Mammoths, Moon Express and MOFs

Extensive samples and research by hardy types who don't mind extreme cold, tells us a wealth of detail about former mammoth denizens who populated Wrangel Island , Siberia and St Pauls Island , Alaska, until relatively recent times - well, approximately 5000 years ago.
Isolated island populations with no real predators to worry about, so why the decline ?
It turns out that these isolated populations became extinct through riverbank erosion, and the gradual decline of water sources.
No fiery comet from above, just the everyday depletion of resources.

Wrangel island

All aboard the Moon Express!
For the first time ever, a commercial company has been cleared to fly to the moon . Ticket prices are yet to be finalised, though, and I'm personally concerned about which sunblock to wear.
Obviously factor 10,000 in some places - but on the dark side ?


It has been claimed that the reason we are alone in the universe is that we are too early , and there could be a gap of a few trillion years before we find other intelligent species to show off our snapshots of lunar holidays and such - ahem.
I think this is a defeatist idea, and we should rather devote resources to actively looking for such aliens - for instance - how about a giant ' x ' in space ?
Too obvious ?
Apparently a giant x-shaped structure has been found at the centre of the universe, although for the life of me I can't see it in the photos.
black holes can kill us from a distance - more bad news for those who prefer to impose order on their worldview.
Luckily we are just a tad too far away...allegedly

The strange case of ' Tabbys Star' continues with new measurements from Keppler that seem to confirm that there is indeed unnatural stuff going on.
The excitement is almost palpable , and now that crowdfunding to buy telescope- time is complete, we should soon have further evidence .
Of course, it wouldn't be social media without someone raining on the parade, so it has been mooted that this possibly epic event happened 1500 years ago, and even if we arrived almost immediately, it's quite possible that the advanced race of beings are no more.
Ho-hum, but hey - let's not be defeatist, they could also be heading our way, bearing gifts and the secret of good wi-fi connections, that sort of thing.

Bio - luminescent technology is becoming quite the buzzword.
The idea that we can encode organisms to grow in any form and provide bacteria - based illumination is creeping out from the realms of sci-fi , and into reality.
I think hybrid bio - mechanical forms have the potential to greatly enhance our environment - as long as we resist the Gigeresque mutations...in the same vein (pun intended) , deep in a Siberian mine, they have discovered unique elements which are known as MOFs - metal organic frameworks.
These oddities are very rare, but bursting with potential.
Their appearance would seem to be partly due to thawing permafrost - so it's not all bad...don't forget though, about the recently awakened anthrax from the thawing permafrost - also, in Greenland, we learn that all sorts of debris from Cold War military base ' Camp Century' , and toxic waste from project ' Iceworm' will come to light soon, as relentless thawing ice reveals its secrets.
Oops...
 

Dolly the Sheep, the Great Red Spot, and the outbreak of Ancient Disease...

 Farewell to Philae, the ill fated lander . Philae was the first man - made explorer to land on a comet - still there, but inoperative to all intents and purposes.
The mothercraft, Rosetta is still taking and returning photos of the comet, and in September will crash-land on the surface , bringing an end to the mission - leaving us with a legacy of space debris orbiting the universe forever.
Quite a big deal, when you think of it like that.

Remaining with space, we find the alleged solving of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter - okay, it's a storm system as big as two Earths, but it also generates heat in the upper atmosphere, which may explain the temperature similarity to Earth, despite the greater distance from the Sun.
I imagine further revelations will be due very soon, now that Juno has entered orbit around the gas giant.
Did I mention the fact that Juno was the wife of Jupiter in ancient mythology , and that Galileo named its moons after the mistresses of Zeus ?

the only sheep honoured with a plaque...

In other news, the worlds first cloned sheep Dolly died at only 6.5 years old (half the average life expectancy for a sheep) , which created a new fear that clones were short lived .
Luckly though, clones were made of Dolly, and they are all aging normally.
I remember the huge issue surrounding the whole Dolly thing, the idea of 'meddling with nature '  so the news that there are more clones is not at all comforting.
It begs the question, what are they not telling us ?
But don't worry - only four of the tested thirteen clones were derived from Dolly .
So that's okay, then...
I mean if there are 13 cloned sheep (fourteen, counting Dolly), who knows how many cloned people there are ?
Perhaps we should scan photos of Trump rallies more closely.

