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"2012" News - science/technology/apocalyptic wackiness (85 posts)

  1. truthmov
    Key Master

    Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included

    http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02/pentagon-l...

    The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

    As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

    Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:

    Posted 14 years ago #
  2. JohnA
    Member

    Sounds like a great idea!! what could possibly go wrong?

    they should go back to trying to kill goats - by staring at them. its a safer way of wasting money.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  3. truthmod
    Administrator

    Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says

    http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-01/chilea...

    The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.

    Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.

    “The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”

    Posted 14 years ago #
  4. truthmod
    Administrator

    Experiment allows scientists to 'read' volunteers' thoughts

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/experime...

    Scientists have read the minds of healthy volunteers using a brain scanner to detect what they were thinking. By placing the volunteers in the scanner after they had been shown three film clips, the researchers were able to tell which clip they were recalling.

    The advance brings a step closer the prospect of a "thought machine" to detect what a person is thinking from their brain activity pattern. But the technique is still at an early stage of development and its capacity to discriminate between "thoughts" is limited.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  5. truthmod
    Administrator

    Cloak of invisibility takes a step forward
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100318/ap_on_sc/us_sc...

    From Grimm's fairy tales to Harry Potter, the cloak of invisibility has played a major role in fiction. Now scientists have taken a small but important new step toward making it reality.

    Researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology report they were able to cloak a tiny bump in a layer of gold, preventing its detection at nearly visible infrared frequencies.

    Their cloaking device also worked in three dimensions, while previously developed cloaks worked in two dimensions, lead researcher Tolga Ergin said.

    The cloak is a structure of crystals with air spaces in between, sort of like a woodpile, that bends light, hiding the bump in the gold later beneath, the researchers reported in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  6. truthmod
    Administrator

    Moral Judgments Can Be Altered: Neuroscientists Influence People’s Moral Judgments by Disrupting Specific Brain Region

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/10032...

    MIT neuroscientists have shown they can influence people's moral judgments by disrupting a specific brain region -- a finding that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.

    To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions -- an ability known as "theory of mind." For example, if a hunter shoots his friend while on a hunting trip, we need to know what the hunter was thinking: Was he secretly jealous, or did he mistake his friend for a duck?


    How they did it: The researchers used a non-invasive technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to selectively interfere with brain activity in the right TPJ. A magnetic field applied to a small area of the skull creates weak electric currents that impede nearby brain cells' ability to fire normally, but the effect is only temporary.

    In one experiment, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before taking a test in which they read a series of scenarios and made moral judgments of characters' actions on a scale of 1 (absolutely forbidden) to 7 (absolutely permissible).

    In a second experiment, TMS was applied in 500-milisecond bursts at the moment when the subject was asked to make a moral judgment. For example, subjects were asked to judge how permissible it is for someone to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knows to be unsafe, even if she ends up making it across safely. In such cases, a judgment based solely on the outcome would hold the perpetrator morally blameless, even though it appears he intended to do harm.

    In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible. Therefore, the researchers believe that TMS interfered with subjects' ability to interpret others' intentions, forcing them to rely more on outcome information to make their judgments.

    Posted 14 years ago #
  7. Victronix
    Member

    TMS can give a pretty nasty headache. Don't ever consent to it if someone asks you to participate in a study.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  8. truthmod
    Administrator

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.200...

    Enter the matrix: the deep law that shapes our reality

    SUPPOSE we had a theory that could explain everything. Not just atoms and quarks but aspects of our everyday lives too. Sound impossible? Perhaps not.

    It's all part of the recent explosion of work in an area of physics known as random matrix theory. Originally developed more than 50 years ago to describe the energy levels of atomic nuclei, the theory is turning up in everything from inflation rates to the behaviour of solids. So much so that many researchers believe that it points to some kind of deep pattern in nature that we don't yet understand. "It really does feel like the ideas of random matrix theory are somehow buried deep in the heart of nature," says electrical engineer Raj Nadakuditi of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

    All of this, oddly enough, emerged from an effort to turn physicists' ignorance into an advantage. In 1956, when we knew very little about the internal workings of large, complex atomic nuclei, such as uranium, the German physicist Eugene Wigner suggested simply guessing.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  9. truthmod
    Administrator

    New Telescope Called “Lucifer” Built Next to Vatican Observatory

    http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-04/devi...

