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New e-book anthology dives into the world of astrobiology

Raitis Misa — Wed, 20 May 2020 13:52:23 +0000

Is anyone out there? From the possibility of microbial life on Mars and elsewhere in the solar system across the multitude of exoplanets all the way to the Fermi Paradox, astrobiology tries to find the answer to this age-old question and more – like how life originated here on Earth, what are its physical limits and what forms might life take under different conditions. A new freely-available anthology released by the European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) delves into these questions via Science Fiction (SF) stories by world-renowned authors, followed by essays about the science of each story.

The anthology, titled Strangest of All (a nod to H. G. Wells’s War of The Worlds), was edited by the author, editor and scientist Julie Nováková, who leads the outreach working group of the European Astrobiology Institute. The book contains reprint SF stories by G. David Nordley, Geoffrey Landis, Gregory Benford, Tobias S. Buckell, Peter Watts and D. A. Xiaolin Spires, plus a bonus story by the editor.

Nordley’s “War, Ice, Egg, Universe” takes readers to an aquatic civilization inhabiting a Europa-like world with an ice-covered ocean, and the accompanying essay focuses on what we know about conditions for life on Europa, Enceladus, Ganymede and other ocean worlds. In “Into The Blue Abyss” by Landis, the protagonist dives into an entirely different ocean – the high-pressure liquid water layer on Uranus, where chemistry signifying possible life had been observed. Could life really exist in such conditions – and could high-pressure environments actually be one of the most common habitats in the universe?

Continuing the journey outward from the Sun, “Backscatter” by Benford finds life in an improbable place: an icy asteroid in the Kuiper Belt. The follow-up essay provides background on the possibility of life in asteroids and comets and dives into the topic of exotic silicon-based life in such cold places with no liquid water.

In Buckell’s “A Jar of Goodwill”, we leave solar system and environments similar to it entirely, visiting a strange exoplanet where plants metabolize chlorine – but the main problem the hero faces is whether its ant-like inhabitants are intelligent creatures. Halogen-based photosynthesis was actually proposed in theory – so we can look at where we could expect such an exotic life. Even more exotic is the titular creature in Watts’s novelette “The Island”: a live Dyson sphere. In the essay, we look at how we can search for Dyson spheres, what the surveys yielded up-to-date, and whether we could presume anything about the origin and thought processes of a nigh-impossible being like the Island.

Benford returns with a microstory “SETI for Profit”, an interesting take on how to revive interest in SETI. What efforts to listen to potential extra-terrestrial messages have been taken so far, and what can we expect in the future? The topic of SETI is inextricably linked with the Fermi Paradox, one of the themes of Spires’s “But, Still, I Smile”. How can we explain the paradox with what we know so far, and how does the explanation in the story relate to our world? Finally, in the bonus story by Nováková, “Martian Fever”, we look at Mars exploration gone awry – and the risks of interplanetary biological contamination and the question of planetary protection.

Each story is followed not only by the science essay complete with references for readers craving more, but also a couple of ideas for classroom discussions or tasks (best-suited for higher high school grades or undergraduate university students), such as thinking of how to devise a message for a potentially listening alien civilization, bearing in mind what we know of sensory and cognitive differences between species here on Earth. For most of the questions, there is no definitive answer – but all the more curiosity should they elicit.

Strangest of All is the first of major outreach projects coming from the EAI. EAI was founded in 2019 with the aims to support interdisciplinary research in astrobiology across Europe and beyond, disseminate scientific results and promote education and outreach in astrobiology and related fields by organizing summer schools, supporting the AbGradE forum for graduate students and creating materials such as this book, among other ways. Astrobiology is an exciting and booming scientific field, and science fiction is a perfect tool to bring it closer to people and enable them to imagine the incessant drive of curiosity and the joy of discovery that are at the heart of both science and SF. More such efforts are considered by EAI’s project team “Science Fiction as a tool for Astrobiology Outreach and Education”, which also welcomes new members who are interested in developing similar outreach materials.

The anthology Strangest of All can be downloaded for free in several formats on the websites of the European Astrobiology Institute and the editor, Julie Nováková.

Links:

About the European Astrobiology Institute: https://europeanastrobiology.eu/aims-2.html

About the editor, Julie Nováková: https://www.julienovakova.com/about/

Strangest of All at the European Astrobiology Institute: https://europeanastrobiology.eu/index.html

Strangest of All at julienovakova.com: https://www.julienovakova.com/strangest-of-all/

airBaltic Announces World Debut of CS300

Raitis Misa — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:40:36 +0000

The Latvian airline airBaltic will start Bombardier CS300 commercial operations on December 14, 2016 on its route linking Riga with Amsterdam.

