Cannibalism Found in Neanderthal Society

I'm fascinated with man's other hominid contemporaries early in our species' history. They may be the closest we can come to learning about how other intelligent but non-Homo Sapiens interacted as societies. The neanderthals are particularly interesting because they were almost advanced as Homo Sapiens. Today it was revealed that their society, at least in relation to this cave, was cannibalistic.

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-caves-neanderthals-cannibals.html

Scientists Inching Towards Bringing the Auroch Back

The auroch may be among the first species cloned and brought back from extinction.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/29/scientists-edge-closer-bringing-back-dead-fabled-aurochs-giant/

This is an update in my continuing coverage of the Proxima Centauri B story. Proxima B remains the closest known, or indeed the closest possible, exoplanet to the sun. Even more interesting, it lies within the habitable zone of its star and could harbor conditions favorable to life including liquid water.

The main development in this story is strong evidence that may lay to rest a decades-old mystery. Up until this point, we weren't certain if Proxima Centauri was gravitationally bound to the nearby Alpha Centauri system. It turns out that it probably is bound and that greatly favors the habitability of Proxima Centauri B.

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the sun. A small, ancient red dwarf, it lies only 4.25 light years away. This is as close as it gets, and indeed will eventually be within our reach to visit. The planet orbiting it is about the same mass as Earth and may be very similar or could be radically different. We just don't know yet.

Key to this story was determining the star's radial velocity, or how it's moving through space. Using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher instrument in Chile, astronomers have obtained very precise measurements of Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri's radial velocity. They match up very well, both stars are moving relative to the sun in the same direction. This strongly suggests that they are gravitationally bound.

That would imply that all three stars that make up the Alpha Centauri system formed within the same nebula billions of years ago along with the exoplanet. They would also all be roughly the same age. The speculative model based on what we know goes that Proxima Centauri was once far closer to the other stars but was ejected out into its current orbit. The planet likely did the same, forming far from the star but migrating to a lower orbit over time.

Given that it formed distantly, it was probably once an ice world if our solar system is any indicator. That implies the presence of water ice, which seems to be common throughout the galaxy. As the planet migrated, that ice would have melted and if it's still there today, it would be in the form of liquid water.

The only other thing we can infer with any confidence about Proxima B is that it may be tidally locked given how close it is to Proxima Centauri. This would lead to an interesting situation where one side of the planet might be quite hot and permanently facing the star while the other side of the world would be frozen and never see the light of day. This would create a ring of habitability on the terminator zones of the planet that divide permanent day and night.

It could be a ring world where the deep red color of its star would dominate the sky along with two very bright, but distant companion stars. Twilight oceans may lap shores not unlike a permanent sunset on an earthly beach. There may even be life, adapted to its dim environment in ways hard to imagine. But, unlike many of the mysteries that I talk about on this channel, this is one that will be answered. It won't take us long to learn more about this world and in the not too distant future we could be walking on those shores, assuming of course that there aren't others already there.

Thanks for listening! I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently with a new book coming out. I pulled out all the stops with this one and asked the deepest question I could think of. If the universe is a computer simulation, then who created it? This book is called Supermind and will be available in a matter of weeks, in the meantime be sure to check out my other books at your favorite online retailer and subscribe to my channel for in depth, regular explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.

Transcript of my KIC 8462852 12/27/16 Update

This is an update in my continuing coverage of the mysterious star KIC 8462852 or Tabby's star for December 27, 2016. For the full back story, I suggest checking out my other videos on this channel starting with my first update video from April of this year and my subsequent updates on this star.

At this stage the star is being monitored every night for the expected deep dimming events first observed by the Kepler Spacecraft. And while there have been a few false alarms, Tabby's star has remained stable in brightness since the observations began earlier this year. And while it's overwhelmingly likely that we're seeing a natural phenomenon, the alien megastructure hypothesis is still not discounted. But the natural explanations that are emerging are improving in quality and we seem to be moving closer to a consensus on what's going on here. But, there is dissent, more on that in a minute.

But which natural phenomenon is causing it? Several new theories and papers have emerged that may provide an answer. According to a recent paper by Jason Wright of Pennsylvania State University, these theories fall into four general categories. Category number one are explanations that lie within our own solar system. Category two are explanations that lie in the interstellar medium between us and Boyajian's star. Category three are explanations that lie in orbit around the star and category four are explanations that involve the star itself.

Category one: The Solar System

To cause the dips in brightness that Kepler observed with KIC 8462852, you need some kind of material to block the light. This could be anything, including alien megastructures. But the location of that material can be anywhere in between us and the star.

One idea is that there is a small, dense cloud of material in the outer solar system orbiting the sun and passing by and blocking the light from Tabby's star. While a reasonable idea on its face, this stands out as odd because we've never seen an analogue of this cloud of material passing in front of any other star in the millions of observations we've made of the galaxy. Because of that we have no real reason other than conjecture to suspect that such a cloud might be lurking out there.

A second possibility is that there is a Kuiper Belt object passing near the line of sight of the star that happens to be out gassing material, such as Enceladus does with water or even Io with its volcanoes. In other words, something spewing material into space. This would seem unlikely, you'd need a bunch of conditions to be just right for a geologically active world to exist in the Kuiper Belt. It would also need to be doing it in a way that's obscuring KIC 8462852. That's a tall order. But, as Pluto recently showed us, bodies in the outer solar system can be quite active and weird stuff does happen in our solar system. So, this remains a maybe.

A third possibility that hasn't been well fleshed-out is a slow collision of comets in the Oort cloud releasing the material. If that's the case, it would probably be obscuring more than just Tabby's star, so it's not a great solution.

But all possibilities involving our solar system face two serious hurdles. Boyajian's star lies well outside the ecliptic plane where the vast majority of matter is congregating. While it's not impossible to have material outside the ecliptic, it's definitely there, it does disqualify most material. The further you are out of the ecliptic, the less stuff there is to block light.

The second problem is that there is some evidence, albeit weak, of potential periodicity in the material that was causing the dips in brightness that Kepler observed. In other words we may have seen it pass by multiple times during Kepler's run. This is to say that there are indicators that the material is orbiting Boyajian's star. But it's really weak evidence. More observation is needed to confirm this. Think of it as hints of being in orbit, not proof.

Category Two: Material in the interstellar medium

The possibility of periodicity also affects any solutions in this category. If confirmed, it would eliminate any possibilities here. However, as it stands, it's still possible that some sort of material is passing in deep space between us and KIC 8462852. The nature of this material is debated, it could be dust or gas and could be linked to any number of astronomical phenomena. One theory even proposed that the material is located in the accretion disc of a black hole. However there are problems with all theories in this category for one simple reason: if it is a cloud of interstellar dust, it's a very strange one of a type we've never seen before. We've never seen one create the kinds of dips Kepler observed.

It's not impossible, of course, but it is unlikely. Unfortunately, with all explanations on the table for Tabby's star, they all seem unlikely. The only consensus is that whatever this is, it's a very rare event and that's what makes pinning it down so difficult.

Category Three: Material in orbit around KIC 8462852

If periodicity is confirmed, this becomes the most likely set of solutions. The problem here is that all of them are really unlikely given what we've observed and because of that the potential for alien megastructures being the culprit remains on the table. But as with anything in astronomy, the last explanation you want to jump to is alien activity. While it's true that we really don't know how common aliens are, the Fermi paradox makes it safe to assume that aliens are very rare or we would have seen them by now.

It's also important to remember that we know absolutely nothing about alien megastructures because we've never seen one of those either. Trying to figure out what sorts of structures a civilization more advanced than our own would build is purely conjectural. We can theorize and speculate, but all we can really define with any certainty is that the megastructures can't defy the laws of physics.  

Because of all the uncertainty, megastructures end up being a wide open explanation that can fit almost any strange phenomenon we observe in the universe. That's why we have to be very cautious when discussing that possibility. It's possible, but not a very good explanation for KIC 8462852.  

The natural explanations in this category advanced so far range from disintegrating giant comets to smashed planets. I've covered these in my previous updates in depth, so check those out for the back story, but needless to say none of the explanations are very good. All of them in this class have fundamental problems based on what we've observed.

Category Four: KIC 8462852 itself.

There's been a few explanations so far that pin the origin of the dips on the star itself. But until now, they haven't been very solid. Star spots and dim areas of the star haven't really held up to scrutiny as far as the data we have goes.

But a new paper suggests something more solid. It presents that Tabby's star is undergoing an internal phase shift that's messing with the light that it emits. A group of mathematicians and scientists at the University of Illinois have been conducting a study and have authored a paper. They looked at how the dips in brightness mathematically relate to each other. This is not unusual, patterns can appear in data and you can study that. Sometimes significant patterns appear. Known as avalanche statistics it can shed light on how and when natural phenomena occur. Importantly, it reveals information about phase transitions.

Think of it as the snaps you hear in a stick as you bend it just before it breaks. The scientists suggest that the small dips in the Kepler light curve are related to the larger dips in such a way that they are linked. This is super-important because it's the first real blow to the megastructure explanation. If the smaller dips are related to the huge dips, then the constraints placed on the alien megastructure theory shrink in a major way.

At that point, it would appear that the star is to blame and that we've caught it in a very rare, but very weird situation where stellar flares and internal conditions of the star are just so that its brightness is being affected in a strange, but entirely natural way. Their model seems to be consistent with what's been observed. Only time will tell if this theory holds up.

But that's not the only paper that's come out recently. German mathematician Eduard Heindl recently proposed that a specific type of alien activity would be consistent with what we see at Boyajian's star. Known as stellar lifting, this conceptual technology would allow a civilization to mine the resources of their star for raw materials.

This may sound like science fiction, but in reality we can think of relatively straightforward theoretical ways to lift material from a star and cool it for use using mirrors, localized heating, and magnetic fields.

Heindl's theory is noteworthy in that it mathematically explains a very strange feature located in the light curve that has so far not been particularly explainable using natural means. The feature is unusually smooth and while not impossible comets and dust clouds would have a hard time creating it. But then again, just about everything we know about KIC 8462852 tells us that whatever we're seeing, it's incredibly rare and unusual.

So there you have it, observations of the star are ongoing but the mystery of Boyajian's star is not yet solved. My transcript for this video can be found at my blog the Event Horizon, link in the description below. You can also find links there to the scientific papers I referenced in this video for people that want to dig in deep regarding this story as well as regular posts about technology, interesting articles I find, and just science and technology stuff in general.

Thanks for listening, I am science fiction author and futurist John Michael Godier currently with a new book coming out in a matter of weeks. It's called Supermind and I'm happy to finally unveil the cover art by noted space artist John Kaufmann, link to his website in the description below and be sure to check out my other books at your favorite online retailer and subscribe to my channel for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live. 

The papers cited in this video:

FAMILIES OF PLAUSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE PUZZLE OF BOYAJIAN’S STAR

Avalanche Statistics Identify Intrinsic Stellar Processes near Criticality in KIC 8462852

A physically inspired model of Dip d792 and d1519 o f the Kepler light curve seen at KIC8462852

METI and Proactively Contacting Aliens

While I'm not against the idea of attempting to communicate with aliens, I think it should be done only after careful and thought out deliberation. I think it's simply prudent for the human race to sit back and just listen for others right now. Let's try to discover them before they discover us. Then we can learn whatever we can about them and then decide if we want to send a message.

What's not prudent is blasting a message towards Proxima Centauri B. There are several reasons for this but chief among them is that it's unlikely to be inhabited by an alien civilization. There are no indicators that such a civilization is there and while the planet may well have liquid water and a potential for life, we really don't yet know how great that potential is. It could be near zero for all we know.

We've known about this world for less than a year. We know almost nothing solid about it. Sending a message there is just an act of expending resources and money on something that has a very low chance of paying off. And if it does pay off by some miracle, we have no idea what the payoff will be. What happens if the Proximans find our message offensive? Or threatening?

It's simply too early in the game for projects like METI.

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-scientists-worlds.html

Technological Unemployment Finally Getting the Media's Attention

Technological unemployment doesn't just affect factory workers. It will eventually affect us all. The bottom line is that computers have the potential to do almost any job. And they will be able to do them better than we can. That doesn't just mean assembly line work, everything from the CEO of a corporation to a scientist will eventually be in the firing line. We must be ready for that as a global civilization. But at least the media is finally starting to catch on that technological unemployment is already an issue we need to be talking about in the public discourse. It's nice to see the subject finally making into popular magazines such as this piece in The New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/our-automated-future

Caught Red Handed: a star that eats planets.

Interesting article about a star that has a composition that indicates that it has eaten at least one of its planets.

https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2016/12/15/astronomers-discover-dark-past-planet-eating-death-star

A gas giant with rubies in its atmosphere

This article just goes to show how crazy extreme planetary atmospheres can be.


http://www.space.com/34992-giant-alien-planet-ruby-clouds-weather.html

The Danger of Rogue Asteroids

This article details the concerns of a scientist regarding rogue asteroids that could cause a dinosaur-like extinction event on earth. He's rightfully concerned, we're woefully unprepared for such an event to the point that we may not even see it coming ahead of time. But it's a problem that we can solve, if we just put a little cash and effort into it. Seems like it would be money well spent to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/dec/13/space-asteroid-comet-nasa-rocket

Japan takes on Space Junk

There have been a number of efforts lately to take on the growing problem of space junk. The more humans launch into space, the more junk gets created. Thankfully, the attempts at cleaning it up have become more proactive in recent years.

Read about Japan's Solutions at the BBC

Transcript: Solipsism Syndrome and Space Psychology

On this channel I often talk about wide-ranging topics like space travel, perception and the nature of existence. While I always do it within the framework of science to the best of my abilities, rarely do these topics come together directly -- unless you happen to be floating in space with a leaking space suit pondering the meaning of existence until the air runs out.

But in one instance, they do come together directly. And, potentially, they do it in a very direct and concerning way. It's called Solipsism syndrome, and while no one's sure that the condition even exists, the fact that it possibly does has certain factions in the aerospace industry thinking about designing habitats and spacecraft that help alleviate it as a potential problem.

Solipsism syndrome is ultimately a psychological state. People subjected to extended periods of isolation, such as living in a space colony, may develop a sense that the world around them is not actually real. This would be a disassociative disorder that might make people become indifferent to the outside world, somehow mentally detached from it in a way that they simply can't shake until their isolation ends.

This could be an extremely dangerous situation that runs head long into science fiction territory. Numerous stories have been told, perhaps most famously with the movie "Event Horizon", of astronauts going mad in space. The scary thing is, there are several ways it could actually happen.

Imagine living on a Mars colony. You've been there for a year in total isolation other than your shipmates. If Solipsism syndrome is real, it may begin to not matter to you that the atmosphere outside is toxic. You may just decide to go for a stroll anyway without your helmet completely unconcerned about what's going to happen because you're convinced that none of it is real anyway. Add in the related phenomenon of cabin fever and ... well ... not good.

And it may even become a collective delusion. Mass hysteria is no joke, it's happened multiple times in history to bizarre effect including a 13th century convent of nuns that compulsively meowed like cats at specific times during the day. Another was the dancing plague of 1518 where a collective delusion developed in a town in France that led hundreds of people to dance without resting for weeks on end leading to several deaths. Likewise, a situation may develop where affected astronauts feed off each other's delusions to disastrous results.

And there's an even more dangerous aspect to this. Unlike other delusions, which are typically not valid and do not relate to anything rational, Solipsism syndrome does. Just as it is the case for the disorder's namesake, the philosophical school of thought known as solipsism, there is actually no way to prove that the real world does in fact exist.

It's fully within the realm of science and philosophy to ask that question, see my video "Is the Universe Real, or Is It a Computer Simulation?". But the bottom line is that all you can know is that you exist and everything else comes down to trusting your senses. Stop trusting them or convince yourself that solipsism reflects reality, and you're in trouble.

Add that with concerns about cloisterphobia resulting from being confined to a small habitat for long periods of time, physiological problems of living in a zero-gravity environment, and the fact that you're as far from a hospital as humans have ever been and its easy to see that the health concerns for deep space exploration become a significant issue indeed.

But there are ways to hopefully avoid these problems. One way is very good and frequent communications with people on earth ranging from family to psychologists. While psychologists have always been involved with ensuring the well-being of astronauts, they have in the past had trouble getting enough access to them due to the packed schedules of astronauts. Any long-term mission will need to address the psychological needs of astronauts more carefully than in the past. But there's also no guarantee that astronauts will talk to the psychologists making evaluation even more difficult.

Case in point, the great Skylab mutiny. Psychologically speaking, Skylab 4 got off to a bad start regardless of what happened after. The moment the astronauts opened the hatch, they were confronted with what appeared to be floating bodies. In fact, it was just a joke left by the Skylab 3 crew, they were just dummies in uniforms. But this mission would go on to see the astronauts actively hiding the effects of space adaptation syndrome, an illness that affects about half of all astronauts as they adjust to zero-G, from the doctors on the ground.

And then came the grueling schedule they had to endure. It was a case where the astronauts felt that they were overworked and ground control felt that they were not working hard enough. This led to something of a mutiny where the astronauts took an unauthorized day off. While the work schedule problem was resolved, and in fact the astronauts got more accomplished on the mission than what ground control had planned, it goes to show that psychology is an important factor to account for on space missions.

But none of that should scare us too much. If those hurdles can be overcome, which, no doubt, they can, the habitats and spacecraft themselves can be designed to be more psychologically friendly. As it stands, spacecraft and places like the ISS tend to be designed for utility rather than psychology. This will probably have to change, and with the advent of the superheavy lift rockets for Mars colonization that Elon Musk and others envision, we will be able to do things like have habitats that have gardens, exercise facilities, and wide open large spaces that will help significantly in keeping astronauts from losing it.

Could Pluto have a Subsurface Jelly Ocean?

It's almost like Pluto wants revenge for being demoted from the status of a planet. And it's doing that by basically turning out to be the most interesting object in the solar system. From emitting X-Rays to showing a young, geologically active surface Pluto has turned out to be nothing like what we envisioned before the New Horizon's probe passed by it in 2015. Now, another addition can be made to the long line of interesting discoveries made at Pluto: hints of a subsurface ocean.

Now, it's very early to speculate about what this ocean might be like and definitely a bit early for the 'does it harbor life' question. But this article is interesting because we can say that if the ocean exists it's probably because of a high ammonia content and may even be more of a gel than a liquid in consistency.

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/solar-system/pluto-subsurface-ocean-possibly-support-primitive-life/

Microsoft predicts that Virtual Reality will be like Hallucinating

I can't say I ever envisioned virtual reality as a kind of hallucination, but I suppose it is in a sense.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2347705/microsoft-says-virtual-reality-will-soon-have-same-mind-bending-effects-as-lsd/

The commercial viability of space mining

It may just be that the first thing of value to commercially mine from the moon or asteroids will be water. This article details a company that is doing just that, setting their eyes on the water of the solar system.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/dec/06/space-mining-moon-asteroids-tech-companies

Robotic Food Delivery Now a Reality

It's here. The robotic pizza delivery person. There are lots of advantages to such a technology; it will be cheaper than humans, faster, will make less errors and will be better at keeping food hot. Trouble is, it will also send those that deliver food for a living to the unemployment line. Technology is a double-edged sword indeed. Technological unemployment is a serious problem and will only broaden to other jobs and get worse as we advance and technology becomes more capable.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2304330/just-eat-makes-history-with-worlds-first-takeaway-delivered-by-robot/

Interestingly, the problem of technological unemployment has been known for a long time even though it's not really talked about in the mainstream media much. Here's a blast from the past, a strange paper authored by John Maynard Keynes in 1930 where he takes a rather rosey approach to the human race going unemployed at large.

http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

He saw technological advancement as man solving his "economic problem". I'm no luddite or other such anti-technology type, but I can't help but think that the process of technological unemployment is going to to hurt. Big time. Pizzas only sell when there is an employed population that can afford them.

Another Carrington Event?

Despite the click bait headline, this article details the very real threat that solar flares present to our technology. While there is only a one in eight chance that such a flare might happen before the year 2020, it's a certainty long term. One that we really ought to be planning for to minimize its effects when it does happen.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/737882/solar-storm-WIPE-OUT-modern-technology-carrington-event

Space-Faring Dinosaurs and the Scarcity of Intelligence

Over the course of my life, I have seen paleontological research into dinosaurs go through a revolution. When I was a kid reading books on the dinosaurs, they were full of pictures of primitive cold-blooded reptiles plodding around awaiting extinction. Now they're not seen that way. Today they are now seen as dynamic, complex animals. And that makes me wonder. What would have happened if they hadn't been smacked with an asteroid? Might they have gone on to achieve civilization and greatness millions of years before man was even a blip on evolution's radar?

It's difficult to say definitively what might have happened. There is always a chance that conditions might have aligned just so that the dinosaurs, or for that matter any of the multitudes of extinct species in earth's history,  might have eventually developed advanced intelligence and ventured out into space. One can never know for certain what might have been. But we can make informed guesses.

While the dinosaurs are turning out to have been more complex than we previously thought, much of that seems to have been turned towards adapting to their environment in a way very different from our own evolutionary path.

For us, the conditions of the world of the early primates specifically favored increasing levels of intelligence needed for survival. For the dinosaurs, not so much. In fact, in those days complexity may have been a liability. After all, the less complex cold-blooded crocodile co-existed with the dinosaurs and is still around relatively unchanged from those days. In their case, evolution favored simplicity. In other words, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

That isn't to say that the dinosaurs weren't moving towards intelligence. Predatory dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex most certainly were. But it was a specific kind of intelligence more akin to what you would need to exist as a pack of wolves, which are far smarter and more complex than the dinosaurs were. It wasn't what you would need to eventually build a skyscraper. In short, the dinosaurs were on the slow path to intelligence whereas the mammals were on the fast track.

One of the major factors governing what might have been is a general rule we see in biology. It's not really how big your brain is, whale brains are quite a bit larger than human brains but they're not as smart as us, but the ratio of how big your brain is to your body. And that's where the dinosaurs fall short. They were huge animals but with tiny brains in comparison to their bulk. This makes sense in one way, but presents a mystery in another.

Our planet's oxygen levels appear to have wildly varied in the past, and apparently still are -- the levels are currently dropping and have been for about the last million years and we're not sure why. Oxygen levels during the time of the last of the dinosaurs appear to have been much lower than they are today. So much so that if you had a time machine and went back to those days, your huge human oxygen hungry brain would cause you to quickly pass out and possibly even die.

That meant that small, simple brains that used less oxygen were the rule of the day. That also means that intelligence was not on the table for the dinosaurs, but it also begs a question. Large bodies also use oxygen, what advantage was there for the dinosaurs to have been so huge?

We don't know the answer to that. But we do know that after the dinosaurs were gone, the small sized, but comparatively large brains of the early mammals favored them in the post apocalyptic environment that was earth just after the asteroid hit. But we do know that the environmental conditions that later arose after the dinosaurs independent of the asteroid probably wouldn't have favored the dinosaurs' physiology and while they might not have gone extinct in later ages, they probably wouldn't have become intelligent either.

So, no space colonies for the dinosaurs, at least not for a much longer period than we required to get to that level of intelligence. If they hadn't gone extinct, we'd have never arisen and earth would still be a world ruled by complex, but unintelligent reptiles. But that also begs a question, if reptiles are destined to be simple and slow to develop intelligence, why did mammals develop intelligence so fast? And how did humans outdo all other mammals?

Well, the fact is, human evolution seems have been a fluke that happened under just the right conditions. The first thing that had to happen was the rise of the mammals in the first place, which unfortunately required the demise of the dinosaurs. Then you needed more oxygen in the atmosphere to swell brain sizes, which by chance happened. But you also need something else. Something in your environment must drive evolution for it to occur. Oddly enough, for us, this seems to have been climate change.

About 20 million years ago, geologic conditions were such that a period of climate upheaval ensued. This is thought to have caused chronic food shortages for the early primates meaning that being able to dynamically adapt and analyze became a desirable trait for finding food.

In short, the smarter mammals lived and those that could not cope died off as natural selection occurred. The end result is us, but what I find fascinating is that we weren't the only intelligent species that would result from that period of evolutionary history.

I often opine about the possibility of alien life on this channel and ask the great "Are we alone?" question. But there was a time when we were most certainly not alone. We once shared our world with other intelligences that while they were cousins, they were not the same species. In fact, at one point, there were three separate species that had mastered fire co-existing on planet earth; us, the Neanderthals and Homo Erectus.

The implications of that are profound if you think about it. Three kinds of intelligent, tool and fire using species all living together on one world. And all three appear to have been aggressive. Those must have been crazy days for sure and while we have tantalizing clues about what our cousins were like and how they interacted with us there is one glaring thing missing in both Neanderthal and Homo Erectus societies: art. And that may be why our cousins are no longer with us.

Creativity seems to have been key for survival. While our cousins were far and away more complex than 99 percent plus of all life that's ever existed on earth they just weren't creative enough to compete with us.

We have found no cave paintings or statues that can be attributed to either the Neanderthals or Homo Erectus. Our level of creativity seems to have given us the advantage, but that came about wholly by chance. Our environment dictated who we would become. And, given that Earth's environment has changed so much that might suggest that in the vast majority of cases alien life may have no driver to push evolution towards intelligence. There may be highly intelligent species out there like Homo Erectus, but they may lack creativity and remain forever primitive because of it. A lot like the stagnation of the crocodiles.

In fact, it could be the case that the more stable an earth-like world is, the less likely it is to evolve intelligence in any form. But at the same time, once intelligence does develop on a world, it may tend to happen with several related species at the same time as it did here. As those species compete, the others would likely die off, aggressive is better in such a state of affairs. But if a world has multiple, protected continents then multiple species civilizations could occur. An interesting concept for a science fiction author to mull over indeed.

But that didn't happen here, our cousins are now in the past and we stand triumphantly at the apex of evolution, all other contenders long gone. But will we remain alone? Perhaps the same environmental conditions that favored our development favored other non-primate species and may continue to do so until they reach our level of intelligence. It's well known that octopuses, chimpanzees, whales, dolphins, and certain species of birds aren't dummies by any stretch. Neither are cats and dogs. In fact, at no other period in earth's history has so much diversity of intelligence existed.

That presents the opposite argument. If general intelligence is rising on earth, then does that mean it does so on other planets as a rule? We don't know. But we do know that physiology also plays a role. While animal intelligence can be quite high and may be evolving, most of them have physiological disadvantages. Dolphins and whales may be smart, but try harnessing fire in the depths of the ocean.

Similar challenges face all intelligent animals and that affects the aliens too. You can be as smart as you want, but if you can't physically build a computer, you'll never go anywhere. It seems that we really did get lucky with both our brain and our physiology. Very lucky to the tune that maybe the reason we haven't detected any alien civilizations is because high levels of intelligence is a fluke rather than an end point of evolution. It also seems that useful physiology that can do things like smelt metal is also a fluke. We're a fluke inside a fluke.

And, there's yet another fluke, this time cultural. Even when you have a creative species like ourselves, it still took us tens of thousands of years to hit the bronze age. And we might still be in the bronze age if successive dark ages had occurred repeatedly resetting the clock for civilization, we do live on a planet where there are to this day uncontacted primitive stone-aged peoples. And we ourselves wouldn't be at this level if someone had simply missed something and failed to pursue a key technology.

Case in point, the Roman Empire and the steam engine. They knew about it, but never used it. As socially advanced as they were, no one noticed that Heron of Alexandria's steam engine could save labor and do work. Had someone noticed that at the time and ran with it, we might have been on the moon in the 6th century instead of descending into the dark ages. The ancient world, as great as it was in many ways, fell for lack of ancient equivalents of James Watt and Thomas Newcomen. Cultural conditions have to be just so for a technological civilization to develop at all.

Well, there I've gone and done it and gone off the rails. In a single video I've covered the dinosaurs, early mammals, aliens, climate change and the steam engine. Next thing you know, I'll be reciting a recipe for biscuits. But before I do, I must give a warning.

There is a line now drawn in the sand. Once you have advanced technology, everything changes and the further you go, the harder it is to go back. We have already become the lords of evolution. We are the single biggest factor in the future of evolution on earth dwarfing even the great asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and soon we will be able to tailor the organisms of our world to be smarter as well as augmenting ourselves.

A new age is coming upon us where we must define our ethics and who we are. The awesome power that lies within the mastery of genetics, artificial intelligence and biotechnology awaits us and we must manage it carefully, or some day we may indeed no longer be alone, regardless of whether we find alien civilizations. It may be the case that they emerge here on earth. We must be ready for them if they do.

Thanks for listening, I am science fiction author and futurist John Michael Godier currently feeling naughty because I lied, I don't actually have a good biscuit recipe and use store-bought premix and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channel for in-depth, regular explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live. 

Build a Moon Colony with Spider Bots!

I thought this proof of concept story was interesting. When we do build a colony on the moon it would make sense to build as much of it with robots as we can.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-25/watch-these-spiderbots-train-to-build-a-city-on-the-moon

New Images of the Strange Bright Spots on Ceres

One major surprise that's coming from NASA's Dawn probe at Ceres is the presence of strange bright spots in a crater on that asteroid. Recently NASA released new images of the spots which are thought to be salts left after the impact melted ice into a salty liquid that then evaporated into space.