    A new instrument with an evil-sounding name is helping scientists see how stars are born. Lucifer, which stands for (deep breath) “Large Binocular Telescope Near-infrared Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research,” is a chilled instrument attached to a telescope in Arizona. And yes, it’s named for the Devil, whose name itself means “morning star.” But it wasn’t meant to evoke him, according to a spokesman for the University of Arizona, where it is housed.

    Lucifer is part of the Large Binocular Telescope, which happens to be right next to the Vatican Observatory on Mt. Graham in Tucson. That’s right, the Vatican has an observatory in Arizona, manned by Jesuit astronomers. Now its next-door neighbor is named for the Devil.


    Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/spac...

    THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  10. truthmod
    Administrator

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM...

    An 83-year-old Indian holy man who says he has spent seven decades without food or water has astounded a team of military doctors who studied him during a two-week observation period.

    Prahlad Jani spent a fortnight in a hospital in the western India state of Gujarat under constant surveillance from a team of 30 medics equipped with cameras and closed circuit television.

    During the period, he neither ate nor drank and did not go to the toilet.

    "We still do not know how he survives," neurologist Sudhir Shah told reporters after the end of the experiment. "It is still a mystery what kind of phenomenon this is."

    The long-haired and bearded yogi was sealed in a hospital in the city of Ahmedabad in a study initiated by India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the state defence and military research institute.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  11. truthmod
    Administrator

    Jupiter loses a stripe
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18889-jupite...

    Jupiter has lost one of its prominent stripes, leaving its southern half looking unusually blank. Scientists are not sure what triggered the disappearance of the band.

    Jupiter's appearance is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere – one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.

    But recent images taken by amateur astronomers show that the southern band – called the south equatorial belt – has disappeared.

    The band was present at the end of 2009, right before Jupiter moved too close to the sun in the sky to be observed from Earth. When the planet emerged from the sun's glare again in early April, its south equatorial belt was nowhere to be seen.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  12. truthmod
    Administrator

    http://www.technofascismblog.com/2010/05/18/virtua...

    Virtual reality mind control experiments go mainstream

    Ultra-creepy mind-control experiments now go mainstream. The video of this experiment looks like a scene from the Manchurian Candidate. I’m sure the souped up version of this “experiment” with the “volunteer” on psychosis-inducing pharmaceuticals is much more effective. Notice how the video involves all the classic elements of mind control: loss of identity, infantile regression, caressing to nurture feelings of security, and pay special attention to the VIOLENT SLAPPING part at the end of the video.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  13. truthmod
    Administrator

    'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment...

    Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell.

    The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell.

    The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.

    The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.

    The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

    He and his colleagues had previously made a synthetic bacterial genome, and transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another.

    Now, the scientists have put both methods together, to create what they call a "synthetic cell", although only its genome is truly synthetic.

    Dr Venter likened the advance to making new software for the cell.

    The researchers copied an existing bacterial genome. They sequenced its genetic code and then used "synthesis machines" to chemically construct a copy.

    Dr Venter told BBC News: "We've now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell - a different organism.

    "As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code."

    The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA.

    "This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell," said Dr Venter.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  14. truthmod
    Administrator

    Hubble catches planet being devoured by its star
    http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0525/hubble-planet-dev...

    The Hubble space telescope has discovered a planet in our galaxy in the process of being devoured by the star that it orbits, according to a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    The doomed planet, dubbed WASP-12b, has the highest known surface temperature of any planet in the Milky Way -- around 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit).

