Tag: science

Mars Biosafety

It’s looking more and more likely that Mars might already be inhabited—by Martians. Very tiny ones. Conley’s office serves to prevent NASA from doing to Martians what European explorers did to Native Americans with smallpox. Because Mars lacks Earth’s history of abundant life, it has that much more raw material for Earth’s bacterial stowaways to devour—should any of them, say, come into contact with water, find a niche they can survive in, and start to reproduce. “The whole planet is a dinner plate for these organisms. They will eat Mars.”

99.99% dark matter Galaxy

Dragonfly 44 is a dim galaxy, with 1 star for every 100 in our Milky Way. But it spans roughly as much space as the Milky Way. In addition, it’s heavy enough to rival our own galaxy in mass. That odd combination is crucial: Dragonfly 44 is so dark, so fluffy, and so heavy that some astronomers believe it will either force a revision of our theories of galaxy formation or help us understand the properties of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that interacts with normal matter via gravity and not much else. Or both.

Kardashev Type II beacon?

If that beacon is transmitting radio waves in all directions, the energy it would need to produce is a whopping 10^20 watts. “That’s a big energy bill even if you’re getting a bulk discount from your local supplier. It’s 100s of times more than all the energy falling on the Earth from sunlight.”

That means the hypothetical beings responsible might be what SETI scientists call a Kardashev Type II civilization, so advanced that they can tap all of the energy being produced by their host star.

Transplanting A Head

The human chimera that awoke from surgery wouldn’t really be the head donor or the body donor anymore, but someone else entirely. In that sense, a head transplant wouldn’t save Valery Spiridonov’s life so much as create a new one. A life with affinities to Spiridonov’s old one, certainly. But in many ways—medically, psychologically, maybe even spiritually—it would be something entirely new, unprecedented in history. “It goes beyond what we’ve ever contemplated, And by ‘we’ I mean humankind.” Spiridonov doesn’t worry much about the risks, psychological or otherwise, of waking up with a new body. Perhaps inevitably, given his handicap, he equates his personhood with his brain alone. “For me, a body is like a machine, doing some duties or some regular stuff, just to support living”. The transplant “is not about philosophy; it’s about mechanics.” He seemed to think that acquiring a new body would be akin to getting a new wheelchair. Still, the constant media attention, and the uncertainty about when and where the surgery will occur, have taken an emotional toll. “I’m really, really tired of being famous. It’s exhausting, and it takes a lot of your time, for nothing.” He doesn’t fantasize much about having a new body, in part because he doesn’t know how much control he’ll have over it. Will he wake up from surgery like the mouse treated with peg in Ren’s lab—faltering a little, but able to move under his own power? Or will he be even worse off than the control mouse—unable to use any of his limbs, and shackled to an alien body?

20nm imaging

The technology incorporates several innovations in fluorescence microscopy and super-resolution microscopy and harnesses the same kind of “adaptive optics” technology used in astronomy – deformable mirrors that change shape to compensate for light distortion. In astronomy the deformable mirrors are used to compensate for atmospheric distortion to yield clear images of celestial objects. Deformable mirrors also can be used to counteract the distortion caused when light passes through biological tissue.

Niku TNO

Astronomers have recently discovered a new mystery object orbiting the sun on a plane nearly perpendicular to the rest of the planets. Adding to the weirdness, the trans-Neptunian object, which has been nicknamed “Niku,” is also spinning around the sun backwards, in the opposite direction of the rest of the planets. So far, astronomers have little idea what could cause such abnormal celestial behavior.

Largest war in history

The largest war in animal history — in fact, by numbers the largest war in history — is going on right now. The supercolony grew to cover most of the United States. Then it spread to England, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. L. humile is now abundant on every continent except Antarctica, and wherever she goes, she slaughters native ant species Things have not been perfect. Near San Diego, a schism formed, and a separate supercolony was created. The battlefront extends for km; some 30M ants die there every year. But for now, a global megacolony still persists, consisting of around 1T individuals: a humble brown ant united in war against every other ant alive.

GoT got nothing on these guys. Super vicious.

Cell Vaults

While many questions about vaults remain, including whether they serve as cargo transporters for the cell, their large, hollow interiors have led some scientists to see the nanobarrels as potential tools for the delivery of biomaterials. A variety of strategies for encapsulating biomaterials already exists, including viruses, liposomes, peptides, hydrogels, and synthetic and natural polymers, but the use of these materials is often limited by insufficient payload, immunogenicity, lack of targeting specificity, and the inability to control packaging and release. Vaults, on the other hand, possess all the features of an ideal delivery vehicle. These naturally occurring cellular nanostructures have a cavity large enough to sequester 100s of proteins; they are homogeneous, regular, highly stable, and easy to engineer; and, most of all, they are nonimmunogenic and totally biocompatible.