Is this intelligence? And more science...

Commencing our weekend science roundup -- leaving comets (!) for another time.... 

On io9... fast becoming the "it" site for open and hungry minds... George Dvorsky's column takes on some big picture stuff.  

In a recent posting, he interviewed me about artificial intelligence (AI) and how we can get into a good mental state to take on the many issues involved: Are We Overthinking the Dangers of Artificial Intelligence?

== Genes for longevity? ==

George goes on in another article to explore " “supercentenarians” living past 110. Superficially, it would seem that there is a genetic component to longevity, since centenarians do not differ that much from the general population in lifestyle choices and their relatives also live longer than average.  Researchers: “mapped the genomes of 17 supercentenarians (16 women and one man). Now, that may not sound like a large sample pool, but keep in mind that there are only 74 super-c's alive today, with 22 in the United States. These 17 samples were compared to those of 34 people aged 21 to 79.”

“From this small sample size, we were unable to find rare protein-altering variants significantly associated with extreme longevity.”  On the other hand: “It is not surprising that a highly complex trait such as longevity is not explained by a single Mendelian gene”

==Should we uplift?==

In a recent piece for New Scientist, some doubt is cast on the “genius of the sea” status of dolphins. I am not surprised. Although I portray descendants of today’s Tursiops dolphins piloting spaceships -- dazzling civilization with poetry and wisdom — I have never been one of those romantics who proclaimed them to be our equals presently, in any meaningful interpretation of “sapience.” That doesn’t mean they aren’t special! (Or that we should not bend our wills mightily toward saving the whole planetary habitat; see EARTH.)

What impresses me most about dolphins is their capacity for non-kin altruism, which is nearly as great as ours, and perhaps more consistent. And their stunning eagerness to learn new things, with a level of curiosity that seems to exceed adult chimpanzees by some distance. Those traits — and anecdotal impressions from some researchers — lead me to think that we would get many Tursiops volunteers, if we could somehow offer them a choice, whether to undertake the long and difficult path of uplift. A path that might lead to those brilliant partners and critics, who would accompany us to the stars.

Should We Engineer Animals to be Smarter? See this BBC Future article by Tim Maughan about animal uplifting, featuring myself and George Dvorsky. I've been in this field a long time and my views are actually fairly nuanced. I am not convinced we should do this thing. Indeed, some arguments against uplift (e.g. the pain of transition) I deem to be more valid than others (e.g. other species have their "own intelligences" -- that's true, in a sense, but those fallow populations would be left alone.) 

Here are some of my own insights on the matter: Will We Uplift Other Animals to Sapience? and Are Animals Intelligent ...Enough?

Two books that peer into the minds of animals: 

The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates, by primatologist Frans de Waal, explores the biological origins of ethical behavior in primate communities, such as the bonobos -- arguing that morality originates, not in religion, but rather as a product of evolution -- and an instinct for fairness and altruism.

Another interesting concept... Hope they send me a copy to review. “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know.” Cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz takes a look at the canine world, exploring how dogs perceive the world around them, each other, and what dogs might think of that other quirky animal -- their human owners:

"Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a picture of what it might be like to be a dog. What’s it like to be able to smell not just every bit of open food in the house but also to smell sadness in humans, or even the passage of time? How does a tiny dog manage to play successfully with a Great Dane? What is it like to hear the bodily vibrations of insects or the hum of a fluorescent light? Why must a person on a bicycle be chased? What’s it like to use your mouth as a hand? In short, what is it like for a dog to experience life from two feet off the ground…” reads the summary on Amazon.

Of course I smelled at the oblique Grouch Marx connection, in the title.

==On the Fringes of Life==

Scientists have created a crystalline material that can pull all the oxygen out of room with just a spoonful. (Probably a spectacular exaggeration.) And it can release that oxygen when and where it's needed. Will this lead to the gill-masks that I portrayed both in EXISTENCE and the uplift novels? 

Fascinating: The ever-regenerating hydra: All you would-be immortals! Watch this interesting animation in which Robert Krulwich shows us the animal that refuses to die! Ah, but then, when you penetrate the mystery, it turns out to be a PATTERN that never dies. But is it the same individual?

Precise brain stimulation techniques are now available for the realization of non-invasive computer-brain interfaces (CBI). This appears to mean that computer-mediated brain-to-brain communications are in the offing.

Mammals can’t regenerate lost limbs like salamanders can, but they can repair large sections of their ribs.  BTW see my short story about organ regeneration leading to something very very weird, in last month's ANALOG Magazine.