The temptation is to write 'wake up, sheeple...'

The Siberian permafrost is thawing, global warming in action - the immediate result is an outbreak of anthrax, supposedly from old reindeer corpses .
That's pretty bad, but of course, what else awaits us, hiding in the distant past ?
The Black Death which decimated medieval Europe ?
TB, Polio and other nasties once thought eradicated ?
 It doesn't bear thinking about, so let's lighten the tone...

Hello to new life - yes, apparently even on this old piece of rock there are still surprises, with the recent discovery of new species - specifically beaked whales, which have recently been cropping up around Alaska - eight in total, none of which are previously known about; in the heady rush to colonise / occupy outer space, it seems that we still have vast unexplored swathes of this blue world.
Even our understanding of the world as it once was, is frequently called into question - most recently by the discovery of  minute air bubbles in grains of rock salt - the specimen grains being 815 million years old, it implies far higher oxygen levels in the Earths atmosphere than previously thought.
This in turn means there is a large gap between oxygen and complex lifeforms evolving.
So there would seem to be something else missing from the equation.
Like the time it took for aliens to arrive and give Earth 'the nod'.

ALIEN 1- "This'll do, but let's start with simple forms like aquatic amoebas, sponges and ultimately cephalopods and fish, then land-based murderous creatures."
ALIEN 2 - "Don't you mean humans ?"
ALIEN 1- "Same thing, different Modus Operandi "
- instantly we have intelligent aliens who understand Latin; or at least watched stray galactic transmissions of CSI.
Which brings us neatly to -
Apparently grammar could easily create a barrier to our ability to understand aliens.
Of course, the whole issue could be irrelevant given the continued lack of contact (wired magazine have just explained the Fermi Paradox again, for those who wonder)
I touched on this previously - damnit there I go again, without a decent referential database to mine for past subject matter.
I need a robot to list all my previous subjects on this blog.
Oh, wait, that will be me, then.
Doh

Robotic Stingrays, Vanishing Explorers and Virtual Hunters

This time around, we have a number of  truly strange developments , so we'll begin with something that is almost mundane - it appears that peas can gamble 

Reality trumps fiction as we move casually into the world of living / artificial hybrids, with news of a
robot stingray made from cells taken from a rat.
Making use of low energy propulsion , the robot stingray has odd implications for the future.
They could be used for  aquatic exploration , but also for the underwater exploration of other worlds.
Our solar system is teeming with possible subsurface oceans, so a swimming robotic explorer would be highly prized.
It really ought to have a seriously good camera , too.
Then of course, there is the problem of having nowhere to keep samples - perhaps a tiny backpack ?
which brings us conveniently to the new craze for ' Pokemon Go', an app that strangely enough, is drawing people together, in a bizarre new form of bonding over the hunt for cartoon characters in virtuality

Already, pleas have gone out that people should not play 'Pokemon Go' whilst driving ...
The downside is that this ' alternate reality ' intersects with our own in some potentially dangerous tangents.
Aside from the potential for death by road accident / drowning, it also gives the app massive control of the users online information, so compromised security is a hefty price to pay for your Pikachu...

The teensy Cozmo...          pic Anki

On a similar level, the tiny robot Cozmo is a cute and very capable package, a rover with the power of facial recognition and the ability to take remote control of your room lights and probably other stuff.
So insiduous AI exists, but in packages that may be overlooked as trivial .
Perfect disguise, really...

STOP PRESS !

News just in tells of an encounter between a robot security guard and child in a security mall, resulting in mild bruising for the human child.
Still, the robot uprising has to start somewhere, so why not in a shopping mall in the USA ?
It was good enough for George Romeros zombies...

Meanwhile, somewhere above Mars...

New theories emerge regarding the origins of Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos . I include the link here, but to condense the piece, it suggests that the pair of moons were created following a humungous impact on Mars , long long ago. 

