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News Briefs 19-02-2015

Keep on Grailin’!

Thanks to Chucky and Don Clemente.

Quote of the Day:

“The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight”

~Joseph Campbell

  1. Nemesis is Given New Life
    The realization that “Scholz’s star” passed through our Oort Cloud 70K years ago is sending shock waves through the pop-science universe!

    http://www.universetoday.com/119038/a-star-passed-through-the-solar-system-just-70000-years-ago/

    The scientists are assuring us that this star could not possibly be orbitally bound to our sun, but there are certainly other ramifications (as RPJ alluded to):

    http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~emamajek/flyby.html
    http://www.space.com/28535-red-dwarf-planet-life.html

    Red Dwarf Scholzie comes hurtling through, Toba erupts wiping out almost all humanoids, Cro-Magnon appears and crazy mythological stuff starts going down. Eventually, Earth starts getting hit by comet swarms and all hell breaks loose. Was it a “drive by” visitation? Makes you wonder.

      1. Commentary on Cometary
        RPJ, I can’t take credit for that one either. It took bloggers only about a day (after the story was made public) to draw that inference. The scientists are trying to downplay this comet-kicker aspect of the “close encounter,” but obviously the Internet pundits aren’t buying it, haha!

          1. Tale of the Comets
            Oh, most definitely a possible link will be explored by scientists, eventually. It is still the glory of scientists to deny the obvious, and the glory of amateurs and comedians to just skip all the research and state the obvious. Along those lines, maybe music and metallurgy and medicine and moo cows were bestowed on mankind as reparations for all those regrettable comets (caused by the red dwarf’s trespassing)? Gotta take the good with the bad sometimes.

  2. dead rising
    I guess they wanted him in a more superhero pose? Others are saying it’s tradition to have him standing. I don’t know or care but viewings have never been my thing. I don’t want my last image of you to be a corpse in a glorified box. Still sad for the family. But the perspective of those images are way off. At first I thought he was a doll, now he just seems shorter than the boys at the wake.

    I would go as Han Solo frozen in carbonite to really fuck with my family. All I have to do is fall into some wet cement when I die and I’m half way there 😛

  3. One-way trip to Mars
    It’s too bad, but for many reasons this is a ridiculous and naive idea. The primary problems are the very extended trip times and limited payloads allowed with present and all reasonably projected propulsion technologies (chemical rockets). For instance, there are nearly insuperable problems involved with long-duration human spaceflight, like the debilitating effects of weightlessness on the body, and solar radiation and cosmic rays. Aside from that, there is nothing on Mars anywhere near valuable enough to justify the huge expense of such a project. It’s just an example of modern science fiction fantasy shared among a certain segment of the population, who among other things don’t understand the science and technology of the problem.

    The fact is, we are nowhere close to going to Mars … not next year nor in the next decade or the decade after that. Human exploration of Mars couldn’t possibly happen sooner than a century from now, even in the most optimistic projection. The only thing that could change this projection would be the development of a fundamentally new energy source that could replace chemical rocket propulsion to allow much higher velocities (shorter trip times), and much larger payloads. Such as a practical lightweight cold fusion reactor. Unfortunately that is science fiction at this point.

    In reality, the resources and the will to accomplish such a project will probably never come together, because our high tech civilization will collapse or at least be severely weakened by multiple catastrophes due to deterioration of the environment and resulting social disintegration and warfare. Forget about Mars already!

    1. The will to explore
      I agree that the project right now seems doomed to fail. The other news I linked to this week –the ‘Martian fart’ Martin wrote about on MU– points to the need of develop robust energy systems which don’t rely on solar energy –those year-long dust storms would turn your little solar arrays useless.

      I don’t think I agree with you when you say “there’s nothing of value” on Mars. We simply don’t know that just yet. Perhaps there’s some incredibly valuable mineral on Mars which would allow us to create new technologies; or, if we did find proof of life on Mars –either fossilized or still living under the surface– that along would make us want to go there and take a look.

      Besides, ‘value’ is as whimsical and unpredictable as human culture. There was a time when the Dutch used to speculate with freaking flowers, for crying out loud! And even they could have found the Bitcoin market of today totally ludicrous 😉

      The very fact that so many people dream about exploring Mars, would make the enterprise valuable. Even if they only found dust and rocks –an engagement ring with a Martian rock instead of a diamond could be the biggest fad in 2050 😉

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