Friday Updates

So, John  Paul Catton of Excalibur Books interviewed me about Lost Guardians and my writing process. You can read the interview here.

That's all I have in the venue of actual news.

Get vaccinated when you can. Please.

Yes, Our Ancestors Swung Around

 In the 19th-century, anatomists decided (those who believed in evolution) that we and the other apes descended from a common ancestor that swung through the trees.

Brachiation is used by chimpanzees and bonobos, and gibbons are highly evolved for it (extremely evolved in fact).

But more recently somebody tried to argue that we ran along the top of branches. On the face of it, this is ridiculous. There's a thing you need to do that safely that most apes lost a long time ago, namely a tail.

Without a tail, it's really hard to do that. Probably why sloths, who also lack a tail, prefer to move along the underside.

Now somebody's looked at a hand of an ancestor and come to the conclusion that we were right the first time. We probably swung around, and that gave us the beginnings of the bipedal stance and the ability to lift our arms all the way up...quadrupeds generally can't do that.

Dunno why it was even an argument, but it seems to be settled.

The Wonderful Issue of Martian Dust

 One of the biggest problems for Martian colonists is likely to be dust. The fine dust of Mars is going to get everywhere. Without precautions, this will include the inside of your lungs, probably resulting in something similar to black lung or asbestosis over time.

But there's a couple of other issues too. During the Dust Bowl, people would hug...and there would be so much static electricity in the air that they would knock each other out. Given Martian dust creates sufficient static to result in dry lightning, it's fairly clear this will also be the issue.

Finally, there's landing on Mars. If you haven't watched the Perseverance landing video, go do so. Watch at the 20 meter mark.

Look at the sheer amount of dust being kicked up by the sky crane's thrusters. As Mars doesn't have enough atmosphere, likely, for a horizontal landing or takeoff, this is going to be a problem for everyone landing on Mars, whether coming in from orbit or flying between settlements.

You ain't landing on visual. Landing a craft on Mars is going to be by instrument, with all the extra challenges that creates.

(I think this supports my implication in Transpecial that passenger transit on Mars is mostly by maglev...)

(Also, could all that static electricity be harvested somehow?)

So, the Poles Are Going to Flip and We're All Going To Die!

 So, you've probably seen those wonderful headlines saying that a temporary polar flip 42,000 years ago killed all the megafauna, finished off the Neanderthals and triggered humans to create cave art.

According to the authors, the flip destroyed the Earth's magnetic field, caused massive climate change, and ionized the atmosphere to degrees which would End Civilization As We Know It if it happened now.

Their evidence? Old trees in Australia. Which does appear to show signs of increased atmospheric carbon isotopes associated with, well, not having a magnetic field. And this does coincide with a time when the poles flipped, then 800 or so years later flipped back. It's called the Laschamp Excursion.

They're arguing it was A Massive Catastrophe That Looked Like the End of Days. Glaciation in North America, shifts in wind belts, huge electrical storms (which caused the cave art by forcing us to hide in caves and I guess their theory is that while hiding in caves from a storm...)

Oh and, of course, it's about to happen again and we're All Going To Die.

First of all, this is one paper (and one of the authors was fired from the University of Adelaide for, apparently, being an asshole). Other evidence doesn't show the kind of climactic changes they're modeling. Ice cores don't show it. And the extinction of Neanderthals and creation of cave art don't actually line up with the shift. It's more likely that the elaborate cave art shows a cultural shift (and as pointed out by the very authors of this paper, elaborate art not in caves wouldn't have survived).

The only record of a shift other than their trees is some Pacific Ocean records that might show temperature fluctuations.

In other words, don't panic yet...it seems this is a little too speculative to be reported as truth.

But what if they're right? When are the poles likely to shift next? Some evidence says soon. The magnetic pole is moving more than normal...or at least more than our records show. The core field is also weakening. Is the magnetic field about to flip?

Some time, experts guess, in oh, a few thousand years. Not tomorrow. Yes, we're all going to die eventually, but probably not from a polar flip.

Perseverance Landing Video

 NASA has now announced that they will drop the high resolution landing video of Perseverance at 2pm EST today.

I for one can't wait to see it. And I'm grateful to whoever sacrificed sleep (likely) last night to do the processing on it.

Eventually we'll get it in full 4k, but for right now, expect to see something really cool soon.

