Year End Wrap Up

Important stories in the last few weeks:

• Recent water flows on Mars.
• Ancient astronomical computer unraveled.
• Another asteroid close call in 2041.
  

Milton Friedman

The world's greatest economist and proponent of freedom died today at the age of 94. Here is a link to a long interview with Dr. Friedman in which he clearly and beautifully makes the case for individual liberty.

Evolution and Being Home for Dinner

Here is an interesting article on evolutionary psychology, although it never explicitly says so. And it is done in classic British style. An excerpt:

Cherie’s message was clear. Men should spend quality time with their family no matter how many wars they’ve inadvertently started and no matter how many constables are knocking on the door wanting to know about cash for ermine.

I’m sorry but I don’t understand. If you were an Iron Age man and you came home from a hunting expedition empty-handed because you wanted to play with your children, you’d starve. If you were a penguin and you came back from a fishing trip with nothing but snow in your flippers, your baby would die and the following year Mrs Penguin would find a new mate.

This is the problem. I am designed to kill foxes, bend every woman I meet over the nearest piece of furniture and give her a damn good seeing-to.

But in an evolutionary nanosecond, it’s all changed. After several million years of programming we’ve been told that what women really want is a husband who leaves his colleagues in the lurch at 7pm and comes home to make a delicious quiche.

Why You Shouldn't Throw an Elephant Into a Black Hole

They can recognize themselves in a mirror, an ability that until recently was thought to be only found in great apes and dolphins.

From the article:

US researchers made the discovery by studying the behaviour of Asian elephants in front of a tall mirror.

One of the animals repeatedly touched a white cross painted on her forehead - a classic test used to assess mirror self-recognition in children and apes.

The study is reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We see highly complex behaviours such as self awareness and self-other distinction in intelligent animals with well-established social systems," said Joshua Plotnik, from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

What Happens When You Throw an Elephant Into a Black Hole?

I don't know. But here is a great article in New Scientist (which is much better than Scientific American) about elephants, black holes, and conservation of information.

Important Safety Information

The American Society for Velociraptor Attack Prevention

Bang postponed. Not Big enough. Reboot.

Here is a collection of six word science fiction stories from Wired magazine.

HG Wells Was Right?

This just in from the BBC:

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

An interesting article. I've long wondered about continued human evolution and what that would bring. What will be the environmental pressures of the future that will affect mate selection? How will this be impacted by technology that will allow humans to genetically design their children from the ground up? I think the most likely scenario is that in the future, no matter what DNA you start with, all humans will be tall, symmetrical, athletic and intelligent. Or maybe I just think that because I'm afraid my descendants will inevitably wind up in the "dim-witted underclass."

Cassini

Lest we forget, Cassini is still out there, orbiting Saturn and taking great pictures like this one. Launched from Cape Canaveral at 4:43am EDT on October 15th 1997, Cassini arrived in orbit on July 1, 2004.

Black Hole Palooza

Ever feel like you are being pulled in 200 different directions at once? That's because there are about 200 supermassive black holes within 400 light years of Earth, according to a NASA study of x-ray sources. To be considered supermassive, a black hole needs to have a mass of at least millions of suns and some type of funny costume.

MRO Takes Picture of Opportunity

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has used its high-resolution camera to take a picture of fellow Mars explorer, the rover Opportunity, which is currently perched on the edge of Victoria Crater.

Shuttle and Space Station

Here is a beautiful photograph of the space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station silhouetted against the sun.

Picture of the "New" Solar System

Pluto is a Pluton

WTF? Yeah, that was my reaction too. I seems that the International Astronomical Union is recommending that Pluto remain a "planet". In fact, they recommend that an official astronomical definition of the word planet be adopted:

"A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet."

So, by this definition, Pluto remains a planet and Ceres, the newly discovered Kuiper Belt Object 2003 UB313, and Pluto's moon Charon get a promotion. Now Charon gets a pass on the "is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet" part because the center of gravity of the Pluto-Charon system is actually outside of Pluto. The Earth's moon is quite a bit larger than Charon (3476km diameter vs. 1212km) but the center of gravity of the Earth-Moon system is beneath the surface of the Earth, so it is considered to orbit the Earth, and thus is not a planet.

To confuse matters more, the asteroid Ceres (now a planet) will be classified as a dwarf planet and Charon/Pluto/UB313 and all the other KBOs and presumably Oort cloud objects that meet the new definition will be called "Plutons" to separate them from the 8 (not counting Ceres) classical planets.

