Blogs / Science Not Fiction

We all know the routine with super powers: a mutated gene, alien origin, or a magic object are required, and usually some cataclysmic family event for motivation. Matt Murdock, better known as Daredevil (and hopefully never again known as Ben Affleck), lost his sight to an accident with a truck carrying radioactive muck. The incident heightened the rest of his senses, which allowed him to use a small radar device and super hearing to allow him to “see.” But guess what? We don’t need a tiny radar, super senses, or even a death in the family to see with sound. We normals can do it already.

How, you may ask? Pretty much just like Daredevil (or bats, or dolphins) do, by bouncing sounds off the environment and listening for the echoes. Blind people have been doing something similar to this instinctively, usually describing how they can “feel” a nearby obstruction like a wall or door. What they’re actually doing is hearing the changing sound of their footsteps as they approach the obstacle. A recent study led by Spanish researcher Juan Antonio Martínez at the University of Alcalá de Henares tested a series of different sounds and techniques designed to teach people how to use echolocation for their own ends. The most effective sound we can make, they discovered, is clicking sound of the tongue pulling away from the roof of the mouth.

“The almost ideal sound is the ‘palate click, a click made by placing the tip of the tongue on the palate, just behind the teeth, and moving it quickly backwards, although it is often done downwards, which is wrong,” Martínez said in a press release.

Normals, bereft of super senses as we are, must resort to gumption and stick-to-itiveness to actually learn how to echolocate effectively. Martinez said students needed two hours a day for two weeks to learn to tell when an object is in front of them, and a few more weeks to be able to identify trees and pavement. A 2000 study found that listeners in motion are able to take advantage of the Doppler effect to locate objects more effectively.

Then again, when there’s a powerful need to learn how to echolocate well, it can be done with astonishing virtuosity. Ben Underwood, who died just last month, became blind at the age of two from cancer. He learned to rollerblade and play Foosball just through sounds and echolocation (the video is pretty amazing). He walked down the street making just the sort of clicks Martinez recommended, and he could tell parked cars from fire hydrants from plastic garbage cans.

So for those of us who didn’t manage to get bitten by a radioactive puppy or hail from a distant asteroid orbiting a purple sun, there’s hope yet! Seeing with your eyes closed is a pretty nifty superpower we can all have… with a lot of practice.

Welcome back to the Codex Futurius project, this blog’s never-ending quest to explore the ineffable scientific ideas raised by science fiction. In an earlier entry in the Codex, Jill Tarter of SETI talked about whether we and intelligent-alien species X would recognize each other’s transmissions as such. Now Kevin Grazier–JPL physicist, Hollywood sci-fi adviser, and official friend of Science Not Fiction–looks at the next big question: how we could communicate with any aliens we encounter.

My heroes are in a first-contact situation, meeting an alien face-to-face for the first time. How could my heroes and the alien learn to communicate with each other?
Both knowingly and unwittingly, humans have been broadcasting their presence to the Universe since the 1920s—when coherent transmissions in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum became widespread. Our radio and television broadcasts do not stop at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere; rather they propagate into space at the speed of light. While these signals attenuate with distance, they are detectable nevertheless: NASA still regularly communicates with the twin Voyager spacecraft despite the fact that they are over 100 times further from the Sun than Earth and that each of which transmit data to Earth with less power than a common household light bulb. This means that an alien civilization as far away as 58 light-years could potentially be trying to make sense of “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do!” (There are 105 G-type stars—ones like our own lovable Sol—within this I Love Lucy-sphere.)

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Welcome to another juicy installment of the Codex Futurius project, this blog’s never-ending quest to explore the timeless scientific ideas raised by science fiction. This question about what kind of aliens we may eventually run into goes to Rocco Mancinelli of SETI. Thanks to Dr. Mancinelli for the enlightening contribution and to Jennifer Ouellette, the director the NAS’ Science and Entertainment Exchange (SEEx) program, for connecting us with him.

What is the most likely form an alien would take?
Life’s architecture is difficult to predict because it depends on many factors involving the interaction of the environment and life through evolution and natural selection. We can, however, make some generalizations based on the vast number of morphological forms that life takes on earth.

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Put two stars of Battlestar Galactica on stage with an artificial intelligence expert and two leading robotics professors…and you suck the sci-fi out of the room and replace it with reality (sort of). The World Science Festival event “Battlestar Galactica: Cyborgs on the Horizon” drew a large crowd at the 92nd Street Y on Friday night, for a discussion of how human brains might soon fuse with computer chips to create real cyborgs.

Moderator Faith Salie introduced the panelists: Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University; Michael Hogan, also known as Colonel Saul Tigh; Hod Lipson, director of the Computational Synthesis group at Cornell University; Mary McDonnell, a.k.a. President Laura Roslin; and Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading in England.

