Expanding our view: Science and technology and unimagined possibilities!

Okay, this is going to be one of those spills of one cool (or amazing or scary) thing after another!

Hubble finds universe is expanding 9% faster than expected! Astronomers keep refining their measurements of Cepheid variable stars and type 1a supernovae, resulting in the best-yet determinations of the age of the universe and the Hubble Constant showing how fast the whole shebang is expanding. And now, in addition to Dark Energy and Dark Matter there is talk of Dark Radiation.  Wowzer.  The more you know….

Updating the Periodic Table: Nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts) and oganesson (Og) are the newest elements - atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 - on the Periodic Table to receive names.  The first three are named for where they were discovered. The last for Russian nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian, a pioneer with achievements including the discovery of superheavy elements.  

Looking ahead.... In his latest book, The Inevitable: Understanding the Twelve Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, tech guru Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for our near future, showing how the coming changes in our daily lives — from virtual reality in the home and on the street to robots in the workplace, from an on-demand economy to ever-present tracking, as well as artificial intelligence embedded in nearly everything we manufacture — Kelly proposes these trends can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces; by embracing these coming changes, Kelly says we can better steer toward a positive future. You can watch Kevin Kelly discuss these major trends at the SXSW conference.

Thinking beyond Asimov's laws: This article discusses how to plan for a future with ethical robots.

Continuously rising: One simple, 40 second gif shows you the simplest path of global temperature rise since 1850, in a way that automatically adjusts for season. You can see the effects of industrialization accelerating, especially in recent years. Seriously, there's plenty to argue about, like how to adapt and fix and (in some cases like Florida) let go. So why are we still pretending there's room for argument about "whether"? There is no whether, only worsening weather. And denialists are direct harm-doers to our kids and our future.

== What we are... Where we've been ==

If the Guinea worm is pushed into extinction this coming year, then it will be just the second human disease to be eradicated after smallpox.  And former President Jimmy Carter will deserve a lot of credit for the accomplishment, having eliminated a painfully debilitating illness that afflicted 3 million people each year, when he left office. Said the 91 year old Carter: "I'd like the last Guinea worm to die before I do."

Sci fi sometimes creeps up, then pounces!  Top scientists recently held a closed meeting to discuss building a human genome from scratch....

...a topic explored in more detail in the recent book, The Gene: An Intimate History, by Pullitzer Prize winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, who offers insight into our modern quest to understand our genetic heritage, how we are shaped by our DNA... and how modern science is now picking up the tools to reshape our genes and those of other creatures.

Indeed, journalist Jennifer Kahn ponders whether new CRISPR genetic tech opens up the possibility of altering entire species forever. “How will this new power affect humanity? What are we going to use it to change? Are we gods now?” A fascinating TED talk.

Researcher Yang Hu thinks food affects tolerance. He found that people from rice-growing provinces such as Guizhou, Fujian and Sichuan, where a large proportion of farmland is devoted to rice paddies, are significantly more accepting of premarital sex, extramarital sex and homosexuality, when compared with those from wheat-growing provinces such as Jilin and Shaanxi. This may not be about nutritional value, though. “For centuries before the prevalence of modern machines, rice plantations relied heavily on close cooperation between farmers for the provision of irrigation, while wheat tended to be managed by people working alone. The need of cooperation for the production of food—a necessity for survival —in rice-growing regions may have helped to cultivate a higher level of interpersonal dependence, mutual understanding and tolerance.

Chinese scientists suggest that complex single-celled organisms may have appeared on Earth up to a billion years earlier than previously thought.

A new book by Peter Ward and Caltech professor Joe Kirschvink, A New History of Life: The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth, challenges many of our ideas about the origins and evolution of life. New research indicates the monumental importance of catastrophic events in shaping our planet (the "Great Oxygenation Event", Snowball Earth) as well as the development of life... for our ancestors had to deal with "fire, ice, hammer blows from space, poison gas, the fangs of predators, pitiless competition, lethal radiation, starvation," as well as war, plague and ever-changing ecosystems, each event leaving "its mark in the total sum of DNA now extant."

A French cave contains a ring of broken stalactites arrayed in a way that could only be intentional… and has been dated to 175,000 years ago. Long before any other known form of art or construction. Wow.  

Eating the right amount of dietary fiber from breads, cereals, and fruits (appears to) be the single largest factor in helping us avoid disease and disability into old age.  

== Tech updates ==

The RoboBee micro sensor-drone weighs 4-thousandths of an ounce and can fly and now – perch against almost any surface using controlled electrostatics. 

Smart dust: increasing miniaturization will bring cameras the size of a grain of salt.

Stretching from the U.S. to Japan, Google's faster (60 terabytes per second) undersea cable goes live.

The World Economic Forum's Top Ten Emerging Technologies of 2016, including nanosensors, organs on chips, next-generation batteries, blockchain and optogenetics.

The proposed “hedgehog” asteroid rover uses a unique flywheel system to propel itself with great simplicity… an endeavor that we funded at NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts group (NIAC.)  

Here's the original video for the first CTO Challenge at FiRe Conferences.  The first of them, dealing with the "cell phone of the future." Now, a decade later, British researchers and Google each claim to have independently developed revolutionary concepts for Lego-like modular interactive mobile devices. But see our slides from 2007!

Adidas is set to release limited edition shoes made out of plastic harvested from ocean waste-pollution.

Soldiers need better hearing. To pick out sounds of danger… and to reduce the impact of harsh noises. These earbuds promise to do both. 

Onward! With confidence (and some caution and compassion.)  Ever-onward.