youtube for the day/ William Shatner narrated summary of the scientific view of the universe

I've shown there's differences between some of the connections found by James Burke in his 'Connections video series/book.  I've found that some of the connections seem remarkably analogous to some of Jacob Bronowski's ideas in his "Origins of Knowledge and Imagination."  His other connections seem more loose, but I've found some examples recently; for instance how the Earth environment movement was inspired by the 1960s programs(both USSR and USA).  Another such indirect connection would be the internet companies and space expansion.

Where the worlds governments couldn't seem to have the scientific vision to make space colonization happen, it appears lots of private space companies are going to make a space faring lifeform happen.  These private space companies appear to have gotten their funding from being successful internet companies.  SpaceX and BlueOrigins are two.  There's others.

Here's a pretty good article abotu Blue Origin's effort to make space happen .

Another connection/influence for space travel that seems to be heating up is the asteroid threat. Here's an article about the Russians effort to find and deflect somehow asteroids .  Russia for some reason keeps getting pelted by asteroids. Honestly, others have experienced asteroid midair explostions.  Most of them happen in remote places. I forget whether it was South Americans or Africa, but some place like that had a particular vivid video and photos of an asteroid dust stream and midair explosion.

- As is becoming to common on my blog, there's nanotech news to report. I should note in connection with one of the major founders of nanomanufacturing, Eric Drexler.  Eric seems to be the inventor of the Solar Sail concept which has been advancing.  The Solar Sail concept alone can be used to deflect over time, asteroids.  He did a certain amount of space colony work, but then hit on making things atom by atom like the way life does. As Eric Drexler soon realized, nanomanufacturing can bring much of the benefits of space colonization(free energy from solar cells out in space; out in space, they can be much more efficient, and the sun generally can be made to never set) can be made by nanomanufacturing.  If only one could build it.  So far, it has been 'unobtainium.' Further, nanomanufacturing can make space access almost too cheap to meter.  Space rockets built by nanomanufacturing would make the Saturn V look like some old Victorian era bicycle. Getting onto even more nanotech news.

In a similar James Burkian indirect connections, researchers doing nanotech in the medical field have found some ways of making dna-self assemblies more robust - to make nano scale molecular parts.  They've also made dna-self assembly even more reliable(I've reported that researchers had made dna-much faster, more reliable just a year ago; so, this is just furthering that). As usual, the interaction of these advances with all previous advances alone should be exciting.

DNA ‘cages’ may aid drug delivery , and Intercalators as Molecular Chaperones in DNA Self-Assembly

- There's been some recent reports of the American semi-conductor company that seeks to mass produce the Canadian D-Wave quantum computers.  They've said the manufacturing process has turned out to be better than expected!

-28Oct2013 edit,

William Shatner is most famous for being Captain James 'T' Kirk in a Sci-Fi t.v. series Star Trek.  The 'T' in James T Kirk is Tiberius. William Shatner is of Jewish descent, and he has this Star Trek Captain Kirk character with a Roman emperor title in it.  Why?  I don't know, but I recall a Star Trek: the Original Series episode of Roman times.  In it, there's characters, German barbarians who convert to a peaceful religion; they mention things about the 'sun' of god with references to the sun.  Does William Shatner notice or know about sungods  and Jesus Christ?  Not to mention things like Flavius Josephus and his possible role in christian origins.

It's pretty hard to e-mail the guy or contact him in any kind of way . . .

youtubes for the day/ more space colonies

I'm sure I've shown the above 70's space colonization video before; but, I recently found the 1960 video shown below.

The 1960 video has the point that if we can just establish a presense in space by means of space stations in orbit and/or on the surface of the moon, the rest of the solar system is a lot easier to get to than from the surface of the Earth.  The surface of the Earth has a larger gravity well, and the atmosphere presents friction problems just trying to get off the surface, much less trying to get back.  The only problem as Robert Zubrin and others have pointed out, the moon doesn't have many naturally occurring materials, like water.  My thought is bring materials from asteroids/comets.  SpaceX's recent reusable rocketry makes space more accessable.  SpaceX and Bigalow inflatable space stations can also make asteroid material tapping more practical. Both the moon and Mars will become accessable. We'll be officially established in space imo, when we build spacecraft in space; spacecraft that can only exist in space.  Today, we have to build spacecraft that can both survive the rocketry from the surface of the Earth and the vacuum of space.

