The Quest for Human Immortality – Innovation & Tech Today

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The quest for immortality is as old as recorded history. In recent years, there have been breathtaking breakthroughs in the field of human longevity research that offer the potential to significantly extend human lifespan. Some futurists even predict that at some point science will discover how to make humans immortal.

Scientists have been studying the mechanisms behind aging for decades, and recent advancements are bringing us closer to understanding how we can slow, and even reverse, the aging process and live healthier, longer lives. Aging is not an inevitable decline of the human body but is plastic and subject to intervention said Dr. David Sinclair, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging Research.

Among the most promising areas of research is cellular senescence. Cellular senescence is the process by which cells stop dividing and contribute to the aging process. In 2021, the US-based company BioAge Labs raised $90 million in funding to continue developing their drug pipeline that targets aging-related diseases. The company has already identified a handful of promising compounds that could dramatically increase human lifespans by targeting cellular senescence.

BioAge Labs isnt the only company exploring this approach. Another company, Unity Biotechnology, reported in 2021 promising results from a clinical trial of a drug that targets senescent cells. The drug, called UBX0101, was also shown to significantly reduce pain and improve joint function in patients with osteoarthritis.

A promising approach to extending human lifespans is the use of gene editing technologies like CRISPR. Researchers are using CRISPR to remove genetic mutations that lead to diseases and aging-related conditions. In 2022, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley used CRISPR to extend the lifespan of fruit flies by up to 60%. While the technology is still in its infancy, the results are promising and could eventually lead to similar advancements in human longevity.

In addition to these approaches, there is growing interest in the role of epigenetics in aging. Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence. Scientists believe that changes in epigenetic markers play a key role in the aging process.

The ultimate goal of aging research is to improve health span, not just lifespan said Dr. Nir Barzilai, Director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine when asked about the tension between longevity and quality of life.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California have discovered a way to rejuvenate aging cells by resetting their epigenetic markers. The researchers were able to take skin cells from elderly individuals and revert them back to a more youthful state.

While these advancements in human longevity research are exciting, they raise a number of ethical questions. For example, who will have access to these treatments, and at what cost? Will these treatments be available to everyone, or only to the fabulously wealthy? Will these treatments lead to a two-tiered society with an elite class outliving everyone else?

The impact that longer lifespans could have on the economy and healthcare system are just beginning to

be studied. With people living longer, there will be a greater demand for expensive healthcare services and an increased burden of retirement programs, like Social Security, on the young.

How society will adjust to a world when people are living longer. Its possible that we could see a shift in the way people approach their careers and retirement, with individuals needing to work well into their later years.

Despite these concerns, there is little doubt that advancements in human longevity research have the potential to transform our lives and civilization in unknown ways. With longer, healthier lives, we may be able to spend more time with loved ones, pursue our passions, and contribute more to society. The biggest concern is that the human imperative to avoid death will overtake our planets carrying capacity.

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The X-Men’s Nightcrawler is the Perfect Uncanny Spider-Man – CBR – Comic Book Resources

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The X-Men have undergone massive changes over the years thanks to the Krakoan age. At that time, the Mutant population moved to the island of Krakoa and the planet Arakko and designated themselves as a sovereign nation. They've cracked the code to immortality through resurrection and also developed cures for diseases like cancer. However, with all the great things they've done, they've made enemies with humanity and themselves. Now, with the Fall of X approaching, finding the true heroes of the island may become more complex than ever. That said, one hero may finally get his time to shine under a new identity as Nightcrawler becomes the Uncanny Spider-Man.

Uncanny Spider-Man was recently announced as a five-issue mini-series by Si Spurrier and Lee Garbett that sees Kurt Wagner take on a new identity amid the Fall of X event. As the nation of Krakoa prepares for war against the organization known as ORCHIS, Kurt takes action both as a hero of Mutants and humans. Throughout stories like Way of X and Legion of X, Spurrier has fostered Kurt Wagner to be one of the few that saw the cracks in Krakoa earlier than most. Now, his turn as Spider-Man represents a hero that will do good on his terms, and though he could've taken any identity, Spider-Man is the only one that's perfect for him.

RELATED: Sins of Sinister Gives a Deadly Mutant Their Own X-Mech

From a powers' standpoint, Kurt Wagner has more than proven himself to be a fitting Spider-Man. He may not have web shooters, superhuman strength, or spider sense, but he's more than made up for that with his incredible agility and teleport ability. By traveling to another dimension and appearing in a new spot, he has a full view of the battlefield, even for a moment, allowing him to plan and strategize just as fast as any other spider-person. Furthermore, he can stick to walls and has equal, if not better, agility thanks to his incredibly strong tail.

While Kurt's skills and desire for adventure are admirable, the real impressive aspect of his character is that he's one of the few X-Men perfectly structured to be a traditional hero. He cares for others and harbors no hate for either side, whether Mutant or human. Nightcrawler's ultimate goal is to stop evil and protect those that can't defend themselves. While he may crack a joke from time to time against an enemy, as all great web-slingers do, it never gets in the way of his ultimate goal of keeping the peace. His heroism also made him incredibly selfless, as the Judgment Day event by Kieron Gillen and Valerio Schiti showed when he sacrificed himself alongside Captain America as a leader against the Progenitor, inspiring others along the way.

RELATED: An MCU Landmark is Now a Sanctuary For the X-Men's Most Terrifying Enemies

When the Krakoan Age began, it was touted as a utopia for all Mutants. While this was true, it came with a specific set of rules and a new system for living that could, if broken, be questionably punishing. This included a banishment to The Pit. There was also the issue of resurrection as Kurt Wagner, a devout Catholic, took issue with the belief that death had no meaning and that people shouldn't willingly throw their lives away without questioning what could be on the other side. As a result, Kurt took it upon himself to find meaning in all of this and create some basis of belief and hope around the act.

Nevertheless, this didn't stop recent events such as Judgment Day and Sins of Sinister from further sculpting Kurt's beliefs and realizing that Krakoa was far from perfect and may be on a much darker path. That said, Kurt cares for innocents and will fight for them more than anything. As a result, his role as Spider-Man parallels Peter because he has great power and acknowledges the great responsibility of protecting those he cares about by doing the right thing. Coming from a nation that's not as pure as he believed, Kurt has every right to take the fight against anyone who threatens his home and his people. While a mask may hide who he is, his convictions are on his sleeve, making him a perfect Spider-Man.

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Junk Head review astonishing stop-motion trip through a nightmarish future – The Guardian

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Movies

Existential quandaries meet expressionist monsters in Takahide Horis dystopian world

Wed 19 Apr 2023 08.00 EDT

Envisioning a dystopian future where humans inch closer to immortality while losing the ability to procreate, Takahide Horis stop-motion adventure journeys through a gloomy, dilapidated universe filled with exquisitely strange creatures. Considering that the film is mostly a one-man operation Hori pores over nearly every technical aspect himself the worldbuilding details are simply extraordinary, bringing to mind the nightmarish virtuosity of Phil Tippetts Mad God.

Seeking a solution to a diminishing population, a human scientist plunges into the subterranean domains inhabited by the Magarins, mutants whose labour powers the running of the city above. After an accident obliterates his physical form, the mind of our wandering protagonist is transferred into a succession of mechanical guises, blurring the difference between his humanity and the clone workers.

Existential quandaries aside, the otherworldly magic of Junk Head is visual rather than plot-based. Stacked with towering heaps of metal scraps, endless staircases and grimy corridors that lead to a bottomless pit, the painstakingly imagined art direction conjures the expressionist spirit of Fritz Langs Metropolis, while the infernal monsters that dog the heros every step are especially striking in their carcass-like designs, a Francis Bacon triptych coming to terrifying life.

The blood-splattered sequences where the grotesque predators gnaw on their hapless victims are punctuated with moments of levity, friendship and jokes; some might find this tonally jarring and crude. Junk Head also leaves many story threads unfinished, intended as it is as the first instalment in a series. Still, the astonishing level of craftsmanship and creativity trumps any minor shortcomings. Sure to send shockwaves up your spine, this triumph of animation demands to be seen on a big screen.

Junk Head is released on 24 April in UK cinemas.

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URI business professor, colleagues look at mortality and leadership … – University of Rhode Island

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KINGSTON, R.I. April 19, 2023 By 2030, more than 30% of family businesses in the U.S. will lose their aging leaders to retirement, or death. Many of those leaders dont have a strategy for letting go of their business, turning it over to a successor, or selling it. While it is rare for an incumbent leader to die while in office, it is difficult for them to face their mortality. Yet letting go and the outsized effect of facing ones mortality have not been examined closely since early writings in family business.

Nancy Forster-Holt, assistant professor of innovation and entrepreneurship in the University of Rhode Island College of Business, has seen that up close. About 20 years ago, she and her husband bought a marine products company from an aging owner, Paul, who hadnt planned for his eventual retirement.

Very few business owners have an exit plan. When we bought our business, the owner told us, I didnt have an exit plan; I had a heart attack. That was so profound to me. Thats what led to my Ph.D. topic on the retirement of business owners. In reading Atul Gwandes book Being Mortal, she was struck by the parallels between facing ones mortality and planning to let go of ones business.

It struck me as different from what Id heard in the medical world where if you understood your mortality, youre a little more likely to let go instead of pressing for life-saving outcomes, said Forster-Holt, whose research interests include succession of family business owners, and gerontology and retirement of aging ENDrepreneurs. Instead, existing scholarship on family business succession emphasizes the leaders quest for immortality, stating it was the chief cause of failed succession, she said.

Now Forster-Holt and co-authors Susan DeSanto-Madeya, a URI associate professor of nursing and palliative care expert, and James Davis, a professor of management, marketing and strategy at Utah State University, are looking at the phenomenon of the disconnect in succession planning of small business owners in a new paper. Their essay, The Mortality of Family Business Leaders: Using a Palliative Care Model to Re-imagine Letting Go, was published in March in the Journal of Management Inquiry, a leading peer-reviewed journal for scholars and professionals in management, organizational behavior, strategy and human resources.

Their paper explores existing literature on family business succession and rethinks the understanding of mortality and its connection to a business owners planning to let go inserting the medical model of palliative care to understand its possible effects on the process. Palliative care makes use of tools that span a period from diagnosis to death, and the paper introduces the idea that planning to let go of ones business takes many forms. The authors offer the Mortality Awareness Model, which depicts four states of letting go, reflecting where a person is in confronting their mortality.

Forster-Holt, who made a call for a better understanding of the struggle to let go in a TEDxURI talk, ran the family business center at Husson University in Bangor, Maine, prior to coming to URI, and found that existing scholarship on family business succession didnt provide for an adequate way to discuss it.

The tools were lacking for me in my practice with family businesses, she said. You just would hear story after story of advisors not knowing how to get deeper, and not knowing the language that would help leaders and their families to talk about the future. We didnt have the tools, not even the conversational tools. I said, What if there was a toolkit for that? What if there was a better way of talking about it?

In their essay, the authors offer an interdisciplinary approach to the question of letting go by adding palliative care, specialized care that is recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialities and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Palliative care places emphasis on mortality awareness and planning, Forster-Holt said. It provides an evolving approach that focuses on a persons quality of life during serious illness and at the end of life, while also promoting an understanding of ones mortality not necessarily that the persons death is imminent and facilitating an appropriate level of planning.

It addresses the reluctance of incumbent family business leaders to plan for letting go by including family or other stakeholders in the process, setting up ground rules, and promoting clear and timely communication, goal setting, dignity, trust and a shared understanding of choices.

The essay also looks at levels of mortality awareness and advanced care planning key parts of palliative care creating a model of four states of letting go and organizational succession outcomes, including good, forced, failed, and eluded. The typologies provide a diagnostic tool in which letting go can be better understood, managed and planned for.

This model could start a thousand conversations, said Forster-Holt. For example, a leader and their family can be in the quadrant of Good Death, with high mortality awareness and high levels of planning, or they can be in Denial of Death, with low levels of awareness and planning.

This is simply labeling the outcomes from lack of awareness to high awareness and from lack of planning to very high planning and everything in between, she said. The family business literature talks about not judging. I cant tell you whether you had a good or bad succession. Its up to you to judge. Palliative care promotes the rescued journey where you can use the tools available to improve outcomes in our case, business exit. Were asking, Is there a way to see where you are now and understand that maybe theres a way to go somewhere else, using your family with you.

Forster-Holt sees future research opportunities from the essay, including exploring the relationships of gender and culture to mortality awareness and letting go. It could also inform advisory services for family business and promote the inclusion of palliative care specialists astrusted family business advisors.

I want to produce work that is useful to advisors, practitioners and family businesses, she said. I also would like to see it taught in the classroom. We dont teach about mortality in business school, but we probably should.

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URI business professor, colleagues look at mortality and leadership ... - University of Rhode Island

Reflections: Resurrection hope – Wellington Advertiser

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The last time I wrote I talked about hope. That human beings are through-and-through creatures of hope. That there is almost nothing we cant bear so long as we have hope, and there is not much we can bear without it.

That Christian faith is nothing if not about hope. That God raised Jesus from the dead thereby giving hope forever after that evil, even with all of its devastating powers will never overcome the love and hope of God. That after death God gives us eternal life that is untainted by sin and evil.

Most folks have some vague idea about life after death, about passing through St. Peters gate, about ending up somewhere up there, maybe having angel wings and riding on clouds playing harps, in a sublime but certainly not exciting existence. Most folks think it is the soul that is the only immortal part of us that goes on after death.

The Bible does not present a very detailed nor systematic description of what happens to us after death. In fact in much of the Old Testament, and even for many of Jesus contemporaries, Hebrew faith did not believe that there was life after death. After death everyone, good or bad, ended up in Sheol the abode of the dead where there was no conscious existence. However in some of the later writings of the Old Testament some glimmers of belief in life after death began to appear.

Life after death is assumed and proclaimed in the New Testament. But the immortality of the soul is not. Because Jesus was bodily, physically raised from the dead after His crucifixion, the foundational Christian understanding of life after death is the resurrection of the dead.

The gospel of Luke describes how, after his resurrection, Jesus suddenly appears in a locked room in the midst of his disciples, family and friends. They are terrified and think they are seeing a ghost. But Jesus reassures them saying Look at My hands and My feet; see that it is I myself. Touch Me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have Have you anything here to eat? They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate in their presence. (Luke 24:39-43)

(Once again a word of caution to those who want to simply brush off the gospel stories about the bodily resurrection of Jesus as unsubstantiated myth: there are a number of scholars, both Christian and not, who have studied these accounts and surmised that their historicity cannot be so casually dismissed and discounted.)

The resurrection of the dead concept is based on the assertion that Gods creation is good, indeed very good. Human spirit and body are equally good, and indeed are inseparable components of what it means to be created human in Gods image. Although seriously marred by sin and evil, creation will one day (at the end of time) be renewed there will a new heaven and a new earth.

Thus Jesus is raised from the dead in both spirit and body. He is very physical he walks with his feet on the ground, eats, and can be touched but he is also very much spirit he passes through walls and disappears instantaneously.

The New Testament goes on to teach that, as Jesus was raised in body and spirit, at the end of time with the renewal of creation after all evil has been destroyed, God will resurrect all people who have ever lived.

Share new life

Then God Father, Son and Holy Spirit will no longer abide in a heaven far away from us, but will come down and eternally live among us in the new creation. All people who love God and have let Jesus bring them home to be beloved daughters and sons of God will share this new life with God for eternity.

And it will be both physically and spiritually real. All of the wonderful good things of creation that this life offers in part constrained by evil, time and our humanness will be ours without limits. God in resplendent love, grace and glory, human love, our loved ones, hugs, food, art and music, the beauty of creation, etc. will be ours for ever and ever. Our existence will be walking-with-our-feet-on-the-ground real.

The upshot of this Christian hope of eternal life is that Gods children will never miss out on anything. Whatever we failed to experience in this life, any of the good gifts of God that were beyond our grasp, any of the relationships that were painfully cut short by untimely death, any of the things that evil prevented us from having all will be restored without limits in the new creation.

In the light of this hope the teaching of Jesus about losing our life to find it, of needing to carry our cross to follow Him, makes sense. Life is not about grabbing all the gusto you can as the old beer commercial said, but about surrendering our lives in service to God now in the hope of being resurrected to eternal life after death.

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings by becoming like Him in His death. (Philippians 3:10)

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Board of Ed Outlaws Native American Mascots in NY, What’s Next … – i95rock.com

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The NFL and MLB have become battlegroundsfor a social debate that has gotten very loud over the last decade.

The question is whether Native-American mascots are offensive? As society changes and public opinion sways, the question is being asked on all levels of athletics. Recently, the New York State Board of Regents simplified the issue for school districts throughout New York this week. According to ABC 7, the board voted unanimously to prohibit the use of Native American themed images, names and mascots.

Team mascots and logos are expected to be changed by the end of the 2024-2025 season. Any schools who do not comply with the ruling will be denied state funding. This mascot ban will impact dozens of schools in New York State, including the Mahopac Indians.

By My Count

I raised questions about this in a December 2022 article titled: "Do You Think Mahopac High School Will Change it's Nickname from the Indians?" In the article, I ran two informal polls, asking readers to share their opinion on two questions, will Mahopac change it's mascot and are Native American mascots offensive. These are the results as of (4/19/23).

Do you think Mahopac Will Change it's Mascot?

Yes - 55.37%

No - 44.63%

Do You Find Native American Mascots Offensive?

I Do - 70.94%

I Do Not - 20.51%

I Don't But I Could Understand if Native Americans do - 8.55%

The Change is Happening

The mascot name change is no longer a question, it's a certainty.In January 2023, The Examiner News published an article laying out the framework for the process. According to the report, the name change will be worked on by the "Mascot Selection Committee" which is made up of around 60 individuals "representing diverse perspectives in the community."

That committee will be responsible for selecting a field of options to present to the students. Those options will then be shared with Mahopac students ages K-12th gradeand put to a vote. According to LoHud,one of those selectioncommittee meetingstook placethis week. The LoHud report states:

Mahopac students, parents and community members met privately in the high school cafeteria in the second of three meetings to select finalists for Mahopacs new mascot. Students from kindergarten through 12thgrade will vote on the finalists in June.

Mahopac Superintendent Christine Tona reportedly denied LoHud access to that meeting. The winner will be announced in June and the mascot logo will be rolled out in September.

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A Town Voice

I reached out to former Carmel/Mahopac Town Supervisor Ken Schmitt for his reaction to the impending transition. This is what Schmitt had to say:

"Hey Lou, I strongly believe there's a disconnect between the NYS Board of Regents and the people. The threats of withholding State aid funding ( our money )to School Districts that have Indian mascots is ridiculous and nothing more than extortion tactics. Mahopac people are proud of our strong Indigenous history and culture. We've honored the local Indiantribes for many years as the Mahopac Indians. Any notion or belief that we are somehow discriminating or disrespecting indigenous people is completely absurd andridiculous."

Ken Schmitt - Facebook

Scmmitt was the town's highest elected official for 14 years. After a few years on the sidelines, Schmitt has decided to run again and has already begun the process.The former Supervisortold us he submitted his Republican Nomination Petitions, collecting 715 signatures.

In the Name of Change

The move for a new mascot has been years in the making. A 2019Change.org petition organized by a 2012 Mahopac grad named Daniel Ehrenpreis hasnearly 8,000 signatures as of today. One petition signer named Ingrid left a petition comment in 2022 that read:

"It is embarrassing that at this point, the district leaders have to be pushed this hard to change the name. They are perpetuating backward and racist thinking."

A Way to Honor Those Who Came Before

Soon after the 2019 petition began to circulate, a counter-petition made the rounds according to the Mahopac Central School district Wikipedia page. The folks in favor of the mascot, argued the name 'Indians' was originally chosen to honor early Native Americans in the region.

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Hoodies On-Sale

It's worth noting that Mahopac Indians apparel is currently on sale for 25% off on the Spirit Shop. It's not immediately clear if that sale has anything to do with the name change.

What About the New Name?

I'm not 100% sure how this move will be received in Mahopac but it will be interesting to see how the town handles the change. The real question is, will they come up with a cool new name or blow it? There are professional marketing and PR people that can't get this type of thing right.

I'm sure the NFL team in Washington hired top-level PR people and marketing advisors when they transitioned away from the Redskins. The absolute best, those brilliant, well paid minds could come up with was "the Commanders!?" That is easily one of the worst names in pro sports. Cleveland's baseball team also spit the bit with "the Guardians."

My bet is that the children of Mahopac will do a better job with this transition than the multi-billion dollar pro sports franchises that have gone through it.

I humbly ask the students of Mahopac to consider the following options:

Mahopac Machine - It's gritty, tough and no one else has it. For the logo you could use a tank.

Mahopac Mailmen - This is a job that once carries great prestige in our country and it's almost completely dead. Let's let our Mailmen and Mail Ladies have their day.

