by Mark Aragona

If two nearby stars collide, it’s possible that we won’t be around long enough to appreciate it.

Scientists are finding evidence that radiation from massive cosmic events, such as star collisions, may have caused massive extinction events on Earth. Researchers believe that the incredible levels of gamma radiation emitted by these events may do long term damage to the ozone layer. However, they’re also discovering that even sudden short bursts of radiation have caused widespread extinction in our prehistoric past.

First detected in the 1960s by the Vela satellites, gamma ray bursts are the brightest known stellar events in the universe. Gamma rays are also the most powerful forms of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum. There are two kinds: the long bursts, which are brighter, and the short-burst types which last less than a second but give off much higher amounts of radiation. Of the two, scientists say that the short-burst types prove to be a greater threat.

Short-burst types may be caused by the collision of cosmic bodies, like neutron stars or black holes. The gamma rays would radiate in a cone-shaped blast from the poles. If such a blast would occur nearby, that is, within our galaxy and pointing directly at the Earth, the results would be undeniably catastrophic.

Still, what are the chances of that happening? Currently, our satellites are detecting these bursts on average once a day. For a Milky Way-sized galaxy, they’re expected to occur once every 100,000-1M years, with only very few of them actually pointing straight at Earth. Since the Earth has been around for 4.5B years, it has been hit by quite a few of these gamma bursts, and they are likely to have caused several prehistoric species to become extinct. Based on fossil evidence, the Ordovician-Silurian extinction event, which happened 450 million years, was believed to have been caused by such a gamma ray burst that coincided with it.

As for the effects of such an event, consider the closest possible threats: the Wolf-Rayet stars, which may eventually turn supernova. Once they do and if Earth happens to be in the direct path of the gamma beams, it would deplete 25% of our ozone layer. This would then destroy several plant and animal species, disrupting food chains and causing mass starvation, not to mention exposure to radiation, which can kill outright or slowly through radiation poisoning.

It seems such events give more reason for humans to build space colonies within the next 100k years, so as to preserve the survival of our species.

by Mark Aragona

Can life evolve from non-carbon materials? At first glance this seems highly improbable, but as with many things recently science has been proving that thinking wrong.

A research team headed by Professor Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow claim to be taking the earliest steps towards creating life from inorganic materials, heralding a possible new field in science. They have shown that they are able to create cell-like structures from metal-containing molecules and make them perform functions normally found in living cells, essentially mimicking life. Professor Cronin calls them inorganic chemical cells, or iCHELLs.

Under a microscope, iCHELLs are built just like a living cell—they have membranes that divide up the internal structure but are permeable enough to allow the passage of materials and energy.

“I’m 100% postive we can get evolution working outside organic biology,”states Cronin. His team aims to program iCHELLs to have the full range of life-like properties, such as replication and evolution. Should he be successful, this can prove to have a wide range of medical benefits, such as internal sensors or contain chemical processes on a microscopic scale.

Does this mean that we may soon see man-made artificial life forms? Not in the near future, certainly. But scientists are also suggesting that inorganic life may already be existing somewhere else in the universe.

According the New Journal of Physics, scientists have found evidence of life-like structures in space dust. Under the right conditions (say, a plasma environment), space dust can actually form helix shaped structures that behave much like organic compounds found on our world. They can even divide to create copies of the original structure, as if propagating themselves. Moreover, these new structures can also interact among themselves, causing their partners to changes and even evolve into different structures. Finally, less stable structures can also break down, leaving the fittest to survive.

Sound familiar? All of this suggest that life can exist outside our well-known carbon-based nucleotides, sugars and amino acids. The next question will be, is this inorganic basis for life as suitable or conducive for creating intelligence?

by Mark Aragona

It’s not yet the level of KITT from the Knight Rider series, but it’s getting close.