Hot SF Chick of the Week : Week 5

Seven of Nine. Star Trek Voyager pretty much sucked until early in season 4 when Jeri Ryan joined the cast as former borg Seven of Nine, and then it sucked a little less. I always thought that the writers of the show tried to show two sides of an argument by having Seven taking the coldly rational side and Captain Janeway taking the more human, emotional side. Kind of like the original Star Trek had arguments between Spock and McCoy. The problem was, that in Voyager, Seven always made a lot more sense than Janeway, who often ended up looking like an idiot. I don't know if the writers planned it that way, or were just bad at writing. I suspect the latter.

Pluto to Remain a Planet

An international group has recommended that Pluto retain its status as a planet. This is a big victory for Pluto, but things are not settled yet, as the group that suggested keeping Pluto's planet title is just an advisory body. The article also says that several group members suggested having three classes of planets: terrestrial, gas giant, and a third that would include objects like Pluto. I think this is a reasonable compromise, although not as good as my own suggestion.

Dr. James Van Allen, RIP

James Van Allen, after whom the Van Allen Radiation Belt is named, has died. America's first orbital spacecraft, Explorer I contained a scientific experiment designed by Dr. Van Allen that discovered a region of radiation surrounding the Earth.

Yeah. This Sounds Like a Great Idea

"Physicists in Japan Plan to Create New Universe in Lab." Nope, I can't think of anything that could go wrong here. Except perhaps, creating an interdimensional rift through which aliens that can only be fought by teenage girls wearing giant robot suits come pouring through.

Bummer

David Gemmell has died. He was my favorite author of fantasy. His books are action packed and full of memorable characters. The heroes of his novels are usually seriously flawed men, sometimes with few redeeming features, but they always know the difference between right and wrong, and a strong sense of morality infused his works. Here is an excerpt from his novel The Legend of Deathwalker:

Druss nodded, his face solemn. "I am not a thinker," he said, "nor am I stupid. I am a man like so many others. I could have been a farmer, or a carpenter, even a laborer. Never a teacher, though, or a cleric. Intellectual men make me nervous. Like that Majon." He shook his head. "I have met a great number of ambassadors, and they all seem identical: easy, insincere smiles and gimlet eyes that don't miss a thing. What do they believe in? Do they have a sense of honor? Of patriotism? Or do they laugh at us common men as they line their purses with our gold? I don't know much, poet, but I know that men like Majon-- aye, and you-- can make all I believe in seem as insubstantial as summer snow. And make me look foolish in the bargain. Oh, I can understand how good and evil can come down to numbers. Like those women in the fountain. A besieging army could say, 'Kill six women and we'll spare the city.' Well, there's only one right answer to that. But I couldn't tell you why I know it is right."

Hot SF Chick of the Week : Week 4

Lynda Carter aka Wonder Woman and the Wonder Twins.



Bonus picture:

A Day in the Life of an SRB

NASA has this cool video up that is taken from a camera mounted on one of the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters. The video is long (about 12 minutes) but is very neat. Liftoff occurs about 50 seconds into the clip and booster separation occurs at around the 3 minute mark. Next is a long segment of the booster cartwheeling through the sky on its journey to the ocean. The parachute deploys at about the 7:20 mark and touchdown is at 7:33. After that it seems to be just floating in the water. Good job NASA!

Hot SF Chick of the Week: Week 3

No introduction needed:

Titan Flyby

As many of you know, I have a small army of post-human, pseudo self-aware net entities crawling the internet for interesting topics and Salma pictures to be posted in The Chinese Room. One such manifestation sent me a link to a flyby of the Saturnian moon Titan by the Cassini space probe. This is the 16th flyby of Titan by Cassini. If you remember, on the second, the Huygens probe was release and landed on Titan, taking some pictures and sound recordings before its battery ran out. For a complete list of Cassini close encounters with Saturn's moons, check out this page.

Happy Aphelion Day!

July 3rd is Earth's aphelion, or the point in its orbit that it is farthest from the sun. According to Kepler, this is also the point that the Earth is moving slowest.

Hot SF Chick of the Week: Week 2

Salma Hayek in Wild Wild West

Wild Wild West was a steampunk action movie starring Wil Smith and you-know-who. There was some other guy in it too, but nobody cares about him. The movie was a fairly uninteresting summer action movie that was memorable only for a brief shot of Salma's tail feathers (I couldn't find a picture of that, and believe me I looked).

