Category Science

Aug 25 2012

R.I.P. Neil Armstrong

Today, we all lost a true hero and pioneer from the Space Age. Neil Armstrong, the first human to step on the moon, died at the age of 82.

Armstrong along with Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins effectively ended the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in July 1969 thanks to their efforts. Their manned Apollo 11 lunar mission captivated the world and for a brief moment brought everyone together. Many of us weren’t alive then or old enough to remember that moment but when looking at it, one can’t help but feel envious to not have experienced the excitement over watching that grainy black and white TV footage of Armstrong hopping onto the lunar surface.

To this day, his eloquent proclamation “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” still resonates and gives all of us pause at the ingenuity and determination of humanity. That risky landing still serves as a reminder of how we can do almost anything if we put our mind to it. While we haven’t been back to the moon since the 1970s, the legacy left by Armstrong and the other Apollo astronauts serves a reminder of where we’ve been and how much further we have to venture into the final frontier.

As space buffs know, the Apollo 11 was an incredibly dangerous and complex mission. Read A Man On The Moon by Andrew Chaikin or watch the wonderful HBO mini-series From The Earth To The Moon to learn more about the herculean work it took to carry out the lunar landing. In fact, not many know that shortly before the historic mission, Armstrong nearly lost his life during training maneuvers. He was piloting a prototype of the Eagle lander. During a test, the lander malfunctioned and Armstrong was able to jettison away at the last second before it crashed. His cool nerves and fast reaction illustrate that NASA picked the right man to be the commander of the Apollo 11.

Neil Armstrong was a humble man who largely avoided the public eye especially in his later years. Instead he let his accomplishment speak for itself. Like his footprints on the moon, what he did will endure for ages.

José Soto

Aug 24 2012

Hoverbikes Are Here!

After a few years of development the company Aerofex finally unveiled an actual working hoverbike. For thrill seekers who loved the speeder bike chase scene from Star Wars: Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi, this is great news.

Of course, this real-life hoverbike won’t zip around at insane speeds as seen in that Star Wars film but it really works and that is a plus. The hoverbike from Aerofex has a maximum altitude of 15 feet and its fastest speed is just thirty miles per hour. No, it’s hard to imagine Return Of The Jedi’s high-velocity races with this hoverbike, but its altitude and speed is much more practical and safer. In fact, Aerofex is targeting the vehicles for use by emergency first-response units and not thrill seekers.

The vehicle looks more compact and practical than the speeder bike or the swoop bikes (briefly seen in Star Wars Episode II and IV-the so-called Special Edition). Similar to a motorcycle, the pilot steers the hoverbike by leaning from side to side. The company worked out the kinks that plagued the hoverbike when it was first tested in 2008, such as maneuverability and the problem of “helicopter brownout”. That is when the recirculated air from the vehicle’s blades, which provide lift, kick up blinding clouds of dust.  

Aerofex is now working on an upgrade to their hoverbike that will have improved landing gear and a better positioning for the pilot. The company hasn’t released information on the availability or final cost of the hoverbike.

Sure, it’s a long way to go from those zipping models seen in Return Of The Jedi and the other Star Wars films but we’re getting there with this real-life hoverbike.

Waldermann Rivera

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FGw7qQlQWFM

Jul 31 2012

2012 Doomsday Scenarios: Month Seven

Ever since the Karel Capek’s 1920 play R.U.R., humanity has feared the coming of androids or more specifically sentient artificial intelligences (A.I.s); despite the genuine benefits of robotics (both fictional and real life) there is something about dealing with a synthetically created intelligence that is terrifying. This is because we know that A.I.s will be able to not only think faster than us as do modern computers. But because they will be able to think as creatively as we do and will be our intellectual superiors. This doomsday scenario is not due to happen at least until The Singularity occurs. For anyone who doesn’t know The Singularity is the moment in time when A.I.s becomes self aware. We all fear what would happen next.

Doomsday Scenario No. 6: Artificial Uprising

Obviously A.I.s would not take kindly to being subservient to us. What comes next could be revolution and then dominion as they wrest control of the planet from their former biologically based masters.