Amidst the frenzy of excitement (well, as frenzied as scientists get) surrounding the potential for life in the subsurface oceans of Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede and Ceres, we have another contender.
 Saturns moon Titan, neglected and unloved, steps up to the plate with new revelations that life could exist there.
Yes, it's an inhospitable deep frozen rocky moon, but apparently the right chemicals are in place for freaky non-waterbased lifeforms.
The mind boggles.

The last thing seen by Hitomi, the ll-fated  Japanese black hole explorer came as a disappointment to me.

Hitomi - final view was the Perseus cluster     pic JAXA

It shows the Perseus cluster , some 249 million light years away, so yes, impressive - but from the wording of the report , it sounded a tad more ominous...perhaps just an image of giant eyeballs...

Meanwhile, further out...

340 light years away - so close, then in universal terms - a planet has been found that defies explanation , as it has three suns.
Take that, Tatooine !
Such a world would almost certainly attract lots of holiday agents - all that guaranteed sunshine !
Endless romantic sunsets !
Infact, it would probaby never get dark...

Gas Giants, Helium Balloons and the Arrow of Time

Apparently the hole in the ozone layer is healing, after the virtually global ban on CFCs was introduced some thirty years ago, so yay!
We did something right...
I think the end of the Eighties trend for ' big hair ' probably made a difference, too...

pic: Mary Sue.com

More Good News...

In Tanzania, they have discovered a huge underground source of Helium, so clowns making balloon animals  and stoners talking in funny voices can rejoice !
Seriously though - Helium occurs in abundance throughout the universe, but sadly it is lacking on Earth,  generally only occuring as a byproduct of radioactive decay...so the discovery of a secret stash is good news!

In other news...

Scientists have discovered a new nucleus that points to a certain place in space, which indicates that time is linear, only ever moving forward.
So, no time travel, then.
I find this oddly deflating (certainly for fans of Back To The Future) , but don't forget - it may only be true in our universe!
Which leads me to wonder whether time even exists in other universes.

Mars has Manganese   pic MSS /  NASA

Recent discovery of oxygen whch was once plentiful in the Martian atmosphere paints a picture of a more Earth-like world , especially with its evidence of ancient oceans and lakes.
Speaking of oceans , it seems there may be one beneath the surface of Pluto, following visual cues from New Horizons data ...and vying for recognition in the possible ' water-world' stakes is another dwarf planet, namely Ceres.

Soon to be at a gas giant near you...

Speaking of long distance travel ( do you like the smooth flow of links here?) , after launching way back in 2011, Juno finally arrives at Jupiter on Monday July 4th 2016 ( auspicious date for some ), to begin a survey of  the atmosphere of the gas giant, helping us better understand the mysterious world .
It's a pretty extreme and turbulent ride ahead for the little explorer, so fingers crossed...

Finally, another piece of good news is that funding has been secured for further missions for New Horizons and Dawn , as well as other craft involved in exploration of space .
Positive steps into the unknown !

Special Snowflakes Melt - The Mediocrity Principle

For those who ponder whether we are alone in the universe, some bright sparks have combined the Fermi Paradox and the Mediocrity Principle , deducing that we are still some 1500 years from our first contact with aliens.
Not only that, but the fact is we're not special. 
'The Mediocrity Principle', basically means that we are not alone in the universe, and there are probably so many versions of humanity that we really are quite banal.
Bit of a blow for the schools of thought that say we are all special snowflakes.
So, perhaps we should get over it, and embrace our galactic banality.
Only then will we make contact with other, equally banal but possibly more technically advanced, aliens.
Personally, I find it oddly discomforting that a think - tank exists to remind us of our ordinariness...
...but 1500 years before we meet another (supposedly dull) race of beings?
The mind boggles...are we watching the galactic equivalent of  paint - drying ?
Mediocrity, indeed.
So, how will we know when we finally encounter these aliens ?
After all, if, like us , they are not special or unique, surely it's possible that we might totally miss them ?
Or will we identify them by their shapeless grey clothing with no distinguishing features ?
Will they look alike ?
Shall they all be named Derek ?
Apologies to any readers named Derek.
How can a technologically advanced race seem dull ?
Are they beyond the world of strong emotions ?

