Evidence of life has been discovered on Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan. Analysis of data sent back by NASA’s Cassini probe suggests primitive aliens are breathing in Titan’s atmosphere and feeding on fuel at the surface. The startling discoveries, made using an orbiting spacecraft, are revealed in two separate reports. Organic chemicals had already been detected on Titan but the liquid is methane, not water, and scientists expect life there to be methane-based.
The first paper said hydrogen gas flowing down through Titan’s atmosphere disappears at the surface, suggesting it could be being breathed by alien bugs. The other paper reports there is a lack of a certain chemical on the surface, leading scientists to believe it may be being consumed by life. Scientists had expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce a coating of acetylene on Titan’s surface but Cassini detected no acetylene there.
Experts warn there could be other explanations for the results. But taken together, they fulfil two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist. NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay said: “If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.”
Scientists believe that when the Sun swells up, swallowing Earth, conditions could be ideal on Titan. Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, said: “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process. “In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.”
Another thing that flew under the radar that is about 8 months old is the findings on those microbes in the Martian meteorite that caused such a HUGE fuss in the mid 90s (from a meteor found in the 80s!) amongst scientists (and theists / creationists for sure!) has been found to be exactly what it looked like, (paranthetical abuse!) microbes from Mars!
NASA scientists have produced the most compelling evidence yet that bacterial life exists on Mars. It shows that microscopic worm-like structures found in a Martian meteorite that hit the Earth 13,000 years ago are almost certainly fossilised bacteria. The so-called bio-morphs are embedded beneath the surface layers of the rock, suggesting they were present when the meteorite arrived, rather than being the result of contamination by earthly bacteria. “This is very strong evidence of life on Mars,” said David Mackay, a senior scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston, who was part of the team of scientists that originally investigated the meteorite when it was discovered in 1984.
In a 1996 study of the sample, Dr Mackay and others argued the microfossils were evidence of life, but sceptics dismissed the claims, saying similar-shaped structures may not be biological. The new analyses, the product of high-resolution electron microscopy, make a strong case for the Allan Hills 84001 Meteorite having carried Martian life to Earth. The microscopes were focused on tiny magnetite crystals present in the surface layers of the meteorite, which have the form of simple bacteria.
Some argued these could be the result of a carbonate breaking down in the heat of the impact. The new analyses show this is unlikely to have resulted in the structures seen in the rock. Close examination suggested that about 25 per cent of the crystal structures were chemically consistent with being formed from bacteria. “We feel vindicated. We’ve shown the alternate explanation is absolutely incorrect, leading us back to our original position that these structures are formed by bacteria on Mars,” Dr Mackay said.
Scientists say the meteorite was broken off the surface of Mars by the impact of an asteroid, and reached Earth after floating through space for about 16 million years. It landed in Allan Hills in Antarctica. Scientists were able to trace the meteorite back to Mars, as its chemical composition matched the relative proportions of various gases measured in observations of the atmosphere of Mars made by the Viking spacecraft in the 1970s. The meteorite also preserves evidence of liquid water on Mars.
Europa’s unlit interior is still considered to be the most likely location for extant life in the Solar System. Life could exist in its under-ice ocean, perhaps subsisting in an environment similar to Earth’s deep-ocean hydrothermal vents or the Antarctic Lake Vostok. Life in such an ocean could possibly be similar to microbial life on Earth in the deep ocean. So far, there is no evidence that life exists on Europa, but the likely presence of liquid water has spurred calls to send a probe there.
Let’s not forget water on the moon people. We live in some pretty exciting times! It’ll definitely challenge the status quo between the baby boomers and their strong theological views (and those zombie like masses of American teenagers brainwashed by them) and the more cold clinical evil villainous scientist types like .. well, like us!
I woke up this morning to silence, my phone seemed to have crapped itself and decided to show one bar of service, and pretend it was sending my messages, when in fact it needed a reboot then suddenly a rush of about 20 messages came in, most of them from various friends who, on reading my coverage of the Norway Sky Phenomenon, figured I’d like to know that a similar sighting has occured over my very own country. The byline is that it is again, a ‘rocket’ that has gone ‘out of control’, except instead of the Russian ICBM story that came with the Norway one, we’ve gotten a story about a ‘private launch’ from Cape Canaveral (in the US ffs) that claims origin of this spiral, even though the rocket in question was about an hour too early for it to be the thing we saw.
Most of you know I’m an ultra-skeptic, but credit where credit is due, this again has me confused terribly, the only other time I have been unable to provide immediately a good solid scientific explaination for something of this nature was the Norway spiral phenomenon in question. So, here’s a picture of it as scene by people in Brisbane, along with the current news coverage of the phenomenon.
One last thing though; if some company or person launched something that travelled for an hour within our atmosphere and ended up ‘out of control’ over one of Australia’s most populated cities, why isn’t there an investigation or at least charges being laid? That’s assuming that a privately launched rocket of unknown and undisclosed type or origin could maintain flight for over an hour; but let’s face it, our government would spend a small fortune investigating an anonymous cock and balls scrawled on Parliament house in sharpie, why won’t they even look into or address this?
UPDATE: Witness reports have come in from the entire eastern coast of Australia from Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria inclusively.
EDIT: Latest coverage has been placed first, view below for earlier story, newer version has witness records from all over the eastern seaboard of Australia.
in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria all reported seeing a bright light moving in an erratic way in the sky early this morning, prompting speculation of a UFO.
One witness in Redcliffe in northern Brisbane told The Sunday Mail of a ball of light moving across the sky at about 5.50am today.
“It was a perfect spiral of light,” the witness said.
“I realised soon it was not the moon but that it was shooting like a comet from the southern sky and off into the northwest.”
Another Brisbane resident said: “There was absolutely no sound in a perfectly clear, darkened sky before dawn.”
Police and search and rescue crews confirmed they had received calls from Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast about the UFO.
The weather bureau said there were no weather conditions which would explain the light. A Defence spokeswoman also said she had no explanation.
In Victoria, a Herald Sun reader identified as Matt said he saw the light after fishing on Port Phillip Bay.
“It was really weird,” he said.
“We tried to take photos with our phones but all you could see was black.”
The light was also seen in Sydney, Wollongong and Canberra, reports The Daily Telegraph. A witness told the ABC she saw a light “racing across the sky” about 5.50am. She described the light as “like a lollipop swirl” that came from the west and was headed east out to sea.
“It was unreal,” she said.
“There was a cloud in the sky – just this light with a swirl in the middle.”
Another caller said:”It was a perfect spiral of light.
“I realised soon it was not the moon but that it was shooting like a comet from the southern sky and off into the northwest.’’
