Our best year in space ever! Plus a tech roundup: material science to quantum computing to cyberattacks etc!

Before commencing our first tech roundup of the year... this piece of mine -- appearing on the hot new online zine "Nautilus"  (or Nautil.us) -- draws notice to 2015: our best year ever in space! How stunningly effective our hero engineers and space-robot designers have to be, in order to accomplish all these miracles. Tiny errors—on the order of one ten-thousandth of a percent—would have aimed the New Horizons cameras at empty space, instead of snapping perfect images of a dimly lit world, hurtling by far faster than a bullet. And that is just one of scores of record-shattering and cosmos illuminating accomplishments. 

 It may be out of fashion, in this era of reflexive, self-indulgent cynicism, but there’s something to be said for the can-do spirit. The notion that “we can solve things!”

Make no mistake... those (on all sides of the hoary-misleading political "spectrum") who are preaching despair and gloom are enemies of our future, our children, our planet. Every year we prove more capable of addressing the serious problems before us.

Come see one long list of stirring examples*.

== Let a great year in science begin ==

There is some very cool stuff in this roundup of tech news.  Some of these breakthroughs - many of them emerging from taxpayer-supported science - may help make it a much better world!  But first, a reminder of what's at-stake.

The Greenland Ice Sheet has lost about 9,013 gigatonnes of water ice from 1900 to 2010 – and it’s dropping mass today at an increasing rate, an international team of scientists say. From 2003 to 2010, the ice sheet lost mass at a rate more than twice the rate during the entire 20th century, a new study shows. And the last two years have each been the hottest in all of recorded human history.  And the oceans are acidifying - with human generated CO2 as the only conceivable cause.  No wonder science is so unpopular among fools.

And no wonder we should all help push for a Science Debate to be part of the U.S. 2016 political season.

== Tech advances! ==

Whoa Hawkeye, this is amazing and may save many gunshot wound victims.  XSTAT 30 is a 30 mm-diameter syringe that is filled with 92 compressed cellulose sponges covered in an absorbent coating and coagulant. Each tablet-shaped sponge unfolds 9.8 millimeters in diameter and can absorb up to 3 milliliters of blood. Whereupon the sponges expand to 10 times their original size, filling the cavity in approximately 20 seconds, forming a temporary blockage that can stabilized a wounded person till they get to an emergency operating room.

Endohedral fullerenes may be the most expensive material in existence in today’s market.  These include N@C₆₀ and N@C₇₀, which consist of a nitrogen atom caged within a carbon sphere made up of 60 and 70 atoms respectively. Potential uses include serving as the basis of atomic clocks even better than those using Cesium transitions.  But one fan of my Second Uplift Trilogy comments that it reminded him of: “your 'strange matter' that Transcendents used to make super-armor for the Streaker in Heaven's Reach. I'd really love to learn if caging different molecules like this indeed can produce some cool effects when it comes to EM/other radiation absorption/reflection.”

Cool?  Along similarly intriguing lines, A team of material scientists in the United States has discovered a novel allotrope of carbon, Q-carbon.  It is ferromagnetic, harder than diamond, and it glows when exposed to low levels of energy. “And the only place it may be found in the natural world would be possibly in the core of some planets.” Wow. 

This is why, when young physical engineers ask my advice, I murmur, like in The Graduate..."Materials Science." Indeed, watch as this field produces badly needed miracles in desalinization and in solar power and much more.

Another entry in the world of nano materials  Borophene: is a one atom thick sheet of boron, may be stronger than graphene. Borophene is also electrically conductive.

New transparent metal films could enable large screen displays, touch screens, solar cells and smart windows.

UCLA researchers have developed a superstrong and lightweight metal by dispersing ceramic nanoparticles in molten metal. This new metal, composed of magnesium infused with ceramic silicon carbide, exhibits a record-breaking strength to weight ratio, and could be useful in airplanes, cars and spacecraft. 

And now... researchers are developing self-healing protective clothing -- which will enable cuts, tears and punctures in fabric to rapidly repair themselves. Useful for soldiers or doctors in the field... or astronauts in space. 