Mahopac Murder - Slow your role, relax. A murder is a large group of crows and that is what I am talking about. How cool would a football helmet look with a bunch of menacing crows on it.

Mahopac Mustangs - You probably already have that one.

Mahopac Malarkey - Malarkey is just fun and funny.

Mahopac Mugwump - A Mugwump is a person who is independent or neutral in their political views. You can smell the irony on this name.

Mahopac Mermaid - This is a big change, big risk, big reward change. In my opinion, you would have to go with a completely different color scheme, moving away from yellow and blue but if we're doing this, let's do it.

Mahopac Centaurs - The Centaur is half man and half horse. You mean to tell me a human with horse legs is not going to dominate at field hockey?

Mahopac Phoenix - This is my favorite mythical creature. The phoenix is a symbol or rebirth, immortality and resurrection. The phoenix rises from the ashes, it cannot be kept down.

In case you could not tell, I'm way into alliteration. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

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The Worst Name Change Ever - WCSU

Whenever the matter of mascot name changes comes up, I feel it is my duty to highlight and underscore the worst mascot name-change in history. It's not so much the mascot as the rationale for the change. In April of 2022,Western Connecticut State University changed their mascot from Colonial Chuck to the Wolves.

The reason the University provided was that Chuck was a Minuteman soldier. The Minutemen were soldiers from the Revolutionary War and that was "too violent" a time period in our country's history.

I s--- you not!

I would never s--- you on this

You're not being s---ted.

This is the absolute truth. I said it then and I believe now, WestConn should be embarrassed of the move and I intend to bring it up every chance I get. Apparently, I was in the minority on this because I started a Change.org petition to get them to change it back.

It's been afull year since and the petition has 60 signatures. I realize that is ahorrendous number and I have no real support but I'll go to my grave screaming about how ridiculous that decision was.

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Putnam Lake is a Hamlet of the Town of Patterson In Putnam County, NY. Originally, the community was a vacation getaway for city folks who wanted Lake property in the country. Today, its not any kind of weekend or destination getaway but a great place to live, I would know, I grew up there. Like any small town, Putnam Lake, NY has its setbacks. Its difficult to open any business and even harder to keep the doors open. These are some of the long vacant commercial properties of The Lake.

If you are in the market for killer views and ultimate privacy, 181 Barrett Hill Road in Mahopac, NY is for you.

Photo Credit: Aurora Photography

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Board of Ed Outlaws Native American Mascots in NY, What's Next ... - i95rock.com

Tooth Pari Series Review: Half-Witted Gore and Half-baked Lore With Vampires in Kolkata – FILM COMPANION

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Tanya Maniktala in Tooth Pari

Director: Pratim D. Gupta

Writer: Pratim D. Gupta

Cast: Tanya Maniktala, Shantanu Maheshwari, Sikandar Kher, Revathi, Tillotama Shome, Saswata Chatterjee, Adil Hussain

If I were an Indian dentist right now, Id be perilously close to suing Hindi cinema. (Or as they call it today: Leading a troll army of Boycott Bollywood hashtags). As if pop culture hadnt done its bit to convince the world that dentists arent real doctors, horror fiction is on its own trip. Freddy (2022) starred Kartik Aaryan as a lonely Parsi dentist whose heartbreak, caused by a cruel girlfriend, turns him into a vengeful psychopath. And now, Tooth Pari: When Love Bites a Netflix series centred on a love story between a rebel vampire and her human dentist features Shantanu Maheshwari as a shy loner whose blood is unique because hes a virgin and a Mommas Boy.

The lawsuit can be a defamation one. The problem isnt that dentistry is treated as a personality disorder; its that these characters and the stories they occupy are about as compact as the rotten teeth they pull out. The awkward introvert often runs a clinic that looks like a vintage house gone wrong; this one is so artistically (and dimly) lit that its no wonder the young doctors career is a joke. His passion for cooking is introduced in a scene where he coyly asks a bartender at a party if he can make a cocktail for him. The entirely unintended homoerotic tension in this scene is the only chemistry we see across eight episodes. His romance with the female vampire has the aura of two pre-teen siblings cosplaying to amuse their parents.

If I were Bengali right now, Id be even closer to filing that lawsuit. Tooth Pari is another symptom of the Bollywood-Bong syndrome, completing the 2023 trilogy along with the screechy Mrs. Chatterjee vs Norway and the clueless Mrs Undercover. The setting is modern-day Kolkata, again. So you have a fanged protagonist named Rumi (Tanya Maniktala) of course, whose lyrical motivations can best be described as all vibes. Rumi lives in the Neeche (Below) section of the city, with a clan of 30 former-human vampires who depend on frozen blood pouches for nourishment. But shes a firebrand, so she sneaks out of the underworld (accessible by a pillar at a metro station) after sunset, parties and seduces amoral Bengali men to feast on their fresh blood. Thanks to some exposition dumps parading as quick chats, the world-building terminology flows thick and fast: Deep-hyp (wiping out the victims memory), blood bar, baaghinis, sharpies, hibernation pods, decapping, vampires greeting each other with a cheerful Goodnight, clan leader Ora, overlord AD, the Cutmundus (a gang of vampire killers) and their witchy leader Luna Luka. It is also unsubtly conveyed that garlic, silver, Howrah bridge, smoking and sunlight are hazardous to vampires. I may or may not be kidding about Howrah and sunlight, but it shouldnt matter.

One night, Rumi bites a drunk mans prosthetic neck (Im serious) and loses her right canine. Her urgent visit to a dentist that soft-spoken, mollycoddled virgin named Bikram Roy sparks off an (alleged) attraction between the two. While she discovers the purity of Doc Roy and hides her mischief from the leaders, her missing tooth triggers a crowd of convoluted sub-plots involving a troubled cop (Sikandar Kher, as Kartik Pal) and his unwitting alerting of the long-dormant Cutmundus. Everyone is out to get someone, and theres half-witted gore and half-baked lore. But most of Tooth Pari feels like an unsupervised root canal because of its uneven tone, flimsy writing, amateur acting and staging. The vampire lair below looks like Tim Burtons Batman raided a video-game parlour; it resembles the B-movie monster pad from the recent Phone Booth (2022), except Tooth Pari isnt supposed to be a spoof.

Its narrative is dead serious, because naturally, writer-director Pratim D. Gupta connects desi vampire legend to the real-world Emergency and conflicts of the Chinese Revolution-inspired Naxalite movement in Seventies Calcutta. The mythmaking is amusing at times, fuelled by the dissonance between what the show thinks it is and what it actually looks like. It fails at such a technical level where the rhythm of every scene exists in isolation to the next that sitting through Tooth Pari becomes an endurance exercise. I missed my swim this morning, so I suppose this will have to do.

Im willing to accept that Tooth Pari gets greedy and strives for genre-fluidity. But even within its hipster Tinder-Dracula universe, very little makes sense. A lot of Rumis fears stem from whether Ora and AD will find out about her frequent visits to the top. The penalty is instant death. But theres absolutely no tension attached to her curfew-breaking ways. She comes and goes at will, even though her senior guardians David (Saswata Chatterjee) and Kathak enthusiast Meera (Tillotama Shome) keep insisting that she is playing with fire. Theres never any danger of her getting caught; the security down under is as bad as the imaginary pressure. Then theres the track of the dude she unsuccessfully bites in the first episode, who soon turns into a vampire himself and gets inducted into the clan. Rumi knows that if he recognizes her as the seductress from above, her game is up. But her dodging of him below in this cramped space for 30 vampires is limited to one throwaway disguise sequence and nothing else until the end. The shows suspense is skewed and convenient, arriving only when the premise gets dizzy from running around in circles.

When the love story comes into focus, the track of Doc Roy and Rumi unfurls like its detached from the rest of the shows universe. Theres a cringey meet-the-parents episode in which Roy tries to test Rumi by serving her garlic chicken. (When she says shes vegetarian, she is served only the garlic chunks). Theres also a random meet-the-family episode, where Rumis ageless guardians visit Roys chaste Bengali parents, and the culture clash is mined with the clunkiness of fangs sinking into a concrete wall. Words like my past still haunts me, maybe your love will help and we are like fire and gasoline further blur the lines between spoof and mediocrity. The quirkiness of him asking her to promise that she will never bite (defy your primal instincts for me) is lost in the shows pursuit of phantom longing.

The performances are an extension of this mess. I get that vampires are not human, but the brief to Tanya Maniktala seems to be spirited but robotic its a strange, unfeeling turn that interprets energy as the language of inertia. Much like in Gangubai Kathiawadi, Shantanu Maheshwari looks frightfully young, though I suspect he might have had more to work with had he not been written as a mousy dentist. Some of the characters are downright absurd like AD, for instance, a silver-haired crook (he glows in the dark, I think) who seems to exist solely so that we notice how solid Adil Hussains Bengali is. Foremost among them is Luna Luka, played by Revathi, a vampy villain whose arc is as confounding as the taandav she does while killing vampires. Luna is flamboyant and showy, but she behaves like a bitter English Literature professor who is avenging her lack of tenureship. It takes some doing to squander a supporting cast of this calibre, but Tooth Pari is impossibly wasteful.

Its not Lunas silly dance or the tacky 90s-Mahabharata-aesthetic effects that are the issue so much as the soulless execution of these scenes. There is no sense of coherence to the staging at one point towards the end, a couple goes from happy to sad to combative to heartbroken in a single moment as if they were puppets with different mood buttons. At another point, the couple has sex in the bedroom (scored to whispery indie music) while their parents are busy drinking downstairs; it probably happens, but every scene in Tooth Pari whether its eating, kissing, killing, blood-sucking has the same mechanical pitch. Love is a dry theory here, not a tangible feeling or act. As is sex: When Rumi sucks on Roys gaping wound, his silly smile destroys the very concept of sexual innuendos. Even the few decent elements like the cops sad family situation, or Rumis loaded backstory unfold with alarming nonchalance. Its just cold film-making, as though this were a script-reading session with makeshift faces happening on screen.

The reason Im doubly upset with a series like Tooth Pari is because its a genre killer of sorts. The Hindi storytelling landscape is averse to risk-taking and innovation, which automatically weakens the conviction in sci-fi, zombie apocalypse, vigilante superhero and vampire stories. So when something like this does get made that too in a long format with streaming resources theres the extra responsibility of batting for a virgin genre and future storytellers. But Tooth Pari is the kind of misfire that might drive audiences away from homegrown vampire productions. You get only one chance to create such worlds for the first time, and for better or worse, a lot rides on these little breakthroughs. This is a one-liner that rarely digs beyond the potential of its premise.

