Links for 24-10-2006
Viking lander blunder, Dawkins’ crusade continues, markets2.0, open source FAB@home project…
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“Researchers now say that the landers’ experiments were not sensitive enough to find life and in any case may not have been able to spot the strange forms that Martian life might take.”
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“Social Finance is the virtual aggregation of dozens, hundreds or millions of people for the purpose of conducting an economic transaction. [...] Affinity Markets are marketplaces where transactions can occur based on affinity attributes.”
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“The probability of God, Dawkins says, while not zero, is vanishingly small. He is confident that no Flying Spaghetti Monster exists. Why should the notion of some deity that we inherited from the Bronze Age get more respectful treatment?”
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“Tom [...] tapped an envelope against a black plastic box connected to his computer. Within moments, the screen showed a garbled string of characters…” Arphids can be hacked, hello?
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“Feeds That Matter is a fascinating new analysis project out of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and a terrific way to find new RSS feeds to subscribe to.” Coukl be worth a poke.
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“Austria’s relatively new dasparkhotel is an inn ‘constructed from repurposed, incredibly robust drain pipes.’” BLDGBLOG reports on some novel European accomodation…
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Does exactly what it says on the tin, thanks to friends-of-friends-of-friends-of Warren Ellis. Beautiful images, awe-inspiring.
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“I just returned from a trip – accompanied by renowned tech artist Sheldon Brown – to visit some top people and companies in the Bay Area, offering and swapping cool ideas.” David Brin’s been hanging at the Googleplex.
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“…the Department of Homeland Security is trying out instead a pair of new defenses, seemingly straight of science fiction: laser guns and microwave blasters.” Sounds a bit cumbersome and expensive so far, though.
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10 – Microwave-oven gun“Simply gather together a stack of magnetrons ripped out of consumer microwave ovens, and lock their output together so that they combine into one coherent beam.” Patent application now live, apparently.
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“New high-performance transistors could lead to windows and helmet visors that double as high-quality displays.”
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“Earth’s recent warming trend might in part be due to a lack of starlight reaching our planet, a new study suggests. But other scientists are not so sure.” Just wait until the anthropic climate change denial crew hear about this…
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“Among the plans for NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a research agenda some of us have been hoping for for years. Designed to scan the entire sky in infrared light, [it] should be able to locate nearby brown dwarfs.”
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“The Space Elevator games just finished up today and it was quite an event. In this post I would like to summarize the games, both the results and the behind the scenes, what it implies and what we can expect in the future.”
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“With NASA expected to reduce expenditures on astrobiology by half in the year ahead, the SETI Institute [...] is seeking private money to help support the nearly 50 scientists it has on staff…” They should call Google, I reckon.
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“Burrowing inside an asteroid whose orbit carries it past both the Earth and Mars could protect astronauts from radiation on their way to the Red Planet.” NASA staff seen reading pulp-era science fiction stories again.
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“Typical activists describe themselves as ’street proselytisers’, and tour the country giving lectures in nonconformists chapels and preaching from soap boxes in shopping centres.” The Grauniad reports on home-grown UK creationism.
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“The end result is that the entire industry is completely held back by the law that the industry itself pushed so hard for and refuses to reform.” Techdirt brings yet more unpalatable home truths.
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19 – Hilldiggers Cover.“Here’s a first look at the probable cover of Hilldiggers. I like this.” Neal Asher seems pretty stoked with the cover-art for his forthcoming novel.
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20 – Pyramids in China“With the help of Google Earth, the objects are to be seen impressively [...] They have four sides and they are even square like the pyramids in Egypt and in Mexico. Its size can quite be matched with those of the Pharaohs…” Cheers, Mac.
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21 – Fab @ Home …“…is a website dedicated to making and using fabbers – machines that can make almost anything, right on your desktop. [It] provides an open source kit that lets you make your own simple fabber, and use it to print three dimensional objects.”
Tags: links
October 25th, 2006 at 2:35 am
[...] Viking landers may have found Martian life after all – space – 23 October 2006 – New Scientist Space “We just may find life to be a bit different from life on Earth,” says Schulze-Makuch. “But wouldn’t you expect that on another planet?” Thanks, Armchair Anarchist (http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/links-for-24-10-2006/) (tags: mars life space) [...]
October 30th, 2006 at 12:08 am
Just a note about the shuttle launch pictures listed above; I received an email from a NASA guy who informs me that those pictures are not from the ISS at all, but from a ‘chaser plane’ that tracks shuttle launches – which in hindsight makes sense. As the guy puts it:
I stand corrected. Still, beautiful images, though!