Science Updates

[Super Nova]

U mad, bro?

Chard,

Mad?? I am probably a little insane but I am not angry or upset.

Feel free to challenge on anything. I was just having a poke back. I am never really mad with things here. It's PA. Feel free to continue. Go hard or soft.

I was just responding in the tone I thought reflected how I felt at the time. I am never mad.

[Super Nova]

What a load of crap this will be.

Mars mission selection 'to be reality TV show'

Mars One chooses its 1,508 candidates for the one-way trip to Mars and plan to make selection for final 40 wannabe astronauts a reality TV show



Mars One hopes to announce a Big Brother-style reality show to help choose which of the 1,058 candidates for the one-way trip to Mars in 2025 will be among the 40 who make the final selection.

There are 40 Brits in the 1,058 candidates who survived the round one application process, which has weeded out more than 200,000 people since April last year. Some of the the wannabe astronauts were zapped on the basis of filming themselves naked in their video applications. Organisers said they ruled out anyone "not taking the mission seriously".

The shortlisted candidates come from 107 countries and the United States is the most heavily represented, with 297 applicants (45 per cent of the total are women). The oldest successful applicant is 81.

As candidates are put through next selection phase of tests and simulations, there are plans for Mars One to be a reality TV show, with viewers voting on who should colonise the Red Planet. Paul Römer, co-creator and the first producer of The Big Donor Show and the Big Brother, is an ambassador for the project, and CEO Bas Lansdorp has said: "We're in advanced negotiations with a major studio for an overall deal for film and television properties."

With expertise from Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Guildford-based Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, Mars One hopes to send a robotic lander and satellite to Mars in 2018 as a precursor to their peopled missions. One Brit chosen is a 20-year-old physics student from Derby called Ryan MacDonald, who said he was informed by email that his application was successful. He told the Derby Telegraph that he will get a new set of instructions on Monday, adding: "I still don’t know what exactly it will consist of, as the company is still in negotiations with TV companies, as some parts of the next rounds will be televised."

"The next several selection phases in 2014 and 2015 will include rigorous simulations, many in team settings, with focus on testing the physical and emotional capabilities of our remaining candidates," Norbert Kraft, Mars One's Chief Medical Officer, said in a statement.

Perhaps the project is more than just a clever marketing and publicity exercise and if this is the case, the Dutch not-for-profit Mars One has serious problems, not least raising the estimated £4billion the project will need. True, they have started a crowd-funding campaign through the website Indiegogo and they are selling official merchandise. But you will have to sell an awful lot of black coffee mugs (£9 each) limited edition hooded sweaters (£30) and bumper stickers (£6) to get Mars rockets off the ground.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is among those to cast doubt on the technical feasibility of Mars One and some of the statements from Lansdorp leave, let's say, a little room for anxiety. He has said, for example, that they will shield the volunteers from dangerous galactic radiation by "providing a hollow water tank" and said that on Mars the people "will grow their own food". Snacking on Mars Bars will be a distant memory because Lansdorp added that "besides vegetables and other plants they will grow algae and insects".

If Mars One does actually get humans on to Mars, I'll be rooting for the 81-year-old, who would be a sprightly 92 (hopefully) when lift-off happens in 2025. Let's just hope he (or she) likes insects.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan ... -show.html

[Chard]

U mad, bro?

Chard,

Mad?? I am probably a little insane but I am not angry or upset.

Feel free to challenge on anything. I was just having a poke back. I am never really mad with things here. It's PA. Feel free to continue.

My nigga...

I was just responding in the tone I thought reflected how I felt at the time. I am never mad.

On reflection I might have come across as a bit of a douche there, so fair enough. Now onward with the SCIENCE!

[Super Nova]

If we can model life down to the atomic level - the chemical interactions at least then I see this as a key step to us being able to engineer life from scratch. Now that's takes us down a whole new set of risks for our own lifeform.

Bring it on. Then we can go out into the bright black yonder of space.

We could engineer life to assist in terraforming planets.

We could create something that will destroy us and all current life.

The prospects are nearly endless.