Germany’s Free University has created a pilotless car that can drive from one destination to another, without having to rely on human control. There was a driver present in the test drive to take over in case of an emergency, but he wasn’t necessary except to comply with city regulations. The car itself maneuvered through Berlin traffic without any difficulty at all. The testers simply entered  instructions into the system before letting the car take over. Using an array of sensors and cameras, the car develops an electronic image of its surroundings, allowing it to navigate its way through the streets.

The benefits of this technology are tremendous: For one, it eliminates the need to have another driver pick you up. The car drives itself, essentially making you a passenger. Sharing a car becomes easier as the car may take its passengers to their separate locations before heading back home. Moreover, people with disabilities will have a chance to drive wherever they please.

Of course, this raises the question—are people ready for such a car? Considering that many drivers have a tendency to drive “their way”, many car owners will be reluctant, even hostile, towards anything that impinges on their autonomy as drivers. They will want to use their own judgment on when to overtake, change lanes, idle or park.

On the other hand, there’s the recent incident with Google’s own self-driving car, wherein an accident was caused not by the computer system but by the human driver himself! Unlike machines, humans can be distracted, fatigued, stressed or under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Not to mention they are not always inclined to follow traffic and safety rules as well as bad habits that involve speeding, tail-gaiting, freeway games, cutting, illegal parking, and so on. Having the machines take over may reduce the costs of traffic and even save lives.

Is there some middle ground in all this? Both the government and the car manufacturers need to hash out the gray areas that comes with this marketable new technology. Furthermore, they have to tackle the inevitable problem that will come up during accidents: will it be the fault of the car owner or the car manufacturer?

As of now, the cost of self-driving cars is still prohibitive, but several car companies forsee that a production model will be available for consumers in 2018. With General Motors, Volvo, Audi, Google and many other companies vying to produce the first mass-produced driverless car, it seems inevitable that driver autonomy will soon be taking a back seat.

by Mark Aragona

You don’t feel it, you don’t see it, but the universe is slowly growing colder and darker.

Using powerful Mopra radio telescopes, scientists in Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) have discovered that about a third of the molecular hydrogen that stars use as fuel has already been used up. By comparing light densities now to how they were 5 billion years ago, they have concluded that less stars are being born now than before. Apparently, the universe had reached its star-birthing peak after a few billion years and is now in the decline.

“We’ve seen a decline in the amount of stars being formed by more than a factor of 10, probably closer to 20 or even 30,” says Robert Braun, lead scientist of CSIRO. “It turns out that these galaxies actually had 10 times more gas with which to form the stars than they do today. We just aren’t seeing as much gas fall in to form the new stars.”

Braun’s team came to this conclusion by comparing older, more distant galaxies with the ones nearby. Galaxies burn interstellar gases they attract from the space in between them, but over time they tend to lose gas, particularly during events such as supernovae.

What’s more, the universe continues to rapidly expand due to the presence of dark energy, which has taken over the cosmos a few billion years back. Dark energy counteracts gravitational force and causes galaxies to accelerate away from each other, making it harder for them to find much needed molecular hydrogen to refuel their stars.

So what are the likely scenarios for an ever-dimming universe? It depends on whether the universe’s rate of expansion will remain as is or if it will accelerate.

Scientists say that the most likely event will be the Big Freeze, stated to happen if the universe maintains its rate of expansion. At around 10¹⁴ years after the Big Bang, no more stars will be born. For many more billions of years after that, all other existing stars will burn out, and even black holes dry up as the universe reaches the point of entropy. The universe will be nearly empty, save for electrons, positrons and dark matter.

Another possible scenario, described by a paper called “Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday,” depends on the kind of dark energy existing in the universe. If it happens to be phantom energy, where the sum of the energy pressure and density is negative, the universe will expand at an exponential rate until it reaches singularity, opposite that of the center of a black hole. Phantom energy’s expansion will be so great that it will tear apart everything in the universe. First galaxies will pull away from each other, then the Milky Way will dissipate, followed by our own solar system. In the last few moments, the rate of expansion will reach infinity, pulling apart atoms, nuclei, and subatomic particles. This scenario is aptly called the Big Rip.

