind of the younger version of himself whilst in the period of time he's chosen.

Hmmm, which do you think would be more exciting? The first option obviously offers more freedom, as you can travel as far back as, say, Ancient Egypt, and learn things about that time that even the oldest and most experienced Egyptologists today don't know. Woo-hoo! But the second option is also just as cool, no? Just think of all the mistakes you made in your past that you would now be able to fix. And before you go there . . . let's leave out the time paradox school of thought, or the Butterfly Effect. Two areas of temporal theory I don't particularly agree with, but which have no place in this fun little thought experiment anyway.

So, what would I do given either of these options?

Well, with the first, I would travel back to the 1950s. I don't know why, but I find it a fascinating time period in America. Sure, I could travel further back in time, but the more you go the more you risk entering an alien culture and society that you are not equipped to handle long enough to keep yourself alive. Not knowing the language alone might be enough of an excuse for some Roman centurion to run you through with his Gladius and ask questions later.

No thanks.

For my first time travel venture, I would play it safe and only go so far back in time that I wouldn't immediately stand out as some rube, yet still be far enough back from my own lifetime for it to be a cool and interesting experience. I would explore New York and see for myself the city expand in all its post-war exuberance. Then I'd take a cross-country trip and eventually make my way to Hollywood, and be there when all the great classic films of the Golden Age are starting to take shape. Maybe I'd stop by this sleepy little desert resort town known as Las Vegas and invest in the local real estate boom going on there, too.

For the second option, this one is the most difficult for me to envision. How far back into my own past would I want to go? What would I do all over again or, more importantly, what must I be sure to keep the same?

I think I would travel back to 9th grade and re-do those next 4 years all over again. Isn't that what they all say? I mean, who here didn't have a difficult go of it in high school? But to be in my 14 year old body with all the knowledge and foresight I possess now? Whoa, it would be a whole different story!

Of course, why would anyone want to repeat high school all over again, right? And let's be honest, if I had the knowledge I have now back then, I would probably just drop out of high school, get some bullshit job at McDs or something, and invest my paychecks in all the companies that I know are going to go BIG in the Internet explosion of the mid-90s -- like AOL, Netscape, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and eventually Google. Not to mention other big corporate entities these days like Amazon, Dell and Best Buy! And in the oughts, there's always Facebook! The sky's the limit on just how much I could benefit knowing what I know now. Plus, I'd get to relieve both the Michael Jordan-era NBA *and* the Yankees resurgence to dominate baseball in the latter half of the 90s. Double win!

The danger of this second option, of course, would be if I went back far enough to effect big events in my life, such as the death of my mom. It's a very heavy subject with me, but surprisingly I'm not so sure that I would do something as drastic as that. I mean, a part of me does in fact believe that some things happen for a reason. It's a hard truth, but it's one I've lived with ever since the age of 9. If I had the chance to change the outcome of that fateful night back in 1985, I'd have to go against everything that made me who I am today.

Wouldn't it be worth it, though? To have my mom back, I mean?

Hmmm . . . as you can see, the possibilities are both exciting and woefully complex at the same time. The more I think of it, the more I believe that the further back into your own past you travel, the more damage you can potentially cause to yourself and those around you. Maybe what you think would be a mistake worth fixing might in turn precipitate another much larger problem in the new future timeline you've just created. And once you made this change, or any change for that matter, you'd run the risk of never being able to return to your future time--the present time--again.

Maybe, on second thought, it's better to just stay put where I'm at for now. It's probably a good thing we can't time travel, eh?

Seeing Is Not Believing

I just read the most interesting article in this month's issue of Scientific American concerning "blindsight," a phenomenon by which people suffering from a specific form of visual impairment can still "see" even though they are technically blind. And even though they themselves are not consciously aware that they are "seeing."

Say WHAT???

I know, that was my reaction also. But it's true! The phenomenon has been known and studied since the early 20th century, but only recently are scientists starting to take the claims seriously and have even come a long way in explaining the source of this singular condition.

People who display this ability have had some form of damage to the visual cortex in their brain. Meaning that their eyes are perfectly healthy, but that the region of the brain that processes what the eyes are seeing is either malfunctioning or not working at all. Yet, with varying degrees of accuracy, most cortically blind people are able to still navigate around objects placed in front of them, make out simple shapes, and even recognize facial expressions in others.