    But it could be enveloped by its own parent star over the next ten million years, the paper's authors have concluded.

    img

    Posted 13 years ago #
  15. truthmod
    Administrator

    Giant sinkhole in Guatemala looks as if it goes to centre of the Earth

    http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/05/31/giant-sink...

    img

    Posted 13 years ago #
  16. nornnxx65
    Member

    the following are quoted from the article:

    http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/... The Coming Data Explosion

    HP CEO Mark Hurd put it this way in June 2009: "more data will be created in the next four years than in the history of the planet."

    281 Exabytes of Online Data in 2009

    In her presentation at PARC, intriguingly entitled "The Physics of Data," Mayer noted that there have been three big changes to Internet data in recent times:

    Speed (real-time data); Scale ("unprecedented processing power"); Sensors ("new kinds of data").

    Mayer went on to say that there were 5 exabytes of data online in 2002, which had risen to 281 exabytes in 2009. That's a growth rate of 56 times over seven years. Partly, she said, this has been the result of people uploading more data. Mayer said that the average person uploaded 15 times more data in 2009 than they did just three years ago.

    A Sensor Revolution

    Mayer talked about "a sensor revolution," including data from mobile phones. She remarked that "today's phones are almost like people," in that they have senses such as eyes (a camera), ears (a microphone) and skin (a touch screen).


    Ranganathan noted that there will soon be millions of sensors working in real time, with data sampled every second. He said there'll be lots of different applications for this data, including retail, defense, traffic, seismic, oil, wildlife, weather and climate modeling.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  17. nornnxx65
    Member

    Minority Report:

    Unconscious purchasing urges revealed by brain scans http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19024-uncons...

    Posted 13 years ago #
  18. truthmod
    Administrator

    http://www.physorg.com/news196943667.html

    Science historian cracks the 'Plato code'

    A science historian at The University of Manchester has cracked "The Plato Code" - the long disputed secret messages hidden in the great philosopher's writings.

    Plato was the Einstein of Greece's Golden Age and his work founded Western culture and science. Dr Jay Kennedy's findings are set to revolutionise the history of the origins of Western thought.

    Dr Kennedy, whose findings are published in the leading US journal Apeiron, reveals that Plato used a regular pattern of symbols, inherited from the ancient followers of Pythagoras, to give his books a musical structure. A century earlier, Pythagoras had declared that the planets and stars made an inaudible music, a 'harmony of the spheres'. Plato imitated this hidden music in his books.

    The hidden codes show that Plato anticipated the Scientific Revolution 2,000 years before Isaac Newton, discovering its most important idea - the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics. The decoded messages also open up a surprising way to unite science and religion. The awe and beauty we feel in nature, Plato says, shows that it is divine; discovering the scientific order of nature is getting closer to God. This could transform today's culture wars between science and religion.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  19. nornnxx65
    Member

    The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/al...

    2012: solar apocalypse for the network society?

    The 2012 Apocalypse — And How to Stop It http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/2012stor...

    NASA Worried About Solar Threat To Earth? http://www.disinfo.com/2010/01/nasa-worried-about-...

    The Sun Also Surprises By LAWRENCE E. JOSEPH http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16joseph...

    Posted 13 years ago #
  20. truthmod
    Administrator

    Proof of extra dimensions possible next year: CERN

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/proof-extra-dim...

    Scientists at the CERN research center say their "Big Bang" project is going beyond all expectations and the first proof of the existence of dimensions beyond the known four could emerge next year.

    In surveys of results of nearly 8 months of experiments in their Large Hadron Collider (LHC), they also say they may be able to determine by the end of 2011 whether the mystery Higgs particle, or boson, exists.

    Guido Tonelli, spokesman for one of the CERN specialist teams monitoring operations in the vast, subterranean LHC, said probing for extra dimensions -- besides length, breadth, height and time -- would become easier as the energy of the proton collisions in it is increased in 2011.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  21. truthmod
    Administrator

    NASA creates buzz with ‘extraterrestrial’ announcement

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/nasa-creates-bu...

    The US space agency has created a buzz with its announcement of a press conference Thursday to discuss a scientific finding that relates to the hunt for life beyond the planet Earth.