Scientists Successfully Model a Living Cell with Software

In creating the first complete computer model of an entire single-celled organism, biologists are forging a powerful new kind of tool for illuminating how life works



Computer models that can account for the function of every gene and molecule in a cell could revolutionize how we study, understand and design biological systems.
A comprehensive simulation of a common infectious bacterium was completed last year and, while still imperfect, is already generating new discoveries.
Scientists are now building models of more complex organisms. Their long-term goal is to simulate human cells and organs in comparable detail.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... h-software

[Chard]

If we can model life down to the atomic level - the chemical interactions at least then I see this as a key step to us being able to engineer life from scratch. Now that's takes us down a whole new set of risks for our own lifeform.

We've been doing most of that already, minus the modeling down to the atomic level. There's a reason why we have stringent treaties governing things like biowarfare research.

Bring it on. Then we can go out into the bright black yonder of space.

Turns out our ability to destroy ourselves is probably our single greatest reason to get off this planet and spread out among the stars as fast as possible. It's only a matter of time before we as a species fuck up and annihilate ourselves, and that's before we get into all the fun methods of making us go extinct the universe has in store for us. It's either up and out or stay and die in the long run.

We could engineer life to assist in terraforming planets.

We can do that already. Just a matter of funding and practical engineering, which requires a lot of funding. Write your MP and bug the shit out of them to create a viable space program.

We could create something that will destroy us and all current life.

We can already do that and have had that ability for over a century now. You'd be amazed at just how far we got with NBC warfare before people stepped back and started writing treaties to put the brakes on it all. If you'd like some nightmare fuel I can tell you about half a dozen instances where just the US and the USSR almost accidentally killed the human race fucking about with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons during peacetime.

The prospects are nearly endless.

The prospects are only as boundless as the funding such projects receive.

[Super Nova]

Nice story. I hope she grows up and engineers a dragon.

Australia's science agency apologises after failing to create dragon eggs
Australia's science agency apologies for failing to create a dragon after a 7-year-old asks the scientists to "make a dragon for me"



Australia's national science agency has apologised to the nation for failing to invent "a dragon or dragon eggs" after a seven-year-old girl, Sophie Lester, wrote a letter asking the scientists to make her a dragon.

"I would like it if you could, but if you can't that's fine," she wrote, after begging her parents for a baby dragon for Christmas.

In the letter, addressed "Hello lovely scientist", Sophie promised to call the dragon "Toothless" if it were a girl, and "Stuart" if it were a boy.

In a response posted on its website, the agency, the CSIRO, said it was proud of its work since 1926 but regretted that it had yet to create or observe a dragon "of the fire breathing variety".

"Over the past 87 odd years we have not been able to create a dragon or dragon eggs," it said.

"We have sighted an eastern bearded dragon at one of our telescopes, observed dragonflies and even measured body temperatures of the mallee dragon. But our work has never ventured into dragons of the mythical, fire breathing variety. And for this Australia, we are sorry."

In the letter, Sophie, from the state of Queensland, promised to keep the dragon "in my special green grass area where there is lots of space".

"I would feed it raw fish and I would put a collar on it," she wrote.

"If it got hurt I would bandage it if it hurt himself. I would play with it every weekend when there is no school."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -eggs.html

[Chard]

Australia's science agency apologises after failing to create dragon eggs
Australia's science agency apologies for failing to create a dragon after a 7-year-old asks the scientists to "make a dragon for me"

If anyone should be apologizing for that it should be New Zealand's tourism board.

Also, just noticed The Book of Mormon ref in your sig. Excellent play, funny as hell. Seen it?

[Super Nova]

Also, just noticed The Book of Mormon ref in your sig. Excellent play, funny as hell. Seen it?

Yes. About 3 months ago here in London. Loved it.

[AiA in Atlanta]

Planet-Hunter: We'll Find An "Earth 2.0" Within "10 or 15 Years"

Imagine one day, we're going to be able to see seasonal effects on these planets and be able to see if there is a biosphere on these planets. So the search for Earth-like planets, the search for an Earth 2.0 is very close. I think in 10 or 15 years we will have an Earth 2.0 candidate.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/ ... picks=true

[Chard]

Planet-Hunter: We'll Find An "Earth 2.0" Within "10 or 15 Years"

Yeah, about that... The Keppler mission has detected several dozen earth size planets orbiting in the habitable zone (orbital zone where surface temps on a planet can support liquid water) of stars similar to our sun, the closest about 12 light years distant. Even if we wanted to get there, it would take us well over a century to get there after we spend the next twenty or thirty years building the ship and enough nuclear weapons to power an Orion drive.