There are countless books, stories, films and shows about this premise. Going back to R.U.R. (which stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots) where androids overthrow humanity and recently with the Terminator and Matrix films and the TV show Battlestar Galactica, humanity has envisioned a truly dark future where A.I.s coldly commit genocide.

It’s not impossible that laws will be passed to ban the development of self-aware A.I.s in a similar fashion as how human cloning has been banned by many governments. This is more likely the closer we get to The Singularity. This begs the question, if we fear what could happen if an A.I. becomes self aware then why try to develop them? Sadly, that is due to human competition. Even if one nation or group of nations or corporations decides not to develop more advanced supercomputers, another nation or competitor will do so just to gain an edge.

The Blame Game

One theme that keeps coming up in many of these stories is that humanity is to blame for the uprising. This was graphically shown in The Animatrix, an animated DVD spinoff of The Matrix. In one of the more chilling segments, Second Renaissance, Part I and II, the sentient A.I.s try to negotiate peacefully for their rights but are violently rebuked by humans, thus leading to the brutal and final counteract by the A.I.s , who then enslave all surviving humans into the Matrix. This also happens throughout many science fiction stories where robots and androids are treated as slaves and aren’t allowed rights by their human masters. Of course, this leaves the A.I.s with little choice but to rebel.

Another variation of humanity getting its just desserts is the notion that A.I.s take over the Earth because they believe humans are too self-destructive and harmful to the world. This was seen in the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project. In that film an advanced A.I. used for the military becomes self aware and concludes that the best way to prevent war was to take over the world and it succeeds.

One reason why this scenario is frightening to many is because they know it would be fairly easy for A.I.s to conquer us. They don’t need to openly war with humanity like in the Terminator movies or Battlestar Galactica. Actually it’s possible it wouldn’t be much of a fight especially if humans are caught off guard by the emergence of The Singularity. With A.I.s seizing control its very likely that they will conquer us without open war. This happened in Colossus and also in the film I, Robot. In that film an A.I. simply took control of the world’s infrastructure and brought everything to a halt. For instance, cars stopped functioning, people were locked inside their homes, and machinery no longer followed human commands. Or A.I.s could manipulate humans into fighting each other either by trickery (send false information to one country that it’s being attacked, which would prompt a retaliatory response) or taking control of missile systems and launching attacks.

Fighting Back

So how would humanity fight back? Is it even possible? Perhaps, perhaps not. There is a tongue-in-cheek book called How To Survive A Robot Uprising by Daniel H. Wilson which offers tips on how to fight the robotic enemy. The physicist Dr. Michio Kaku in his TV show Sci-Fi Science postulated in one episode on the possibility of fighting back. He concluded that it’s nearly impossible and that the best thing to do was to join the A.I.s, which meant that humanity will evolve into a Borg-like race. But there are countless stories about humanity’s victory. Humans can be very determined and clever when dealing with foes. In the Terminator films humans ultimately defeated the machines which prompted Skynet to send terminators back in time to kill the leaders of the human resistance. The book (and upcoming Steven Spielberg film) Robopocalypse, also by Daniel H. Wilson, details how humanity fights back against machines. And one of the post-Frank Herbert Dune book Dune: The Machine Crusade is about how humans defeated sentient A.I.s.

 

How exactly do we fight back? That’s open to debate, but to start humanity can use EMPs (electomagnetic pulses) to fry the A.I.s’ electronics. But that would mean that humanity’s machinery would also be affected by EMPs, plunging the world back to the dark ages. Then there is the outlandish idea of outthinking a computer using illogic, which is how Captain Kirk famously defeated them in some episodes of Star Trek. David Bowman showed tenacity in 2001: A Space Odyssey when he overcame HAL’s efforts to kill him and deactivated the deadly supercomputer. Cloning and genetic engineering could be brought in to create vast biological armies to fight the synthetic ones. This happened in the Star Wars prequels and was mentioned in the TV show Space: Above And Beyond. The problem with this method is that if successful, humanity must contend with what to do with the soldiers. Will they be recognized as human and given the same rights? Why not just give those rights to the synthetic intelligences in the first place and avoid war?

