Air Bell

According to a new study by an international team of researchers, the Earths entire atmosphere vibrates much like a ringing bell a low-pitched fundamental tone alongside higher-pitched overtones.

The discovery could help scientists better predict weather patterns and understand the makeup of our atmosphere.

This finally resolves a longstanding and classic issue in atmospheric science, but it also opens a new avenue of research to understand both the processes that excite the waves and the processes that act to damp the waves, co-author Kevin Hamilton, a professor at the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii, said in a statement.

The atmospheric resonances were first proposed at the beginning of the 19th century by French physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace, whose dynamic theory of ocean tides has since allowed scientists to predict deformations in a planets atmosphere.

The tones,according to Hamilton and his collaborators, are created by massive pressure waves that travel around the globe. Each wave corresponds to each of these different resonant frequencies.

Our identification of so many modes in real data shows that the atmosphere is indeed ringing like a bell, Hamilton said.

The new study includes a detailed analysis of pressure observations spanning 38 years. The researchers found dozens of separate waves circling the Earth in a checkerboard pattern.

For these rapidly moving wave modes, our observed frequencies and global patterns match those theoretically predicted very well, lead author Takatoshi Sakazaki, assistant professor at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Science, said inthe statement. It is exciting to see the vision of Laplace and other pioneering physicists so completely validated after two centuries.

READ MORE: New study detects ringing of the global atmosphere [University of Hawaii at Manoa]

More on Earths atmosphere: New Research: Earths Atmosphere Extends Well Beyond the Moon

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Scientists Detect "Ringing" in the Earth's Atmosphere - Futurism

Astronomers have created a 3D map of a cosmic structure so gigantic that its almost impossible to even comprehend.

The South Pole Wall is a flabbergasting 1.4 billion light years across and contains hundreds of thousands of galaxies, Live Science reports. That puts it on par with the Sloan Great Wall, the sixth largest cosmic structure ever discovered at 1.38 billion light-years across.

The surprise for us is that this structure is as big as the Sloan Great Wall and twice as close, and remained unnoticed, being hidden in an obscured sector of the southern sky, Daniel Pomarde from Paris-Saclay University and lead author of a paper about the research published in The Astrophysical Journal today, told The New York Times in an email.

The discovery is a wonderful poster child for the power of visualizations in research, co-lead Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii, told the Times.

To create their map of the South Pole Wall, the cosmographers had to use new sky surveys to peek past the Zone of Galactic Obscuration, an area in the southern part of the observable universe thats obscured by the comparatively bright Milky Way.

The new research builds on a 2014 discovery by the same team of cosmographers of a supercluster of galaxies with the Milky Way being one of approximately 100,000 galaxies contained within called Laniakea.

To put the size of the South Pole Wall into perspective, our own Milky Way galaxy is a mere 52,850 light years across.

Counted in miles, the distance of the South Pole Wall end-to-end would end up have 21 zeroes attached to it. Estimates put the number of grains of sand on Earth at just 7.5 quintillion (18 zeros).

These gigantic structures are made up of countless clumps called cosmic webs floating inside enormous clouds of hydrogen gas. Outside these larger structures, theres not a whole lot of stuff, as far as we know.

To make the discovery, the team came up with a new technique to measure the dizzying size of the South Pole Wall, which takes into account the velocity of galaxies as they exert gravitational forces on each other.

This new technique was even able to take dark matter into consideration, the mysterious stuff believed to make up approximately 85 percent of the matter in the universe. While dark matter remains a mystery, astronomers suggest it could be the scaffolding that determines the shape of these cosmic structures.

As of right now, the largest cosmic structure ever discovered is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, which spans 10 billion light-years. Even then, the Wall accounts for only a tenth the size of the observable universe, which spans about 93 billion light years.

READ MORE: Astronomers discover South Pole Wall, a gigantic structure stretching 1.4 billion light-years across [Live Science]

More on super structures: Strange Theory: Entire Universe Structured by Quantum Static

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Astronomers Discover Deep-Space Structure, 1.4 Billion Light Years Across - Futurism

MCLEAN, Va., & BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MITRE established MITRE Labs, restructuring research and development (R&D) capabilities and talent to further extend its impact across federally funded R&D centers and in collaboration with academia and industry. Charles Clancy was named senior vice president, chief futurist, and general manager of MITRE Labs, which comprises nearly 50 percent of the workforce to deliver solutions-driven innovation. In this new role, he is responsible for sparking innovative disruption, accelerating risk-taking and discovery, and delivering real-time, technology capabilities and execution through labs, platforms, and the MITRE Fellows program.

MITRE has been tackling complex threats facing our nation throughout our history. With crises and world events unfolding in ways that nobody expects, we pivot quickly, and proactively lead in the public interest, said Jason Providakes, president and CEO. Our response to COVID-19 highlighted these strengths, and the creation of MITRE Labs will position our R&D capabilities and world-class talent to anticipate future disruptions and business innovations to better deliver on our mission of solving problems for a safer world.

Clancy is an internationally recognized expert on topics at the intersection of wireless, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. He joined MITRE in May 2019 and previously served as vice president for Intelligence Programs.

John Wilson is now vice president, chief information and security officer, a role he has been serving in an interim capacity since November. He leads MITREs Enterprise Computing, Information, and Security organization and is responsible for advancing MITREs intelligent enterprise, information security, as well as overseeing the companys business transformation. Wilson joined MITRE in 1983 and most recently was vice president for the companys technical centers.

Christina Orfanos has been promoted into the role of vice president, Talent Experience & Total Rewards. She is responsible for managing the strategy, planning, development, implementation, and administration of MITREs talent program. Orfanos joined MITRE in 2018 and most recently served as director of Talent Strategy and Integration.

About MITRE

MITREs mission-driven teams are dedicated to solving problems for a safer world. Through our public-private partnerships and federally funded R&D centers, we work across government and in partnership with industry to tackle challenges to the safety, stability, and well-being of our nation.

