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.