Looking For Exo - Civilizations

In this recent Daily Galaxy article I found a really novel approach for looking for life or more to the fact, thriving high tech civilizations on other planets.   In the past astronomers have looked for alien civilizations by listening for radio signals or looking for ultra-short laser pulses.   Now in the past it was not uncommon to listen in the communications bands as well hoping that we literally "listen in" for  extraterrestrial intelligence.  The problem in that approach is that like us it is not unreasonable to expect that many of these signals would be shielded or better focused and in cable for television and phone, therefor making such signals almost impossible to detect.

Now astronomers from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Princeton University have suggested a novel idea for detecting alien societies - urban lights.

It is a beautifully simple idea and it is played out every 90 minutes or so aboard the ISS.   It is a very striking sight to see the lights of the big cities glowing on the night side of Earth.   A truly vigorous society on another planet would almost certainly have bright cities at night.   No matter what wavelength these lifeforms would see in, artificial lighting is all but a given in a city environment.   The astronomers are of the mindset that the total change in light levels  from a planet with city lighting will vary in a way that is measurably different from a planet that has no artificial lights.

It really is a brilliant and brilliantly simple idea.  Read the complete Daily Galaxy blog article here.

First Video of Moon's Far Side

NASA's twin spacecraft GRAIL mission has sent back video from the "Ebb" half of the twin orbiter mission. This is Ebb's first video of the far side of the moon. The imagery was taken on Jan. 19 by the MoonKAM aboard the mission's "Ebb" spacecraft. Flow's MoonKAM is to be tested at a later date, yet to be announced.

As the article points out, the Grail mission is in part an educational mission. From the NASA article:

• Thousands of fourth - to eighth-grade students will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego. Photos of the target areas will be sent back by the satellites for students to study.

Mind Reading Computer Program

The Guardian list an article that very well could help people who may have lost the ability to speak as a result of a stroke or other medical conditions.

Scientists have had some success in decoding the brain activity caused by words that they hear.  Quite literally,  the mental "thoughts" that go along with hearing spoken words.

This tech is of course still very much in the early phase, but ultimately - from  the article -

•  the work paves the way for brain implants that could monitor a person's thoughts and speak words and sentences as they imagine them. 

Check out the video here

Antipodean Issue 164 Now Online

Issue 164 of the Australian flash fiction online site Antipodean is now up.  Here is a list of the stories.  It is a great issue, editor Ion has done a great job of amassing some really good fiction this month!   

Deviation By Andy Astruc & RJ Astruc

Orbital Fort Orbital Fire By Wes Parish

Everything Old Is New Again By Nicole Rendall

Revenge Inc. By Kevin J. Phyland

Love In A Time Of Entropy By Geordie McLeod

Long Exalt The Average Person By Shaun A Saunders

Thump By M L Sawyer

Teach Your Children Well By Edwina Harvey

The Gift By Mick Dawson

Father Dominic Is Overworked By Bart Meehan

How NASA Fixed Aries for Five Bucks

You know, sometimes it good to see that NASA can still pull the fat out of the fire when push comes to shove....(oh dear...mixed Metaphors!)

You have heard here that the Aries lifter had a flaw that to fix would cost hundreds of millions. This flaw was a vibration that built up as the solid boosters burned down. This vibration, when coupled to the control deck made it impossible for the astronauts to read the craft's digital read outs and therefor impossible to complete the tasks of getting the system to orbit. Plans to correct the flaw went to ridiculous springs to even more unusual redos. But in this Gizmodo article, NASA engineers think if not outside the capsule, at least outside the box. In the article, after measuring the oscillations of the solid boosters, engineers scrounged up simple accelerometers and associated circuitry costing a mere fraction of the projected booster re-engineering. The fix was not to stop the vibration, but to strobe the digital readouts in the cabin at the same frequency as the solid rocket boosters - saving untold millions!

It is kind of moot since the Aries has been delayed and shelved numerous times, but it does show that there is still a certain amount of inventiveness still going on in NASA. Check out the Gizmodo article here