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MITRE Establishes MITRE Labs to Accelerate Innovation and Disruptive Solutions in the Public Interest - Business Wire

Chinas embassy inthe former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan has put out a statement warning of an unknown pneumonia that is reportedly even deadlier than the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the South China Morning Post reports.

The death rate of this disease is much higher than the novel coronavirus, read the warning to Chinese citizens in Kazakhstan, as quoted by the SCMP. The countrys health departments are conducting comparative research into the pneumonia virus, but have yet to identify the virus.

Pneumonia is an infection of either one or both lungs and is caused by either bacteria, viruses or fungi. The inflammation can make it difficult to breathe and in some extreme cases can be life-threatening.

The statement doesnt include any details and doesnt elaborate on the nature of the virus. COVID-19 has also been shown to cause severe pneumonia in both lungs for some patients.

Local media have been reporting a worrying uptick in pneumonia cases in a number of Kazakh cities since mid-June, as the SCMP reports, with as many as 500 reported patients across three locations, 30 of whom are in critical condition. Officials and the media in Kazakhstan, according to the SCMP, are saying the cases are just regular pneumonia.

Reported pneumonia deaths in June account for over a third of pneumonia deaths in the country since the beginning of the year, according to the embassys statement.

Kazakhstan hasnt been immune to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. A state of emergency was declared in mid-March, with lockdowns lifted in mid-May. Kazakhstans President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev warned of a second wave this week on a televised address.

There have been over 250 COVID-19 deaths in the country of roughly 18 million residents so far, with just shy of 50,000 reported cases.

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China Says There's a New Disease That's Even Deadlier Than COVID - Futurism

Using a small device called the Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument attached to NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, a team of scientists found that there may be vastly more subsurface metals beneath the Moons surface than previously thought.

The discovery could force us to rethink the evolution of the Moon itself. The dominant theory is currently that a collision between a Mars-sized space object and the Earth sheered off the Moon as a result of collapsing gravitational forces clumping dust and debris together.

The theory has often been used to explain why the Moons composition is so similar to Earths. But in reality, the material making up the lunar highlands, a bright silicate layer covering more than 80 percent of the moon, seemed to contain far fewer metal-bearing minerals than what youd find on Earth.

But darker regions and plains of the crust formed through volcanic processes, the Moons maria, seem to be more metal-rich which has researchers scratching their heads.

The Mini-RF instrument on board NASAs Moon orbiter found that the larger the crater, the more the material was able to transmit electric fields, a property known as the dielectric constant. Scientists have found a direct link between this constant andthe concentration of metal minerals including iron and titanium oxides. Yet, for craters between three and 12 miles wide, this constant didnt change.

It was a surprising relationship that we had no reason to believe would exist, Essam Heggy, co-investigator of the Mini-RF experiments from the University of Southern California and lead author of the paper published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters last week, said in a statement.

Their hypothesis: meteors excavated metals from below as they battered the lunar surface, forming the craters in the process. That would mean there would be vast caches of useful metals lurking below a few hundred meters of Moon rock.

In fact, the lower wed dig, the more iron and titanium oxides wed find, according to the researchers.

That thinking echoes research releasedin June 2019 that suggests there is a huge mass of metal hiding beneath the Moons four billion years-old South Pole-Aitken basin.

Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground, Peter B. James, author of the paper, said in apress release. Thats roughly how much unexpected mass we detected.

This exciting result from Mini-RF shows that even after 11 years in operation at the Moon, we are still making new discoveries about the ancient history of our nearest neighbor, Noah Petro, LRO project scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, who was not involved in the research, said in the newer statement.

The MINI-RF data is incredibly valuable for telling us about the properties of the lunar surface, but we use that data to infer what was happening over 4.5 billion years ago! Petro added.

READ MORE: Theres more metal on the moon than we thought [Space.com]

More on metal on the Moon: Scientists Are Baffled by Huge Mass Under the Moons Surface

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NASA Discovers Huge Potential Caches of Metal On the Moon - Futurism

An expert has warned the world could be plunged into a new Great Depression under a coronavirus worst case scenario.

Peter Schwartz believes the 'cascading crises' currently gripping the world could result in an almost decade-long disaster.

He said these crises include the social turmoil from the Black Lives Matter movement and leadership problems in some countries.

The futurist has warned if scientists fail to find a vaccine, the world could face a Great Depression-style ordeal for years on end.

He added: "We don't have vaccines for a lot of these viruses. So it's entirely plausible we won't for this (coronavirus) either.

"And that means, in turn, that we're not going to get back to 100% of where we were before for years.

"It's like 1929-1937 that sort of timeframe. We are in the Great Depression and so we're below the economic potential for quite a long time.

"Maybe someday we'll get a vaccine but you kind of learn to live in a pandemic world.

"And that is a plausible scenario of depressed economic activity and a persistent pandemic where Covid is the new normal."

Mr Schwartz said the world is currently suffering from four crises - health, economic, social and leadership.

He has described how the situation developed from a health crisis into an economic one.

The expert added: "We had somewhat of an economic crisis going in, a trade war that has now been amplified.

"We have a social crisis now created by the Black Lives Movement worldwide and the response to the George Floyd killing,

"And then finally we have a leadership crisis in some countries. So this is the scenario where essentially the virus really persists."

Mr Schwartz, head of strategic planning at tech company Salesforce, told the World Economic Forum no 'new normal' would arrive without a vaccine.

The expert wrote: "Instead, a 'Covid normal' emerges, with continuing waves of the virus, persistent economic uncertainty and deep societal unrest."

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Futurist says coronavirus could last for years 'like the Great Depression' - Mirror Online

Cold Shoulder

Overall, the Earth is getting warmer at an ominous rate which, according to an overwhelming majority of climate scientists, is probably a result of greenhouse gas emissions.

Thats why its so interesting, as Mashable points out in a fascinating new story, that one spot in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean appears to be getting colder each year.

A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change explores possible reasons for the cold spot, which is known as the warming hole or, charmingly, the blob.