It’s strange and humbling to think that something as vast as the universe still has a lifespan. Perhaps humans won’t be around to witness it, perhaps they will. Perhaps we will even find some way to endure even when the last star fizzles out, as in Asimov’s short story, “The Last Question.” Or maybe another version of the universe will come into being. We may never know, but we can always dream.

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by Mark Aragona

Cloning takes a turn for the bizarre when South Korean scientists breed Tegon, a female who beagle that glows in the dark. Born in 2009, Tegon was created by a research team in Seoul National University (SNU) through the same cloning technique they used to make the first cloned dog, Snuppy, back in 2005.

The research team reports that they can even turn Tegon’s peculiar ability on and off by adding drugs to her food. When Tegon ingests doxycycline antibiotic, she glows fluorescent green when held under ultra-violet light.

How is this an advancement for science, you ask? It’s not meant so that owners can find their dogs in the dark. Lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun explains that Tegon can potentially help in the search for treatments against deadly diseases.

“The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,” says Lee. He goes on to add that humans and dogs share 268 diseases. By using cloning techniques, they can better understand degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s by injecting the gene in a dog, then studying how to cure it.

Tegon did not come cheap, though: it took four years and about $3,000,000 to produce this superdog. And what medical benefits she can lend us have yet to be seen.

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by Mark Aragona

Dark marks on the surface of Mars that may indicate the presence of flowing water have scientists abuzz anew with the possibility of finding primitive life on the Red Planet.

A new search algorithm developed by University of Arizona student Lujendra Ojha has discovered subtle changes on the surface on the pictures taken by the Martian Reconnaissance Orbiter. Results show that long grooves appear in several areas during the spring and summer, then disappear when colder seasons set in. According to estimates, these lines are anywhere from 1.6 to 16 feet wide.

Scientists say that the best explanation so far for this observation is the existence salty water freezing and unfreezing over time, creating these grooves on the surface. No liquid water has ever been found on Mars, despite the ice found on the poles.

NASA officials speculate that the kind of life form that can evolve on such a world must be able to adapt to this kind of seasonal flow. ”If there are cold salty waters that never freeze, despite the cold frozen surrounding ground, then they simply remain active at all times, although at lower metabolic rates when the coldest temperatures occur. If the environment is one which it is liquid seasonally but pretty much freezes up solid at other times of the year, then that would have to be an organism that can go into a dormant state.”

Eyes are now turning to the 2016 ExoMars expedition which will go to the planet to search for trace gases and water. Scientists are hoping that forthcoming tests and space missions may shed more light on this phenomenon, and more importantly, provide definite answer to the age-old question of life on another world.

by Luke Forney

            I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

—John F. Kennedy

On Thursday, July 21, 2011, the space shuttle Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center, officially bringing NASA’s manned space shuttle program to a close.

NASA, formed in 1958 (as NACA: National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) to compete with the Soviet Union’s Sputnik series of satellites, began its ascent to greatness most prominently with the Mercury missions, the first to put Americans in space, launching greats such as Alan Shepard and John Glenn.  Gemini pushed the American space program forward, working to prepare for NASA’s eventual trip to the moon.  After the success of this program, begun with Gemini 3, NASA hit its pinnacle with the Apollo missions.

The first manned mission in this new program was Apollo 7.  Yet, it was with Apollo 1 that the true cost of man’s quest for the moon was brought home.  Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee were participating in a test in the command module when a fire started.  All three astronauts died in fire, in what turned out to be a series of lethal design flaws in the original command module build.  Apollo 1 never flew, while Apollo 2 through  Apollo 6 were unmanned.  Finally, in October 1968, Apollo 7, featuring Apollo 1’s backup crew, put man back into space.  The success of Apollo 7, despite the crew conflicts that led to all three astronauts never going to space again, reignited confidence in manned missions after the Apollo 1 tragedy, and paved the way for lunar landing.