See the images here

NASA'S EmDrive Paper Finally Published

It's official, the EmDrive seems to work, but we have no idea how.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3958206/Nasa-finally-publishes-controversial-fuel-free-impossible-drive-paper-t-explain-works.html

A major breakthrough in gene editing

This news story seems to hold a lot of promise. Previously, editing genes inside major organs wasn't possible. Now it is. This will allow us to eventually treat a host of diseases that we couldn't before.

Breakthrough in Gene Editing

The Great Filter

One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is the Fermi paradox. At it's most basic level, the Fermi Paradox asks that if the universe is teeming with intelligent life, then why don't we see evidence of it? While one may be rightly skeptical when claims of finding aliens are advanced, the fact of the matter is that it may be more likely that our galaxy would be teeming with intelligent life than not.

The reason for this is simple. Fermi stated that there are billions of stars in our galaxy that are comparable to our sun. No small amount of these stars are older than our sun. Some of these stars are bound to have planets similar to Earth. Some of those will develop intelligent life like Earth has. If you take that premise, or the related Drake equation that can be used to predict how many intelligent species should be present in the galaxy, you come up with staggering numbers every time in favor of intelligent life being everywhere and easily detected. But it's not.

There is no shortage of solutions for the Fermi Paradox. These can range anywhere from an ocean planet where life is intelligent but can't develop technology because, well,  fins are bad for manufacturing things to the need for a presence of a Jupiter-sized planet to clean out enough asteroids to keep life from going extinct every few million years. But one potential solution stands out.

It's called the Great Filter and it suggests that the reason we don't see alien civilizations all over the place is because something, which could be one of several things, causes those civilizations to go extinct before they ever have a chance of branching out into the universe. More, the idea of a great filter comes along with a rather spooky conclusion. The easier it is for life to evolve to our stage, the worse our chances are for long-term survival.

Part of the reason that the Great Filter is such an attractive solution to the Fermi Paradox is that we know how earth-life behaves on a fundamental basis and we can assume that other life behaves much the same way. One thing we notice time and again about Earth life is that it's unbelievably tenacious. You can drill miles into the earth and take rock samples and still find bacteria living there. Conversely, you can do the same in the arctic. Bacteria have even survived being trapped inside a camera lens on the moon retrieved during an Apollo mission after being there for years.
Knowing that, we can reasonably expect that life will fill any void it can.

Some of that life will eventually evolve intelligence and move out to colonize literally any space it can find to live. That would include earth. But, we have seen no reliable evidence that alien races have ever visited earth at all and the life here all seems to be related. And when we look out into the cosmos, we don't see aliens, at least not yet.

Instead, we seem to be able to explain everything we've observed in the universe using natural physical processes rather than resorting to chalking anything up to the activities of aliens. While certain phenomena such as Boyajian's star or the Wow! Signal might be suggestive of alien activity, they aren't conclusive and as far as we have seen the universe appears dead other than life here. But it shouldn't be, suggesting the Great Filter.

Now one possibility is that the filter is biological. In other words, some aspect of evolution has to happen just so for an advanced civilization such as the human race to form. In other words, earth got lucky. Trouble is, there doesn't seem to be anything in the way for evolution to eventually create intelligent life on literally thousands of worlds in our galaxy alone. That may suggest something else.

That something else is extinction. Let's face it, since 1945 the human race has had the ability to destroy itself in a nuclear war. And while it's encouraging that we haven't yet done that, there is no guarantee that we won't either. We also seem to be able to alter the composition of our atmosphere through our activities, which could also potentially prove fatal. And there will be other dangers to our existence posed by future technologies such as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.

While I have confidence that we'll survive our infancy, never underestimate the power of our human self-preservation instinct, with so much seemingly standing in our way, it's not a far stretch to envision that civilizations may more often than not destroy themselves.

So if the Great Filter exists then one of three things must be the case regarding our civilization.

1. We're already past the Great Filter, unlike most other civilizations in the universe which didn't make. This would make us incredibly rare, but with a very bright future.

2. We're early in the game meaning that in most places in the universe life has not had enough time to evolve intelligence. In this scenario, we'll be the great old ones to any new intelligences that crop up.

3. We haven't hit the filter yet. If we find life elsewhere in our solar system such as on Mars, this would not bode well for us. It would mean that life is not rare and that would imply that the filter lies ahead.

But it's also possible that there is no such thing as the Great Filter and that some civilizations may indeed destroy themselves, but it's not a hard rule. It may simply be too expensive for a civilization to colonize the galaxy, or they may simply hide their presence for security purposes, or advanced civilizations don't build huge megastructures and simply exist as a nanotechnological cloud that cannot be easily detected. They may even live in virtual reality and ignore the universe entirely.

Can the human brain be hacked?

Unintended consequences are the rule of the day for technologies that can vastly change human society. A great example of this is the home computer and the internet. While

undoubtedly one of the most important developments in the history of human technology,

it also brought on the advent of hacking, for better or worse.

It can be said that a human, at least in some ways, can be seen as a kind of biological

computer. Computers can do math, but so can we. Computers are programmed, we are

taught. And while there is currently much more to us than there are to computers, there

will come a day when computers will become virtually indistinguishable from their

human counterparts, at least in their abilities.

But at the same time, it seems likely that we ourselves will merge with our technology at some point, eventually using it to enhance ourselves in ways ranging from having a Ph.D. in physics implanted into our brains without having to attend a single class, or direct virtual reality connections to the internet all unfolding due to a chip implanted in our heads, or even telepathic direct mind to mind conversations.

If that's the way things go, then one must wonder what the unintended consequences will be. Among those are the possibility of someone hacking your brain, and that may be possible sooner than you think. More on that in a minute.

Rudimentary forms of these technologies already exist and research into improving them

is moving faster than most people realize. For example, brain to computer interfaces have

existed for some time. They fall into two general categories. The first are medical in

nature. These amazing technologies are already being employed to allow people with

severe spinal injuries to move robotic arms, and even in some cases restoring some amount of sight for people with certain types of acquired blindness. Wonderful, promising technologies to be sure.

But the other class is more recent and presents a dilemma. This is gaming and recreation. Non-invasive interfaces can be used to control and enhance video games. Called Neurogaming, these interfaces use the player's brainwave patterns, heart rate, and other indicators to change how the game is being expressed by its software. This includes adjusting scenery and music depending on the mood of the player. Eventually, this will go much further and potentially allow the player to control the game entirely with their mind, and possibly someday enter it completely in a full immersion brain-interfaced virtual reality mode. 

Other technologies and research expand this even more which include efforts to decode

thoughts. This is an effort which has seen some surprising success, even going so far as to reconstruct and create crude movies of what people are seeing from signals detected in the area of the brain responsible for vision. Another is the successful connection of a biological neuron with a computer chip, termed a neurochip. These are technologies that we already have, and no one is quite sure just how fast this field as a whole is progressing and that opens us up for the unintended consequences.

We will undoubtedly use these technologies to hack ourselves to varying degrees. Neuroscientist Chris Berka has found a method of monitoring the state of the brain where it becomes hyperfocused on a task, think if it as the state you are in when you are "in the zone". This allows Berka's company to inform people when they are "in the zone" helping them "zone in" and improve their performance.

