Same thought occurred to me.

With all these new brain implants on the market, it's becoming increasingly important for manufacturers to make sure they're safe.

Brain-computer interfaces, like the ones produced by NeuroSky and Emotiv, allow users to control objects and video games with their thoughts. The growing fear is that third party-developers could build apps that masquerade as games — but actually harvest sensitive information from the user. Or they could simply be hacked into from unknown external sources.

Writing in SF Chronicle, James Temple highlights the concerns:

In early 2009, hackers inserted malicious code into an Epilepsy Foundation message board that embedded flashing images into hundreds of posts.

An untold number of epilepsy patients clicked on otherwise normal-looking headlines, only to find themselves staring at kaleidoscopic animations. For a handful, the images triggered migraines or near seizures, according to reports at the time.

The episode might have represented one of the first brain hacks, a computer attack on the mind. But security researchers say it's unlikely to be the last.

In fact, as brainwave sensors for games and implantable neural devices for diseases become more common and sophisticated, a host of troubling possibilities arise. Early research suggests that hackers might be able to use these tools to extract sensitive information from our brains, like ATM passcodes. From there it's not too far a leap to triggering physical movements or perhaps even inserting ideas.

"You could use these to directly interact with the brain," said Ryan Calo, assistant law professor at the University of Washington focused on privacy and robotics, in a recent presentation at Stanford. "You could get up to all sorts of mischief."

And indeed, a number of security experts say the time has come for manufacturers to protect consumers from these sorts of threats.

There's lots more in Temple's article, including a UC Berkeley study in which researchers were able to use such devices to predict the thoughts of computer science students.

Inset image: Batou from Ghost in the Shell: Innocence — as his e-brain is being hacked into.

Call it the Sarlacc Pit of the Late Miocene: A recent study by Spanish paleontologists has shown how a nasty cave entrance gobbled-up a disproportionate number of carnivores for an extended period over 9 million years ago.

The cave, dubbed Batallones-1 (or Bat-1 for short), was discovered back in 1991, and it has produced a tremendous number of fossils.

Typically, digs like this one produce a consistent ratio of herbivores to carnivores, a figure that usually settles around 10:1. But Bat-1’s lower level was dominated by the remains of carnivores — accounting for nearly 98% of the fossils — a list of creatures that included (especially) saber-toothed cats, hyenas, ancestors of the red panda, an extinct ‘bear-dog’, and many others.

Image: The skeleton of the hyena Protictitherium crassum. Credit: Domingo MS, Alberdi MT, Azanza B, Silva PG, Morales J (2013).

What’s more, analysis of the fossil record indicated that the remains settled at the bottom of the cave over a protracted period of time, and that the remains were highly isolated in time (meaning that the carnivores didn’t accumulate in the pit by virtue of mass events). The paleontologists also ruled out the possibility that the animals accidentally fell into the cave, or that they were brought there by other animals or flushed into the cave by flooding waters.

Rather, it appears that the carnivores intentionally entered into the cave — only to be trapped forever. The researchers theorize that the cave entrance was enticing to predators who were inexperienced, desperate, or overly adventurous as they sought an easy meal or drink of water.

“In modern ecosystems, mortality among prime adult individuals is not rare and is related to their proneness to search for resources in dangerous locations mainly during [stressful periods],” write the researchers in their study, which now appears in PLOS.

Image: (A) Carnivores intentionally enter the cave, (B) Regular floods fill the cave and bury the remains; carnivores continue to enter into the cave over time, (C) Final stages of the filling of the chamber, but it’s not a carnivore trap anymore. D) Deposition of elements from the upper level assemblage. Art by Mauricio Antón, Israel M. Sánchez and M. Soledad Domingo.

The researchers believe that the animals deliberately entered the cave of their own free will owing to the dearth of herbivore remains. The top of the cave was very visible and avoided by most herbivores; most falls were accidental, but not entirely uncommon — as witnessed by the remains of an unfortunate rhino (Aceratherium incisivum).