Meanwhile, Ingenuity is talking to the comms relays, but no word on when the flight will be attempted.

Friday Updates

 Don't forget that Farpoint Convention starts tomorrow! It's curtailed from our normal program, but we have some very interesting science presentations (including one from the wonderful Inge Heyer on Mars exploration, which I highly recommend because Inge Heyer).

I will be there both days, and will be talking about Writing Characters With Different Body Plans on Saturday and Doctor Who on Sunday. And I'll be in the GatherTown con suite in the evenings. If you can't do GatherTown, let me know on Discord and I'll come over there. (GatherTown works better with my system but I'm well aware that it can cause issues for visually impaired attendees).

A "Mammoth" Discovery

 Genetic sequencing has given us an insight into the origin of the extinct woolly mammoth.

Three very old specimens from Siberia were analyzed and only the youngest turned out to be a woolly mammoth.

Of the other two, one was a steppe mammoth, the ancestor of the woolly mammoths (and we now know they were hairy too).

The third was genetically distinct and instead of matching to other Siberian mammoths, appears to be an ancestor of the mammoths that lived in North America.

They didn't get a full sequence, but they got enough.

(Don't get me started on whether we should try to clone them. I can't even agree with myself on that one).

ESA Taking Astronaut Recruitment to a New (and Amazing) Place

 The ESA will be recruiting astronauts from March 1 to May 28. You need to be a citizen of an ESA member state or associate member state, hold a Master's degree in natural sciences, medicine, engineering, or mathematics, have at least three years relevant experience and be fluent in English.

And, of course, you have to meet all of those tough physical and mental requirements...

...but the ESA is about to become the first space agency to allow people with certain disabilities to apply.

For the Parastronaut Project they will be looking at candidates who have: Lower limb deficiency below the knee, pronounced leg length difference, or short stature. They will have to meet all of the other requirements, but will have flight opportunities.

This is the first step towards allowing disabled people to reach space, and if we're ever going to move beyond this planet, we need to be able and willing to take everyone who can handle the trip.

The Most Famous Asteroid...

 ...may not have been an asteroid at all. A new, very solid theory suggests that what really killed the dinosaurs was a fragment of a comet.

Comets sometimes go so close to the sun that they hit the roche limit, the point at which an object loses structural integrity due to the tidal forces and gravity of the body it's orbiting. This causes them to break up, but they keep following the orbital path. The math shows that one such fragment is very likely what hit the Earth 66 million years ago. Kind of like a big piece of shrapnel.

And it hit at the worst possible angle. The dinosaurs got very unlucky. (Or it was aliens. Nah).

Good Work "Hope"

The Hope probe sent back its first picture of Mars, and it's one of the most gorgeous ever taken of the red planet.

Check out this BBC article to see the picture (as it's not NASA, I don't want to link it directly) and a good explanation of exactly what you are seeing.

The Hope orbiter is in a fairly high orbit around Mars to allow for observation of the entire planet at work. The spacecraft is going to be doing some meteorological and atmospheric observation, and they expect to have good data by about September.

Meanwhile, Perseverance will be going straight for a landing on Thursday. Fingers crossed...

Friday Update

 No news this week...except that we were supposed to get snow yesterday and didn't.

Enjoy the three-day weekend, but let's not do anything silly and get the roni, okay? Please enjoy your V-day dinner at home.

We're going to be on the winning side soon, just a little bit more patience.

Solar Orbiter Ducking Behind The Sun

 So, the Solar Orbiter is now on the far side of the sun...now we can be absolutely sure there isn't a hidden counter Earth tucked away there.

All joking aside, the orbiter is recording some very interesting data on baby's first trip behind the sun. We will lose contact for a while, but when it gets back we'll be able to see some high resolution data from our system's primary.

Better understanding the sun helps us deal with solar flares and CMEs that can disrupt communications.

Things You Learned in School That Turn Out to be Wrong

 Hands up who was, in biology class, given the example of the coelacanth as a living fossil, unchanged for millions of years.

Yeah, that's a lot of hands.

Guess what.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the coelacanth is not a true living fossil, having been busily evolving...just not in ways that affect it's phenotype.

Likely the phenotype is highly efficient for its environment and thus conserved, but the fish has been evolving at a more hidden level. And something truly strange happened about 10 million years ago...

...our friend the coelacanth picked up 62 genes from other, unrelated species through horizontal transfer.

How much does that drive evolution? And how did it get so many? This isn't normal.

So, not a living fossil, but possibly even stranger...

Mars Madness

 ...yeah, I know it's February and also I stole that shamelessly from Space.com.

Three missions will reach Mars in February (Mars missions travel in packs because you want to send them when the two planets are closest).

And one of them will add a new country to the Mars race. The United Arab Emirates orbiter will arrive today, the first interplanetary mission from the gulf state, with the goal of improving our knowledge of Martian weather.

China's Tianwen-1 mission will put the first Chinese rover on Mars. Tianwen-1's aims are a little less clear because the Chinese are tighter lipped, but appears to include attempts to measure the Martian ionosphere from orbit, while the rover demonstrates technology for a sample-return mission and looks at soil composition.

NASA's own mission will attempt to fly the first helicopter style drone on Mars, look for life and collect soil and rock samples to be cached for a potential sample return mission. They're also going to try and extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere and look at, you got it, the weather.

Hopefully we'll get some interesting data.

We've Seen This Movie...

 ..or at least read this book.

There's a project going on to create robots that can reproduce and evolve...at both the software and hardware level. They will build their own offspring using 3D printing.

The idea is that mimicking evolution will design robots that are much more efficient for their task...the first task being cleaning up legacy waste in nuclear reactors.

The question is:

When does a machine that can evolve and reproduce become life?

And when does it become intelligent life?

The ethics of simply recycling poorly-evolved robots might seem straightforward to start with, but...

Friday Updates - Farpoint

 Farpoint Convention will be virtual on Saturday, February 20 and Sunday, February 21. Admission is free, but donations to cover the cost of the video conferencing accounts will be appreciated. We will also be collecting donations for the Julian Fleming Memorial Fund and Art Way Alliance in lieu of our normal auction of SF memorabilia and books.

I will be doing two panels:

Writing Characters With Different Body Plans (MOD) Sat 2/20 at 3pm (Struggling to know what to do with your dragon's wings? Need tips for remembering your Andorian has antennae?)

Doctor Who Sun 2/21 at noon

And I'll be hanging out on Discord and in our Gathertown recreation of the Hunt Valley La...I mean Inn all weekend.

Hear No Ev...Forget That

Apparently marmosets hear plenty of evil...they're nosy little creatures who eavesdrop on their neighbors and listen to what they "say."

(In air quotes because they don't have a fully developed language).

Common marmosets kind of live in packs like wolves, and they rely on each other a lot. So they listen, especially to how other marmosets in the group treat the babies. Mistreat a baby and you won't be babysitting again!

(It's an interesting insight into the kind of forces that develop language).

Impulse Drive?

 Star Trek never quite explains how the impulse drive on a starship works. Some kind of rocket, but clearly one much more efficient than we have.

A woman named Dr. Fatima Ebrahimi may have cracked the problem. Plasma drives are already being used to propel spacecraft, using electric fields...

...but using magnetic fields is much better. How much better? We're talking 10 times faster.

Right now it takes about seven months to get to Mars. Call it 210 days.

So, this new rocket design, if it works, would get us to Mars in 21 days, comparable to a transatlantic sailing trip. That's much more feasible for human astronauts.

Of course, right now it's still on the digital drawing board, but the design seems solid...we'll have to see what happens when and if somebody builds a prototype.

Are We All Here Because Of...

 ...fungi? (Yes, I have been watching Discovery. No, this isn't about space spores).

A 635 million-year-old microfossil is the oldest land fossil ever found, and it appears to be some kind of fungus, or at least something very like a fungus.

And it dates from about the time Earth unexpectedly broke out of an extended snowball period. We don't know why the Earth thawed.

But it could have been fungi...busily making the seas more fertile, creating oxygen in the atmosphere, making soil...and creating our living world.

What if We Could Just...Choose To Have Boys

 This is an interesting article on Live Science.

Actually, this is classic science fiction. I've played with the idea of sentient species being able to choose the sex of their offspring before, albeit not in anything published.

The article gives me some very interesting ideas, though. (Plotbunny alert).

Human sex selection leading to too many boys is also a classic science fiction trope. In reality, I suspect it would quite quickly balance out, though...because we know it's a bad idea.

And then how would the state intervene? It's...quite interesting and there are too many ways to go with it for now.