Mantis Shrimp are TOTALLY BADASS!

Mantis shrimp see in much more vivid colors than us humans, and are just generally totally bad-ass (most awesome shrimp ever) but recent studies of the mechanism that mantis shrimp use to change linearly polarized light into circularly polarized light may give inspiration to the next generation of DVD drives.

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mantis-shrimps-could-show-us-way-better-dvd-26561.html

LCROSS impact early tomorrow morning.

At 4:31 AM(PST) tomorrow(10/9/09) morning, NASA's LCROSS satellite will smash into the moon to study possible sources of water. Now, there's a lot of important and interesting science to be done on this mission, and the resulting data will be invaluable in understanding our moon and eventually creating moon bases and cities, but when I think about this mission, I can only focus on the WOW COOL aspect of it. because WE ARE GOING TO HIT THE MOON WITH A SPACESHIP JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS. I hate to yell, but that is just amazingly cool. So cool in fact, that me and a few friends are headed to the Chabot Space and Science Center to watch it with our own eyes. If you are in the bay area, Join us, its only 3$. If not, you can get live images and info from NASA

Water Water Everywhere

My desire for extra-planetary emigration is well documented, so, when I saw two interesting articles about water on both Luna and Mars, I had to talk about them and their effect on bringing about the belated retrofuture.

Before I talk about the moon, I want to mention a finding that has been overshadowed by the moon finding (which, admittedly, is very very exciting.) However, Here on Between Worlds I'm going to give Mars the first billing. a few meteorites that smashed into mars last year have uncovered martian ice at latitudes much closer to the equator than we have expected to find ice. This means that ice is much more plentiful on mars than we previously thought.

What I find most fascinating about this is a coincidence that only proves that nature has a twisted sense of humor. One of the meteorites revealed ice no more than 4 inches from where the 1970's Viking 2 lander dug a trench into mars. If the viking lander had dug its trench only 3.5 inches deeper, it would have likely revealed the ice, and certainly would have changed how we view mars and martian exploration in the past 4 decades.

But onto the big story of the day, The Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission, using NASA's Moon Meteorology Mapper, has discovered that the moon is damp. Water, while not abundant, is definitively present on the moon. One of the major problems that has been facing a Lunar Colony has been the assumed dryness of the lunar surface. If we were unable to find water on the moon, we would have to ship it all up from earth, and that puts a major major crimp in any plans. the energy cost of shipping it all up is extensive to say the least (if you don't believe me, ask anyone who has gone to burning man)
 Furthermore, we gain more than just drinking water when we find water on the planetary bodies and moons we wish to colonize, Rocket-fuel and Breathable Oxygen all can be made once we have that good ol' Hydrogen Hydroxide (don't listen to the fools who call it 'dihydrogen monoxide' they don't know what they are talking about).

These findings force us to radically change our previous conceptions about the rarity of water in the solar system. The increased water we find throughout the system can and will be used to sustain human colonies on other planets.  Overpopulation has become a major problem for humanity, we can fix this in two ways, decreasing population, and increasing resources/area. However, our home planet is fast becoming tapped out of resources, so, where do we go? To the stars, where else? This is one of the major callings of our generation. We must break free from the gravity well that keeps us on this planet. The water findings just give us the confidence that allows us to take bold action in taking the next step to become the first species (so far as we know) to spread itself out to the stars.

Mathematics of Steallar Death

Applied Mathematicians and Astrophysicists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have recently created a simulation of the last few hours of a white dwarf star leading up to a type 1a supernova. regular readers (ha, check it out, I made a funny) may remember me blogging about type 1a supernova earlier in the month. So I felt some obligation to post this awesome new finding about them.

For years type 1a supernova have been a standard candle for astrophysicists because it is theorized that they all blow up the same way, however, we have until now, a good computational simulation of the creation of type 1a supernovas has seemed intractable, which begged the question, "do they really all blow up the same way? if we cant simulate it, perhaps they don't..."

But, Mathematics once again came to the rescue as applied mathematicians Ann Almgren, John Bell and Andy Nonaka of Berkeley Lab's Computational Research Division,  developed MAESTRO, a simulation code of the problem. The real genius behind MAESTRO was to strip out the sound waves making the problem much more efficient and able to run on modern day supercomputers like the Jaguar, the Cray XT4, one of the worlds most powerful supercomputers.

read the full article Here at Science Daily.

