CWL

Earth

“The home planet of an emerging technical civilization, struggling to avoid self-destruction. The Earth travels some 2 and a half million kilometers every day around the Sun; eight times faster than that around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy; and, perhaps, twice faster still as the Milky Way falls toward the Virgo cluster of galaxies. We have always been space travelers.” — Carl Sagan

Image by the Russian Federal Space Agency

Orion above El Castillo

Orion rising above “El Castillo” (Spanish for “castle”), also known as the Temple of Kukulkan.

El castillo was built by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization sometime between the 9th and 12th centuries. The pyramid consists of a series of square terraces with stairways up each of the four sides to the temple on top.

Stop Building Bombs and Start Building Starships

Side Note: To go where no human has gone before.. this may come off as a lengthy read but I would definitely recommend it to any follower who is either into futurism or at least has an interest in where our future ought to head. Scientific American guest blogger Steven P. discusses how science and our ever developing technologies can really take us into an age of space exploration. So give it a read or save it on the blog for later, I definitely enjoyed it myself. But then again I’m always up for some interstellar space travel.

Illustration: ‘The Fleet Advances’ by newcmd001

by Steven Ross Pomeroy

In 1969, a great shadow was cast over the United States. That shadow, however, was not one of gloom. Instead of evoking the absence of light, this shadow caused us to look up in wonder at the brightness that created it. When the Saturn V Rocket propelling Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins dashed across the blue, cloud-splotched sky, we did not see a dark present. We glimpsed a bright future.

Elsewhere, however, truly ominous shadows were cast by rockets which never saw the sun. Nestled in silos and buried beneath barren landscapes, “Minuteman” missiles meant not to uplift man, but to deliver the end of man, shrouded much of our world in trepidation.

These two rockets, with two very distinct purposes, bring into focus a problem that has long plagued our nation. We spend far too much money on war, and not enough on science.

Considering that we are nearing the ominously titled “fiscal cliff” — a series of government spending cuts and tax increases that will automatically take effect if Congress and the President do not act to stop it — we have a unique opportunity to review Federal spending and ensure that we are investing our time and wealth to their most productive ends.

I argue that such a review – if guided by reason – would reveal that defense spending should be reduced in order to make way for a world-changing commitment to science and technology, a bold move that will put both the United States and the world on a path to a bright future.

As it stands today, the United States is clearly over militarized. Defense spending in 2011 was estimated at $711 Billion. That’s equal to the combined budgets of the next fourteen top-spending countries, over half of whom are strong U.S. allies. Moreover, a 2011 Government Accountability Office audit of defense spending found that a combined $70 billion was wasted in 2010 and 2009.

This over-the-top spending is indicative of a military-industrial-complex run amok, precisely the scenario that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, perhaps the most revered military commander of the 20th century, warned against in his farewell address. “Together, we must learn how to compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose,” he avowed.

I can think of no better way to fulfill Eisenhower’s vision than through the pursuit of science.

By intelligently, purposefully, and gradually drawing down the defense budget from 4.7% to 3.0% of GDP (from $709 to $453 billion), and diverting some of those funds to meaningful science projects of both national and global significance, the United States can accomplish the essential goal of protecting its citizens, while simultaneously making the world a safer, healthier place and reinvigorating our economy.

We can begin the funding transition at home by re-committing ourselves to NASA. If we double the space agency’s budget (currently at $17.8 billion), our space accomplishments in ten years will dwarf even the monumental success of this summer, when the Curiosity rover landed on Mars.

We can complete the James Webb Space Telescope, allowing us to peer farther into the Universe than ever before. We can go to Mars by the end of the decade, a mission which astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson insists “would reboot America’s capacity to innovate as no other force in society can.” And with the recent news that warp drive may be more feasible than originally thought, we can focus on researching and eventually engineering interstellar starships that could one day take humans to Gliese 581 g — a potentially habitable Earth-like planet — in a mere two years. Along the way we could solve a myriad of other problems, writes Space.com’s Clara Moskowitz:

“…if human beings can solve the challenges of interstellar spaceflight, in the process they will have solved many of the problems plaguing Earth today, experts said. For example, building a starship will require figuring out how to conserve and recycle resources, how to structure societies for the common well-being, and how to harness and use energy sustainably.”

