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Gregory Benford’s Guide to Terraforming the Moon

fuckyeahdarkextropian:

When it comes to remaking a celestial body in Earth’s image—“terraforming” it—the moon has clear advantages: It gets twice the sunlight of Mars. It’s a three-day trip with current technology, while getting people to Mars would take six months. Furthermore, the moon is dead and it’s small, so it…

Stick with me kids and you could have a job in the Kuiper Belt firing comets into the Moon, making it rain there for ten thousand years. In your new space-hardened, posthuman body. Would you like to know more?

MORE – Gregory Benford’s Guide to Terraforming the Moon

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Exoplanet names will be put to public vote   

To kick things off, the IAU has created a list of 305 well-studied exoplanets. Starting in September, astronomy clubs and non-profit organisations will be able to register at a website and between them select 20 to 30 of these worlds to name. Each group will then be allowed to submit a name for one of these exoplanets, following the IAU’s naming rules. Once the suggestions are collected, they will be open to a public vote. The IAU will still have the final say, and will announce the results at its next general assembly in Hawaii in August 2015.

In case you’re wondering, names must be copyright-free, which may rule out calling a planet Alderaan or Westeros, for example. The IAU guidelines say names must be free for public use and “not subject to copyright royalties, as could be the case for names created in fiction works, like books, plays, movies, etc”.

The 305 worlds on the initial list were all discovered before 2009, which means the list excludes all the planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. But the list does includes Gliese 581 d, which may not actually exist.

“There are no guarantees that all of the 305 exoplanets in this list will stand the test of time,” says Christensen. “Science changes all the time, and these objects are notoriously hard to detect. So changes to the list at a later stage are not impossible, and possibly Gliese 581 d could be such a case. For now, after careful considerations, it remains on the list although its existence is disputed.”

Exoplanet names will be put to public vote   

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Ancient Lost Continent Discovered in Indian Ocean (2013)         

Jamtveit and his colleagues estimate that the lost microcontinent, which they have dubbed Mauritia, was about a quarter of the size of Madagascar (map).

Furthermore, based on a recalculation of how the ancient continents drifted apart, the scientists concluded that Mauritia was once a tiny part of a much larger “supercontinent” that included India and Madagascar, called Rodinia.

The three landmasses “were tucked together in one big continent prior to the formation of the Indian Ocean,” Jamtveit said.

But like a prehistoric Atlantis, Mauritia was eventually drowned beneath the waves when India broke apart from Madagascar about 85 million years ago.

Based on the new findings, Mac Niocaill and others think other vanished microcontinents could be lurking beneath the Indian Ocean.

In fact, analyses of Earth’s gravitational field have revealed other areas in the world’s oceans where the rock appears to be thicker than normal and could be a sign of continental crusts.

“We know more about the topography of Mars than we do about the [topography] of the world’s ocean floor, so there may well be other dismembered continents out there waiting to be discovered.”

Ancient Lost Continent Discovered in Indian Ocean (2013)         

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Cycorp AI – Business Insider

zerosociety:

warrenellis:

“If computers were human,” Lenat told us, “they’d present themselves as autistic, schizophrenic, or otherwise brittle. It would be unwise or dangerous for that person to take care of children and cook meals, but it’s on the horizon for home robots. That’s like saying, ‘We have an important job to do, but we’re going to hire dogs and cats to do it.’”

And this is why I empathize more with theoretical AGIs than some people.

Cycorp AI – Business Insider

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Blue Ants | MORNING, COMPUTER

Why would you not want to be Blue Ant? Being aware that others may read this, I don’t want to spoil the ending of William Gibson’s “Blue Ant” trilogy, as some now call it. But Bill gives the mysterious (or, perhaps, too shallow to be knowable, like screwing fog, therefore “mysterious”) Hubertus Bigend a very, very good reason for doing what he does. Which is knowing things, as completely as possible, before other people do. Again, fog:

he leaks into the leading edge of the civilisational substrate without being detected, and causes sample molecules to be scraped off the cutting blade of the future-facing plane.

Blue Ants | MORNING, COMPUTER

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Crystal cocoons kept bacteria safe in space   

fuckyeahdarkextropian:

Several hundred million years after Earth formed, when life was emerging, our young planet had an atmosphere, oceans and primordial continents. But it did not yet have an ozone layer to shield the surface from the sun’s harshest ultraviolet rays. Because UV radiation can damage DNA, that would have made it difficult for any but the most extreme forms of life to survive.

In 2002, a team led by astrobiologist Charles Cockell at the University of Edinburgh, UK, discovered a unique group of cyanobacteria in Haughton crater in northern Canada. The bacteria live in tiny pores and cracks of near-translucent rock, formed during the intense heat and pressure of the asteroid or comet impact that made the crater, about 23 million years ago.

Cockell’s team found that the altered crystal structure of the rocks absorbed and reflected UV rays. This suggests the rock could shield the bacteria while letting enough sunlight through to allow them to photosynthesise.

Complex life evolved long before the crater formed, but there have been countless space rock strikes in Earth’s history. “That raised a whole bunch of questions about whether the unique geology of impact craters could have been a good UV shield on the early Earth,” says Casey Bryce, a member of Cockell’s lab.

Bryce and her colleagues got an unusual chance to test the notion in 2008. As part of the European Space Agency’s EXPOSE mission, the team sent some of the crater rocks to the International Space Station (ISS). Before lift-off, they grew samples of the cyanobacteria either in plain glass discs or in discs of the impact-altered rock. Once in space, these discs were mounted on the outside of the ISS, where they were left exposed for nearly two years.

The bacteria received radiation doses far more intense than conditions on early Earth. When the samples were returned to the lab, the microbes in the glass discs were dead.

