Apocalyptica

Recently, Earth narrowly avoided annilhation - allegedly. Tabloids were freaking out, as were fundamentalists - specifically a group (the eBible fellowship) who predicted the end of the world back in May 2011, and rather than die from the shame of such a non - event, decided to work towards a second definite date which was Tuesday the 7th October 2015.

Well, we're still here, and I assume that the cult members have been savvy enough not to part with all their wordly goods and chattels. Could be bad though - imagine the shame of returning to your old boss the next day:
" You know how I left saying that I hoped you would burn in Hell like the lying, fornicating, lowlife you are ? I guess I was a tad harsh - and when I said a reckoning will come, I meant eventually, to every one of us - each in their own time. So - uh, can I have my job back, please?
 Just until the next time, you understand - until the big one .
 Next year. Definitely. "

Predicting real world events based on apocryphal tales will always end badly.
How do these people live with themselves?
More to the point, do they rid themselves of wordly goods and effects?
Do they inform friends and relatives of their status ?
"Sorry for cancelling the fishing holiday at short notice, but The End is Nigh, and all that"

I know that people can believe anything, and for instance - the Jehovah Witnesses have been wrong on many occasions. You have to admire their gumption though - knowing that there are finite (100,000) numbers who will be saved come The Rapture, they still persevere with doorstepping , hoping to reach their target and the possibility of salvation - but I digress.

There should be an independent body which monitors these important upcoming extinction dates.
Perhaps even with an award ceremony, where little gold plated statuettes (showing the world cracking open with an atomic cloud erupting) could be given to each cult leader / prophet.
Each statuette engraved: " The World Ended On (insert date)_____ , but I Survived! Winner!"
I imagine these artefacts would soon form a glut, and charity stores would have a new section called 'Apocalyptica'©

I remember the hullaballoo that arose over the millenial bug, in that computers would go haywire at the end of 2000, resetting their clocks and potentially causing chaos to global transport, airplanes, etc.
Of course, the New Year came, no disaster struck, and whoever made a killing with anti-millenium bug software scurried away to await the next outbreak of mass gullibility.
Don't forget there was no Google, no Facebook,no Twitter, no '#Social Media' so the Millenial scare transmitted the old way, by printed media and word of mouth (and possibly forums on UseNet).
What I'm saying is that this was quite a widespread thing, not confined to a specific religious group.

I have no desire to rubbish end - of - the - world scenarios in any system of belief -
I'm just quietly impressed / alarmed with the sudden apparent increase in asteroid near - misses.
Given that NASA have pretty much accounted for every wayward asteroid, and know most of the orbits - obviously there are still a few rogue elements out there - it would be just dull otherwise.
The adrenaline thrill of possible death is the force that drives base jumpers and all other extreme sports after all, it's human nature.

Ancient lakebed on Mars        ©NASA/JPL/ Caltech

On a more life-affirming note , water and evidence of water continues to be found in our solar system, with new images showing a cracked lakebed on Mars , which in the mists of time, was possibly one of many shimmering lakes of fresh water that covered the surface of Mars.

Pluto appears to host a subsurface ocean, too, which gives us a hypothetical five worlds -Enceladus,Europa, Ganymede, Mars and Pluto with hidden, extant water.
This is all recent news, and exploratory probes are being designed for launch as we speak !

The downside of all this is that if our first genuine 'alien' encounter is with a jellyfish, there could be a language barrier.

image ©happy tree fanon. wikia

Are You Human ?

What makes you human ?
Online we can use captcha and some such technical marvels to prove that we are individuals as opposed to automated bots.
But we could, individually, still be masquerading as sock puppets.
Many people do, particularly on social media.
After all, it's far more impressive to score points during a debate with rapier-like wit against an unwitting Joe Bloggs type, when they are actually an extension of yourself .
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against it.
It would save all those sleepless nights due to suddenly remembering the perfect comeback!
Ah, the realms of the thwarted...

Not the image I was looking for, but - serendipidity, so...

At least, we could until now.
Recent developments (take a bow Behaviosec) in keylogging mean that your speed pressure and angles periodicity can all be read, thus profiling everyone with allegedly forensic accuracy.
As accurately as fingerprints.

Meanwhile, in the U.S.A, Jeb Bush asks if people can please stop encrypting and making life difficult for the NSA.
(cue canned laughter and occasional slow handclaps)

We seem to be moving into a time when encryption is second nature.
The whistle blowing of Edward Snowden and others has shown that we are being watched enmasse.
I am still ambivalent on this one, as I naively believe that it's just a combination of natural human voyeurism , the desire to know everything, and greedy commercial concerns who want our demographics, so that they can better target us with naff adverts for garbage we don't want.
On the other hand, what if the Apocalyptic believers are right, and none can buy or sell, unless he has the number of the beast?

Initially begun in the USA, the barcode has spread far and wide, and is now universal.
It is said that the numbers 6 appears three times as a 'divider' on every barcode , hence 666 ...
Luckily there was no internet to propogate the meme at the time, or there may have been a sudden downturn in supermarket purchasing and an increase in violent scenes at the meat counter.
The jury is out on whether there is some truth in the apocalyptic revelation of the barcode, but millenial madness is amplified by the interweb and its fondness for widespread panics and mass confusion.

A pleasant form of which, was the 'Flashmob' craze which seemed all the rage a few years ago.
I remember watching entranced as crowds of dancers, some in formal attire, but others looking for all the world like travellers who were caught up in the moment, waltzed silently on the concourse of a railway station I was passing through.
It was a surreal moment
Then they were gone, and normality slowly seeped back .
But I digress.

Facebook have filed a patent that allows them to log details of specific cameras, thereby identifying users of said cameras. At least, I think they have. Could be up there with the other, endless FB scams - did you know, Mark Zuckerberg went online to tell people to 'stop being so f**king gullible' ?
No ? Me neither, because he didn't .


Apparently the motion sensor on a smartphone can likewise be used to monitor keypad presses.
Recent developments even allow Smartphones to tell whether they have been picked up ! The mind boggles!
What a time to be alive!
Your next gen phone will probably be able to tell whether you're alive, anyway - and even alert medical help if there's a problem...so there is an upside to the micro-managing, surveillance culture we're in.
Honestly.

In the Wake of Water

So NASA 'found' water on Mars.
It means different things to different people, but for many of the scientists involved, it's not really 'news', I imagine - more a confirmation of generally accepted reality.
The only real  change in more populist perception is the move from bounteous surface water then (approx. 500,000 years ago) to seasonal trickles of water now.
Still, it raises the collective profile, and creates a buzz in the wake of the Pluto flyby, keeping the realm of space in the public eye, and hopefully generating further funding for exploration.

I learned a new technical term , as well - Recurring Slope Linae - RSL - lines which indicate (in this case) water flow on Martian slopes.

How will this news affect future Mars exploration ?

 It means that NASA will be honouring the 'Outer Space Treaty' of 1967, by choosing exploration sites well away from all evidence of water, and landers being free of contaminants as far as possible - after all, we don't want to follow the historic example of human colonists who wiped out native species by inadvertently introducing disease .


For some, the announcement merely means that yes, we should colonise Mars .
However, this conjures images of a wild frontier, with pioneering types staking claims to land in the ' Gold Rush of 2020 '.
Except there may not be gold as such.
There is certainly a wealth of citrine, olivine and feldspar.
It may be the case that claims have already been lodged with some Intergalactic Mining Body.
Which may lead to unpleasant scenes on Mars.
With angry locals staging sitdown protests, and suchlike.

This is also an extrapolation too far - that there are 'locals'.
Since H.G.Wells wrote 'The War Of The Worlds' in 1897, we've seen them (Martians) as undesirable interlopers, invaders intent on usurping our world, little green men with a penchant for invasion and genocide.
The initial invasion was almost parochial, with the Martians invading Woking, Surrey, in England.
Personally, I think it was evocative of the fears inherent as a new century approached - perhaps even a psychic window into the looming dark clouds of war - World War One was only a few years away.
Of course, the Hollywood interpretation is more global.
The latest remake of the 'War Of The Worlds' movie involves Mr Tom Cruise (who knows a few things about invading aliens).
The amount of sci-fi centred on encounters with Mars is vast, the most recent entry being 'The Martian', in which Matt Damon grows potatoes on the red planet.
It has fared well, considering the monumental thumbs down which greeted the recent John Carter movie. Eleven books of source material and three screenplay writers - yes, it's a mess.
Even the mythical Santa Claus had a battle with joyless martians, a film that lives forever in the minds of those unfortunate enough to see it...
Anyway, enough of the glib, potted reviews -

In terms of invading aliens , to coin a phrase - the shoe is on the other foot , and we are now the invaders.
We must tread carefully (literally).

In conclusion, we have 'Recurring Slope Lineae' in abundance on Mars - but we also see RSL on Ceres.
Many of its craters exhibit RSL , particularly on sunlight facing slopes
My question is this;
if the dark RSL on Mars are flowing water, what then, are the light - coloured streaks on Ceres' crater walls ?

The recent image below shows an odd hexagon-shaped crater, and mystery light - coloured streaks on the upper-left walls...click for larger view.

Hexagonal (!) crater on Ceres

I'm not even going to wonder how we have a hexagonal crater - instead, I offer a link to brand new and wonderful images of Ceres , and I say thanks to the tireless efforts of E Lakdawalla, and all at The Planetary Society.

Blank Wall

I've really hit the virtual wall now.
A big blank.
The dread writers block.
Not that I'm really a writer -
I mean, we are all citizen writers now, surely ?
I scan the news for anything that might stimulate the flow of neurons in the brain.

The Pope is touring the U.S.
That's news.

Dogs representative on Earth ?     pic ©Foxylauralou

The marketing machine is already in full swing.

Meanwhile...
Here in the uk, the prime minister is suddenly quiet.
Ahem.
Or 'oink ', as they say.

But nothing is really firing the synapses.

Been like this for days now.

Could be the weather, a great u.k. standby.
As we head into Autumn, we are promised a brief flurry of late summer:
A season we almost entirely missed this year.
As I write, this weekend (Sept 27-28th) the world has (apparently) survived a total of six 'apocalyptic' asteroid collisions.
The nearest one skimming past at a mere 110,000 km.
Not terribly close then - infact, further away than the moon .
Yeah, it's that exciting.
And on Sunday , the rare treat of a bloodmoon and a lunar eclipse - (alleged harbingers of doom)
To admire at its fullest you are advised to go outside at three a.m. GMT.
In my neck of the woods, there is too much light pollution, and that time of night is generally spent snoring.
Beyond that, nothing new.

Detail on Pluto- needs a banana for scale    ©NASA/JPL/Caltech

Oh, the latest pics from the ongoing Pluto downloads are amazing, with all sorts of weird and wonderful.
Which depresses me, as we no longer have a craft orbiting Pluto which is capable of taking more detailed closeups of sites which are now appearing in the downloads..
New Horizons is already some 5 million km away from Pluto, on its way to a rendezvous in the Kuiper Belt.

Note to NASA, should funding permit, how about a relay satellite for future outer solar system missions ?
A craft capable of reaching and orbiting the outer worlds for the purpose of follow up reconnaisance work ?

Just a thought.

It could also serve as a galactic 'buoy', hovering in space, with a lone red light flickering;
'Welcome to our Solar System, Earth Welcomes Careful Drivers'
You know the sort of thing.

Oh, N.A.S.A. are doing a big reveal with regard to a discovery on Mars on Monday 28th.
Tabloid news have already declared Aliens, and tiresome wags have made the comparison to the ongoing migrant situation.

So, there we have it.
In lieu of anything eventful, I've been a bit of a news / trivia aggregate.
Horribly topical, too.
I will update following the NASA reveal on Monday-


Lo! By the magic of the interwebs, it is now  Monday 28th September 2015!
The big news is - they found evidence of flowing water on Mars.
Not such a world-shattering reveal, then - but where there is water, generally there is life.
The flow appears to be seasonal, and the source is within mountains.
Speculation abounds!


I have to keep my virtual eye on the ball.
It always seems to be a red ball, too.
You know the one - an aid to focus and meditation.
Don't drop the ball, suspended a short distance in front of you.


I always get distracted.
Or I picture Yoda in a swamp
Teaching me the zen of the Force.
And I drop the ball.
This whole thread reminds me of a sequence in the Midwich Cuckoos (originally filmed as Village of The Damned).

Village of The Damned 1960

A prolonged and very tense scene, where a teacher has to think of a blank wall,
In order to stop the precocious psychic alien children from reading his thoughts...

Blank Wall.

Which is where I began.

Alien Finds On Distant Worlds.

In the news this week, we learn that scientists are preparing to awaken the mollivirus, a super-virus discovered in 30,000 year old Permafrost in Siberia.
Apparently they will first check that it will not affect humans or animals.
So that's alright, then.
Seriously though - if that's the case, why bother waking it up anyway?
Have they never heard the phrase 'Let Sleeping Dogs Lie?'
Not that it's a dog...
...except further conjecture is that some of the complex super-virus genus might conceivably be lifeforms in stasis. Or gestating...haven't they seen 'The Thing' ?

Ahem.
I remove my protective but highly - sensitive tin-foil helmet...