The one great vignette of an aspiring actor choosing to become a vampire to preserve his youth only to realize that he is invisible to cameras unlocks the hope of many untapped immortality stories. A few vampires casually speak about how they helped Mahatma Gandhi drape his dhoti or refer to their time during the Battle of Plassey, but the toll of their agelessness is never addressed. They act weird, and thats it, but what about Rumis challenge of having to seduce so many men across generations without falling in love? What about the trauma of having to live through so many different India(s)? What about the tragedy of falling for a human knowing that he will grow old and you will stay the same age (a la Let The Right One In)? What about the epidemic of sickly and suicidal people converting to vampires to cure themselves? What about nocturnal challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic? Theres so much that remains untouched by the makers in their pursuit of cheap wins (like Rumi taking Roy to an abandoned theatre in Maniktala as an ode to the actress playing her). The lack of narrative space is disappointing. If I were a vampire right now, Id be close to suing but closer to spreading blood-sucking terror in the industry. But perhaps the best revenge would be to make a mainstream thriller about dentists, Bengalis and disenfranchised vampires.

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Tooth Pari Series Review: Half-Witted Gore and Half-baked Lore With Vampires in Kolkata - FILM COMPANION

A quarter million tons to Mars: SpaceX’s ambitious vision – Ynetnews

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Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, outlined his vision years ago to transport humanity to Mars using the Starship spacecraft. Last weekend, a year after Starship's first trial and a few weeks after the third trial, Musk unveiled an updated plan, which includes the establishment of an independent colony on Mars within two decades.

Musk addressed SpaceX employees at the company's Boca Chica space base in South Texas. He reiterated the imperative of transforming humanity into a multi-planetary species, transcending the constraints of a single planet, and, in the distant future, into an interstellar species, not confined to a single solar system.

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Starship spacecraft

(Photo: SpaceX)

Mars stands as the primary candidate for human settlement, currently representing the sole viable option. To realize this monumental goal, SpaceX developed the Starship system, a massive spacecraft capable of vertical landing and reusability that can be launched repeatedly. Its launch vehicle, Super Heavy, is also designed for multiple deployments. The entire assembly of the spacecraft and the launch vehicle is collectively referred to as Starship, though this can be somewhat confusing.

In Starship's third trial, conducted in March 2024, the spacecraft achieved its designated space trajectory for the first time, followed by re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. However, the intended activation of its engines in space and subsequent targeted crash into the sea encountered technical failures. The spacecraft failed to reactivate its engines for a controlled descent and ultimately disintegrated during re-entry. Additionally, the launch vehicle, which was supposed to perform a landing maneuver over water and then crash into the sea, exploded before completing its mission.

In his Saturday speech, Musk expressed hope that the spacecraft would successfully withstand the heat during re-entry in its fourth experimental flight, scheduled for a few weeks later. In the future, plans to implement a novel landing technique for the launch vehicle, and in some cases the spacecraft itself, involving a specialized tower equipped with mechanical arms to gently guide the hovering rocket to the ground. In the forthcoming flight, Musk said, the rocket will attempt a landing with a virtual tower over the sea, executing the vertical stabilization maneuver while hovering, before crashing into the water. A successful virtual maneuver would pave the way for its real-world counterpart to be tested in the subsequent fifth flight.

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A formidable launch system poised to surpass all predecessors. Starship 3, on the right, compared to the two preceding models

(Photo: SpaceX)

A successful virtual maneuver would pave the way for its real-world counterpart to be tested in the subsequent fifth flight. The maneuver is more challenging concerning the spacecraft, due to its high-speed descent from space. Musk stated that the company would want to record at least two consecutive successes in such a maneuver over the sea before attempting to land the spacecraft at its Texas launch base, to reduce the potential risk of debris and shrapnel scattering over the United States and Mexico in the event of a malfunction.

Presently, Starship launches are performed exclusively only from SpaceX's facility in Texas, but the company has already started building a suitable launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it launches most of its rockets. Musk has revealed that the company is constructing two launch pads there, with the first anticipated to become operational by the middle of next year. Along with an additional launch pad under construction at Boca Chica, this will bring the total to four active Starship launch facilities by the end of next year. Trials will continue in Texas, while routine operational launches will shift to Florida.

The main innovation in Musk's remarks was the presentation of the future model of Starship, called Starship 3. Following the completion of trials, SpaceX plans to initiate flights using Starship 2, which is slightly larger than the models currently being tested: it will be about 52 meters tall, compared to about 50 meters in the current version, and will be capable of transporting a payload of at least 100 tons to Earths orbit. The upcoming Starship 3 will be nearly 70 meters in height, equipped with nine engines instead of six, and capable of carrying over 200 tons of payload to Earths orbit. For comparison, the Saturn V rocket, which launched the Apollo spacecraft to the moon, carried a payload of about 140 tons to Earths orbit.

In parallel with upgrades to the spacecraft, the company is also developing a new model of Raptor engines, utilized both in the launch vehicle and in Starship itself. Musk presented the ex-generation engine, Raptor 3, which is anticipated to withstand harsh conditions, particularly heat, owing to an internalized design for components that are currently installed externally. Additionally, Raptor 3 will provide stronger thrust and will be easier to manufacture due to the improved design.

The key to Starship missions to Mars, or any other destination, will be refueling in Earth orbita technology that has not yet been tested, in part due to the challenges of transferring large quantities of liquids in microgravity conditions. SpaceX has already commenced the third experimental flight of Starship to evaluate technologies for fuel transfer between tanks. The long-term plan envisions Starship vessels loaded with cargo to Mars or other destinations reaching Earth orbit with nearly depleted fuel tanks, having consumed most of their fuel to bring the payload into orbit. There, they will connect to refueling ships that will replenish their tanks, before setting off to their distant destination.

Given the differing orbital speeds of Earth and Mars around the sun, launches to the Red Planet are possible only during specific windows when the two planets are relatively close, resulting in a journey lasting typically 6 to 9 months. These potential launch windows to Mars occur every 26 months. According to Musks vision, it should be possible to launch up to ten Starship spacecraft per day during these time windows. Once fueled, these spacecraft will await the opportune moment to initiate their journey toward Mars.

Musk proposes that each craft, carrying 200 tons of cargo, could collectively transport 250,000 tons of equipment to Mars during each launch window, culminating in delivery of one million tons of essential supplies to the neighboring planet over an approximate span of about eight years. Musk believes that establishing a functioning and self-sustainable colony on Mars, capable of producing and meeting all its needs independently without reliance on Earth, requires the migration of a million people and several million tons of cargo. He believes this goal can be achieved within twenty years. This ambitious endeavor entails the construction of thousands of spacecraft per year, a feat that Musk deems entirely feasible and comparable to current automotive industry scales.

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According to Musk, a self-sustaining Mars colony that would be independent of Earth could be established within 20 years. Visualization of SpaceXs Mars Colony

(Photo: SpaceX)

Such a colony would need to develop, among other things, energy sources and methods for their production, mining methods for ice and minerals, long-term life support systems, construction methods and technologies utilizing local materials, and a global communication system. According to Musk's vision, the need for new technologies opens up many opportunities for entrepreneurs and offers new horizons for companies entering these markets.

According to his plan, most of the Starship spacecraft launched to Mars will not return from there but will instead undergo recycling for colony needs. The spacecraft, constructed from stainless steel, could be melted down and recycled to produce tools, building materials, and more. Later, some of the spacecraft will be launched back to Earth after refueling, utilizing resources harvested from the Martian atmosphere and from the ice in its soil, notably methane (CH4) and oxygen (O2). Ultimately, this could establish regular, albeit slow, two-way traffic between Earth and Mars.

Central to realizing the grand plan is a significant reduction in launch expenses. Musk is convinced that by implementing mass production techniques for thousands of spacecraft and rockets per year, using affordable and readily available fuel, and fully recycling these crafts and rockets, the cost of launching a Starship could drop to just $2-3 million. While this might still seem costly, it is notably less than the price of launching "Falcon 1", which the company launched at the beginning of its journey in 2006, capable of carrying less than 200 kilograms of payload into Earth orbit.

In the meantime, the company is financing most of Starships production and development from its two main projects: the Starlink satellite communication network, which includes more than 6,000 satellites serving close to three million customers, and launches to Earth orbit utilizing the Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX's trusted workhorse. These rockets deploy satellites for many commercial and governmental clients, as well as crewed and uncrewed Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. Currently, until Boeing finally launches its crewed spacecraft, SpaceX remains the sole American entity launching astronauts into space, serving both NASA and private companies such as Axiom.

SpaceX is engaged in many other projects, notably NASA's effort to return humans on the moon again as part of the Artemis program. Starship has been selected by NASA as the designated crewed landing vehicle for the program's initial missions, and potentially also in subsequent endeavors.For these purposes, SpaceX is developing a lunar version of Starship, equipped with appropriate landing legs and devoid of the heat shield and steering fins needed for atmospheric reentry. NASA officially plans a crewed landing on the moon by the end of 2026, though it is more realistically expected to occur two or three years later.

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A testing ground for technologies en route to Mars. SpaceX's envisioned lunar base

(Photo: SpaceX)

The company's agreement with NASA does not grant the space agency exclusive rights to use the lunar landing vehicle, allowing SpaceX to sell it to other space agencies or use it for private missions. Indeed, SpaceX has expressed intentions to establish a Moon base, as briefly mentioned by Musk in his recent address. Such a base, if realized, would likely serve SpaceX or its clients as a testing ground for technologies destined for Mars exploration

Meanwhile, SpaceX is solidifying its status as the foremost operator in Earths orbit. According to Musk, about 90 percent of orbital activity is attributable to SpaceX, primarily driven by the Starlink satellites. Musk notes that approximately 90 percent of orbital activity is attributable to SpaceX, primarily due to the Starlink satellites. China accounts for an additional six percent, with the remaining four percent distributed among other global entities.

SpaceX's dominance is expected to increase once Starship becomes fully operational. Well before routine Mars flights become a reality, it's likely that these sizable spacecraft, if they deliver on their promise of low launch costs, will be used not only for deploying large payloads such as space stations but also for satellite deployment and other spacecraft missions. Musk estimates that his company could eventually control 99 percent of activity in Earth orbit. While this goal may sound ambitious and aspirational, judging by SpaceX's progress so far, it is by no means unattainable.

