On Deep Time... SETI... the Neolithic... immortality... and science!

Next week, in San Jose, California, commences the greatest general scientific conference in the world, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, bringing together sages from every field. What better place for me to come on-stage and debate the issue of "Messaging Extraterrestrials" with the small coterie of radio dish mavens who want to shout into the cosmos, on our behalf.  

To be clear, those of us who oppose charging into this arrogant activity, based on unexamined assumptions, aren't aiming to "stifle humanity forever." What we want is something that all of you would enjoy! A worldwide discussion of all aspects of this matter, televised and webbed so that all of us can look over the full range of fascinating concepts and evidence -- before giving the nod to yelling "yooho, aliens! Lookit us!"

On February 14 there will be - in parallel - an open to the public session at the SETI Institute. Come on by, if you can. 

Oh, at one AAAS I got to watch the epic keynote given by author Michael Crichton, who spent a whole hour repeating "I DON'T hate science!" I had to... just had to... make him a character in EXISTENCE.

== Related matters? ==

Okay, some of these will be along the "edge".  But then, I just came back from Cape Canaveral and a meeting of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts group. (I'm on the external council of advisors.) We are a wise people if we keep paying a small but steady and eager glance at the edge.

Will we detect life on other worlds through their vibrations? It is suggested that all living cells emit a variety of sonic vibrations — potentially a valuable aspect for future instruments aiming to detect life elsewhere in the Solar System. Not just bacterial flagella create vibrations. “or more complicated eukaryotic cells, there's lots of internal movement, as cellular components are shifted along tracks called actin filaments and microtubules. We have drugs that disassemble these tracks, and the authors used these and showed that again, the resulting vibrations changed. In fact, they changed in stereotypical ways: "Large fluctuations of the sensor can be associated with movements inside the actin network whereas less intense but more frequent fluctuations can be attributed to the tubulin network.””

How to Find Faster-Than-Light Particles: Actually, this article about the (very) slim possibility of FTL neutrinos is cogently written.  “A new paper claims to demonstrate that neutrinos not only travel faster than the speed of light, but have the brain-twisting characteristic of “imaginary mass”, a property that means they actually speed up as they lose energy.  -- The phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof” has seldom been more appropriate, but Professor Robert Ehrlich, recently retired from George Mason University, believes he has that, with six different measurements from different areas of physics. All of these, Ehrlich claims in Astroparticle Physics, provide matching results that not only indicate that neutrinos have imaginary mass, but point towards the same value, making it less likely the readings are in error.” 

 == Were we “nicer” before the Neolithic? ==

I am fascinated by the Neolithic - after we developed farming and stratified specialization and towns... but before writing and empires.

When We Were Nicer: Stephen Mithen's review of On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Smail exposes some interesting ideas... e.g. that the feudal lords, kings and priests began manipulating the body chemistry of their subjects (without knowing it) by inducing and relieving stress through religion, alcohol, ritualized sports and so on....

...and that the western enlightenment started taking off when large middle classes gained access to the tools to regulate their own chemistry -- with coffee and tea (which let them stay hydrated healthily, unlike purifying water with gin, switching in one generation from shambling lushes to caffeine-propelled merchants and organizers. These may have been as important as the opening of "frontiers" of trade and of colonization.

Sure, these are good insights.  Still, one commenter, below this piece, offered a good observation about something that has always irked me... the romantic notion that pre-agrarian hunter gatherer tribes were "egalitarian."


"I assume that it was an editorial decision rather than the reviewer’s to title Steven Mithen’s review of Daniel Lord Smail’s On Deep History and the Brain ‘When We Were Nicer’ (LRB, 24 January). There are good reasons to suppose that our hunting and foraging ancestors were ‘egalitarian’ in the sense that would-be dominant self-aggrandisers were held in check by joking, teasing, enforced sharing, vigilant monitoring, counter-dominant coalitions, and occasional assassinations. But that didn’t mean they were ‘nice’. Presumably some were and some weren’t, then as now. The difference is that sedentism and a sustainable sufficiency of food (fish will do as well as grain) made possible, as Mithen says, a return to primate-like social structures in which the nasty could get away with self-aggrandisement by means that the environment of hunting and foraging lifeways precludes." -- writes WG Runciman, Trinity, Cambridge.



Indeed, the number of injury scars that we see in pre-neolithic bones, from weapon-related injuries, suggests a very violent era. Only a small fraction of tribal folk, at any time, were buried with rich grave goods and we see other skeletons - contemporaneous - whose bones reveal life-long privation and (in some cases) clear signs of subservience.  

No one on the planet opposes a return to brutal feudalism more intensely than I do -- or expresses a stronger determination to keep our Enlightenment Experiment moving forward.  

But I hold no truck with those romantics who claim to see feudalism's solution to be a "return to wise, primeval ways."  Such folk see a just-so story that they want desperately to believe, without any substantial evidence.  Their (typically "leftist") romantic RENUNCIATION ethos is almost as troglodytic and crazy as today's far-larger and even-more-insane Right.

Science will show us how to regulate our own chemistries and get the best out of ourselves... and how to hold accountable all elites who want to regulate those things "for" us.

==A creepy way to fight aging ==

Parabiosisis a 150-year-old surgical technique that unites the vasculature of two living animals.  Experiments with parabiotic rodent pairs have led to breakthroughs in endocrinology, tumour biology and immunology. By joining the circulatory system of an old mouse to that of a young mouse, scientists have produced some remarkable results.  The blood of young mice seems to bring new life to ageing organs, making old mice stronger, smarter and healthier.

If that were all there was to it… then the darkest sci fi would be for young people to be well-paid to donate blood, or even drafted to donate monthly.  Big deal. I just completed my 80th donation, earning me my 10 gallon hat from the blood bank(!)  I’d have doubled that rate, when young, in order to revivify old folks.  

No, that’s not the scary part.

What’s scary (and not at all mentioned in this article) is that the strongest effects appear not to come from just receiving younger blood, but from sharing the younger animal’s circulatory system, meaning the older creature is also using the younger one’s kidneys, liver and other organs.  And the younger one pays a price for this parabiosis, with apparent ageing of those organs.

NOW there comes to mind a much more horrific sci fi scenario — of rich struldbrugs kidnapping and using up young people in order to extend their own overdue lives.  Yipe!

Perhaps science will speed ahead and make the benefits non-parasitic and cheap for all!  But meanwhile only one thing can prevent this horror from playing out....

...Transparency.

  

== miscellany ==

Wave energy, a coastal resource of prodigious potential, and possibly much less disruptive then wind (which can becalm) or solar. A new analysis of its costs/benefits indicates that wind energy will be competitive with other energy sources.

Illegal fishermen, the value of whose catch is estimated at up to $23.5 billion annually, operate with near impunity in some areas where they think themselves safe from tracking. But a new satellite tracking system launched on Wednesday aims to crack down on the industrial-scale theft known as "pirate fishing." 

Might Dark Matter contribute to the existence of stable wormholes in our galaxy? In the galactic halo region, dark matter may supply the fuel for constructing and sustaining a wormhole. Hence, wormholes could (maybe) be found in nature. 

Femto-second laser pulses make some surfaces super hydrophobic, repelling water and keeping clean and rust-free… valuable for solar arrays and many ther uses.  

Ancient palindrome!  An ancient, two-sided amulet uncovered in Cyprus contains a 59-letter inscription that reads the same backward as it does forward.

“CicretBracelet".  This device was invented in Israel and is not yet available on the open market. In fact, I doubt it will be for a while yet.  Still, its patents are probably worth billions. And I want it as my first smart phone.