No, not that kind. Rather, first contact of a technological kind:
“First Contact With Inner Earth”: Drillers Strike Magma
A drilling crew recently cracked through rock layers deep beneath Hawaii and accidentally became the first humans known to have drilled into magma—the melted form of rock that sometimes erupts to the surface as lava—in its natural environment, scientists announced this week.
“This is an unprecedented discovery,” said Bruce Marsh, a volcanologist from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who will be studying the find.
* * *
The drilling was being conducted for an existing geothermal power plant built to harvest heat from the world’s most active volcanic zone, Kilauea volcano, which has been spewing lava continuously since 1983.
Don Thomas, a geochemist from the University of Hawaii’s Center of the Study of Active Volcanoes, said it was just a matter of time until some drilling operation there struck hot magma.
OK, not exactly a borehole pressure mine (gods, I love that game), but still very very cool. Or hot, to be literal. 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit.
I’ve had an idea about using such a source for doing cast stone sculpture – pouring molten magma into heat-resistant forms – I wonder if they’d be interested in having an artist in residence?
Jim Downey
Ever stand on the bank of a stream and watch a submerged stick oscillate up and down? Or maybe seen something similar happen when you were fishing, and a cork/bobber got pulled underwater, the way it will swing back and forth?
That’s vortex induced vibration. And it is a real problem for all kinds of engineering disciplines – just about any real world application which involves a fluid (or a gas, or even a plasma I suppose).
It could also be the thing which saves us from a carbon-based energy nightmare. Vortex Hydro Energy is a new technology which could supply clean, renewable energy. Professor Michael M. Bernitsas at the University of Michigan has helped pioneer this system. From his University profile:
Current Energy Conversion: Invented, designed, and model-tested for the VIVACE http://www.vortexhydroenergy.com/ (Vortex Induced Vibration Aquatic Clean Energy) energy converter (patent pending UofM#2973). VIVACE is an ocean/river current energy converter based on the idea of enhancing rather than spoiling vortex shedding, increasing rather than suppressing VIV under high damping, and harnessing rather than mitigating VIV energy. VIV was first observed by Leonardo daVinci in 1504AD in the form of “Aeolian Tones”. Since then, engineers have been trying to suppress VIV which damage aero, civil, mechanical, marine, offshore, nuclear engineering structures. The VIVACE Converter takes this destructive force in nature and utilizes for the benefit of mankind. The VIVACE Converter is designed to be in high damping VIV ? thus extracting energy at high efficiency – over the range of current velocity that is of practical interest: 0.25-2.5m/sec (0.5-5.0knots) [79-80]. Testing of the VIVACE Converter in the Low Turbulence Free Surface Water Channel of Ocean Renewable Energy Laboratory at the University of Michigan for high damping resulted in a power harnessing rate of PVIVACE=0.22pwDLU3 for current velocity of only 0.840m/sec (1.63 knots) [80-82].
News of this just broke, and the research is still very much in its early stages. So there is still a lot to be done to assess the potential power generation as well as the downsides of applying the technology. It is likely that placement of the VIVACE system would be critical, so as not to disrupt environmental conditions necessary to the maintenance of a healthy planet. But it strikes me as a potentially elegant solution to the problem of safe power generation with minimal environmental impact, and would avoid many of the issues that such technologies as wind power have.
Fascinating.
Jim Downey
(Via dKos. Cross posted to UTI.)
Ah, gotta love the advancement of science – soon, you’ll be able to drink beer with the legitimate claim that you are doing it for your health:
Anti-cancer beer under development
NEW YORK: American students have designed a genetically modified yeast that can ferment beer and produces the chemical resveratrol, known to offer some protection against developing cancer.
* * *
The idea for the healthier beer, dubbed ‘Biobeer’, started out as a joke. “You could say that the inspiration for the project came from a student who really enjoys his beer,” said Thomas Segall-Shapiro, a member of the team behind the project.
And from USA Today:
Students are working to modify the yeast with two sets of genes, including one that will allow the yeast to metabolize sugars and produce an intermediate chemical. The second set will convert that chemical to resveratrol.
