New images of the Mars Lander, covered by wintertime carbon dioxide frost on Mars. When it's September on Earth, it's the heaviest time of frosts there, the JPL scientists believe. Something about this snip from the NASA press release makes me feel sad for the little fellow, out there in the cold all by his lonesome -- he's had no one to talk to for an entire year:

The Phoenix Mars Lander ceased communications last November, after successfully completing its mission and returning unprecedented primary science phase and returning science data to Earth. During the first quarter of 2010, teams at JPL will listen to see if Phoenix is still able to communicate with Earth. Communication is not expected and is considered highly unlikely following the extended period of frost on the lander.

More images, and more about the images, here. Also, here's a higher resolution of the image above, compared to a shot taken during the previous earth-month.

Hey li'l Lander? If you can hear me, I dedicate this song to you tonight.

The Google Earth Alphabet has upper and lower case and numbers and punctuation formed inadvertently by geographic features visible from space.

Upper case

Lower case

Numbers and punctuation

(via Making Light)

Lavie Tidhar's story "Spider's Moon" is up on Futurismic, and it's a very rewarding ten-minute read. Futurismic's short-short fiction department publishes some genuinely wonderful science fiction, bite-sized stories that contain actual characters and settings and plots in impossibly small packages.

"Spider's Moon" is no exception: a story about spacefaring South Seas Islanders who come to Earth seeking mass-produced Vietnamese technology, and of what transpires; told with an admirable lyricism and poesie.

Melkior felt a little lost at Hoi An. He had arrived three days before, taking a room in a small hotel just outside the old town. It was, in many ways, a disconcerting experience. Once, Hoi An had been a trade centre, the meeting place of Chinese and European merchants on the coast of Viet Nam, and the old town had been preserved just as it had been, full of charming little cobbled streets and charming little temples and charming old houses - "Charm," the brochure insisted, "is the defining characteristic of the town". The old town was a bubble out of time, and visiting it was a wilful act of time-travel, or so it seemed to Melkior. The Hoi An lanterns ("Famous for hundreds of years," boasted the brochure) still hung everywhere, and barges still travelled down the river, pushed on long poles - and yet it was a lie, too, for the past was not really there, only its semblance, and who could believe in the past (not less a gentle, charming past) under the full spider's moon?

Crossing from the old town into the new was a disorienting fast-forward into the future: here, beyond the bubble of preserved time, the future happened with every heartbeat, the sound of construction filling the days, houses and office towers rising higher and higher into the atmosphere, as if grasping for the moon. He was here for the new town, not the old; was here for the future, not the past. The juxtaposition of both unsettled him. It had occurred to him he should have stayed in Da Nang, a forty-five minute drive down the road, a busy, bustling, cheerful city that had nothing of the quaint or picturesque (as the brochure had put it). Hoi An was a tourist town, famed for its tailors and shoe-makers, and even Melkior had given in to that extent, having purchased a new, sombre black suit and two pairs of custom-made knock-off trainers, with the company logo hand-stitched into the thin leather. He wore them now, feeling the cobblestones beneath the thin soles.

Spider's Moon By Lavie Tidhar

"NASA to Start Radiating Monkeys," noted Chris Baker (of Wired), "The kind of headline that should be followed by 'NASA to Fire PR Firm.'"

The experiments will bombard squirrel monkeys (like the lil guy above) with radioactivity to explore the possible effects of radiation in space on human astronauts. Warning: eventually, revenge will come. Oh, and then there's this possibility.

[Photo: "Here's Looking at You!" by ifijay, via Flickr, CC license here. ]

A four pound hunk of metal crashed through the roof of Peter and Mair Welton's home in Hull, UK. The Royal Air Force first thought the debris fell off an airplane but now they say it came from space. From the BBC News:

It was not known where the metal had come from but it seemed likely that it was "space debris", investigators said.

The RAF Flight Safety Branch said it was the only incident of this kind it had dealt with for five years.

Couple's home hit by space metal

National Geographic has a gorgeous visual map of space missions to our nearest interplanetary neighbors. Is it just me, or would this make an awesome embroidery sampler? Or maybe a pillow?

Many thanks to the Bad Astronomy blog, for this beauty.

Jason sez, "A beautiful entry at the Letters Of Note website detailing a card sent to the Woomera Rocket Range in Australia, 1957, by a little boy named Dean Cox. Dean provided the rocket scientists a helping hand with future space craft design offering his concept of a Rolls Royce Jet Engined-powered two man vehicle- but beyond that, the scientists would have to "put in other details". Turns out 52 years later he's been tracked down (see article comments) and he's still waiting for a reply."

TO A TOP SCIENTIST (Thanks, Jason!)

The idea of blowing bits of the moon up bothers me, because I believe that the moon is not ours to blow up. Blasting synthetic craters on the lunar surface for the purpose of finding water or habitable land -- which we'd have enough of if we weren't screwing things up so furtively, back home -- just disturbs me. But nevermind what I think. What matters is what esteemed "Exopolitics" expert Alfred Lambremont Webre thinks.

["Moon bombing"] may also trigger conflict with known extraterrestrial civilizations on the moon as reported on the moon in witnessed statements by U.S. astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, and in witnessed statements to NSA (National Security Agency) photos and documents regarding an extraterrestrial base on the dark side of the moon.

If the true intent of the LCROSS mission moon bombing is a hostile act by NASA against known extraterrestrial civilizations and settlements on the moon, then NASA and by extension the U.S. government are guilty of aggressive war which is the most serious of war crimes under the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, to which the U.S. is subject.

And that will make them very angry, very angry indeed.

NASA moon bombing violates space law & may cause conflict with lunar ET/UFO civilizations (Seattle Exopolitics Examiner via Jesse Dylan)

Bonus Video: "America Blows up the Moon," from Mr. Show, (via @georgeruiz).

