Ancient Atlantis or Something Else?

By J. P. Skipper

The report is about an Earth based scenario, a combination of the possibilities inherent in a background Earth story, some possible hypotheses by me, and then some visual evidence to add into the mix. It will be up to you to decide if there is any merit. First we’ll start with the background story.

In more modern times, the story of ancient Atlantis has fascinated generations and some to obsession as a real place. As many of you may know, it is acknowledged that the story of Atlantis was first introduced into public awareness via dialogues by the Greek philosopher Plato around 355–360 BC. As the story goes, Plato’s references regarding Atlantis was allegedly in turn sourced from a 500 hundred years earlier 6th century BC trip by the Athenian lawgiver Solon to Egypt where an Egyptian priest there translated a part of an unknown history of ancient Athens and Atlantis from papyri scrolls of Egyptian hieroglyphs to Greek of a time some 9,000 year earlier to that 6th century period.

According to the translation, it seems that the god/man Poseidon (you know, Zeus, Hera, Apollo etc.) fell in love with a human female named Cleito on the island Atlantis who bore him many sons, the oldest of which was named Atlas. Now it should be noted at this point that the term “Atlantis” in Greek means “island of Atlas” and the term “Atlantic” Ocean was named after Atlas. It seems that in the even more distant past, the “gods” divided up Earth lands among themselves and Poseidon to his liking was assigned the then Atlantis lands west off of the Pillars of Hercules which the latter we know today as the Strait of Gibraltar separating the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

So, despite the many other location prospects presented by others as more likely sites, the ancient story clearly places the location of the Atlantean culture in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere west of the Strait of Gibraltar. Many have a problem with this because it is the scientific consensus opinion that this location is geologically impossible. Further, since science now days considers itself rational and enlightened, the story starting off with the “god” Poseidon likely causes many not to take it serious and regard it as little more than fabricated myth.

However, this ignores the ancient Sumarian and Indian culture record as also referring to such “gods” in human form including conducting great wars with each other. The consensus also makes the assumption that such records are not history but merely fabricated myths and legends to explain events they didn’t understand by ancient people less sophisticated and knowledgeable than ourselves. In my opinion, such views reveal more about our flaws and arrogance than ancient ones.

In any case, the story goes on to describe Atlantis as an island or a great number of islands occupying a very large area of specific measurement so that it might also be considered as large as a continent. Therefore do note that it isn’t described so much as a “continent” as we think of single land mass but a collection of land masses with the island Atlantis as its center of power.

The Atlantean’s are described as a naval power that also possessed flying machines. It seems that landmass Atlantis itself was occupied by Atlas and was an island with mountains. One of these mountains where Cleito apparently resided was carved by Poseidon into a great palace with concentric rings of land, walls, and canals extending out from its center and complete with other canal systems. It seems that the eastern most and other reaches of the Atlantean world were separate kingdoms divided up almost certainly among Atlas’s brothers and so the Atlantean world was a confederation of kingdoms with Atlantis as its power center.

In the time some 9,000 years before the time of Solon and the translation, the Atlantean confederation or some portion of it was apparently aggressively attacking and conquering in western Europe, parts of Africa, and attacking into the Mediterranean where they encountered ancient Athens. Athens standing alone stopped them militarily and thus no doubt the reason for Solon’s Greek interest in the Egyptian translated story. At some point in time not too long after this Atlantean military defeat there is suppose to have been some kind of earthquake upheaval that in one day and night caused the whole of the Atlantean world to sink beneath the Atlantic Ocean causing mud to poor in on top of it creating an impassable and unsearchable muddy shoal and a hazard to navigation.

Remember such records in these ancient times were likely one-off laboriously hand inscribed accounts and not a record that is repeated as we do today via books and electronic devices. So if the one record is destroyed, the account is lost forever. So this is a no doubt condensed Egyptian account/record further condensed by Solon, further condensed by Plato, and further condensed and interpreted by people like me in more recent times so that much information and, more important, a true sense of elapsed time is lost and/or distorted. So there may be a tendency to think about this account happening in shorter lengths of condensed time than may have actually been the case.
For example, we now know something about plate tectonics as well as continental drift and we now know, if we thought about it very much, that this identified location out in the Atlantic west of the Pillars of Hercules would be near an ever expanding seam between tectonic plates and a geologically unstable area due to that fact. This suggests the multiple fracture zones of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Logically, over the centuries earthquakes and rising sea levels may have alerted many intelligent advanced Atlantean people to their island life peril and especially among the island kingdoms with lower elevations.

This would have likely caused some Atlanteans, especially in the Atlantean eastern reaches, to be concerned about future sudden flooding caused by earthquakes building in intensity over the years and/or centuries and flooding shorelines. That may have caused them to attempt to shift populations further eastward to the mainland of western Europe and Africa getting into conflict with those already there occupying those places.

Also, before I forget to include this, it should be noted at this point that the Egyptian account clearly identifies a continent further west of Atlantis bounding the Atlantic Ocean that sounds an awful lot like the American continents. This in turn clearly suggests at least an Egyptian familiarity in ancient 6th century BC times and/or before with the western boundaries of the Atlantic Ocean and its navigation. That would make sense with a broad area of islands in the mid Atlantic making island hopping or circumventing navigation westward to the Americas much easier.

There is even the information in the account of the sunken shoals of Atlantis impeding navigation in the Atlantic. Even if the Egyptian account is false and a creation by Plato or his predecessors, it still suggests a navigation knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean to its western boundaries by some Mediterranean people in 355-360 BC and/or before Plato’s time and that too is significant.

Also, here’s another consideration. The underwater terrain area immediately east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge area has not only many fracture zones demonstrating geological instability but many mountain ranges as well no doubt created over time by that geological instability. Some of the highest mountains stick out of the water and their tops are islands out in the mid Atlantic. It is also likely that the highest mountains would be those created deeper within the Mid-Atlantic Ridge fracture zone areas.

Now consider that the events described here allegedly happened roughly about 12,000 years back into the past from the present time. Today our science tells us that the last glacial maximum (coldest period) peaked about 20,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago as we entered the current interglacial cycle warming period. That means that 12,000 year ago from our time the Atlantean culture would be facing a warming trend that would have been ongoing and well along for some 8,000 years with melting ice sheets and sea levels rising nearing to the completion of this warming cycle just 2,000 years in their future.

Think about it. Depending on its possible age of existence, the Atlantean culture may have been initially established at some period during the last ice age glacial maximum around 20,000 years ago. During that earlier time, the ice sheets would likely have been at their peaks of mass and the sea level would have been at its lowest. That means that a great deal of the top of those mountain ranges east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge plate tectonic seam would have likely been sticking considerably out of the water forming a massive area of islands with many of them land interconnected and suitable for habitation.

This has all kinds of negative implications for any civilization based on the mountain range islands in the mid Atlantic during an 8,000 year long to that date interglacial warming/melt trend and its geological changes. As their island centers were threatened by rising water levels and increasingly made more and more vulnerable to the occasional earthquake driven tsunamis and other rogue waves from deeper water over the centuries, there would have logically been a migration from this home area by many while others stayed behind unwilling to leave so typical of human behavior.