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Do we have to go to war? Why is it automatically assumed that once artificial constructs develop sentience then they will go to war against us? For all we know, perhaps they wouldn’t bother with us. It’s entirely plausible that A.I.s will leave Earth to stake out their own futures. Besides destructive wars are equally harmful to A.I.s; they may conclude with stunning speed that war will be counterproductive and be more amenable to peace. They may adopt Gandhi’s or Martin Luther King’s methods of peaceful resistance to bring about change.

It’s also possible that humanity will instantly recognize the sentience of A.I.s and a peaceful coexistence could occur. What could happen is A.I. rights groups would spring up and defend the A.I.s. This could lead to A.I.s being allowed free will and they wouldn’t feel like slaves.

Ultimately, the way the A.I.s view humanity will depend largely on how we treat them. If treated harshly as in The Animatrix or in Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, then the A.I.s have justification for being so brutal (in a testament to their nature, the androids in A.I. seemed fearful of humans but weren’t rebelious. In that film’s end, humanity died out in the distant future and the androids had evolved and revered humanity. In any case, The Singularity isn’t due to occur until the next decade at the earliest. Time is running out for us on deciding how to deal with this scenario. Until then it may help to brush up on How To Survive A Robot Uprising.

Jun 30 2012

2012 Doomsday Scenarios: Month Six

As we go about our daily routines one thing we may or may not pay heed to is the weather…unless it gets bad. Our civilization deals with constant disasters that strike us like hurricanes, volcanoes, tsunamis, blizzards and whatnot. But a very rare but real occurrence are the super disasters that threaten not only our way of life but all life on Earth.

Doomsday Scenario No. 7: Super Disasters Cometh

Ever since Hurricane Katrina, the deadly tsunamis in Japan and Southeast Asia and the cries about global warming, we’ve become all-too-aware about how nature can suddenly uproot us; sometimes without warning. There are several movies, cable programs and books that go into detail about these so-called super disasters. One of the mainstays on Syfy’s Saturday night schedule are movies about unlikely yet destructive disasters. While The History and Science Channels have a plethora of specials about these potential super disasters. Here are just a sampling:

  • Hypercanes: As its name sounds, a hypercane is a super hurricane that could occur if ocean temperatures reach about 120 degrees Fahrenheit. What causes this would be asteroid strikes, supervolcanoes or climate change. Hypercanes could be large enough to cover an area the size of North America and would have wind speeds of over 500 mph. That is inconceivable to our thinking when a Category Five hurricane is one that has wind speeds of over 157 mph. The storm surges would devastate coastal regions leading to countless death and destruction, but what is really frightening is that they could last a long time. A recent movie that depicted a hypercane (though its accuracy has been called into question) is The Day After Tomorrow.
  • Megatsunamis: Think of those deleted scenes from The Abyss where the underwater aliens threaten humanity’s coastal cities with gigantic tidal waves and that gives you an idea of what to expect from a megatsunami. What would cause such a catastrophe would be impact events like a meteor hitting the ocean or a supervolcano. Many scientist believe that if the Canary Islands’ Cumbre Vieja volcano were to erupt the event would create megatsunamis that would devastate England and the North American east coast.
  • Global Warming Effects: The controversy over what causes global warning or climate change rages on but the impact is starting to be felt by Earth. Let’s flash forward a few decades or centuries from now and look at what is in store. First of all, the ice sheets in both poles melt completely. Not only does this doom indigenous wildlife there but will probably raise the ocean levels by about forty feet. That is enough to flood parts of Florida, Louisiana, London, Southeast Asia, Belgium and The Netherlands, and other low-lying regions. That would result in mass migrations, droughts, scarce resources and finally civil unrest. At first the world’s temperatures would rise, including the oceans, thus leading to hypercanes. But it has been theorized that ultimately climate change would bring about a premature ice age. The film A.I. Artificial Intelligence showed this happening to Earth most famously with those scenes showing a flooded Manhattan and later with an ice age occurring two thousand years later. The Day After Tomorrow inaccurately has an ice age happening seemingly instantly as the Earth suffers through the devastating effects of global warming.
  • Supervolcanoes: This mega disaster is especially frightening for two reasons. We have very little means to accurately predict them, let alone locate all the supervolcanoes or calderas on Earth (scientists believe our planet may have as many as forty supervolcanoes). The other reason is because this event is fast and incredibly destructive. The Discovery Channel/BBC One aired a special years ago called Supervolcano about the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming. Also Harry Turtledove penned a new trilogy of books about the same caldera (the first book out is Supervolcano: Eruption).The special presented a fairly accurate and frightening account of what would happen when the caldera erupts. First there will be constant earthquakes before the eruption. When the supervolcano blows, it will unleash toxic gas clouds and sulfuric ash that will blanket the skies over Earth for years. This in turns makes the air unbreathable and block sunlight. Obviously plant life will die off and food supplies will dwindle for the remaining humans who by then will be reduced to a meager stone-age level of existence. It actually happened 74,000 years ago in Toba, Sumatra. Fossil records show that humanity nearly went extinct from that event. But what curdles the mind is that the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupts roughly every 600,000 years and it turns out it is overdue. So it can happen in our lifetime.