“However, when we cracked open the impact-shocked rocks we were able to detect chemical signals of life and rejuvenate the dormant cyanobacteria,” says Bryce. The team’s findings provide the first direct evidence that crystal cocoons formed by impacts might have been radiation-proof cradles for early life.

Asteroid and comet impacts are ubiquitous in the solar system, so Pontefract thinks impacts could have helped kick-start life on rocky planets and then shielded whatever emerged. Crater rocks could provide refuges even now for life on other planets, such as Mars, she says.

I just wanna rant about directed panspermia and ancient aliens and start an Asteroid Cult and… maybe I’ll finally set up the basic podcast kit I got for Xmas tomorrow.

Crystal cocoons kept bacteria safe in space   

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Institute of Network Cultures | No. 07: Radical Tactics of the Offline Library, Henry Warwick

fuckyeahdarkextropian:

The radical tactics of the offline: abandoning the online for more secure offline transfer. Taking inspiration from ancient libraries as copying centers and Sneakernet, Henry Warwick describes the future of the library as digital and offline. Radical Tactics of the Offline Library traces the history of the library and the importance of the Personal Portable Library in sharing knowledge and resisting proprietarian forces.

The library in Alexandria contained about 500,000 scrolls; the Library of Congress, the largest library in the history of civilization, contains about 35 million publications. A digital version of it would fit on a 24 terabyte array, which can be purchased for about $2000. Obviously, most people don’t need 35 million books. A small local library of 10,000 books could fit on a 64 GB thumb drive the size of a pack of chewing gum and costing perhaps $40.

I’ve got this 1TB drive I’ve been slowly filling with esoteric texts, key documentaries, cult movies and classic tv shows. Enough material to keep me going for a 100 years.

“He was last seen leaving the city in a beat up diesel Hilux, his dog at his side. The back loaded with trunks of books and camping gear. Solar panels and 3D bio printers. Headed for the desert|forest|mountains. Amazon Drones only know where exactly.”

I’ll put it all up on TPB before I go.

Institute of Network Cultures | No. 07: Radical Tactics of the Offline Library, Henry Warwick

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After Centuries of Lost Ideas, Humans Saved History by Sending It to Space   

By far the most tantalizing loss from the library [of Alexandria] was a treatise by the mathematician Aristarchus of Samos (310–230 BCE) that provided the first model for a heliocentric universe. That’s right: this guy casually figured out that the Earth was orbiting the Sun some 2,300 years ago, and we have no real idea how he did it.

His argument was destroyed along with the rest of the Library, but we know that it existed because Archimedes wrote the following passage about it in The Sand Reckoner.

It is gut-wrenching to think that the true nature of the solar system had been successfully divined all the way back in the third century BCE, only to be suppressed for another 1,800 years.

Imagine how different the course of history might have been had this revolutionary idea been fostered and investigated instead of ridiculed, dismissed, and ultimately engulfed in flames. For better or for worse, we would have been a very different species if Aristarchus’ contemporaries had embraced his findings instead of accusing him of impiety.

After Centuries of Lost Ideas, Humans Saved History by Sending It to Space   

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Cracks in Pluto’s Moon Could Indicate it Once Had an Underground Ocean

In Charon’s case, this study finds that a past high eccentricity could have generated large tides, causing friction and surface fractures. The moon is unusually massive compared to its planet, about one-eighth of Pluto’s mass, a solar system record. It is thought to have formed much closer to Pluto, after a giant impact ejected material off the planet’s surface. The material went into orbit around Pluto and coalesced under its own gravity to form Charon and several smaller moons.
 
Initially, there would have been strong tides on both worlds as gravity between Pluto and Charon caused their surfaces to bulge toward each other, generating friction in their interiors. This friction would have also caused the tides to slightly lag behind their orbital positions. The lag would act like a brake on Pluto, causing its rotation to slow while transferring that rotational energy to Charon, making it speed up and move farther away from Pluto.

“Depending on exactly how Charon’s orbit evolved, particularly if it went through a high-eccentricity phase, there may have been enough heat from tidal deformation to maintain liquid water beneath the surface of Charon for some time,” said Rhoden.
“Using plausible interior structure models that include an ocean, we found it wouldn’t have taken much eccentricity (less than 0.01) to generate surface fractures like we are seeing on Europa.”

“Since it’s so easy to get fractures, if we get to Charon and there are none, it puts a very strong constraint on how high the eccentricity could have been and how warm the interior ever could have been,” adds Rhoden. “This research gives us a head start on the New Horizons arrival – what should we look for and what can we learn from it. We’re going to Pluto and Pluto is fascinating, but Charon is also going to be fascinating.”

Based on observations from telescopes, Charon’s orbit is now in a stable end state: a circular orbit with the rotation of both Pluto and Charon slowed to the point where they always show the same side to each other. Its current orbit is not expected to generate significant tides, so any ancient underground ocean may be frozen by now, according to Rhoden.

Cracks in Pluto’s Moon Could Indicate it Once Had an Underground Ocean

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Massive ‘ocean’ discovered towards Earth’s core

The water is hidden inside a blue rock called ringwoodite that lies 700 kilometres underground in the mantle, the layer of hot rock between Earth’s surface and its core.

The huge size of the reservoir throws new light on the origin of Earth’s water. Some geologists think water arrived in comets as they struck the planet, but the new discovery supports an alternative idea that the oceans gradually oozed out of the interior of the early Earth.

“It’s good evidence the Earth’s water came from within,” says Steven Jacobsen of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The hidden water could also act as a buffer for the oceans on the surface, explaining why they have stayed the same size for millions of years.

Massive ‘ocean’ discovered towards Earth’s core

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