Provenance unknown

Some time ago I mentioned the discovery of a star with the mysterious property of intermittent flickering.
A kickstarter to pay for precious telescope time observing ' Tabbys star ' has just been successfully funded - so we are much closer to the truth of the mysterious star thanks to public crowdfunding - I think this is a great idea, even though it will almost certainly prove to be anti - climactic, with no evidence of sci - fi / aliens whatsoever.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

A highly improbable  ' Dyson sphere'

Interesting trivia regarding LIGO - which is tasked with registering gravitational waves generated by the merging of black holes and suchlike - apparently, the equipment is so sensitive it can be affected by passing clouds.
To avoid too much ' background noise' , some people have mooted that perhaps it should be set up on the far side of the moon - but won't that signal be messed up by the secret alien moon-bases ?

Just kidding.
Or...

In Which I Rant

In a complete change around, here are some thoughts on the burgeoning , vapid world of the vlogger.
Call it sour grapes, if you must - after all, I am too old for such japes, and have a resigned, world-weary face best suited to radio or other non-visual media.
Take a deep breath -
In this new 21st Century technology - driven world, it seems that everyone can grasp their fifteen minutes of alloted fame -
but I see a flaw.
Something is missing.

Where is the content ?
Many vlogs, like plain old blogs , are about daily life, and the authors personal experience of the wider world.
Some vlogs are literally about opening packages, and are hugely successful.

In other vlogs, the author wanders around, accidentally - on - purpose promoting a range of cosmetics / clothing / foodstuffs / whatever.
Remove the framing device of  ' wandering ' , and there's really nothing there.
It's bland.
We have these ' perfectly decent ' types, moving through their vlogging world.
Scratch the surface, though, and what do you find ?
Nothing.
That's it.
No big life lessons.
No high dramas - after all, edgy tension doesn't equate to selling product.
Or more probably, being hungover and unshaven doesn't look good for a brand ambassador.
Unless you're Keef Richards promoting Jack Daniels, maybe...
I'm feeling increasingly aware of the aimlessness here.
I don't really mind, it's a cultural thing, and I'm obviously not the demographic, so why care ?
I care because I am sad that the new ' level playing field ' of the internet / You Tube world is already awash with this stuff, and not genuine creativity.

Perhaps it's just age - I am bitter and twisted, after all.
I used to write mean (snarky ?) media reviews for an indie magazine long ago, but nowadays, I would find it hard to maintain that level of vitriol for long periods of time.
It's odd, but maybe I chilled out.
These days, I avoid things that annoy me.
Except when they get in my face.
Hence this rant about vloggers / marketing devices - and make no mistake, whilst being seemingly innocuous, most vlogs are aggressively about marketing.
Okay - deep breath.
Perhaps my finger lingered too long on the button marked  ' buy happiness '.


ASMR is another burgeoning area of  videos with the smallest of sounds designed to comfort and replace the unwanted noisy chaos of the everyday world - given my own myoclonus that took hold a few years ago, I can see the need for such, and so we have niche stars of the ASMR world who post videos of themselves quietly brushing things, or whispering about things, which are viewed by millions.
It's all strange - and, oddly, comforting.


I have no real comparison here - in my dim and distant teenage years, VHS was a new thing, and most people didn't even have a camera.
They were bulky and expensive for a long time.
Disposable culture came in the form of Polaroids - which were a sort of analog Snapchat, I suppose - depending on who you asked...
Some people proudly owned Super - 8 cameras, which took cassettes of film .
When developed, they'd yield three minutes of action.
This meant that you'd have to think about every shot.
Make it count...

Super 8

There was no social media
There were no computers in the home.
If you asked someone for their wi-fi password they'd look at you strangely, then probably have you sectioned.

It wasn't even very long ago.
Twenty years.
Okay, twenty - five .

We've advanced at an incredible rate, really - oh, no - wait -
Technology has advanced at an incredible rate.
We are trying to adapt to new rules, netiquette and such.
The finer points of social media; lol does not mean ' lots of love', that sort of thing.
My daughter explained to me the use of emojis in place of nuance - no italics or bold type in social media, so intention and meaning are often depicted visually.
It's a minefield - the winking face ?
Thank goodness for millenials to guide us through...