This would explain the view of Atlanteans moving east by Egyptian and Greeks as invaders. Did you know that Egyptian earliest history includes accounts of battles fought with unidentified peoples from the west? The Atlanteans on the move, but being a finite number of people without the replenishment reserves of an long term established people and even with more advanced technology, they would gradually have been worn down in conquering ability pushing east into western Europe and Africa until finally exhausted they met their match and perhaps were stopped by the Athenians and a growing culture that later produced the fiercely committed Spartan defenders at Thermopylae. If so, now all that is left of their legacy is perhaps some of their DNA in many of us and some long lasting megalithic structure evidence in Europe and Africa as their smaller numbers were eventually absorbed into the greater human whole of that part of the world.

This is the Earth Atlantis story in basic and some of my thoughts on it. You will notice that I do not label this information as so many others do as myth. From my point of view, it is neither myth nor truth but simply a story like that of Troy that may have some basis for fact in it and not to be summarily dismissed. In other words, I suspect there is core truth to be had somewhere in this story.

You can perhaps understand that, when I got Google Earth, one of the first things I did was go looking for any sign of civilization underwater in the Atlantic west off of the Pillars of Hercules where the Atlantean culture at its height is alleged to be located. I expected nothing and especially not in light of the fact that so much of the satellite imaging has been obfuscated. However, I did find what clearly appears to be some evidence of artificial construction underwater west southwest well out from the Strait of Gibraltar.

I was going to report on it before now but got distracted into planetary evidence and kept putting it off until now. I also delayed because I wanted to further inspect what appears to be some underwater canal systems joining certain islands still sticking out of the water in the general area. However, recently I received an email bringing this site back to my attention from a Clinical Psychologist Dr. Christof Lehmann wanting to know what I thought of the same underwater formations? I’m glad he did. Now let’s look at some Google imaging showing the location of the site and the site itself.

The above 1st image is a context view showing the Atlantic Ocean, the position of the unstable Mid-Atlantic Ridge tectonic plate fracture zone and the rough mountainous underwater terrain produced by it. Likewise, the red arrow demonstrates the underwater evidence site to the left relative to the Strait of Gibraltar or Pillars of Hercules to the right at the mouth of the Mediterranean. As you can see, the placement of the site is in general consistent with the ancient story of the placement of the Atlantean empire.

The above 2nd image from Google Earth provides a closer but still context view showing a little more detail of the evidence that surrounds the site. Note that the site in question appears to be underwater on the east edge of the rough mountainous Mid Atlantic Ridge terrain and on the west edge of a more level plain. However, one needs to be cautious. This may or may not be accurate as a portion of the smoother plain appearance may also be the result of smudge treatments applied to the local area. In fact, if one takes into consideration image tampering treatments, what we can see of the underwater ruins may merely be only part of a greater whole hidden by smudge treatments.

The above 3rd and 4th images provide different types of views of the underwater ruins site. As you can see these many geometric right angle and linear lines are almost certainly represent artificially created ruins of some kind. However, note that there are apparently no concentric round rings as the story describes that are suppose to be on the main island of Atlantis. Further, while there are other long linear lines east of this site that could be old ancient canals connecting islands, there is no more evidence of ruins this definitive in the immediate surroundings.

Does this tell us that this isn’t Atlantis? Not hardly. The ruin outlines you see above are also how this site would look if smudge image tampering were a factor. Same with the extensive smooth plain to the east of this site. You can take nothing for granted in this regard as to what role image tampering may play by hiding evidence.

So does this tell us that this is Atlantis? Again the answer is no. However, what it does tell us is that what we have here is artificial ruin outlines underwater on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean where none should exist and that alone is very significant. Scientists tell us that this is impossible but here you have the visual evidence. Unless some advanced aliens built something here underwater that has been covered over by smudge treatments and still printing through them, we’re almost certainly looking at ancient human civilization construction evidence that had to have been created by ancients over time and unquestionably out of water. That means that this site existed at one time in the past out of water and on dry land.

That in turn logically means that this civilization evidence may have existed active at some time during the last glacial cold period as much as 20,000 years ago when the ice sheets were at their maximum and the water level here was much lower than now exposing these lands to air and sunlight. That in turn makes the story of some ancient civilization like the Atlantean culture in the Atlantic Ocean off of the Pillars of Hercules more feasible.

For example, the destruction of Atlantis, if the overnight time frame is legitimate and not a result of condensing the time line in the Egyptian reporting the event, may have been the result of a combination of things building up over centuries. Rising water during the interglacial warming trend would be the chief suspect but would not alone sufficiently explain the overnight disaster scenario. On the other hand, warming trend rising water levels would have made islands more vulnerable to inundation at the same time that increasing downward weight pressure of the rising water on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge geologically unstable area could have created a subterranean collapse of the plate dropping down a bit and/or a significant earthquake displacing and pushing water in a great wave over the already vulnerable island culture depositing swirling stirred up bottom sediment (mud) over the area.

The above evidence site may or may not be part of an Atlantean empire. However, it was a part of something out here in this now underwater terrain and there is no telling what extensive civilization evidence may be hidden in this area under smudge treatments. If there is anyone out there around the world with access to commercial satellite imaging of this underwater general area that may not have been subjected to tampering treatments, please get it to me for examination and we’ll see if there is anything more to be seen here!

Now that the above evidence leans so much in favor of artificial civilization evidence being possible underwater in this general area of the Atlantic Ocean, is there is further evidence of the civilization kind on this side of the Atlantic? As it turns out, there actually is north of this area and off the west coast of Ireland and the visual evidence is as follows.

The above 5th image is the wide angle context view of that evidence both out on the coastal shallower water shelf represented by the lighter blue color and down in a deeper canyon system represented by the darker blue color. Note that this evidence is not really like the ruins of buildings because the imprint of it is finer and closer textured but still with the sharp 90º right angle boundary geometry and long straight linear lines so typical of man’s constructions.

In the above 6th image, note the lower section pointed out between the two arrows. This looks suspiciously like writing of some unknown kind, at least to me. IF this is writing, perhaps some better forensic imaging experts in conjunction with some linguist experts probably in ancient text could get better details and interpret this?

To that end, the above 7th image provides a closer view of this possible writing. It also provides a good view of how precise the southern straight line boundary of this grid like site makes a perfect sharp 90º turn upward north forming the west boundary edge of the entire site. As you can see, the corner is just too right angle perfect to be the result of some natural occurrence and has been almost certainly implemented by artificial means. As with the previous evidence, the presence of smudge and/or a mud covering on the site tells us that these are not imaging artifacts but something actually present on the bottom.

The above 8th image view is of the top or north and west boundary of the site off of Ireland. As you can see, this area of the site is more compromised by blur. That is caused I suspect mostly by obscuring smudge treatments but acknowledge that it could be mud as well. However, even so, note there are many objects (containers ?) of the same size and in a side-by-side east/west orientation repeating in a long uniformly even line here mostly but not completely obscured and as pointed out by the red arrows.

It obviously suggests artificiality rather than something of natural origin. What any explorer worth his salt wouldn’t give to go down and inspect that long line of same size objects seen in the above 8th image!