It’s not entirely clear if the carnivores died as a result of their fall into the pit, or if they remained alive for some time, eventually dying after progressive weakening. But the skeletal remains weren’t altered very much, and they didn’t have any trampling marks on them — a possible indication of instantaneous death. But the researchers say they’re simply not sure.

“Carnivores could be struggling for getting resources but it is unlikely that they risked their [lives] in the jump,” they wrote. “Most probably, carnivores got trapped and remained alive for some time.”

Read the entire study at PLOS: “Origin of an Assemblage Massively Dominated by Carnivorans from the Miocene of Spain.

Fixed!

Yet another extraordinary image from Chris Hadfield. This gorgeous shot shows a darkened Southeastern United States just before dawn, with the moon bringing the new day with it. In a new video, Hadfield explains how he takes these marvellous photos.

From Hadfield's Twitterfeed:

Tonight's Finale: The Moon ushering in the dawn over the Southeastern United States. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 1, 2013

This is how he does it:

Generating organs and tissue with 3D printers is nothing new. But this bioengineered ear is unique in that it utilizes embedded electronics that allow it to pick up radio frequencies outside the range of normal human hearing.

Integrating electronics with biological materials hasn’t been easy owing to heat and mechanical issues. Standard tissue engineering techniques, like cell seeding, may never lead to the creation of complex 3D biological structures that play along nicely with electronic devices.

Looking to overcome these limitations, a research team led by Princeton University’s Michael McAlpine decided to try a new approach: additive manufacturing.

To “grow” the cybernetic ear, the team turned to a standard off-the-shelf 3D printer. After a computer program modeled the structure of the ear into a series of thin slices, it was printed layer by layer using cells from a calf. Plastics and silver nanoparticles were used to architect the ear with the antenna already embedded within it. The calf cells eventually formed the cartilage.

The end product was an ear consisting of a coiled antenna inside a cartilage structure. Two wires extend out from the base which can be connected to cochlear-like electrodes — thus allowing the ear to sense incoming “sound” (or radio waves in this case).

It’s the first time that researchers have shown the effectiveness of using a 3D printer to interweave tissue with electronics.

It’s not ready for primetime just quite yet, and the current model doesn’t allow for natural human hearing. But in the future, the researchers would like to incorporate other materials, like pressure-sensitive electronic sensors, to help it sense acoustic sounds.

Once refined, the cybernetic ear could be used to restore — or even enhance — human hearing. Even in its current form, electrical signals produced by the ear could be connected to a person’s nerve endings, which is similar to how a cochlear implant works.

"The design and implementation of bionic organs and devices that enhance human capabilities... has been an area of increasing scientific interest," write the researchers in their study. "This field has the potential to generate customized replacement parts for the human body, or even create organs containing capabilities beyond what human biology ordinarily provides."

Read the entire study at Nano Letters: “A 3D Printed Bionic Ear”

It's another blow for immersive virtual reality. University of California researchers have shown that even people with perfect eyesight navigate the world by relying on a lot more than what they see. Here's why VR won't really work until we go beyond visual cues and fancy treadmills.

Inside our brain’s hippocampus we have what are called place cells. These specialized cells help us build a “cognitive map” of our surroundings — mental representations which allow us to orientate ourselves in our spatial environment.

These neurons have been observed to fire like crazy whenever a rat has to go about the task of figuring out where it is in the world. And if the rat in an entirely new location altogether, it has to create a new cognitive map from scratch.

But once this map has been created, rats can quickly figure out where they are should they return to that location.

Scientists have theorized that rats don’t require much sensory information to build these maps, figuring that distant visual images, the ability to move themselves around, and maybe some proprioceptive orientation is all that’s required to do the trick. But as the new study by Pascal Ravassard and colleagues has shown, that’s not enough — and not enough by a mile.

To reach this conclusion, Pascal Ravassard and colleagues experimented with rats placed in a virtual reality environment. Indeed, VR is becoming a popular tool amongst some scientists. For example, researchers have interacted with rats by becoming virtual rats themselves, and they've gotten monkeys to feel virtual objects by using a brain implant.

