[vox_mundi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '.').. This kind of discussion reminds me that to me, the main regret I have about dying in a couple-few decades or so is not getting to see all the cool stuff that happens due to technology. (As a fan of astronomy as a child I NEVER would have imagined a booming field in studying exoplanets, or even identifying one with certainty.)

[onlooker]

So then the two questions become can the integrated and enhanced sum of individuals retain individual identity? The second being will emotions and/or a sense of morality be lost to this AI super organism or individual creatures enhanced and/or integrated with AI?

[vox_mundi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'S')o then the two questions become can the integrated and enhanced sum of individuals retain individual identity? The second being will emotions and/or a sense of morality be lost to this AI super organism or individual creatures enhanced and/or integrated with AI?

[onlooker]

Yea Vox, kind of like the Matrix (movie). A virtual Universe or world. In fact some scientists speculated that our Universe could be one giant Virtual reality programmed by some super advanced intelligent beings

[vox_mundi]

Goodbye Gravity: Device Creates Negative Mass

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]http://freehauleralcione.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/negative-mass-propulsion.jpg[/img]

Most objects react in predictable ways when force is applied to them—unless they have "negative mass." And then they react exactly opposite from what you would expect.

Now University of Rochester researchers have succeeded in creating particles with negative mass in an atomically thin semiconductor, by causing it to interact with confined light in an optical microcavity.

This alone is "interesting and exciting from a physics perspective," says Nick Vamivakas, an associate professor of quantum optics and quantum physics at Rochester's Institute of Optics. "But it also turns out the device we've created presents a way to generate laser light with an incrementally small amount of power."

Though applications are "still down the road," Vamivakas adds, his lab will continue to explore: The physical implications of creating negative mass in the device. "We're dreaming up ways to apply pushes and pulls—maybe by applying an electrical field across the device—and then studying how these polaritons move around in the device under application of external force.

S. Dhara et al. Anomalous dispersion of microcavity trion-polaritons, Nature Physics (2017)

[vox_mundi]

This is How It Begins: FBI Closes Sunspot Observatory Due To 'Security Issue'

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]http://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mar77adkma1rvk0h5o1_500.gif[/img]

This is how it happens when the extraterrestrials make contact with Earth.

... It seems to have started last Friday when the observatory was temporarily closed because of an undisclosed security issue. Shari Lifson, a spokesperson for the group that manages the facility—Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)—told the Alamogordo Daily News: “We have decided to vacate the facility at this time as a precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facility.”

Otero County Sheriff Benny House told the Daily News that FBI agents told his officers to “standby,” and would not explain the security threat to him or why the federal law enforcement agency was involved.

“But for the FBI to get involved that quick and be so secretive about it, there was a lot of stuff going on up there,” House said to the Daily News..
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]“There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers, but nobody would tell us anything.”

[asg70]

^^^ Gosh one can only hope (collateral damage aside).

[Cog]

You can't hide aliens by closing down one observatory. The location of this particular observatory is close to a couple of sensitive military installations. Which is probably why they are there doing what the FBI does. Besides going after Trump that is.

[Newfie]

More “down to earth “ coverage.

Interesting stuff.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.c ... o-11496171

I find it interesting that Google Earth is blocked from that area. Military installations yes, but an observatory? Maybe it was not what it seemed in the first place?

[onlooker]

Funny, it does appear ET, has been here but may have left, having deemed us unworthy of further contact yet. Also, I think it was the late Stephen Hawking who said careful what you wish for in trying to contact ET. He surmised they would be much more advanced than us and would likely not have our best interests in mind rather theirs.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'M')ore “down to earth “ coverage.

Interesting stuff.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.c ... o-11496171

I find it interesting that Google Earth is blocked from that area. Military installations yes, but an observatory? Maybe it was not what it seemed in the first place?

[Cog]

Well at least the aliens won't be confused by a deep bow

[Tanada]

In that case the aliens will see why the majority of human existence has been based on inherited or acquired leadership, not democracy. There is a reason monarchies have existed for as long as we have had recorded history and remain in general the most successful form of government second only to acquired forms like the Chinese politburo where the most skilled and ruthless rise to lead.

Joe6P in general does a lousy job voting for leaders. This is true of all types of leaders from Union reps to government 'legislators' and 'district attorneys' who are almost in every case a glib talker who looks out for their own interests above any principled decision making process.

In the acquired forms of leadership the most skilled rise to the top and they want to stay there. In the monarchy form the children in general are trained from birth to make decisions. In Democracy the best used car salesman gets to be in charge. The problems with this system should be self evident. The ability to talk and sell a line of BS is not leadership.

President Trump, love or hate him, has acquired authority because he has vast skill at making deals that improve his finances and he said what the average voter wanted to hear. In our system he only has that authority for 4-8 years but for that time the authority is his and constantly wing nutting theories about how the rest of the government will suddenly decide to replace him does not help achieve anything. You want the President to do something differently offer him a deal that makes it look like he wins on the issue and you are far more likely to get what you want. The same is true of every President including the last 20 men who held the office so this basic civics lesson should not have to be stated, but what the heck I feel magnanimous today. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar and all the D's have offered for the last 4 years straight is vinegar. Gosh I wonder what will happen in November when Joe6P gets to pick between honey (President Trumps proud words about American greatness) and vinegar (the D's words about how the President is a dolt and everyone who voted for him is a misogynistic homophobic racist SOB that deserves to die).