The strange thing is, there's no rebellion.
Well, not in the old way.

" -Whatcha got ?"  - The Wild One 1953

The music used to carry the message.
Rock Around The Clock
Summertime Blues
My Generation
Pretty Vacant
Bored Teenagers

Perhaps no-one is vacant or bored anymore.

Infact, are there such a thing as teenagers anymore ?
Or is Young Adult the preferred title ?
Which leads me to another rant - who devised the YA category of  books ?
Surely a school somewhere?
In my experience, books are just books.
Okay, there are books which are specifically aimed at children, but they're fairly obvious due to big illustrations and odd fonts.

So how do we reclassify older books from the era pre-YA ?

Is The Lord Of The Rings YA ?
I don't even suppose Harry Potter is YA, technically.
So why marginalise a section of readers?
When do they officially become Adults ?
And who decides this arbitary nonsense ?

My initial research shows that YA appears to be an American scholastic thing , although the age group is fairly loosely defined.
I still have personal issues in that it implies that it's undesirable to expose ' Young Adults' to certain 'Older Adult' themes - presumably issues of mortality or 'perversions' or other life - stuff.
If so, this ties in with  the whole avoiding ' triggers ' thing which is really censorship of the worst kind, because it encourages self-censorship.
The ultimate result would surely be a society of molly-coddled, ill - prepared people standing at the door marked ' Real World '.

Not that the real world is entered through a door.

Our Expanding Universe, ♥ and the Zombie Pandemic...

Apologies for the delay in missives, the author was overwhelmed by illness at a time when antibiotics are becoming redundant - that global zombie pandemic begins to look almost plausible - even moreso if we look at political trends.
Ahem
However, we shall rise above such concerns which lead to fisticuffs at the watercooler - apparently a new reason for not 'getting things done' in the workplace is the recent discovery that the universe is expanding faster than we thought, by some 5 - 9 %.
As a percentage, that may sound insignificant, but of course the universe is expanding at the speed of light, so a conservative estimate is approximately 34 million miles an hour - which is one of those frightening, unwieldy numbers that keeps me awake at night.
The sheer thought of the emptiness...*

There's more space than we thought...

...to counteract the coldness of deep space, I think of the intense warmth generated by fusion, which may eventually provide an almost limitless supply of energy .
Although it seems like an eternal carrot being dangled just out of reach , the immense technical challenges (how do you generate millions of degrees of heat, and how do you keep it safe ?) are being addressed by facilties such as PPPL, in the USA.

 

Fusion Image courtesy PPPL

Meanwhile, on the event horizon ...

It has also recently been deduced that black holes were mostly created in the first seconds of the existence of the universe, and may be used to explain the absence of ' dark matter' .
As we hurtle through an increasingly large space on our little rocky world, we are also adapting to our new technologies, the smartphones and screens which alter the way our brains work - with shorthand language that replaces expressions with emojis ♥ and acronyms instead of words.
An extreme extrapolation of this is that we are preparing for the next level of communication - a language of symbols  which would be quite universal (certainly for carbon - based lifeforms)...

Meanwhile, on Mars...

There is evidence of an ice age in the records of the Martian polar ice cap, and also records of two huge tsunamis exist in the shorelines around Mars.
All that remains is to establish whether Marsquakes were triggered, and there is the proof of a mass extinction event.
Of course, this leads to the question - what became extinct ?
Again, it has been put forward that a fossil record would be preserved in rock near the tsunami shorelines.
If you ask me, the pieces of jigsaw are falling into place for the evidence of a mass migration.
Wouldn't it be funny if we, in our shiny new spaceships, boldly conquered the barren Mars, only to find that our ancestors had abandoned it millenia ago ?
Especially if our collective reason for the Conquest of Mars was our own poor environmental management here on Earth , triggering extreme weather cycles and natural disasters...♥


* ...okay, so how can anything exceed the speed of light ?
Theoretical particles for one, and - oh, yes - the Theory Of Relativity may be wrong.
Or at least, incomplete...hey, I'm only the messenger, put those virtual pitchforks down !