- science/technology extra,

Grant funds development of improved nanoscale additive manufacturing (3D printing)

Between grapheme and 3d printing advances like above, nanomanufacturing will revolutionize everything, including space access.  3d printing seems to be developing and proving that it can also bootstrap to full fledged Feynman/Drexlerian nanomanufacturing.  Before then, the world will have been transformed as it is. In some ways, I like the 3d printing anyways; it doesn't have the self-replicating problems of Eric Drexler's vision.

astro picture for the day and extras/bloopers and more

Comet Hale-Bopp. Credit: NASA

Well, I suppose I'm making this post more to update about Comet ISON.  Scientists have apparently excercised their modeling ability; current models predict that comet ISON will survive its close encounter with the sun.  Whether this comet is as bright or brighter than any comet seen by human cameras is still open to speculation.

Early on, Astronomers were saying this comet could be as bright as the full moon.  If so, this comet will stop the presses. I remember comet Hale Bopp, and I've seen some other comets over the last decade, and even those, I couldn't help noticing the magnetic field texture of the tail.  These are clearly plasmas and not your everyday material objects.  A comet as bright as the full moon should be spectacular.

- These are kind of well known, but I found the names of some people who said airplanes(heavier than air vehicles, as opposed to gas balloons which had been around for a few decades up to that time), and space travel. In October 1903 for instance, astronomer Simon Newcomb said, "May not our mechanicians," he asked, "be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of the great class of problems with which man can never cope, and give up all attempts to grapple with it?" Just a few months later, the Wright brothers confirmed sustained powered flight(this is a technical point; the original flight was not that fast; they had to use physics and observation to confirm that their glider was in fact being pushed through the air in a powered sense).

In the 1920s, Frank Whittle came up with the idea of a jet engine.  But, most people replied it would never work. A fellow engineer colleague, who actually did some work to help make it practical, in July 1926, A. A. Griffith said that it was impractical. Around 1928, Flight Lieutenant Harold W. Raeburn said furiously, "Why don't you take all my bloody aeroplanes, make a heap of them in the middle of the aerodrome and set fire to them – it's quicker!"  These guys were saying these things more in frustration.  They wanted it to work.

I know there were people who said space rockets could never work, but I've yet to find quotes and to put names to those claimants.

- Archaeological news,

Otzi left many descendents

The cave painters appear to have been the women!

- technology news,

thermal transistors , one problem any nanomanufacturing faces is thermodynamics; what if we could turn heat on and off; apply it when we need it, and control it where we need it?

Nanomanufacturing needs Artificial Intelligence? I've thought of this before.  I've since then heard many people talk about it and debate it; here we see A.I. being used in various nanotechnological developments.  The article also pretty much thinks A.I. is needed. Eric Drexler himself, from the very beginning, always pointed out that molecular chemistry software is needed to run the nanomachines.  The reason comes from the fact that they need to be automated; individual humans can't see and manipulate an individual atom. The point here though is do we need A.I. just to make primitive nanomanufacturing and then bootstrap to daimondoid(or better) nanomanufacturing?

- found a quote,

"Wherefore we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence." Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig felt that some concepts cannot be treated by words - like god, love.  I argue differently.  Natural language can deal with vagueness; that doesn't mean they treat them rigorously.  There's denotative and connotative meanings to natural language words.  Natural language simply denotes vague concepts.

quote for the day and some more

"Nothing is more fruitfull-all mathematicians know it-than those obscure analogies, those disturbings reflections of one theory on another; those furtive caresses, those inexplicable discords; nothing also gives more pleasure to the researcher.

The day comes when this illusion dissolves; the presentiment turns into certainty; the yoked theories reveal their common source before disappearing. As the Gita teaches, one achieves knowledge and indifference at the same time. Metaphysics has become mathematics, ready to form the material of some treatise whose cold beauty has lost the power to move us." - Andre Weil

Recently, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, announced that testing of rocket components has completed the program of making a fully reusable space rocket.  As I commented elsewhere, this establishes the ability of Humanity to explore space.  It establishes a minimum ability for humanity to survive science/technologically. If nothing else happens . . . nanomanufacturing/a.i./quantum computers(and associated quantum technologies) . . . space exploration can solve lots of human problems.

I just found this video of SpaceX's groundfloor where they've made space a reality.  As it turns out, this was before the U.S. space shuttles were decommishioned. It's still a fun science/engineering video . . . a tour through SpaceX's spaces by none other than Elon Musk!

 

10oct2013 update - Well, I've tried to wait at least two weeks to see if any nanotechnologists would comment about it, but, well, for one, none have(one guy who's not exactly a main science news website has at least posted the article) commented about the latest dna chemistry controllers. In other areas, the commentators have chosen to comment about other news. I think it's safe to say that this is such a breakthrough that they feel it best to go silent about the implications.