The researchers conclusion is that the blog is probably caused by a number of complex factors but mainly changing ocean currents and thick clouds that congregate over it.

Counterintuitively, the researchers say, the same greenhouse effect thats warming most of the Earth is likely causing the complex phenomena that are causing the blob to get colder.

Anthropogenic climate change changes the circuitry of the climate system, said Kristopher Karnauskas, an oceanographer at the University of Colorado Boulder who had no role in the research. [The cold blob] is an interesting manifestation of the peril were bringing on.

READ MORE: Why Earth has a stubborn spot thats cooling [Mashable]

More on climate change: Climate Change Threatens 60 Percent of the Worlds Fish Species

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One Particular Spot on Earth Is Getting Colder Instead of Hotter - Futurism

Slow Boil

New research suggests that climate change threatens to wipe out significantly more species of fish than previously thought.

If average global temperatures rise by five degrees Celsius thatd be a global warming nightmare scenario then New Scientist reports that 60 percent of all fish species could go extinct by the year 2100. Its grim news, as previous studies predicted that fish would be far more resilient.

Other research gauging the impact of rising water temperatures on fish populations focused exclusively on how well adultfish would be able to adapt. Based on those measurements alone, New Scientist reports that scientists expected only five percent of fish species to die off under the same conditions.

But the new study also takes fish larvae, embryos, and other stages in the fish life cycle into account. And in those phases, the fish are far more vulnerable to higher temperatures.

This is casting light on a life phase that has been largely ignored, Hans-Otto Prtner of the Alfred Wegener Institute told New Scientist.

Thankfully, the year 2100 is still pretty far away, and ambitious efforts to limit climate change could mean many of those species are spared.

We can say 1.5 [degrees] is not paradise, there will be changes, Prtner told New Scientist. But we can limit those changes if we manage to stop climate change. Fish are so important for human nutrition, so this study makes a strong case for protecting our ecosystems and natural environments.

READ MORE: Climate change will make world too hot for 60 per cent of fish species [New Scientist]

More on extinction: Scientists: Human Extinction Is Extremely Likely

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Climate Change Threatens 60 Percent of the World's Fish Species - Futurism

This past autumn, a professor at Wuhan University named Jau Tang was hard at work piecing together a thruster prototype that, at first, sounds too good to be true.

The basic idea, he said in an interview, is that his device turns electricity directly into thrust no fossil fuels required by using microwaves to energize compressed air into a plasma state and shooting it out like a jet. Tang suggested, without a hint of self-aggrandizement, that it could likely be scaled up enough to fly large commercial passenger planes. Eventually, he says, it might even power spaceships.

Needless to say, these are grandiose claims. A thruster that doesnt require tanks of fuel sounds suspiciously like science fiction like the jets on Iron Mans suit in the Marvel movies, for instance, or the thrusters that allow Doc Browns DeLorean to fly in Back to the Future.

But in Tangs telling, his invention lets just call it a Tang Jet, which he worked on with Wuhan University collaborators Dan Ye and Jun Li could have civilization-shifting potential here in the non-fictional world.

Essentially, the goal of this technology is to try and use electricity and air to replace gasoline, he said. Global warming is a major threat to human civilization. Fossil fuel-free technology using microwave air plasma could be a solution.

He anticipates this happening fast. In two years, he says, he thinks Tang Jets could power drones. In a decade, hed like to see them fly a whole airplane.

That would all be awesome, obviously. But its difficult to evaluate whether Tangs invention could ever scale up enough to become practical. And even if it did, there would be substantial energy requirements that could doom aerospace applications.

One things for sure: If the tech works the way he hopes, the world will never be the same.

Tangs curriculum vitae flits between a dazzling array of strikingly disparate academic topics, from 4D electron microscopy to quantum dot lasers, nanotechnology, artificial photosynthesis, and, of course, phase transitions and plasmonics.

Hes held several professorships, done research at Caltech and Bell Laboratories, published scores of widely-cited papers, edited several scientific journals, and won a variety of awards. He holds a U.S. patent for a device he calls a synchrotron shutter, designed to capture electrons traveling near the speed of light.

Tang says he first stumbled onto the idea for the plasma thruster when he was trying to create synthetic diamonds. As he tried to grow them using microwaves, he recalls, he started to wonder whether the same technology could be used to produce thrust.

Other huge stories, like the coronavirus pandemic and the baffling saga of Elon Musk naming his baby X A-12, were sucking a lot of oxygen out of the news cycle in early May, when Tang announced his invention to the world. A few outlets picked up Tangs story, including New Atlas, Popular Mechanics, and Ars Technica, but no journalist appears to have actually talked to him.

Because of that, there was little fanfare surrounding the sheer scope of his ambition for the technology and it went overlooked that Tang sometimes sounds as though hes invented a hammer and is now seeing a lot of things as nails.

After describing his plans to conquer aerospace with his new thruster, for instance, he starts to describe plans to take on the automotive industry as well with jet-powered electric cars.

I think the jet engine is more efficient than the electric motor, you can drive a car at much faster speeds, he mused. Thats what I have in mind: to combine the plasma jet engine with a turbine to drive a car.

But you wouldnt want to drive behind it, he warned, because you could be scorched by its fiery jet stream.

Over the course of our interview, Tang also brought up the possibilities of using the technology to build projectile weapons, launch spaceships, power boats, and even create a new type of stove for cooking. On that last point, Tang said that hes already built a prototype kitchen stove powered by a microwave air plasma torch but its so deafeningly loud that it sounds like a constant lightning strike.

Technically, the Tang Jet is an attempt to build a plasma thruster, a concept thats periodically gained attention in scientific circles. Michael Heil, a retired aerospace and propulsion engineer with a long career of Air Force and NASA research, told Futurism that Tangs research reminds him of several other attempts to build air propulsion tech that hes encountered over the years.

Plasma thrusters like those that would power a Tang Jet have been around for a while. NASA first launched a satellite equipped with plasma thrusters back in 2006, but its capabilities are a far cry from what Tang is proposing with his research.