Scientists at NASA say they've figured out a way to extract water from moondust, using the same old ordinary microwave ovens you and I use to extract "lunch" from frozen pizza-bricks:

"We believe we can use microwave heating to cause the water ice in a lunar permafrost layer to sublimate - that is, turn into water vapor. The water vapor can be collected and then condensed into liquid water. "Best of all, microwave extraction can be done on the spot. And it requires no excavation -- no heavy equipment for drilling into the hard-frozen lunar surface."

Microwaving Water from Moondust (NASA)

Image: Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean holds up a thermos full of moondust. (courtesy NASA)

"It", in this case, referring to "The Right Stuff". Brandon Keim at Wired Science had a great post yesterday about attempts by NASA contractors to get women into the space program during the late 1950s. The (ultimately unsuccessful) charge was led by Randy Lovelace--the doctor responsible for putting together health tests for astronaut hopefuls during the original Mercury 7 selection process--and Donald Flickinger--an Air Force general. Flickinger founded the Women in Space Earliest program in 1959, Keim writes...

But the Air Force canned it before testing even started, prompting Lovelace to start the Woman in Space Program. Nineteen women enrolled in WISP, undergoing the same grueling tests administered to the male Mercury astronauts. Thirteen of them -- later dubbed the Mercury 13 -- passed "with no medical reservations," a higher graduation rate than the first male class. The top four women scored as highly as any of the men

It's pretty fascinating stuff, I just wish Keim had included more biographical information on the women involved. Unlike the male astronaut candidates, they couldn't have come from the Air Force (and 1959 seems a little late for women who'd been with the WAC in World War II to be in prime physical condition), and yet, the women were trained, experienced pilots. There's some great stories fluttering in the shadows around this piece. I, for one, would love to know more.*

*Read: I would kill to interview one of these women. If you, your mom, or your grandma were involved, email me. Seriously.

Jim Bumgardner has created a lovely sound project that brings to life the music of the spheres: "Wheel of Stars."

I downloaded public data from Hipparcos, a satellite launched by the European Space Agency in 1989 that accurately measured over a hundred thousand stars.

The data I downloaded contains position, parallax, magnitude, and color information, among other things.

Sean Bonner, upon whose blog I discovered this, says, "I highly recommend fullscreen and the use of headphones. Listening to this is hypnotic. I want it to play constantly in the background of my life."

Space history will be made this week: the first clown launched into orbit. Canadian billionaire Guy Laliberté, the circus entrepreneur behind Cirque du Soleil, was once a street performer. Now he's a space performer. Apparently, he's planning to put on a show during the trip. BBC News, MSNBC, space.com. I hope they don't cross paths with the Killer Klowns from Outer Space. (Image: Space Adventures/ONE DROP Foundation)

There's a lot to enjoy in the Flickr stream of Vienna-based graphic designer Michæl Paukner. I intend to start following him on Twitter. I think this piece, above, is my favorite of the 27 he has posted online so far.

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest. - A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
-- Albert Einstein

Skin Encapsulated Ego (via Fernando Rizo).

Columnist and conservative speechwriter William Safire died yesterday at age 79. Here is the speech he drafted for president Nixon to read in the event that Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong found themselves stranded to die on the moon. I am happy to note that Messrs. Aldrin and Armstrong are all still alive (as is Michael Collins, who orbited the moon while his colleagues walked on her surface). William Safire's Finest Speech. (Gawker, via Scott Beale)

Jeff sez,

An iron fence on W. 21st St. in New York depicts the classic image of a rocket crashing into the Man in the Moon from Melies' 1902 pioneering science fiction film, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).

The fence is across from the Clinton School of the Arts for Writers and Artists, and I happened to snap this photo during lunch break. After I was done shooting about 10 or so photos, I noticed that a crowd of kids had surrounded me and continued talking about the image as I walked away.

Soooo, teacher that I am, I went back and asked if any of them knew what it was. None of them did, but they agreed that it was "awesome" and wondered if the thing in his eye might be a bullet. I explained about the Melies film, its history, and what the image was supposed to be, all of which the kids said was even more awesome, so they asked me to repeat the title so they could watch the film on Youtube.

I remember being fascinated by a still of the original scene in a book when I was their age, um, many moons ago. Not only is the fence homage cool in itself, but it was wonderful to see that "A Trip to the Moon" continues to inspire.

Melies Moon Fence (Thanks, Jeff!)

Smithsonian posted an absolutely breathtaking gallery of images taken by space probes over the last decade. From Smithsonian:

The Cassini spacecraft, which is now orbiting Saturn, looked back toward the eclipsed Sun and saw a view unlike any other. The rings of Saturn light up so much that new rings were discovered.

"Fantastic Photos of our Solar System"

Ellen Klages' young adult novel White Sands, Red Menace is quiet, magnificent, heartbreaking and inspirational. It's the story of Dewey and Suze, two girls growing up in Alamogordo after the end of WWII. They are both the children of atomic scientists from the Los Alamos project, and have found themselves in a period of weird and fragile peace after V-J day.

But the peace is only a skin stretched thin over a hundred bubbling tensions: Suze's mom has formed a league of atomic scientists against nuclear proliferation while her father has gone to work on the space program, ready to forgive the Nazi scientists he's working alongside if it means that he gets to play with giant sexy toys and fight Commies. Dewey -- a girl-inventor whose delightful ingenuity is the progeny of Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel and a Cherry Ames novel -- is forced into "girl" classes at school and has to come to grips with her bespectacled awkwardness. Suze befriends a Mexican girl from Little Chihuahua and is delighted by the family's old artist grandmother, who tutors her on craftmaking; but she is also forced to confront the racial inequality in whitewashed New Mexico.

Set in the fascinating period right after the war, when "atomic" meant "new and exciting" and when empowered women had yet to be shoehorned all the way back into their kitchens, White Sands, Red Menace has the sweet and evocative nostalgia of Ray Bradbury; the ingenuity and sprightly pace of a Heinlein juvenile; and the sneaky and thought-provoking politics of PD James. Klages has pulled off the impossible: a moving, deeply political novel that both cherishes and critiques the American century. It is an extraordinary and moving book.