Salie asked each panelist to define what a cyborg is. Everyone had different answers: Warwick said it’s something that is part human, Lipson said it’s a moving target or a physical device that takes on biological life, and Bostrom said it’s the essence of human intelligence.

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We’ve just heard that we’re going back to Comic Con this summer, with a panel topic and line-up even bigger and better than last year’s event.

We are teaming up with Jennifer Ouellette and the crew at the Science and Entertainment Exchange to produce a panel on “MAD SCIENCE,” i.e. Science as a double-edged sword, ethically and morally neutral in and of itself, but dependent upon who wields it, and how.

Beloved Internet Personality Phil Plait is lined up to moderate (after he gets his tattoo) and we’re expecting guests from Eureka, Battlestar Galactica, Fringe, Stargate: Universe and more.  Watch this space for additional details.

Superheroes, they’re just like us! [via Hero Complex]

Meta-conspiracy: Does the government want you to believe in UFO’s? [via Futurismic]

Real-life Terminator robots here, here and here.  [via Technovelgy]

Video of low-altitude flight over the lunar surface by the Japanese KAGUYA explorer [via Pink Tentacle]

Recently released scenes of the upcoming remake of V combine two of our favorite things: creepy aliens and Party of Five! [via thrfeed]

In our vigilant monitoring of the popular media for all things science-related, we’ve identified an emerging trend: scientists as fashion accessories.  In just the last few weeks both GQ and Louis Vuitton have inserted scientists and/or astronauts into glossy fashion shoots.

The GQ layout, “The Rock Stars of Science,” introduces a public service campaign that matches musicians with leading researchers in different medical fields to highlight the need for additional research funding.  The featured scientists include Francis Collins,  Harold Varmus and Anthony Fauci, all of whom have been mentioned in DISCOVER recently, so we can’t quarrel with the science cast or the cause.

My beef is with the rock stars.  Joe Perry?  Sheryl Crow?  Seal?  It’ s beyond me why GQ couldn’t find anyone who had produced a meaningful hit in the last ten years.  How about Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio (bonus: album is called “Dear Science“)?

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Here’s another entry in the Codex Futurius project, this blog’s never-ending quest to explore the timeless scientific ideas raised by science fiction. This question about communicating with aliens goes to Jill Tarter of SETI. Thanks again to Jennifer Ouellette, the director the NAS’ Science and Entertainment Exchange (SEEx) program, for connecting us with Tarter.

Would/will we recognize an alien transmission right away? Is there a chance we could miss such a transmission, or they ours?

We will recognize the sorts of electromagnetic signals for which we have built good matched filters: nanosecond optical laser pulses, narrowband radio continuous wave or pulsed signals. If signals are of some other type (e.g., a modulation scheme with higher dimensionality, or something other than electromagnetic waves) then we will not detect them, except by serendipity as we build new instruments to study our universe in different ways, or by using increasing computational power to look for more complex types of electromagnetic signals.

If signals are transmitted via a technology that we haven’t yet invented, we will miss them until we manage to invent the appropriate technology (remember that we are a very young technology (~100 years) in a very old galaxy (~10 billion years). I suspect we have a lot more to learn.

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Even on the harsh deserts of Arrakis, the the water recycling capacity of a stillsuit prevent the wearer from would only lose a thimbleful  of water a day.  If you figure a thimble holds about 10 milliliters of water, and an astronaut normally consumes 2.7 liters of water per day through eating and drinking, that’s only a loss of .4% of the body’s daily water. Pretty impressive for a desert race with long life but limited resources. (In case this wasn’t clear, I’m talking about George Frank Herbert’s Dune here.)

Until recently, there was no need for us to try and engage with this sort of water recycling technology. In general, water has been plentiful in this world, and if it wasn’t we just piped it in. (I just re-saw Chinatown, so I’m feeling up on all this.) But increasingly short supplies of water in the American southwest and elsewhere have turned eyes to water recyling as at least a part of the long-term water supply solution. But to take a more extreme situation, let’s look at the final frontier, where there’s really no water at all. In fact, to transport water up to the International Space Station costs $15,000 a pint if we let the Russians do it, more if we send it up on Endeavor or Atlantis.

But today we got the marvelous news that instead of having to truck tons of water of space, the astronauts can just drink their own pee! (Yay?) Today marked  a successful test of the International Space Station’s water recycling system. The astronauts marked the occasion by raising a baggie (no glass in space) of recycled water (née urine) in a toast,  and taking it a sip. They deemed it delicious, and, after taking a few questions from reporters, went about their day.

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It’s a constant on SciNoFi that we do one post per episode of a given show. But as we all now know from watching the unexpectedly epic season finale of Fringe last week, constants can change, universes collide, and worlds are as multitudinous as the stars in the sky. And really, none of that was a spoiler.