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Best Bill Farmer Films, Series and Shorts on Disney+ – What’s On Disney Plus

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Disney takes time to honor those who have contributed to the companys success by recognizing them as Disney Legends. One of the Disney Legends is Bill Farmer who worked in animation. He is best known as the voice of Goofy and Pluto but has also provided countless other voices over the years. Lets take a look at some of the best films, series or shorts on Disney+ featuring Bill Farmer.

A toon-hating detective is a cartoon rabbits only hope to prove his innocence when he is accused of murder.

A prince cursed to spend his days as a hideous monster sets out to regain his humanity by earning a young womans love.

When Max makes a preposterous promise to a girl he has a crush on, his chances to fulfilling it seem hopeless when he is dragged onto a cross-country trip with his embarrassing father, Goofy.

A cowboy doll is profoundly threatened and jealous when a new spaceman action figure supplants him as top toy in a boys bedroom.

A deformed bell-ringer must assert his independence from a vicious government minister in order to help his friend, a gypsy dancer.

The son of Zeus and Hera is stripped of his immortality as an infant and must become a true hero in order to reclaim it.

A misfit ant, looking for warriors to save his colony from greedy grasshoppers, recruits a group of bugs that turn out to be an inept circus troupe.

When Woody is stolen by a toy collector, Buzz and his friends set out on a rescue mission to save Woody before he becomes a museum toy property with his roundup gang Jessie, Prospector, and Bullseye.

Max goes to college, but to his embarrassment his father loses his job and goes to his sons campus.

In order to power the city, monsters have to scare children so that they scream. However, the children are toxic to the monsters, and after a child gets through, two monsters realize things may not be what they think.

When a young Inuit hunter needlessly kills a bear, he is magically changed into a bear himself as punishment with a talkative cub being his only guide to changing back.

To save their farm, the resident animals go bounty hunting for a notorious outlaw.

Manny, Sid and Diego discover that the ice age is coming to an end, and join everybody for a journey to higher ground. On the trip, they discover that Manny is not in fact the last of the woolly mammoths.

On the way to the biggest race of his life, a hotshot rookie race car gets stranded in a rundown town, and learns that winning isnt everything in life.

A look at the relationship between Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. Sully Sullivan (John Goodman) during their days at Monsters University, when they werent necessarily the best of friends.

The famed stepbrother inventors know what theyre gonna do today. Theyre gonna rescue their sister from an alien abduction.

A poor boy and a prince exchange identities and lives while the villainous Captain of the Guard plots to take advantage of this.

Three tales of Christmas past about Donalds nephews reliving the day on repeat, Max Goofs belief in Santa being challenged, and Mickey and Minnie making ends meet.

Jaq and Gus create a storybook based on three events that happened after the first film. The stories include Cinderellas opposition to the courts strict etiquette, Jaqs becoming human for a day, and Anastasias redemption through love.

Timon the meerkat and Pumbaa the warthog are best pals and the unsung heroes of the African savanna. This prequel to the smash Disney animated adventure takes you back way back before Simbas adventure began. Youll find out all about Timon and Pumbaa and tag along as they search for the perfect home and attempt to raise a rambunctious lion cub.

Mickey, Donald and Goofy are the French three Musketeers.

Mickey and all his Disney pals star in an original movie about the importance of opening your heart to the true spirit of Christmas. Stubborn old Donald tries in vain to resist the joys of the season, and Mickey and Pluto learn a great lesson about the power of friendship.

The classic Disney character Goofy is a single father raising his son, Max, in Spoonerville. Pete, a frequent antagonist from the old cartoons, lives next door with his family.

The misadventures of Donald Duck and his rebellious teenage nephews with attitude, Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Mickey and his friends Minnie, Donald, Pluto, Daisy, Goofy, Pete, Clarabelle and more go on fun and educational adventures.

Higglytown is full of everyday heroes like Mail Carrier Hero (Kathie Lee Gifford), Fireman Hero (Donald Faison), and Bus Driver Hero (Stuart Pankin). This inventive series taught children about their ever-growing environment in an entertaining way.

Minnie and daisy open a bow shop in which they help people and have adventures.

Mickey Mouse takes on new adventures finding himself in silly situations in different settings.

An animated TV show that follows a band of young pirates who spend their days competing against Captain Hook and Mr. Smee for treasure.

Donald Duck decides to forgo flying south for the winter in order to spend Christmas with Mickey Mouse and his other pals.

At the end of Halloween night, Mickey attempts to cap off the evening by telling his and Donalds nephews the scariest story ever.

Ordinary Anne Boonchuy, 13, finds a music box that sends her to Amphibia, a world full of frogs, toads, and giant insects. With help from Sprig, she must adjust to life in Amphibia and discover the first true friendship in her life.

Vampirina tells the story of a young vampire girl who faces the joys and trials of being the new kid in town when her family moves from Transylvania to Pennsylvania.

The comedy-adventure series chronicles the high-flying adventures of trillionaire Scrooge McDuck; his temperamental nephew Donald Duck; grandnephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie; Launchpad McQuack; and Mrs. Beakley and her granddaughter Webby.

Mickey and his best pals Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy and Pluto embark on their greatest adventures yet, navigating the curve-balls of a wild and zany world where the magic of Disney makes the impossible possible.

Follows Funny, an enchanted talking playhouse who leads Mickey Mouse and his pals on imaginative adventures.

The lovable chipmunk troublemakers in a non-verbal, classic style comedy, following the ups and downs of two little creatures living life in the big city.

Goofy shows us how to get through this pandemic as only he can.

The series centers on the adventures of Chibi versions of Disney characters as they live in their own universe.

Bill Farmer, the voice actor of Goofy and Pluto, tells the stories of working dogs across the United States while educating viewers on responsible pet care.

Those are some of the amazing movies, series and specials featuring the wonderfully talented Bill Farmer. What will you be watching?

Jeremy has been a big Disney fan since he was a kid growing up during the Disney Renaissance. One day he hopes to go to every Disney Park in the world.

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Will future colonists on the moon and Mars develop new accents? – Livescience.com

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In the not-too-distant future, humans will begin to spread out into the solar system and not just for fleeting visits. The ultimate goal of space exploration (apart from finding aliens) is to set up human colonies on other worlds to learn more about our cosmic neighborhood and search for new resources that could help us thrive on Earth.

The first human space colonies will likely take root on the moon and could emerge within the next few decades. But the bigger, long-term target is to put a colony on Mars, which will become a more realistic goal once we've established a permanent presence on the moon.

The idea of human groups living away from our planet opens up a litany of questions about future colonists for experts to solve, such as how they will grow food or access water and how will they adapt to living with less gravity.

However, one query has long been overlooked: What might future space colonists sound like? Or, more specifically, what kind of accents might they develop?

Human accents are a fascinating topic of research in themselves. Every person has at least some sort of accent, regardless of whether they realize it, and all of these accents can be traced to specific times, places, languages or groups of people here on Earth. But with the dawn of space colonies on the horizon, the way future interplanetary settlers will pronounce their words is uncharted territory.

Related: Which animals will be the first to live on the moon and Mars?

"New accents emerge by imitation," Jonathan Harrington, director of the Institute for Phonetics and Speech Processing at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich in Germany, told Live Science. "We remember the sounds and words of a conversation, and these can have a small influence on the future way that we speak."

These changes are subconscious and occur only when we interact with people who have different accents from us over long periods, Harrington said. This is why people who have lived in a new country or region for long periods develop subtle changes to their accents without realizing it.

But when people with different accents become isolated from the rest of the world, the entire group will start to mimic one another, creating a brand-new blend of the available accents, Harrington said. This can start to happen very quickly, especially in small groups, he added.

In 2019, Harrington led a study that analyzed the phonetic changes of 11 researchers who spent a winter isolated in a laboratory in Antarctica. The group comprised eight people from England (five with Southern accents and three with Northern accents), one from the U.S. Northwest, one from Germany and one from Iceland. Throughout the experiment, the researchers noticed that each individual displayed phonetic changes and that the group collectively started pronouncing specific sounds differently and used different parts of their mouths to make those sounds. These were the first steps of a new accent forming.

"Exactly the same thing should happen in any environment in which individuals are isolated together over a prolonged period, whether this is in Antarctica or in space," Harrington said. "In fact, accent change should be even greater in space because contact with the home community is even more difficult."

On Mars or the moon, colonists could start to develop subconscious-yet-audible changes to their accents within a few months especially on Mars, where conversing with people on Earth is even more challenging due to the roughly 20-minute delay it takes for messages to travel between the two planets, Harrington said.

However, for unique, long-lasting accents to emerge, the colony likely would need to be big enough for colonists to reproduce, so that the accent could be passed on to future generations.

Related: Which planet is closest to Earth? (Hint: There's more than 1 right answer.)

If new colony members were added to a colony in the early stages of habitation, they could shift the trajectory of that group's accent. However, once an accent were fully established, new colonists would likely have a minor impact on how that accent evolved and would slowly change their accents to match that of the rest of the colony.

Any new accents that developed in space colonies would likely be shaped by the most abundant accent within the group, Harrington said. A good example of this is the Australian accent, which has lots of similarities to London's "Cockney" accent because most of the original settlers had that accent, he added.

If the initial accents were evenly split, then the new accents would be a mix of them all, rather than resembling one particular accent. As a result, unless future colonies on Mars and the moon are made up of groups with an identical mix of accents, they would likely develop different accents, Harrington said. The different environmental factors on the moon and Mars would likely not impact either accent in a major way, he added.

Without knowing the accents of the astronauts that will make up future Martian and lunar colonies, it is hard to predict what these accents might sound like. However, as soon as the colonists are selected, it could be possible to predict how the accents will evolve.

During the 2019 study in Antarctica, the study team used a computer learning program to predict how the participants' accents might change during the study. To their surprise, the team found the vocal changes they observed matched up very well with what the program predicted.

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Will future colonists on the moon and Mars develop new accents? - Livescience.com

Can Elon Musk Get Us to Mars Without Killing Everyone – Medium

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One mans vision looms large Elon Musk, the enigmatic entrepreneur behind SpaceX, has long set his sights on the Red Planet. But amidst the lofty ambitions and grand promises, one question looms large: Can Elon Musk really get humans to Mars alive?

Lets break down the complexities of this monumental endeavor. The longest duration a human has spent in space stands at 437 days, achieved by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov. With the transit time from Earth to Mars ranging between 150 to 300 days, the logistics of reaching Mars are within reach, at least in terms of duration. However, the true challenge lies in the journey back. The round trip encompasses a staggering 600 days, a duration for which we lack empirical data on the human bodys ability to endure.