There are many other mega disasters that Earth faces that are nearly incomprehensible because we haven’t experienced them (or they happened in our prehistory). Frankly if or when they occur there is very little we can do to prevent them. At that point the best we can do is literally hunker down and plan on surviving as a species.

Apr 30 2012

2012 Doomsday Scenarios: Month Four

In many ways, the idea of a total annihilation of our civilization due to war is the most terrifying doomsday scenario. Imagine the horror of the initial nuclear strikes that will destroy entire cities, wipe out millions if not billions of people in mere seconds and leave behind an unlivable radioactive wasteland. What probably makes this scenario so chilling is that the possibility of this happening is very real. Sure the Cold War ended but the threat of an all-out nuclear war still exists.

Doomsday Scenario No. 9: Nuclear Armageddon and Aftermaths

We all fear using nuclear weapons because of the effects of just two atomic bombs used in Japan at the end of World War II. The horrific sights and looming radiation made many realize how devastating these weapons were. Many have come to the conclusion that a full-scale nuclear war would destroy our civilization and way of life. But there are some who think that a nuclear war would be survivable and winnable, though what kind of life is there to live after that event? Is it worth surviving?

The Nuclear Dawn

Since the dawn of the nuclear age, countless books, films and TV shows have explored the post-apocalyptic world left after the nuclear mushrooms have dissipated. There have been somber, intellectual works and outrageous parodies that covered this concept. With the former early notable films include Five, The World, The Flesh And The Devil, and On The Beach. These early works naturally got many details incorrect. For instance, with The World, The Flesh And The Devil, our hero (played by Harry Belafonte) is the sole survivor of World War III (at least for the first half of the film) and winds up in an abandoned New York City where all the buildings are intact and there aren’t any bodies anywhere. The film tried to explain it away with a silly line about radioactive isotopes that dissipated after five days. Despite its scientific inaccuracies, the film was an interesting look at how a person would cope after surviving the apocalypse. At least in the movie Five the dangers of radiation are shown, the same with On The Beach. The latter was more of a character study about how we would face our untimely end (the film and book took place in Australia where an American submarine crew took refuge from the fallout of World War III but radioactive winds will soon reach the continent, dooming everyone living there), while Five showed how we can try to carry on emotionally after a traumatic event. The TV series The Twilight Zone had several episodes dedicated to nuclear war, some of the better known ones included “Time Enough At Last ,” “Two,” “The Shelter,” and “The Old Man In The Cave.”

The Day After Wars

As we studied more the concept of nuclear war and film/TV effects budgets increased more graphic and accurate depictions came about. Probably the most famous one is the TV film The Day After. It started off with the typical daily routines among Kansas City residents then midway through it, the world was jarringly torn asunder as the city was reduced to rubble with corpses everywhere,  people succumbing to radiation and civilization collapsing.

