The future soon's friend Caroline is doing something I really want to do - go to places in the world and start shooting.
No, not bullets - footage. I sometimes forget that to a broadcaster shooting means camera work (hence the odd look on my wife's face every time I say" I miss shooting everyday.")
Caroline is in the Kingdom of Swaziland, getting lost in the unnamed streets of Manzini, watching lightning and producing video clips for a bunch of non-profits.
1. Conservationists in the Indian state of Assam are using fences smeared with chili sauce to keep out elephants. Farmers and elephants often come into conflict when the elephants, in need of food and forage, move out of small protected areas into farmland. This often results in conflict between our two species, with death on both sides.
"(Conservationists)have put up jute fences made of strong vegetable fiber and smeared them with automobile grease and bhutjolokia chilies. These peppers, also known as ghost chilies, have been certified as the world's hottest by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Wildlife experts also were using smoke bombs made from the chili to keep away elephants."
Indian wildlife specialists hope that this new tool will lower the number of deaths among farmers and elephants.
Over 600 people have been killed by elephants in the last 16 years in Assam. The elephants haven't fared much better.
"Science is what we do when we don't know what we're doing." — CERN scientist
You may have heard about CERN. If you Dan Brown's books, you've definitely heard of them.
The organization bills itself as "the world's largest particle physics laboratory", and it does so with good reason.
Currently under construction, the lab's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a 26.659 kilometre-long particle accelerator. Built roughly 100 metres beneath the surface of the Earth, the accelerator is so long that it crosses the border between Switzerland and France four different times.
When it's put into operation next spring, the researchers hope to generate enough energy in their collisions to produce matter. This is the system to prove once and for all that e=mc2.
And how will they prove it? By recreating the big bang. And also, possibly, black holes. This, according to the scientists, is a massive step towards creating a theory that explains everything.
Hopefully they're right that the black holes will be too unstable to sustain themselves. Hopefully. I guess we shouldn't be too worried, after all, there was an outside chance that the first nuclear bomb would start a chain reaction that would destroy everything. But we're still here, right?
The following BBC documentary about the LHC is long, but watch the first couple of minutes and see if you don't get hooked:
Coming to a mountain valley in Russia is this £2.5 million sculpture of wind power tech - The Wind Dam.
The wind dam will produce power by funneling wind into a turbine. Designed by architect British architect Laurie Chetwood, this fixed "land-sail" should be up and running by 2008.
Wind Dam above Lake Ladoga, Russia Now that the newsy-bit is done I can say that I love this structure. It looks like Lebbeus Woods was given free range to go nuts and design a palace of canvas. I want one of these dams, just for me, to suspend my bubble home from the rigging and sell power to the grid.
But why stop at just fabric - you could coat the structure in solar cells. As long as the sail doesn't mess up bird/bat migration paths through the valleys, I think we should think of this dam when planning future power projects.
The Yellowstone supervolcano is getting bigger everyday. That's right, the largest volcano on the planet (all of Yellowstone is inside the caldera), capable of knocking life back to square one if it fully erupted, has shown rapid growth in its magma chamber.
But don't worry, because even though the growth of the caldera is seven times faster than the average, the amount is only 7 cm a year.
"There is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption or hydrothermal explosion. That's the bottom line," says seismologist Robert B. Smith, lead author of the study and professor of geophysics at the University of Utah. "A lot of calderas [giant volcanic craters] worldwide go up and down over decades without erupting."
"Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock," Smith says. "But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again," he adds.
The magma chamber isn't a cavern full of molten rock, like the depths of Mount Doom, but more like a sponge cake, with magma caught in between other sediment.
So, don't worry about pyroclastic surges, the falling ash cloud that will smother us, short-out our power, carbonize our bodies.
Or the change in global weather due to geological ages worth of gas emissions, and mountain ranges of ash, spewing into the atmosphere.
It isn't going to happen today.
But it could happen tomorrow.
To get an idea what a minor eruption would be like, check out this trailer from Discovery/BBC docudrama Supervolcano. If you can find this film, watch it.
Six for Science will be a new feature here on the future soon. Every couple of days you will get a list of some of the most interesting, and overlooked, science related stories.
