Quotes

The iron level of the universe increases with time as successive generations of stars form and die. We can use the iron abundance of a star as a qualitative “clock” telling us when the star was formed.

In the case of the star we have announced, the amount of iron present is less than one millionth that of the Sun, and a factor of at least 60 times less than any other star. This indicates that our star is the most ancient yet found.

Stars are like time capsules, they lock away a sample of gas from which they form. In the case of the star we have discovered, this has enabled us to study in detail a sample of gas from approximately 13.6 billion years ago.

This is so long ago that the star predates the formation of the Milky Way. It likely formed in a small cloud of gas and eventually many of such clouds fell together under gravity to form the grand spiral galaxy we call home.

This star has born silent witness to 99% of the life of the universe – it has spun impervious, slowly converting hydrogen into helium as demanded by gravity.

The oldest star discovery tells much about the early universe – https://theconversation.com/the-oldest-star-discovery-tells-much-about-the-early-universe-22944
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I would say that one of the ethical problems we face today is how to return to silence. And one of the semiotic problems we might consider is the closer study of the function of silence in various aspects of communication, to examine a semiotics of silence: it may be a semiotics of reticence, a semiotics of silence in theater, a semiotics of silence in politics, a semiotics of silence in political debate—in other words, the long pause, silence as creation of suspense, silence as threat, silence as agreement, silence as denial, silence in music.

From Umberto Eco’s INVENTING THE ENEMY, via @WarrenEllis
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Environmental management requires long-term strategy which may not be profit-maximising; it requires outward-looking international co-operation; it requires taxation and state intervention. Such attitudes are anathema to a neoliberal. They refuse to believe there is a problem because the ideology to which they are devoted could not possibly begin to deal with it.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/07/david-cameron-floods-socialist-crisis-prevention (via grinderbot)

Or, how the west was destroyed from within by barbarians in bespoke suits.

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One of the main technical challenges the ISEE-3/ICE project has faced is determining whether we can speak, listen, and understand the spacecraft and whether the spacecraft can do the same for us. Several months of digging through old technical documents has led a group of NASA engineers to believe they will indeed be able to understand the stream of data coming from the spacecraft. NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) can listen to the spacecraft, a test in 2008 proved that it was possible to pick up the transmitter carrier signal, but can we speak to the spacecraft? Can we tell the spacecraft to turn back on its thrusters and science instruments after decades of silence and perform the intricate ballet needed to send it back to where it can again monitor the Sun? The answer to that question appears to be no.

The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999. Could new transmitters be built? Yes, but it would be at a price no one is willing to spend. And we need to use the DSN because no other network of antennas in the US has the sensitivity to detect and transmit signals to the spacecraft at such a distance.

This effort has always been risky with a low probability of success and a near-zero budget. It is thanks to a small and dedicated group of scientists and engineers that we were able to get as far as we have.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/02070836-isee-3.html
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We’re working to shorten production times for you, but we’re still bound by the laws of physics. We don’t have replicators, teleportation, or delivery drones just yet!

From Winter Review Qualifiers at the Lego Cuusoo blog (via frankie-roberto)
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The fact that our friends who were creative people totally got it, but the business-y type people we spoke with were totally baffled by it, was a strong sign to us that this was something worth doing.

Yancey Strickler, on starting Kickstarter (via maxistentialist)
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In one new study of 1000 human genomes, Sriram Sankararaman and David Reich of Harvard Medical School and colleagues found that Neanderthal DNA is most common in regions of the genome with the greatest genetic variability, making them a prime target for natural selection. While Neanderthal DNA may make up only 1.6 to 1.8 per cent of the Eurasian genome, it punches above its weight in terms of biological impact, says Reich (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature12961).

Joshua Akey and Ben Vernot of the University of Washington in Seattle have analysed the Neanderthal DNA in a further 665 humans (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1245938). Both their study and the Harvard one found a hotspot of Neanderthal ancestry in genes relating to keratin, a fibrous protein found in our hair, skin and nails.

One of the genes, BNC2, is involved in skin pigmentation. That implies that Eurasians owe their paler skins partly to Neanderthals. Light skin is an advantage at higher latitudes because it is more efficient at generating vitamin D from sunlight, so Neanderthal DNA may have helped modern humans to adapt to life outside Africa.

If so, the adaptation took thousands of years to become universal. A third study published this week describes a DNA analysis of one person who lived in Stone Age Europe about 7000 years ago – 40,000 years after any Neanderthal interbreeding. His genes suggest his skin was dark (Nature, doi.org/q74). It may be that the Neanderthal keratin affected early Eurasians’ hair instead, perhaps straightening it.

…

Neanderthal DNA is irregularly spaced through the modern human genome rather than being fully mixed. That implies that interbreeding occurred very rarely. Sankararaman estimates it may have happened just four times.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129542.600-neanderthalhuman-sex-bred-light-skins-and-infertility.html
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Running for a couple of weeks in summer 2005, Orbital focused on the attempts of a Spanish business heiress to keep up with payments on her spacecraft loan with the income from collecting space junk and running errands for building contractors in LEO. Simultaneously, she has to deal with the increasingly erratic “ghost” of a lovesick Indian aerospace engineer – who committed suicide by “uploading” his personality into her vehicle’s mainframe. The two of them got caught up in the attempts of a shadowy business conglomerate to clear squatters from a potentially lucrative piece of orbital real estate by “arranging” for its collision with a fake Indian telecommunications satellite.

[key texts] Transhuman Space « Justin Pickard (via iamdanw)
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The absence of event horizons mean that there are no black holes – in the sense of regimes from which light can’t escape to infinity. There are however apparent horizons which persist for a period of time. This suggests that black holes should be redefined as metastable bound states of the gravitational field.

Stephen Hawking declares: ‘There are no black holes’ | Technically Incorrect – CNET News

Please update your space lexicons pronto. Black Holes, to be filed next to Pluto is a Planet.

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