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July 10th: Nikola Tesla's Birthday, for whom we have radio, alternating-current (AC) electricity, microwave emitters, and the foundation for our technological civilization. Thank you!
Selected writing of Nikola Tesla [archive.is/ffuQ], including:* "Experiments with Alternating Currents of High Potential and High Frequency" (1892) [archive.is/UTsc]
* "Earth Electricity to kill Monopoly; A Way to Harness Free Electric Currents" (1896) [archive.is/Ed1JC]
* "Possibilities of wireless" (1897) [archive.is/wCFAp]
* "Talking with Planets" (1901) [archive.is/1pw0X]
* "Rain can be controlled and hydraulic force provided if we turn to sun for power" (1920) [archive.is/JrkM5]
* "World system of wireless transmission of energy" (1927) [archive.is/q51O]
* "Tesla invents 'Peace Ray' " (1934) [archive.is/6ic28]
Stranger News
* "Virginia Tech scientist develops model for robots with bacterial brains" (2015-07-16, vtnews.vt.edu) [archive.is/3UAVe]
* "Researchers demonstrated the first realization of invisible absorbers and sensors; Absorbers are completely transparent at non-operational frequencies" (2015-07-20, aalto.fi/en) [archive.is/Lx77D]
* "Bringing Back the Magic in Metamaterials" (2015-07-16, mtu.edu) [archive.is/m5WwB]:
A single drop of blood is teeming with microorganisms—imagine if we could see them, and even nanometer-sized viruses, with the naked eye. That’s a real possibility with what scientists call a “perfect lens.” The lens hasn’t been created yet, but it is a theoretical perfected optical lens made out of metamaterials, which are engineered to change the way the materials interact with light.
* "After 85-year search, massless particle with promise for next-generation electronics discovered" (2015-07-16, princeton.edu) [archive.is/cyB48]
* "Weyl points: Wanted for 86 years" (2015-07-16, mit.edu) [archive.is/s4WZv]:
"The discovery of Weyl points is not only the smoking gun to a scientific mystery," comments MIT Professor Marin Soljači?, "it paves the way to absolutely new photonic phenomena and applications. Think of the graphene revolution: graphene is a 2D structure, and its electronic properties are, to a substantial extent, a consequence of the existence of linear degeneracy points (known as Dirac points) in its momentum space. Materials containing Weyl points do the same in 3D. They literally add one degree of freedom, one dimension."
* "Drawing a line between quantum and classical: Bell’s Inequality fails test as boundary" (2015-07-21, rochester.edu) [archive.is/3Srcl]
* "Rare form: novel structures built from DNA emerge" (2015-07-20, biodesign.asu.edu) [archive.is/QbKvu]:
DNA, the molecular foundation of life, has new tricks up its sleeve. The four bases from which it is composed snap together like jigsaw pieces and can be artificially manipulated to construct endlessly varied forms in two and three dimensions.
The technique, known as DNA origami, promises to bring futuristic microelectronics and biomedical innovations to market.
Hao Yan, a researcher at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, has worked for many years to refine the technique. His aim is to compose new sets of design rules, vastly expanding the range of nanoscale architectures generated by the method. In new research, a variety of innovative nanoforms are described, each displaying unprecedented design control.
Space News
* "Philae the little lost lander finds organic molecules on comet" (2015-07-31, AFP Newswire) [archive.is/rCjqC]
* "Saturn's 'Death Star' Moon Mimas Is Weird Inside" (2014-10-16, space.com) [archive.is/4pmFD] [begin excerpt]: Mimas' rotation and its orbit around Saturn make the moon look like it's rocking and back forth and oscillating similar to the way a pendulum swings. The rocking motion is called libration, and it's commonly observed in moons that are influenced by the gravity from neighboring planets. However, using images of the moon captured by the Cassini spacecraft, Radwan Tajeddine, a research associate at Cornell University, discovered that the satellite's libration was much more exaggerated in one spot than predicted. He expects it must be caused by the moon's weird interior. One idea is that the moon has an elongated, oval-shaped core. This elongation might have happened as the moon formed under the push and pull of Saturn's rings. The teeter tottering could also come from a subsurface ocean, similar to the one on Jupiter's moon Europa. [end excerpt]
* "Flowing nitrogen ice glaciers seen on Pluto" (2015-07-24, AFP Newswire) [archive.is/oLqTj]]
* "New Horizons 'Captures' Two of Pluto's Smaller Moons" (2015-07-21, pluto.jhuapl.edu) [archive.is/9cqKN]
* "Earth-Size Planet Found In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star" (2014-04-17, nasa.gov) [archive.is/pD3fE] [begin excerpt]: Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting in the "habitable zone" of another star. The planet, named "Kepler-186f" orbits an M dwarf, or red dwarf, a class of stars that makes up 70 percent of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun. [end excerpt]
* "NASA just discovered 'Earth 2.0'" (2015-07-23, businessinsider.com) [archive.is/xlIWg] [begin excerpt]: We have discovered the very first Earth-like planet orbiting a sun-like star in the perfect sweet spot where liquid water could be sloshing on the planet's rocky surface, a team of scientists at NASA, SETI, and Cambridge University said Thursday. This is the Earth twin that planet hunters have been searching for 20 years. It's called Kepler 452b.