As technology improves, other hacks will become available to us. Current generations of prosthetics, for example, are becoming quite advanced. There will come a day when those prosthetics surpass their biological counterparts. There may come a day, perhaps sooner rather than later, when disabled athletes in the Paralympics outperform biological athletes, no doubt creating ethical dilemmas when people wish to replace their healthy biological limbs with prosthetics. While that may seem a stretch, the human race generally speaking has been no stranger to body modification, and there's no reason to suspect that's going to change.

But what of the possibility of someone else hacking into your brain? The answer to this

question is complicated because we already do have ways of hacking someone's brain, such as brain-washing or propaganda. So it could be said that we've been hacking people's brains for thousands of years. But as to technologically doing so, it may not only be possible, but may come far sooner than most realize.

As technology advances, there seems to be little reason to doubt that eventually it will be able to decipher people's thoughts. Rudimentary forms of that are already being experimented with, in fact one such experiment deciphered parts of people's pin numbers and banking information. In the event that this technology continues to improve, eventually your politics, religious beliefs, and just about everything else that goes on inside a human brain becomes visible to someone else. Disturbing on many levels, hackers may use that technology to blackmail people, or worse.

But if we take all of these technologies a step further, it may some day be possible to not only eavesdrop on people's minds, but change them. Thoughts are just electro-chemical neural phenomena and likely can be changed. If an unethical individual, say a politician, that wanted to rule the world came up with a hacking scheme to hack and change enough minds in order to win an election, then we will live in a very frightening world indeed.

But there is hope, we're still moderately early in this game and people within the industry are actively sounding the alarm. With proper regulation and well-thought out architecture for these technologies, we may dodge this bullet yet.

A fascinating take on the problem of orbital space junk

Anyone interested in human space flight knows that space junk is becoming a serious issue. After decades of space launches, a halo of debris now surrounds earth that consists of everything from dead satellites to paint chips. Space entrepreneur Tom Markusic has a novel answer to this problem: recycle it by capturing and towing it to Mars for use as raw materials for future missions to that planet. Now that's outside-of-the-box thinking at its best!

Read a full article on it here at Space.com

Promising New Technology for Those with Spinal Injuries

Amazing. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/11/09/paralysed-people-could-walk-again-instantly-after-scientists-pro/

The Dangers of Autonomous Weapons

There has been a push, particularly in the UN and among advocacy groups, for a global ban on the development of autonomous or A.I. weaponry arguing that there should always be a human in the chain when operating weapons of war. Regardless of the ethical concerns within the issue, here is a rather chilling article that presents that it may already be too late to enact such a ban. There seems to me to be a chronic problem developing where our all too human governments are now too slow to keep up with regulating the increasingly rapid development of technology.

Is it too late to ban autonomous weaponry?

Another You? Looking Beyond the Observable Universe

One of the major questions in cosmology today is how large the universe really is. While there are indicators that it is at least very, very large, the fact is, we don't know for sure, and it may be the case that the universe isn't just big, it's infinite. And if that is indeed the case, then the nature of our universe starts looking really weird. For example, in an infinite universe, there is in fact other intelligent life in the universe. Statistically speaking, it must be so. But not aliens, per se, rather almost exact copies of earth and the human race.

In fairness, some astronomers suspect that the universe is finite in that it has some special geometry such as a donut shape that allows for no boundaries, but limited volume. But on the other hand, those models of finite universes don't fit the data we have as well as an infinite universe does.

Why can't we tell for sure? The problem is the expansion of the universe. Driven by dark energy, space is expanding. This means that the further you are from an object, say a distant galaxy, the more expanding space there is between you and it.

Ultimately, that cumulative amount of expanding space becomes so great that it cancels out the speed of light and light waves can't reach us from an object because the expanding space in between would require them to travel faster than light, which light can't do. This leads to a sphere of what we can see known as the Hubble Volume, or the observable universe. Beyond the boundaries of this volume, we can't see a thing which means part of our universe is invisible to us.

The trouble is, we don't know how much of the universe lies outside the Hubble Volume. It could be only a small part, or it could be most of the universe. Or, the universe could be infinite and never ends. And that's the kicker, any universe that is infinite would mean that anything that's possible in the universe happens ... somewhere, no matter how unlikely. Infinite is infinite, after all, so if it's possible it's happened.

So long as matter is evenly distributed across the universe, something which astronomical observations support, then that means that past the Hubble Volume there should be exact copies of earth, our solar system and ourselves that vary a bit in the details, but overall are nearly identical.

Your doppelganger would have many of the same memories that you do, share the same likes and dislikes, the only difference being that your counterpart may have eaten pizza for dinner while you had soup. And since it's infinity we're talking about here, then the numbers of these copy planets would be staggering. Think an infinite number of doppelganger you's.

So how far do you have to travel to find such a copy planet? Physicist Max Tegmark has calculated that our nearest, almost perfect twin would be about 10 to the 1028  meters from here. That's an incomprehensibly huge distance, so you probably won't be meeting your doppleganger any time soon. But you will see other, closer, less perfect, earth copies, perhaps ones where the dinosaurs didn't go extinct or life took a completely different evolutionary path.

The infinite universe possibility is actually based on pretty solid physics and statistics making it the least questionable of any of the multi-verse theories. Often termed a level 1 multiverse, this one would simply be the universe at large where an infinite amount of Hubble Volumes exist, some of them being virtually identical to our own, some of them being very different, all of them too distant to see or reach.

The next level of a multi-verse is level 2. This is where there are more than one level 1 multiverses. In other words a potentially infinite amount of individually infinite universes. While not exactly intuitive, there is a very good principle backing this: the anthropic principle. Our universe just so happens to be perfect for supporting human life. Uncannily so, but it didn't have to work out that way. In fact, we have no idea why it did.

But if you've got an infinite amount of universes, then it's no big deal statistically if you just so happen to be in the lucky one. But if there is only one universe, then the odds of it existing just so to allow life are astronomically against it existing. Since it clearly does, or something does, then one must look at alternative theories such as if this is a computer simulation.

But there is a third level, where there theoretically are also many copies of you. The level 3 multiverse is the most controversial of the three, but also the most mind-blowing. This theory suggests that all possible outcomes split off from our universe and become  parallel universes. In one universe, you went to the theater. In another, you went swimming instead. You can't see these other universes, but they would be there hovering just above you.

For me, the most interesting aspect of this thinking is that if we can answer the question of whether the universe is finite or infinite, it would instantly answer the question of whether there is other intelligent life in the universe. If infinite, then statistically speaking it's a certainty. It's just not the kind of alien life we thought it would be, its just other versions of us. But there may be other versions of them too. 

The End of Nightmares?

Scientsts identify the genes involved with nightmares and sleep disturbances

For better or worse, self-driving vehicles are the future. It will be a rather messy future full of media scare articles painting self-driving vehicles as unsafe, fully legitimate concerns about sending thousands of commercial drivers to the unemployment line, and varying rejection from consumers on grounds of distrusting technology and a preference to be at the wheel themselves, but it is the future nonetheless. I'm not yet sure how I feel about that, I can see both sides of the argument for and against self-driving vehicles,  but what I do know is that the benefits and cost savings are just so for commercial use that self-driving vehicles will be ubiquitous within a decade.

The world's first self-driving beer run

Breaking News: Have We Detected 234 Alien Civilizations?

By John Michael Godier

Several days ago a paper came out that made an interesting claim. That claim was that anomalous signals from 234 stars in the Milky Way of types similar to our sun were emitting pulsed, regular signals consistent with what you would expect from alien civilizations employing laser communications.

While the media at large loves to take stories like this and sensationalize them and make all sorts of clickbait headlines that lead people to believe that aliens are discovered weekly, that's obviously not the case, and this particular paper is very preliminary but does still fall into the realm of possibility.

The paper authored by researchers Ermanno Borra and E. Trottier, details a study of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that looked for periodic fluctuations in the spectra of stars in the galaxy that were abnormal but consistent with a pulsed signal from an alien civilization. They found abnormal signals coming from 234 different stars.

But, abnormal doesn't immediately mean alien so much study and work will be needed to determine exactly what's going on with these stars. I stress, this story is more about figuring out a new way to detect alien signals rather than actually making the claim to have detected them. Take this one with a grain of salt, that's probably not what these are. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

The whole thing goes back to an earlier paper that Borra authored in 2012. In it, Borra posits that it should be possible to detect pulsed laser signals from alien civilizations mixed within the natural spectra of the stars that their homeworlds orbit.

Borra backs this up by pointing out that our current technology could produce such signals that would be detectable by other species if they were looking, using these same methods. That's if we made the effort to try to contact other races. We currently are not.  

Now, what is a spectrum? Think of it like this; stars have a sort of fingerprint made of light that reveals information about them. At its most basic level, it's simply using a prism to split light into its constituent rainbow spectrum and looking for dark lines that appear in the spectrum. These lines, called Fraunhofer lines, are caused by certain materials present in the star that absorb different frequencies of light. This yields information about the star's chemical makeup.

But you can tell much more from how those lines are arranged and shifted, such as if the star is moving towards you or away from you, of even if obscuring dips in the light are due to diffuse dust and gas or gigantic alien megastructures as what everyone's waiting for with KIC 8462852, and many other things.

And, luckily, astronomers have taken lots of spectra over the years while studying stars. A lot to the tune of huge sky surveys such as the Sloan survey which detail the spectra of at least 2.5 million stars at this point. Borra argued in 2012 that you could search those existing spectra for signs of alien civilizations using pretty straightforward methods.

Fast forward to today. Borra and Trottier did just that and out of the 2.5 million spectra they found 234 anomalous ones that could fit the bill for alien communications. That's a pretty tiny percentage, perhaps what you might expect given that intelligent alien life is probably pretty rare, but we don't really know.

But what was interesting about those spectrums is that the associated stars just happened to be overwhelmingly sun-like, meaning that the stars were of sufficient age and stability to reasonably say that it's possible for them to have civilizations developing around them based on the conditions of our own solar system and our development. Interesting results to be sure.

But, and the authors are careful to point this out, it's just that. Interesting and worth checking out. These signals are very weak, and while the argument can be made that aliens need not transmit using huge amounts of energy just to say hello, stars themselves can be really enigmatic and naturally produce all manner of strange signals.

We've seen some strange stuff with stars before that ended up having fully natural explanations. Natural is always very much more likely than artificial. There's a lot of variation in how stars behave due to a mind-boggling array of chemical and physical factors that can be present within them, to the point that we often come across stars we don't quite understand. There are anomalous stars out there that are so bizarre that they shouldn't even exist. But they do, which means we just haven't thought of a way to explain them yet. That's likely to the be the case with these anomalous stars.

Further study is likely to show that most, if not all, of these 234 anomalies are of natural origin. But, then again, if NASA itself is to be believed, it's also probably likely that within just a few decades we will have discovered evidence of intelligent alien life and studying stellar spectra is just one more tool we can use to accomplish that.

An Eyebrow Raiser

I'm not against AI or its development, nor am I worried about it ... yet.

apple-employs-tech-guru-from-university-that-taught-computers-to-defeat-humans/

KIC 8462852 Tabby's Star Update 10/6/2016

This is another installment in my continuing coverage of KIC 8462852 or Tabby's star, easily the strangest star we've yet come across in our universe. Since my last update, a number of scientific papers have been published that offer a new group of potential explanations for the dimming phenomena, but the possibility of alien megastructures causing the dimming events at this star still has not been discounted.

For more solid science only back story on Tabby's star, check out the other videos on KIC 8462852 on this channel. They are arranged by date in the title, starting with the first one I did on April 10th of 2016 and together in sequence provide a complete overview of what we know and what we can reasonably speculate if indeed the dimming events at this star are of alien origin, which I stress is highly unlikely.

Most noteworthy is that there now seems to be a disparity of sorts in the story. There are two phenomena that seem to be going on at Tabby's star. The first is the major dimming events first detected by the Kepler Spacecraft that caught everyone's attention in the first place. The second, which if it exists is almost certainly related, is a long-term dimming trend first noted by Bradley Schaeffer who found that the star had dimmed significantly over the course of a century.

Schaeffer's work was called into question by a group led by Michael Hippke leading to somewhat of a public row between several scientists. Hippke essentially questioned Schaeffer's methodology and stated that he could find no evidence of this long-term dimming trend. Schaeffer had based his findings on one set of sky survey photographic plates taken over the course of a century. This wasn't the only set of plates of this kind, and Hippke used a second set known as the Sonneburg plates after the German observatory where they were taken and again found no evidence of a long-term dimming trend.

More, several other scientists published a paper calling the long-term dimming into question as well. They attributed the dimming at Tabby's Star to a gap in the data, but oddly found several other similar F-type stars in the survey that do appear to be experiencing similar long-term dimming trends of their own on a century scale. These are of unknown origin. There seems to be all sorts of mysteries buried in old sky surveys.

So is there a long-term dimming trend or not? Well, now a third group of scientists have entered the mix. Using the data from Kepler, Benjamin Montet and Joshua Simon have seemingly confirmed the long-term dimming trend over the period that Kepler was active, or at least a dimming trend during that period. So the pendulum tips in favor of the long-term dimming trend existing once more.

But that isn't the only news. Regarding the deep short-term dips that made this star famous, several new theories have emerged or reemerged regarding natural explanations that better fit the observations of this star than the previous explanations, including the alien megastructure possibility, which remains the least likely of any of the explanations but still remains on the table.

One interesting new theory was put forth by Valeri Makarov of the US Naval Observatory. This theory suggests that what we're seeing is basically some star's disembodied debris disk, perhaps tossed out into interstellar space by another gravity source, passing in front of our line of sight to Tabby's star but not actually related to it.

This seems to potentially be a good fit with what we see with the star. Such material, being in interstellar space, would be very cold. That would explain the lack of infra-red emissions that you would expect to see if the debris was orbiting KIC 8462852. It would also potentially explain both of the dimming trends, depending on how that cloud of debris was set up.

The only thing standing in the way of this explanation is weak evidence of some periodicity in the Kepler light curves. This suggests, but not very well, that whatever is causing the dimming is in orbit of the star. The only way to tell for sure is to check out Tabby's star over a long period of time to look for recurring periodic dips. The good news is that this is already happening, Tabitha Boyajian and her team have the funding and are observing the star actively. The bad news is that it could be several years before we know.  

Complicating this further are the problems with the long-term dimming trend. If it doesn't exist, then one of the older theories returns to the table, the idea that the dimming could be caused by a cloud of disintegrating comets in orbit of the star. The lack of infra-red emissions would be accounted for due to the comets being cold. But there are problems with this theory that make it not a perfect fit for what is observed.