But as this experiment showed, getting a rat's brain to respond to a VR environment in the same way it responds to the real world is not so easy.

For the study, the researchers tried to create two apparently identical worlds, one real (RW) and one virtual (VR). Each environment consisted of a linear track in the center of a square room with distinct visual cues on each of the four walls. These cues were nearly identical in both environments, but the rats' bodies were fixed in VR — thus minimizing (or even eliminating) other important spatial cues, like balance. So, the only incoming environmental data during VR exposure were the visual cues and self-motion.

After attaching tetrodes to measure the neural activity of six rats, the researchers had them run the track in both the RW and VR environments. When looking at the results, it was clear that the VR environment was not exciting the place cells as per usual. In VR, place cells showed 20% activity as compared to 45% in RW — more than twice as much.

So, vision and self-motion will spark a little bit of place cell activity, but balance and other sensory cues are what's fully required to properly encode a rat’s — and likely a human's — position. Moreover, the researchers speculate that other cues — like smell, sound, and textures — are what's needed to help the rats properly self-locate themselves. But looking at the scans, the researchers realized that the only spatial encoding that was being done in VR was distance.

It’s clear from the study, therefore, that a variety of sensory clues must interact and compete in the brain for us to construct a robust cognitive map.

Read the entire study at Science: “Multi-Sensory Control of Hippocampal Spatiotemporal Selectivity.”

Probably the first time I've forgotten to mention the scientists' names in, like, ever. They are: Pascal Ravassard, Ashley Kees, Bernard Willers, David Ho, Daniel A. Aharoni, Jesse Cushman, Zahra M. Aghajan, and Mayank R. Mehta.

Added link; but here it is: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/...

Someone was probably really proud of this collection just as the Second World War was about to start — but now it's just all sorts of wrong.

Top: The front row features a way-too-thin Herman Göring, Adolf Hitler, and an appropriately smug looking Benito Mussolini. All images via Hermann Historica via Retronaut.

Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels and Ernst Röhm. The Röhm figurine was discontinued after he was assassinated by Hitler in the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934.

Adolf Hitler in party uniform strikes his iconic pose.

Joseph Goebbels in party uniform.

Paul von Hindenburg and Adolph Hitler

Figurines include Spain's Francisco Franco, Hitler, and a very dark-skinned looking Joseph Stalin. Actually, what is Stalin doing in this collection? Between them, these men were responsible for over 70 million deaths.

Goose-stepping Nazi soldiers.

More at Retronaut.

Yes, good point — and I think even more advanced treadmill-like devices (involving great degrees of balance and coordination and control) will greatly enhance the experience to make it seem more real.

What do you mean "I can do better than this?" Like I've stated a billion times over now, not all these complaints are representative of my own views. I've never said here — or anywhere — that uploading is definitively impossible. My intention was to present the most compelling arguments against the possibility. But if by "doing better than this" you mean I missed some, then by all means please let me know.

It's really grainy, and you can't make out the famous E=MC² equation, but this is the only known photograph of the master hammering away at the chalkboard on his special relativity formula.

David Topper and Dwight Vincent of the University of Winnipeg discovered the photograph in a halftone newspaper file photo clipping. It features Einstein using two blackboards to express the derivation of the equivalence of mass and energy during a public lecture in Pittsburgh in 1934.

Shockingly, no one had the sense to take a shot of the E=MC² equation — not then and not ever. Topper and Vincent offer an explanation in their analysis:

In the end there were several missed opportunities and failed comprehensions that day— surely by the photographers, some from the audience, and perhaps even by Einstein himself. Because he was posed next to the wrong blackboard, no photographer snapped the picture posterity wanted; that is, capturing the famous scientist with his equally famous energy equation. Yet we know that even if he had been placed next to the correct blackboard, few viewers then, as now would immediately grasp the significance of [E=MC^2]. How many in the general public know the convention of setting c=1? Moreover, this issue is a subset of a larger one of Einstein’s own making; namely, his decision to overlook the nonmathematicians in the crowd, and instead to pitch his talk consistently at a high mathematical and abstract level. Probably no one expected Einstein to dumb-down his talk; after all, he was delivering the Gibbs Lecture at the request of the AMS.