That should result in a healthier beer, produced at no additional cost, said Stevenson.
Why beer? Stevenson points to the numbers: Americans consumed 20.5 gallons of beer per capita in 2005, but only 2.5 gallons of red wine.
Resveratrol is a popular anti-oxidant thought to play a role in extending life, fighting the development of cancer, and maintaining cardiovascular health. It is a naturally produced chemical, found in high concentrations in a variety of foods, and has been proposed as one of the health benefits of drinking red wines (it is present in grape skins, and red wines are fermented with the skin, leading to a high concentration of resveratrol). Introducing this chemical into beer this way would seem to offer another way to get supplemental protection – though of course, health authorities will caution that excess consumption of alcohol carries risks of its own. Personally, I’ve always figured that alcohol is a good sterilizing agent, and consumption of it in one of my preferred forms was a good way to make sure that I reduced exposure to dangerous germs . . .
Jim Downey
(Hat tip to GvR for the USA Today link. Cross Posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Comics, Humor, Paleo-Future, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech
An excellent Three Panel Soul strip.
Another travelogue later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Google, Heinlein, Heinlein Centennial, Jeff Greason, movies, Paleo-Future, Peter Diamandis, Phil Plait, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Space X, tech, TGV Rockets, XCOR
Last night I watched a movie made before I was born. By coincidence, the timing was perfectly in sync with the news yesterday.
* * * * * * *
Over a year ago, I wrote this, about Jeff Greason of XCOR Aerospace (one of the speakers at the Heinlein Centennial):
Yes, dependable reusable rockets is a critical first-step technology for getting into space. But as Greason says, he didn’t get interested in space because of chemical rockets – he got interested in chemical rockets because they could get him into space. For him, that has always been the goal, from the first time he read Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert Heinlein when he was about 10. It is somewhat interesting to note that similar to the setting and plot of the book, XCOR Aerospace is based on the edge of a military test range, using leased government buildings…
Anyway. Greason looked at the different possible technologies which might hold promise for getting us off this rock, and held a fascinating session at the Centennial discussing those exotic technologies. Simply, he came to the same conclusion many other very intelligent people have come to: that conventional chemical rockets are the best first stage tech. Sure, many other possible options are there, once the demand is in place to make it financially viable to exploit space on a large enough scale. But before you build an ‘interstate highway’, you need to have enough traffic to warrant it. As he said several times in the course of the weekend, “you don’t build a bridge to only meet the needs of those who are swimming the river…but you don’t build a bridge where no one is swimming the river, either.”
And this, in a piece about Pat Bahn of TGV Rockets:
And there was a lot of thought early in the development of rocketry that such capability could be used for postal delivery. It doesn’t sound economically feasible at this point, but there’s nothing to say that it might not become an attractive transportation option for such firms as UPS or FedEx if dependable services were provided by a TGV Rockets or some other company. In his juvenile novel Rocket Ship Galileo, Robert A. Heinlein had his characters adapt a retired “mail rocket” for their own spacecraft, used to fly to the Moon.
I find this notion of private development of spaceflight more than a little exciting. When I wrote Communion of Dreams, I was operating under the old model – that the enterprise of getting into space in a big way was going to mandate large governmental involvement and coordination. I’m not going to rewrite the novel, but I am reworking my own thoughts and expectations – this is probably the single largest change for me from attending the Centennial.
Well, yesterday a Falcon 1 rocket from the Space X corporation made it to orbit. From Phil Plait:
Congratulations to the team at Space X! At 16:26 Pacific time today (Sunday, September 28, 2008), their Falcon 1 rocket achieved orbit around the Earth, the first time a privately funded company has done such a feat with a liquid fuel rocket.
* * * * * * *
As coincidence would have it, about the time the Space X rocket reached orbit I was watching Destination Moon, a movie I had added to my NetFlix queue after the Heinlein Centennial, and which just now had floated to the top.
What’s the big deal? Well, Destination Moon was about the first successful private corporation launch, not to orbit, but as a manned mission to the Moon.