What this site is exactly I cannot say. Could it be a giant horizontal read message board with all the main smaller text obscured and only the grossly large bottom line of text printing through the obscuring mud and/or smudge? What ever it is, the main thing is that it appears to be of artificial origin and it is underwater in the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland. It is entirely possible that this site also dates back into glacial maximum times when the water levels here were at their lowest level exposing this area to the air and sunlight enabling this construction.

The problem with that consideration is that 20,000 years ago during the peak glacial cold cycle, the ice sheets extending down from the Artic north of this point would likely have covered this site making it very difficult for human habitation. Also, the lowered sea levels would have exposed what is now the British Isles including Ireland and the English Channel making this area a landmass extension of the European continent.

If this now underwater site would not be conducive to human habitation back then during the glacial cold cycle, could this site be some kind of giant heated grid type sign system then on exposed land melting ice away from around it and framing a giant message meant only to be seen from above? Perhaps a giant boundary marker defining territory?

In other words, discoveries raising questions like this point to a time in this planet’s history when things were happening that we in our ignorance in this time have little to no knowledge of today except for a few privy to truthful satellite imaging. With that in mind and consistent with human behavior, there may be a tendency to speculate that these things were happening before our recordedhistory? If so, let me say a word about that.

More than likely, there was such a recorded history. For example, the ancient libraries that we know were intentionally sacked and burned a number of times in the lands around the Mediterranean may have contained a great deal of this information. So much of the information in them was destroyed just because of the information they contained that someone of the time didn’t want known. So, with the destruction, the information lost to human civilization is incalculable. I might add that sadly much of that library destruction was undertaken in the name of religion and its intolerance for difference.

I am reminded of the ancient peoples in the opposite direction of South and Central America. They recorded a great deal of history on gold likely thinking that the knowledge would never perish on this wonderfully stable metal. They did not of course anticipate that European white men driven by greed and accompanied by zealot guardians of religion would wish to destroy even history, covet the gold, melt it down wholesale (again knowledge destroyed) too fill great ship convoys headed back to Europe to feed even greater greed and the power addicts of that time.

If very much of any of this ancient information had survived intact, it is possible that humanity would have surged centuries ahead increasingly on an individual basis not nearly as dependent on leaders to manipulate us via spin telling us what to think, how to feel, and what to do that always seems to benefit the few but rarely the many that take the action and run the risks. However, that’s just my personal thoughts.

Addendum added 7/19/2010

It has been brought to my attention by a number of people that this possible site in the Atlantic off of the Pillars of Hercules has been discovered and apparently reported on previously by someone else also making a possible Atlantis connection. I don’t know who. At the same time it seems that Google has put forth an official explanation found HERE that the evidence is a artifact of bathymetric data collection sonar process from boats with the lines reflecting the path of the boats. I was not aware either of the prior discovery or the official explanation at the time of my reporting above.

Because of the location of this particular evidence, it is natural to associate this site with Atlantis. The subject of a technologically advanced human civilization prior to our current recorded history is not welcome in science or political consensus circles just as it was not in ancient times with the destruction of the great libraries. In this time it is preferred to promote surprisingly advanced but still suitably and safely primitive cultures like the Minoans in the Mediterranean as the bases for the story of Atlantis.

As for the official Google explanation, if the Google Earth underwater search function revealed a pattern of sites like this as a result of fuzzy sonar readings around the Earth, such an official explanation might hold a little interest for more investigation. However, no matter what they say, the evidence just isn’t there. That means that the official explanation amounts to no more than a claim and it is clear that this site west off the Pillars of Hercules has been specifically targeted for this special explanation.

The bottom line is that, if they can get the deep rough and very intricate Mid-Atlantic Ridge massive area bottom information west adjacent to this site correct without such visual defects, that says it all and the official explanation is not something to take seriously. You must decide what has merit and what does not for yourself. As for me, I stand by my reporting.

 

Living in A Simulation

By Rob Braynton

The above new video accompanies my blog entry from last August, on the subject of Simulism: the idea that we could be living within a gigantic virtual world, whether we are aware of it or not. Simulism.org is a wiki created by the Netherlands’ Ivo Jansch, and it brings together a number of interesting bits of information about (to quote from the wiki) “the possibility that our existence rests on an unimaginably complex n-dimensional k-state computer grid with rules governing the transition from one state to another”.

In my previous post on Simulism and the above video blog, I talk about several other shows which have showed Simulism-related concepts, including The Matrix, Inception, Star Trek: TNG’s holodeck, and a television show I had not come across before called Play. The Moviespage at the simulism wiki lists a number of other films, most of which are obviously science fiction. But I couldn’t resist adding a few of my favorite films to the list because (in my opinion) they present related concepts:

A Christmas Carol – could this 1843 Charles Dickens novella be the grand-daddy of Simulism? The ghosts conjure virtual worlds of time travel and alternate timelines that to Ebenezer Scrooge are completely real.

It’s a Wonderful Life – when George Bailey is shown an alternate version of the world as it would have been without him, can’t this be thought of as a simulation?

Groundhog Day – being trapped at a certain instant of time (6 am on Groundhog Day), and then being given the freedom to explore all the possible timelines that extend from that instant: is Phil Conners trapped in a simulation? The movie offers no explanation so we are left to imagine what could have been the cause of his predicament.

Brazil – since so much of this film is surreal, placed “somewhere in the twentieth century” according to the opening subtitle, it’s possible that the entire film is a virtual world, a simulation. Could Sam Lowry have woken up from the dream, Neo-style, at any moment in this movie? Since the world depicted in this film is unlike any version of the twentieth century you or I experienced, there are other “alternate history” discussions that could just as easily be related to this film, one of my all-time favorites.

The wikipedia article on alternate history presents some examples of stories exploring the “what would have the world been like if this rather than that had happened” as far back as two thousand years ago: ideas of parallel universe versions of our own observed universe are not as new as you might suspect! And if Information Equals Reality, then all of these examples of simulism, alternate histories, and parallel universes may not just be flights of imagination, but examples of the possibilities inherent in the underlying structures of our reality.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton.

Are Prosthetic Genes Next?

Image via Wikipedia

By Robert Holt

There is nothing particularly thought provoking about a Teflon frying pan, but it has enormous utility when frying eggs. Teflon (the DuPont brand name for polytetrafluuoroethylene) doesn’t exist in nature. It is a polymer, a chainlike assembly of simple, repeating, fluorinated carbon molecules that was first synthesized by DuPont scientist Roy Plunkett in 1938. It is the only know substance to which a gecko cannot stick.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a polymer. It is a natural polymer, comprised of a chainlike assembly of four different constituent deoxyribonucleotides, commonly referred to as DNA bases A, G, C and T. Each base has considerably more structural ornamentation than the pedestrian fluorinated carbons of Teflon, and when appropriately paired and polymerized as they are in the genome of every living thing, they form an elegant double helical structure. Genetic information, the instructions for cells to make gene products that form the structural and functional components of cells, is carried in the particular order of bases in the double helix. The order of bases in the sum total of DNA that encodes our biosphere has been laid down over evolutionary time. The order is not immutable but it is resilient, left on its own. We have become very good at reading the order of DNA bases (ie. DNA sequences) to the point where an individual human genome comprising billions of ordered bases can be read in about a week. A bacterial genome, typically containing a million or so nucleotides can be read about as fast as the DNA can be purified.