Replace colonoscopies with Yogurt? Scientists are developing synthetic molecules that can be introduced into the body via yogurt, and will interact with cancer in a way that produces telltale biomarkers. These molecules can then be detected easily when passed in urine.

More on how curiosity can be learned... and it then helps learning!

Dweebcast is one of these joyfully-geeky mini-shows that celebrate tech optimism. In this episode they ask me: "Hey, where are the hoverboards we were promised in Back to the Future?" 

==Physics and Technology Updates== 

As reported in Science Daily: “Researchers twist four radio beams together to achieve high data transmission speeds. The researchers reached data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5 meters of free space in a basement lab. For reference, 32 gigabits per second is fast enough to transmit more than 10 hour-and-a-half-long HD movies in one second and is 30 times faster than LTE wireless.”

Engineers have printed an ant-sized radio onto a silicon chip that costs pennies to make and draws power from the information it receives. This brings to life the ubiquitous smart dust potential that author Vernor Vinge prognosticated in fiction, more than a decade ago.

Printable solar panels? Kewl. But I have a sci fi reason for watching this tech. There will come a day when we learn how to make solar panels so simply that it could be a Cottage Craft, like blacksmithing, even after (if) civilization falls. Imagine if we ever experience a truly major fail… but simple craftsmen can provide villages with panels like roofing tiles that provide electricity. From then on, the utter baseline state of humanity will never again be caves or log cabin misery. There would always be light and basic electronics. And a limit to how far we could ever fall again.

A fascinating experiment is being concocted for Fermilab, to place two 400m Michelson interferometers side-by-side and see if their random quantum positional jitters correlate with each other. If they do, then they will have used this Holometer to reveal “holographic noise” at the Planck scale that communicates in a quantum way across space-time… a link not only between the two interferometers, but also between the two realms of physics that (so-far) have not meshed well. For more details, see The Fermilab Holometer Proposal. 

Aren’t you proud to be a member of such a civilization?  Oughta be.

And yet...persistent booms and busts in science funding hurt us all.

Graphene “paint” may be the most durable and corrosion resistant coating ever.

One of two British explorer ships, from the infamous-mysterious Franklin Expedition that vanished in the Arctic more than 160 years ago, has been found, in vivid sonar images. 

Here’s a cool (and necessary) notion.  The conceptualized 3D Re-Printer allows its user to feed used plastic items, which they would normally discard as trash, into the top of the machine. They machine will then grind the plastic up into a powder like material. At this point, the printer melts that powder, and extrudes it in molten form. Though it will take years to perfect it to the extent we saw in Back to the Future, where Doc Brown dumps anything at all into the Mr. Fusion.

Neat stuff: blasting incoming missiles and drones out of the sky with a high-energy laser, carried aboard a rugged truck. The see-saw of attack-defense just took another swing. It's a sci fi world. Now let's produce science fiction the (accurately) predicts something better than dystopias.

== Plus a reminder ==

Peter Ward is not optimistic. The changes we are wreaking on Earth go far beyond a few degrees of warming. Or even ocean acidification, which is clear and irrefutable (denialist-cultists always yell Squirrel and change the subject). Ward shows that the dead Black Sea and dying Mediterranean and Caribbean are only the beginning.

In “Under a Green Sky” he shows parallels with the Permian Triassic extinction, in which hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas fizzed into the atmosphere, killing far more life than that measly dinosaur-asteroid. It is part and parcel to the steady acidification of the oceans, which is a clear fact and caused by human generated CO2. 

One thing is certain, you denialist-cultists who obstructed even moderate-compromise (TWODA) measures - sensible, moderate steps we could take, just in case all the smart people actually turn out to be right - none of you will have a place on any life arks.  

Queries on Quora... and track the comet landing!

Woo-hoo! The Philae Lander is on the comet! On the NASA Channel, I see big smiles as humanity's little lander has made it. Be proud! How impoverished are those who cannot feel thrill as we explore the solar system. Kudos to the European Space Agency for the Rosetta mission’s successful docking of the Philae lander on the surface of comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko.  

Be sure to follow this epic event! 

There will be live coverage on the science channel.  Yay ESA! And hurrah for us and for a scientific - ambitious civilization.

== Questions!  More Questions! ==

I occasionally answer questions on Quora -- the open-query-and-answer website. Here are a few of the more interesting tidbits.

* What are the most interesting questions where the answer is zero?

How many other sapient species do we know of, in this vast cosmos?

      See more on SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.


* Aside from religion, what can actually stop scientific progress?

Better to ask what retarded scientific progress across 6000 years of feudal societies, featuring pyramidal power structures, with a few lording it over ignorant masses.  The priesthoods in those societies (often) did repress questions and defended rigid dogmas.  But mostly in service of that lordly caste.