Engineers have long dreamed of a plasma jet-powered plane, but every attempt has been smacked down by the technological limitations of the day. For example, New Scientist reported in 2017 that a team from the Technical University of Berlin attempted to build a similar thruster but like every attempt over the previous decade, their work never became useful outside of the lab.

The problems with these attempts arent so much faults with the theory the concept of generating thrust with a plasma torch is fairly sound. Rather, issues begin to pop up when working out the logistics of building a vehicle that actually works.

Tang has little interest in commercializing the jet himself. Instead, he wants to demonstrate its merits in hopes that well-funded government leaders or titans of industry will be inspired to take the ideas and run with them.

The steps toward realization of a full plasma jet engine would cost lots of money, time and energy, he said. Such investment is beyond our present resources. Such tasks should be taken by aerospace industries or governmental agencies.

Thats a common mindset for scientists, said Christopher Combs, an aerodynamics researcher at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Thats what us academics do, we figure out the physics and say Well I dont want to make a product,' he told Futurism. Its kind of a common refrain to see people in academia who have had something that gets a lot of attention.

Though hes intrigued by the underlying principles of the Tang Jet, Combs says its unlikely that it will scale up to the size needed to lift a plane in other words, the same challenges that proved insurmountable to previous plasma thrusters will rear their heads once again. The current prototype, for perspective, only produces about 10 Newtons of thrust about the same as a medium-sized model rocket.

Youre talking about scaling something by five orders of magnitude more than 100,000 times! Combs said. Which almost never works linearly. Lots of engineering happens in the middle.

And even if it were to scale perfectly, theres the issue of power. Iron Mans suit was powered by an Arc Reactor, and the flying DeLorean was powered by a Mr. Fusion unit that turned household trash into more than a gigawatt of power both of which, unfortunately, are fictional.

Fossil fuels store vastly more energy by weight than batteries, and thats unlikely to change any time soon. And thats too bad, because the Tang Jet needs a whole lot of power.

According to a paper Tang and his collaborators publishedabout the thruster prototype in the journal AIP Advances in May, the technology produces about 28 Newtons of thrust per kilowatt of power. The engines on the Airbus A320, a common commercial jet, produce about 220,000 Newtons of thrust combined, meaning that a comparably-sized jet plane powered by Tang Jets would require more than 7,800 kilowatts.

For perspective, that would mean loading an aircraft up with more than 570 Tesla Powerwall 2 units for a single hour of flight an impractical load, especially because the A320s payload could only carry about 130 of the giant battery units. Long story short, no existing battery tech could provide enough juice.

Does this thing just become a flying Tesla battery? Combs said. With the weight of these batteries, you dont have room for anything else.

The battery weight issue doesnt doom the Tang Jet, but it pushes options for its power source into the fringe. Tang is banking on improvements to battery technology over the next years and decades; those Technical University of Berlin researchers speculated about nuclear fusion. Unfortunately, any possible answers could be decades away or impossible.

It is worth noting that there exist compact nuclear fission reactors, like Russias KLT-40S, that produce enough power and weigh little enough that they could fit in a passenger plane or rocket.

But the safety and environmental implications of nuclear-powered aircraft are grim, and Heil was quick to point out that generating enough power isnt the only problem facing a Tang Jet. Actually getting the electricity from the power source to the thrusters would pose its own difficulties, perhaps requiring superconducting materials that dont exist yet.

You need power to generate thrust. And how do you move that power around on the aircraft? Heil said. Moving and controlling megawatts from the reactor to the jet is a huge challenge. You have to use big thick copper wires, that adds a lot of weight.

Overall, both Combs and Heil questioned the feasibility of a practical Tang Jet based on the technology we have today. Without a quick fix to the energy problem, its certainly a tall order.

But both said they were fascinated by the research and hoped to see future progress. They also pointed out that a plasma thruster could be useful for pushing satellites or spacecraft that are already in orbit though at that point it would need to bring propellant with it rather than using atmospheric air, since thered be none in the vacuum of space.

The bottom line, Heil and Combs agreed, is that we wont have a firmer grasp of the future of the tech until Tangs colleagues have evaluated and experimented with it.

Im rooting for this, and Id love to see it pan out, Combs said. But the scientist in me has some questions and some concerns.

More on Tangs plasma jets: Scientists Create Jet Engine Powered by Only Electricity

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This Scientist Says He's Built a Jet Engine That Turns Electricity Directly Into Thrust - Futurism

It would have been easy for Max Brookss World War Z to feel gimmicky. An oral history of a worldwide zombie apocalypse? There are many, many places where that could have gone wrong. Instead, what Brooks created succeeded on a host of levels, from the geopolitical to the horrific. It balanced big-picture momentum with a few fantastic setpieces; via its framing device, it also allowed Brooks to present a bold vision of what the world might look like after such an outbreak was contained.

On paper, Brookss followup has more than a few things in common with World War Z. Like its predecessor, Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre is presented as a found document. Like its predecessor, it involves humans coming into conflict with something uncanny. And, like its predecessor, its structure offers plenty of foreshadowing of discomfiting events. But Devolution differs from World War Z in a few substantial ways as well, which ultimately make it a more intimate book than its predecessorand a far stranger one.

The bulk of the narrative comes from the journal of one Kate Holland, with additional interviews and annotations by an unnamed writer. From the early pages, Brooks offers a broad outline of whats to come. Holland was one of the residents of an isolated, high-end, high-tech eco-community of Greenloop. Were told that Mount Rainier erupts, leading to chaos in the Pacific Northwestfor humans and non-humans alike. The introduction alludes to a troop of hungry, apelike creatures who would soon attack Greenloop.

All of that information gives the narrative the sort of doomed intensity of the best disaster movies. Greenloop itself, designed to be isolated in nature but also easy for its affluent residents to access Seattle, plays out like a lightly satirical take on Elon Musk-style futurism. Once the eruption hits and the communitys members find themselves isolated in ways they never expected, Brooks balances the more satirical elements of the situation with keen attention to the unique methods such a community would use to survive.