Though it's super unclear, Topper and Vincent managed to transcribe Einstein's chalkboard scribblings:

And here's the entire shot:

Read the entire paper: "Einstein’s 1934 two-blackboard derivation of energy-mass equivalence" (2007).

h/t Ptak Science Books.

Teen activist Zack Kopplin has lost his third bid to see a repeal of Louisiana’s Science Education Act — a highly controversial piece of legislation that allows teachers to bring creationist textbooks and other instructional materials into the classroom.

Bill 26, which was sponsored by Senator Carter Peterson (D-New Orleans), was defeated by a narrow vote of 2-3 in the Louisiana Senate Education Committee. The vote came after hours of testimony, including a formal statement made by Kopplin. Peterson sponsored the identical SB 70 in 2011 and SB 374 in 2012, which were defeated 1-5 and 1-2 respectively.

"For the past few months we've been organizing relentlessly and having people contact their elected officials to ask them to vote to repeal Louisiana's creationism law,” Kopplin told io9.

“We lost again this year, but we're making progress. We gained a second vote. And on top of this, it was clear that we will eventually win and repeal this vote. It's up to the legislators to choose which side of history they want to stand on,” he said.

During the latest round of testimony, Senator Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas) made some rather eye-opening remarks. The Times-Picayune reports:

[Guillory] said he had reservations with repealing the act after a spiritual healer correctly diagnosed a specific medical ailment he had. He said he thought repealing the act could "lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures."

"Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man — in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed — if I had closed him off and just said, 'That's not science. I'm not going to see this doctor,' I would have shut off a very good experience for myself," Guillory said.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal recently expressed his support of the Act, essentially admitting that it’s a way to get creationism into science class. In response to a question by NBC’s Hoda Qutb, Jindal had this to say:

We have what's called the Science Education Act that says that if a teacher wants to supplement those materials, if the school board is okay with that, if the state school board is okay with that, they can supplement those materials... Let's teach them — I've got no problem if a school board, a local school board, says we want to teach our kids about creationism, that people, some people, have these beliefs as well, let's teach them about 'intelligent design'...What are we scared of?

The repeal campaign has been endorsed by 78 Nobel laureate scientists, nearly 40% of living Nobel laureate scientists, and numerous other prominent scientists. It has also been endorsed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other major science and educator organizations in Louisiana and the United States.

“The fight for science in Louisiana is ground zero of this fight world wide,” Kopplin told us. “As we change the debate in Louisiana, we're changing the debate everywhere.”

Here's an excerpt from Kopplin's testimony:

Claude Bouchard, the former Director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, calls the LSEA “anti-science” legislation whose intent is to diminish the role of science in elementary and secondary schools when teachers discuss with their students such hot topics as evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

Dr. Bouchard says that the LSEA has economic consequences. “If you are an employer in a high tech industry, in the biotechnology sector or in a business that depends heavily on science, would you prefer to hire a graduate from a state where the legislature has in a sense declared that the laws of chemistry, physics or biology can be suspended?”

Because The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology pulled a prescheduled convention from New Orleans in response to the passage of the LSEA, the repeal of this law is important to our state’s tourism industry.

According to Steve Perry, the President of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, the LSEA “is a poor symbol of our state’s actual commitment to being on the cutting edge of modern science. And, it has a damaging impact on our bringing hundreds of millions of dollars of major international meetings and conventions in medical and basic sciences.”

Perry says “It is such an embarrassing, antiquated law to have on the books when we are making such transformational new investments in biotechnology, gene therapy, and neurosciences. With our entire country voicing the need for more investments in the teaching of science and mathematics, here we are re-living the kind of discussion the Catholic Church must have had with Galileo.”

Image: Lauren McGaughy, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.