    "NASA will hold a news conference at 2 pm EST (1900 GMT) on Thursday, December 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life," it said on its website.

    Space enthusiasts and believers in alien life took to the blogosphere in a flurry of speculation over the potential meaning of the announcement, though NASA declined to elaborate further.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  22. JohnA
    Member

    wow

    NASA Discovers New Life: Arsenic Bacteria With DNA Completely Alien To What We Know

    Astrobiology research funded by NASA has made a tremendous new discovery which could "fundamentally change the knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth," according to NASA. (Scroll down for live video and updates.)

    The major finding announced today has fueled speculation recently that reached a fever pitch after the agency said the finding "will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."

    While the discovery is not extraterrestrial life, NASA has indeed uncovered an entirely new life form on our planet that "doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living" on Earth, Gizmodo reports.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  23. truthmod
    Administrator

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12012082

    Earth project aims to 'simulate everything'

    It could be one of the most ambitious computer projects ever conceived.

    An international group of scientists are aiming to create a simulator that can replicate everything happening on Earth - from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on Milton Keynes' roads.

    Nicknamed the Living Earth Simulator (LES), the project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world.

    "Many problems we have today - including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading - are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work," says Dr Helbing, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who chairs the FuturICT project which aims to create the simulator. Knowledge collider

    Posted 13 years ago #
  24. truthmod
    Administrator

    Imagine the sci-fi possibilities...

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/hong-kong-resea...

    A group of students at Hong Kong's Chinese University are making strides towards storing such vast amounts of information in an unexpected home: the E.coli bacterium better known as a potential source of serious food poisoning.

    "This means you will be able to keep large datasets for the long term in a box of bacteria in the refrigerator," said Aldrin Yim, a student instructor on the university's biostorage project, a 2010 gold medallist in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s prestigious iGEM competition.

    Biostorage -- the art of storing and encrypting information in living organisms -- is a young field, having existed for about a decade.

    In 2007, a team at Japan's Keio University said they had successfully encoded the equation that represents Einstein's theory of relativity, E=MC2, in the DNA of a common soil bacterium.

    But the Hong Kong researchers have leapt beyond this early step, developing methods to store more complex data and starting to overcome practical problems which have lent weight to sceptics who see the method as science fiction.

    They pointed out that because bacteria constantly reproduce, a group of the single-celled organisms could store a piece of information for thousands of years.

    The group has developed a method of compressing data, splitting it into chunks and distributing it between different bacterial cells, which helps to overcome limits on storage capacity. They are also able to "map" the DNA so information can be easily located.

    This opens up the way to storing not only text, but images, music, and even video within cells.

    As a storage method it is extremely compact -- because each cell is minuscule, the group says that one gram of bacteria could store the same amount of information as 450 2,000 gigabyte hard disks.

    They have also developed a three-tier security fence to encode the data, which may come as welcome news to US diplomats who have seen their thoughts splashed over the Internet thanks to WikiLeaks.

    Posted 13 years ago #
  25. truthmod
    Administrator

    I have not checked into this at all. I have been getting the feeling that they were going to announce the discovery of extraterrestrial life soon, over the last couple years. I've wondered how such a revelation would play out, especially in the media. Maybe we'll get to see now...

    NASA SCIENTIST CLAIMS TO HAVE FOUND FOSSILIZED REMAINS OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL BACTERIA IN FRESHLY FRACTURED METEORITES

    http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html

    Dr. Hoover has discovered evidence of microfossils similar to Cyanobacteria, in freshly fractured slices of the interior surfaces of the Alais, Ivuna, and Orgueil CI1 carbonaceous meteorites. Based on Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and other measures, Dr. Hoover has concluded they are indigenous to these meteors and are similar to trichomic cyanobacteria and other trichomic prokaryotes such as filamentous sulfur bacteria. He concludes these fossilized bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, e.g. comets, moons, and other astral bodies. The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets.

    Posted 13 years ago #

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