But what about the broader goal of establishing a sustainable colony on Mars? The answer, unequivocally, is yes but with a caveat. While humanity may one day call Mars home, achieving a self-sustaining colony is a monumental task that will take decades to realize. The sheer magnitude of resources required from lifting massive payloads into orbit to transporting delicate equipment across vast distances presents formidable challenges that cannot be underestimated.

So, can Elon Musk deliver on his promise to transport humans to Mars alive? The answer is a cautious yes. Musks SpaceX endeavors have undeniably propelled space exploration to new heights, but the ultimate goal may be more aligned with deep-space tourism than colonization. While Musks ambitions are commendable, the reality of establishing a thriving Martian colony will require a collaborative effort between nation-states, mega-corporations, and the international community at large.

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Red Earth – Film Threat

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Director Georg Koszulinskis experimental film Red Earth takes viewers several hundred years into the future. In the year 2492, Mars has been colonized, and the first results of terraforming are beginning to emerge. While Earth had been hell-bent on self-destruction for centuries, a war between Earth and Mars finished the job, rendering our home planet into a blasted, inhospitable wasteland. The conflict began when it became clear that Martian planetary ethics were evolving to be more mindful of the environment. In contrast, Earths conviction was that Martian settlers were there for no reason other than exploiting Martian resources and supporting the home planet.

The story spans three generations with interwoven first-person narratives of a single-family participating in the Martian Colonization Project. The eldest is activist Earth scientist Telos (Mark Evans), who gets his daughter Kasei (Christina Leidel) onto a colony ship. She settles on Mars and becomes a revolutionary in the rebellion against Earth. In turn, her son Thomas (Matt Devine) is one of the first Martians to return and take stock of the war damage on Earth. Theres another character off-screen, Ursa Harriot, a historian and scribe who is quoted in text cards from a fictional history of the rebellion called Tractatus Mars.

The thing about experimental film is that, by definition, the style is going to defy normal expectations of film structure. Its important to go in knowing that and not be too put off by choices like a lack of script/dialogue, a non-linear narrative, an unusual visual presentation, or a soundtrack designed to evoke anxiety. The cinematography is primarily darkened, reddish landscapes, shots of the faces of the actors, and futuristic sequences of images distorted by digital noise. Red Earth employs all of these variations on normal cinema themes.

rendering our home planet into a blasted, inhospitable wasteland

For this film, also, a viewer needs to be comfortable with anti-capitalist, aggressively pro-environmental views. These positions play well in this context, taking our current apathy toward global warming and global wealth gap disparities to their logical conclusions over time. Given that we may well achieve the ability to travel to Mars in the next century or so, its not much of a reach to suggest that Mars colonists might not want to become the new world coal miners for a corrupt, fading Earth hegemony. The website supporting Red Earth mentions that it takes place in the late Anthropocene era. Thats another kind of final warning to us here on the (for now) blue planet Anthropocene is a way to describe the time during which humans have had sufficient technology to inflict a substantial impact on the planet. Its also a way to suggest our time will one day pass as the defining characteristic of a geological age is that it ends at some point.

Red Earth is a jarring film experience, flouting narrative and structure rules, as well as breaking the show, dont tell rule by having most of the salient information conveyed in narrated voice-overs and in the Tractatus Mars text excerpts displayed on the screen. Theres little to no action, no interaction, and a lot of speechifying. In the context of the film as a language, this one needs more verbs.

That said, its worth taking a spin on Red Earth if you think of it as a meditation on the life of our planet. Its a parable about what could happen to us if we dont turn aside from the industrial greed thats rapidly moving our ecosystem toward being uninhabitable. The irony in the backlash coming from Mars is that the way well get there is going to be based on that same capitalist push for more for the rich and less for everyone else. What if your workers do, finally, seize the means of production and then turn your home planet into a hostile desert to stop you from ruining theirs?

For more screening information, visit the Red Earth official website.

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Did the Curiosity rover find alien bones on Mars? – Syfy

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In the classic run of The Twilight Zone(check the SYFY schedule for airdates), Rod Serling delivered one of the most blistering twists in storytelling history with the episode I Shot an Arrow into the Air. The 15th episode of the first season begins with a crewed mission to an unexplored asteroid. Disaster strikes and half of the eight-person crew is killed when their craft crashes on the asteroids surface. Slowly, the rest of the crew perish, trying to survive on an alien world, until only one remains.

The 1968 filmPlanet of the Apes (also written by Serling) has a similar premise. Astronauts on an interstellar voyage waken from stasis and crash land on an alien planet in a star system 300 light years from Earth. There, they encounter populations of intelligent non-human apes and a subclass of primitive humans.

The characters of Battlestar Galactica (streaming now on Peacock!) represent the remnant of humanity leftover after all out war with a cybernetic race of warmongers known as the Cylons. The remaining humans inhabit 12 colony worlds, but theyre searching for a lost colony and their true home: Earth.

RELATED:Where is the Battlestar Galactica cast now? Edward James Olmos, Katee Sackhoff & more

In each case, the protagonists of these stories (not to mention the audience) were in for a big surprise. The last surviving astronaut of that asteroid mission, lived just long enough to learn his spacecraft had malfunctioned and he had crashed right here at home, in the Nevada desert. Having escaped the clutches of the apes, Charlton Heston's Taylor rides the shoreline on a horse and discovers the partially buried remains of the Statue of Liberty. And the humans looking for Earth, they eventually gave up, settled someplace else, and named it Earth in honor of the world they never found. That false Earth is the world youre living on right now.

Each of those stories have one thing in common: by the time the credits roll, weve learned that what the characters took for an alien world was, in fact, Earth all along.

Its a classic trope, and one which has been employed exhaustively, but its never been tried in real life. Imagine our surprise, then, when the Curiosity rover recently stumbled upon what appear to be the remains of a decayed rib cage sticking out of a Martian rock.

Curiosity has been roaming around Gale Crater, a 96-mile impact crater, for more than a decade, taking pictures the whole time. Martian spacecraft track the date based on how many Martian days (Sols) have passed since they landed. Sol 1 is the day they land, Sol 30 is one Martian month later, and so on. On Sol 3798 (That was April 1 on the Earth calendar, but this is no April Fools prank), the rover snapped pictures of a rock with a series of long, slender spikes sticking out of its side.

At first glance, it conjures visions of ribbed newts, a species of salamander with a defense mechanism that would make aliens proud. When threatened, ribbed newts change the angle of their ribs, swinging them forward while keeping the rest of the body rigid. As a result, the ribs pierce the newts skin, protruding from the sides of the body like adamantium claws in need of directions. On their way through the skin, theyre covered in a venomous mucus, turning them into deadly weapons. It isnt the most comfortable defense mechanism but, boy, is it effective.

While Gale Crater is whats left of a massive lake which existed roughly 3.5 billion years ago, it's unlikely that lake was filled with rib-stabbing newts. The images spurred conversation on Twitter, from scientists and enthusiasts alike. Nathalie Cabrol, an astrobiologist studying Mars ancient lake beds said she has never seen anything stranger in over 20 years studying Martian geology. She went on to explain that the formation, strange as it is, is likely the result of ripples in the rock and a whole lot of erosion. But if theres one thing weve learned about Mars, its that things arent always what they seem.

This certainly isnt the first time humans have found an unusual rock formation on Mars and thought it might be something weird. The red planet is famous for having a gigantic face on its surface and it has only been a few months since astronomers found what looks like the face of a bear in severe need of therapy, staring up from the surface of Mars. Each one is a surprise, but that they exist at all, shouldnt be surprising.

RELATED: Astronomers find the face of a cracked-out bear on the surface of Mars

If you take one desert planet, muss its hair with liquid water and volcanic activity, then turn down the lights, lock the doors, and leave it to the whims of wind-blown sand for a few billion years, youll end up with just about every geological formation you can imagine, and a few you cant. This isnt even the first time weve found something bone-like on Mars. Back in 2014, Curiositys MastCam imaged what looked like a loose collection of scattered bones, partially buried in Martian soil. One rock in particular sticks out among the rest, thanks to its striking resemblance to a femur.

If found on Earth, these rocks might trick a paleontologist for a minute, but theyd figure it out pretty quickly. On Mars, though, its pretty clear that geology is at work. Is it possible that life arose on Mars in the past? Yes! And were working hard to find out. Is it possible that Martian life not only existed but was complex enough to adapt large bodies and leave fossilized bones behind? Hell, we dont know. No one does. But probably not. If they did, there should be a lot of them and todays kids will grow up to become alien paleontologists, the coolest job that has ever existed. Its more likely that theyll grow up to become alien geologists and finally explain how weird rock formations like these are created.

You know how the old saying goes: never attribute to dope alien creatures that which is adequately explained by physics.

Watch Battlestar Galactica streaming on Peacock, and learn that the real Earth was the friends we made along the way.

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Did the Curiosity rover find alien bones on Mars? - Syfy

Fired on Mars cast: Who stars in the animated comedy series – Hidden Remote

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POLAND - 2022/01/21: In this photo illustration, HBO MAX logo is displayed on a smartphone with stock market graphics in the background. (Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

A new workplace comedy has entered into the streaming game! The upcoming Max animated comedy dystopian series Fired on Mars premieres Apr. 21 on the streaming service formerly known as HBO Max. The service has been switching their focus from family-based programming to adult animation withFired on Marsarriving on the platform at perfect time.

The series explores the precarious relationship between work and selflight years away from Earth. Jeff Cooper, the lead character, finds himself adrift in an office colony and is forced to reinvent himself and find meaning in a dangerous, alien, yet all-too-familiar corporate landscape.The animated series is based on the 2016 short film of the same name from newcomer writer/directors Nate Sherman and Nick Vokey. This movie will join the same slate of adult animated series that will live on the platform including the upcoming Clone High reboot.Are you looking to find out whos voicing the characters on the show? Read on to find out!

Previously, it was reported that SNL alum Pete Davidson would lead the series but has since not been mentioned in any current promotional media as the lead. The remaining cast of Fired on Mars has not yet been revealed.Want to see what to expect before the episodes are released? Look on to find out!

Watch the trailer below on the official Max YouTube channel:

Let us know in the comments below if you plan on watching! You can stream all eight episodes of Fired on Mars starting Apr. 20 on Max. Make sure to keep up todate with Hidden Remote for more Fired on Mars news and coverage.

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Fired on Mars cast: Who stars in the animated comedy series - Hidden Remote

SpaceX releases simulation video of trip to Mars – Travel Tomorrow

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SpaceX has released a simulation video of Mission to Mars, showcasing Elon Musks vision of what the future of space travel could look like, including a colony on the Red Planet.