But, here's the kicker -- they don't realize they're doing this!

SciAm has a video up on their website which demonstrates a patient performing blindsight. Click on this link to get to the article, and then wait for the embedded video to load up. It's intriguing to say the least!

Reading the full article (which you can only get by subscribing), I started forming my own opinions on how this was possible. I thought it was telling that only people with damage to the VC would display this ability, while people blinded through direct physical or congenital damage to the actual eyes could not.

Turns out my rationale was leading me to right solution after all. By the end of the article, the author proposes that the visual signals being received by the still healthy eyes, but not being processed by the VC, is instead being processed by an older, less-evolved region in the midbrain called the superior colliculus (SC). In mammals, the SC is responsible for less refined functions of vision such as the movement of the eyes and basic object recognition for use in higher brain functions like the "fight or flight" instinct we all share. In other words, the portion of the visual signal that would normally go to the SC is still going there despite damage to the VC that would normally handle the finer processing of the information our eyes transmit to the brain. So while the VC might no longer be operating as normal, the SC is still doing its job.

Fascinating, huh?

And because the SC is used in the processing of mostly unconscious decisions, this also explains why exhibitors of blindsight can perform such uncanny feats and not even realize they are doing it. It's raising a lot of questions--both scientifically as well as philosophically--about just how much of what we see is active cognition. How much of what we used to think we actively processed visually is in fact being handled by a part of the brain connected more with instinct and unconscious brain function?

Food for thought.

Born With A Head For Numbers

One of the many science print magazines I subscribe to, Discover, had a very interesting column this month on human beings and the rather intuitive instinct we have for math. This goes deeper than the math we're taught in school--like algebra and calculus--to a more fundamental basic recognition. The article points out that, contrary to prior scientific belief, the basic skills for math is not something we learn cold, like riding a bike or learning to juggle---but is something hardwired into our very neurons! And that, despite major advancements in the field of mathematics within the last millennium, this instinctual skill has been around with us since long before the advent of civilization.

"Despite the late appearance of higher mathematics, there is growing evidence that numbers are not really a recent invention—not even remotely. [University of Rochester neuroscientist, Jessica] Cantlon and others are showing that our species seems to have an innate skill for math, a skill that may have been shared by our ancestors going back least 30 million years.

One sign that this skill truly is innate: Children enter the world with a head for numbers. Veronique Izard, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, demonstrated this in a recent study of newborns. She and her colleagues played cooing sounds to babies, with varying numbers of sounds in each trial. The babies were then shown a set of shapes on a computer screen, and the scientists measured how long the babies gazed at it. (The length of time a baby spends looking at an object reflects its interest.) Newborns consistently looked longer at the screen when the number of shapes matched the number of sounds they had just heard. For example, a baby who heard “tuuu, tuuu, tuuu, tuuu” would look the longest at four shapes, less at eight, and still less at twelve. Izard’s study suggests that newborns already have a basic understanding of numbers. Moreover, their concept of numbers is abstract; they can transfer it across the senses from sounds to pictures."

Wow!

I said it before and I'll say it again: the human mind is a truly magnificent construction. Except, according to this article, we're not the only animals with this trait built into our brains. Say what?

If you want to read the article in full, click on this link.

How's This For Irony, Eh?

I was reading an article in this month's Discover magazine about a new city being built from virtual scratch that will be both carbon-neutral and zero-waste producing. The city will rely completely on "green" technologies -- meaning no gas-guzzling vehicles, no fossil-fuels, and no nuclear power. But here's the kicker: the city, named Masdar, will be located in perhaps the most successful oil-producing corner of the globe, The United Arab Emirates.



Being constructed on a site occupying 2.5 square miles just 11 miles southeast of Abu Dhabi city, Masdar (Arabic for "source") will be a walled-in enclosure eventually housing 50,000 citizens and providing for an additional 40,000 daily commuters who will work and toil in the city's 1,500 planned commercial and manufacturing businesses. The products of these companies will be primarily eco-friendly as well.

A solar-powered desalination plant will provide for the city's water needs. In addition, the water will be continuously recycled, with some of the runoff waste water used for crop irrigation. Solid waste will also be treated and used for soil fertilization.

Masdar will rely entirely on renewable energy for its power supply. The city will utilize a 60-megawatt solar power plant to generate the power needed to construct its buildings and infrastructure. Wind turbines and supplemental photovoltaic modules on the rooftops of most buildings will provide up to an additional 150-megawatts of power to the city after its completion.