John F. Kennedy’s call for men on the moon was a path continued under Richard M. Nixon, who was President when, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to stand on the moon.  It took four days for Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to leave Earth, travel to the moon, and land.  Four days for one of humanity’s greatest achievements.  Human’s had left Earth, landed on another celestial body, and would return safely.  Mankind could finally, after millennia of existence, reach the stars they had looked up at for so long.

If only it had lasted.

Apollo missions continued, taking more people to the moon.  In the mid-‘70s, NASA sent up Skylab, which hosted three crews, before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and crashing down in 1979.  During Skylab’s time in the sky, the United States and Russia teamed up for the first time on a space mission, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which ended the Apollo missions.

NASA decided to focus its efforts on its space shuttle program, and in 1981 launched the first shuttle, Columbia.  Only five years later, in 1986, space shuttle Challenger disintegrated less than a minute and a half into its flight, killing all seven people aboard, including Christa McAuliffe, a high school social studies teacher participating in the Teachers in Space Project.  Only in 2007, 21 years after the Challenger disaster, Barbara Morgan, McAuliffe’s backup, become the first “teacher in space.”

After nearly three years without a space shuttle mission following the Challenger, NASA resumed the shuttle project.  However, national interest had begun to decline following the end of the Apollo missions and the Challenger disaster, and most of the missions received little fanfare as NASA headed into the ‘90s.

1998 saw NASA’s next big project.  Teaming with the Russian space program, NASA began work on the International Space Station, a project that, over a decade later, is nearing completion.  A center for scientific experimentation, the ISS is a crowning achievement for the cooperation of mankind in its efforts for studying and exploring space.  However, the dwindling interest in NASA’s space shuttle program continued, only getting a burst of media buzz in 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed during re-entry, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

Eight years later, space shuttle Atlantis lands, and ends the space shuttle program, along with any NASA-based manned space flights.  The final flight didn’t even break into the major news stories of the day, and NASA’s space shuttle missions truly went out with a whimper, if even that.

As science fiction fans, space exploration is a fantasy turned reality, and manned space flight was that fantasy at its greatest.  Man’s thrust into space is something that can transcend national borders, and unite all of humanity together behind a common goal and a common purpose.  With the termination of manned space flight through NASA, many of these dreams for the future have been stunted and cut off.  Perhaps, with continued unmanned space flight, mostly outsourced, and with the beginnings of commercial space flight, as well as growing space programs in other countries, manned exploration of space won’t take too large of a hit, but one can’t help but feel that, with this chapter of closing in the annals of NASA, the group that put man on the moon for the first time, some vital will be missing.

As the plaque on Apollo 11’s lunar module states, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 A.D.  We came in peace for all mankind.”

In honor of the 28 astronauts who were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, 17 of which were presented posthumously: Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Alan Shepard, John Young, Thomas P. Stafford, Jim Lovell, Shannon Lucid, Roger Chaffee, Edward White, William Shepard, Rick D. Husband, Willie McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel B. Clark, Ilan Ramon, Dick Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, and Robert Crippen.  And to all those worldwide who died to send humanity to the stars.

by Mark Aragona

It seems that the human mind doesn’t want to work harder than it has to. Studies are showing that our easy access to search engines is affecting our ability to recall information: we are less likely to remember something if we know we can find it online.

Researchers from the University of Columbia, Harvard, and University of Wisconsin conducted psychology experiments on a group of participants to test how memory works. In one trial, they found that volunteers are more likely to remember trivia if they thought they would not be able to research it online later on. Researchers concluded that they “don’t make the effort to remember” if they knew they could look up the information.

A second memory experiment also showed that participants are more likely to remember where important data is stored in a computer than what that information is. “That kind of blew my mind,” says lead author Dr. Betsy Sparrow.

According to Sparrow, the Internet functions as a “trans-active memory” which people have come to depend on to store information for them. Trans-active memory is nothing new—we’ve been doing the same thing for centuries through books and other people. Scholars and experts, for example, have been entrusted with and are expected to retain certain specialized data. In more social terms, we rely on our own spouse or partner to remember important dates and events for us. We leverage other people’s memories for our own benefit.