Panoramic Galaxy

I found over at Wired Science an awesome panorama of the the milky way galaxy. what is exceptionally cool about this is that it was made with nothing more than a digital camera, each of the over 1,200 image was taking with a 6 minute exposure and the entire panorama took months to create.

The artist, Serge Brunier deserves much applause as does Frédéric Tapissier, who solved many of the technical problems of combining all of these images into the amazing whole

This is just a beautiful image that gives one perspective into the world we live in, and the vast scope of the beyond. Also it is as good a case against light pollution that I can conceive.

Giant Rats and Severed Tails

Two awesome findings in the world of biology today. Firstly biologists in the crater of a volcano found a new species of Rat that is almost a meter long.. Meanwhile, a study shows that severed gecko tails perform complex movements.

The giant rats, having never encountered mankind until now, are completely tame and unafraid of man. knowing how good pets rats make, I have to admit wanting one of these as a pet just so I could have a pet that is as awesome as a pet rat but the size of a cat or small dog...

The gecko tail thing, however is just amazingly cool and yet another example of evolution coming up with great and weird solutions to problems. if the gecko's tail just falls off, the predator is likely to still go after the rest of the gecko, if it moves rhythmically, the predator is likely to ignore it after a few seconds once it sees it is a pattern, by having complex non-deterministic movements, the tail can lure the predator away from the gecko, and given how fast it is, can perhaps even evade the predator itself.

Like I said, totally awesome!

Being Smart About Extinctions

People worried about animal extinctions always slightly troubled me, not that I don't agree, I don't like the thought of animal X going extinct, but its also inescapable. on a long enough time line, all species go extinct, extinctions happen all the time. evolution keeps marching on. How do we couple the problems of ecological disaster due to key species going extinct and yet always be aware of the process of evolution and how to manage the ecology Well, like all good things, Google has the answer! According to Wired, scientists have used a modified version of the Google search algorithm to determine which species are key to the survival of an ecosystem. Now we can look more closely at where to tailor our conservation efforts not in a vain attempt to save every species but instead to save ecological diversity.

now that you are helping us save the planet, I have one question, Google, is there anything you cant do?

Biotech on the Rise.

Articles like this make me glad to be alive in our times

ScienceDaily (2009-09-07) -- If artificial devices could be combined with biological machines, laptops and other electronic devices could get a boost in operating efficiency. Researchers have now devised a versatile hybrid platform that uses lipid-coated nanowires to build prototype bionanoelectronic devices.

I've been dreaming of the day when biotech gets started ever since a fairly obscure white wolf role-playing game Trinity (or, if you really played it, Aeon) The coolest bit of trinity, in my opinion, wasn't the weird psionic powers, or the futuristic setting (although I liked both of those) but it was the cool biotech toys you got to play with. all the other kids can enjoy their vorpal swords, I'll take a crazy slug that attaches to my arm and fires mini-nukes. I just cant wait.
full article

Early computer to be brought back online.

The Harwell computer, the UK's third oldest computer is about to head down to bletchley park to be rebooted after 36 years idle.

Mr Barnes said the prospect of seeing the Harwell computer up and running after more than 36 years was "very exciting

indeed it is, computers have become so ubiquitous to modern life, tha it is easy for us to forget how modern they are, and we often forget those early pioneers into computing technology that has created the modern era. its nice to see these great early computers starting up again to remind us how far we have come, now that we seem to be sitting on the cusp of the quantum computing revolution.

read more here

Stand Aside, its time for SCIENCE

Its a great time to love science. We now have the first evidence of a binary star system where one is a massive white dwarf star. Such stars are the precursor to type 1a supernovae. A white dwarf star is usually about half as massive as the earth and about as large, however, the star the ESA has found is half the size of the earth and half again as massive, hence much much denser than the average white dwarf. The theory is that when the star hits 1.60 earth masses, it will cause a supernova, one that is close enough to us that will light up the sky day and night. The inhabitants of this planet are going to be so damn lucky in a few million years....

ScienceDaily (2009-09-04) -- The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton orbiting X-ray telescope has uncovered a celestial Rosetta stone: the first close-up of a white dwarf star, circling a companion star, that could explode into a particular kind of supernova in a few million years. These supernovae are used as beacons to measure cosmic distances and ultimately understand the expansion of our Universe.

White dwarfs