Original coverage:
Geoffrey Whyatt from the Sydney Observatory says it was probably a satellite, space junk or a rocket.
“The fact that you’ve got the rotation, the spiral effect, is very reminiscent of the much widely reported sightings from Norway and Russia last year, which both turned out to be a Bulava missile which was being adjusted in its orbit,” he said.
“So possibly a rocket, I would say, having some sort of gyroscopic stability rocket fired on its side.”
Mr Whyatt says it is a rare phenomenon.
“The first I saw of the spirals was last year when they were reported in Norway and then a few days later in Russia,” he said.
“The Norway one was very spectacular because of its symmetrical appearance.
“But the one this morning and the one in Russia bear a striking similarity of being the same effects from a rocket trying to be controlled or adjusted.”
A privately-owned rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on its first test flight is believed to be responsible.
But Doug Moffett from UFO Research NSW says he has a few problems with this theory.
“Firstly, the time of the launch was 18.45 GMT, which translates to 4.45am EST, the duration of the flight was 9 minutes 38 seconds – this is a full hour before the reported sightings,” he said.
“Secondly, where was the glow from the boosters or from the friction created by the craft moving through the atmosphere, where was the tail of the rocket?
“Thirdly, why would anyone launch a rocket on a maiden test flight with a trajectory that would take it over the most heavily populated parts of Australia?
“And how big must this rocket have been to be seen so clearly, at the same time, over such a vast distance?”
‘Like a bright star’
Canberra resident James Butcher says he was driving home from a night out with his brother when they spotted the “strange spiral light in the sky”.
“It had a distinct bright centre, much like a bright star, indicating an object shedding light trails, spiralling and fattening out from it,” he said.
“The effect lasted only two or three minutes, moving and descending quickly out of view.
“The colour was yellowish but this may have been blurred and tinted by the morning fog.”
Wollongong man Eddie Wise says he also saw the light during his morning walk just before 6:00am.
He says he has never seen anything like it.
“It was like a yellowish, greenish light with a light spiral around it,” he said.
“It sort of moved around, bobbed up and down and then it went behind a cloud.
“I’m just amazed. I want to know what it was.”
A caller to the ABC, Robyn, says she saw the phenomenon from her home on Sydney’s north shore just before 6:00am.
She says it was over within two minutes.
“There was this white light up in the sky like a huge revolving moon,” Robyn said.
“At first I thought it was the moon but it was travelling so fast, high up above the eastern horizon and twirling as it went.
“It was just amazing and to be quite frank, I was quite frightened and my heart’s still pounding.”
‘Lollipop-type swirl’
A number of people from Morayfield and Caboolture in Queensland have reported that they too saw a white light in the sky about 5:50am.
“It was just the one light. I just came home from my walk and I happened to look up in the sky, and here it was racing across the sky,” Linda told 612 ABC Brisbane.
“I bashed on the window for my husband to have a look and he flew out.
“It was spectacular.”
Linda described the light as like a lollipop swirl.
She says the light came from the west and was headed east, out to sea.
“It was just unreal. There was a cloud in the sky – just this light with a swirl in the middle,” she said.
Peter, from Balmoral, says he saw the light while he was on a ferry terminal on the Brisbane River.
“It certainly had that lollipop-type swirl … but it was travelling low and fairly fast, and as it went past me and I looked up, it looked like a row of lights, maybe four lights,” he said.
Denise, at Pine Mountain, told ABC radio in Brisbane that she saw the lights shortly before 6:00am.
“I got up at about 5:45 to let my horse out of his stable … and I saw this coming from a north-west direction towards the south-east,” she said.
“There was no noise. It was like bands of ribbon coming out of it and it looked like it was coming through a cloud, yet there were no clouds.”
Some interesting comments on the issue: -
Tommy Posted at 3:15 PM Today
yep, Russian rockets again….
Comment 10 of 51
Glen of Newcastle Posted at 3:20 PM Today
This looks the same as the ones in Norway December 2009…spooky?
Comment 11 of 51
Hodge of Melbourne Posted at 3:28 PM Today
I’m waiting to hear the weather balloon theory….swamp gas etc. They don’t want to admit that just maybe,it’s not from this world…and i think they forgetting the witnesses said it made no sound!
Comment 12 of 51
Man In Black Posted at 3:29 PM Today
No other object has been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus. Even the former leader of your United States of America, James Earl Carter Jr., thought he saw a UFO once… But it’s been proven he only saw the planet Venus. Venus was at its peak brilliance last night. You probably thought you saw something up in the sky other than Venus, but I assure you, it was Venus. Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception. Yet you somehow brazenly declare seeing is believing? Your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder, and I wouldn’t flaunt your ignorance by telling anyone that you saw anything last night other than the planet Venus.
Comment 13 of 51
Believer of Gold Coast Posted at 3:43 PM Today
aahh here we go another “rocket” cover up story! why dont you people/government just admit that its an extraterrestial object. why do you keep the public in the dark about these matters you greedy b**t***ds !!
Comment 14 of 51
Dr Simon Mahogney of Perth Posted at 3:48 PM Today
They’re here, expect more UFC sightings as things heat up… disclosure is soon, prepare yourself :-)
Why would a u.f.o. have lights when they are trying not to be seen?Are they unable to see at night?Do they not have a ‘space’ G.P.S and have to find their way by sight?Come on,Dont believe the hype.Last month it was the weather radars,Whats next,Santa?
Comment 17 of 51
Lisa of Sunny Q Posted at 3:59 PM Today
man in black is really Sheldon from Big bang, beautiful, man in black beautiful.
Comment 18 of 51
Steven Posted at 4:00 PM Today
And out of the woodwork come the loonies….
Comment 19 of 51
Straife of Brisbane Posted at 4:01 PM Today
“Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 on June 4, 2010.[1] The Falcon 9 launch vehicle carried a Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit, a mockup of the Dragon spacecraft.” Launch date June 4, 2010, 14:45 EDT[1] Maybe it was a rocket after all.
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him…”
Friedrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science (1882), s126.
Long have we theorised the above line by a madman bearing a labtern not to be talking about the literal God believed in by so many theists. Instead, we interpret, he is talking about what this god represented for European culture, the shared cultural belief in God which had once been its defining and uniting characteristic.
So to has man thrown off the yolk of theism, every element of the divine has been replicated at large through science, trickery, art, illusionism except one final element; the creation of life.
Until yesterday when flamboyant geneticist Craig Venter held true to the pledge he made nearly 15 years ago, unveiling his magnum opus. This landmark of scientific progress, published in the Journal of Science, stands on the shoulders of his race to decode the human genome in his own laboratory, egotistically his own DNA I might add.