Like Teflon, the new bacteria, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0, has its origins in polymer chemistry. The genome sequence of its forbearer, Mycolplasma mycoides LC has been known for some time. When we know the order of bases in a piece of DNA we can physically reconstruct it. The procedure involves chemically modifying a base to specify its reactivity, joining it to another base to create a sequence of two, then demodifying this product in readiness for addition of the next base. It is slow, expensive and error prone and can support only a few dozen additions. The approach hasn’t changed much since the first chemical synthesis of DNA molecule, a 77 base fragment of a yeast gene, was synthesized by Har Gobind Khorana and colleagues in 1965. This being the case, the synthesis of a plethora of short DNA precursors, each a carbon copy of a particular fragment of the 1.08 million base Mycoplasma mycoides LC genome, and the assembly of these chemical precursors into the complete, accurate and functional genome of JCVI-syn1.0 is a tour de force in both polymer chemistry and synthetic biology.

The Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 genome is a prosthetic genome because like any other prosthesis, it is an artificial replacement of a missing body part, albeit an essential one in this particular case. Where will this remarkable new direction in chemical synthesis lead us? Unlike Teflon frying pans, JCVI-syn1.0 cells have zero utility. In fact, if anything they are more likely to have negative utility. It is well established that some types of mycoplasmas are infectious, and in the laboratory many a research project has been derailed by incidental mycoplasma contamination of cell cultures and considerable effort goes into making molecular biology labs mycoplasma free, to the point where an entire industry is dedicated to this problem. A google search for “Laboratory Mycoplasma Decontamination” returns 160,000 hits. Try it.

So why would anyone want to dedicate years of R&D and tens of millions of dollars to build a mycoplasma? Why create the synthetic genome of a parasitic pathogen? To digress a little, synthetic mycoplasma is a legacy project. Initial studies begun over a decade ago focused on Mycoplasma genitalium because it was known to have one of the smallest genomes of any cellular organism – only half a million bases. It was anticipated that the small genome size, plus lack of a fortified cell wall, would make genome reconstruction and activation of more tractable. The reason to try to reconstruct and activate a synthetic genome was simply to show that it could be done. However, when the genitalium genome was built it could not be activated by transfer into a recipient mycoplasma cell, probably because its genomic composition was just too different from that of the standard recipient, Mycoplasma capricolum. To digress further, since capricolum was already known to be able to support transfer of the natural, but larger, mycoides genome the synthetic genitalium operation was scrapped and replaced by the now successful synthetic mycoides project. Although there have been claims that, being engineerable, mycoplasmas could now have commercial applications, this is is highly debatable. The fragile cell membrane that positions mycoplasmas so well as experimental organisms for microbial genomics makes them, at the same time, completely unsuitable for the heavy lifting of industry. These tasks are better suited to their more robust bacterial cousins.

Although lacking any real world utility, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 is definitiely thought provoking. Why is this genome not just another synthetic polymer? What makes it more intriguing than polyester? At first glance it is probably clear to anyone that what sets this polymer apart is that unlike any former product of chemical synthesis it is supporting what is, undebatably, cellular life. Of course we don’t have a clue how to do the design of an organism from scratch, to pick a particular order of A, G, C an T’s that yields some startlingly new but entirely pre-designed outcome. But we are now able to copy organisms. Change them a bit. So where do things go from here? Could we create a more complex microbe? A yeast, perhaps, which is an organism with a cell structure more related to multicellular entities like ourselves than to bacteria. Various yeast strains have been sequenced, and a typical yeast genome is only about ten times larger than Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0. How about a fruit fly, ten times larger still, and with a well characterized genome sequence? Or, if we follow this train of thought about as far as anyone would care to, how about a person? This is the real impact of the JCVI-1. It is demonstration that once we know a genome sequence, we can rebuild the organism it encodes. Even, in principle, a person. From scratch. Using chemically synthesized DNA fragments. To be sure, the technology is nowhere near being up to the task of constructing or activating anything as large and complex as a human genome, but the point is just that. The hurdle would be a technical one. A problem of scale. For better or worse, contemplation of human existence need no longer be purely metaphysical. We should ask ourselves how we feel about that, and start to act accordingly.

[Ref: Cosmology Magazine]

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• Mad Scientist Creates Living Cell, Potentially Dooming Us All [Science] (kotaku.com)

US Department of agriculture analysts indicate us one simple solution to keep the immune system healthy

By Celia Barnes

Did you know the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) funded scientists demonstrated that Organic mushrooms play an essential function in keeping the body’s defense mechanisms healthy?

In a recent report published in July 2010 from Sciencedaily.com, leading correspondent Rosalie Marion Bliss reported how the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) experts have conducted an animal-model and cell-culture study showing that white button mushrooms improved the activity of vital cells in the body’s immune system.

Agaricus bisporus (known variously as the common mushroom, button mushroom or white mushroom) is an edible basidiomycete mushroom indigenous to grasslands in European countries and The United States. Agaricus bisporus is cultivated in more than seventy countries and is one of the most commonly and widely eaten mushrooms globally.

In the USA, white button mushrooms represent 90 % of the entire mushrooms eaten.

The study was conducted at the Jean Mayer Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts School by center director Dr. Simin Meydani.

The outcomes propose that white button mushrooms may increase immune function by increasing the production of antiviral and other proteins that are released by cells while seeking to defend and repair tissue.

The study’s cell-culture phase established that white button mushrooms enhanced the maturity of immune system cells called “dendritic cells,” from bone marrow.

Dendritic cells can make T cells that are important white blood cells that can identify and eventually deactivate or destroy antigens on invading microbes.

When immune system cells are exposed to disease-causing pathoenic agents, like bacteria, our body begins to increase the number and function of immune system cells, according to Dr. Meydani.

[Ref: United States Department of Agriculture]

Why To Colonize Mars?

Our blue planet is suffering from cataclysmic processes including global warming and pollution. Now our Earth is harboring almost seven billion Homo Sapience. In near future it would be even greater problem. Except that there are many problems which force us to establish colonies outside of terran. Here Robert Zubrin, Former chairman of National Space Society, will explain some prospects for Mars colonization.

By Robert Zubrin

Among extraterrestrial bodies in our solar system, Mars is singular in that it possesses all the raw materials required to support not only life, but a new branch of human civilization. This uniqueness is illustrated most clearly if we contrast Mars with the Earth’s Moon, the most frequently cited alternative location for extraterrestrial human colonization.

In contrast to the Moon, Mars is rich in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, all in biologically readily accessible forms such as carbon dioxide gas, nitrogen gas, and water ice and permafrost. Carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen are only present on the Moon in parts per million quantities, much like gold in seawater. Oxygen is abundant on the Moon, but only in tightly bound oxides such as silicon dioxide (SiO₂), ferrous oxide (Fe₂O₃), magnesium oxide (MgO), and aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃), which require very high energy processes to reduce. Current knowledge indicates that if Mars were smooth and all its ice and permafrost melted into liquid water, the entire planet would be covered with an ocean over 100 meters deep. This contrasts strongly with the Moon, which is so dry that if concrete were found there, Lunar colonists would mine it to get the water out. Thus, if plants could be grown in greenhouses on the Moon (an unlikely proposition, as we’ve seen) most of their biomass material would have to be imported.