Meanwhile, back on Ceres
Well, strictly speaking, above Ceres...
The image above is a view of the 'Occator' crater, alias 'spot 2'. The crater walls are some two miles high, and very steep.

Personally, the more I see, the more I think it may be some subsurface, molten activity - for instance , it seems as though much of Plutos shifting surface landscape is altered through some form of internal heat, so why not.
The latest images from the Dawn mission, taken from a height of  915 miles, also show detail of a crater with the ubiqitous 'reflective' material on the crater walls.
This lends weight to the idea that it is some form of highly reflective material, possibly a form of salt crystal / magnesium sulfate?
It appears to be a very recent crater, and further imaging indicates some form of ongoing modification happening.
That's right, the dwarf planet is self-repairing !
Although, I'm sure there are better, more accurate, scientific terms available...
I'm just highly excited!
It's all happening!
After a fallow period, we're getting images thick and fast from the solar system!

Pluto with better resolution

Thanks to artefacts hampering the quality of previous images from Pluto, we are now get stunning full resolution versions, and Ceres continues to impress and puzzle.
There's even a fine 3-d anaglyph, for those with red / blue viewing specs.
I'm not going to waste time with conjecture, I'll just create links to the sites with the best images.
All I will say is this (dons tin-foil helmet);
although the latest images of the Occator and Haulani craters on Ceres (the craters with the most reflective 'lights') are taken from a much closer point , we still don't see clear definition.
There are images which clearly show light coloured ejecta around craters, which seems to indicate that this is subsurface material which has been displaced.
However, we have to wait until December for the final, closest, yet probably still ambiguous images...

A new Ceres crater with light streaks on the wall...

Bytes and Doxx

This week, my Google Chrome browser stopped working, forcing me to delve back into the technical world of my computer.
I hate the moment when you realise how dependent you are on these fleeting virtual things.
 My front page, my most visited sites, my zillion bookmarks - all gone!
And let's not discuss - gulp - backups!

Seriously, I only ever consider my computers mortality when the BSOD occurs - otherwise, it's an eternal thing, right ?
Well, no, it shouldn't be...
[...at this point, I launch into a patronising tutorial on how to avoid computer catastrophe.]
Actually, I won't, as I have no tips beyond the usual IT reprise:
Turn it off and on again .

When it comes to computer technology, I'm a bit of a luddite, in that I don't do the phablet thing,
or lust after the latest Apple gadgets.
Back in the days when computers were clockwork versions of the Babbage machine, I wrestled with Amigas.
In those days, it was simple:
Amiga and Apple were good.
Microsoft was bad.

Ho-ho...

Now, it's not so simple.
Apple are seen as the corporate hipster monolith, whilst Linux in its many forms is the feisty newcomer, the freewheeling spirit of the age .
Microsoft have lost ground, and are desperately playing keep-up .
Amiga lost the most ground, but is back in a tiny niche...
Anyway, enough with the overview -


Many years ago, on a tight budget, I bought a second hand p.c.
The price was good, and whilst it wasn't cutting edge (it was a Phillips Freeline actually), it had room for expansion.
I decided to become self taught, at least enough to upgrade and generally 'tinker' under the hood.
After a few years of good service, the p.c. went to Blue Screen Heaven (or Hell, as I distinctly remember cursing it).
Luckily, I had backed up the drive, and knew enough to be able to salvage parts for the next machine.
I bought an off - the - peg machine with room for upgrades, and swiftly went from (cue geek trivia) a dual core cpu to a quad core apu, to an eight core apu with dual graphics (in crossfire mode).
[Don't know why I detailed that... ]

I tend to freeze in horror when confronted with a mass of multi-coloured wires, ( I had some experience of this many years ago, soldering an electronic fx console)*, but it's worth knowing how to upgrade the power supply, graphics card, on-board memory, etc.
It de-mystifies the process.
Knowledge is power, and all that.

I find it odd that we now live in a culture that is all about recycling etc, and yet people are keen to ditch technology at the first sign of 'something wrong'.
We live in a Convenience Culture...(cue Amazon Prime).
But when something is no longer convenient, then it's disposable .
Personally, this is why I am down on Apple, with the almost inbuilt obsolescense of its products:

'Hey , over here for the new shiny - what, it stopped working? - shame - how about this then, it's better, faster, more compact - just wait in line, we open at midnight for new tech...

It's easier to replace than to repair - mobile phones (and hermetically sealed Apple units) being the worst offenders.