The madman carrying this lantern has indeed created the first instance of purely synthetic life, opening the doors nanoscience falter at with the potential to create designer microbes for special jobs such as production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals, through to filtering contaminents from air and water.
“This is the first synthetic life that has been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromasome, made with four bottles of chemcals on a synthesizer from information on a computer,” Dr Venter said.
Lauded as a tour de force by Prof. Mattick from the Australian Research Council, Dr. Venters work is as ground breaking as science gets these days, the applications for man made life are phenominal and limited only by our imagination. That being said, mans imagination can often be self destructive, so think of all the fantastic synthesized zombie viruses the US military will make with this!
The bacterium used decoded DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides imprinting the synthetic DNA and inserting it into living bacterium, in this case Mycoplasma capricolum, allowing the bacterium to flourish with both it’s own and the synthetic DNA within, then finally using an antibiotic designed to kill all but the synthetic DNA allowing only the synthesized organism to proliferate and produce protein strands from the original Mycoplasma mycoides creating, simply, artificial life.
This week, the world’s leading techno-socio-economic guru Dirk Helbing outlined his vision of the Earth’s future, or rather, the means to acquire it. At a cost of $1.5bn, the Living Earth Simulator will gather as much data about humanity as possible, mining every available source to produce a picture of where we’re at and where we’re heading.
Like Google Earth with a mind-numbing amount of extra detail added – namely, everything. It will be built in Switzerland, home of that other enormously ambitious project to map just about everything, the Large Hadron Collider. Finances, pandemics, emissions, weather patterns, transport, wars – if humanity indulges in it, affects it or is afflicted by it, it goes into the simulator. Whether we actually want to see that is another question, because it could well be like having your own genome sequenced and finding out you’ll be dead by the end of the year.
Helbing hopes his simulator – he’s coined the term “knowledge accelerator” – will be up and running by 2022, which is, perhaps not coincidentally, exactly 42 years after Douglas Adams gave the world the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. Helbing believes it could be used by global leaders to view and manage current and future crises in “situation rooms”. “With our knowledge of the universe, we have sent men to the moon,” Helbing writes in a paper on the project released online. “Humankind is now facing serious crises for which we must develop new ways to tackle the global challenges of humanity in the 21st century.
“We know microscopic details of objects around us and within us. And yet we know relatively little about how our society works and how it reacts to changes brought upon it.” The start up cost will be somewhere around $1.5 billion and it’s so far wholly funded by the European Union, which shows it is taking the project and its possibilities very, very seriously.
Once in a while you come across a piece of hack documentary type puff that blows irresponsibility out the water. One child claims she was first blessed with her ‘talent’ when she was two years old, simply because she wandered away from her house and blamed it on a ‘little girl’ which the parents fabricated an anecdotal story around. “There’s no reason to think these people are lying, why would they?” says the mother. Shot in the dark here love, but I’d guess for the epic fucking attention they get for lying through their teeth.
Sounds whack? That’s the bottom line of ‘Psychic Kids’ a Biography channel d(/m)ocumentary using various fallacies and props as outlined in my last post regarding quakcery and touchy feely rubbish, if you watched Here Be Dragons, the video on YouTube about critical thinking, you’ll watch this and facepalm double handed just like I am.
Stuff like this really makes me worried. Children are impresionable, it’s far more dangerous putting something so under the radar as encouraging psychological illness replication, as far as behaviour goes, than it would be violence, given the predisposition for ‘psychics’ to be depicted as loved and special, treasured almost–albeit by those who fail to think critically and believe in unicorns too–and thus is something more children would wish to attain as far as recognition goes. That being said, whilst I disagree, and whilst I can see the damage humouring assinine material such as this and appreciate it is a large amount of socio-economic damage,
The father of one of the children labels himself a skeptic, and illustrates freely that she was a bit of a nutjob kid with mental problems and used this as an out. Although in the very next scene we have a camp old man ‘psychic’ reaffirming her delusions claiming he has had psychic powers forever and starts asking how many ‘spirit beings’ she detects in the area, naturally she spits out epic dramu, but such is life.
In fact ALL of the children on the show suffered bullying and ostricization, this they will clearly blame on people ‘not understanding’ their abilities as opposed to rational people disliking attention whoring irrational twats brainwashed by their crystal fiddling dope smoking parents.
I think the worst part is a scene where one of the children is seen being coaxed to go to the basement in the middle of the night to ‘communicate’ with the spirit child that dwells there, where we see gaudy night vision (sadly no Paris Hilton in sight) and a poor arse replication of Most Haunted crossed with Blair Witch Project and a ball that is moving in a lazy circle due to a weighted patch on the side of it which is reacted to in a manner that this invisible child is pushing the ball back.
Overall, it’s another case of this memetic cancer in our society that needs some rapid chemo.
I was recently suggested a read by a friend, Dr. John L. Turner (add him on twitter, @DrJohnLTurner), of a document entitled Bioelectromagnetic Healing, A Rationale for Its Use by Thomas F. Valone, Ph.D. published in 2003. This work was vanity published by his own sock puppet ‘charity’ organisation called the ‘Integrity Research Institute,’ which he is, surprise surprise, the President of. A brief review of his curriculum vitae reveals that he has no published works in any respectable scientific journal, nor any peer reviewed scientific journal or publication out of all his publications; they’re all primarily through his ‘Integrity Research Institute.’
REMEMBER: PSEUDOSCIENCE KILLS.
Click here to review individual instances of pseudoscience and alternative medicine being at fault in over 368,379 people dying, 306,096 injured and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages.
I don’t mean to rag on him too much by the way, he seems to be a TAFE teacher (by Australian standards, or primarily a ‘community college’ instructor by US standards) and has clearly worked with some brilliant chaps too; my disdain isn’t against this individual but merely his actions as a proponent of deadly conspiracy and pseudoscience peddling. That being said he can be found on YouTube making an ass of himself talking about UFOs and conspiracies.
Before reading through this review, or maybe even after, watch this video on critical thinking for a general primer on how to approach … well, just about anything utilising the illumination of critical thought and the scientific mind!
I was cynical from the commencement reading this material, as I have read hundreds of papers debunking magetic therapy, the dedication at the begining of the work mentioning a naturopath was not reassuring. The preface is a very stereotypical opening shot of anecdote, as with most ‘alternative medicine‘ someone always knows someone who X, Y and Z, but sadly none of these people manage to deliver even a scrap of scientific proof nor are any of these wonderous revolutionary discoveries ever distributed to peer reviewed journals where the reading (and commenting) audience are medically or scientifically trained. We all know why that is.