* Kepler-186 and the Solar System infographic (nasa.gov) [archive.is/XiT2D] [begin excerpt]: The diagram compares the planets of our inner solar system to Kepler-186, a five-planet star system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The five planets of Kepler-186 orbit an M dwarf, a star that is is half the size and mass of the sun.
The Kepler-186 system is home to Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star in the habitable zone—a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step toward finding a world similar to Earth. [end excerpt]
* "Found 20 light years away: the New Earth" (2007-04-26, dailymail.co.uk) [archive.is/92fEw]. Gliese 581 is among the closest stars to us, just 20.5 light years away (about 120 trillion miles) in the constellation Libra. It is so dim it can be seen only with a good telescope. Although the new planet is in itself very Earth-like, its solar system is about as alien as could be imagined. The star at the centre - Gliese 581 - is small and dim, only about a third the size of our Sun and about 50 times cooler. The two other planets are huge, Neptune-sized worlds called Gliese 581b and d (there is no "a", to avoid confusion with the star itself). The Earth-like planet orbits its sun at a distance of only six million miles or so (our Sun is 93 million miles away), travelling so fast that its "year" only lasts 13 of our days. The parent star would dominate the view from the surface - a huge red ball of fire that must be a spectacular sight.
* "NASA’s Kepler Marks 1,000th Exoplanet Discovery, Uncovers More Small Worlds in Habitable Zones" (2015-01-06, nasa.gov) [http://is.gd/ECcH2Z]
* "The Planetary Sweet Spot" (2015-07-20, news.ucsb.edu) [archive.is/1xeVc] [begin excerpt]:
Planet Earth is situated in what astronomers call the Goldilocks Zone — a sweet spot in a solar system where a planet’s surface temperature is neither too hot nor too cold. An ideal distance from a home star — in Earth’s case, the sun – this habitable zone, as it is also known, creates optimal conditions that prevent water from freezing and generating a global icehouse or evaporating into space and creating a runaway greenhouse. However, a new theory by UC Santa Barbara geochemist Matthew Jackson posits that the bulk composition of a planet may also play a critical role in determining the planet’s tectonic and climatic regimes and therefore its habitability. Until a decade ago, Jackson noted, scientists based the Earth’s composition on a model tied to ancient stony meteorites called chondrites, which were considered the building blocks of the planet. Then studies analyzing the ratio of two neodymium isotopes — 142Nd and 144Nd — demonstrated that Earth’s composition may differ from that of chondrites — and differ enough to send scientists back to the drawing board.
In 2013, Jackson and Jellinek published a new compositional model of the Earth in which a large portion of the mantle was depleted to form the continental crust. The model also assumed a 30 percent reduction in the uranium, thorium and potassium content in the planet. The decay of these naturally occurring elements generates almost all of the planet’s radioactive heat. [end excerpt]
Ancient News
* "A Cataclysmic Event of a Certain Age; Geologist James Kennett and an international team narrow the date of an anomalous cooling event most likely triggered by a cosmic impact" (2015-07-27 ,news.ucsb.edu) [archive.is/F4cOm]
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* "Michael Jackson fans are flocking to a Chicago museum to see a 3,000 year old Egyptian model which looks remarkably like the late king of pop" (2009-08-09, telegraph.co.uk) [archive.is/JCgRo]. Yes, that is a crown of hearts...
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* "The Tragedy of Slack Farm" (by Brian Fagan) part 1 [archive.is/iSz4d], part 2 [archive.is/c68Xu], part 3 [archive.is/ZfOJ7]
* "The Burrows cave: African gold in Illinois" (2006, philipcoppens.com) [archive.is/Bxy8g]: The story of the Burrows Cave is more about human behaviour than archaeology. It is the story of an alleged cave containing the tomb of an African king who reached North America in the 1st century AD – and the subsequent controversy that the artefacts created.
Burrow's Cave article by Richard Flavin:
* "Falling Into Burrows' Cave" [archive.is/KSLcD]
* "2009 Burrows Cave Hoax Update" [archive.is/IBcSR]
* "2013 Burrows Cave Hoax Update" part 1 "2012 + 1" [archive.is/Dfda1]; part 2 "I'm not saying it's aliens, but they're saying ...it's aliens" [archive.is/9tqBi]
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* "Studies find genetic signature of native Australians in the Americas Doesn't change the big picture, but it's not clear how it got here" (2015-07-21, arstechnica.com) [archive.is/G9f8v]
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Don't believe the myth that Africa did not have a written history. Roughly 1 million manuscripts were found in Timbuktu, the capital city of the ancient Empire of Mali, covering all the fields of human knowledge: law, the sciences, medicine, etc.
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* "God as Architect" illumination on parchment (c.1225) [archive.is/VOORB]. Monks would, at times, enter into a psychedelic state of mind, either through a substance (like ergot in beer, which is similar to LSD), or through intense prayer (meditation). The interesting thing about the illumination is that it may show a true representation of the universe itself, showing it as a beige fractal emitting turquoise light, which is, apparently, the color which the universe may look like when viewed "from above" [archive.is/5NbsZ]!
* "Fractal Universe" website [www.fractaluniverse.org] about the theory that the universe may be a fractal equation.
* Fractal image showing the result of the Mandelbrot set of equations [archive.is/owBmQ]
* "Fractal Heart" image [archive.is/CnVAd]:
