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.

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The legendary Asimov is well-known for writing books by the hundreds, each brimming with ideas. More often than not, though, character takes a back seat to the hard science fiction topics, particularly in his “Foundation” and “Robot” series. But “Robot Dreams,” one of his short story collections, shows another side of Asimov. Yes, it’s filled with his brilliant ideas, but there’s also room for character and feeling.

There’s plenty to like in this anthology. Despite its title it’s not all about robots: you’ll find several stories about computers, mathematics, time travel and such. It also has many of the Asimov greats in it, such as two of his favorite stories, “The Last Question,” about how humanity copes with the end of the universe, and “The Ugly Little Boy,” a story about motherhood and time travel. It also contains “The Last Answer,” which is a great partner to “The Last Question” as both discuss Man’s relationship with eternity a higher power. The book is still slanted towards hard sci-fi, but there is also the breathtakingly emotional piece, “Eyes Do More Than See”, which focuses on who will remember humanity eons after we’re all dead and gone.

As for the flagship story, Asimov specifically wrote the short story “Robot Dreams” for this compilation. It features Dr. Susan Calvin from his previous robot stories, but centers mostly on Elvex, an android developed with a brain that was capable of mimicking human brain waves. Because of this, Elvex could dream. Unfortunately, his subconscious thoughts did not necessarily bode well for humanity, and Dr. Calvin must decide the fate of the only second sentient life form to evolve on this planet.

“Robot Dreams” reminds us that a master storyteller like Asimov is not just good in the realm of ideas but also in stirring emotion. By nature, short stories only have enough space for one specific idea, one distilled emotion, and Asimov carefully constructs the ones in his anthology to call to hearts as well as minds. He also criticizes human weakness, our pride, our mistrust of people not of our race, our deep seated fear of being subverted by our own creations. His theme seems to be that humanity can only be saved by the things that make him human— caring, empathy, belief in our own physical and mental capabilities, rather than relying on machines.

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

I have mixed feelings about “The Snow Queen”. On one hand, it offers a mélange of fantastic science fiction ideas. On the other hand, the love story holds very few surprises especially if you’ve read the original Hans Christian Anderson fairytale that Joan D. Vinge based her novel on.

Vinge sets her tale in a carefully crafted universe. The planet Tiamat is located on a binary star system circling a massive black hole, which serves as a portal to other planets in the Galactic Hegemony. Tiamat follows a unique cultural cycle: every 150 years, the planet is close enough to the black hole to facilitate interstellar travel and trade. During this point, the technologically-inclined Winter folk hold sway over the planet and the Snow Queen rules over all. After this period, the Tiamat moves away from the gate and the planet is isolated for 150 years. A sea change also occurs: the former queen is deposed and the tradition-based Summer people become prevalent, led by their own Summer Queen.

And so it was for several centuries, until the latest Snow Queen, Arienrhod, devises a master plan: in order to prevent Tiamat from backsliding into obscurity, she covertly implants several Summer women with her own clones in embryonic stage, hoping to create her own successor when the Summers come to rule.

Only one clone, Moon, grows into adulthood. She and her lover Sparks both vow to become sibyls, an order of mystics that seem to have access a vast store of information. Unfortunately, only Moon passes the test, and an embittered Sparks leaves her for the capital city of Carbuncle. There, drawn by the Snow Queen’s resemblance to his beloved Moon, he winds up in Arienrhod’s company and eventually her bed.

In an attempt to get him back, Moon follows him to Carbuncle, but circumstances force her to leave the planet and she winds up on the other side of the interstellar wormhole. The rest of the story deals with her desperate attempt to return to Tiamat, rescue her lover, and confront both her clone and her own destiny.

Throughout all this, Vinge fills her tapestry with various imaginative ideas. Subplots include the mers, sentient sea-dwellers that the Winters are hunting to extinction for their life-prolonging blood. Intricately linked with the mers are the sibyls, whose particular power is like the intergalactic version of Google: asked a question, they will go into a trance and telepathically access some vast storage of information and answer accurately. For good measure, there’s an intergalactic conspiracy that aims to preserve the status quo in Tiamat and continue the mer hunt.

The most fascinating character in the story is the titular Snow Queen herself, Arianrhod. A ruthless, manipulative, seemingly jaded queen, she finds it in herself to care about Sparks. Knowing that she must eventually be deposed, she fights her fate and the endless back-forth step of her planet’s history by cloning herself in hopes that her successor would have the spirit to preserve their people’s technological progress. Someone should have told her cloning doesn’t work that way.