The kicker that already got my eyes rolling out of my head was the defecting Russian scientist, who spoke of awesome ‘energy healing‘ methods through magnetic devices which, when pointed at the ear of a subject with an ear infection for a few minutes, would destroy the infection. If ANYONE can reproduce that in a lab under ANY form of scientific scrutiny, I will gladly sell all my possessions, hand them the cash, then promptly jump off a cliff. I shit you not, I WILL stake my entire life on the fact that ALL alternative medicine is a farce. A dangerous farce at that, killing millions the world over who, through ignorance, or irresponsibility of others putting forth puff where one should be proposing medicine and science, die and cause massive financial, emotional, and general harm to people every day. I feel safe in my bet on this one though: -
“I know of no scientist who takes this claim seriously…It’s another fad. They come and go like copper bracelets and crystals and all of these things, and this one will pass too.” –Robert Park of the American Physical Society.
“Iron atoms in a magnet are crammed together in a solid state about one atom apart from one another. In your blood only four iron atoms are allocated to each hemoglobin molecule, and they are separated by distances too great to form a magnet. This is easily tested by pricking your finger and placing a drop of your blood next to a magnet. ” –Michael Shermer*
“The more extreme claims of magnetic therapy, such as curing cancer by hanging supermagnets around your neck, are not only nonsense but also dangerous, since they may divert patients from seeking appropriate treatment from mainstream medicine. Magnetic jewelry and most other magnetic-therapy products probably are harmless beyond a waste of money.” –James D. Livingston*
By page 4 the author is already claiming magnets are ‘the medicine of the future’, an ongoing cliche comment from all alternative medicine and snake oil peddlers in general. This magnet shit was mostly hashed out in the 70′s, with magnetic rooms, or ion charging units in sweat lodges in Europe would charge tens of thousands for ‘therapy,’ or the pleasure of sitting on a seat awkwardly in the middle of a room in your underwear whilst your healers snort the cash you’ve given them like hoovers. The whole ‘electro’ fad was exhausted by the 1930′s and debunked by most educated fellows.
One can’t go very far in the realm of ‘alternative medicine’ without striking on an Edison or Tesla reference, this work doesn’t disappoint, albeit I did find the uber professionalism of the author in one outstanding statement that pretty much sets the feel for the rest of the narrative of pseudoscience: -
Key sections are noted with a :) symbol to indicate importance.
Brilliant, right? In the 1930′s, as the author even states, such ridiculous claims were put forwards such as Tesla’s high frequency currents “are bringing about a highly beneficial result in dealing with cancer, surpassing anything that could be accomplished with ordinary surgery.” Statements like that are what people term as anecdotal; they’re not scientific, nor is any credential other than that of the conman or his associates put on the line. If it were submitted for peer review scientific journals by modern standards they’d be ridiculed openly and debunked, if not outright exposed, as phoneys. We all know electricity won’t cure cancer. If it did, we wouldn’t be spending billions in cancer research, nor spending even more in socialist states like Australia to fund the treatment of cancer patients if mere electro-shock will cure it.
Tim Harlow, general practitioner, Colin Greaves, research fellow, Adrian White, senior research fellow, Liz Brown, research assistant, Anna Hart, statistician, Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine conducted a large scale scientific examination of energy healing, with a focus on magnets, these findings were published in an esteemed and peer reviewed journal, British Medical Journal, Dec. 2004.
Skip to the bottom of this article to see other findings from other scientists that have been submitted to REAL journals and published BY presses that aren’t owned by those conducting the research.
That being said, we still have some whacky psychiatrists (mostly in Western Australia at Graylands (movies have been made about that place and this practice) who believe that electro-shock therapy is effective in dealing with depression and anxiety conditions. The figures probably come from the fact people will behave the way the doctors want because they don’t want a fucking jumper cable put to their temples again; not to mention in extreme cases these practices cause indirect lobotomies, but have as unpredictable a result as inserting a screw driver into your cars ignition, hitting it with a 20 lb sledge hammer, and hoping it starts.
By page 12 the author had lost me with far too much blatent pseudo-science, so I decided to look into him a bit more, examine his writing style. He seems to apply many footnotes, but I noticed that there are none beyond the 90s if not even the 70s that AREN’T published in some wanky new age touchy feely hippy publication, or vanity pressing. All the rest of the footnotes are from things from the late 1870s through to the 1930s, so we’re already dealing with someone who is structuring their research to suit their argument, as opposed to conducting research to present their argument be it right or wrong.
By page 13 the author is citing conspiracy theory books claiming that there is suppression by ‘big pharma’ to prevent the world being this wonderful utopia as peddled by snake oil salesmen. At this point I realised I could not go any further without losing all respect for myself. Cute read, non-scientific, all point of view, all flawed research.
Further reading:
Colbert, A. P., Wahbeh, H., Harling, N., Connelly, E., Schiffke, H. C., Forsten, C., Gregory, W. L., Markov, M. S., Souder, J. J., Elmer, P., King, V. (2009). Static Magnetic Field Therapy: A Critical Review of Treatment Parameters. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 6: 133-139 [Abstract][Full text]
Boutron, I., Moher, D., Altman, D. G., Schulz, K. F., Ravaud, P., for the CONSORT Group, (2008). Extending the CONSORT Statement to Randomized Trials of Nonpharmacologic Treatment: Explanation and Elaboration. ANN INTERN MED 148: 295-309 [Abstract][Full text]
Rumbaut, R. E., Mirkovic, D. (2008). Magnetic therapy for edema in inflammation: a physiological assessment. Am. J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. 294: H19-H20 [Full text]
Barron, M. C., Rubin, B. R. (2007). Managing Osteoarthritic Knee Pain. J Am Osteopath Assoc 107: ES21-ES27 [Abstract][Full text]
Pittler, M. H. MD PhD, Brown, E. M. BSc, Ernst, E. MD PhD (2007). Static magnets for reducing pain: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials. CMAJ 177: 736-742 [Abstract][Full text]
Katz, W. A. (2007). Themed Review: Nonpharmacologic Approaches to Osteoarthritis. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LIFESTYLE MEDICINE 1: 249-255 [Abstract]
Kuipers, N. T., Sauder, C. L., Ray, C. A. (2007). Influence of static magnetic fields on pain perception and sympathetic nerve activity in humans. J. Appl. Physiol. 102: 1410-1415 [Abstract][Full text]
Bjordal, J, Conaghan, P G (2006). NSAIDs in osteoarthritis: irreplaceable or troublesome guidelines?. Br. J. Sports. Med. 40: 285-286 [Full text]
Finegold, L., Flamm, B. L (2006). Magnet therapy. BMJ 332: 4-4 [Full text]
Rubin, B. R. (2005). Management of Osteoarthritic Knee Pain. J Am Osteopath Assoc 105: S23-S28 [Abstract][Full text]
Winemiller, M. H., Billow, R. G., Laskowski, E. R., Harmsen, W. S. (2005). Effect of Magnetic vs Sham-Magnetic Insoles on Nonspecific Foot Pain in the Workplace: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial. Mayo Clin Proc. 80: 1138-1145 [Abstract]
McDonald, H. L (2005). Patients who wore standard magnetic bracelets reported reduced pain from osteoarthritis of the hip or knee compared with patients wearing placebo bracelets. Evid. Based Nurs. 8: 89-89 [Full text]
McCrory, P (2005). The power of placebo. Br. J. Sports. Med. 39: 125-125 [Full text]
(2005). Robin Goodfellow (44-3). Rheumatology (Oxford) 44: 418-418 [Full text]
Exposure to violent video games makes players more aggressive and less caring.