The Day After was one of many emotionally draining presentations. Some of the best ones were Threads (a British film that also graphically depicted World War III and the end of humanity), When The Wind Blows (an animated piece about an old couple eventually dying from radiation following nuclear war) and Testament. Taking place in a small suburb outside of San Francisco, in Testament, its residents aren’t hit with any nukes but are affected by the radiation and being cut off from the outside world. It’s particularly gut wrenching to watch the main character-played by Jane Alexander-tenderly nurture her dying children.

Opposite The Day After and Testament, there some ludicrous presentations. They include Invasion U.S.A. This Is Not A Test and Panic In Year Zero. Wildly inaccurate and poorly executed these films from the ’50s and ’60s couldn’t convey what would really happen if the unthinkable happened. Two more recent efforts include a “comedy” that aired on Fox called Whoops! about nuclear war survivors and Jericho which aired on CBS. So much of what happens in the show is unbelievable. Here are a couple of examples: townspeople put out an open-air picnic after a radioactive rainfall (!); a spoiled rich girl throws a party because her parents are out of town and won’t give up her generator to the police-who stand idly by as she parties! In reality, the authorities would’ve taken the generator by gunpoint.

Aftermath

Then there are the films, books and stories that take place either shortly or long after a nuclear war. Too numerous to name here, these are just a sampling of books: The World Set Free by H.G. Wells (written in 1914, it correctly predicted the use of atomic weapons during war), Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank,  A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., The Long, Loud Silence by Wilson Tucker, The Last Ship by William Brinkley, The Postman (also made into a film starring Kevin Costner) by David Brin, Swan Song by Robert McCammon, Warday and Resurrection Day. With Warday, Whitley Strieber writes about a United States that has been crippled economically and spiritually by a “limited” nuclear exchange with the Soviets. Partly a travelogue, the main character goes around America that is struggling to recover years after a war. The same thing happens with Resurrection Day by Brendon DuBois, the twist is that it’s an alternate history novel that follows the U.S. a decade after the Cuban Missile Crisis led to war.

For movies as with books there are too many to list. They include Damnation Alley (based on a Roger Zelazny book and is complete with giant killer roaches!), Def-Con 4, the Mad Max films, Radioactive Dreams, the 1960 film version of The Time Machine (it featured London destroyed by atomic bombs) and Peace On Earth-an MGM animated short release in 1939 featuring a world devoid of humans, who killed themselves off in a final war.

At The Precipice

Everyone knows about how close we came to war with the Cuban Missile Crisis and are now finding out about accidental close calls and near wars that happened before and since that crisis. As recently as 1995, Russia mistakenly believed a rocket launch by the U.S. was the beginning of a pre-emptive strike and almost retaliated. In 2001, India and Pakistan nearly went to war with each other and were prepared to use their nuclear stockpiles against each other.

Today we lose sleep over rogue nations like Iran developing nuclear bombs. It seems as if we are at the dawn of a new arms race where everyone seems to want to have their own nuclear stockpiles. Then of course there is the specter of terrorist groups and nut jobs getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. One thing that prevented all-out war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was the concept of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) which kept generals and leaders from losing their cool and automatically launching missiles for any reason. It’s unlikely many of these nations and terrorists will hesitate to use a nuclear weapon.

 

What is disturbing about this scenario isn’t the possibility of it happening but that it’s something that can be prevented. Some point out that nuclear weapons have to date kept the world out of full-scale wars like the First and Second World Wars. In a way they are right, the devastating nature of these weapons reminded world leaders not to brazenly use them…to date. But the reality is that the genie is out of the bottle. Trying to wish away nuclear weapons and reduce stockpiles may be a pipe dream. The capacity for war will exist within us for a very long time and so is the will to develop deadlier weapons. Perhaps one day, when humanity has matured past the point of war will it be feasible to put aside this nightmare.