Prayers for NASA Mars Rover SPIRIT
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Mars, Robot Psychology, Robots, Science, Technology
A group of robots held a candlelight vigil on Monday night for their comrade Mars Rover SPIRIT. The adventurous robot is currently contemplating its death while stuck in the soil of Mars.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab manager John Callas said in a statement to the press that “Spirit is in a very difficult situation.”
The problem started after SPIRIT rolled into some loose dirt while driving in reverse. Besides being stuck in the soil, SPIRIT has lived longer than NASA ever imagined, and its age is starting to show as its gone through a series of malfunctions. However, the robot community is holding onto hope that the tough Martian rover will pull another trick out of it’s hat and push on with its exploration of the Red Planet.
Read more about SPIRIT’s dangerous predicament here.
Real Life Star Trek: DARPA Rewards VULCAN Engine Contracts
Filed under: Future Weapons, Outer Space, Science, Science Fiction, Technology, The Future
Right before the release of J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency kicks off their VULCAN Engine Program by rewarding four contractors with funding to begin first phase development of the proposed super engine system.
When we hear the word Vulcan, our thoughts wander to the Star Trek character Spock, his home planet, and his people. The VULCAN Engine Program is appropriately named since it is a “propulsion system demonstration effort to design, build, and ground-test an engine capable of accelerating a full-scale hypersonic vehicle from rest to Mach 4+.”
This could be our first steps towards a “warp drive” propulsion system like the one that propels the Enterprise across vast distances in space.
Read the DARPA News Release here (via DARPA’s news room.)
The Power of the Sun in the Palm of Our Hands
Filed under: Alien Intelligence, Aliens, Animal Intelligence, Discoveries, Science, Science Fiction, Technology, The Future
We could soon harness the power of a sun in a laboratory setting, ala Dr. Octopus’s mad scientist escapades in Spider Man 2. Or at least that’s what this experiment hopes to prove (report from WIRED.)
The project at the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility plans to ignite a miniture star in a controlled lab environment using lasers. This tiny nuclear reactor could produce tremendous amounts of energy. For example, our sun blasts about 386 BILLION gigawatts of energy into space. A large nuclear reactor generates 1 gigawatt. Do the math. Even if we could create a star hundreds of billions times smaller than our sun, the energy output would still be massive. This could solve all of our energy problems as long as we can control the nuclear fusion and harness to power of a star. Worst case scenario = the destruction of earth if the star we build powers out of control.
This building could soon be home to a man-made baby star.
Is Glow-in-the-Dark Genetic Engineering the Solution to the Energy Crisis?
Filed under: Biology, Discoveries, Genetic Engineering, Science, The Future
The video says it all. What’s next? Can you imagine a world full of glow in the dark humans?
Some say this could be a solution for the energy crisis and global warming.
“If humans glowed in the dark, they wouldn’t need lights. Lights in our homes, cities, et cetera eat up a tremendous amount of energy,” says Physicist Peter Pablano. “Glow in the dark powers could save the climate, since the reduction in energy consumption would lead to a massive reduction in carbon emissions.”
What do you think? Should the Obama administration push forward with a policy of genetically engineering the American populace to glow in the dark as part of their energy policy?
DARPA Launches All Seeing Eye Into Stratosphere
Filed under: Conspiracies, Future Weapons, Government, Science, Science Fiction, Technology, The Future
Another step towards floating cities or Big Brother? You decide.
DARPA is moving project ISIS into its demonstration phase. ISIS (Integrated Sensor Is Structure) is a military project with goals to launch an autonomous statospheric-based airship equipped with supercharged sensors for surveillance. The lightweight structure will hover high above earth for years and be capable of tracking objects as small as a child from up to 300 km away.
But, the idea of hovering surveillance structures troubles privacy groups like the Anti-Satellite Sympathizers. A.S.S. founder and president Neil Kaminskigee said the following: “It’s just one more step towards a totalitarian police state, in which every square inch of earth has a dedicated ‘surveillance camera’ to watch over citizens.”
Others see this as another step towards floating airbases and cities. Population control organizations have promoted the idea of permanent, stratosphere based structures to help alleviate overcrowding on the surface of our planet.
Read the press release from DARPA here.