The 5-minute animation starts off showing Starbase, SpaceXs base on the Gulf Coast of Texas, before the Starship rocket takes off. Built from shiny stainless-steel, with its nostril embellished with fins and ten metres taller than the giant Saturn V rocket, Starship seems to be poised to revolutionise space travel. Capable of transporting thousands of tonnes in weight and greatly reduce back and forth travelling between space and Earth, the fully reusable rocket holds the key of Musks settlement of a colony on Mars.

Soon after take-off, the rocket breaks in two, the 33-engine first stage returns to base and smoothly lands back at the orbital launch tower, while the 50-metre-tall upper stage docks onto a tanker in Earth orbit to fuel up for the long journey ahead.

The video pans over Mars orbit then switches to a from-land view that shows there are total of four ships approaching the planet, leaving bright tails behind them. After a perfect landing, the doors of the rocket open and four astronauts gaze at the domed habitat in the middle of the human settlement seemingly flourishing on the Red Planet.

In February 2022, Musk detailed his vision of the future of space travel and of humans becoming an inter-planetary species. His ambitious goal envisions the creation of a colony on Mars, an insurance coverage, he said, where humanity would be protected from existential dangers on Earth. Starship is capable of doing that, Musk said. Its capable of getting a million tonnes to the surface of Mars and creating a self-sustaining city and I think we should try to do that as soon as we can.

The critical threshold for Mars is to have a city that is self-sustaining, he continued, recognising the difficulty of the ambition and even acknowledging that if any ingredient is missing, however minor it may be, the city would die out. If Earth stops sending shuttles to Mars, Musk envisioned, a colony on the Red Planet could be in jeopardy.

A few months later, SpaceXs chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell announced that people will reach Mars by the end of the decade, within 5 or 6 years to be more precise. While the company has ambitious plans, two start-ups have partnered to beat Musk to Mars, pledging a trip in 2024.

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SpaceX releases simulation video of trip to Mars - Travel Tomorrow

Thanks to NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can now circumnavigate the Martian surface – Syfy

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In SYFYs The Ark (airing Wednesday nightson SYFY, and streaming next day on Peacock!), the surviving crew of the colony ship Ark One are on a one way trip to Proxima Centauri b, humanitys new home, but only if they can get there alive. While the circumstances of their departure from Earth werent ideal, there is something appealing about the opportunity to see another world up close. One way to do that is to hop a ship off planet and endure the grueling trip to another world. Another option is to stay on the couch, crunching popcorn, while you globetrot around Mars in your jammies.

Jay Dickson, an image processing scientist at the Bruce Murray Laboratory for Planetary Visualization at Caltech, led the project to build a global mosaic of Mars, using data from NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The project was funded as part of NASAs Planetary Data Archiving, Restoration and Tools (PDART) program, whose aim is to develop new tools and resources from existing NASA data.

RELATED:'The Ark' writer Rebecca Rosenberg on perspective as only woman in SYFY series' 4-person writers' room

I wanted something that would be accessible to everyone. Schoolchildren can use this now. My mother, who just turned 78, can use this now. The goal is to lower the barriers for people who are interested in exploring Mars, said Dicksonin a statement.

The mosaic was created by stitching together more than 110,000 images taken by the MROs black and white Context Camera. In fact, the MRO has three cameras onboard, each of which is useful for different types of work. The Mars Color Imager (MARCI) produces a low-resolution global map of Mars every day. It doesnt have the sorts of surface features that are fun to look at, but its useful at tracking weather patterns across wide areas and over extended periods. The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) provides full color, high-detail images of small areas, on the same scale as a kitchen table. If they represent two extremes of the imaging spectrum, the CTX sits somewhere in the middle. It doesnt provide color, but it does gather data at the right scale for this kind of global surface map creation.

Images from the CTX have a resolution of roughly 270 square feet (25 square meters) per pixel, making this mosaic the highest resolution global image of Mars ever created. If you tried to print the whole mosaic to make your own scale model of the red planet, youd need an area about the size of the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, according to JPL. Thats about 900 feet in diameter, in case youre not a fan of collegiate level athletic architecture. Suffice it to say, you could spend a while walking around the virtual red planet.

Building the mosaic was no easy feat and took tens of thousands of hours over the course of six years to complete. The MRO has been in orbit around Mars since 2006 and has been absolutely crushing its job as space paparazzi ever since. In the course of its orbit, it has seen the planet from almost every conceivable angle, and there arent any instructions for stitching thousands of images into the ultimate planetary panorama. Building a mosaic like this is like putting a puzzle together, except most of the pieces have duplicates, some pieces are the wrong shade, and others are missing entirely.

RELATED: See Mars Jezero Crater for yourself in this stunning video tour

To make the job manageable, Dickson created an algorithm to sift through images, identify features, and use those features to stitch images together. When it was done sifting through the MRO data, Dickson had the foundation of his mosaic, but there were still 13,000 images the algorithm couldnt parse. He stitched those together himself manually, one at a time. By the time the project was finished, every single image had been put in its proper place. Any remaining gaps represent areas which hadnt yet been imaged at the time of the project or images which were obscured by clouds or dust.

Already, more than 120 peer reviewed scientific papers have reverenced the mosaic, demonstrating the value of these sorts of tools for research, but you dont need an advanced degree to use it. The MRO mosaic is designed to be as user friendly to as many people as possible. Users are presented with a list of popular destinations, including Jezero Crater, hometown of the Perseverance Rover, with the click of a button. Once you land at your destination, you can click around, zoom in and out, then jump to the next port. You could even circumnavigate Mars manually, like some sort of virtual interplanetary Magellan. Embark here for Gale Crater, Olympus Mons, and all stops between! What are you waiting for? The water is frozen and mostly trapped underground. But still!

If Mars is too near a destination, you can catch the last ship to Proxima Centauri b on The Ark!The Season 1 finale airson SYFYthis Wednesday, April 19, at 10 p.m. ET. Catch up on the story thus far with Episodes 1-11 streamingon Peacock. The series wasofficially renewed for a second seasonearlier this week.

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Thanks to NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can now circumnavigate the Martian surface - Syfy

William Shatner is back in the captain’s chair in wild new ‘Stars on … – Space.com

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The indefatigable William Shatner is about to embark on a Red Planet mission, or at least a simulated one.

Fox is heating up summertime television by approving a full season of the sci-fi reality series, "Stars on Mars," a celebrity-fueled unscripted show spotlighting "Star Trek" luminaryWilliam Shatner in a host-style role, according to Variety (opens in new tab). This extra-planetary series will premiere in June and is centered around Earthly entertainment stars as they slip on spacesuits to reside inside a colony habitat designed to simulate environments that a Mars astronaut might encounter on a future mission.

"Stars on Mars" will launch on Monday, June 5, at 8 p.m. exclusively on Fox. This intriguing show arrives from the creative folks at Fremantle's Eureka Productions and follows this crew of celebrity contestants competing in the Mars-ish setting with Shatner handing out certain tasks and commands to the stars from a simulated Mission Control until only one "celebronaut" remains standing.

Related: Watch SpaceX launch a Starship to Mars in this gorgeous new animation

"The moment I heard the pitch for 'Stars on Mars,' I knew a show this bold, this big and this outlandish simply belonged on Fox," said Fox unscripted programming president Allison Wallach in a press statement, Variety reported. "Watching celebrities take giant leaps out of their comfort zone and step into the unexpected will no doubt be truly transformational and comical. Throughout, we will learn a lot about these stars, and when you factor in William Shatner leading the charge from Mission Control, we have the makings of a show that's ready for blast off."

Here's the official description of this far-out Martian free-for-all:

The show will open with the celebrities living together as they live, eat, sleep, strategize, and bond with each other in the same space station. During their stay, they will be faced with authentic conditions that simulate life on Mars, and they must use their brains and brawn or maybe just their stellar social skills to outlast the competition and claim the title of brightest star in the galaxy. The celebrities will compete in missions and will vote to eliminate one of their crewmates each week, sending them back to Earth.

Cue the intergalactic alliances and rivalries. "Stars on Mars" will send these famous rookie space travelers where no one has gone before and reveal who has what it takes to survive life on Mars.

Eureka Productions' Chris Culvenor conceived this clever "Stars on Mars" concept and will act as executive producer alongside Paul Franklin, Wes Dening and Eden Gaha. Charles Wachter is aboard the project as executive producer and showrunner.

"Stars on Mars" will premiere on Fox on June 5, 2023.

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Ved Chirayath is on mission to map world’s oceans – Mirage News

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The University of Miami professor, National Geographic Explorer, inventor, and fashion photographer has created and developed next-generation remote sensing instruments capable of mapping the seafloor in remarkable detail.

One misstep and Ved Chirayath would have been a goner. Cut off from civilization and his cell phone useless, he knew that medical aid would never reach him in time if he were bitten by one of the countless sea snakes that surrounded him.

Theyre curious creatures, the University of Miami researcher and National Geographic Explorer said of the highly venomous snakes. Theyll swim right up to you and lick you. And when they sleep, they sleep head down in the rocks. So, my real concern was not to step on one.

But despite the very real prospect of death, Chirayath concentrated on the task at hand: mapping a colony of stromatolites in Australias snake-infested Shark Bay.

He would spend the entire two months of that 2012 field campaign navigating around the deadly snakes, the thought of dying only occasionally entering his mind. His unquenchable thirst for knowledge allowed him to stay focused.

Its that same thirst that drives him today in his quest to explore Earths last unexplored frontier: its oceans.

We have mapped more of Mars and our Moon than we have of our planets seafloor, and we know more about the large-scale structure of our universe and its history than we do about the various systems in our oceans, said Chirayath, the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. And we know so much more about our universe because we can see very far into space and in different wavelengths.

Peering into the deep ocean, however, is another matter. Light penetrates only so far below the sea surface, and ocean waves greatly distort the appearance of undersea objects.

But using a camera he invented that literally sees through ocean waves, Chirayath is removing those distortions and helping to reveal the trove of deep secrets hidden by our oceans. Mounted on a drone flying above the water, FluidCam uses a technology called Fluid Lensing to photograph and map the ocean in remarkable clarity. From American Samoa and Guam to Hawaii and Puerto Rico, he has used the device to map more than a dozen shallow marine ecosystems such as coral reefs at depths as low as 63 feet.

That still pales in comparison to the average depth of the ocean, which is nearly 4,000 meters. And 99 percent of the habitable volume of our planet is in that region, said Chirayath, who also directs the Rosenstiel Schools Aircraft Center for Earth Studies (ACES).

