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.

thought for the day/ Rock of Gibralter: last stand of the Neanderthals?

Gorham's cave

Neanderthal bones were found in Gibraltar caves as early as 1848.

I saw an National Geographic magazine about Neanderthals yesterday while waiting to see some optometrists(to get my eyes checked out and get a new pair of glasses).  I had reading material with me, and I wasn't sure what reading the whole article could possibly say anything new about Neanderthals for me, I did skim it; and, I found some quick remarks that the Neanderthals they were talking about came from the Rock of Gibraltar area.  The Neanderthal caves are actually located south of the Rock of Gibraltar.

While I haven't set foot on the Rock of Gibraltar, I have seen it and the southern tip of Spain.  I was on an aircraft carrier at the time(this would be around 1996-7 - somewhere around that time. The deck was pretty cleared of aircraft.  There wasn't that many people out there on the flightdeck, but me and a good amount of my fellow AT's(avionic techs). We just walked up and down the deck a few times talking about whatever and looking at four directions of the sea - one was straight into the mouth of the Mediterraenean, the other direction was the southern tip of Spain, the other was the Rock of Gibraltar on the African continent.  It's kindof cool to be able to see two continents at the same time!  I did not know about Neanderthal caves at the Rock of Gibraltar at the time(apparently, nobody else did either), and then of course to the west was the Atlantic ocean. That's a nice little crossroads, dwarfing any manmade harbor! Getting on to the Neanderthals of Gibraltar.

Everyone has heard of Neanderthals by now and Homo Erectus.  Seems to me that whenever I hear the latest science about the Neanderthals, it's always about whether Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens mated.  Dna analyses of Neanderthals is certainly an exciting science of today.  Just like the Human Genome project, they've mapped the complete genome of Neanderthals.  If memory serves me right, they have found that there was indeed some mating between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.  But, what I always want to know is how Neanderthals evolved form Homo Erectus.  Homo Erectus was the first hominid species to move from Africa through EurAsia.  Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals both had to of evolved from Homo Erectus.  Well, I still haven't seen anything about that, so I move on.

I would think the Rock of Gibraltar alone would have made that land almost holy land for Neandrethals back then. As it turns out, the area around the Rock of Gibraltar was a very stable climate.  In fact, it was stable for the majority of Neanderthals continuous habitation of the Rock of Gibraltar lands for almost a hundred thousand years.  That's pretty good. It also appears to be a place free of cave bears and lots of other predators.  This place appears to have been Neanderthal heaven! An interesting anthropological observation is that the Rock of Gibraltar Neanderthals felt no pressure to make new technologies.  The technologies from a hundred thousand years ago to 25 to 24 thousand years ago never changed - unlike the changes of technologies for European Neanderthals.  This would also imply that few if no Neanderthals swam or boated from either the southern tip of Spain to Gibraltar or the other way around.

The climate of Gibraltar did eventually change around 25,000 years ago.  It appears that the Neanderthals were dependent on the climate like most animals.  We can't say that the Gibraltar Neanderthals were the last of the Neanderthals.  All we know is the Gibraltar Neanderthals are the last dated remains of Neanderthals.

There's also indications that Homo Sapiens did not due them in on Gibraltar.  Homo Sapiens came around 18,000 B.C. 

-------------------------------------------------science news extra

Massive Pakistani earthquake creates Island

from the stone age to quantum computers age! 

A D-Wave special purpose quantum computer chip.  As the article states, 120 quantum chips at a time . . . ahh hh.  They're mentioning the ability to solve protein folding problems.  At 120 chips per eight inches, they can solve lots of protein folding problems . . . now. Could they design and predict protein nanoparts for some nanomechanical device and make nanomanufacturing happen in the next year?

- 27September2013 additional news, looks like biological nanomanufacturing systems should be buildable within the next year even without quantum computing.