1. Increasing the genetic diversity of Geraniums, and why it's important. 2. Robo-moths and how they will help amputees in the future. 3. Air-breathing fish that live in trees. 4. Spirit rover heads north for winter. 5. Fossil evidence shows mass-extinctions can be caused by gradual environmental change. 6. China might have plans for a space station. Welcome back, red star in orbit.
Stumbled upon this while looking for science. Coltrane was a hero when I was in high school. Yes, I was that guy on the periphery who played a saxophone and thought, inside, he was cooler than all of you.
Alive in Joburg is one of the best short films you will see. The story: alien ships crash into Joburg during Apartheid. At first the aliens are accepted, but then they become the hated people of the shantytowns, with the South African government and the subjugated black population threatening the aliens.
I really like this film because it isn't black and white, but gritty, complex, and strangely believable. The documentary feel of this piece gives this film a level of realism that often escapes SF. I find that watching this film is like reading the fiction of Ian McDonald - stories in places where the future and the rest of humanity crash together.
Laika became the first known terran life form to reach orbit on November 3, 1957. Launched by the Russians to test if cosmonauts could survive in zero-g. Laika lasted a number of orbits around the earth before succumbing to overheating and stress. Sputnik-2 would continue to orbit the planet for another 162 days.
Laika had been a stray on the streets of Moscow before being captured and trained by the Russian Cosmo dog program.
Although there is regret by scientists who were involved with the Cosmodog program, Laika's trip in Sputnik 2 did prove that animals could survive in zero-g. As long as they had adequate life support and a way of not burning up in the atmosphere.
Sad news from monster island today: CNN is reporting that the chupacabra -- the famous "goat sucker" of Latin America -- is nothing more than a hairless coyote.
• There is a marked difference in levels of UFO visitation between the eastern and western halves of the continental US. Apparently, extraterrestrials like it out west. • Marked exceptions to this rule is a hotspot in northern Minnesota, several others spread out mainly in Missouri and Illinois and a small area in the Florida panhandle. • Aliens like the west, but generally don’t care for Dixie: the south is remarkably UFO-free. • Preferred landing spots of UFOs are concentrated in the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, the three coastal states and Nevada – with a spike around, of course, Area 51.
Chris, alien activity seems to be low near you.
Me? Well, you'll know what happened when my life goes crazy an I end up living in a treehouse behind my mom's trailer.
(Chris's note: maybe UFOs are rare in the East, but when they come, they make a splash.)
Here is the next crazy hybrid vehicle - the four wheeled Tesseract!
Unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show, this street quad is only a concept vehicle right now. But when it gets into production, I really want to have one - This is the most manga bike I have seen in a long-time.
Now I know what the kids will ride in the future (or at least the one in a novel I am writing.)
Last week on The National there was piece on how the Canadian government is causing two electric car companies to shift operations overseas.
That is right, two internationally respected electric car companies are about to move shop, at a time when demand for electric cars is growing. And let's not even mention the car company lay-offs in Ontario.
The BC company Dynasty Electric will stop producing their cars in Canada, and the Ontario company Zenn is considering moving production.
Why? Because Transport Canada is in the process of changing the road rules that currently allow these electric vehicles to be sold in Canada.
CBC News gave Harry Baergen, a senior regulatory enforcement engineer at Transport Canada, a call and asked if Zenn meet regulations. Harry said "They haven't met our requirements yet, no." When asked about the specific regulation Harry said "They've showed us that it meets requirements as an LSV (low-speed vehicle)." So... ah, what's the problem, Harry? Harry says "Our definition is presently being clarified because there is a little bit of a broadness in it."
Zenn's founder Ian Clifford says it's a "different story ... every time" from Transport Canada and they get "road blocks thrown up in front of us every attempt." Ian says it's getting to the point now where we're almost giving up on Canada." Danny Epp, general manager at Dynasty electric cars has already given up saying the company is "not getting any support from the federal level."
Watch this CBC report:
I really like the look of the Dynasty it car - there is one in Ucluelet. The car can only go 40km, so it can't really leave town, but it is great for ferrying your groceries between the Co-op and Millstream. (Too much of an insider Ukee moment?)
Special thanks toAutoblogGreenfor their excellent coverage.
Photograph by Volkmar K. Wentzel, National Geographic
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