Being cut off from civilization is but one struggle that the residents of Greenloop must face. Kates journal includes allusions to strange sounds heard at night, and massive shadowy figures seen in the distance. The reader knows whats coming, which means that the plot has more than a little horror movie in its DNA. Were introduced to a disparate group with their own rivalries and shifting dynamics; as anyone whos seen a horror movie knows, were about to see most of these people meet terrible fates.

Interspersed with the Kate Holland narrative are interviews conducted with experts in the field and people with ties to Greenloops residents. Its here that Brooks offers a glimpse into Devolutions larger worldbuilding: namely, the idea that the sasquatches (or Bigfoots? Bigfeet?) that attacked Greenloop represent a species that evolved concurrently to humanity, and which have developed a keen ability to hide themselves away from human civilization.

The novels title, then, comes from the notion that the extreme circumstances of the volcanic eruption pushed the sasquatches to adopt more violent behavioreffectively devolving into a more base state. As the plot develops, the human characters find themselves relying less and less on technology and using more and more brutal tacticsmeaning, essentially, that devolution works both ways.

In showing humans pitted against a close evolutionary relative in a desperate attempt at survival, Brooks offers a bleak view of the world. Its telling that neither sidehuman or sasquatchsuggests cooperating to save both communities. Throughout the book, Brooks makes allusions to areas around the globe where neighboring populations have gone to war, including a passing reference to the Balkans in the 1990s and another character looking back on their time in the IDF.

But Brookss ambitious take on human (and primate) nature sometimes balances unsteadily with the smaller details of life in Greenloop, including a few odd pop culture references. When Devolution shows a wider canvaseven a secret history of the worldit works brilliantly, and the scenes of two species each fighting for their life abound with harrowing moments. But there are times where the intimate scale of this novel feels at odds with some of Brookss larger thematic points. As compelling as it is, you might find yourself wishing hed opted to tell this story using a larger canvas.

Devolution is available from Del Rey.

Tobias Carroll is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn. He is the author of the short story collection Transitory (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and the novel Reel (Rare Bird Books).

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When Futurism Meets With Disaster: Max Brooks' Devolution - tor.com

Charming Discovery

Physicists at CERNs Large Hadron Collider just discovered a brand-new kind of subatomic particle and its composition is a baffling world-first.

The yet-unnamed particle is the first that we know of to be entirely made up of the same kind of quark, which is a building block for subatomic particles. In this case, according to preprint research shared online Tuesday, the particle is composed of four charm quarks an arrangement that could help physicists better probe the underlying forces holding particles together.

Charm quarks are just one of six flavors of quark, along with up, down, strange, top, and bottom. As one of the heavier flavors, the charm quarks are bound together by the same, poorly-understood fundamental force that binds protons to neutrons. Researchers hope the unusual combination can help them explain how that particular force works.

Particles made up of four quarks are already exotic, project spokesperson Giovanni Passaleva said in a press release, and the one we have just discovered is the first to be made up of four heavy quarks of the same type, specifically two charm quarks and two charm antiquarks.

Next, the team hopes to sort out whether theyve found a true tetraquark or rather two quark pairings that are bound together like atoms in a molecule though both would be valuable discoveries.

Todays discovery opens another exciting chapter in this scientific book, allowing us to study our theory of matter particles in an extreme case, spokesperson Chris Parkes said in the release.

READ MORE: Exotic never before seen particle discovered at CERN [University of Manchester]

More on the LHC: The LHC Just Discovered A New System of Five Particles

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The Large Hadron Collider Just Discovered a Brand-New Particle - Futurism

Off-Kilter

For the first time, scientists have managed to find our solar systems precise center of gravity down to about 100 meters a flabbergastingly precise measurement on the scale of our vast solar system.

It sounds like a trivial feat think back to the posters hanging in your classroom and you might reasonably assume that the center of our solar system is smack dab in the middle of the Sun. But finding the gravitational center its barycenter,in the lingo is actually a complex task, ScienceAlert reports, that involves factoring in the pull of every planet, asteroid, and moon in the star system.

With all those gravitational tugs especially Jupiters particularly strong pull accounted for, the real center of gravity in our solar system lies just above the Suns surface, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal.

With that knowledge in hand, astronomers can more accurately hunt for gravitational waves given off by faraway supermassive black holes and pulsars, ScienceAlert reports. Thats because these measurements are extremely sensitive to error and depend on us knowing where Earth is relative to the solar systems barycenter.

Now, armed with a better understanding of the solar systems balance, scientists expect their gravitational recordings to suddenly improve.

Using the pulsars we observe across the Milky Way galaxy, we are trying to be like a spider sitting in stillness in the middle of her web, NASA astronomer Stephen Taylor said in a press release. How well we understand the solar system barycenter is critical as we attempt to sense even the smallest tingle to the web.

READ MORE: Astronomers Have Located The Centre of The Solar System to Within 100 Metres [ScienceAlert]

More on the solar system: Astronomers Discover Mirror Image of our Solar System

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Scientists Say They've Found the Exact Center of the Solar System - Futurism

Blazing Up

The Bighorn Fire is a vicious blaze thats been raging in Arizona since the beginning of June forcing evacuations as recently as this week.

In fact, the fire has grown so large that satellites can easily see it from space, according to a new post by NASAsJet Propulsion Laboratory.

NASA grabbed the imagery using its Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument, on board its Terra satellite, which was launched back in 1999.

The epic shot included in the post shows the fires progress over the Santa Catalina Mountains, North of Tucson. Vegetation is shown in red, according to NASAs description of the shot, and burned areas are shown in gray.

ASTER, the space agency wrote, is a useful instrument for mapping the changing surface of the Earth because of its high resolution and capability of imaging in thermal infrared wavelengths.

NASA has used it to study the movement of glaciers, volcanic activity, crop health, weather, and the wellbeing of wetlands and coral reefs.