Though it was originally developed to treat patients with epilepsy, interest in the ketogenic diet has taken off in recent years as we've learned more about its therapeutic and health benefits. Here’s what you need to know about ‘keto’ and why some health experts believe it's good for your body — especially your brain.

Fasting and other ketogenic-like diets have been used to treat conditions like epilepsy for thousands of years. And in fact, a version of the keto diet has been traced back to 500 BC.

Fast forwarding a bit, Dr. Rawle Geyelin gave a 1921 presentation to the American Medical Association in which he reported on the remarkable outcomes of several children who had benefited from fasting; his patients were having fewer seizures — and the effect appeared to be long-lasting.

Geyelin continued this work, and he developed a tolerable and reproducible high-fat and low carbohydrate diet now formally known as the ketogenic diet. For the next two decades, it was used by physicians to minimize seizures in their patients. Once modern antiepileptic drugs were introduced, however, the practice declined dramatically.

But interest in keto was renewed about 20 years ago as a number of scientists began to study it more closely — and not just for its ability to treat epilepsy. As we’re now learning, and despite its reputation as a “starvation” diet, a keto regimen has been shown to confer a variety of benefits.

The state of ketosis

The ketogenic diet is essentially a way to get our bodies to enter into a condition known as ketosis.

Normally, our bodies rely on glucose for fuel — the result of our moderate to high-carb diets. Carbohydrates are broken down to glucose, which gets converted into energy and transported to our muscles and organs.

But when carbs are restricted, and when there’s a lack of glucose, our liver starts to produce ketones — a process that shifts our body towards fat utilization. This new mode of metabolism, or ketosis, can come about in several different ways, including starvation, type 1 diabetes, and even alcoholism.

While in this state, the levels of ketones in our blood starts to rise. Ketones are acidic chemicals that include acetone, acetoacetate, and beta-hydroxybutyrate. Needless to say, this can lead to some serious problems; starvation is obviously not good! If left unchecked, ketones can increase blood acidity, which can affect urine and cause serious liver and kidney damage.

But, when done correctly and responsibly, the keto diet can be used to effectively treat a number of health conditions.

Image: "Alterations in intermediary metabolism during the high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet that lead to the formation of ketone bodies. The ketogenic diet provides high levels of long chain fatty acids and is deficient in carbohydrates so that glucose availability is severely limited." Source.

How to do keto

A keto diet can take on many forms, but it typically involves the restriction of carbohydrates to no more than 50g per day. Sources should typically come from whole foods like vegetables, nuts, dairy, and so on. Refined carbohydrates, like bagels, pasta, and cereals, should be avoided, as should refined sugars (including high-sugar fruits and fruit juices).

Meals, therefore, should mostly be comprised of protein and some healthy fats (like olive oil, coconut oil, and avocados). A good rule of thumb is to follow the 60/35/5 rule in which 60% of calories come from fat, 35% from protein, and 5% from carbs. Protein should be set at about 1.5 to 1.75g of protein for every kilogram of your ideal body weight.

For comparison, a typical Western diet is about 5-15% protein, 10-20 % fat, and 65-85% carbohydrates.

It’s also important to not overdo the protein; a high-protein diet may prevent the body from entering into ketosis. Also, this is not a form of intermittent fasting — that's something else.

The UNM School of Medicine offers this dietary advice:

As examples, a typical meal might include some type of meat with green vegetables cooked with a mayonnaise sauce or a lot of butter. Heavy cream may be included on the side for drinking. Another meal might consist of bacon and eggs with a lot of butter or oil added, and heavy cream to drink. A very high ratio of fats to carbohydrates must be maintained with a low total calorie intake for the diet to be successful.

Lacto-ovo vegetarians can hit up the cheese, eggs, tofu, and low-carb whey protein.

Oh, and if you still think all fats are bad for you — and that they make you fat — read Gary Taubes’s book, Why We Get Fat.