Like it or not people would rather vote for a happy lie than a sad truth. Such is the nature of DEMOCRACY.

[Newfie]

I’m bored and tired of hearing about Florence. I’m looking some juicy wild speculation about the sun observatory. All the reports are pretty bland, no real investigation going on.

Who works there? Not just scientific staff but groundskeepers and janitors. There must be some, and they have neighbors.

How come the reporters went out talking to these folks?

[vox_mundi]

Rising CO2 levels; senior Federal officials ignoring the warning, calling it a hoax; strange goings-on at national observatories.

It's all becoming crystal clear...

The 1996 movie The Arrival wasn't a cheesy Sci-Fi flick - It was a documentary.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') The planet, we are informed, is warming. The ice caps are melting.

Climates are changing. Scientists blame factory smokestacks, car exhausts and the destruction of the rain forests. “The Arrival” has a more terrifying hypothesis to explain the phenomenon. In the great paranoid tradition of science fiction, the discovery of this possibility is made by one man who cannot get anyone to listen to him and who grows desperate as the establishment slams its doors. The man is Zane Zaminski (Charlie Sheen), a radio astronomer who listens for signs of intelligence from outer space. Unlike his colleagues, he's looking in the noisy FM band: “It's like searching for a needle,” his partner tells him, “in a haystack of needles.” When he picks up an unmistakable signal, Zane takes it gleefully to his boss (Ron Silver), only to be told that the government's entire intergalactic eavesdropping operation is being scaled down because of budget cutbacks. Zane's frustration is the engine for a science-fiction film of unusual intelligence that keeps on thinking all the way to the end, springing surprises and ideas. The movie is as smart as “Mission: Impossible” is dumb.

[Newfie]

Yeah, Aliens! We need a break from the routine news.

[vox_mundi]

Spock’s Home World Has Been Discovered (sort of)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]https://pre00.deviantart.net/22c3/th/pre/i/2010/359/b/3/enterprise_d_vulcan_by_nethskie-d35mtcn.jpg[/img]

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was visionary in many ways: The Enterprise crew’s communicators presaged today’s smartphones, Bones’s sickbay mirrored in modern medical scanners, and, well, we’re still working on that transporter. Now, it seems he accurately predicted a location for science officer Spock’s home planet, Vulcan.

The magazine Sky & Telescope reports this week that back in 1991, Roddenberry and three astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, declared in a letter to the magazine that Vulcan most likely would orbit the planet 40 Eridani A. Although not mentioned in the original TV series or later feature films, a number of stars had been put forward by Trekkies as the likely locale of Vulcan. Roddenberry and his co-authors argued that 40 Eridani A was the most likely because, at 4 billion years old, an orbiting planet would have had long enough to evolve a superlogical being such as Spock.

Now, astronomers have found that 40 Eridani A, an orange dwarf star 16 light-years from Earth, does indeed have a planet. The Dharma Planet Survey, which is looking for low-mass planets around bright nearby stars, reports in a paper due to appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that the putative “Vulcan”—officially known as HD 26965b (and shown above in an artist’s illustration)—is eight times the mass of Earth.

[charmcitysking]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09- ... believable

[vox_mundi]

Terminal Atomic: Technogeomorphological Mounds: What A Sinister Looking Giant Black Pyramid Is Doing At An Abandoned Military Base

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]https://d1qikntta4cp8k.cloudfront.net/?q=85&w=790&url=https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/adad111caa.jpg[/img]
http://www.geologicnow.com/39_CLUI.php

There are dozens of these mounds, across the country from Pennsylvania to Arizona, built mostly by the Department of Energy, and maintained by their Legacy Management office.



Each disposal cell covers many acres and as much as half a square mile. They resemble ancient pyramids or relics from a geometrical mound-building culture, like archeological forms made for the future. They represent the legacy of the most advanced technology of a global culture: the creation of the atomic bomb, the ability to destroy the world at the push of a button. They are part of the nationwide network of industrial sites created to extract, process, manufacture, and engineer nuclear fuel for reactors and weapons--a continent-wide landscape machine to concentrate a naturally occurring trace material into such compressed atomic density that it explodes with galactic energy.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]... The disposal cell at Green River is designed and constructed to last for 200 to 1,000 years. However, the general license has no expiration date, and DOE understands that its responsibility for the safety and integrity of the Green River site will last indefinitely.

[vox_mundi]

Tracking the Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua To Its Home

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')img]https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2018/trackingthei.jpg[/img]

A team of astronomers led by Coryn Bailer-Jones of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has tracked the interstellar object 'Oumuamua to several possible home stars. The object was discovered in late 2017 – this was the first time astronomers have been able to observe an astronomical object from another star system visiting our own Solar System. Bailer-Jones and his colleagues used data from the ESA astrometry satellite Gaia to find four plausible stars where 'Oumuamua could have begun its long journey, more than a million years ago

The new study by Bailer-Jones and colleagues takes into account how 'Oumuamua's orbit has changed as the object passed close to the Sun, giving the astronomers a precise estimate of the direction the object came from originally, as well as the speed at which it entered our Solar System.

Plausible home stars of the interstellar object 'Oumuamua found in Gaia DR2, arXiv:1809.09009 [astro-ph.EP]

Some of Arthur C. Clarke's stories deal with following an alien artifact back to its home: Rescue Party, Rendezvous with Rama