Already Masdar is being touted as the city of the future; an experiment with aims to produce more "green" energy than that being consumed. If successful, it will be the model for urban planners in the near future.



One way Masdar will fulfill its need to be green will be through the disallowing of all carbon-fueled vehicles entering the city limits. Local transportation will be provided, instead, by a network of magnetized strips which will propel specially designed electric vehicles throughout the city. These driverless "cabs" will connect to around 83 stations all over the city, so that pedestrians might easily and comfortably travel without the fear of adding to the global carbon footprint. A pair of electric rail systems will connect Masdar to the outside world, allowing tourists and commuters to enter and leave the city with ease.



The planned Masdar City headquarters (pictured in the concept art above) will be the first building of its kind to generate the power it will need for its own construction. Before the 1.4 million square foot structure is built, a large solar-panelled platform will be assembled first and serve as the headquarters' roof, where it will continue to provide all the power needs for the office and administrative spaces housed under its photovoltaic umbra. The building will cost an estimated $300 million to construct.

Which begs the question: where is all this money coming from? The project is being headed by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi itself committing $15 billion to the initiative's projected $22 billion price tag. Through the project's Clean Tech Fund, additional investments are provided by such notable partners as General Electric, British Petroleum, Mitsubishi, and Royal Dutch Shell.



The project, called the Masdar Initiative, began back in 2006 and has a planned completion date of sometime in 2013. However, the first phase of the city's development will be finalized and ready for habitation by as early as next year!

And other countries aren't doing this why?

You can read more about this experiment in green urban planning by visiting The Masdar Initiative's official website. I could not find a copy of the print article on Discover magazine's website for linking.

E.T. -- You Have A Call On Line One!

This is very cool! I was reading this article in SciAm today, about upgrading the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, a collection of 27 radio telescopes used to explore the universe. The expanded VLA is the latest breakthrough in the technology, going completely digital to be up and running by 2012. What is so impressive is the supercomputer, or correlator, that monitors and compiles all the various signals coming in from each of these antenna dishes.

You can read the entire article online by clicking here.

This is my favorite excerpt:

"Engineers also upgraded the path by which signals get from the antenna dishes to the correlator, using all-digital fiber optics that replace the old analog waveguides. The dishes are getting new, exquisitely sensitive digital receivers, providing continuous band coverage from one to 50 gigahertz. All these upgrades will pump up the VLA’s capabilities at least 10-fold, making it able, in principle, to detect a signal as weak as a cell phone call from Jupiter."

I'm simply dumbfounded by the awesomeness of the bolded statement. Science rocks, hard!

The LHC Is Super Duper FLY!!!

This nerd rap is probably something that will amuse only scientists and those hardcore sci-fi fans who follow serious science. I thought it was hilarious, as I've probably learned more than I'll ever need to know about the Large Hadron Collider due to my subscription to Scientific American. I've probably read three to four full-length articles on the LHC in Scientific American over the past year -- and each time it left my head spinning!

Anyway, for those who don't know, the LHC has been under construction at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) for the past decade, although plans for the collider were first realized way back in the 80s. If anyone has read Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, you may remember CERN and the particle accelerator there having an integral presence in the novel. CERN is housed near Geneva and extends underground through both Switzerland and France. It receives funding from several major nations, and gathers the best scientific minds in the world into one place for the sake of advancing mankind's knowledge of the universe. Très cool!

The LHC is set to be officially revealed next month, and when it is fully up and running will run a variety of particle physics tests, including proving the existence of the Higgs boson and uncovering the secrets behind some of the fundamental forces in the universe, such as electromagnetism. The LHC will be the linchpin of several different experiments running simultaneously, including ATLAS and CMS, among others. But the one I have the most excitement for is ALICE : or, A Large Ion Collider Experiment, which will smash lead ions together at close to the speed of light, studying the resultant debris for quarks and gluons.

Basically, once the LHC goes online, it will be the fulfillment of many a physicist's wet dreams. I'm not a physicist, or anywhere close to being one. But I'm giddy as to what this may mean for the field of speculative fiction. Some of this stuff has already been theorized before, of course. But there's nothing like getting cold, hard confirmation from the lab to get the imagination buzzing.