READ MORE: NASAs ASTER Sees Arizonas Bighorn Fire Burn Scar From Space [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory]

More on fires: Devastating Fires in Amazon Rainforest Can Be Seen From Space

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This Forest Fire Was So Huge, NASA Spotted It From Space - Futurism

Researchers have yet to find any evidence of life on any other planet, including Mars.

But that hasnt stopped some rogue scientists from making outlandish claims and self-publishing evidence of the existence of a microbiological presence on the Red Planet, as CNETsJackson Ryan reports in an outstanding feature.

Self-described neurobiologist Rhawn Gabriel Joseph a man referred to by Ryan as the Space Tiger King, a nod to the popular Netflix docuseries is convinced that life already exists on Mars and Venus, and that we already have the evidence to back it up.

The roots of Josephs school of thought first started with the labeled release (LR) experiments on Mars in the 1970s, when NASAs Viking lander looked for biosignatures on the planet by carrying out a series of tests.

While the lander found no significant amount of organic molecules, some scientists, most notablythen-NASA researcher Gilbert Levin, believed the results did indeed confirm the existence life on Mars.

NASA refuted any such claims outright, writing that the experiments provided no clear evidence for the presence of living microorganisms in soil near the landing sites.

Joseph built on the research from this fringe group of researchers, by claiming that life was brought to the cosmos by a process called panspermia, a theory that suggests life in space was seeded with microbes carried by dust and meteors.

Over the decades, Joseph has attempted to get his work peer-reviewed and published in a variety astrobiology journals. He even went as far as creating his own journal, which he calls the Journal of Cosmology, likely an attempt to make his work appear more legitimate.

The journal is not much more than an outdated website, and has published claims made by Richard Hoover, another former NASA scientist, who suggested that we discovered fossilized bacteria in space, as CNET reports yet another claim NASA wants nothing to do with.

In 2014, Joseph even attempted to sue NASA into examining a biological organism the agencys Opportunity rover discovered on the surface of Mars. He claimed the rover found a mushroom-like fungus, a composite organism consisting of colonies of lichen and cyanobacteria, and which on Earth is known as Apothecium. It turned out to be a rock.

Just last year, Joseph caught a break when the reputableAstrophysics & Space Science journal published a paper of his that claimed life on Venus had already been found.

Based on photographic evidence made up of grainy black and white images, Joseph argues that Russias Venera 13 lander found evidence of life on Venus in 1982. The paper is still online, as CNET found. The journal added an editors note to the paper this month warning readers that conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the editors.

Mainstream astrobiologists are not amused.

I feel like these guys have just poisoned the whole field, Paul Myers, a developmental biologist at the University of Minnesota, told CNET.

READ MORE: The search for life on Mars and the Space Tiger King [CNET]

More on life on Mars: Former NASA Scientist Convinced We Already Found Life on Mars

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Extremely Dubious Scientist Believes There's Mushrooms and Lichen on Mars - Futurism

Minimum Occupancy

A French computer scientist developed a complex series of equations to predict the smallest number of Mars settlers needed to establish a successful, self-sustainable community on the Red Planet.

The number he arrived at just 110 intrepid explorers, who could all fit in a pair of SpaceX Starships, if they can actually carry 100 passengers each seems shockingly low considering the countless challenges of establishing a permanent presence on a new planet for the first time. But Universe Today reports that the researcher, Jean-Marc Salotti, of Bordeaux Institut National Polytechnique, focused on one key metric: how cooperatively the settlers would work toward their shared survival.

The math in Salottis research, which was published this month in the journal Scientific Reports, gets a bit complex. But the end result is a simple graph showing that once the settlement has 110 people, they can successfully work together on tasks that benefit the group at large like building facilities that harvest drinking water instead of fending for themselves.

If each settler was completely isolated and no sharing was possible, Salotti writes in the research, each individual would have to perform all activities and the total time requirement would be obtained by a multiplication by the number of individuals.

Of course, there are many challenges that need to be solved before we can settle Mars. But Salotti argues in his research that establishing models like these could help space agencies create data-driven plans for the endeavor.

Our method allows simple comparisons, opening the debate for the best strategy for survival and the best place to succeed, he wrote.

READ MORE: The Bare Minimum Number of Martian Settlers? 110 [Universe Today]

More on settling Mars: Reality Check: It Would Take Thousands of Years To Colonize Mars

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According to New Equations, a Mars Colony Would Need This Many People - Futurism

Misplaced

A gigantic, particularly-bright star just disappeared without a trace.

Its an unusual case: The giant star in the nearby Kinman dwarf galaxy, which was 2.5 times brighter than our Sun, had been observed during a decades worth of observations, Gizmodo reports. But when astronomers went to check up on it in 2019, the star had vanished.

Thankfully, the Trinity College Dublin astronomers have some ideas for what could have happened.

There are two possibilities that the team threw around in their research, published Tuesday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. First, the star could have drastically decreased its brightness and is also obscured by a cloud of dust. The second is far more mysterious: It could have died and turned into a black hole without ever exploding in a supernova.

If thats the case, it would be the second-ever failed supernova that we know of.

Regardless of which scenario occurred both are consistent with past observations for the star and computer models Gizmodo reports that the scientists missed out on an opportunity to update the models theyd based on the star. But on the flip side, the opportunity to investigate a vanished star makes up for the loss.

We were all pleasantly surprised to find that the stars signature was not present in our first observation, lead researcher Andrew Allan told Gizmodo. We initially hoped for a higher-resolution observation that resembled the past observations, which we would use for our models.

READ MORE: A Massive Star Has Disappeared Without a Trace [Gizmodo]

More on stars: Two Dead Stars Are Orbiting Each Others Corpses Incredibly Fast

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A Giant Star Appears to Have Winked Out of Existence - Futurism

The transition to electric mobility could help Latin America and Caribbean countries to reduce emissions and fulfill their commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change, while generating green jobs as part of their recovery plans from the COVID-19 crisis, according to a new study.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, Electric Mobility 2019: Status and Opportunities for Regional Collaboration in Latin America and the Caribbean, analyzes the latest developments in 20 countries in the region and highlights the growing leadership of cities, companies, and civil associations in promoting new e-mobility technologies.

