Bill Nye: We May Discover Life on Europa
This plan does not involve landing on Europa and therefore meets the approval criteria from Posthuman Flight Club.
Start sending your empty coffee cups to NASA now, or something.
Planet OGLE-2013-BLG-0341LBb Orbits in Binary Star System
Although the planet orbits one of the two stars at almost the same distance that the Earth orbits the Sun, that particular star is much dimmer, meaning that the planet itself is probably colder than Jupiter’s moon Europa.
That said, the researchers say the dynamics of the system show that it is possible for the planet to maintain a stable orbit if that parent star was of the same mass and energy as the Sun. If that were the case, the planet could be considered habitable.
“This greatly expands the potential locations to discover habitable planets in the future,” said Scott Gaudi, an astronomer researcher at Ohio State University who participated in the research. “Half the stars in the galaxy are in binary systems. We had no idea if Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits could even form in these systems.”
ENIGMA MAN: A Stone Age Mystery
With Enigma Man we follow the groundbreaking research of Aussie paleoanthropologist Darren Curnoe and his Chinese colleague, paleontologist Ji Xueping.
Their study of ancient human remains found in a remote cave in South-west China looks at the idea there may have been another species of human existing alongside our ancestors as recently as 11,000 – 14,000 years ago.
Dubbed the ‘‘Red Deer Cave people’’, these ancient people, or, more precisely, their remains – so similar, yet so physically different from us – are much, much younger than our Neanderthal relatives, posing some seriously interesting questions. Were they really another human species? And if so, what happened to them? Why did they die out? How did they live? And what were their interactions with our own early relatives?
These are indeed big questions, Curnoe says, and that’s what makes the search for answers so fascinating.
“The documentary is about the process of deciding: do we have a new species or not?” Curnoe, who is Associate Professor of evolutionary biology in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at UNSW, explains.
“The fossils just don’t fit with the dominant view in science at the moment about who was around 11,000 years ago or 14,000 years ago, how they relate to us, and how we think of ourselves as humans in relation to nature.
“We tend to think of ourselves as special. So it raises some pretty deep and challenging questions.
“There are views, which I subscribe to, and quite a lot of other people do too, that there are at least 30 different species that are in the fossil record that would be relatives of ours in some sense – some may be ancestors, some may be side-branches that went extinct.
“The classic example is the Neanderthals – everyone has heard of them, even if you don’t know much about them. What we are proposing is that instead of the Neanderthals being the last of the other human-like creatures [before it was] just us, we are in fact saying, well, no, this other group survived until much more recently.”
ISSpresso by Argotec and Lavazza
Coffee in spaaace. Good job Italy!
Jill Tarter: 30 Seconds On Why We Search For Aliens
We should be searching for life beyond the earth because we want to understand what the laws of chemistry and physics have produced in this universe. Are we the only life there is? Are we the only intelligent species, or are we one of many? How do we fit in? It’s a very old question, humans have asked it, and we want to find the answer.
It is that simple and profound.
Cosmic Anthropology for Beginners.
MIT Robot on the Shoulder Control
via Techcrunch:
MIT researchers have created a pair of robotic arms that connect to your shoulders and give you another pair of pinchers to help you lift heavy objects, keep objects in place while you attach them overhead.
The arms “watch” what your real arms are doing and, using video analysis, try to pitch in when needed. The project is sponsored by Boeing and the company hopes to use the technology, called Supernumerary Robotic Limbs, to help its workforce in factories and loading docks.
The system weighs ten pounds and attaches to your upper or lower back. The creators, Baldin Llorens-Bonilla and H. Harry Asada, call the system “A Robot on the Shoulder” and hope to bring it to market soon. Another system would include arms that can move back and create a sort of pair of tripod-like legs to help support humans as they lift large objects. These tools are superior to exoskeletons in that they are much lighter and won’t trap the user if they break or run out of battery.
RIPLEY
I feel like a fifth wheel here. Is there anything I can do?
APONE
I don’t know. Is there anything you can do?
RIPLEY (pointing)
I can drive that loader. I’ve got a Class Two rating. My latest career move.
Dru Chen – Turnaround [Official Music Video]
I think somebody likes Mirror’s Edge.
Also, filmed in Indonesia. Totes cyber yo.
Interstellar — Trailer — Official Warner Bros
Oh my yes this film.
Interstellar space travel…
IT’S A RESCUE MISSION.
Preach Nolan bros.
A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!
Take a flight to Titan. Take a flight on Titan. Stay forever and live as an Angel.
Lerman and two classmates factored in the density of air at the surface of Titan, gravity, and the ratio of the path of the air above the wing to that below the wing. The students calculated that a person would need to run at a speed of 36 feet per second (11 meters per second) if they wanted to take flight wearing a normal-sized wingsuit with an area of about 15 square feet (1.4 square meters).
That running speed is quite daunting considering that Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, the fastest man on Earth, achieves speeds only slightly higher (just over 40 feet per second, or 12 m/s).
To lift off by running at a more manageable speed of about 20 feet per second (6 m/s), a person would need to wear a more unwieldy wingsuit with a surface area more than three times larger than the normal size, the students said.
Their paper was published in the University of Leicester’s Journal of Physics Special Topics, which features short articles written by students to help get them acquainted with the peer-review process.
Many of the papers test bizarre or pop culture-inspired scenarios, such as an article published last year that examined what traveling through hyperspace would really look like.
For extra credit, update the terrestrial math on the required morphology here for the posthuman near future life on the Saturnian retreat.
A functional wing is, sadly, out of the question. Humans lack the shoulder joint and massive muscles that millions of years of evolution gave modern birds. Wing loading is another killer requirement. Modern birds need at least a square centimetre of wing area for every 4 grams of body mass, so an 80-kilogram human would need two square metres of wing.
But an arm might be converted to a decorative wing. Poore suggests modelling it on the wing of Archaeopteryx, the earliest bird, which had a shoulder much closer to humans than the shoulders of better-flying modern birds.
Next, rearrange the muscle and skin to allow articulation of the new bone arrangement.
Things get tricky when it comes to feathering the wings. Hair grows in different skin layers to feathers and the two consist of different types of keratin. No one knows how to convert one to the other.
Yet.
Kickstartering the Posthuman Futcha!
Bootstrappin’ the Galactic Adventure!!!
Selling tickets to jaded trillenials to pay your way through xenobiology school…
[MIRRORED FROM http://fuckyeahdarkextropian.tumblr.com/post/82951083259/a-new-life-awaits-you-in-the-off-world-colonies-a]
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The Committee to Nuke Elysium 