Again, it’s important to stick to these recommendations. And in fact, you should probably talk to your family doctor before going on this diet just to make sure you’re in the clear. Also, you should expect to feel like crap for the first week or two as your body adjusts.

In addition, you may experience some side effects like constipation and nausea. More about side effects and other risks of not doing it right here and here.

Why it works

Actually, we’re not entirely sure why it works so well. But some theories are beginning to emerge.

Keto diets have beneficial effects in a broad range of neurological disorders, particularly those involving the death of neurons. Scientists think it may have something to do with the effects of cellular energetics.

As already noted, the keto diet is associated with increased circulation of ketones in the body, which is a more efficient fuel for the brain. Ketones may also increase the number of brain mitochondria — the power packs inside of cells.

It’s possible that the boosted energy production capacity created by these effects is what gives our neurons an enhanced ability to resist metabolic challenges. Other biochemical changes — namely ketosis, high fat levels, and low glucose levels — may contribute to neuronal protection through a number of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory actions.

The keto diet is being increasingly considered for the treatment of many neurological diseases and injuries, a list that includes Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, stroke, and even traumatic brain injuries. The keto diet can also improve memory function in older adults with increased risk for Alzheimer’s.

Neuroscientists attribute the keto diet’s brain-protective qualities to a number of things:

• Ketone bodies serve as an alternative source of energy during metabolic stress

• Ketosis diminishes the toxicity produced by glutamate acid, a problem when a brain injury happens

• It enhances GABA levels (γ-Aminobutyric acid) — an important inhibitory neurotransmitter

• It has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory qualities

• The diet protects against various forms of cell death

• Restricting carbs protects against oxidative- and glutamate-stress, among other things

Epilepsy

As noted, the ketogenic diet was originally meant for the treatment of epilepsy — and it works startlingly well. Research has shown that, for children will refractory epilepsy, a keto treatment lasting for six to 24 months can result in a 90% decrease or elimination of seizures.

Dr. Eric H. Kossoff offers this example of a typical ketogenic meal for a 4-year-old child dealing with epilepsy.

Strangely, the link between ketone bodies and the anticonvulsant effectiveness of the keto diet isn’t clear. Scientists theorize that it has something to do with acetoacetate and acetone, as they’ve been shown to have anticonvulsant properties in animal models.

Cancer

The keto diet may also help in fighting off certain types of cancer and various tumors. It seems to do a good job treating brain tumors, likely a consequence of its neuroprotective qualities.

In one case, it seems to have helped an elder woman mange her brain tumor. It can also work well in conjunction with radiation therapy to treat brain tumor cells — at least in mice. Some scientists believe that a restricted keto diet is “a viable alternative to the standard care for managing malignant brain cancer.”

A 2011 pilot study indicated that the ketogenic diet is suitable for even advanced cancer patients, claiming that “It has no severe side effects and might improve aspects of quality of life and blood parameters in some patients with advanced metastatic tumors."

Weight loss

The ketogenic diet is also being considered as way to help people lose weight, though evidence of its efficacy and safety are mixed.

A 2006 study comparing ketogenic and non-keto diets concluded that both diets are useful for weight loss, but the researchers found that the keto diet was associated with metabolic and emotional effects. "The use of ketogenic diets for weight loss is not warranted," the authors write.

Another study indicated that keto diets work great for the first three to six months compared to other dietary routines, but that the difference is no longer apparent after a year. The researchers found that keto is associated with favorable changes in triglyceride and HDL cholesterol levels (that’s the good kind), but that it results in higher LDL levels than conventional low-fat diets.

Nancy Krebs’s 2010 study is probably the most favorable in terms of its application to weight loss. Her team concluded that a high-protein, low-carb keto diet may be effective for severely obese adolescents in the long term.

Exercise

The keto diet has also been used in conjunction with exercise and athletics. And in fact, a growing number of athletes and bodybuilders swear by it, including many CrossFitters and other strength-and-conditioning types.

Formal studies are far-and-few on the subject, but a 2011 Italian study suggested that keto could be used as a way to lose weight in conjunction with exercise.