I only upgraded from my old CRT monitor three years ago (I still miss the depth of colour - sigh ).
I remember when the very first i-pad came out, and how the thrill of being the first to own one turned people into arrogant bores.
Anyhow, rant over - I feel self-conscious now, as I realise that this falls into the category of 'humble-bragging' - another term that's developed through social media.
For instance- to me, DOS is a primitive form of machine code.
Confusion arose when I started reading of people suffering from DDOS:
apparently, whereas it once meant Disk-based Operating System - it now means Denial Of Service , or even Distributed Denial Of Service .
Confusing.
Infact, it was only the other day that I discovered another expression, 'Doxing' comes from the word 'documents.'
I'm so old, daddio.

The good old floppy disc, with a whopping 1 meg of storage...

Saying that, I read it online, so...
All these new terms,
so memes
such wow-
It moves so fast, that I hear the term 'Lol' is on the way out.
Welcome to the twenty-first century, me!
Something else I've noticed is that the terms used refer more to actions that are 'virtual' now.
As opposed to nuts and bolts machinery.

Back to the point - Google stopped working.
Still doesn't, so in the meantime, I've switched to DuckDuckGo.
And upgraded my RAM.
Which isn't connected, but there it is.
Increasing the RAM makes me realise that I need a water - cooling system now.
Except, I'll have to wait, as the MOBO will need replacing soon...
which means the graphics will need updating...
Such is the hamster wheel of (upgrade) life...






* which one was it, Piers ? Mark 1 or 2 ?

Limpets, Rubber Ducks and Cookies in Space

After my recent 'Dismaland' diversion, it's back to outer space - a new photo of Ceres reveals the mysterious mountain in greater detail.
The frustration increases, however, as we realise that this is the only close-up view we currently have, taken from some 900 miles above.
The strange mountain is also bizarre because it really is alone in an otherwise flat landscape, which is surely suggestive of an artificial origin.
I find this both fascinating and totally frustrating.
Frustrating because we won't get any more detailed images until December, when spacecraft Dawn enters a much lower orbit , taking closer shots from just 275 miles above.
Theories abound as to the nature of the 'mesa', with some saying it's material excavated from the nearby crater, and others declaring the 'spurs'  to be ice water.
The site has already been dubbed 'lonely mountain' by some Tolkien - lovers :
and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a dragon guarding treasure there...

A mountain or a space limpet ?                                   ©NASA/Caltech/JPL

Conjecture is all we have until further evidence arrives - I think it's amazing, especially given that our initial interest in Ceres was piqued by the highly reflective areas in what is now called the 'Occator' crater  - also still a mystery -
infact there has been a dearth of new information on that front, which has allowed exotic theories to abound.
There is conjecture that the mysterious 'reflections' are atop tall pillars which project above the crater edge ( giving us pillar / structures some two miles high)
An abandoned city / mining site has also been mooted - this is no longer such an outlandish idea , don't forget that we already have companies in place gearing up for offworld mining, after all.

New System tests             NASA jpg

Personally, I wonder if such ideas are being encouraged, purely to keep people interested in the otherwise quite 'dry' science of 'space-geography'.
Speaking of which, is there such a thing?
There should be, with the incoming data helping to create a database - after all, surely many of the oddities we are seeing arise because we try to make otherworld  geology match our own:
but our own knowledge is limited to this little blue planet.
Oh, and the moon.
Mars can be partly included as well, with Curiosity continuing its examination of ancient sedimentary rock and the like.
The recent flypast of Pluto / Charon gave us dramatic new geology with flowing water / methane ice, and changing, active landscapes.
The next focus for New horizons will be a Kuiper Belt object , 2014 MU69, about a billion miles beyond Pluto.

As we speak, tests are being run for Orion, NASAs next big thing, which will launch into lower Earth - orbit on December 4th as a test prelude to manned deep space missions, ultimately using a module which will facilitate deep space missions, but hasn't been created yet !
I'm a little dubious, given that the new Orion craft will be capable of  twenty- one days in space - surely not long enough to go anywhere meaningful - or is there some as yet unexplained quantum secret ?
As well as this, rather strangely, objects to be carried include a rubber duck, and a giant cookie - I kid you not !
So the next 'big' proposal from NASA involves astronauts circumnavigating the moon with the munchies and toys...

A giant cookie for space, obviously...          © NASA jpg

Surely the widespread legalisation of pot in the U.S.A. has affected hitherto serious decisions ?
Good to know then, that in this new space race, priorities are suitably warped...