Another group of scientists modeled the comet hypothesis. While a very large, and I mean huge, number of comets does fit with the later dimming events in the Kepler data, they could not model the day 800 long, slow, smooth event. This remains a mystery and has no easy explanation under any scenario and in some ways does serve to support the alien megastructure theory.

Another possibility is that the star is younger than we think it is and still has a disc of debris orbiting it coalescing into planets. This is also not a great fit due to the lack of infrared-emissions, but another theory suggests that if we're seeing that disc edge on, then that would account for the missing infrared.

And now to the megastructures. While highly unlikely, this is most probably a natural phenomenon, we can speculate about a few possibilities. While the Kepler light curves are consistent with a Dyson swarm, and potentially even a large baffle in space designed specifically to block light, see my earliest video for that story on that, the long-term dimming trend would suggest that we're seeing it under construction. Very rapid construction, so much so that it seems unlikely according to the Montet and Simon findings. Even self-replicating nano-technology might have trouble building something that quickly. If it is aliens, then why are they in such a hurry?

I think this speed works against the megastructure hypothesis and for the natural explanations. A passing cloud of debris could have areas of higher density that might block a star and cause a dimming trend on a scale of centuries. At some point it would go the opposite way and turn into a brightening trend. So once again, I must stress, that it is highly unlikely for multiple reasons that the mysteries of KIC 8462852 are of alien origin. But, it's still on the table. Only time will tell for sure as more observations of the star are made.

Colonizing and Terraforming Venus

While talk about colonizing the solar system has dominated the news lately with Elon Musk's visionary plan for Mars, another potential target for colonization might not be getting the attention it deserves. There are reasons for this, the planet's surface is a truly hellish mix of extremely hot temperatures and sulfuric acid. That planet is Venus, and while at first glance it doesn't look like a good candidate for colonization, there are some surprisingly attractive attributes to this world that may eventually make it worthwhile.

As Elon Musk points out, we need to become a multiple planet species if we wish the human race to survive any calamity that might cause our extinction such as an asteroid impact. Sooner or later, something bad will happen and a second planet would serve as insurance against extinction. But why not a third planet? And why not Venus?

If it weren't for the hostile surface conditions, Venus would be the obvious choice for colonization as opposed to Mars. Surface conditions aside, Venus could be called a sister planet to earth. With Mars, due to its smaller size, we aren't yet certain that humans will avoid bone decalcification due to a lack of gravity. This is not the case for Venus, which is almost the same size as earth with comparable gravity probably eliminating decalcification as a problem for colonization entirely.

Venus is also closer than Mars, which favors both transport and communications. Launch windows for Mars occur every 780 days as the planet passes close by. For Venus, this is only 584 days. Flight times are also going to be shorter than for Mars. Like Mars, Venus' atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide. If you filter out the sulfuric acid, you can use that carbon dioxide to grow plants. And there is a zone on Venus that looks far more attractive than its surface.

This zone, which is about 31 miles in the atmosphere above the planet's surface, has a different composition due to the fact that nitrogen and oxygen are lighter than carbon dioxide. This means that if you fill a balloon with earth air, it will float in this region. The temperature here is nicer as well, about 75 °C or 167 degrees. If you go a bit higher, say 5 kilometers, it drops to a comfortable 81 degrees Fahrenheit. This zone also favors colonization in that it also happens to be about the same air pressure that we experience here on earth. Handy indeed. And, the atmosphere above this sweet spot naturally shields out cosmic radiation roughly comparable to how Earth's atmosphere does.

That's a lot of points in Venus' favor. But the obvious problem here is that you'd have to suspend your colony high up in the atmosphere of Venus and make sure it stays there. But this may not be as hard as you might think. As I mentioned, breathable earth air is a lifting gas on Venus, much like helium is here. That means that if you were inside a balloon on Venus, you could easily live, and so long as that balloon doesn't pop, you would be in much safer natural conditions than one would be on the surface of Mars.

If your balloon sprung a leak, for example, there would be no explosive decompression due to the similar air pressures inside and out. You would have plenty of time to patch it up. Similarly, you would not require pressurized space suits, just protective ones to keep out the sulfuric acid and of course a breathing apparatus and protection from the heat, which isn't that big of a deal.

Now, it's pretty windy up there, often reaching over 200 miles per hour, but there's also nothing to run into so you could let the balloon colony move with the winds, which would reduce structural stress.

There are cons to the idea of colonizing Venus as well. It has no oxygen, so it would have be manufactured from carbon dioxide. It also has basically no water, meaning you'd have to get that from the sulfuric acid. Retrieving anything from the surface would difficult given the surface conditions. And you would need some serious corrosion protection in all elements of your colony. Add that to the fact that Venus rotates very slowly compared to earth, its day is 243 earth days long. In fact, its day is longer than its year, which is only 224 earth days.

But if we did colonize Venus, might we be able to terraform it and make it earth-like? The answer is yes, it's theoretically possible. In fact, Paul Birch put forth just such a plan that would allow the planet to be terraformed in just two centuries. Humans have taken on huge projects that took even longer than that before, often it would take 500 years or more to build a medieval gothic cathedral. So two centuries is not that long of a time for a project.

Birch's plan envisions putting a thin solar shade perhaps made of Mylar or a similar substance in the line of sight between the sun and Venus and reduce the temperature of the atmosphere. As the planet cools, the high pressures will cause the carbon dioxide to liquefy and rain onto the planet as oceans. Then, as the cooling continues, the oceans freeze and become dry ice. You then cover the frozen oceans over with a thermally insulating layer and you've got a fresh planet to work with where the amount of carbon dioxide in the protoatmosphere can be controlled.

To make it earth-like, you would first need a lot of water. The problem there is that water is hard to transport, so it's better to make it onsite. To do this, you need hydrogen, which is something Venus doesn't have much of. But the gas giant planets do and it's possible to mine it from them.

Transporting that hydrogen could be accomplished with a mass driver system, you just electromagnetically fling loads of the material to Venus. In fact, it may eventually be the case that we build mass drivers on many bodies in the solar system to move materials around.

An alternative to securing the water which is much faster is to simply crash an icy moon into Venus in a controlled fashion. This is harder, but also surprisingly possible through using the gravity of bodies such as Saturn and its moons to move large objects around.

Then you need the oxygen. This can come from our frozen carbon dioxide oceans readily either by chemically releasing it or using algae or a similar bioengineered method taking advantage of photosynthesis.

The last major problem is Venus's slow rotation. One approach to this would be to speed the planet up, and there are theoretical ways to do that, but it would seem to make more sense to just simulate a 24 hour day. Birch suggests that we use a soletta, a kind of rotating mirror in polar orbit to create the illusion of a day. Alternatively, solar mirrors can both shade the lit side of Venus and reflect light to the dark side as needed to create a suitable day.

While all of this may seem beyond reach, at least in theory it's actually something we could do right now. Birch lays out in his paper that we could begin colonization of the atmosphere and terraforming efforts in 2030 and have a fully habitable second earth by 2250. It would be difficult and expensive, there's no doubt of that, but it is doable and may not be so expensive as we expand out and begin colonizing other areas of the solar system at the same time. Especially if Elon Musk's plan for Mars comes to fruition, a big part of that is that the entire solar system becomes accessible.

So both colonizing Venus' atmosphere and eventually terraforming are possible and perhaps even advantageous. And with all the buzz surrounding Elon Musk's bold plan to colonize Mars, I hope the idea of colonizing the solar system catches fire and some day Venus too may also be a self-sustaining home for humankind.