But this whole question of varying physical constants has been roiling the scientific community for years, especially the astrophysicists who really have their telescopic fingers on the cosmic pulse of the question. As all of us who ever took a high school sicen class know, physical constants are crucial to making a great many descriptive equations actually work.  In Einstein’s E=mc², the c is the constant, it’s the speed of light. Then there’s the Planck constant, Avogadro’s number, and on and on. But if those numbers suddenly turned out to be changing, then how would the equations still work? Would science be broken?

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What’s not to like about watching mega-geeks create  effects for the coolest movies on earth? Very little—which leads one to wonder why producers didn’t think of it before. Oh wait…they did.

But there’s plenty of room for a condensed run-through of all the latest technology, from motion capture to the ever-ubiquitous CGI. Which is reason enough to like the Science Channel’s Science of the Movies series,  premiering Tuesday, May 26. Hosted by AchieveNerdvana.com blogger and Geekscape columnist Nar Williams, it’s six episodes on the behind-the-scenes geekosity that’s responsible for everything from Terminator 3 to The Fast and the Furious to Dexter to, yes, Star Wars.

Of course, take away all the blockbuster jargon and Hollywood sheen, and what you’re really watching is a tour through the ranks of ironic T-shirted, scraggly-facial-haired dudes that create the world’s biggest movies. Williams hobnobs with the best and baddest, from John Dykstra (yup, the guy who blew up the Death Star) to the Strause brothers, whose visual effects shop, Hydraulx, dominates the CGI market (300, anyone?).

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The Codex Futurius project, this blog’s never-ending quest to explore the timeless scientific questions raised by science fiction, is back—and this time we have reinforcements. The NAS’ Science and Entertainment Exchange (SEEx), a group dedicated to bringing real science into entertainment, has agreed to help us find experts who can tackle these ineffable sci-fi questions.

Our first expert-answered Codex question goes to J Storrs Hall, an independent scientist and author who’s also president of the Foresight Institute, a nanotech-oriented think tank. Thanks especially to Jennifer Ouellette, a science writer and the director of SEEx, for connecting us with Hall. Without further ado, here’s the question of the day, asked by an (imagined) big-time Hollywood director/producer who thinks getting the science right might help nail down that elusive Oscar:

“How could nanotechnology transform the world? Most importantly, how could I stop a plague of nanorobots from eating my spaceship/research facility/planet?”

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On last night’s episode of Fringe, practically the first thing we see is a gunshot wound victim rolling into the ER, but the nice EMT has a surprise for the doctor: The patient has a robot hand! Yep, erstwhile Massive Dynamic rep Nina Sharp has had her hand hacked off, and in its place Sharp has been granted a robot wrist and hand that was probably last seen attached to an Austrian-accented terminator (when it was wrapped in some manly skin, of course). It’s got some nice capabilities, this hand: Sharp has full range of motion and dexterity with her robot fingers, something real-world technology still has not achieved. But for all of Massive Dynamics’ evil know-how, they’re actually behind the times when it comes some elements of hand technology.

The most fascinating robot hand has to be the Shadow Hand, which relies on air compression for its “muscle” power. By filling and draining a flexible tube with air, the shadow hand achieves a level of precision not available to typical robotic hands. It can grasp things more gently than traditional robot hands, and it’s far lighter in weight than a big all-metal hand. And it has far greater range of motion. Granted, the Shadow Hand is intended for industrial applications rather than attachment to a person, but it seems to offer certain critical advantages that Massive Dynamics might have considered.

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OK, I kind of loved it when, in this week’s episode of Fringe, Emmanuel Grayson basically reveals the plot of the Star Trek movie in his spiel. Does this mean that the Star Trek universe and the Fringe universe are the same? Maybe Emmanuel Grayson *is* Spock. Or is it just that both the show and the movie exist in J.J. Abrams’ head? Hard to say.

But mostly I want to talk about pyrokinesis. And if you’re curious about that, you gotta click the jump, to avoid pesky spoilers from last night’s episode.

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If we’re going to wear surgical masks on the subway, make mine an Octopus beard. [via Pink Tentacle]

The Internet may be crumbling, but think of the time that would free up! [via Futurismic]

“Junk DNA” science may cure HIV, probably won’t create race of superhuman mutants.   [via SciFi Scanner]

Migrant workers may soon be able to telecommute.  [via SciFiWire ]

SciNoFi is not alone.  Terminator TV fans mobilize to save their show. [via eonline.com]

And the first Star Wars may have been 30+ years ago, but its spirit lives on in the hearts of harp music loving pre-teens everywhere [via The Website at the End of the Universe] :