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The inner edge of the habitable zone is the dividing line between peaches and cream and all out hell. Venus has likely seen both. The study of exo-solar systems like Wolf 1061 is key to understanding our own Venus.

New observations of the nearby star Wolf 1061, some 14 light years distant in Ophiuchus — already known to harbor three super-earths — should help planetary scientists better understand what went wrong with our own Venus.

Turns out hellishly-hot Venus-like worlds are quite common and early in the history of any given planetary system, such close-in terrestrial mass planets might even sport liquid water. But as their host stars evolve, the perilous inner edge of these extrasolar planetary systems’ habitable zones move decidedly outward.

As a star’s luminosity grows over time, such tenuous habitable zones can cause what might have been a promising climate to turn into a runaway greenhouse of the sort we see on Venus. With no liquid water at its surface, Venus is the very definition of inhospitable. That’s in contrast to a habitable clime where given the right atmospheric pressure and temperatures terrestrial mass planets can host temperate liquid water on their surfaces.

Continue reading “Planets Around Wolf 1061 Key To Understanding ‘Venus’” | >

Here’s a Harpers review on a new book about #transhumanism coming out soon that discusses the movement, including some of my work. I saw this review in the print edition today (150,000 copies hitting the stands today and 2nd oldest mag in America).

George Saunders is the most humane American writer working today. He need not ask, as Sheila Heti did in the title of her novel, how a person should be. He knows. A person should be courageous and hopeful, generous and kind. A person should sacrifice herself for the good of those who are more vulnerable. A person should live in the knowledge that life is suffering, and that the most, or least, she can do is attempt to ameliorate the suffering of others. And — this is where it gets interesting — a story should be as compassionate as a person. “A story’s positive virtues are not different from the positive virtues of its writer,” Saunders noted in an essay called “My Writing Education.” “A story should be honest, direct, loving, restrained.”

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A discussion about Simulation theory, quantum mechanics and Super Mario!

Futurists Keith Comito, Gray Scott, Luis Arana, and Zach Waldman talk about the simulation theory as part of the #FuturistSessions at the Soho House New York. Discussions include quantum mechanics, mathematical realism vs mathematical fictionalism, the Matrix, Pacman, and Mario!

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Continue reading “The Futurist Sessions: Simulation Theory — ft. Keith Comito, Gray Scott, Luis Arana, and Zac Waldman” | >

For nearly 100 years, scientists have dreamed of turning the lightest of all the elements, hydrogen, into a metal.

Now, in a stunning act of modern-day alchemy, scientists at Harvard University have finally succeeded in creating a tiny amount of what is the rarest, and possibly most valuable, material on the planet, they reported in the journal Science.

For metallic hydrogen could theoretically revolutionise technology, enabling the creation of super-fast computers, high-speed levitating trains and ultra-efficient vehicles and dramatically improving almost anything involving electricity.

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More than 80 years after it was first predicted, physicists have created metallic hydrogen — a mysterious form of hydrogen that could be capable of superconducting electricity without resistance at room temperature.

Scientists have long suspected that hydrogen could exist as a metal in certain parts of the Universe, but this is the first time metallic hydrogen has ever been created on Earth, and the material is even stranger and more fascinating than scientists imagined.

“This is the holy grail of high-pressure physics,” says lead researcher Isaac F. Silvera from Harvard University. “It’s the first-ever sample of metallic hydrogen on Earth, so when you’re looking at it, you’re looking at something that’s never existed before.”

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Too many people spend their whole life on a treadmill striving for financial success and/or fame.

People often take a job or start a company because they think it’s a quick way to get rich or get noticed, i.e. to be successful.

Throughout my career, whenever I’ve started a company just to make money, it’s been a mistake. Starting any successful company is always hard work, and if my heart isn’t in it, the effort becomes hard, unfulfilling work, and I give up before the job is done.

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Today scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) present a study in Cell (“The in vivo architecture of the exocyst provides structural basis for exocytosis”) where they have been able to observe protein nanomachines (also called protein complexes)—the structures responsible for performing cell functions—for the first time in living cells and in 3D. This work has been done in collaboration with researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and the Centro Andaluz de Biología del Desarrollo in Seville.

3D observation of nanomachines in vivo

On the left, in vivo image of nanomachines using current microscopy techniques; on the right, the new method allows 3D observation of nanomachines in vivo and provides 25-fold improvement in precision (O. Gallego, IRB Barcelona)

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