Lifeboat Foundation

As we all know, Venus’s atmosphere & temperature makes it too hostile for colonization: 450°C temperatures and an average surface pressure almost 100 times that of Earth. Both problems are due to the size of its atmosphere — massive — and 95% of which is CO₂.

The general consensus is that Venus was more like that of the Earth several billion years ago, with liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface water and subsequent rise of greenhouse gases.

It poses not just a harsh warning of the prospects of global warming on Earth, but also a case study for how to counter such effects — reversing the runaway greenhouse effect.

I have wondered if anyone has given serious thought to chemical processes which could be set in motion on Venus to extract the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The most common gas in the Universe is of course hydrogen, and if sufficient quantities could be introduced to the Venusian atmosphere, with the appropriate catalysts, could the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere be eventually reversed back into solid carbon compounds, water vapor and oxygen? The effect of this would of course not only bring down the temperature, but return the surface pressure, with 95% of its atmosphere removed, to one more similar to that of Earth. Perhaps in adding other aerosols the temperatures could be reduced further and avoid a re-runaway effect.

I’d like to hear others thoughts on this. It would be a long term project — but would perhaps make our closest planet our most habitable one in the future — one we could turn into a habitat that would be very accessible, with ample oxygen, water and mineral resources… The study of such a process would also greatly benefit Earth in the event that theorized runaway greenhouse effects start to occur on our own planet, the strategies learned could save it. Other issues to address regarding Venus: lack of magnetic field and  its slow rotation would have to be considered, though hardly off-putting, and 150ppm sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere would need to be cleansed — surely not insurmountable.

Global warming is bad. But just how bad could it be, worst case? Could it make the Earth hotter than a self-cleaning oven, like it did Venus? Venus is even hotter than Mercury even though Mercury is closer to the sun, because of Venus’s greenhouse effect. But there seems little reason to fear such a runaway greenhouse effect on Earth. Aside from the fact that it has never happened here before, the Earth may simply not have enough solar energy and greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide and methane) to start the runaway positive feedback process that happened on Venus. Some day that may change, however — the sun is getting hotter as it grows older, and greenhouse gases, perhaps exotic and powerful ones, could potentially be manufactured and released by hostile invading extraterrestrials, robots, or apocalypse-minded humans. But let’s ignore this scenario as unlikely for now (so that we could claim to be optimists, if not for the following paragraphs). Is there any other apocalyptic global warming scenario still to worry about? Something that is not only known to be theoretically possible, but has actually happened? Say, a stinking poison that contaminates the atmosphere and waters of the entire Earth, not only wrinkling noses worldwide but killing off almost all living things? Welcome to the gray, dead plains (often warm and balmy), oxygen-starved waters, green skies and repellent smell of hydrogen sulfide poisoned Earth.

Hydrogen sulfide, H2S, is a gas. Chemically similar to H2O (water) but with a sulfur atom in place of water’s oxygen, it is not a necessity of life like water, but very poisonous. Much less than 1 part per million (ppm) in the air is detectable as an odor like rotten eggs. 10 ppm is a typical occupational exposure limit. 1 part in 1000 in air can cause rapid death. As a young man I kept several 1-gallon milk jugs of green algae-containing water, which I fertilized with vegetable peels and such. It worked great, but there was one slight problem: some vegetables contain substantial amounts of sulfur, which can lead to H2S dissolved in the water especially in the muck at the bottom. I finally dumped all the algae water down the toilet rather than move it to another apartment (a decision with which you are welcome to disagree). Some were smellier than others, and I ended up with a modest case of hydrogen sulfide poisoning. Main symptom: a mental “slide show” of colorful crystalline images, presumably the result of H2S-caused inhibition of cellular respiration in the brain. Like humans, most animals and plants are poisoned by H2S.

How might H2S come to poison the Earth? Like it did in the past. The dinosaurs are thought to have perished in a mass extinction event triggered by an small asteroid, several miles in diameter, crashing into the ground near the town of Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, 65 million years ago (mya). But the worst extinction event of all time is believed by many to have been caused by H2S. This was the much earlier Permian-Triassic (or P-Tr) extinction event of 251.4 mya — about 20 million years before any dinosaur was even a gleam in its mother’s eye. The vast majority of plant and animal species then in existence went extinct, both in the sea and on land. The P-Tr event is often called the “Great Dying.” A similar process could play out in humanity’s future, potentially ending it. Here is how.