The Internet is a game-changer because it provides a vast amount of information within easy reach.

On one hand, storing information digitally may just be a good way to ensure it can be accurately recollected later on. After all, we have a tendency to forget, be selective about, or even subconsciously alter our memories according to our convenience.

On the other hand, it does tend to make us lazy. Would that mean that general education is less valuable, because most of what we want to know is just a Google search away? And with the advent of Intenet Protocol version 6 and mass storage, the web will have a seemingly bottomless capacity for keeping the information it receives on a daily basis. How will all that affect our ability to remember? Will long-term memory eventually decline as online technology grows?

Morever, if the Internet can affect our memory, what about other thought processes, say analysis or critical thinking? What about social intelligence? Or even just the ability to form a personal opinion? If we continually rely on the Internet to remember for us, will we eventually come to rely on it to tell us what to think?

Or, opening a can of worms in hopes of starting a comment war…

Here’s our latest science fiction poll, and our first science fiction concepts question. We think this is a great question and we hope it generates lots of feedback, so please jump into the discussion.

Are you a hard science fiction traditionalist, or a soft science fiction fan that follows those ‘other’ traditions. As you read this, keep in mind that any answer you give is deemed to be inclusive of the two options above it. In other words, if you’re a Type 3, you are also presumed to accept 1 and 2. If you’re a Type 2, then no 3 or 4 applies to your view of what it is to be a “science fiction” story.

And… fight!

Thank you for taking the poll! If you think our categories need help or if you think we totally missed the boat, tell us. We care.

Cheers — Michael (unapologetic Type 3)

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By Mark Aragona

It seems that we don’t have to wander outside of our solar system to find planets that could possibly sustain life. A tiny Saturn moon may just be the place for it. The Cassini-Huygens mission has found that Enceladus, much like Jupiter’s Europa, may have an oceanic layer underneath its surface of ice.

Enceladus is a wonder in itself: a frozen white world, 0.0395 the size of Earth. The moon is the most reflective body in our solar system, reflecting more than 90% of the sunlight that reaches it and leaving the moon with a temperature of -330 degrees Fahrenheit (-201 degrees Celsius). Geysers on its surface shoot out ice particles in great white plumes that feed Saturn’s E ring. Scientists used this very phenomenon to find out what lies underneath the moon’s icy exterior.

In 2008, the Cassini spacecraft dove through Enceladus’s plume trail and found that it was made up of icy water. The real find came when they took a close look at the particles nearer the surface and found salt. In fact, 99% of the solids found in the plume were salt-rich material that resembled the kind found in our own seas. It’s likely that somewhere underneath all that ice, Enceladus has its very own ocean.

There’s more: the spaceship’s instruments have detected negatively charged ions in Enceladus’s icy plume. Professor Andrew Coates of the Cassini mission said: “While it’s no surprise that there is water there, these short-lived ions are extra evidence for sub-surface water, and where there’s water, carbon, and energy, some of the major ingredients for life are present.”

That means that Enceladus is one of three places in our solar system that so far have been found to have negatively-charged ions—the other two are Titan and Earth itself. Here on our own planet, negatively-charged ions are present where there is liquid water in motion, such as streams, waterfalls, and yes, oceans.

The two flybys of the Cassini spacecraft have also shown that Enceladus has an atmosphere. Because the moon is so small that it cannot hold that atmosphere down, scientists speculate that the geysers and ice volcanoes are continuously feeding gas to the surface.

NASA scientists have declared at an Encedalus Focus Group Conference that the Saturn moon “is emerging as the most habitable spot beyond Earth in the solar system for life as we know it.” Meanwhile, the Cassini mission is preparing for another close encounter with this enigmatic world. Here’s hoping that even if they don’t find life, they may at least guarantee a place for it.