Diabetes

Because it’s a low-carb diet, ketosis works very well for people with diabetes. It’s effective at improving glycemic control in diabetic patients, and it "has a significant beneficial effect in ameliorating the diabetic state and helping to stabilize hyperglycemia."

Additional reporting by Joseph Bennington-Castro.

Images: Top: Joshua Resnick/Shuttersock; Ketone: Rawle Geyelin/Shutterstock.

I can't say I agree. I get a tremendously positive response from io9 readers when I write about this stuff. People want to know about the science behind their food choices (and don't forget — we're not just future and scifi, we're also science). We're in the midst of an awful obesity epidemic — a clear sign that many people are confused or misdirected when it comes to their food choices. And as for this being a "fad" diet, perhaps — but its use in therapeutic settings has only just begun.

The Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees has penned a fascinating article for The Telegraph in which he ruminates about humanity’s future prospects, including the potential for super-human machine intelligence and our transition into a space-faring cyborg species.

Top image: Magazine cover by Paul Chadeisson, via his blog.

This isn’t the first time Rees has written about these subjects, but the new article is one of his most articulate expositions of his thoughts to date.

In it, he talks about how many of our future visions appear outlandish at first, only to quickly become a part of our reality. He writes about the moon landings, supersonic airliners, and current efforts by the private sector to get into space.

“I’d venture a confident forecast that during this century the entire solar system – planets, moons and asteroids – will be explored and mapped by flotillas of tiny robotic craft,” he writes.

Related: "The Astronomer Royal tells io9 how he plans to save humanity from extinction."

Looking further ahead, he has this to say:

What about travel beyond our solar system? Even the nearest stars are so far away that no present technology could reach them. The first voyagers to the stars will be creatures whose life cycle is matched to the voyage: the aeons involved in traversing the galaxy are not daunting to immortal beings. By the end of the third millennium, travel to other stars could be technically feasible. But would there be sufficient motive?

Would even the most intrepid leave the solar system? We can’t predict what inscrutable goals might drive post-humans. But the motive would surely be stronger if it turned out that many stars were orbited by planets that might harbour life.

Rees also acknowledges that our conceptions of space and time may be incomplete, and that our single universe may be an island — just one patch of space within "an infinite archipelago."

In this hugely expanded cosmic perspective, the laws of Einstein and the quantum could be mere parochial bylaws governing our cosmic patch. Space and time may have a structure as intricate as the fauna of a rich ecosystem, but on a scale far larger than the horizon of our observations. Our current concept of physical reality could be as constricted, in relation to the whole, as the perspective of the Earth available to a plankton whose “universe” is a spoonful of water.

And that’s not all – there is a final disconcerting twist. Post-human intelligence will develop hypercomputers with the processing power to simulate living things – even entire worlds. Perhaps advanced beings could use hypercomputers to surpass the best “special effects” in movies or computer games so vastly that they could simulate a world, fully, as complex as the one we perceive ourselves to be in. Maybe these kinds of super-intelligences already exist elsewhere in the multiverse – in universes that are older than ours, or better tuned for the evolution of intelligence. What would these super-intelligences do with their hypercomputers? They could create virtual worlds vastly outnumbering the “real” ones. So perhaps we are “artificial life” in a virtual universe.

Read Ree’s entire article at The Telegraph.

As the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, mercury is freaky even under normal conditions. But check out what happens to a blob of the stuff when it's exposed to a different audio frequencies.

Photographer Nick Moore achieved this cymatic effect by pouring the mercury onto a concave plastic lens from an old projection TV (it was only about one-centimeter across). The lens was then stuck to a 12-inch speaker using Silly Putty to prevent it from rattling around or bouncing. The sine wave tones, ranging from 10 Hz to 120 Hz, were produced by an old signal generator.

And as you can see, when frequency is increased, more nodes, or bumps, appear on the mercury as it resonates — a result of its exposure to three-dimensional standing waves.

Here's what it looks like in slow-motion:

H/t Mental Floss.