The Moon is also deficient in about half the metals of interest to industrial society (copper, for example), as well as many other elements of interest such as sulfur and phosphorus. Mars has every required element in abundance. Moreover, on Mars, as on Earth, hydrologic and volcanic processes have occurred that are likely to have consolidated various elements into local concentrations of high-grade mineral ore. Indeed, the geologic history of Mars has been compared to that of Africa, with very optimistic inferences as to its mineral wealth implied as a corollary. In contrast, the Moon has had virtually no history of water or volcanic action, with the result that it is basically composed of trash rocks with very little differentiation into ores that represent useful concentrations of anything interesting.

You can generate power on either the Moon or Mars with solar panels, and here the advantages of the Moon’s clearer skies and closer proximity to the Sun than Mars roughly balances the disadvantage of large energy storage requirements created by the Moon’s 28-day light-dark cycle. But if you wish to manufacture solar panels, so as to create a self-expanding power base, Mars holds an enormous advantage, as only Mars possesses the large supplies of carbon and hydrogen needed to produce the pure silicon required for producing photovoltaic panels and other electronics. In addition, Mars has the potential for wind-generated power while the Moon clearly does not. But both solar and wind offer relatively modest power potential — tens or at most hundreds of kilowatts here or there. To create a vibrant civilization you need a richer power base, and this Mars has both in the short and medium term in the form of its geothermal power resources, which offer potential for large numbers of locally created electricity generating stations in the 10 MW (10,000 kilowatt) class. In the long-term, Mars will enjoy a power-rich economy based upon exploitation of its large domestic resources of deuterium fuel for fusion reactors. Deuterium is five times more common on Mars than it is on Earth, and tens of thousands of times more common on Mars than on the Moon.

But the biggest problem with the Moon, as with all other airless planetary bodies and proposed artificial free-space colonies, is that sunlight is not available in a form useful for growing crops. A single acre of plants on Earth requires four megawatts of sunlight power, a square kilometer needs 1,000 MW. The entire world put together does not produce enough electrical power to illuminate the farms of the state of Rhode Island, that agricultural giant. Growing crops with electrically generated light is just economically hopeless. But you can’t use natural sunlight on the Moon or any other airless body in space unless you put walls on the greenhouse thick enough to shield out solar flares, a requirement that enormously increases the expense of creating cropland. Even if you did that, it wouldn’t do you any good on the Moon, because plants won’t grow in a light/dark cycle lasting 28 days.

But on Mars there is an atmosphere thick enough to protect crops grown on the surface from solar flare. Therefore, thin-walled inflatable plastic greenhouses protected by unpressurized UV-resistant hard-plastic shield domes can be used to rapidly create cropland on the surface. Even without the problems of solar flares and month-long diurnal cycle, such simple greenhouses would be impractical on the Moon as they would create unbearably high temperatures. On Mars, in contrast, the strong greenhouse effect created by such domes would be precisely what is necessary to produce a temperate climate inside. Such domes up to 50 meters in diameter are light enough to be transported from Earth initially, and later on they can be manufactured on Mars out of indigenous materials. Because all the resources to make plastics exist on Mars, networks of such 50- to 100-meter domes couldbe rapidly manufactured and deployed, opening up large areas of the surface to both shirtsleeve human habitation and agriculture. That’s just the beginning, because it will eventually be possible for humans to substantially thicken Mars’ atmosphere by forcing the regolith to outgas its contents through a deliberate program of artificially induced global warming. Once that has been accomplished, the habitation domes could be virtually any size, as they would not have to sustain a pressure differential between their interior and exterior. In fact, once that has been done, it will be possible to raise specially bred crops outside the domes.

The point to be made is that unlike colonists on any known extraterrestrial body, Martian colonists will be able to live on the surface, not in tunnels, and move about freely and grow crops in the light of day. Mars is a place where humans can live and multiply to large numbers, supporting themselves with products of every description made out of indigenous materials. Mars is thus a place where an actual civilization, not just a mining or scientific outpost, can be developed. And significantly for interplanetary commerce, Mars and Earth are the only two locations in the solar system where humans will be able to grow crops for export.

Interplanetary Commerce

Mars is the best target for colonization in the solar system because it has by far the greatest potential for self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, even with optimistic extrapolation of robotic manufacturing techniques, Mars will not have the division of labor required to make it fully self-sufficient until its population numbers in the millions. Thus, for decades and perhaps longer, it will be necessary, and forever desirable, for Mars to be able to import specialized manufactured goods from Earth. These goods can be fairly limited in mass, as only small portions (by weight) of even very high-tech goods are actually complex. Nevertheless, these smaller sophisticated items will have to be paid for, and the high costs of Earth-launch and interplanetary transport will greatly increase their price. What can Mars possibly export back to Earth in return?

It is this question that has caused many to incorrectly deem Mars colonization intractable, or at least inferior in prospect to the Moon. For example, much has been made of the fact that the Moon has indigenous supplies of helium-3, an isotope not found on Earth and which could be of considerable value as a fuel for second generation thermonuclear fusion reactors. Mars has no known helium-3 resources. On the other hand, because of its complex geologic history, Mars may have concentrated mineral ores, with much greater concentrations of precious metal ores readily available than is currently the case on Earth — because the terrestrial ores have been heavily scavenged by humans for the past 5,000 years. If concentrated supplies of metals of equal or greater value than silver (such as germanium, hafnium, lanthanum, cerium, rhenium, samarium, gallium, gadolinium, gold, palladium, iridium, rubidium, platinum, rhodium, europium, and a host of others) were available on Mars, they could potentially be transported back to Earth for a substantial profit. Reusable Mars-surface based single-stage-to-orbit vehicles would haul cargoes to Mars orbit for transportation to Earth via either cheap expendable chemical stages manufactured on Mars or reusable cycling solar or magnetic sail-powered interplanetary spacecraft. The existence of such Martian precious metal ores, however, is still hypothetical.

But there is one commercial resource that is known to exist ubiquitously on Mars in large amount — deuterium. Deuterium, the heavy isotope of hydrogen, occurs as 166 out of every million hydrogen atoms on Earth, but comprises 833 out of every million hydrogen atoms on Mars. Deuterium is the key fuel not only for both first and second generation fusion reactors, but it is also an essential material needed by the nuclear power industry today. Even with cheap power, deuterium is very expensive; its current market value on Earth is about $10,000 per kilogram, roughly fifty times as valuable as silver or 70% as valuable as gold. This is in today’s pre-fusion economy. Once fusion reactors go into widespread use deuterium prices will increase. All the in-situ chemical processes required to produce the fuel, oxygen, and plastics necessary to run a Mars settlement require water electrolysis as an intermediate step. As a by product of these operations, millions, perhaps billions, of dollars worth of deuterium will be produced.