The causal process begins with global warming. While massive volcanism in Siberia is thought to have triggered global warming by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere back then, human burning of fossil fuel is doing it now. This warming is melting sea ice which darkens the ocean surface, causing more sunlight to be absorbed and worsening the warming trend. As the oceans warm, methane hydrate crystals deep underwater will warm too, which may cause methane to be released into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide, except many times more powerful. Such a release of methane from the ocean floor is a likely though still controversial cause of the global temperature spike called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum of 55.8 mya, during which average global temperatures soared over 10°F.

Heating of the Earth’s surface causes the top layer of the polar oceans to warm disproportionately. Normally, cold air in the polar regions chills and oxygenates the surface waters, and salinates them by evaporating some water and leaving the salt, which makes the remaining water saltier. The cold and extra salt makes these waters denser, so that they sink and flow along the bottom, causing a planet-wide current of oxygen-rich water called the thermohaline circulation that connects the bottoms of the oceans. Global warming affects the polar regions the most, and warmer temperatures there can slow and potentially even halt the thermohaline circulation, thereby slowing or stopping oxygen from getting to the ocean depths.

Back in the Great Dying, it is hypothesized that after the thermohaline circulation stopped, the oxygen in the deep ocean waters was used up by the organisms that live down there. But some microbes don’t need oxygen gas dissolved in the water. Bad news — they get their oxygen instead from oxygen-containing sulfur compounds, and release the villain…hydrogen sulfide (just as they did at the bottoms of those algae water-containing plastic milk jugs). But it gets worse. The hydrogen sulfide slowly accumulated in the ocean waters, poisoning many of the remaining oxygen-breathing organisms. That explains why the extinction event was so devastating to marine life. Things went from awful to even worse. So much hydrogen sulfide accumulated that it started leaking from the water into the atmosphere. Because such a low concentration of hydrogen sulfide is needed to create a bad stink, if this happens during the human era the first blatantly obvious sign will be the smell of rotten eggs. It will be everywhere. Though unpleasant, it is not harmful until the concentration grows. As it accumulates in the atmosphere though, the smell will go from bad to worse, and eventually the increasing amount of H2S will start poisoning land life. And the sky will turn green. That can explain the devastation to land life during the Great Dying. And maybe it could happen again.

Recommendations

No need to buy a gas mask just yet. Thing won’t start getting really bad during our lifetimes. But this could be an existential risk to our species. Thus, scientific study is important. A serious risk is that things we do in our lifetimes may be the trigger for an extinction event later. It should be obvious that it would be the height of irresponsibility to let that happen. Yet there will always be forces of irresponsibility. One may hope that those forces fail to win or their victory may be a Pyrrhic one indeed.

Reference

There is a lot of both popular and scientific literature on this topic. A well-known full length work that bridges the gap between those literatures is P. D. Ward, Under a Green Sky, HarperCollins, 2007.

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Nature News reports of a growing concern over different standards for DNA screening and biosecurity:

“A standards war is brewing in the gene-synthesis industry. At stake is the way that the industry screens orders for hazardous toxins and genes, such as pieces of deadly viruses and bacteria. Two competing groups of companies are now proposing different sets of screening standards, and the results could be crucial for global biosecurity.

“If you have a company that persists with a lower standard, you can drag the industry down to a lower level,” says lawyer Stephen Maurer of the University of California, Berkeley, who is studying how the industry is developing responsible practices. “Now we have a standards war that is a race to the bottom.”

For more than a year a European consortium of companies called the International Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB) based in Heidelberg, Germany, has been drawing up a code of conduct that includes gene-screening standards. Then, at a meeting in San Francisco last month, two of the leading companies — DNA2.0 of Menlo Park, California, and Geneart of Regensburg, Germany — announced that they had formulated a code of conduct that differs in one key respect from the IASB recommendations.”