Martin Gauss, Chief Executive Officer of airBaltic: “CS300 is a great aircraft, and a great improvement for our customers this Christmas. We are delighted to announce that the historic first airBaltic commercial flight with Bombardier CS300 will link Riga with Amsterdam.”

The new CS300 aircraft with a total of 145 seats, offers excellent flying experience with such benefits for passengers as wider seats, larger windows, more hand luggage space in the cabin, improved lavatories and other. New aircraft is also much quieter – with four times smaller noise footprint. Moreover, at the moment, it is the greenest commercial aircraft in the world, as it is the first aircraft to have a transparent declaration of the life-cycle environmental impact, helping to reduce CO₂ and NO_Xemissions by 20% and 50% respectively.

airBaltic is the launch operator for the CS300 aircraft, and has ordered 20 CS300 aircraft.

Bombardier CS300

The winner of the Mars One University Competition will bring life to Mars in 2018

Raitis Misa — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 14:07:38 +0000

Amersfoort, 5th January 2015 - Mars One is proud to present the winner of the Mars One University Competition: Seed. The Seed team is an important step closer to sending their payload to Mars. The winning payload will fly to the surface of Mars on Mars One’s 2018 unmanned lander mission. Seed was selected by popular vote from an initial 35 university proposals and this is the first time the public has decided which payload receives the extraordinary opportunity to land on Mars.

“We were generally very pleased with the high quality of the university proposals and the amount of effort associated with preparing them,” said Arno Wielders, co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Mars One. “Seed itself is uniquely inspiring since this would be the first time a plant will be grown on Mars.”

The Winning Team - Seed aims to germinate the first seed on Mars in order to contribute to the development of life support systems and provide a deeper understanding of plant growth on Mars. The payload will consist of an external container, which provides protection from the harsh environment, and interior container, which will hold several seed cassettes. The seeds will stem from the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which is commonly used in space plant studies. After landing, the seeds inside the cassette will be provided with conditions for germination and seedling growth. The growth will then be recorded using images transmitted back to Earth.

"We are really pleased to be the selected project among so many excellent ideas. We are thrilled to be the first to send life to Mars! This will be a great journey that we hope to share with you all!" said Teresa Araújo, Seed team member.

Seed consists of four bioengineering students from the University of Porto and two PhD students from MIT Portugal and the University of Madrid. The team is supported by Dr. Maria Helena Carvalho, plant researcher at IBMC and Dr. Jack van Loon, from the VU Medical Center, VU-University in Amsterdam, and support scientist at ESTEC-ESA. Seed benefits from scientific and technical support from several advisers, whose expertise range from biological systems to spacecraft development and validation. Read more about Seed here.

An in-depth technical analysis of the winning proposal will be conducted to ensure that the winner has a feasible plan and that their payload can be integrated on the 2018 Mars lander. Mars One and its advisers will contribute to the analysis by thoroughly and critically examining the Seed proposal.

If Seed runs into any issues regarding feasibility or can not stick to the schedule, Mars One will fall back on the runner ups of the university competition. The second and third placed projects are Cyano Knights and Lettuce on Mars.

Lockheed Martin Plans to Restart Atomic Age

Raitis Misa — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:37:10 +0000

The Lockheed Martin Skunk Works team is working on a new compact fusion reactor (CFR) that can be developed and deployed in as little as ten years. Currently, there are several patents pending that cover their approach.
While fusion itself is not new, the Skunk Works has built on more than 60 years of fusion research and investment to develop an approach that offers a significant reduction in size compared to mainstream efforts.
More in short video

Read even more here

SpaceX and Boeing to Fly US Astronauts to ISS

Raitis Misa — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 13:39:00 +0000

NASA Chooses American Companies to Transport U.S. Astronauts to International Space Station.

U.S. astronauts once again will travel to and from the International Space Station from the United States on American spacecraft under groundbreaking contracts NASA announced Tuesday. The agency unveiled its selection of Boeing and SpaceX to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station using their CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively, with a goal of ending the nation’s sole reliance on Russia in 2017.

The companies selected to provide this transportation capability and the maximum potential value of their FAR-based firm fixed-price contracts are:

The Boeing Company, Houston, $4.2 billion
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Hawthorne, California, $2.6 billion

The contracts include at least one crewed flight test per company with at least one NASA astronaut aboard to verify the fully integrated rocket and spacecraft system can launch, maneuver in orbit, and dock to the space station, as well as validate all its systems perform as expected. Once each company’s test program has been completed successfully and its system achieves NASA certification, each contractor will conduct at least two, and as many as six, crewed missions to the space station. These spacecraft also will serve as a lifeboat for astronauts aboard the station.