Ideas may be another possible export for Martian colonists. Just as the labor shortage prevalent in colonial and nineteenth century America drove the creation of “Yankee ingenuity’s” flood of inventions, so the conditions of extreme labor shortage combined with a technological culture that shuns impractical legislative constraints against innovation will tend to drive Martian ingenuity to produce wave after wave of invention in energy production, automation and robotics, biotechnology, and other areas. These inventions, licensed on Earth, could finance Mars even as they revolutionize and advance terrestrial living standards as forcefully as nineteenth century American invention changed Europe and ultimately the rest of the world as well.

Inventions produced as a matter of necessity by a practical intellectual culture stressed by frontier conditions can make Mars rich, but invention and direct export to Earth are not the only ways that Martians will be able to make a fortune. The other route is via trade to the asteroid belt, the band of small, mineral-rich bodies lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. There are about 5,000 asteroids known today, of which about 98% are in the “Main Belt” lying between Mars and Jupiter, with an average distance from the Sun of about 2.7 astronomical units, or AU. (The Earth is 1.0 AU from the Sun.) Of the remaining two percent known as the near-Earth asteroids, about 90% orbit closer to Mars than to the Earth. Collectively, these asteroids represent an enormous stockpile of mineral wealth in the form of platinum group and other valuable metals.

Miners operating among the asteroids will be unable to produce their necessary supplies locally. There will thus be a need to export food and other necessary goods from either Earth or Mars to the Main Belt. Mars has an overwhelming positional advantage as a location from which to conduct such trade.

Historical Analogies

The primary analogy I wish to draw is that Mars is to the new age of exploration as North America was to the last. The Earth’s Moon, close to the metropolitan planet but impoverished in resources, compares to Greenland. Other destinations, such as the Main Belt asteroids, may be rich in potential future exports to Earth but lack the preconditions for the creation of a fully developed indigenous society; these compare to the West Indies. Only Mars has the full set of resources required to develop a native civilization, and only Mars is a viable target for true colonization. Like America in its relationship to Britain and the West Indies, Mars has a positional advantage that will allow it to participate in a useful way to support extractive activities on behalf of Earth in the asteroid belt and elsewhere.

But despite the shortsighted calculations of eighteenth-century European statesmen and financiers, the true value of America never was as a logistical support base for West Indies sugar and spice trade, inland fur trade, or as a potential market for manufactured goods. The true value of America was as the future home for a new branch of human civilization, one that as a combined result of its humanistic antecedents and its frontier conditions was able to develop into the most powerful engine for human progress and economic growth the world had ever seen. The wealth of America was in fact that she could support people, and that the right kind of people chose to go to her. People create wealth. People are wealth and power. Every feature of Frontier American life that acted to create a practical can-do culture of innovating people will apply to Mars a hundred-fold.

Mars is a harsher place than any on Earth. But provided one can survive the regimen, it is the toughest schools that are the best. The Martians shall do well.

Searching For Early Life On Mars

Mars our neighboring  planet, similar in environment to Earth, has ever been suggested as best candidate for our future colonization. The recent findings and data sent from Mars Phoenix Lander, suggested there was water in early mars.

Laboratory tests aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander’s robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.The soil sample came from a trench approximately 2 inches deep. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard layer of frozen soil. Two attempts to deliver samples of icy soil on days when fresh material was exposed were foiled when the samples became stuck inside the scoop. Most of the material in Wednesday’s sample had been exposed to the air for two days, letting some of the water in the sample vaporize away and making the soil easier to handle.Besides confirming the 2002 finding from orbit of water ice near the surface and deciphering the newly observed stickiness, the science team is trying to determine whether the water ice ever thaws enough to be available for biology and if carbon-containing chemicals and other raw materials for life are present.[Source: NASA]

The recent news published at NASA website clearly depicts that there could have been life on early Mars:

Rocks examined by NASA’s Spirit Mars Rover hold evidence of a wet, non-acidic ancient environment that may have been favorable for life. Confirming this mineral clue took four years of analysis by several scientists. An outcrop that Spirit examined in late 2005 revealed high concentrations of carbonate, which originates in wet, near-neutral conditions, but dissolves in acid. The ancient water indicated by this find was not acidic. NASA’s rovers have found other evidence of formerly wet Martian environments. However the data for those environments indicate conditions that may have been acidic. In other cases, the conditions were definitely acidic, and therefore less favorable as habitats for life. Laboratory tests helped confirm the carbonate identification. The findings were published online Thursday, June 3 by the journal Science.[Source: NASA]

Massive carbonate deposits on Mars have been sought for years without much success. Numerous channels apparently carved by flows of liquid water on ancient Mars suggest the planet was formerly warmer, thanks to greenhouse warming from a thicker atmosphere than exists now. The ancient, dense Martian atmosphere was probably rich in carbon dioxide, because that gas makes up nearly all the modern, very thin atmosphere.

It is important to determine where most of the carbon dioxide went. Some theorize it departed to space. Others hypothesize that it left the atmosphere by the mixing of carbon dioxide with water under conditions that led to forming carbonate minerals. That possibility, plus finding small amounts of carbonate in meteorites that originated from Mars, led to expectations in the 1990s that carbonate would be abundant on Mars. However, mineral-mapping spectrometers on orbiters since then have found evidence of localized carbonate deposits in only one area, plus small amounts distributed globally in Martian dust.

Most of our universe appears to be a hostile place for life to exist with no planetary bodies except Earth harboring life as we know it. However, similar notions were previously thought of Earth’s extreme environments such as acidic hot springs, deepsea vents or solar salterns, which were believed to be too “extreme” to nurture life. Yet numerous studies over the last decades have shown that these extreme environments actually harbor an incredible diversity of Eukarya, Bacteria and Archaea. The very same may hold true for the search for extraterrestrial life: Just because we have not found it yet, does not mean it cannot exist. However, there is still the question of what are we actually looking for, and where?

The most recent findings suggest that planet was warmer and wetter in the past. What tend to evolution of  life on Earth is warmer environment and water. With this assumption in mind, Mars is probably our best chance to find life, extant or extinct, within our Solar System and recent results from the Phoenix Mars Lander have actually shown evidence for water in modern day Martian soil. Another intriguing find was made by the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, when they discovered halite and sulfate evaporated rocks on Mars. This suggests that hypersaline brine pools may have been relatively common on the surface of Mars, which in turn may have been a suitable environment for a family of Archaea which thrive on Earth: the family Halobacteriaceae. On Earth, modern hypersaline brine pools are not solely inhabited by halophilic Archaea. Two examples of other inhabitants are Salinibacter ruber or the unicellular green algae Dunaliella salina. In the search of extraterrestrial life, halophilic Archaea are of particular interest as they are amazingly robust organisms, able to survive being desiccated into a crust of solid salt. Sealed in such salt crystals, halophiles have an extremely high, and perhaps indefinite, longevity. Interestingly, these halophilic Archaea are not known to form spores, thus it is of great interest how they can survive for an extended period of time. Ancient stromatolites date as far back as 3.5 billion years and may have provided the first micro-environments on early Earth, as they were fashioned in ancient oceans, which may have been 6% NaCl.