Protein folding advances experimentally confirmed

This group had reported advances in Protein design almost a year ago; but, I guess there were still problems of matching experiment with theory. Basically, proteins can be designed that bind atoms in prescribed ways.  The proteins can be arranged by dna self assembly in some assembly line arrangements. -  Something I forgot to mention is that the Proteins are needed to do atom by atom chemistry.  The dna doesn't really do atom to atom chemistry.  I'm not sure If I've described nanomanufacturing, so I'll give a little intro.

Some history - There's some indications that nanomanufacturing was thought of earlier than Richard Feynman's famous 1959 speech(just two years after Sputnik went up!). People generally consider Richard Feynman's 1959 speech as the first time anyone ever thought of this. Richard Feynman shortly after this decided not to talk about it or develop it.  In the 1970s, someone else thought of it and decided to talk and develop it - Eric Drexler.

Eric Drexler points out that any technology possible is just an arrangement of atoms.  So, if we have precise control of the placement of every atom, we can make anything scientifically possible. How he imagines this possible is by means of billions of trillions of nano-robots that can attach individual atoms to a particular atom. Some points he makes is that because of the small size of these nano-machines, their frequency of motion is very fast(less distance to move).  Also, if you have lots of them, you get massive parallel processing - more than one atom being placed per time interval.  The only thing is how to make them!

Drexler soon learned of STM's, or Scanning Tunneling Microscopes.  These are true quantum technologies(as are lasers and electron microscopes before the invention of the STM; also, the innovator of the STM recently passed away).  Electrons can move from one side of solid barrier to another just like radio waves can go through the glass and wood of a building for you to hear sounds on your radio set.  STM's use this electron property to be able to image individual atoms.  The amount of electrons who do this electron tunneling dictates the curvature of the surface the STM's needle is detecting as it scans across a surface.  It would be nice to think that one can just size down the STM's to make these Drexlerian nanomachines.  Only problem is that is a long road from our macroscale to the nanoscale.  To make successively smaller STM's is a long road. Eric Drexler thought of using protein's to self-assemble nanomachines.

The problem with using proteins, is that protein folding into arbitrary nanoparts is the quantum gravity problem of biology.  The prediction of proteins is an astronomically hard computation(hence why using quantum computers can come in handy here).  Eric Drexler thought of using artificial selection to make proteins more predictable instead of natural proteins.  Natural proteins are these naturally complex nanoparticles; their like nano snowflakes.  They are exquisitely tuned to fit whatever environment they are born in.  Well, this idea of artificial selection has taken awhile(since the early 1980s).  The group above actually comes up with an algorithm for computing the result of a protein folding. But, even their algorithm isn't the last word.  It's just the latest stage and algorithm to make protein folding prediction practical.  Hopefully, it's good enough to make a dna/protein nanomanufacturing system advanced enough to bootstrap to a more robust non-protein nanomanufacturing system.

As Eric Drexler saw almost as quickly as he suggested using proteins, it would be wise to go to a stiffer structural material.  He quickly suggested diamond.  Daimond is generally the best material to make nanomachines.  It's not the final word, but it is the best studied.  There's problems there.  They'r etalking about making strained diamond structures.  Bending diamond on a nanoscale to create bearings and other non-linear mechanical parts. Point is that even if/when they do make dna/protein nanomanufacturing systems, they'll look to quickly move to non-protein nanomanfacturing systems.  But, this may not be that easy.   Dna/Protein systems have a natural self-organizing ability.

Here's an article that says we've pretty much got dna/protein systems right now.  The above is indicating a greater potential.

survey of latest dna/protein nanotechnology

- 28Sep2013 edit. Table top accellerators and GUT level energy accellerators?

Particle accellerators along with astronomical telescopes have been some of the greatest scientific instruments of our times.  Particle accellerators for the most part used electromagnetic fields to accelerate particles. Electromagnetic particle accellerators have done great things so far; they've found electro-weak unification and now the Higgs(or at least a Higgs particle). But, even these tremendous machines cannot get anywhere near GUT level energies.  GUT energies are the unification energies of the three nuclear forces - electromagnetism(photons), weak and strong nuclear forces. For electromagnetic particle accellerators to probe the GUT energies would require accellerators of unheard of sizes - like the circumference of a planet. But, Particle Physicists may have found a way - laser accellerators. I know they've been working on this for awhile; now, they've been making them a technological reality.