Read the entire article on Nature News.

Also read “Craig Venter’s Team Reports Key Advance in Synthetic Biology” from JCVI.

About

It has long been known that certain psychoactive chemicals, found in such plants as the peyote cactus and diviner’s sage, enhance access to other planes of awareness. (Hence the old saw, “Reality is for people who can’t handle drugs.” Needless to say this comes with risks as well.) More recently, pills have revolutionized brain function among the mentally ill, beginning with the discovery of chlorpromazine in 1950.

Now, drugs that enhance mental functioning in healthy people are becoming known and — increasingly — used. We are in the midst of a series of discoveries that will progressively enhance mental abilities. Alpha-CaM kinase II causes remembering a bad memory to erase it, at least in mice. Credible evidence exists for other biomolecular approaches to cognitive enhancement, some listed in the table.

Table. Some cognitive enhancers. Not intended as a sole source of information.

But why bother with pills if you could be more targeted, specific, and fast another way? Direct electrical stimulation of the brain. A “brain pacemaker,” if you will. Things have come a long way from the circa-1900 book that suggested applying battery power near the eyes to see “colors” as an interesting electrical “experiment” for the amateur scientist. It is also several decades from the 1930’s, when shock therapy was invented (it is still used for treating depression). But remember we want targeted. Sean Miller’s Feb. 2007 surgery involved inserting electrodes directly into his brain. The ultimate result was relief from years of severe depressive disease. By 2009, tens of thousands of people had been treated for another disease, Parkinson’s, using electrodes in their brains. It had also been shown useful in treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). There is no reason this technology has to stop at treating disease. Like psychoactive medicine, it could potentially enhance function in healthy individuals as well. Finding the exact location in the brain to stimulate to, say, motivate yourself for an hour, feel more romantic, or remember where you put the darn cell phone last is important. Who knows what would happen if you accidentally stimulated the wrong place? Luckily progress in brain scanning technology is improving exponentially: resolution is doubling about every three years; speed (important for capturing transient brain activity) is doubling about every two. At that rate we’ll know a lot more about where the brain does what a couple of years from now (where “now” is any time point you like).

Still, no matter how accurate, there will always be curmudgeons like me who balk at jabbing wires through their skulls. That’s why the third generation of brain stimulation techniques holds such interest (first generation — pills, second — electrodes, third — noninvasive neurostimulation). One of these methods is transcranial electromagnetic stimulation, or TMS. First approved for fighting depression, the physics is pretty basic. An electromagnet is positioned to direct magnetic lines of force through the area of the brain that is to be affected. The magnet is activated with alternating current, or AC (ordinary household AC changes direction twice per cycle at 60 cycles/second in many countries, for example). Changing current causes the magnetism to change correspondingly, which in turn causes changing electrical fields in the affected brain tissue, which changes the electrical activity of neurons in that area. Another method uses ultrasound, or sound waves above the audible range of frequencies. The nanomechanical effects of these sound waves on neuron membrane ion channels can, it seems, cause neural firing.

In the longer term future, people want their kids to be smarter. Kids will benefit. Even small changes in IQ appear to cause significant increases in earning power — roughly $15,000 per IQ point in the US in 2000 dollars. Worldwide, “Iodine deficiency… can significantly lower the IQ of whole populations.” and can be alleviated by iodizing table salt in affected countries at extremely low cost. Education is the classical approach to increasing intelligence, of course, but it’s hard work and shortcuts are therefore of interest. Playing classical music to junior while she’s still in the womb may be fun for mom, but as an intelligence enhancer for the upcoming little one, its usefulness is still speculative. However, taking choline dietary supplements during pregnancy makes for smarter offspring in rats (so why not in people?). Choline is a nutrient found in egg yolks, lecithin, and other sources. When women who are pregnant or lactating take cod liver oil supplements, their children are smarter at 4 years of age, which is good, but any effect is no longer clear by age 7 — not so good.