Not only is there the suggested relative common occurrence of hypersaline environments on Mars in its early history, but one can also imagine that any simple microorganisms could interact in some way with their physical environment to form similar “Earth-like” mats or stromatolites. Thus it is not unthinkable if life were to exist on early Mars that stromatolites were a common occurrence in the past, and which may have harbored halophilic Archaea. Once water on Mars started to evaporate, forcing any stromatolites to become extinct, halophilic Archaea may have become entrapped in halite where they continued to flourish. Halophilic Archaea may survive for millions of years enclosed in salt crystals. This makes them prime candidates for organisms that may have been present on early Mars and raises the possibility that even nowadays, they may be enclosed and dormant, trapped in a crystal.[Ref: Microbial Life Educational Resources]

As the crystals grow, small pockets of brine are trapped within the salt structure. As the rate of crystal growth increases, the quantity of fluid inclusions also increases. Quantities of inclusions are greatest in the center of the crystal (Roedder, 1984). As a crystal forms, sometimes halophiles become trapped within the fluid inclusion of the halite crystals. These enclosed halophiles may remain viable in the inclusions for many years (Norton and Grant, 1988; Norton et al., 1993; Denner et al., 1994; Grant et al., 1998; Vreeland et al., 2000). The population of viable halophiles is hypothesized to decrease as resources are depleted over time (Norton and Grant, 1988).

Various species of halophilic Archaea (halophiles) have been revived from fluid inclusions in ancient salt crystals (Norton et al., 1993; Denner et al., 1994; Grant et al., 1998; Vreeland et al., 2000). A new species, Halococcus salifodinae, was one novel isolate discovered in an Austrian salt mine (Denner et al., 1994). Many different species were isolated from salt crystals in two British salt mines. Based on lipid patterns, three out of nine taxonomic groups of halophiles were isolated from both of the salt mines (Norton et al., 1993).

The principal morphological types of these haloarchaea are rods, cocci and irregular pleomorphic forms. Halophilic Archaea thrive even in concentration of salt five times greater than the salt concentration of the ocean and in salt concentrations higher than those used in any food pickling processes. They in fact require salt for growth and they are adapted to environments which have little or no oxygen available for respiration. Instead, their cellular machinery contains charged amino acids on their surfaces, which react to the salt. The proteins of halophilic Archaea are highly adapted and engineered to function in their natural environment, which usually contains between 2 and 5 M inorganic salts. Another interesting feature is that the genomic structures of these organisms have adapted to lower the occurrence of potential lesions induced by the natural occurring high UV radiation within their environment and thus no ozone is required to ensure their survival.

Halophilic Archaea have been found in two habitats, stromatolites and halite crystals, which have important implications for their ability to also thrive in extra-terrestrial environments. Ancient stromatolites may offer clues to the evolution of life on Earth, and possibly Mars, as they have been present on Earth for 3.5 billion years and may have been one of the first microenvironments to harbor early life. At this point, it needs to be acknowledged that the biological origin of ancient stromatolites is still controversial with opinions divided between diverse inorganic or biosedimentary origins. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that at least some ancient stromatolites have been formed due to biosedimentation. The microbial ecosystem on the top layer of the stromatolite plays the role of a filter that enhances, inhibits or passively allows the growth process. Thus, the formation of stromatolites results from interactions and balance between intrinsic (microbial mat and biofilm) and extrinsic factors (environmental conditions). Many important steps of evolution may have also occurred within stromatolites owing to the close proximity of diverse microorganisms and microniches.

[Image Credit: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov%5D

How to detect such Halophiles? Well, microbial life, if extinct or extant on Mars, would produce biomolecules that might be preserved and detectable in Martian rocks. A biomarker is a specific cell constituent produced by microorganisms and when detected, conclusively shows that living organisms are or were present in the environment. Examples of biomarkers are lipids, steroids, and pigments. Halophilic Archaea are mostly pigmented red due to a high content of C₅₀ carotenoid pigments (α- bacterioruberin and derivates) in their membranes. Recent studies have shown, that these pigments can be detected by Resonance Raman spectroscopy which is a spectroscopic technique used to study vibrational, rotational, and other low-frequency modes in a system.

The past decade has seen a rapid increase in technology and possibilities to look for life on different planets. Further mission to Mars will undoubtedly increase or understanding of the history of the red planet and probably offer insights into our own evolution. With all the evidence pointing at the moment to a warm and wet early Martian environment, it may be conceivable that life was thriving in a hypersaline ancient ocean on early Mars. Similar to the modern day environment of Shark Bay, stromatolites may have been present at the time, harboring and sheltering life. Once the environment was changing, in particular the loss of water, organisms may have been entrapped within forming salt crystals. Those crystals containing halophilic Archaea perhaps may still be lying dormant beneath the Martian surface, waiting for us to find them.

Implications The presence of Halophiles on Mars would certainly boost the possibility of other algae like that. In my early post “How Close We Are to Colonize Galaxy?” a commenter and regular reader of this site Nelson, points out that presence of  petroleum on Mars could help us in colonization of Mars in several way. I’m amazed can’t we find petroleum if there is extinct algae on Mars?Sure, we could.

[Ref: NASA, Halophilic Archaea and the Search for Extinct and Extant Life on Mars BY S. Leuko and Microbial Life Educational Resources]

Extreme Tech: Genetic Engineering And Gene Programmer[Part-I]

As I have promised yesterday, the greatest technology which we could achieve by the end of this century, I’m going to suggest it. As title says , it is related to somewhat you can term as genetic engineering. If  I’m not wrong DNA or genome which is a characteristic carrier ,is one of the most complex things and programmed as well. If you might know every property or characteristics which comes to a creature ,is due to different sequencing of  genomes. For example, if  a genome which is directly responsible for the adoption of wing in a Albatrauss[though there are others too which are to make it adequate] , is doped into you probably you can fly high in the sky and you don’t need a jet pack or monoplane to do so. Ohh.. I’m forgetting.. you don’t even need to carry a heavy fuel tank.

The gene itself manages how to handle the pesky things. If a gene is programmed to grow your body bigger and bigger and let the multiplication of cells go on infinitely with no bounds, you would become immortal Homo Sapiens Sapiens Gianta{actually this gene is responsible for continuous growth of plants}. Have  you ever seen a rhino? It has a 5cm thick skin which protects it. Indeed it is the gene which programmed rhino’s body to develop such kinda thick skin.

Why not consider those tiny creepy crawly creatures? Yea, I’m talking of insects and archenids{spiders and other pods}. I don’t find anything with better capabilities than insects according to their size. I’ve read somewhere in wikipedia that a beetle can manipulate 850times more mass to its own[Rhinoceros beetles are also one of the strongest animals on the planet in relation to their own size. They can also survive Nuclear warfare. They can lift up to 850 times their own weight.^[1] :ref].

In a laboratory experiment, Rob Knell from Queen Mary,University of London and Leigh Simmons from the University of Western Australia found that the strongest Onthophagus taurus could pull 1,141 times its own body weight. That’s equivalent to a person lifting close to 180,000 pounds (the same as six full double-decker buses). Isn’t it mind boggling?

Just take a insect and try to scratch its outer shell and you’ll find how hard it is and its claws are even more stronger than its shell. I find their claws more strong than the wires of copper and alluminium of same dimension. It may astound you. I’ve put well known spider’s web which is even more strong than steel, aside here[ carbon nanotube could beat it].