Researchers say they have proved this conclusively after analysing 130 reports involving more than 130,000 gamers.
Iowa University psychology professor and video game researcher Craig Anderson said the results left little doubt – violent video games are bad for those who play them.
“We can now say with utmost confidence that regardless of research method, the effects are that exposure to violent video games increases the likelihood of aggressive behaviour,” he said.
The results are significant, as the impact of violent games has divided academics and been subject to long-running debate.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland last year expressed concerns about players becoming desensitised by violence in computer games, something that was being reflected in their behaviour.
“They see it (violence) happen in the movies and in video games and the person always gets up. Well, sadly, we know that’s not always the case,” he said.
The latest research comes as the Federal Government considers the introduction of an adults-only R18+ rating for games.
The move, which requires the agreement of all state and federal attorneys-general, is bitterly opposed by anti-violent video game activists, who argue it will expose children to unsavoury content.
The video games industry and gamers have mounted a campaign for reform, arguing the introduction of an adults-only category for games would bring Australia into line with the rest of the world.
The new study was published in the American Psychological Association journal Psychological Bulletin.
The team of international researchers, led by Prof Anderson, said exposure to violent games helped increase the risk of increased aggressive thoughts and behaviour and simultaneously decreased empathy toward others.
“From a public policy standpoint, it’s time to get off the question of ‘Are there real and serious effects?’ That’s been answered and answered repeatedly,” Prof Anderson said.
Australian Council on Children and the Media spokesman Dr Wayne Warburton said the research offered fresh ammunition against introducing an adults-only rating for games.
Twinkle Dwivedi, a 14-year-old who lives in northern India, has been spontaneously bleeding from her eyes, nose, hairline, neck and soles of her feet for the last three years, UK tabloid The Sun reports. The bleeding can happen up to 50 times a day and result in the loss of litres of blood.
“I bleed from my eyes, my hands, my head, from everywhere. From my ears and nose as well,” Twinkle said. “It doesn’t hurt when the bleeding starts. But it makes me tired and sometimes I have headaches.” Because of the bleeding Twinkle has been unable to attend her school in Lucknar, Uttar Pradesh.
Dr George Buchanan, an expert haematologist from the US, examined Twinkle in a Mumbai hospital but was unable to explain the strange condition. “I’ve never seen a case of someone who bleeds spontaneously from their scalp or their palms, or read about it in medical history,’ Dr George Buchanan said. “It doesn’t seem physically possible for blood to seep through intact skin.”
Clearly the media misrepresented Dr Buchanan, or he need return to general practice, as hematidrosis (also called hematohidrosis) is a well documented but very rare condition in which a human being sweats blood. It may occur when a person is suffering extreme levels of stress, for example, facing his or her own death. Several historical references have been described; notably by Leonardo da Vinci: describing a soldier who sweated blood before battle, men unexpectedly given a death sentence, as well as descriptions in the Bible, that Jesus experienced hematidrosis when he was praying in the garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22,44).
Hemochromatosis, another form of sweating blood, is a disorder due to deposition of hemosiderin in the parenchymal cells, causing tissue damage and dysfunction of the liver, pancreas, heart, and pituitary. Other clinical signs include bronze pigmentation of skin which may fly under the radar given the girls complexion, arthropathy, diabetes, cirrhosis, hepatosplenomegaly, hypogonadism, and loss of body hair, none of which are evident. Full development of the disease among women is restricted by menstruation and pregnancy.
According to Dr. Frederick Zugibe, Chief Medical Examiner of Rockland County, New York, sweating blood is well-known, and there have been many cases of it, “Around the sweat glands, there are multiple blood vessels in a net-like form. Under the pressure of great stress the vessels constrict. Then as the anxiety passes the blood vessels dilate to the point of rupture. The blood goes into the sweat glands. As the sweat glands are producing a lot of sweat, it pushes the blood to the surface – coming out as droplets of blood mixed with sweat.”
In a lecture, Dr. Zugibe stated: “The severe mental anxiety…activated the sympathetic nervous system to invoke the stress-fight or flight reaction to such a degree causing hemorrhage of the vessels supplying the sweat glands into the ducts of the sweat glands and extruding out onto the skin. While hematidrosis has been reported to occur from other rare medical entities, the presence of profound fear accounted for a significant number of reported cases including six cases in men condemned to execution, a case occurring during the London blitz, a case involving a fear of being raped, a fear of a storm while sailing, etc. The effects on the body is that of weakness and mild to moderate dehydration from the severe anxiety and both the blood and sweat loss.”
Optical fibres make it possible for us to use the technologies we take for granted, such as the internet our mobile phones, and other ‘unwired’ tech, but now new research from Macquarie University may hold the key to more cost-effective, energy-efficient, durable and easy-to-use fibre optics in the future.
Professor Town’s team of fibre optics specialists from the University’s Department of Electronic Engineering has been developing a new prototype for fibre optics which is made from a “bubbly” polymer fibre. “Our technique involves heating the polymer to form bubbles-it’s easier and cheaper than assembling tubes or drilling,” he says. “This could be a cheap, clean and relatively fast way of developing an optical network and the production process uses significantly less energy than if we were working with glass.”
Traditionally, glass has been used to produce optical fibres, but the equipment needed in order to process the glass at high temperatures makes this an expensive option. While several groups around the world are investigating polymer as a potential future replacement, the Macquarie team is the only group to develop and test a system which uses bubbles within the polymer to guide and scatter light.
Deliberately leaky fibres are ideal for transmitting data over short distances. “This technology would be applicable to, for example, inter-office connections where workers could use ‘wireless’ laptops within a certain area of the workplace,” Professor Town says. “The bubbly design allows you to scatter out of the fibre and also to scatter back in: if you can do that, it reduces the cost of coupling and the overall system costs are reduced.