It’s not a great movie. But it was fascinating to watch, an insight into those heady post-war years, into what people thought about space, and into the mind of Robert Heinlein, who was one of the writers and technical advisors on the film (with connections to two of his novels: Rocket Ship Galileo and The Man Who Sold the Moon). Interesting to see the trouble they went to in order to explain what things would be like in space (no gravity, vacuum, how rockets would work, et cetera) because this was a full 8 years prior to the launch of Sputnik. We’ve grown up with spaceflight as a fact, with knowing how things move and function – but all of this was unknown to the average viewer when the movie was made and released. They did a surprisingly good job. And the images provided Chesley Bonestell are still breath taking, after all these years.
* * * * * * *
It may yet be a while before any private corporation wins the Google Lunar X Prize, let alone sends a team of astronauts there and gets them back, as was done in Destination Moon. But it’ll happen. When it looks like it will, I may need to schedule another viewing of the movie, and not just trust to coincidence.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Blade Runner, BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Constitution, Cory Doctorow, Emergency, Expert systems, General Musings, Government, Guns, movies, Philip K. Dick, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Ridley Scott, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism, Violence
So, according to FOX News, our friends at the Department of Homeland Security will soon have a new trick up their sleeve: MALINTENT.
Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind
Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening — a body scanner that can read your mind.Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person — not the device — set to wreak havoc and terror.
MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security’s directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.
I’m . . . sceptical. Let me put it like this: if this thing actually, dependably, reliably works the way they tout it in the article (go read the whole thing, even if it is from FOX), then the TSA would be perfectly fine with allowing me to carry a gun onto a plane. After all, I have a legitimate CCW permit, have been vetted by a background check and accuracy test, have had the permit for three years, and have never demonstrated the slightest inclination to use my weapon inappropriately. If I could pass their MALINTENT scanners as well, they should be completely willing to let me (and anyone else who had a similar background and permit) carry a weapon on board.
Just how likely do you think that is?
Right. Because this sort of technology does not, will not, demonstrate reliability to the degree they claim. There will be far too many “false positives”, as there always are with any kind of lie detector. That’s why multiple questions are asked when a lie detector is used, and even then many jurisdictions do not allow the results of a lie detector to be admitted into courts of law.
Furthermore, the risk of a “false negative” would be far too high. Someone who was trained/drugged/unaware/elated with being a terrorist and slipped by the scanners would still be a threat. As Bruce Schneier just posted about Two Classes of Airport Contraband:
This is why articles about how screeners don’t catch every — or even a majority — of guns and bombs that go through the checkpoints don’t bother me. The screeners don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be good enough. No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a gun through airport security if there’s decent chance of getting caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great.
Contrast that with a terrorist plot that requires a 12-ounce bottle of liquid. There’s no evidence that the London liquid bombers actually had a workable plot, but assume for the moment they did. If some copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport security and the screeners catch them — like they caught me with my bottle of pasta sauce — the terrorists can simply try again. They can try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed.
OK, so then why do it? Why introduce these scanners at all? Why intrude on the privacy of people wanting to get on an airplane?
Control. As I noted earlier this year, about the news that the US military was deploying hand-held ‘lie detectors’ for use in Iraq:
The device is being tested by the military. They just don’t know it. And once it is in use, some version of the technology will be adapted for more generalized police use. Just consider how it will be promoted to the law enforcement community: as a way of screening suspects. Then, as a way of finding suspects. Then, as a way of checking anyone who wants access to some critical facility. Then, as a way of checking anyone who wants access to an airplane, train, or bus.
Just how long do you think it will be before you have to pass a test by one of these types of devices in your day-to-day life? I give it maybe ten years. But I worry that I am an optimist.
An optimist, indeed. Because here’s another bit from the FOXNews article:
And because FAST is a mobile screening laboratory, it could be set up at entrances to stadiums, malls and in airports, making it ever more difficult for terrorists to live and work among us.
This is about scanning the public, making people *afraid*. Afraid not just of being a terrorist, but of being thought to be a terrorist by others, of being an outsider. Of being a critic of the government in power. The first step is to get you afraid of terrorists, because then they could use that fear, and build on it, to slowly, methodically, destroy your privacy. Sure, the DHS claims that they will not keep the information gathered from such scanners. And you’re a fool if you think you can trust that.
Jim Downey
Via BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.
Filed under: Art, Artificial Intelligence, BoingBoing, Book Conservation, General Musings, movies, Science, tech
An earlier version of Communion of Dreams had one of the minor characters with an interesting hobby: building his own computer entirely by hand, from making the integrated circuits on up. The point for him wasn’t to get a more powerful computer (remember, by the time of the novel, there is functional AI using tech which is several generations ahead of our current level). Rather, he just wanted to see whether it was possible to build a 1990’s-era desktop computer on his own. I cut that bit out in the final editing, since it was a bit of a distraction and did nothing to advance the story. But I did so reluctantly.
Well, this is something along those lines: video of a French artisan who makes his own vacuum tubes (triodes) for his amateur radio habit:
It’s a full 17 minutes long, and worth watching from start to finish. Being a craftsman myself, I love watching other people work with their hands performing complex operations with skill and grace. I have no need or real desire to make my own vacuum tubes, but this video almost makes me want to try. Wow.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing.)
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, General Musings, Humor, Patagonia, Science Fiction, Society, tech
My phone rang in the grocery store. I set my basket and the six-pack of 1554 down, pulled the phone out of my pocket. Didn’t recognize the number.
“This is Jim Downey.”
“Um, hello. You tried to place an order for some new Nikes this morning?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I figured out why they couldn’t get the order to go through.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, it’s your email address. It’s obscene.”
* * * * * * *
Over the weekend, I tried four times to place an order online for some new walking shoes. I wanted some for my upcoming trip to Patagonia. My current pair of walking shoes are still in decent shape, but I wanted some that could also serve as semi-dressy shoes for the trip. I even created an account with Nike, to simplify ordering. But each time, I always got a glitch at the end of the whole check-out process, after jumping through multiple hoops and entering data time and again.
Finally, in frustration, I called the customer service number. After going through about a dozen levels of automated phone hell, I got to talk with “Megan”. She was quite helpful, but I still had to repeat to her all the information I had entered on four separate occasions. And at the end, she got the same error message that I did.
“Um, let me put you on hold.”
Sure.
Wait.
Wait.
About five minutes pass. “Hi, sorry about that. No one here can figure out why the system won’t process the order. But I’m just going to fill out a paper request with all the information, and send it over to the warehouse. They should be in touch with you later today to confirm shipment.”
“Thanks.”
* * * * * * *
“My email address is obscene?”
“Yeah. The system thinks so, anyway.”
The email address I gave them is one I use for stuff like this: crap@afineline.org It’s also the one I use over at UTI. Cuts down on the amount of spam I get in my personal accounts.
I laughed. “I use that to cut down on junk I get from businesses.”
A laugh at the other end of the phone. “I understand.” Pause. “But, um, do you have a real email address I can use?”
“Oh, that one’s real. I just want people to know what I think of the messages they send me when they use it.”
“Ah. OK. Well, you should get a confirmation email later today that the shoes have shipped.”
“That’ll be fine. Thanks.” I hung up, and made a mental note to pass along word to others not to offend the computers at Nike – they seem to have rather delicate sensibilities.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Bad Astronomy, Discover, Pharyngula, Phil Plait, Politics, PZ Myers, Quantum mechanics, Religion, Science, Society, String theory, tech
Bits and pieces this morning.
Phil Plait has Ten things you don’t know about the Earth. A couple in there I didn’t know, or only knew incompletely.
The LHC goes online tomorrow. You can play with a cool simulation here. This is actually a very big deal, something on the order of the Apollo program in terms of size, complexity, and being a threshold event.
Play with your brain: Mighty Optical Illusions.
Be afraid, courtesy of Pharyngula.
Perhaps more later.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 