Extreme Tech

Finally we can conclude that it is the gene who programs every creature either it’s insect or extremohile viruses and manages to maximize survival in every sort of environment no matter how harsh that is. The final outcome is that we can produce anything by manipulation of genetic codes which is not even attainable by nanotechnology. So what about a gene programming machine? If we could design a gene programming machine[ I’ll call them “Gene Programmer” and creatures produced by Gene Programmer wii be called as Bioprogram], we could create every sort of  bio robot which may seem non existent for today’s technology. Just mingle the genes of Onthophagus taurus and Supersaurus(about 140feet long and 20m high and 120 tonnes weight]and what will you see, would be a giant even more powerful than a godzilla and as long as I can estimate(just estimation) it comes to have power of 1oo godzillas(worth considering is that it is so small than a godzilla was). Or if you are a good programmer then you could do better job at your own will. It doesn’t seem me to be obsolete and perhaps more recent achievement showed that we can do even better in near future. They can be used to terraform planet or even in space colonization. Look forward for second part in  which you I’ll peer review the implications to Gene Programmer at different levels.

Shaping Future By Time Travel

The idea of travelling forward into the future or back into the past has always fascinated science fiction writers. The ‘grandfather paradox’ is the argument many people use to suggest that time travel is impossible. What if you went back in time and prevented your grandfather from meeting your grandmother so that your mother was never born? Then you would never have been born… and so on.

Until very recently such arguments led most scientists to believe that time travel could never exist outside science fiction. But amazingly, some interpretations of the weirdness of the quantum world now suggest that time travel is possible – at least in theory.

Einstein’s theory of relativity brought space and time together in a single, four-dimensional arrangement that he called spacetime. We know that we can travel forwards, backwards and sideways in space, so why not forwards and backwards in time?

Four dimensions are difficult to imagine, so physicists usually suggest you think of spacetime as a rubber sheet stretched out flat. If there are no large masses around, the sheet stays flat, and so any object placed on it will move around in straight lines. But a large mass, such as the Sun, makes a dip in the sheet because it actually warps spacetime. Now any other object with smaller mass, like our Earth, moving about in spacetime rolls into the dip as it comes past the Sun. It appears ‘attracted’ to the large mass. This effect of warping spacetime is what gives rise to gravity.

The Universe is full of heavy objects exerting gravitational effects and the net result is that spacetime is not flat at all but curved. Everything, including light, has to follow curved paths in spacetime. We know Einstein was right about this because astronomers can sometimes see distant stars that ought to be masked by nearer objects such as the Sun. Instead of travelling in straight lines and hence being blocked, the light from the stars bends round the obstruction.

When a star reaches the end of its life it may collapse inwards under the influence of its own gravity to such an extent that all its matter becomes concentrated into an extremely dense object a fraction of its original size. This is a black hole. Black holes have such a huge gravitational pull that nothing can escape from them, not even light. We cannot see them but we have good evidence that they exist. We can see stars behaving in ways which suggest that they are being pulled about by a nearby invisible object with enormous mass.

What does a black hole do to spacetime? Relativity predicts that at the centre of a black hole is an infinitely dense point, called a singularity, within which all the normal laws of physics no longer apply. Time, space, matter and energy no longer have any well-defined meaning. Einstein’s equations show that such a singularity doesn’t just make a dip in the imaginary rubber sheet of spacetime, it makes a tunnel that goes right through and momentarily opens out on the other side.

Where is ‘the other side’? It could be somewhere else in spacetime, either in the future or in the past, or it could even be in another Universe! Supposedly it was Dr Who’s Timelords who first harnessed the power of a black hole to begin their experiments in time travel. If you could take a spaceship through such a tunnel, or wormhole, you would have discovered the secret of time travel. This is of course impossible with today’s technology. But in the future, who knows?

Einstein’s equations describe a spacetime that is perfectly smooth, like the rubber sheet. His theory of relativity only deals with the physics of what happens on big scales. It cannot deal with what happens at the centre of a black hole, or what happened during the moment of the Big Bang at the birth of the Universe when spacetime itself was infinitesimally small. That takes us back into the world of quantum physics.

If you could look at spacetime with a magnifying glass so powerful that it reached down to the quantum scale, you would not see the smooth, continuous sheet of Einstein’s spacetime. Just as a foam rubber ball looks smooth from a distance but rough and ragged close up. In this picture of spacetime it is quite likely that tiny holes could open up, entrances to little tunnels between now and other times, or between here and other universes. Another option for future time travellers would be somehow to harness these tiny wormholes and expand them.

To return to the question that has puzzled thinkers since Newton’s day, is the future preordained? Or are there an infinite number of futures? One way of looking at the quantum world suggests that not only are there an infinite number of futures, but they are realised in an infinite number of universes.

Photons and electrons sometimes behave as waves and sometimes as particles, but never both at the same time. So far, the argument for interference between one universe and another applies only to events occurring at the quantum level.

But the idea of parallel universes provides a possible resolution to the ‘grandfather paradox’ that might otherwise cause problems for time travellers. If we travel back in time and change history, we launch ourselves into a new future in a parallel universe – but we have no effect on the present one from which we started out.

Scientists of the future may well pursue a new form of futuristic technology based on quantum effects. Such applications could include quantum teleportation, by which a quantum particle can be teleported from one point in space to another; and quantum computation, where calculations can be carried out which would take many years on a conventional computer. Although we now know how to measure time very accurately, have we come any nearer to answering the basic question ‘What is time?’.

Mysterious Particle Ribbon at the Edge of Solar System

More recently, some interesting discoveries has been done by Voyager probes that were later verified by data obtained from IBEX and Cassini probes. They have discovered the particle ribbon at the edge of solar system. The bubble of gas enveloping Earth and the rest of the solar system has some seriously weird formation where it abuts interstellar space , a region expected to show only smooth uniformity.

This is a shocking new results for up and one that is not entirely understood. The stops out streams of ionized particle that blast out into space in all directions at about a million miles per hour, forming a protective bubble and defining edge of the solar system.
But the rivers of gas face pressure– and some unknown physics- when and where they encounter charged particles and magnetic fields emanating from space. The solar system is currently through a rather wispy interstellar cloud in the milky way galaxy, which gives the heliosphere plenty of creating room. But the outside world apparently has some sharp elbows. In their first big picture views of heliosphere, scientist discovere a well defined neutrally charge particles, precisely tailored, process unknown by magnetic fields in the interstellar sea. The ribbon is organised around this magnetic fields. Really it seems me interesting when I read this news.

Another Puzzling Dino

I like them since I saw Jurassic Park? No, I liked them before Jurassic Park and still today. Yesterday, I googled for biggest dinosaurs and I was thrown to site that has really great stuff about dinosaurs. In one of dinosaurs article Mr. Bob Strauss describes about a dinosaur named hypergigantosaurus with an enormous size of 500 foot and weighed approximately 20000 tonnes. This animal lived in plains of northern America. I think this one was surely biggest dinosaur of all the time if it really existed. Since I can’t find further info on that dinosaur through over the web except that one, I don’t know whether this one is credible source or not. But if it is very interesting. Read full article above.