Very long term, controlling the genes of our children to increase their intelligence will become more feasible. Technologies include genetically modifying sperm and egg cells, generating multiple embryos in the lab and implanting only the desired one in the womb, and abortion based on analysis of embryonic DNA such as from amniocentesis. Some people will not do this, of course, but others will; some countries and religions will forbid it, but others won’t. Success will depend on identifying which genes help control intelligence. As of this writing, no single gene is known to have a great effect, but a number appear to have small effects and others have yet to be discovered. Many genes with small effects may add up to a large effect. Thus, in several years when enough people have had their genomes sequenced, it will become feasible for biostatisticians to determine the influence on intelligence of every normal variation of each of our 20,000-odd genes. At that point overbabies, designed for their mental abilities, will be in sight.

What you can do

First, be careful. The risks of abuse, unanticipated side effects, and long-term, delayed effects should be a concern. Civilization as we know it could be at risk if the wrong mind modifiers are widely applied and turn out to have delayed, unanticipated, and dangerous side effects. Even honey water, over a long period, might increase chance of diabetes through repeated blood sugar spiking. Yet the competitive disadvantage of non-use could also be a problem in some circumstances. Supporting anti-doping efforts could help solve that problem. Although we are discussing becoming smarter, the term anti-“doping” exists for a reason! Finally, be careful.

Notes

“Alpha-CaM kinase II…”: L. Gravitz, Selectively deleting memories, Technology Review, Oct. 22, 2008, discussing the work of neurologist Joseph Z. Tsien. Http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21593/.

“Another method uses ultrasound…”: W. J. Tyler, Y. Tufail, M. Finsterwald, M. L. Tauchmann, E. J. Olson, and C. Majestic, Remote excitation of neuronal circuits using low-intensity, low-frequency ultrasound, PLoS One, Oct. 29, 2008, vol. 3, no. 10, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003511.

Table: entries caffeine through methylphenidate are reviewed and additional references provided in A. Sandberg and N. Bostrom, Converging cognitive enhancements, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2006, vol. 1093, pp. 201 – 227, http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/converging.pdf. For piracetam and Hydergine, start with a Web search. For donezepil, see M. S. Mumenthaler, et al., Psychoactive drugs and pilot performance: a comparison of nicotine, donepezil, and alcohol effects, Neuropsychopharmacology, Jul. 2003, vol. 28, no. 7, pp. 1366 – 1373, http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v28/n7/full/1300202a.html.

“But why bother with pill…”: J. Graham, Deep brain stimulation offers hope to people with treatment-resistant illnesses, Sept. 12, 2008, Physorg.com, www.physorg.com/news140412075.html.

“Luckily progress in brain scanning technology is improving exponentially…”: R. Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, Penguin Books, 2005, pp. 159 – 160.

“…roughly $15,000 per IQ point”: S. D. Grosse et al., Economic gains resulting from the reduction in children’s exposure to lead in the United States, Environmental Health Perspectives, 2002 June; vol. 110, no. 6, pp. 563 – 569 (see Table 2), http://www.ehponline.org/members/2002/110p563-569grosse/grosse-full.html.

“Worldwide, ‘Iodine deficiency…”: The scope of the problem, Micronutrient Initiative, http://www.micronutrient.org/english/view.asp?x=578. See also N. D. Kristof, Raising the world’s IQ, The New York Times, Dec. 4, 2008, New York edition p. A43, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opinion/04kristof.html.

“However, taking choline…”: Sandberg and Bostrom, pp. 207, 223.

“…take cod liver oil…”: I. B. Helland et al., Effect of supplementing pregnant and lactating mothers with n-3 very-long-chain fatty acids on children’s IQ and body mass index at 7 years of age, Pediatrics, 2008 Aug., vol. 122, no. 2, pp. e472-e479, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/122/2/e472.

November 14, 2008
Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/eventinfo/ieet20081114/

Organized by: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology and the Lifeboat Foundation

A day-long seminar on threats to the future of humanity, natural and man-made, and the pro-active steps we can take to reduce these risks and build a more resilient civilization. Seminar participants are strongly encouraged to pre-order and review the Global Catastrophic Risks volume edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic, and contributed to by some of the faculty for this seminar.