White Sands, Red Menace is the sequel to the 2006 The Green Glass Sea, though it stands alone just fine. But you should read 'em both.

White Sands, Red Menace

Update, 5:55pm PDT: Heard just now on Mission Control audio: "Home! (...) Welcome home Discovery, after a successful mission, stepping up science to a new level on the International Space Station." A beautiful touchdown at 5:53pm PDT, and damn tootin' we heard (and felt) the twin booms here in LA.

Southern California BB readers, here's your evening forecast: breezy with a chance of BEWMMMM! Expect a large sonic boom between 530-555pm PDT this evening if you're in one of the colored areas in the map embedded at left (click to see large size).

That's when the Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to land at Edwards Air Force Base out in Mojave, instead of KSC in Florida (due to sketchy weather back east). Snip from LA Times item:

The so-called "deorbit burn" is scheduled to begin at 4:47 p.m. PDT for a 5:53 p.m. landing at Edwards in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, according to details published on NASA's website. The second opportunity for leaving orbit will come at 6:23 p.m., ending with a landing at 7:28 p.m.

The mission to deliver supplies and equipment to the International Space Station lasted 2 weeks and spanned 5.7 million miles. More: LA Times, NASA "Landing Blog."

Wooo! The deorbit burn is beginning as I type this blog post. Snip:

Discovery's orbital maneuvering system engines are firing now. This two-minute, 35-second deorbit burn will slow the orbiter's forward speed by about 267 feet per second, enough to begin its descent through the atmosphere.

Update: Sonic boom + unsuspecting dog = the video below (via @caseymckinnon via @georgeruiz).

Earlier this year, NPR ran a neat narrated slideshow of astronomers discussing their favorite images of space taken through the Hubble Telescope. It's worth a second look, now that the device is back in action, following a final round of repairs. Above, holy wow, right? This image was one of the earlier images retreived after Hubble launched nearly 20 years ago. Astronomer Tod Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson explains that it's a Hubble Space Telescope image of part of the Eagle Nebula, a giant cloud of gas and dust about six thousand light years from earth. These pillars are areas of strong concentrations of gas and dust, in which stars are eroded away, like sandcastles on a beach are blown away by waves. Inside this cloud, new stars are being formed.

Hubble's Prying Eyes (NPR News, via Jesse Dylan)

And, with that prelude out of the way -- go have a look at the new images NASA released today from the now-upgraded Hubble Telescope. Below, "Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302."

I am thoroughly smitten with the new They Might Be Giants kids' album, Here Comes Science, which ships with a charming DVD of videos and supplementary material. In the best traditions of awesome educational kids music -- Schoolhouse Rock, the Animaniacs, Electric Company -- Here Comes Science combines top-notch pop music with humor that's aimed at both kids and adults (I once heard the creators of Sesame Street discuss how the inclusion of humor targeted at adults meant that grownups were more likely to watch with the kids, and thus be on hand to answer questions and discuss the material; this should be gospel for everyone who makes media for kids). And, of course, the material is great. Better than great. Perfect. This is the album They Might Be Giants was put on Earth to record: they are genuine science nerds, and it shows.

For Here Comes Science contains a broad, inclusive and thought-provoking tour through science in all its facets. Songs like "Science is Real" (which explains how scientific beliefs are different from beliefs in unicorns and other beliefs formed without rigorous testing) and "Put It To the Test" (possibly the best kids' song ever written about falsifiablity in hypothesis formation) cover the basics, the big Philosophy of Science questions.

Then there's songs for all the major disciplines: "Meet the Elements," "I am a Paleontologist" (also delving into the joys of a science career), "My Brother the Ape," "How Many Planets," and the diptych formed by "Why Does the Sun Shine?" (stars considered as superheated gas) and "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" (stars considered as superheated plasma) -- these last two are a brilliant look into how different paradigms have different practical and theoretical uses. "Photosynthesis," "Cells" "Speed and Velocity" -- you get the picture.

Finally, there's some jaunty little numbers about technology: "Computer Assisted Design," and "Electric Car" and one genuinely silly and delightful track, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)." (I haven't enjoyed an "in outer space" reworking of a beloved classic so much since "Josie and the Pussycats In Outer Space").

These songs definitely address themselves to an older audience than the last two TMBG kids' discs, Here Come the 123s and Here Come the ABCs, but if you've got kids who started with these two, they're certainly ready to move up to Here Comes Science. And even if you don't, I defy you not to rock out to this excellent disc.

Here Comes Science on Amazon

Here Comes Science on They Might Be Giants' site

Beloved Hugo-award-winning writer, dancer and choreographer Jeanne Robinson (wife of Spider Robinson) has cancer, and it has taken a turn for the worse. Spider Robinson describes their financial situation as dire ("running on fumes") and so he's asking for cash to help them get through this. There's lots of ways to give, from bidding in a charity auction to attending a benefit concert to buying Spider's books. I've just sent them what I could spare -- Jeanne and Spider have given me so much pleasure and wisdom over the years, it was an honor. I hope that some of you who've been touched by them will do the same.

As some of you know, I've been dealing with a rare biliary cancer for many months. It has already taken my gall bladder, bile duct and most of my liver...and it's not done yet. It looks like in a matter of weeks I'll be facing chemotherapy, in an attempt to at least slow its progress...

There are many things I need as I prepare for my third act--supplements, prescription drugs, counseling, expensive alternative therapies, etc--and they all cost money...money I don't have. So, after all these months of being silent and private about my illness, I recently said yes to my close friend Michelle Meyrink when she asked if she could organize a benefit concert for me. http://www.spiderrobinson.com/images/Dream%20for%20jeanne.pdf

Others have since jumped in, including my Vancouver Buddhist sangha, Mountain Rain Zen Community, and a dear friend in Florida, Jan Schroeder, who has been auctioning donated items (such as rare Babylon 5 scripts and other SF memorabilia) on eBay for me. Goods or services can be donated for the auction by contacting Jan at dreamforjeanne@aol.com. Several other methods of helping out, including a straightforward PayPal donation account, can be found at http://wedreamforjeanne.blogspot.com/.