Source: NASA

IBM Unveils a Chip With 4096 Processor Cores

Raitis Misa — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 08:58:39 +0000

Scientists at IBM Research have created by far the most advanced neuromorphic (brain-like) computer chip to date. The chip, called TrueNorth, consists of 1 million programmable neurons and 256 million programmable synapses across 4096 individual neurosynaptic cores.

Built on Samsung’s 28nm process and with a monstrous transistor count of 5.4 billion, this is one of the largest and most advanced computer chips ever made. Perhaps most importantly, though, TrueNorth is incredibly efficient: The chip consumes just 72 milliwatts at max load, which equates to around 400 billion synaptic operations per second per watt — or about 176,000 times more efficient than a modern CPU running the same brain-like workload, or 769 times more efficient than other state-of-the-art neuromorphic approaches. Yes, IBM is now a big step closer to building a brain on a chip.

IBM already has dozens of big data solutions — such as Watson — that could be dramatically enhanced by TrueNorth.

NASA RF Test Device produces anomalous thrust

Raitis Misa — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 12:28:27 +0000

Researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston have found that a microwave thruster system that requires no propellant does indeed generate a small amount of thrust.

The thruster may work by somehow harnessing the subatomic particles that continuously pop into and out of existence, the NASA researchers suggest. The results and the technology are promising enough to warrant further study, they wrote in the study.

Approximately 30-50 micro-Newtons of thrust were recorded from an electric propulsion test article consisting primarily of a radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity excited at approximately 935 megahertz. Testing was performed on a low-thrust torsion pendulum that is capable of detecting force at a single-digit micronewton level, within a stainless steel vacuum chamber with the door closed but at ambient atmospheric pressure.

Original paper by NASA

Similar project by SPR Ltd.

airBaltic – World’s First Airline To Accept Bitcoin

Raitis Misa — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 08:12:40 +0000

Latvian airline airBaltic has become the world’s first airline to accept Bitcoin as payment for its tickets to 60 destinations in Europe, Middle East, Russia and the CIS.

Martin Gauss, airBaltic Chief Executive Officer: “airBaltic has been ranked among TOP 10 most innovative airlines globally. Introducing the Bitcoin payment option is a part of our innovative approach to service with a central focus on our customer.”

airBaltic accepts Bitcoin as payment for tickets on its website www.airbaltic.com. The ticket prices on the website are displayed in euros. When airBaltic customers pay for their flight, their Bitcoins are converted into euros at the current exchange rate. To make accepting Bitcoin possible, airBaltic teamed up with Bitpay, a third-party payment processor that converts Bitcoins into euros. The Bitcoin payment option is available when purchasing the cheapest tickets, known as airBaltic Basic class.

Bitcoin is a software-based payment system introduced in 2009. Payments are recorded in a public ledger and bitcoin is its unit of account. Bitcoin payments are accepted by such companies as WordPress.com, Overstock.com, Expedia, Dell, and others.

Nikon announces the D810 – FX-format digital SLR camera

Raitis Misa — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 07:43:40 +0000

An effective pixel count of 36.3-million pixels for the sharpest, best image quality in Nikon history

The D810 is a digital SLR camera that boasts high image quality with a new Nikon FX-format CMOS sensor with no optical low-pass filter, adoption of the latest EXPEED 4 image-processing engine, an effective pixel count of 36.3-million pixels, and a standard range of sensitivities from ISO 64 to ISO 12800. Not only does it offer accurate AF, but vibrations generated inside the camera have been reduced to maximize the resolution of its 36.3-million pixels for sharp and clear images. The camera also supports recording of smooth, sharp 60p full-HD (1920 x 1080) movies. What's more, high-speed continuous shooting at up to 5 fps with the FX-format image area and up to 7 fps* with the DX-format image area is possible for excellent response to a wide variety of scenes.

D810 Primary Features

The first digital SLR camera in Nikon's history to offer a minimum standard sensitivity of ISO 64 at which superior clarity and image quality with rich tones is achieved;
Further increases in imaging flexibility: The Picture Control system, Nikon's exclusive advanced system for image processing;
Extremely precise AF and superior vibration suppression that maximize the resolution of the 36.3-million-pixel effective pixel count;
High-speed continuous shooting at approximately 5 fps in FX format and approximately 7 fps in DX format makes capture of a broader range of subjects possible;
Full-HD movie recording with which picture quality and operation has been significantly improved.

Elon Musk – All Our Patent Are Belong To You

Raitis Misa — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 08:36:32 +0000

Tesla Just Gave All Its Patents Away

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced today that his company will not “initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” In plain English, that means that if other car companies want to produce electric cars, they can use Tesla’s technology to do it, and, in turn, advance Musk’s sustainability vision.
Statment by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors follows.

Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible.

At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.

At best, the large automakers are producing electric cars with limited range in limited volume. Some produce no zero emission cars at all.

Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.

We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.

Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.