This seminar will precede the futurist mega-gathering Convergence 08, November 15 – 16 at the same venue, which is co-sponsored by the IEET, Humanity Plus (World Transhumanist Association), the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Immortality Institute, the Foresight Institute, the Long Now Foundation, the Methuselah Foundation, the Millenium Project, Reason Foundation and the Accelerating Studies Foundation.

SEMINAR FACULTY

• Nick Bostrom Ph.D., Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University
• Jamais Cascio, research affiliate, Institute for the Future
• James J. Hughes Ph.D., Exec. Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
• Mike Treder, Executive Director, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
• Eliezer Yudkowsky, Research Associate. Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
• William Potter Ph.D., Director, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies

REGISTRATION:
Before Nov 1: $100
After Nov 1 and at the door: $150

Cross posted from Nextbigfuture

Click for larger image

I had previously looked at making two large concrete or nanomaterial monolithic or geodesic domes over cities which could protect a city from nuclear bombs.

Now Alexander Bolonkin has come up with a cheaper, technological easy and more practical approach with thin film inflatable domes. It not only would provide protection form nuclear devices it could be used to place high communication devices, windmill power and a lot of other money generating uses. The film mass covered of 1 km**2 of ground area is M1 = 2×10**6 mc = 600 tons/km**2 and film cost is $60,000/km**2.
The area of big city diameter 20 km is 314 km**2. Area of semi-spherical dome is 628 km2. The cost of Dome cover is 62.8 millions $US. We can take less the overpressure (p = 0.001atm) and decrease the cover cost in 5 – 7 times. The total cost of installation is about 30 – 90 million $US. Not only is it only about $153 million to protect a city it is cheaper than a geosynchronous satellite for high speed communications. Alexander Bolonkin’s website

The author suggests a cheap closed AB-Dome which protects the densely populated cities from nuclear, chemical, biological weapon (bombs) delivered by warheads, strategic missiles, rockets, and various incarnations of aviation technology. The offered AB-Dome is also very useful in peacetime because it shields a city from exterior weather and creates a fine climate within the ABDome. The hemispherical AB-Dome is the inflatable, thin transparent film, located at altitude up to as much as 15 km, which converts the city into a closed-loop system. The film may be armored the stones which destroy the rockets and nuclear warhead. AB-Dome protects the city in case the World nuclear war and total poisoning the Earth’s atmosphere by radioactive fallout (gases and dust). Construction of the AB-Dome is easy; the enclosure’s film is spread upon the ground, the air pump is turned on, and the cover rises to its planned altitude and supported by a small air overpressure. The offered method is cheaper by thousand times than protection of city by current antirocket systems. The AB-Dome may be also used (height up to 15 and more kilometers) for TV, communication, telescope, long distance location, tourism, high placed windmills (energy), illumination and entertainments. The author developed theory of AB-Dome, made estimation, computation and computed a typical project.

His idea is a thin dome covering a city with that is a very transparent film 2 (Fig.1). The film has thickness 0.05 – 0.3 mm. One is located at high altitude (5 — 20 km). The film is supported at this altitude by a small additional air pressure produced by ground ventilators. That is connected to Earth’s ground by managed cables 3. The film may have a controlled transparency option. The system can have the second lower film 6 with controlled reflectivity, a further option.

The offered protection defends in the following way. The smallest space warhead has a
minimum cross-section area 1 m2 and a huge speed 3 – 5 km/s. The warhead gets a blow and overload from film (mass about 0.5 kg). This overload is 500 – 1500g and destroys the warhead (see computation below). Warhead also gets an overpowering blow from 2 –5 (every mass is 0.5 — 1 kg) of the strong stones. Relative (about warhead) kinetic energy of every stone is about 8 millions of Joules! (It is in 2 – 3 more than energy of 1 kg explosive!). The film destroys the high speed warhead (aircraft, bomber, wing missile) especially if the film will be armored by stone.

Our dome cover (film) has 2 layers: top transparant layer 2, located at a maximum altitude (up 5 –20 km), and lower transparant layer 4 having control reflectivity, located at altitude of 1 – 3 km (option). Upper transparant cover has thickness about 0.05 – 0.3 mm and supports the protection strong stones (rebbles) 8. The stones have a mass 0.2 – 1 kg and locate the step about 0.5 m.