On April 27, NASA’s Fermi and Swift satellites detected a record-setting burst from a dying star located in a nearby galaxy. Most likely the result of a massive supernova, it produced the highest-energy light ever detected by scientists.

Above image: The map above shows gamma-ray energies above 100 million electron volts (MeV). The first frame shows the sky during a three-hour interval just before the explosion. The second frame shows a three-hour interval starting 2.5 hours before the burst, and ending a half-hour into the event. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration.

The gamma-ray burst, called GRB 130427A, has wowed astronomers for a host of reasons. Not only was it freakishly powerful — one gamma-ray was measured at 94 billion electron volts (GeV) — but it was uncharacteristically long-lasting; the burst lasted for hours and was detectable for most of the day by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT). It produced 35 billion times the energy of visible light, and is about three times more powerful than the LAT’s previous record.

The explosion set a new record for the longest gamma-ray emission from a gamma-ray burst. And at 3.6 billion light years away, it was actually quite close. GRB 130427A falls within the closest 5% of all supernovas ever recorded. Celestial explosions like these are exceptionally rare, happening only once every million years or so per galaxy. They’re also very difficult to detect; the hyperfast jet emanating out from the ensuing black hole has be to positioned directly towards Earth. Needless to say, astronomers are not able to see the vast majority of GRB events.

This sequence shows high-energy (100 Mev to 100 GeV) gamma rays starting three minutes before the burst to 14 hours after. Following an initial one-second spike, the LAT emission remained relatively quiet for the next 15 seconds while Fermi's GBM instrument showed bright, variable lower-energy emission. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration.

Gamma-ray bursts happen when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse under their tremendous weight. As the core collapses into a newly-formed black hole, jets of material shoot outward through the collapsing star at nearly the speed of light. The jets continue into space, where they interact with gas shed by the star to produce bright afterglows.

These explosions wreak havoc to the immediate area. Any habitable planet located within several thousand light years are likely to be sterilized by such events.

"We have waited a long time for a gamma-ray burst this shockingly, eye-wateringly bright," noted Julie McEnery through an official statement. "The GRB lasted so long that a record number of telescopes on the ground were able to catch it while space-based observations were still ongoing." McEnery is a project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Scientists will continue to monitor the area in an attempt to identify the ensuing supernova remnant.

Source: NASA.

By counting the cracks in pierced glass, forensic scientists can now tell how fast an object was going when it pierced through it.

Whenever an object, like a stone or a bullet, pierces through brittle materials like glass or Plexiglass, the energy expended by the impact results in a characteristic cracking pattern that extends radially outward from the entry point, producing a kind of star-shaped pattern. Like a snowflake, these patterns are unique — but up to a point. It turns out that the number of cracks created by a projectile holds some important clues about the nature of the impact.

This is the conclusion reached by Nicolas Vandenberghe and colleagues at Aix-Marseille University after shooting BB-sized metal balls into plexiglass plates of various thickness and strengths. As a high-speed camera chronicled each impact, the speed of the bullets were increased until reaching 268 mph (432 km/h). The team shot over 100 plates, and then analyzed and counted the cracks that extended outward.

Then, after considering the material’s strength and thickness, Vandenberghe’s team devised a global scaling law for the number of radial cracks produced. It turns out that the number of cracks double for every fourfold increase in an object’s speed.

In the example above, the four cracks (left) indicate a speed of 70 km/h, whereas the eight cracks (right) indicate a bullet moving four-times as fast, 280 km/h. Credit: N. Vandenberghe/Aix-Marseille University.

The simple equation, which was based on Griffith’s theory of fracture, could be used by forensic scientists (e.g. to determine location of a shooter, or hypothesize about type of gun used; or to determine the speed at which a car was traveling when an object pierced through the window, etc.). The rule could also be used in archaeology or astronomy (e.g. to analyze impact events on terrestrial surfaces).

Read the entire study in Physical Review Letters: “Star-Shaped Crack Pattern of Broken Windows.”

Image: Shutterstock/EGD.