Google Earth In-flight Refueling

Google Earth is a program developed by Google that allows you to see satellite photographs of nearly the entire Earth. People have used it for all kinds of fun things. A few weeks ago I posted about people who use it to find old meteor impact sites. Well, some guy has found a photo of an Air Force KC-135 tanker refueling a C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft in flight. Sweet. Check out the full story here.

Pluto's Moons Get Names

Pluto's newly discovered moons get names: Nix and Hydra.

Hot SF Chick of the Week: Week 1

In an effort to make this blog more relevant to guys and lesbians, I'm starting a new series in which each week I'll post a photo of a hot science fiction chick. First off, of course, is the lovely and talented Salma Hayek playing the part of vampire Santanico Pandemonium in From Dusk Till Dawn. Some might argue that vampires aren't SF, but I think SF, fantasy, and horror can be lumped together in the same general genre. Besides, it's Salma!

Fermat's Last Homer

In that Simpsons episode where Homer is sucked into a 3-dimensional world, a mathematical equation appears briefly on the screen. The equation, 1782¹² + 1841¹² = 1922¹² is just shown for an instant. If you enter the equation into your calculator, it turns out to be correct. This means that Fermat's Last Theorem, which states that for n > 2 there are no non-zero whole numbers a,b, and c that satisfy the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ , has been disproved! The "proof" however relies on the calculator's rounding error, and it turns out the equation is not really true after all. Simpsons writer David X. Cohen put the equation in the episode. Apparently he has a MS in computer science and searched for numbers that came close to disproving the theorem. So, all you budding mathematicians out there, be sure to keep an eye on the Simpsons.

On the Menu

On this weekend's menu: The Spanglish Sandwich.

Deep Impact

Science Daily brings us the news that a giant (~200 mile diameter) impact crater has been found (maybe) buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice. They theorize that this impact could have caused the Permian-Triassic extinction. This extinction is believed to be Earth's largest, with more than 70 percent of all species dying off, and cleared the plate, so to speak, for the rise of the dinosaurs.

The article also mentions the Vredefort crater in South Africa. The 2-billion year old crater is still officially the largest impact crater found on Earth. It can be seen pretty clearly here using Google maps. Amateur geologists have found perviously unknown impact craters using Google Earth. That seems like a pretty fun hobby to me.

Black Hole Death Dance

Astronomers have discovered a pair of black hole spiraling toward one another. The resulting collision, which should happen in a few million years are so, will result in one larger black hole and, theoretically, a massive burst of gravitaional energy in the form of gravitational waves. How can you not love black holes?

MRO in Orbit

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter completed it's main engine burn Friday afternoon and is now orbiting the red planet. I love to follow these kinds of things at www.spaceflightnow.com. They usually give live updates to launches, landings, and other important spacecraft happenings. They also inject a lot of enthusiasm into their reporting. Here is a sample from Friday's MRO mission status log:

2124 GMT (4:24 p.m. EST)

MOI IGNITION! Flying backward with the Red Planet looming near, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has ignited its cluster of engines for the 27-minute orbit insertion burn. This engine firing will slow the spacecraft's speed by 2,200 mph, enabling the planet to capture the probe before sailing past.

2216 GMT (5:16 p.m. EST)

CONTACT! Communications have been restarted with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter!

When reading the updates live, I really get caught up in the exitement.

Supercomputers

It seems like every time somebody jams a new processor or bunch of processors in a desktop computer, they call it a supercomputer. Remember Apple's Power Mac (what was it a G3 or G4 at the time) advertising campaign? Well, these guys have now come as close as anybody, jamming up to 8 dual core Opteron processors and 64G of memory into a machine not much larger than a desktop PC. I assume the Opteron is manufactured in a 90nm process. Companies are already selling devices at 60nm, and 45nm test chips have likely taped-out somewhere. So this thing could have 64 cores in under two years. Now that is desktop power.

Time Travel Short Story

If you enjoy time travel stories as much as I do, here is a link to a good one. The author is Michael Swanwick, who also wrote the time travel novel "Bones of the Earth".

Some Life Lessons

I don't want this to turn into some sort of gay blog, but I found this post to be worth reading. Even if you're the type of person who never follow links, you should read this one.

Jurassic Beaver

According to this article in New Scientist (which is much better than Scientific American), scientists have unearthed the fossil of a large, beaver-like mammal that lived about 164 million years ago. It was thought that mammals were mostly limited to small, shrew like animals until the age of the dinosaurs ended 65 million years ago. Perhaps we have a more complex history than was previously believed. On a slightly related note, the phrase "Jurassic beaver" makes me giggle.