“It’s like when you drive into the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and you can still listen to your car radio-they use a co-axial cable that leaks in a similar way so that you can receive the signal anywhere on the roadway.” He doesn’t go on to explain how a leaky feeder can be implemented with light, where light lost will cause errors in reception of the signals target.
Because the bubbly polymer allows light out and in, it also makes it potentially very useful for sensing applications. “This type of polymer optical fibre may also prove useful for distributed sensing of materials such as toxic or explosive gases,” says Professor Town.
I’ve had many an argument online with folks obsessed with ‘you’ll go blind’ mentality towards video games, amongst other things. I feel vindicated today as I read that a study found video games are “good for eyes”, far from being harmful to eyesight action games provide excellent training for what eye doctors call contrast sensitivity.
Contrast sensitivity is the ability to notice tiny changes in shades of grey against a uniform background, and is critical to everyday activities such as night driving and reading. It often degrades with age.
The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, reveal a previously unsuspected adaptability in the brain, and could open the way to new therapies, the researchers said. ”This is not a skill that people were supposed to get better at by training,” said Daphne Bavelier, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York state and the study’s lead researcher.
”It was something that we corrected for at the level of the optics of the eye – to get better contrast detection you get glasses or laser surgery.”
”What we found is that even without this correction you can help your brain make better use of whatever information is received from your retina,” she said.
For the study, Bavelier and three colleagues conducted two sets of experiments. In the first, they compared the contrast sensitivity of hard-core action game players with video game aficionados of the same age who preferred less rapid-fire fare.
In action games, players typically target and shoot figures that pop up suddenly on a computer screen. The researchers found that the action buffs were 50 percent more efficient at detecting contrast. But there remained a chicken-or-egg question: had their vision been improved by playing, or did they become action game players because they had better than average contrast sensitivity to start with?
To find out, Bavelier asked two groups of non-action video game players to undergo 50 hours of training. One played a popular point-and-shoot game called Call of Duty, and the other played a game that offered a rich visual experience, but one bereft of action.
”We found that the people in the first group improved by 43 percent, and the other group not at all,” she said. As important, the study also found that the improvement was not transitory. ”The positive effect remained months, even years after training, indicating long-lasting gains,” she said.
Is there some limit beyond which playing action games loses its positive effect or becomes detrimental? Can you, in other words, have too much of a ‘good thing’?
“For your visual system, probably not. For your social life, perhaps,” said Bavelier.
Has anyone else noticed that user @AdorianDeck and his bum chum @brysonen are the users behind the recent cash in on the #omgfacts trend of Twitter creating @OMGFacts? Has anyone noticed how all of their facts tend to be wrong?
It’s like they’ve googled ‘list ob kool faxtz’ and are just copy-pasting without any critical evaluation or quality control. Idk about you, but shit like that drives me up the wall. On average most humans are pig shit ignorant, but ‘pop sci’ facts are the bane of academia, science, and thought. Nutshell ‘facts’ may be easy for the ignorant to digest, but they get stuck in the craw of anyone of any education.
It’s possibly one of my biggest pet piss offs, it’s always the pseudo-intellectual type who everyone knows are full of a substance other than book-learnin’s who spout such shit, propogated by morons, who later take these facts to be truths self evidently held on the grounds that they read it on ‘teh interwebs lololol~`!1′
I’m calling you out, bitch. @OMGFacts, employ some form of quality control, or hand the account over to your nearest University. But whatever you do, don’t let @DrKarl touch it, his pop sci facts are almost as ubiquitously fucking WRONG and flawed as yours are.
Police say DNA has become a vital crime-fighting tool and helps speed up clean-up rates. In Queensland they have taken DNA samples of children, which figures under Right to Information legislation have revealed, a collection of DNA from 1275 children aged between 10 and 16. earmarked as the next generation of criminals was carried out.
Civil libertarians have accused the police and State Government of giving up on Queensland’s youth and focusing more on convictions than on rehabilitation. Civil Liberties Australia chief executive Bill Rowlings said it was an infringement of civil rights because, while the law ensured a child’s criminal record was not carried through into adulthood, it would not stop their DNA remaining in criminal databases indefinitely.
Last year, the Queensland Police Service caught 33,644 juvenile offenders. “Some of these children might be guilty of stealing a Mars Bar and for that the Queensland police are prepared to put them on a national criminal register, possibly for life,” he said.
The average daily number of juveniles in custody in Australia is 800. Youth Affairs Network Queensland director Siyavash Doostkhah said he was against taking DNA from children and called on the Government to fund more rehabilitation and youth mentoring programs.
“It never brings any safety to the community,” Mr Doostkhah said. “If we get more tough, if we collect more DNA and have more cameras out there . . . it doesn’t stop crime, it just brings convictions.” That being said the Australian law enforcement industry as a whole is fed by conviction basis, meaning that budgets are given and awards recieved for numeric dominance over the population as opposed to deterrence or rehabilitation.
A Department of Communities spokesman said there were currently about 139 young people in detention in Queensland and insisted it was a priority to focus on rehabilitation for young offenders.
The last two nights in a row I’ve found myself watching S02E11-12 of Battlestar Galactica (Reimagining), one of the best space operas in the history of science fiction. These two episodes featured the first huge scale combat scene, which reminded me of a post I read a few days back by Joseph Shoer on the physics of space combat and future tech weaponry. I figured it’s worth syndicating and reposting as it’s something worth reading even if you’re only a little bit nerdy! Also, if you’ve never seen BSG, check it out. I found it hard to get into and only by Season 3 did I ‘get it’ enough to watch all the earlier ones like a fanatic. Alas, I digress.
Joseph Shoer is a Ph.D. candidate in aerospace engineering, studying how modular spacecraft could be assembled, and hoping that they will be the telescopes and human exploration vehicles of the future, and not for crushing the dreams of Martian colonists.
I had a discussion recently with friends about the various depictions of space combat in science fiction movies, TV shows, and books. We have the fighter-plane engagements of Star Wars, the subdued, two-dimensional naval combat in Star Trek, the Newtonian planes of Battlestar Galactica, the staggeringly furious energy exchanges of the combat wasps in Peter Hamilton’s books, and the use of antimatter rocket engines themselves as weapons in other sci-fi. But suppose we get out there, go terraform Mars, and the Martian colonists actually revolt. Or suppose we encounter hostile aliens. How would space combat actually go?