Another way to help would be to buy our books from Amazon by clicking-through from Spider's site, so we can get the affiliate commission. We've spent decades holding up visions of humankind's highest evolutionary potential while entertaining you enough to keep you turning pages.

The Third Act

This is not the first web video of daily highlights from a NASA mission, but it just struck me now, watching today's silent vlog from STS-128, that this video really is amazing. It is amazing because it is equal parts banal and mindblowing.

Just as our grandparents were wowed by silent black and white film, our grandchildren will one day find these little YouTubes from space quaint. May I suggest watching these while listening to Boards of Canada? Good, because I just did.

Below, a still from this video which shows a neat laptop array. What an awesome workstation. I think I'll rearrange my desk like this after Labor Day. OH WAIT. Gravity, right.

The NASA videos are provided in YouTube HD, meaning you'll see a nice, crisp 1280x720 video embed instead of the puny 480x295 embed above if you click through to this link: STS 128 HD Flight Day 7 Highlights (Periods With No Sound) (YouTube/NASA).

NASA image of the Los Angeles fires, as viewed from high above our planet.

The image was acquired mid-morning on Sunday -- the fire has since more than doubled in size, mind you! -- by the "backward (northward)-viewing camera of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite."

To give you a sense of scale, the image you see here covers an area 152 miles wide. Them's some big blazes.

More about the image here, and larger sizes. And here's more, from scientists at NASA JPL. Robert Mackey at the NYT has a related item. I cringe at linking to the Daily Mail, but hold your nose and click on this image: an annotated version of this same NASA shot that shows you where various parts of LA are located. I am happy to report that I am safely near the edge of the blue stuff, and not downwind of those huge, nasty smoke plumes.

...so we earthlings can gaze at photographs like this. "Billows of smoke and steam rise above Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida alongside space shuttle Discovery as it races toward space on the STS-128 mission."

Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-128 mission is set to lift off within minutes of the time of this blog post. My suggestion: space out to Soma FM's Mission Control channel in one browser tab (or on iTunes or your player of choice) while you watch Miles O'Brien hosting live coverage of the launch on SpaceFlightNow.com, embedded after the jump. Follow Miles on Twitter here, and SpaceFlightNow here. I'll also be following @Astro_Jose = Mexican-American astronaut José Hernández, who tweets from space en Español (!!!).

Image (via NASA): "Seated are Commander Rick Sturckow (right) and Pilot Kevin Ford. From the left (standing) are mission specialists José Hernández, John "Danny" Olivas, Nicole Stott, European Space Agency's Christer Fuglesang and Patrick Forrester." Godspeed, all.

One of the recent images returned from the Cassini spacecraft, a school-bus-sized probe orbiting Saturn since 2004, includes an odd detail that is puzzling astronomers:

It's not exactly clear what's going on here, even in this slightly zoomed shot. But it looks for all the world - or worlds -- like some small object on an inclined orbit has punched through Saturn's narrow F ring, bursting out from underneath, and dragging behind it a wake of particles from the rings. The upward-angled structure is definitely real, as witnessed by the shadow it's casting on the ring material to the lower left. And what's with the bright patch right where this object seems to have slammed in the rings? Did it shatter millions of icy particles, revealing their shinier interior material, making them brighter? Clearly, something awesome and amazing happened here.

Like the fist of an angry god (Phil Plait / "Bad Astronomy" - Discover, thanks Ugly Canuck)

Related: Saturn Images from Cassini (ciclops.org)

BB pal and periodic guestblogger Richard Metzger has an amazing blog post up about the off-Broadway musical Man on the Moon. The play was conceived by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and his third wife, South African actress, Genevieve Waite, as a potential film or stage production originally entitled "Space."

The stage performance was produced by Andy Warhol. Long-lost video footage of the play is embedded above. More video over at Metzger's blog, too, amazing stuff.

The following text was written by Chris Campion and Jeffrey A. Greenberg from the liner notes of the CD release of Andy Warhol Presents Man on the Moon.

I'll post a snip here, but you have to read the whole thing to hear about the part Philips wrote for Elvis, and all the weird little factoids about Warhol's work, and allegations that George Lucas stole the idea for Star Wars from this offbeat project. Snip:

Space was born the day Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. Like millions of other people, John watched the 1969 moon landing on TV. He was living, at the time, on the Malibu property rented by British film director Michael Sarne, who was under contract at Fox to direct the adaptation of Gore Vidal's novel, Myra Breckenridge, with Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch and Mae West. Sarne had commissioned John to write songs for the film.

The Apollo 11 moon landing became an obsession. John would watch a recording of the TV transmission made on an early video tape machine over and over. The idea of exploring this new frontier - and particularly Neil Armstrong's scripted aside as he stepped onto the lunar surface that it was, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - fired John's imagination, and he began to piece together ideas for a mythical space opera set to music. "He loved myths," says Genevieve, who was first introduced to John by Sarne that summer. "He liked Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey."

(...) Genevieve bemoaned the fate of the show to her friend, Andy Warhol, who offered to find a backer, and did. Warhol also agreed to serve as a producer, and provided a director in the form of Paul Morrissey, who had made a series of avant-garde exploitation films under Warhol's aegis (Flesh, Trash, Heat, Chelsea Girls, etc.). John expressed his bemusement about Warhol's involvement in the song, "Oh Andy My Assistant": "Oh Andy, my assistant/your mind is so consistently blank/that I'm banking on you now/so please so don't try to comprehend/the reason why I have to send/ you up or else, I'm sure that we, shall have a terrible row/It's either you or I must save the race/ So bye-bye Andy and off you're goin' to Space."