In both Rome and the American south, new technologies were repressed that might have made slavery uneconomical. Education for the masses, recommended by Adam Smith, only started once the top layers of nobility were removed, both in Periclean Athens and in the early US.

Today, we face multiple threats and I am libertarian enough to admit that stifling government bureaucracies can be one kind! But we are seeing that the greatest threat to modern science, education, calm problem-solving and (yes) democracy is a return to the same enemy that crushed all of those good things, across the millennia -- oligarchy, accompanied by relentless anti-scientific propaganda.

* What is the relationship between religion and transparency?

The ultimate question is why God doesn't just open up the sky and speak, like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I mean, wouldn't that be the fair thing to do?  Instead of leaving religious "truth" in a myriad variants for misguided parents to inculcate in naive kids? For the simple reason that their parents had taught them the same things? Should children on one continent, who happened to listen to one set of stories, go to hell because they never heard the alternative stories that are "true," told 5000 miles away?

No, if God is fiercely judgmental, then the fair thing is to simply part the clouds once, with all our cameras rolling, and explain it all clearly. Then, any folks who refuse to toe the line -- (and I do not promise in advance not to be one of them!) -- can do so with genuine free will.

There is an alternative... that His refusal to do that simple thing has a fair reason. It is the Great Sermon: "Figure it all out for yourselves!"  And if so, then fair enough! But it means no one is punished simply for believing their parents.

Note how this quandary allegorically fits everything I've said in The Transparent Society.  The one tool for justice (and the Bible says it too!) ... is light.

* Why did Albert Einstein say that the one who is sucked into a black hole sees time slow down and one who is standing outside sees things move fast?

We humans tend to assume that time is the background phenomenon that is steady, constant and unchanging, the same everywhere, because that seems to be the case in our mid-scale, human-level world. 

But it is not so. The variability of time was very very difficult for physicists to grapple with, almost exactly a century ago, when they realized that the invariant thing is the speed of light!  THAT is the thing that remains constant in all frames of reference, not time.

As for a black hole, consider this: A speed relates SPACE to TIME. When it comes to light, that speed is invariant. Hence, in a black hole, where space has been compacted very tightly, so is time, in order to maintain that same ratio.  Get it?

Of course there are equations....

* What would physically happen to a human body

 when a human reaches the speed of light?

You become a singularity and perhaps a new universe.  Because at that point you are infinitely massive.

Sorry, that is WAY oversimplifying... oh, and it can't happen... but it is true enough -- in a way -- to come out sounding so... so cool.

* What were the most accurate predictions of all time?

"As a mental experiment, let’s go along with FBI director Freeh and try to envisage what might  happen if - say - bombers actually succeeded in toppling both towers of New York’s World Trade Center, killing tens of thousands.  Or imagine that nuclear, or bio-plague terrorists someday devastate a city.  Now picture the public reaction if the FBI ever managed to show real (or exaggerated) evidence that they were impeded in preventing the disaster by an inability to tap coded transmissions sent by the conspirators. They would follow this proof with a petition for new powers, to prevent the same thing from happening again.

"Such requests might be refused nine times in a row, before finally being granted the tenth.  The important point is that, once the bureaucracy gets a new prerogative of surveillance, it is unlikely ever after to give it up again.  The effect is like a ratchet that will creep relentlessly toward one kind of transparency..."

This discussion, which then predicts the Patriot Act, in detail, is from page 206 of The Transparent Society -- published in 1997. Judge for yourselves whether that is a creepy level of on-target prognostication.

 I have a well-followed track record but that's one I wish had been wrong.

* Elon Musk wants to send one million people to Mars. Can he do it?

There are a dozen truly major technologies that must be developed, first.  Elon is doing great at pushing chemical lift-rockets to far greater efficiency. But someone also must develop cheap sail-or-ion propelled freighters, automated Mars water drill-distillers, in-situ propellant production, closed cycle processes for turning local ores into advanced machinery, and above all - advanced and reliable closed cycle life support. 

And we at NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts group have been funding some interesting additional ideas... like finding and exploring lava tubes for habitats. And developing hibernation/torpor for long duration spaceflight. Or better radiation shielding.  Cool stuff, much of it needed for us to develop the solar system.

None of these are impossible and we are making great strides! We'll do it all... but we need maybe five more Elons.

Oh and psych.  We need better understanding of human beings.  Small order!

* Which historical figure is least recognized for having caused a tremendous amount of harm, and what harm did they do?

Here's a stab at it.