First, let me point out something that Ender’s Game got right and something it got wrong. What it got right is the essentially three-dimensional nature of space combat, and how that would be fundamentally different from land, sea, and air combat. In principle, yes, your enemy could come at you from any direction at all. In practice, though, the Buggers are going to do no such thing. At least, not until someone invents an FTL drive, and we can actually pop our battle fleets into existence anywhere near our enemies. The marauding space fleets are going to be governed by orbit dynamics — not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets’ orbits. For the same reason that we have Space Shuttle launch delays, we’ll be able to tell exactly what trajectories our enemies could take between planets: the launch window. At any given point in time, there are only so many routes from here to Mars that will leave our imperialist forces enough fuel and energy to put down the colonists’ revolt. So, it would actually make sense to build space defense platforms in certain orbits, to point high-power radar-reflection surveillance satellites at certain empty reaches of space, or even to mine parts of the void. It also means that strategy is not as hopeless when we finally get to the Bugger homeworld: the enemy ships will be concentrated into certain orbits, leaving some avenues of attack guarded and some open. (Of course, once our ships maneuver towards those unguarded orbits, they will be easily observed — and potentially countered.)
Now, Let’s Talk Technology
First, pending a major development in propulsion technology, combat spacecraft would likely get around the same way the Apollo spacecraft went to the Moon and back: with orbit changes effected by discrete main-engine burns. The only other major option is a propulsion system like ion engines or solar sails, which produce a very low amount of thrust over a very long time. However, the greater speed from burning a chemical, nuclear, or antimatter rocket in a single maneuver is likely a better tactical option. One implication of rocket propulsion is that there will be relatively long periods during which Newtonian physics govern the motions of dogfighting spacecraft, punctuated by relatively short periods of maneuvering. Another is that combat in orbit would be very different from combat in “deep space,” which is what you probably think of as how space combat should be — where a spacecraft thrusts one way, and then keeps going that way forever. No, around a planet, the tactical advantage in a battle would be determined by orbit dynamics: which ship is in a lower (and faster) orbit than which; who has a circular orbit and who has gone for an ellipse; relative rendezvous trajectories that look like winding spirals rather than straight lines.
Second, there are only a few ways to maneuver the attitude of a spacecraft around — to point it in a new direction. The fast ways to do that are to fire an off-center thruster or to tilt a gyroscope around to generate a torque. Attitude maneuvers would be critical to point the main engine of a space fighter to set up for a burn, or to point the weapons systems at an enemy. Either way, concealing the attitude maneuvers of the space fighter would be important to gain a tactical advantage. So I think gyroscopes (“CMGs,” in the spacecraft lingo) would be a better way to go — they could invisibly live entirely within the space fighter hull, and wouldn’t need to be mounted on any long booms (which would increase the radar, visible, and physical cross-section of the fighter) to get the most torque on the craft. With some big CMGs, a spacecraft could flip end-for-end in a matter of seconds or less. If you come upon a starfighter with some big, spherical bulbs near the midsection, they are probably whopping big CMGs and the thing will be able to point its guns at you wherever you go. To mitigate some of the directionality of things like weapons fire and thruster burns, space fighters would probably have weapons and engines mounted at various points around their hull; but a culture interested in efficiently mass-producing space warships would probably be concerned about manufacturing so many precision parts for a relatively fragile vessel, and the craft would likely only have one main engine rather than, say, four equal tetrahedral engines.
How About Weapons?
We have to consider just how you might damage a spacecraft to put it out of action.
Explosions are basically a waste of energy in space. On the ground, these are devastating because of the shock wave that goes along with them. But in the vacuum of space, an explosion just creates some tenuous, expanding gases that would be easily dissipated by a hull. No, to damage spacecraft systems, you can’t hit them with gas unless it’s really, really concentrated and energetic. So unless you want to just wait till your enemy is close enough that you can point your engines at him, the best bets for ranged weapons are kinetic impactors and radiation.
A kinetic impactor is basically just a slug that goes really fast and hits the enemy fighter, tearing through the hull, damaging delicate systems with vibrations, throwing gyroscopes out of alignment so that they spin into their enclosures and explode into shards, puncturing tanks of fuel and other consumables, or directly killing the pilot and crew. You know…bullets. But it sounds much more technical and science-fictiony to say “mass driver” or “kinetic lance” or something of the sort. Of course, the simplest way to implement this sort of weapon in space is just as some kind of machine gun or cannon. Those will work in space (ask the Soviets, they tested a cannon on their first Salyut space station), and the shells will do plenty of damage if they hit anything. However, space is filled mostly with empty space, and hitting the enemy ships might be a challenge. Furthermore, if the impactors are too large, the enemy could counter them by firing their own point-defense slugs and knocking the shells out of line. Therefore, I contend that the most effective kinetic space weapons would be either flak shells or actively thrusting, guided missiles. The flak shells would explode into a hail of fragmented shards, able to tear through un-armored systems of many craft at once without the shell directly hitting its target, or able to strike a target even after it tries to evade with a last-minute engine burn. The missiles would be a bit different from the missiles we are used to on Earth, which must continuously thrust to sustain flight. In space, such a weapon would rapidly exhaust its fuel and simply become a dummy shell. No, a space missile would either be fired as an unguided projectile and power up its engine after drifting most of the way to its target, or it would fire its engine in sporadic, short bursts. A definite downside to kinetic weapons on a starfighter is that they would impart momentum to the fighter or change its mass properties. Very large cannons or missiles might therefore be impractical, unless the fighter can quickly compensate for what is essentially a large rocket firing. Even that compensation might give the enemy just the window he needs…
Radiation-based weapons that burn out the electronics of a spacecraft sound exotic, but are still potentially achievable. This would be the attraction of nuclear weapons in space: not the explosion, which would affect just about nothing, but the burst of energetic particles and the ensuing electromagnetic storm. Still, such a burst would have to be either pretty close to the target vessel to scramble its systems, or it would have to be made directional in some way, to focus the gamma-ray and zinging-proton blast. But while we’re talking about focused energy weapons, lets just go with a tool that we already use to cut sheet metal on Earth: lasers. In space, laser light will travel almost forever without dissipating from diffraction. Given a large enough power supply, lasers could be used at range to slice up enemy warships. The key phrase there, though, is “given a large enough power supply.” Power is hard to come by in the space business. So, expect space laser weapons to take one of three forms: small lasers designed not to destroy, but to blind and confuse enemy sensors; medium-sized lasers that would be fired infrequently and aimed to melt specific vulnerable points on enemy space fighters, like antennae, gimbals, and maneuvering thrusters; and large lasers pumped by the discharge from a large capacitor or similar energy storage device to cut a physical slice into the enemy craft wherever they hit. Such a large weapon would likely only be fired at the very beginning of a battle, because the commander of a ship with such a weapon would not want to keep his capacitor charged when it might unexpectedly blow its energy all at once once he’s in the thick of things.