LONG LOST FOOTAGE OF MUSICAL PLAY BY JOHN PHILLIPS, PRODUCED BY ANDY WARHOL (1975) (Dangerous Minds, photo courtesy Ken Regan / Camera S)

Music CD: Andy Warhol Presents "Man on the Moon" (Amazon.com)

Can't believe I missed this on Coast To Coast. So, I don't know what your plans are for September 12 and 13, but you might want to change them. The 11th annual "Bay Area UFO Expo Celebration Event" takes place that weekend in Santa Clara, California. Snip:

Just think about it.... Eleven years of bringing you the most compelling theories and evidence in support of the truth about UFO's, their mysterious occupants and Earth's hidden underground bases!

If you are interested in UFO's, ET's, Reptoids, Earth Changes, Crash Retrievals, Chem-Trails and Conspiracies, the 11th Annual Bay Area UFO Expo will guarantee an entertaining and mind expanding experience!

That copy already had me pretty worked up, but then I read about the "Seasonal Vegetable, Sliced Fruit Tray, Assorted Breads, and Chef's Selection of Dessert" that come with the two-day pass. Sold! If you go, please tell me about it. I'll gladly re-blog any interesting photo/video/liveblogs submitted by BB fans who do attend. Also, how great is that poster?

11th Annual Bay Area UFO Expo (via Bonnie Burton)

Earlier in July, I attended the Kansas University Campbell Conference, the annual event at which the Campbell and Sturgeon Awards are given out (Little Brother was one of the Campbell winners this year). One of the honorees at the awards ceremony was Paul Carter, the historian and science fiction scholar. Paul was absolutely charming all weekend, a clever, twinkle-eyed presence in the room at all the various discussions, and then, at the very end of the event, he took the podium and delivered the closing lecture.

Called "The Enormous Absurdity of Nature," Carter's essay was one of the most beautiful, lyrical and thought-provoking pieces of writing I had encoutered; it examined the mythic, religious and scientific history of humanity's relationship to the Earth, to space, and to the moon. It epitomized everything great about scholarly writing -- the ability to show the unexpected connections between seemingly disparate subjects and to illuminate them in so doing.

Paul's son Bruce was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the manuscript for "The Enormous Absurdity of Nature" and to pass on Paul's consent to publish it here. I only regret that there isn't video of Paul's delivery, which was magnificent, practically a sermon (turns out Paul's father was a Methodist minister).

So here it is; posting it here is one of my most exciting Boing Boing moments for the year. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

During the week in the hot summer of 1994 when we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first human visit to Earth's moon, broken chunks of Comet Shoemaker-Levy, carefully labeled from A to W by watchers on Earth, crashed into the back side of Jupiter. When the big planet rotated sufficiently to show Earth observers the extent of the damage, Jupiter quite to their surprise displayed visible blemishes, some of them more than Earth-sized, on its colorful cloud-banded face. They shared space with the long-extant Great Red Spot, which Jupiter watchers had had under continuous observation for two centuries and more.

Jupiter's diameter is ten times Earth's. A comet hurtling into that roiling gas ball, unless perchance it were to stir up organic processes out of that primal soup, must be less than a pinprick. But a similar solid body smiting the Earth would be quite another case. Conceivably it could send the current lord of creation, homo sapiens, to join his august predecessor the dinosaur.

Dinosaurs, from the innocuous children's purple friend Barney to the frightful raptors portrayed in Jurassic Park and its sequels, have in the modern imagination to a great extent displaced the dragon. What fascinates us about them is precisely that they came, lived, flourished and died without any human referent whatsoever. To one 19th century Victorian clerical gentleman, that utter absence of human context posed a troublesome question for traditional faith: "Who can think that a being of unbounded power, wisdom, and goodness should create a world

The Enormous Absurdity of Nature (PDF, scan of original typescript)

The Enormous Absurdity of Nature (HTML, OCR'ed from original typed manuscript)

(Thanks, Paul and Bruce!)

Both via Boston.com's "The Big Picture."

Above (click for large size): A NASA photo of a young Neil Armstrong, 1966. (view the full Apollo mission photoset here).

Below: (click for large size) the longest eclipse of the century, seen beyond a statue of Mahatma Gandhi (Chennai, India, July 22, 2009 - REUTERS/Babu)

(All spotted on missom's blog.)

This gorgeus astro-soap-bubble is a freaky nebula discovered last July by Dave Jurasevich of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, who called it the "Cygnus Bubble." New Scientist has the explanation, courtesy of Adam Frank of the University of Rochester: "'Spherical ones are very rare.' One explanation is that the image is looking down the throat of a typical cylindrical nebula. However, it is still remarkably symmetrical, Frank says."

Giant 'soap bubble' found floating in space

(Image: Travis A. Rector/U of Alaska Anchorage/Heidi Schweiker/NOAO)

John Graham-Cumming's The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive is a geek initiation in 505 pages. Identifying 128 sites of nerdy interest (with strong clusters in the UK and US), the Atlas could also be called 2^7 places to go and have your mind blown before you die.

From Charles Babbage's pickled brain (Royal College of Surgeons Hunterian Museum, London) to the lockpickers' paradise at the John M Mossman Lock Collection in NYC to place to see the prime-number-oriented magicicadas spawn to the Magnetic North Pole, the Atlas covers a gamut from the historical to the wondrous. It even takes note of some of my local haunts, including the wonderful, solemn and beautiful Bunhill Cemetery, resting place of Thomas "Bayesian filtering" Bayes and his patron, Richard Price, the inventor of actuary. It does a particularly good job on Bletchley Park, site of Alan Turing and co's codebreaking efforts during WWII (part of the proceeds from each Atlas sold go to fund restoration efforts at Bletchley, which is sadly neglected by the British government).