Crassus -- and earlier Marius and Sulla -- helped destroy the Roman Assemblies, which till then had balanced the Patrician Senate, keeping Rome a vibrant and middle class society. He also crushed Spartacus, instead of reforming slavery, which would have ended the revolt.

La Malinche is well-known down south but most Anglos are unaware of how many native Americans died because she helped Cortez.

In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. He had been a Chinese exception, outward-looking and progressive, he supported the ambitious voyages of Admiral Zheng He. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–1425), stopped those voyages which, if they had continued, might have sailed into Lisbon Harbor while Prince Henry the Navigator was in knee pants. We'd all be speaking Chinese right now.

Andrew Jackson is on our $20 bill. He managed to delay the Civil War by 30 years and that makes up for the fact that he was a wretched man who did terrible harm to U.S. governance and betrayed his Cherokee friends.

Some good and competent people wrought great harm.  Like the Polynesian navigator who guided  colonists to New Zealand.  Had he failed, we might have Great Auks and other wonders, today. Or the leaders of the migrations over the ice age land bridge into the Americas. Or... I'd include Columbus but he's so over-rated.  Someone would have made the same journey within 10 years.  It was time.

I could go on.

Some of the other questions are good, and thought provoking! See also... my other answers on Quora.

The main thing is to stay curious. Perhaps our greatest gift... after love.

Comets galore! And much more...

"Ridiculously difficult" -- describes the challenge of landing a probe on the surface of the comet, as summarized in this simulation: How to Land on a Comet. 

On November 12, the European Space Agency's Rosetta Spacecraft will drop the Philae Lander onto Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko -- in the first ever soft landing of a craft on a comet. The landing site, named Agilkia, is located on the head of the comet. Philae will drill into the surface to analyze the comet's composition -- see this timeline of science experiments to be undertaken by the lander. Meanwhile, Rosetta will continue to monitor changes on the comet through 2015.

The event will be covered live on NASA and the Science Channel. Am I excited? * 

== Space News ==

No roundup about space would be complete without first mentioning the tragic and disastrous crash of the Virgin Galactic Spaceship Two... whose problem we hope will soon be solved and resolved, so that Richard Branson and Burt Rutan will achieve their aim -- offering the uber-rich thrills that in-turn subsidize the development of space. (As portrayed in a recent novel.) 

... and the explosion of the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket. Such coincidences in timing aren't uncommon.  Hey, space is hard! Still, the sci fi nut inside asks: are we under attack by UFOs? (Yeah, silvery guys... I'm lookin' at you.) 

Seriously, our sympathy to both teams, with best wishes for recovery and future success.

And we move on to ...

Is suspended animation possible? Can we 3D print whole structures on the moon? How about swimming the ocean of Europa?

Our leader at NASA NIAC - Jay Falker - explains the mission, to explore highly speculative ideas with small, seed grants. Watch this short video about NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts group. I am proud to be on the council of external advisers. 

YOU should be proud to be a member of a civilization that does stuff like this.

Indeed, cheer up by reading a fascinating article about the British Skylon Program, which promises air-breathing engine technology that could make genuine space planes possible.  We appear to be entering the "barnstorming era" of space at last, when private risk-taking becomes possible and opens up many worlds of possibility. As the earlier (cheaper and easier) barnstorming era opened flight in the 1920s.

== More space! ==

Art often interfaces with science, but not quite like this. As reported by Adam Rogers (my former ArchiTECHS co-star) in WIRED -- The Warped Astrophysics of Interstellar -- it seems that the special effects team for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming (and much-awaited) film Interstellar consulted with another friend of mine — Caltech’s brilliant Kip Thorne, who supplied equations that Nolan’s team crunched and crunched… in order to show us what (according to Thorne) a Black Hole “will actually look like.”

This isn’t the first time that art rendered a best-image for science!*

But this is just plain terrific. If you are like me, you are bouncing against walls with eagerness to see Interstellar! Both as fans... and for what just the right piece of art may do to shatter the stunning cowardice toward new ideas that dominates today’s studio-Hollywood.

== More Comet News == 

Last month Comet Siding Spring grazed right past Mars, endangering our many satellite probes there... clever maneuvers enabled all of them to survive.  More exciting, the comet, which passed within about 87,000 miles of Mars on October 19. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft all detected a change in the level of ions in Mars's ionosphere. The comet close approach apparently set up epic meteor showers -- bombarding Mars with thousands of fireballs an hour!

Eau de comet? The Rosetta Probe sniffs Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko -- and detects odors resembling "rotten eggs and horse pee" -- also known as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and formaldehyde.