Deflector shields like those in fiction are not possible at present, but it would still make sense to armor combat spacecraft to a limited extent. The spaceframes of the fighters would likely be designed solely for the space environment; the actual ships would be launched within the payload fairings of a rocket or assembled in space. If launched from the ground, armor must be minimized to reduce the launch weight of the spacecraft. But if built and launched in space, it would make sense to plate over vital systems of the vehicle. Thick armor would prevent flak or small lasers from piercing delicate components, and might mitigate a direct strike from a kinetic impactor or heavy cutting laser. However, the more heavily armored and massive a space fighter is, the more thrust it will take to maneuver in orbit and the more energy it will take to spin in place. (Here’s where computer games get space combat all wrong: the mass of a huge space cruiser would not place an upper limit on the speed of a vehicle, but it would reduce the acceleration a given engine could produce compared to the same engine on a less massive vehicle.)
I’m assuming that we’d have some intrepid members of the United Earth Space Force crewing these combat vessels. Or, at least, crewing some of them — robotic drone fighters would be a tremendous boon to space soldiers, but the communication lag between planets and vessels in orbit would make the split-second judgments of humans necessary at times. (Until we perfect AIs… but if we’re giving them the space fighters from the beginning, we deserve the robot uprising we’ll get.) The crews will hardly be sitting around nice conference-room command bridges with no seat belts; nor will they be standing upright in slate-gray console pits with glowing glass displays all over. It’s not even a good idea for them to have windows, which would be vulnerable to flak and could give the crew an intense sense of disorientation as the spacecraft maneuvers, and could give them tremendous trouble adapting to rapid changes in light levels as the ship rotates near a planet or star. No, they should be strapped into secure couches and centrally located in the most protected part of the spacecraft. They should also be in full pressure suits, and the interior cabin of the spacecraft should already be evacuated — to prevent fires, or any secondary damage if all the atmosphere rushes out a hull breach. This also reduces the need for escape pods. Camera views from the exterior of the ship and graphical representations of the tactical situation would then be projected directly onto helmet faceplates.
Now, for the final word, let’s say the United Earth Space Force defeats the Martian rebels in orbit. What do we do to hit them on the ground? Well, strategic weapons from space are easy: kinetic impactors again. You chuck big ol’ spears, aerodynamically shaped so they stay on target and don’t burn up in the atmosphere, onto ground targets and watch gravitational potential energy turn into kinetic energy and excavate you a brand-new crater. At some point, though, the imperialist Earthlings probably want to take over the existing infrastructure on Mars. Time to get out the Space Marines!
It’s not terribly expensive or difficult, comparatively speaking, to get people from orbit down to a planet surface. You fall. This is the purpose of a space capsule. What’s really, really, prohibitively difficult is getting them back up again. So, the victorious orbital forces would have to bring in a transport ship chock full of Space Marines and drop them all at once in little capsules (little because they can only be so big for the atmosphere to effectively brake them, and because you don’t want all your Marines perishing in some unfortunate incident). Some orbital forces would remain in place to threaten the ground with bombardment and give the Marines a bit more muscle, but really, the ground-pounders are going to have to be pretty self-sufficient. If they ever want to come back up, they would have to build and/or fuel their own ascent vehicle. (This is the problem facing any NASA Mars efforts, too: getting back up through the Martian atmosphere is much harder than any of the lunar ascents were.)
What Would Combat Spacecraft End Up Looking Like?
There are good arguments to have both large and small spacecraft in the Earth forces. A big spacecraft could have a lot more armor to keep its systems and crew safe, more room for large fuel tanks and electrical power supplies, and larger mass to resist impulses from cannon recoil. However, a smaller craft would be less visible to radar, more maneuverable, and could achieve higher accelerations for constant engine thrust. As with just about any military force, the role of the craft would be tailored to the tactical operations required, so the Space Force would probably include several sizes of craft.
Enemies could come at your ship from any direction in space, which means that you would want to react, strike, and counterattack in any direction. So, you would either have to mount weaponry all around your starfighter, put the weapons on gimbals so that they could rapidly point in any direction, or make the fighter maneuverable enough that it could rapidly point in any direction. Gimbals would be a bad option, because they would introduce points of increased vulnerability, unless they could be very well-armored. I conclude that the big ships would have many weapons, pointed in many directions; the small ships would have a few weapons, with the main weapon systems pointed in one direction.
Maneuverability (angular acceleration) you could achieve with gyroscopes, or by mounting engines or thrusters away from your fighter’s center of mass. For the highest levels of maneuverability, the spacecraft should be close to spherical and these engines should be as off-center as possible, which might mean putting thrusters on long booms or struts. The problem with this kind of Firefly-like engine layout is that it becomes very vulnerable. If a fighter can achieve high maneuverability with gyros, those are probably the best option.
So, I think the small fighter craft would be nearly spherical, with a single main engine and a few guns or missiles facing generally forward. They would have gyroscopes and fuel tanks in their shielded centers. It would make sense to build their outer hulls in a faceted manner, to reduce their radar cross-section. Basically, picture a bigger, armored version of the lunar module. The larger warships would also probably be nearly spherical, with a small cluster of main engines facing generally backward and a few smaller engines facing forward or sideways for maneuvering. Cannons, lasers, and missile ports would face outward in many directions. On a large enough space cruiser, it would even be a good idea to put docking ports for the small fighters, so that the fighters don’t have to carry as many consumables on board.
I think it’s time to sketch some pictures and write some stories!
Space-Wide Peace
I certainly hope we don’t get into any space wars. Human nature being what it is, though, and given how scarce a lot of resources really are on the scale of a solar system or a galaxy, I don’t think it’s out of the question. I would like to think that when we start colonizing other worlds, we will be sufficiently enlightened to do so from on board the Ship of the Imagination, and not as futuristic conquistadores. Still, the part of me that loves science fiction has fun with these thought experiments.
Reprinted without permission from Joseph Shoer, hope he doesn’t mind non profit use. :P
After hosting a panel earlier this year to discuss supposed flaws in evolutionary theory, Italy’s science agency the National Research Council (CNR) reportedly put up thousands of dollars to help with the publication of a follow-up book, Evolutionism: The Decline of an Hypothesis. The move has vexed many scientists in the country where the Vatican recently came out in support of Darwin’s ideas.
Authored by CNR’s Vice President Roberto de Mattei, the book asserts, among other things, that scientific dating of rocks is inaccurate and that dinosaurs went extinct just 40,000 years ago (rather than some 65 million years ago, not accounting for modern birds, of course), according to the blog ScienceInsider. The American Academy for the Advancement of Science blog notes that an Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, is reporting that CNR provided 9,000 Euros (some $13,255) to help publish the book, which came out last month.