If we want to control temperature in city, the top film must have some layers: transparant dielectric layer, conducting layer (about 1 — 3 microns), liquid crystal layer (about 10 — 100 microns), conducting layer (for example, SnO2), and transparant dielectric layer. Common thickness is 0.05 — 0.5 mm. Control voltage is 5 — 10 V. This film may be produced by industry relatively cheaply.

If some level of light control is needed materials can be incorporated to control transparency. Also, some transparent solar cells can be used to gather wide area solar power.

As you see the 10 kt bomb exploded at altitude 10 km decreases the air blast effect about in 1000
times and thermal radiation effect without the second cover film in 500 times, with the second reflected film about 5000 times. The hydrogen 100kt bomb exploded at altitude 10 km decreases the air blast effect about in 10 times and thermal radiation effect without the second cover film in 20 times, with the second reflected film about 200 times. Only power 1000kt thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb can damage city. But this damage will be in 10 times less from air blast and in 10 times less from thermal radiation. If the film located at altitude 15 km, the
damage will be in 85 times less from the air blast and in 65 times less from the thermal radiation.
For protection from super thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb we need in higher dome altitudes (20−30 km and more). We can cover by AB-Dome the important large region and full country.

Because the Dome is light weight it could be to stay in place even with very large holes. Multiple shells of domes could still be made for more protection.

Better climate inside a dome can make for more productive farming.

AB-Dome is cheaper in hundreds times then current anti-rocket systems.
2. AB-Dome does not need in high technology and can build by poor country.
3. It is easy for building.
4. Dome is used in peacetime; it creates the fine climate (weather) into Dome.
5. AB-Dome protects from nuclear, chemical, biological weapon.
6. Dome produces the autonomous existence of the city population after total World nuclear war
and total confinement (infection) all planet and its atmosphere.
7. Dome may be used for high region TV, for communication, for long distance locator, for
astronomy (telescope).
8. Dome may be used for high altitude tourism.
9. Dome may be used for the high altitude windmills (getting of cheap renewable wind energy).
10. Dome may be used for a night illumination and entertainment

The New York Times reports that Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., two scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratories are proposing a process by which the carbon dioxide — the primary greenhouse gas considered responsible for contributing to global warming — emitted from cars and other polluters would be captured and converted to gasoline, methane and jet fuel.

The bold proposal, which the duo have named “Green Freedom” would create a closed cycle from the emission of greenhouse gasses resulting in the creation of a vast source of renewable energy where today we have an open ended cycle that is considered a global threat.

They say the science is relatively simple and straight forward. Polluted air would be blown over potassium carbonate which would sequester the CO2, a chemical process would then remove the trapped CO2 and via a number of established chemical processes it would then be converted to various types of fuel.

Although the process has not been demonstrated and no prototypes have been built the pair claims that the required steps or other chemical processes that they say are close cousins to those required are already in use. In addition, none of the processes violate any known laws of physics and a number of other top researchers have independently made similar suggestions for the sequestration and reuse of emitted CO2.

This concept is not without its share of controversy and detractors however. With claims of everything from the fact that the economics of the process make it unfeasible to concerns that it will encourage further over – population and sprawl not to mention the worry that proliferation of nuclear power brings with it, it is nevertheless an interesting concept and proves — if nothing else — that through continued investment in breakthrough technologies we can overcome all challenges be they environmental or societal.

Today, the University of Colorado at Boulder made an announcement regarding a very promising technology:

Known as optical frequency comb spectroscopy, the technique is powerful enough to sort through all the molecules in human breath and sensitive enough to distinguish rare molecules that may be biomarkers for specific diseases

Combined with other rapid-response technologies, this could be part of the detection side of a BioShield, a technological immune system for humanity.

The optical frequency comb is a very precise laser for measuring different colors, or frequencies, of light, said Ye. Each comb line, or “tooth,” is tuned to a distinct frequency of a particular molecule’s vibration or rotation, and the entire comb covers a broad spectral range — much like a rainbow of colors — that can identify thousands of different molecules.

Source: University of Colorado at Boulder