And comets beyond comets! Thousands of them observed flickering in and out near the new solar system of Beta Pictoris.

Bizarre Pyramid on Comet 67P? "It looks almost as if loose dust covering the surface of the comet has settled in the boulder's cracks. But, of course, it is much too early to be sure," comments researcher Holger Sierks."Yes, well, comet dust layers were predicted 30 years ago, in fact. *

==Space Updates==

NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and Elon Musk's SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, ending U.S. dependence on the Russian Soyuz for transportation of humans. It's about time! It also makes clear the advantages of competition, which Elon's company has restored.

The Sentinel program - developing satellites that can warn in advance of medium/small asteroids on collision course - reveals in vivid detail what the U.S. Defense Department had heretofore (for unfathomable reasons) deemed secret — that from 2000 to 2013 there were twenty-six “nuke-level” incidents, when meteors of asteroidal scale exploded in the atmosphere, delivering from one to six-hundred kilotons of energy. 

A “city killer” strikes Earth once per century, though the greatest danger is if one of these events ever took place in a touchy region, possibly sending itchy trigger fingers racing for buttons.

Watch the video visualization … then consider participating.

Want another worry? Earth's magnetic north pole has been speeding up in its movement and this year passed its closest to true north. Interesting... and sci fi worrisome.

How cool is this? “Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have located at least one and possibly three Kuiper Belt objects that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft can reach after its flyby Pluto next year.”

Meanwhile, I am helping my friend Jon Lomberg (creator of Hawaii's famous "Galaxy Garden" and co-creator of Carl Sagan's Voyager Record) in his effort to get a similar trove of human wisdom and art stored aboard the New Horizons probe after it finishes doing science, screaming past Pluto next year. 

Sign the petition for the New Horizons Message Initiative -- to send a crowd-sourced message to the spacecraft's memory.

== And yet more inspiring science! ==

Scientific American asks: “Conspiracy theorists may wonder, why does NASA’s next major telescope director need top secret clearance?” Interesting indeed. “The Webb telescope is being planned as a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and will peer at some of the farthest reaches of space and time. The $8.8-billion observatory is due to launch in 2018.” Past Space Telescope directors did not need clearance. But in fact, I believe that this event has little to do with the Webb Telescope. 

Remember that NASA just took delivery of two Hubble class Keyhole space telescopes, no longer needed by the National Reconnaissance Office or NRO. I guess they want to be sure that, in converting those scopes for scientific work, sensitive tech does not leak . On the other hand, what if the Webb is being used as a civilian cover operation for next generation spook craft, just as the Hubble had been? Maybe an even bigger reason.

Gamma Ray Bursters as cullers of life? These bursters may wipe out those systems that orbit near Galactic Center. “Only at the outskirts of the Milky Way, at more than 10 kpc from the  center, this probability drops below 50%. 

When considering the Universe as a whole, the safest environments for life (similar to the one on Earth) are the lowest density regions in the outskirts of large galaxies and life can exist in only ~ 10% of galaxies." Interesting hypothesis. On the role of GRBs on life extinction in the Universe, by Tsvi Piran, Raul Jimenez.

Tiny diamond nano threads could someday support a space elevator?  See my earlier ruminations about how a space elevator beanstalk on the far side of the moon might (across 100 million years) save our planet!

Ten horrifying technologies that should never exist, by George Dvorsky, citing weaponized nanotechnology, brain hacking devices, weaponized pathogens...and more terrors.

Will “torpor” let us put astronauts into suspension (as in 2001: A Space Odyssey), saving resources for deep space missions? As I mentioned earlier, this work is funded by us at NIAC... actually, one of the less plausible grants, in the next decade or two.  But good press!

Heh cute visualization to put things in perspective; How close is our closest neighbor, our moon "It’s tempting to think it’s much closer to Earth than it really is. The Moon has an average distance from Earth of 384,399 kilometers (or 238,854 miles if you prefer)....It turns out it’s far enough to fit every other planet in the solar system with room to spare, " notes astronomer Christian Ready. 

Here's one rule of thumb.  The distance from Earth to moon is ten times Earth's circumference.  So wind a measuring tape ten times round the equator.  That should do it.   In fact... now that I put it that way, I am starting to suspect....

But never mind. Onward and let's foster a bold, ambitious, responsible but brave civilization! 

====

*PS... am I excited about all this comet news?  Excuse the pump heck-yeah. But way back then, for a while, I was a top comet-ologists. My doctoral dissertation created the present model of dust layers on an icy-rocky core. See it portrayed in Heart of the Comet.  So heck yeah indeed!  I am plenty jazzed.