Though still a recent development, electrification of the public transport sector is happening at high speed in several countries in the region, says the study financed by the European Commission through the EUROCLIMA + Programme and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and renewable energy company Acciona.

Chile stands outs with the largest fleet of electric buses in the region, with more than 400 units, while Colombia is expected to incorporate almost 500 electric buses in Bogot, its capital. Other Colombian cities, like Cali and Medelln, have join Ecuadors Guayaquil and Brazils Sao Paulo in introducing electric buses.

Increased efficiency, lower operation and maintenance costs of electric buses, as well as growing public concern around the impacts of road transport-related emissions on human health and the environment are the main drivers behind this transition in public transport, according to the study.

The transport sector is responsible for 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean and is one of the main drivers of poor air quality in cities, which causes more than 300,000 premature deaths a year in the Americas, according to the World Health Organization.

In recent months we have seen a reduction of air pollution in cities in the region due to lockdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But these improvements are only temporary. We must undertake a structural change so that our transportation systems contribute to the sustainability of our cities, says Leo Heileman, UNEP Regional Director in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The report calls on decision-makers to prioritize the electrification of public transport, especially when updating the old bus fleets that run through the large cities in the region. There is fear of a technology lock-in over the next 7 to 15 years if authorities choose to renew old fleets with new internal combustion vehicles that will continue to pollute the air and cause severe health damages.

Some countries are already paving the way to ensure a transition to sustainable transport. Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panam have designed national strategies on electric mobility, while Argentina, Dominican Republic, Mxico, Paraguay are finalizing their own plans, according to the report.

More than 6,000 new light-duty electric vehicles (EVs) were registered in Latin America and the Caribbean, between January 2016 and September 2019, according to the report. The need for charging infrastructure has boosted new ventures and services. For example, e-corridors, already running in Brazil, Chile, Mxico, and Uruguay, allow users to extend the autonomy of their EVs by making use of public fast charging point networks.

Shared mobility businesses focusing on electric bicycles and skateboards are also being developed in at least nine countries in the region.

The development of electric vehicle charging infrastructure has the potential to foster new investments and jobs, which are key to COVID-19 recovery efforts in the region.

The report calls on governments to develop a clear medium- and long-term roadmap that provides legal certainty for private investment and highlights the role of sustainable mobility in power grid expansion plans, in line with climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.

The 2015 Agreement, signed to date by nearly 200 countries, aims to keep the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The report was produced with inputs from the Latin American Association for Sustainable Mobility (ALAMOS) and contributions from the Center for Urban Sustainability in Costa Rica.

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Diplomatic Academy Vienna Marking the 75th anniversary - Modern Diplomacy

Light Diet

Researchers from University College London (UCL) say theyve found that exposing the human eye to deep red light for three minutes a day could improve declining eyesight.

According to a study about the research published in the Journals of Gerontology, cellular function declines with age due to lower densities of mitochondria in the retinas photoreceptor cells. Mitochondria are as you may have learned in school the powerhouse of the cell, producing energy and boost cell function. Photoreceptor cells are particularly power hungry but after being exposed to near-infrared light with a wavelength of 670 nanometers, their performance improved, along with study subjects eyesight.

The technology is simple and very safe, using a deep red light of a specific wavelength, that is absorbed by mitochondria in the retina that supply energy for cellular function, Glen Jeffery, professor at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

For the study, 12 male and 12 female participants between the ages of 28 and 72 had the sensitivity of their eyes checked. They were then asked to stare into a small LED flashlight for three minutes a day over two weeks, a process Jefferey likened to re-charging a battery.

Participants ability to detect colors improved 20 percent among some of those 40 and older. Low light sensitivity improved significantly in the same group as well.

Mitochondria have specific light absorbance characteristics influencing their performance: longer wavelengths spanning 650 to 1000nm are absorbed and improve mitochondrial performance to increase energy production, Jeffrey said.

READ MORE: Deep red light reboots aging retinas like recharging a battery [New Atlas]

More on eyesight: This Bionic Eye Is Better Than a Real One, Scientists Say

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Researchers Say You Can Improve Your Eyesight by Staring at This Specific Type of Light - Futurism

No Touching

A team at NASAs Jet Propulsion Lab have built a prototype to fight the ongoing coronavirus pandemic: An electronic pendant that scolds you every time you lift your hands to your face.

The tiny device, called PULSE, is simple in design. Its equipped with a infrared proximity sensor, a coin-sized vibration motor, and a three volt battery. Once it notices that youre about to touch your face, the vibration motor triggers.

Health experts have long recommended that you should abstain from touching your own face to minimize the risk of COVID-19 infection. All it takes is a short touch to spread pathogens from your hands to your mouth or nostrils.

NASA doesnt have any plans to start selling the gadget, but it has generously made the entire plans for the small device open source, from schematics for the electronics to files for 3D printing the case.

The team seems to have had far more success at developing a device to stop you from touching your face than Australian astrophysicist Daniel Reardon, who got four small magnets stuck up his nose in late March while trying to develop a similar gadget.

READ MORE: NASA designed a vibrating necklace to help you stop touching your face [Mashable]

More on that physicist: Physicist Tries to Build Device to Prevent Coronavirus, Gets Magnets Stuck Up Nose

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NASA Invents Wearable That Scolds You For Touching Your Face - Futurism

Getty

While the topic of human augmentation may be taboo to many, humans have been trying to find ways of augmenting ourselves for centuries. One could argue that glasses were an invention that allowed us to augment our bad eyesight and that hearing aids augmented our bad hearing. As a woman who works in tech, Ive often wanted to explore the idea of how technology can help us live longer and live better. Im in some ways, what my futurist friend Kate ONeil has coined, a tech humanist.

My curiosity has led me to test a lot of new technologies and also work within the emerging tech industry thats crafting some of these solutions. In this article, Id like to share six times that Ive personally used technology to augment myself and share some of the lessons Ive learned along the way.