Each site in the Atlas is accompanied by a sprightly and well-explained lesson in history, science and technology, from the functioning of diesel, two-stroke and four-stroke engines to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory to the way that antibiotics work to the basis for the Davy lamp.

Whether you're off on a trip or just want to do some armchair exploring and learning, the Geek Atlas is a wonderful piece of reading, and an education besides.

The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive (Amazon)

The Geek Atlas (author's site)

Publisher of Geek's Atlas to help save Bletchley Park

Here's Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the stupendous Red Mars books, in the Washington Post explaining why we shouldn't go to space -- and why we should.

The creation of a cosmic diaspora is just one argument for putting humans in space -- a bad one. But now, as human-made climate change has thrust us into the role of stewards of the global biosphere, new reasons, good ones, have emerged. Indeed, keeping our space ambitions relatively local -- within our own solar system -- can help us find solutions for the climate crisis.

It has been said that space science is an Earth science, and that is no paradox. Our climate crisis is very much a matter of interactions between our planet and our sun. That being the case, our understanding is vastly enhanced by going into space and looking down at the Earth, learning things we cannot learn when we stay on the ground.

Studying other planets helps as well. The two closest planets have very different histories, with a runaway greenhouse effect on Venus and the freezing of an atmosphere on Mars. Beyond them spin planets and moons of various kinds, including several that might harbor life. Comparative planetology is useful in our role as Earth's stewards; we discovered the holes in our ozone layer by studying similar chemical interactions in the atmosphere of Venus. This kind of unexpected insight could easily happen again.

Return to the Heavens, for the Sake of the Earth (via Making Light)

Robert Pearlman of collectspace.com says, "Forty years to the day after it was found and collected by Neil Armstrong, a moon rock is helping NASA mark the anniversary of the first lunar landing from on-board a perch that is closer than any Apollo-returned lunar sample has ever come to its original home."

Full story on Robert's blog here. Image above: The Apollo 11 moon rock, seen here before its launch, is now on the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA/collectSPACE).

Avi sez, "The Air & Space Museum in DC now hosts a comprehensive exhibition of Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean's artistic record of the Moon voyages. The museum has released high resolutions scans of two of Bean's amazing portraits of Armstrong and Aldrin."

Armstrong portrait

Aldrin portrait (Thanks, Avi!)

To honor the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, NASA has just released these brand new restored videos of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's historic first steps on the moon. The space agency is working with Lowry Digital in Burbank to restore tapes from the July 20, 1969 moonwalk &mdash the project in its entirety will be completed in the fall, but they're offering a sneak peek at some of the iconic moments, like Neil Armstrong (above) and Buzz Aldrin (below) taking their first steps on the moon, starting right now. These clips show side-by-side comparisons of the footage stored in the NASA archives vs. the never-seen-before newly restored footage.

Stay tuned for more reporting about the "lost" Apollo 11 tapes and an interview with Buzz Aldrin on BBG on Monday.

Below, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin raising the American flag on the moon's surface:

Footage courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Jeffrey A Carver sez, "The prologue to my SF novel Sunborn (Tor Books), narrated to an animated video sequence drawn from a slew of NASA images from Hubble, Chandra, etc. In the case of this particular prologue, the astronomical images actually do reflect the story of one Deeaab, explorer from across the brane-boundary. I think it's pretty cool, which is not entirely bragging, as the real video wizardry was done by a fellow named Adam Guzewicz. Created for a local arts festival, I decided to see if it might be an interesting way to introduce a book to new readers."

Video Narration of Sunborn (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

"Day in the Clouds," The Virgin America + Google in-flight internet gaming competition we published a BB Video piece about today, netted yet another honor for multiple world puzzle championship Winner Wei-Hwa Huang. He's shown above, on our flight, using one of the tools of his win: a notebook. Not the notebook computer, a notebook.

He has an extensive blog post about his experience at the event here, which includes the impossibly awesome phrase "Parallel slave processor friends," used to describe his seat-mates, off whom he bounced thoughts as he sorted out answers.

My favorite part of his post? The lyrics he wrote as an answer for one of the puzzles. You should read the whole entry, because it's rare to read such a subjective, intimate account of how genius prepares for a competition in his field. But, I have to just blog the song he wrote, here:

Enjoy the world
with the day in the cloud
Never be bored
and say this aloud:

Everything is connected
when you live in the clouds
Every line is expected
when you live in the clouds

Everyone can do it
no matter your status
have fun anywhere
while flying through a stratus!

Everything is awesome
when you live in the clouds
Everything and then some
can be found in the clouds

Don't worry so
about problems in flight,
Because you know
Everything's going to be all right!

Day in the Cloud -- Virgin America Flight 921 (Onigame livejournal; image via Virgin America)

Lorna Toolis, head librarian at Toronto's magnificent Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy sez,

I'm really pleased about having the staff from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory do a day long presentation on the Chandra Mission. The programming is meant for teenagers as well as adults.

Join us on Friday, July 17th and Saturday July 18th, 2009, when the Merril Collection will present a galaxy of exciting events in conjunction with NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory Mission. Course material is intended for teen and adult patrons.

Schedule of Events

Unless otherwise stated, all events will take place in the lower level programme room of the Lillian H. Smith Building, 239 College Street.

Highlights of the Chandra Mission Friday, July 17, 2009, 6:00 - 7:30 p.m.

Author Julie Czerneda launches her new book Rift in the Sky Friday, July 17, 2009, 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. in the Merril Collection reading room, 3rd floor

A Voyage Through Art-Space by Donna L. Young. Saturday, July 18, 2009, 9:30 - 10:45a.m.

Workshop: Stellar Evolution - Cosmic Cycles of Formation and Destruction. Saturday, July 18, 2009, 11:00 - 12:00 a.m.

Workshop: Alien by Design with Julie Czerneda, Sci-Fi Author Saturday, July 18, 2009, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m.

Illustrating Space with Jean-Pierre Normand, SF / Fantasy Artist Saturday, July 18, 2009, 3:00 - 4:30 p.m.