In addition to funding NASA, we can make fusion energy research a top national priority. Fusion power – an unparalleled energy source that generates electricity by effectively creating a miniature star – has eluded scientists for decades, but researchers now believe that successful fusion is within mankind’s grasp. Before the year is out, scientists at the National Ignition Facility in California hope to fire the world’s most powerful laser into a small test chamber with pea-sized fuel pellets of deuterium and tritium inside. The two isotopes of hydrogen will fuse together and potentially create up to one hundred times more energy than was used to ignite the fuel.

This breakthrough could serve as our “Sputnik Moment” for energy production. If we can put a man on the Moon a mere eight years after deciding to do so, then surely we can master “star power” if we pledge ourselves to the task. Fusion produces no carbon emissions, could provide power for thousands of years, is estimated to be cost-competitive with coal, and is unquestionably the energy source of the future. Yet despite the impressive resumé, fusion energy research is only allotted a relatively paltry $474.6 million.

Why wait for the future to happen later? With additional spending freedom by making cuts in defense, we can fund fusion and make that future happen now.

Continue over at SciAm

Eternal Sky Ceasing Civilizations

In a time exposure image, a single film exposure of several hours, the motion of the sky is captured by star trails above a lonely ruin near Yazd, Iran.

The gate is the standing remain of an ancient city buried under the ground; home to ancient people who appreciated the same eternal sky.

Oldest Mayan Astronomical Calendar Discovered

The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.

The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn’t a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said.

“The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future,” said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. “Numbers we can’t even wrap our heads around.”

Continue..

More Amazing Space Colony Art by NASA from the 1970s

A time when Space exploration was one of the most spoken of subjects.

Humanity has the power to fill outer space with life. Today our solar system is filled with plasma, gas, dust, rock, and radiation — but very little life; just a thin film around the third rock from the Sun. We can change that. In the 1970′s Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill with the help of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University showed that we can build giant orbiting spaceships and live in them. These orbital space colonies could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation, fantastic views, freedom, elbow-room in spades, and great wealth. In time, we may see hundreds of thousands of orbital space settlements in our solar system alone. Building these settlements will be an evolutionary event in magnitude similar to, if not greater than, ocean-based Life’s colonization of land half a billion years ago.

Credit: NASA

Image Food for Thought

Ancient Astronauts engraved In Human Civilization

Ancient paintings from Val Camonica, Italy are believed to depict forgotten deities; ancient astronaut proponents claim these pictures resemble modern day astronauts despite being painted ca. 10,000 BC.

Claims:Intelligent extraterrestrial life visited the Earth in ancient times and profoundly affected the development of human civilization.

More Amazing Space Colony Art by NASA from the 1970s

A time when Space exploration was one of the most spoken of subjects.

Humanity has the power to fill outer space with life. Today our solar system is filled with plasma, gas, dust, rock, and radiation — but very little life; just a thin film around the third rock from the Sun. We can change that. In the 1970′s Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill with the help of NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University showed that we can build giant orbiting spaceships and live in them. These orbital space colonies could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation, fantastic views, freedom, elbow-room in spades, and great wealth. In time, we may see hundreds of thousands of orbital space settlements in our solar system alone. Building these settlements will be an evolutionary event in magnitude similar to, if not greater than, ocean-based Life’s colonization of land half a billion years ago.

Credit: NASA

Side Note: I would not mind learning a bit of Architecture just to draw up some of my own colonies, I’ve actually thought of a few cool looking ones already

Image Food for Thought

Ancient Astronauts engraved In Human Civilization

Ancient paintings from Val Camonica, Italy are believed to depict forgotten deities; ancient astronaut proponents claim these pictures resemble modern day astronauts despite being painted ca. 10,000 BC.

Claims:Intelligent extraterrestrial life visited the Earth in ancient times and profoundly affected the development of human civilization.