Our sense of touch is more important than ever. With handshakes gone due to the pandemic, I often worry that were on our way to becoming a touchless society. But one of the VR peripherals that offer some hope for us to be able to feel touch in virtual environments with haptic gloves.

I had a chance to demo VRgluv in Atlanta back in 2018. VRgluv is a wireless all-in-one force-feedback haptic glove for Virtual Reality. According to their website: When integrated into a custom VR training simulation, VRgluv allows users to see and use their own hands to seamlessly interact with the virtual training environment without the need to use a controller. VRgluv uses force feedback to recreate the size, shape, and material properties of virtual objects, tools, and interfaces. By stopping the fingers at the boundaries of the virtual objects, users experience significantly more realism and immersion when interacting with their virtual surroundings. These haptic sensations and visual confirmations allow trainees to work and train with objects that only exist in the digital world.

I put on a VR headset and the glove and was able to enter a virtual work simulation where I needed to pick up and move objects. The haptic feedback, the weight simulation, and the resistance of the virtual objects were all pretty realistic and to this day my brain believes that what we did was true and not a virtual simulation.

Im really enjoying the hand tracking on my Oculus Quest, so I look forward to seeing how VR hardware OEMs use peripherals like haptic gloves to give users the feeling of touch, and Im sure that neural interfaces are on the horizon as well.

It is often said that humans only use a certain percentage of their brainpower, so when I was given the chance to test out Neruable, a brain-machine interface device in April 2019, I jumped at the opportunity. Brain-machine interfaces (BMI) and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are devices that enable direct communication between a brain and an external device. I was able to put on their BMI and a VR headset and I went into an experience that reminded me of Stranger Things. I used just my thoughts to input codes and throw items to escape a virtual room that I was trapped in. It was the first time I had tried anything similar and I was hooked.

Impressed by Neurable, I sought out to test more of these BCI devices. I got a chance to test NextMinds BCI at CES in January. During my demo, I was able to switch channels using just my thoughts, play duck hunt with my thoughts, and dim lights by just focusing on them. After this demo, I realized how much my brain enjoyed this workout.

I continued exploring and pre-ordered Neurositys Notion BCI developer kit, which arrived earlier this year. I can use this BCI to scroll my iPad with just my thoughts (yes, you read that right) and Im seeing developers create amazing applications for this dev kit.

It really does feel like Im pulling off a Jedi mind trick. Which leads me to the next superpower Ive experienced.

What if we could see through walls? Would that be your superpower of choice? While I havent been able to do this (at least not yet), I have been able to demo the Accuveins Vein Visualization device.

It got me to think about how augmented reality can make our lives better or easier, especially if one has a fear of needles?

In May 2019, I got a chance to demo the AR subcutaneous vein imagining finder from Accuvein at Jabils Blue Sky Center in Silicon Valley. This was a great example of how AR can provide true utility. This type of use of immersive tech will make my life better and the lives of many of their folks out there, especially children and the elderly. This use of AR helps take the guesswork out of finding the vein. In my opinion, it helps make the healthcare experience better for the patient and it helps the medical professional do their work faster and better.

The vein finder glides over your arm and can detect veins and blood flows, giving phlebotomists a sort of X-ray vision and helping them find the right vein.

One could also argue that when I use my spatial computing headset and venture into an app like Spatial for meetings with colleagues in the form of realistic avatars, that I also use some sort of X-ray vision to see whats not really in front of me.

Cathy Hackl

Have you ever seen, felt, or smelled a tree in VR? Well, I all three at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017. I actually really did smell the redwoods in an interactive experience called Treehugger: Wawona where I put on a VR headset with a scent device over my noise and gloves with tracking devices. While there was not a concrete storyline, I did perceive this to be an innovative way to interact in VR through touch and smell and a

Cathy Hackl

way forward for how we will be able to tell stories in VR using all the senses in the future. I walked away from this tree-hugging experience feeling energized as we had just done a whole hour of yoga. Its been one of my favorite VR experiences to date. It gave the phrase, stop to smell the roses, a lot more possible in a virtual world.

Mommy, are you a cyborg? my son asked.

I wasnt sure how to answer that question. I was living connected to a medical device that had to be on 24/7 and that needed to be charged often. It would beep when it was starting to run out of battery and beep constantly when it was almost out of charge. During that time I felt more like a Tesla than a cyborg.

Phrases such as:

I spent the last several months of 2019 recovering from medical complications post-surgery. My surgery wound wasnt healing as it should and my doctor recommended I start using a medical machine called a wound vac or negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) machine, to heal.

Cathy Hackl

Having to don a medical computer all day, round the clock was daunting. Needless to say, it took a while to realize that the machine and I were essentially one for a span of 6 weeks, except during showers and dressing changes. I had to plug into the wall every so often to recharge the machine. If I had to go outside, I would carry the machine with me in a travel pouch. I slept with the machine on, worked with the machine on, did everything with it on. Living life with a medical machine gave me a new perspective on human augmentation.

See, while being a cyborg would seem cool, I felt more like a Tesla more than a cyborg. I had to recharge the machines battery every day, when the battery was low it would beep constantly and I had to run upstairs to plug in. This symbiotic relationship between woman and machine would only be effective if I charged it and it did its job.

Having these experiences have really lead me to think about human augmentation in a totally new way. It also got me thinking a lot about what the strategic foresight consultancy, Toffler Associates, refers to as the Bio-Digital Convergence, which is the intersection of human and machine, and the impact this convergence will have on our lives, our laws and even our sense of self.

Curiosity has led me to demo all these technologies and think through their connotations for humanity and for businesses and the possible futures where they can lead us. Its trends like these that are on the horizon and that will major implications for our businesses, our families, and our sense of self. Setting ethical best practices will be of the utmost importance so that in the future those who augment and those who do not have the same opportunities. Now the question is, what superpower would you choose and how would you use it for good?

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Augmented Human: 5 Times Ive Used Technology To Augment Myself - Forbes