As space is limited, interested members are asked to phone and register attendance with Merril Collection staff at 416-393-7748.

Toronto Public Library>Unique Collections > Merril - What's New?:

Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.

While traveling in Eastern Eastern and Central Europe last year I stumbled on the globe museum in Vienna, Austria. It had some beautiful orreries and tellurions (an astronomical instrument depicting the movement of the earth around the sun) but none of them came close to the impressiveness of the Eisinga Planetarium

Aside from a plaque that reads, "Planetarium," one would hardly be able to tell that inside this seemingly cozy, Dutch house lives the oldest, accurate moving model of our solar system. What is harder to believe still is that the model, built in 1781, is still functioning to this day!

Eise Eisinga, a wood carver and amateur astronomer living in Franeker, Netherlands, decided to build the model in 1774 after a mass panic occurred among the Dutch following an alignment of the planets earlier that year. People were terrified that a plantary collision was imminent. Eisinga hoped his model would help prove that nothing of the sort was going to happen.

The model was built from oak wood, nine weights, a pendulum clock, and over 10,000 hand-forged nails. Each planet continues to orbit the Sun at an appropriate speed (i.e. Earth, once a year, and Saturn, every 29 years). The museum is also home to a variety of old astronomical instruments as well as modern day astronomy equipment.

More on the planetarium here, on the globe museum here, and to the Atlas category "Astounding Timepieces" here.

Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.

Last summer, I read Roberto Casati's wonderful, lyrical book Shadows: Unlocking their Secrets, from Plato to Our Time, and was struck by a passage in which Casati describes how his addiction to total solar eclipses (TSEs) has carried him to the middle of the Black Sea and to Zambia:

A total eclipse is by far the most impressive natural phenomenon that we terrestrials can witness. The staging doesn't lessen its brutal effects. The temperature drops. A mysterious cold wind starts blowing. The shadow comes running up like a hurricane on the sea. The light collapses, and in just a few seconds, a metallic night falls--it comes on so fast the mind is not ready for it. On the horizon, unreachably far away, are the vestiges of daytime: an orangy twilight all around, as if a set designer made a mistake in projecting a sunset. In the midst of all this is a sun that's no longer a furnace but just an unlucky rock: its shining fringe is like the silver mane of hair of some aged celestial divinity; and stars glitter again, caught out of place in this out-of-joint nighttime.

Sounds like an almost religious experience, doesn't it?

TSEs happen about once every other year, and are only visible in a narrow band of the earth's surface. When I first read Casati's book, I vowed that I would try to see one as soon as possible.

I had high hopes of being in the Siberian town of Nadym for the last TSE, on August 1, 2008, but another commitment kept me in another hemisphere. Alas, I'm also going to be glued to my desk for the next TSE, which is exactly a month away, on July 22. Since it's going to pass over major populated areas in India and China, it may end up being witnessed by more human beings than any other TSE in history. It's also going to be the longest of the 21st century, lasting 6 minutes and 39 seconds at its point of maximum eclipse.

The next four TSEs--in 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2016--will barely cross dry land. So unless you want to join a cruise expedition or do some airborne eclipse chasing, you'll have to wait for the 2017 eclipse, which is going to carve a big fat path across the American heartland. For more info, check out Totality: The Digital Magazine for Eclipse Chasers.

Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.

The Kansas Underground Salt Museum would be a curious site all on its own. Sixty-five stories below the ground of Hutchinson, Kansas sits a massive salt mine with salt veins stretching from Kansas all the way to New Mexico, and comes complete with an underground salt museum and tram tour. There is, however, an even more unusual aspect to this site. What might be the world's oldest organism was reanimated from the salty walls of this mine.

Deep in the mine, within a pocket of salt water trapped in a 250 million-year-old salt crystal, two biologists and a geologist discovered the 2-9-3 virgibacillus bacteria. This would be unremarkable save for the fact that this bacteria was 100 million years older than the dinosaurs... and it was still alive.

Bacteria have the ability to go into a kind of semi-permanent hibernation, but survival for this long was unheard of. After lying dormant in the salt crystal for 250 million years, the scientists added fresh nutrients and a new salt solution, and the ancient bacteria "re-animated."

Dr. Russell Vreeland, one of the biologists who found the bacteria, pointed out that bacteria can survive the forces acceleration via rubble thrown into space via a meteor impact. If it is possible for a bacteria to survive being off the planet and to stay alive within a salt chunk for 250 million years, then in a sort of "reverse-exogenesis" it may be possible that earth's own microbes are already out there.

"When man goes to the stars, our microbes will be waiting for us," Vreeland said.

Today the antiquity of the bacteria is still being tested. For a great roundup of the objections to and data backing up the bacteria try here at American Scientist. For more on the mine, which also stores the master prints of thousands of Hollywood films such as Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, check the Atlas page here and more about the scientists on this excellent blog post at The Lope.

David Marusek's Mind Over Ship is the long-awaited sequel to his groundbreaking 2005 debut novel Counting Heads, and it was worth the wait.

Mind Over Ship returns to the awesomely weird and exciting Marusek future, where humanity trembles on the verge of transcendence, splintering into people, clones, avatars, AIs, temporary and permanent models (some made without the model-ee's consent) and a thousand other fragments. Each of these factions battles for the best deal it can get -- even as the individual members of each clade fight for their own personal best interests.

Mind Over Ship is so complex, with so many storylines and so many incredibly inventive premises, that it trembles on the verge of breakdown, acrobatically walking on a tightrope over the pit of too-weird. It's a book that demands and rewards attention, as it explores a hundred important philosophical questions about free will, destiny, bioethics, intelligence, and duty.

For example, there's the story of the betrayal of the cold-sleep deep-space ships, which are meant to be launching by the dozens to distant, unexplored stars (but which have been co-opted for use as space-condos in a hostile corporate takeover). This leaves their erstwhile owners -- semi-sovereign collectives of Jesus freaks, defective spare-organ clones of VIPs, fatalistic Ukrainian Chernorbyl survivors, and other disaffected groups yearning to breath the air of distant worlds -- out in the cold.