More Salma

Since you've all been so good this week, here's a picture of Salma.

Fun with Orbits

If you like orbits, you'll find this interesting. Astronomers have discovered a solar system in the process of formation. The thing that is different about this one, though, is that the cloud of gas and dust in the inner system is rotating in the opposite direction than the cloud of gas and dust in the outer system. This would lead to some planets orbiting in one direction, and other planets orbiting in the opposite direction.

Quantum Computers

In what sounds like it was ripped right out of a Robert Heinlein novel, scientists have developed a quantum computer that produces an answer without having to be turned on. I can't wait for the movie.

More on Pluto

Nice article here on whether or not Pluto should retain its planetary status. I get the sense that things are not looking good for our favorite Kuiper Belt Object, although we've just discovered it has two new moons.

Salma!

Movie Review

This week's movie review is posted here.

Heavenly Bodies

No, I'm not talking about Salma (although I am thinking about her). There is a great article in Wired about amateur satellite trackers. Using binoculars and orbital mechanics, these guys have tracked and published the orbits of virtually all artificial satellites, including secret military spy satellites. The article details their history and the attempts to track the super-secret NSA stealth satellite known as 'Misty'. It's a must-read and you can see their website at www.heavens-above.com. Check it out.

Turning Against Pluto

Astronomers think they have nailed down the size of the newly discovered planetary object outside the orbit of Pluto, and it looks like it is larger than the ninth planet by about 700km or abouts. This is sure to intensify the debate over whether we add it as a tenth planet. Personally, I say it's not a planet and neither is Pluto.

Despite my engineering training, where instructors mercilessly drilled the nostalgia out of me, I lean toward sentimentality on things like this. I'm the kind of guy who like it when sports teams keep around great atheletes who have passed their prime instead of letting them go in favor of younger, up and coming talent. Perhaps for this reason, I've been a strong supporter of Pluto as the ninth planet. Lately, however, I've started to change my mind. Maybe I'm just tired of the arguments, but if I were in charge, I'd ditch the planet nomenclature altogether. I'd divide everything in the solar system into 5 catagories: Inner Planets, Gas Giants, Kuiper Belt Objects, Oort Cloud Objects, and Whatever the Hell Else We Find Out There. Pluto and 2003 UB313 are Kuiper Belt Objects, and that's what we should call them. Simply calling new found KBOs planets is just going to make things more complicated once we start finding these guys in droves. Are we going to make school kids learn the names of 500 planets? What about calling anything that is spherical due to gravity a planet? Well, then we'd have to make Ceres a planet and it has done nothing so far to deserve that status. No, it's simpler to make a clean break now. I know it would be tough to say goodbye to Pluto, but it'll still be there, orbiting the sun as always. Heck, we'll even drive by in 2015.

More Planets?

Astronomers have published a study of stars in our galaxy that indicates most stars are single, that is, they do not have a companion star. Previously, scientists believed that most of the Milky Way's stars were in fact binary star systems. I seems like this would mean that there may be more planetary systems in the galaxy than would be possible if most of the stars were part of binary systems. I expect that planet formation is less complicated in a single star system. Looks like we may have to modify a few parameters in the Drake Equation.

Movie Review

This week's movie review is posted here.

Don't let the door ...

Astronomers have discovered a couple of stars being flung entirely out of the Milky Way galaxy. Apparently the only way for a star to build up the necessary velocity to escape is two start as a one-half of a binary star system plunging toward the massive back hole at the center of the galaxy. If the trajectory is just right, one star of the system will be captured by the black hole, and the other star will be left with the orbital energy of the original two-star system. In other words, it will lose one stars worth of mass and receive a velocity boost. In this case, the velocity exceeds the escape velocity of the Milky Way(about 220 km/s) and the star speeds off into intergalactic space, never to return. I hope it doesn't get lonely out there.

13 things that do not make sense

Wait a minute! There are a lot more than 13 things that don't make any freakin' sense! I know that, but New Scientist compiled their list of stuff we just can't figure out. The article is about a year old, but it's really good. On a side note, New Scientist is much better than Scientific American, and I think Salma would agree with that.

Gratuitous Salma Shot

Why is this blog called The Chinese Room?

It's not because I'm Chinese. The Chinese Room refers to a thought experiment developed by John Searle as an argument against artificial intelligence. A good summary can be found here on Wikipedia. It seems to me that the basic argument, that a computer program could duplicate intelligence without having any real consiousness or understanding behind it, can be applied to human intelligence as well. I find the whole subject interesting and thought it would make a nice blog name.