This could be useful.... A very simple method for cracking hydrogen off CH4 producing only carbon powder and hydrogen (H2) -- without carbon dioxide.

Implantable collamar lenses appear to be effective in treating myopia.

== Do the Ai's have it? ==

Google recently announced a breakthrough in the field of quantum computing. They think they have found a quantum algorithm that solves problems 100 million times faster than conventional processes. This discovery could not only lead to artificial intelligence but could also substantially advance the US space program.

Two separate AI research teams incorporated concepts from cognitive psychology and developed novel algorithms to teach machines to learn... more like children. One instructs computers to imitate behavior; the second, to extrapolate and generalize.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman (co-founder of Y Combinator, a tech accelerator) have joined with Peter Thiel and others to found a “billion dollar” non-profit devoted to researching artificial intelligence.  "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return," said a post on the new organization, called OpenAI.  Yes, but speaking as the fellow who completed Isaac Asimov's exploration of the Three Laws of Robotics, I can tell you that there are levels... and more levels and layers.

== worries vs conspiracies ==

In his book Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, Ted Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on America’s power grid is not only possible but likely, that it would be devastating, and that the United States is shockingly unprepared. Imagine a continental blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Koppel maintains that a well-designed attack on just one of the nation’s three electric power grids could cripple much of our infrastructure. 

 Let me add that it might not take terrorism to accomplish this. A “Carrington Event” – a massive solar flare like the one that fried telegraph systems in the 1840s – could have devastating effects upon our grid and even unlinked electronics in the home, possibly zapping rooftop solar systems, unless we learn how to buffer them well. And the 1840s event was apparently nowhere near as bad as they come. Studies of carbon isotope anomalies suggest that the Sun occasionally gives our planet truly major shocks.

On the other hand... Want to see some tasty conspiracy theory mania? This stunning concoction of utter malarkey is from a fellow who calls himself an activist against “near-term extinction through geo-engineering.” He has either crafted himself – or else credited gullibly – one of the dumbest Black Helicopter spews I have seen in years… that hundreds of skilled scientists, engineers and civil servants are filling the skies with polymer threads coated with organic compounds, to be inhaled by “all living creatures” including their fellow citizens.  All as part of an effort to create an atmospheric shield against solar radiation.

Put aside that the “interview” is written in the baldly stilted style of a villain’s monologue from a very cheap James Bond ripoff. Or that almost every technical or scientific remark is actually wrong, sometimes hilariously so.  The real response to all such Black Helicopter theories that involve the US federal government is… Edward Snowden. If Snowden was willing to blow the whistle on programs that were – in fact – legal at the time … (his revelations caused us to revise and make some of them illegal)… and that had not tangibly harmed a single citizen (yet)… then how many other civil servants and scientists would balk over a loony, hair-brained program to fill the skies with nasty polymer threads?

Sure, I’ve drawn attention to this bozo’s spectacularly stupid site. But in so doing I hope I’ve spread a notion about how to judge whether a conspiracy theory is even remotely plausible… or just plain dumb. Do the one thing every Hollywood film has trained you not to do.

Consider the henchmen.

== ...and finally... ==

Kinda depressing but useful information. Using antidepressants during pregnancy greatly increases the risk of autism.  Here is a later rebuttal.

The Institute for Creation Research, which teaches there’s scientific proof that God created the earth in six days, is ready to expand in Northwest Dallas, adding a  “3D planetarium” and calling itself the Dallas Museum of Science and Earth History. Robert Heinlein predicted this when he forecast a time called “The Crazy Years.”  Let's just make sure his other prediction does not come true... a fundamentalist loony gaining the White House, then declaring himself to be "Prophet of the Lord." 

And so we come full circle, back to the War on Science.  Do not imagine it is anything less than that -- and a war on rationality and facts and calm negotiation and everything else that has made our civilization different and hopeful? It is no less that a war upon our children, our planet, our nation and species.

Time to fight back.

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* Oops!  I left out of my list of accomplishments in space in 2015 a great one!  Then there was India's first interplanetary mission, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan ("Mars-craft", from Sanskrit - accomplished at stunningly low cost and amazingly high competence.  Huzzah!