Then there's the biowar flu, "the 24-hour nonspecific grief flu," which causes its victims to feel, well, nonspecific grief for 24 hours, before their immune systems fight the bugs off. Or do they?

NASTIEs are nanoweapons, the scale of a dandelion seed, which take root and begin coopting nearby matter, sending out tree-like roots to seek out the raw materials to assemble themselves into "deadly weapons of mass destruction." The army that launched the NASTIEs disbanded sixty years ago, but the seeds still flutter on the wind, periodically dissolving whole housing complexes as cloned first-responders seek to disassemble them before they can realize their destiny.

Clones are in trouble -- different kinds of clones, provided by different workforce vendors, are all going through massive, wrenching existential trauma. Do they have "clone fatigue" that causes them to run against type? And of course, every clone wonders if his creators imbued him with "musts" (secret, tailored cocktails of trace minerals whose absence will kill a clone in short order) and "candy" (like "musts," except that these cocktails evince extreme ecstatic responses, acting as a powerful Skinnerian conditioning agent).

There's even weirder life in Mind Over Ship: a beheaded tycoon whose head is grafted onto a cloned baby's body; her mother, secretly alive, encoded in the modified brains of "panasonic" fish around the world. And then there's the lively media: nits and the nitwork, micro-, mezzo- and nano-scale spybots that form a ubiquitous surveillance grid around the planet, a grid that can only be avoided by taking powerful purgatives that destroy the artificial fauna populating your outer and inner self before passing through an airlock.

Marusek's hyperfuturistic, hyperimaginative soap-opera is a tour-de-force of imagination, philosophy, dark humor and humanity. Let's hope he writes the next one quickly!

Mind Over Ship

Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.

When Neil Armstrong first took that one small step onto the moon, he left behind more than just a footprint. Among the many items still sitting in the Bay of Tranquility are;

Neil Armstrong's boots, a gold replica of an olive branch, tongs, four armrests, urine collection assemblies, a hammer, an insulating blanket, and... four defecation collection devices. Yes, Neil Armstrong's poop is moldering on the moon.

While bags of frozen astronaut poop may sound unimportant, even a little gross, some "extreme heritage" conservationists are very concerned about their protection--as well as the other detritus left behind by humanity's first moonwalkers. For now, Tranquility Base is still tranquil (there is no wind or rain up there to damage things), but preservationists worry that private space enterprises will one day endanger the Apollo landing site, as well as other important landmarks on the moon. From the Lunar Legacy Site:

"Unfortunately, at the present time both NASA and the Federal Government are not willing to pursue preserving these properties on the moon...The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Site is not simply a significant site for Americans, it was a significant event for all of humanity. The steps on the moon were a step for mankind. Over 600 million people watched the moon landing. The site belongs to the world."

Full list of items left at the Apollo 11 landing sites, at the Lunar Legacy Site.
Great New Scientist piece on preserving Tranquility Base, Space Archeology Wiki, and LA Times Article on space heritage.

A first for one of the First Men, spotted in a NYT Q+A with Dr. Buzz Aldrin:

Q: What sort of music do you like?
A: I just did a rap session with Snoop Dogg and a rap composition called "Rocket Experience." It's going to be an online video. The Web site is funnyordie.com.

Q: Do you actually sing on the video?
A: I relate. It's not singing, it's rapping.

The Man on the Moon (via Robert Pearlman)

(Download MP4)

In today's episode of Boing Boing Video, space/aviation/tech reporter Miles O'Brien speaks with me about the role of technology in the recent Air France crash.

He answers a number of questions posed here on Boing Boing by commenters on our previous episodes: how "black boxes" work, why they're not built to float, whether they would be more effective if they streamed data constantly while in use, and whether more training in the "lower-tech" aspects of piloting could have helped.

Since we taped this two-way conversation on Friday, recovery teams off the coast of Brazil have recovered some 16 bodies, and wreckage from the crash.

Here's a snip from his latest blog post about the disaster, over at True Slant.

The Air France 447 mystery may never be solved beyond a shadow of doubt, but there are some telling, tragic clues to consider based on what we know about the airplane systems and the extreme weather and aerodynamic conditions it encountered before it went down a week ago.

First, a bit of aerodynamics: The doomed Airbus A-330-200 was flying ever so close to its maximum altitude - in a zone pilots call the "Coffin Corner". It refers to the edge of so-called "flight envelope" of an aircraft. At this altitude, the air is much thinner and that significantly narrows the swath of speed at which the airplane can safely operate.

Read the whole post: "The 'Coffin Corner' and a 'Mesoscale' Maw." And speaking of True Slant, check out these two articles about the recently-launched site, a rare refuge for hardcore journalism in these hard times: Washington Post, and Associated Press.

If you're interested in this story -- or in aviation and space news in general -- you really should also follow Miles on Twitter to see his thought-stream unfold in real time.

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Sponsor shout-out: This week's Boing Boing Video episodes are brought to you in part by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."

National Geographic celebrates the first monkeys in space with a photo-feature of the poor little primates in their capsules:

A squirrel monkey named Baker peers out from a 1950s NASA biocapsule as she's readied for her first space mission. Baker and a rhesus monkey named Able launched aboard a Jupiter AM-18 rocket on May 28, 1959 -- 50 years ago this week. The pair returned to Earth alive after a 15-minute flight, becoming the first primates to survive a trip into space. Miss Baker, as she came to be known, spent the latter part of her life at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. She died of kidney failure in 1984 at the ripe old age of 27.

SPACE MONKEY PICTURES: 50-Year Anniversary (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Among the free papercraft downloads at Canon's website is this beautiful model of the structure of the sun -- a perfect project for a sunny weekend!

Structure of the Sun (via Make)