The story is fast-paced and eventful, but also frustrating. One problem I had was how casual the main characters seem to be with their relationships. A love story doesn’t work very well when the lovers themselves are not adverse to changing bed-mates. Also, the Snow Queen herself is supposed to be the most interesting character, but she isn’t given much to do, and it’s left to Moon to push the plot forward. Since most readers already know how the general story will turn out, there’s not a lot to push, leaving “The Snow Queen” to be an interesting but unmemorable diversion.

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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.

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It’s the 1960s. You are the lone survivor of a plane crash, stranded in a mysterious tower in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Inside you find a bathysphere that takes you several fathoms into the deep, and the voice of eccentric tycoon Andrew Ryan intones that you are approaching the city of Rapture, “where the artist would not fear the censor…where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality…where the great would not be constrained by the small.”

He promises you a utopia in Rapture, yet you enter to find a city gone to hell, besieged by maddened mutants called Splicers and watched at every corner by security cameras and machine gun-wielding robots. Welcome to the world of Bioshock.

Bioshock has been dubbed the spiritual successor of System Shock, a series of games that incorporate the first-person shooter and role-playing game genres. The System Shock games are classics in themselves and are certainly a tough act to follow, but Bioshock more than matches up by doing what video games are supposed to do and doing it well: by immersing you in its environment and making you feel a whole spectrum of emotions—horror, relief, anger, fear, and yes, even pity.

It does all this by creating a world so amazing you can’t help but stop and stare. Even in tatters, the underwater city of Rapture is a joy to behold. The city is designed in art deco style to evoke the 60s, and music from the Ink Spots and other classic singers filled the air with the sense of nostalgia for more innocent times. The city leaks and groans and flashes and screams. You could roam freely for hours, living off vendo machines and scavenging weapons and first aid kits while fighting off wave after wave of Splicers and other monstrosities.

Fans of Ayn Rand and her classic novel Atlas Shrugged will find a treasure trove of references. Though director Kevin Levine didn’t say so, the game is at least partially inspired and very much informed by Atlas Shrugged, to the point that it critiques it.

In Rand’s novel, all the inventors and geniuses and creators of the world go on strike and leave the world to its own devices. Her philosophy, Objectivism, stipulates that progress will only occur when man is allowed to pursue his own self-interest and profit from his own work without interference from the rest. Rand points out that society is full of parasites that thrive on the work of a few great minds, and that these precious few go unheeded, underpaid, unsung, bearing the weight of an ungrateful world on their shoulders. By secluding themselves and creating their own laissez-faire society, they uphold the greatness of the individual and reject the tyranny of the many.

Bioshock not only takes that premise and runs with it at breakneck speeds, it follows it to its inevitable crash. Andrew Ryan (the name itself’s a dead give-away) creates an underwater city free from the shackles of any government or religion and where only science and industry reign supreme. Rapture’s citizens live with every comfort imaginable. The city is powered by geothermal energy from underwater volcanoes. The discovery of a new species of sea slug allows them to create a substance called ADAM, which alters their DNA and allows them to perform fantastic feats.

But Rapture also proves that wherever there’s an ounce of power to be had, there will always be people fighting to claim it. The city soons stratifies into the haves and have-nots. War breaks out between the elitist Ryan and the working-class figurehead known as Atlas. When ADAM runs in short supply, severe withdrawal turns the citizens into murderous lunatics. Amoral scientists start turning orphan girls into “Little Sisters,” genetically-altered beings that collect and recycle used ADAM from the recently dead. They also create “Big Daddies,” hulking beasts in armored diving suits that accompany the Little Sisters in their grisly task. Soon Ryan’s utopia becomes a city of ghouls and corpses.

Somewhere in all this chaos, you must fight your way to Andrew Ryan and stop him. To survive, you must enhance your abilities by injecting ADAM into your system, giving you incredible abilities like telekinesis, cryokinesis, pyrokineses, and much more. But the game’s philosophy extends to you as well: at some point you may either harvest Little Sisters for their rich store of precious ADAM, or rescue them by turning them back into humans, which while compassionate provides you significantly less ADAM. Which will it be? Will you pursue your own self-interest without regard for anyone else, or give way to sentiment and help the weak at long-term cost to yourself?

Bioshock is a clever, engaging, fascinating game, and is already being claimed as proof that the medium can be an art form. As a visceral example of biopunk and steampunk, it’s also a fantastic experience for any science fiction fan. Most of all, it’s a parable for the modern age and a response to Objectivism. Greed and madness are endemic to Man’s nature, and even a society composed of and controled by the “Great” will hardly fare better than any other.

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?