Laser particle accellerators. g

Adding these laser particle accelerator chips in a row to the length of about a hundred feet would equal the energies of the SLAC two mile long accelerator.

-30Sep2013 edit,

Programmable chemical controllers made from DNA ,

And the amount of dna-nanomanufacturing systems keeps growing! This group seems to be most inspired from the work of Eric Winfree.  I think I've linked recently showing Eric Winfree's program will lead to ever more dna-nanomanufacturing.

"The development of synthetic systems with similar capabilities could lead to applications such as smart therapeutics or fabrication methods based on self-organization."

thought for the day/ Barry Mazur's "Imagining Numbers: in particular the square root of -15/ Permisability

ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image

I haven't read the entire book yet; I just got it.  I wasn't sure if i'd even like the book. But, I've found the more I read it the more interesting things are said.  I still don't think it will ultimately be correct.  I'm thinking Barry Mazur's use of the word 'imagination' is much like other vague words like beauty, good, 'having fun/party.'  I should explain that last part about 'having fun/party.'  I find that people, generaly non-intellectuals, often say they just want to have fun.  And, 'we like to party.'  Well, define these things.  And just when you're about to ask them to define what they mean, they're running off.  Life is just this fast paced social nothing fun.  What party really means is go to some meeting place and bullshit one another.  You drink to have fun because otherwise you're pissing each other off. "Having fun" means going to a party.  "Having fun" never means adventure of exploration - exploration of anything; whether art, sports, or some kind of science.  Working hard it not fun, but some kind of thrill ride is.  I like roller coasters to, but why bungy jumping?  Enough of that soapbox, how about another?  This should be called the soapbox post!

I should say that asking the question of what do you mean by having fun is not permissible.

Barry Mazur suggests that in mathematics, one overcomes permisability in old ways of thought. I completely agree. Most life evolves to adapt to a certain environement.  They're suppose to go through their lives in certain ways.  Homo Sapiens for some reason have reached a certain stage of consciousness, where we overcome what we're suppose to do.  Homo Erectus was the first animal to spread to so many different environments. No animal is suppose to look up at the heavens; but, Homo Sapiens eventually did.

Mr Mazur even decodes invention and discovery from this permisability concept.  One major philosophical debate amongst mathematicians is whether mathematics is invented or discovered.  Barry Mazur relates the two to permisability; he says that when mathematics seems unpermissable, we say mathematics is discovered.  When someone shows us how to do mathematics in a new way(such as Descartes coordinate geometry for instance), mathematics is pure invention!

quote for the day/astro picture for the day

Credit: ESO. Acknowledgement: Martin Pugh


"What I cannot create, I do not understand." - Richard Feynman

This is apparently Richard Feynman's last thought written on a blackboard.

Where computation and fabrication meet: using computers to mimic biology. Zack Booth Simpson

Couple of recent thoughts about the above video which is about Eric Winfree's path to nanomanufacturing.  He's making a community of molecular programmers who will make layers of programs which can make molecular nanomanufacturing on larger and larger scales, easier and easier.  It's like in computers, you have machine level programming languages, and then you have programming languages that understand human language.  This seems hard and it seems like it can work.  It also seems like it will take a long time to get anything going.

Here I'm thinking the benefits of the bio pathway, Eric Winfree style, will be more interesting than the initial surface perception would indicate.  While the ability to make something as complex as a whale is certainly a far off dream(although, if sufficiently advanced A.I. comes around, well, that would be a big help), making macroscale simple objects might not be so hard.  I'd like to note that Eric Winfree's team has been given a lot of money recently to carry out his program.  He's also just one guy/team doing, well, dna-nanomanufacturing.  I'm saying that as Eric Winfree carries out his program, there will be 'many' spinoffs along the way - nanoengineered macroscale products.

-------------------------Science news extras 1.2!

Feynman diagram rules vastly generalised; Einstein's spacetime about to be put in its place

experimental brain tissue