So, he created the more powerful MiDAR. The Multispectral Imaging, Detection, and Active Reflectance device combines FluidCam with high-intensity LED and laser light pulses to map and transmit 3D images of the sea floor at greater detail and depths. Chirayaths research will be on display April 2021 at the Universitys showcase exhibit during the eMerge Americas conference at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Recently, he used MiDAR to conduct multispectral mapping of corals in Guam, validating the airborne images during subsequent dives.

Still, even MiDAR will not illuminate objects 4,000 meters deep. But install the device on a robot sub that can dive thousands of meters deep, and the possibilities of imaging the seafloor in the same detail and volume that satellites have mapped land are limitless, according to Chirayath.

It keeps me up at night, he said of MiDARs potential. He envisions his creation, awarded NASAs invention of the year in 2019, exploring not only the Earths deep oceans but worlds beyondfrom sampling minerals on Mars to looking for signs of life beneath the icy ocean moons like Jupiters Europa.

Chirayaths fascination with studying and surveying the ocean deep was born out of his love of the stars.

He grew up in Los Angeles, looking up at the stars and contemplating the possibility of life on other planets. As a youngster, he would attend open house events at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in nearby Pasadena, learning from the scientists and engineers who were building the Cassini space probe that explored Saturn and its intricate rings.

I knew at 5 years old that I wanted to work for NASA and make a contribution to discovering other worlds, Chirayath said.

By the time he was a teenager, astronomy had been his passion for more than half his life. It was also an escape, a methodology, he said, to deal with some of the challenges he faced at that time. I was homeless for about three years, and I used that time to sit on top of a mountain and do as much astronomy as I could, Chirayath noted.

At 16, he detected an exoplanet one and a half times the size of Jupiter and 150 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, doing so with a consumer digital camera he modified and attached to a telescope. His refashioned scope allowed him to employ the transit photometry method for detecting exoplanets. Whenever a planet passes directly between a star and its observer, it dims the stars light ever so slightly. Chirayaths modified telescope detected just such a dip in light.

Earth- and space-based observatories that look continuously at stars for weeks and even months at a time use the technique. It took Chirayath three years to locate the planet, but his patience paid off in the form of a scholarship he won and used to help study theoretical physics at Moscow State University in Russia.He later transferred to Stanford University, where he earned his undergraduate degree.

To help pay the bills while he attended college, he worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue. His pictures have also appeared in Elle, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair.

He earned his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University, reconnecting with his passion for astronomy and always asking himself, What can I do with small telescopes? How can I make an impact? How can I develop new technologies and explore our solar system?

He came to the University of Miami in 2021 after a decade-long career at NASAs Ames Research Center, where he founded and led its Laboratory for Advanced Sensing, inventing the suite of next-generation remote sensing technologies that are now the cornerstones of his work at ACES.

While at NASA, he also created NeMO-Net, a single player video game in which players help NASA classify coral reefs. The space agency awarded Chirayath with its 2016 Equal Employment Opportunity Medal for organizing its first participation in the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade.

His fluid lensing mapping of the ocean promises to improve the resilience of coastal areas impacted by severe storms as well as assess the effects of climate change on coastal areas around the world.

While his origins are in astronomy, today he is more of a marine scientist than an astrophysicist. Still, the two fields are incredibly similar, Chirayath pointed out. Theyre both very difficult to study and require thinking beyond our terrestrial comfort zone. I love them both, and they can easily coexist. You can have large space observatories, and they can even help one another. A lot of the technologies that Ive created were inspired by things I learned in astrophysics and applied astronomy. But theres not that curiosity for understanding our own planet in a way that there is for space, and Im hoping to change that.

He applauds the $14 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which has been taking the deepest infrared images of our universe ever taken.

But weve never invested $14 billion into an ocean observatory, into something that looks critically at a piece of the puzzle that if we miss, we do so at our own peril, Chirayath explained. Im one of the many technologists who are looking inward and saying, This is what we understand about the universe and its large-scale structure, but a lot of the questions that are being posed to understand our universe and whats in it can also be posed for the ocean. If we dont map it, if we dont understand it, if were not able to characterize it, then when it fails or changes, humans may not be a part of the future.

The University of Miami is a Titanium Sponsor of eMerge Americas. Visit the Universitys research and technology showcase April 2021 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Registration for an Unlimited TECH Pass is free for all University of Miami students and faculty and staff members.

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Ved Chirayath is on mission to map world's oceans - Mirage News

Space Launch: Who, What, and Where We’re Going – Andreessen Horowitz

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For a full landscape of the commercial space market, see our previous post: Space: A Market Map.

Few achievements illustrate American Dynamism in a more visceral way than a rocket blasting off. It is, in a sense, controlled chaos the culmination of expertise in a number of scientific disciplines, harnessing explosive forces to escape our planets grip. In recent years, technical innovations and market opportunity have ushered in an ecosystem of new launch providers, and a domain once reserved for nations is now led by private companies.

Their simple goal is to put mass, in the form of commercial or government spacecraft, into orbit. Of course, this is literally rocket science, so theres actually nothing simple about it. Earths atmosphere and gravity attempt to restrain us, and although we regularly break free today, theres still much innovation to come if were going to truly open up space for anything beyond satellites and exploratory research missions.

This resurgence of the launch ecosystem is young, but segments are emerging. There are a lot of rocket companies, and more are popping up every year. What follows is an explanation of how the launch market works and where it might be headed.

Launch prices have dropped precipitously in recent years, expanding the potential for profitable applications. Notably, in this period, weve seen satellites dramatically shrink in size. But while they may differ in mass, they remain similar in principle:The largest segments of the space economy today are satellites transferring information through the electromagnetic spectrum. Doing this in space is really cheap, as it is on Earth, and is especially worth it if that data can only be supported by space-based infrastructure (e.g. remote sensors, satellite internet, GPS, etc.). As of now, information technology is the king of space and both commercial and government customers are driving demand.

Understandably, customers want to quickly and successfully reach orbit for the cheapest price. Reliability and speed aside, price is commonly measured in $/kilogram (kg). This is often expressed as the price per unit if the rocket is full; more practically, the lowest costs fall between $3,000/kg and $6,000/kg. This is due in part to reusability, scheduling, and volume requirements. However, most customers wont fill a rocket alone, as few companies have payload demands exceeding tens of thousands of kilograms.

Cost per launch better reflects the true price of reaching orbit. You can either fill the full payload capacity and achieve the lowest $/kg costs, or fill only a small fraction of the total capacity and pay more per unit. But the launch company charges the same price whether its at full capacity or empty. Naturally, rideshares enable multiple companies to split the cost per launch, which is why $/kg is commonly used for comparisons (more on this later).

For optimal efficiency and pricing, launch capacity would be matched to payload demand. Large rockets that arent filled end up being far more expensive than a smaller rocket that is fully filled; economical viability can trump technical capability, in that sense. The launch market is commonly categorized by how much mass the rocket can carry small, medium, heavy, super heavy. Ive elected to simplify this according to the groupings of customers and use cases, not just launch capabilities: Big rockets launch big payloads, often mega constellations, and Small / Medium rockets launch smaller payloads, enabling dedicated scheduling and deployment location for spacecraft.

Today, the launch market is roughly $12 billion, but is estimated to grow to $30 billion or more by 2030. The western launch providers that flew at least once in 2022 are illustrated below, including legacy players like United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Arianespace.

If you can fill them, big rockets are the cheapest per-unit launch option. The SpaceX Falcon 9 has proven to be the most effective vehicle for this market, making up a whopping 60 of the 91 western launches in 2022 and there is no close second. But that stat only illustrates whos dominating the launches: Unpacking the customers in this segment reveals broader insights about the launch market and where its headed.

Lets start with SpaceX. In 2022, over 50% of SpaceXs launches were dedicated to Starlink, which now makes up the majority of objects in low-Earth orbit (LEO). These are very full launches. Its worth noting here that Falcon 9s listed max payload 22,800 kg is for the expendable version; its reusable rocket version peaks at around 80% of listed capacity roughly ~18,000 kg for LEO. Even so, Starlink missions regularly pack in over 16,000 kg (approximately 50 satellites), and geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) missions pack over 4,000 kg. In 2022, four of Falcon 9s launches were dedicated to U.S. government payloads, and three others were for allied governments.

For ULA, six out of eight launches on their Atlas V and Delta IV rockets flew U.S. government hardware. The majority of these government payloads are expensive, research-focused or classified, and demand reliability; they cant risk a failed launch.

SpaceXs Falcon Heavy found a unique use case in this government market, and its present usage illustrates the broader importance of matching rocket size with payload demand. Heavy was initially designed for the massive thrust to get large telecom satellites into GTO a highly elliptical orbit that circulates into geosynchronous orbit (GEO) with time, and is much easier to reach than heading to GEO directly. However, the Falcon 9 improved so much over the years that it stole this market from its sister rocket. In 2022, roughly 20% of Falcon 9s launches were for large commercial payloads entering GTO.

Though Heavys unit prices are very low when full, few customers will pay the $97 million launch price when the Falcon 9s $67 million cost maps better to their needs. Heavy would be flown for Starlink missions, but its payload volume is actually similar to the Falcon 9. Effectively, you cant fit more Starlinks in a Heavy anyway, so the added thrust is worthless. On top of this, difficulties with coordinating large enough launchpads makes scheduling difficult. Falcon Heavy only flew once last year, carrying heavy Space Force satellites directly to GEO.

Still, the majority of the launch market is in deploying large constellations in LEO. This will not just be Starlink. Other large telecom deployments, like Amazons Project Kuiper and OneWeb, will also demand high-volume, cheap launches. Given the competitive atmosphere, however, both of these constellations appear to be avoiding launching with SpaceX. Project Kuiper is looking at Arianespace, ULA, and, of course, Blue Origin for their future needs. And OneWeb selected Indias space program and Relativitys future rocket, Terran R. Additionally, OneWeb is launching a couple of payloads with SpaceX due to the last minute cancellation of their Russian Soyuz launches because of the war in Ukraine.

There is also significant demand from other satellite operators, albeit not at the scale of communication satellites. For example, since 2017, Planet Labs has launched from the Russian and Indian state space organizations, Arianespace, Rocket Labs, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX. Today, of the ~7,000 satellites in various orbits, around 1,000 operate in a remote sensing capacity like Planet Labs.

Building and maintaining increasingly large constellations of satellites requires big rockets, and there is certainly demand in this market available to whoever is able to launch reliably. Noteworthy big rockets in development include:

Existing players will likely dominate this market, and steep development costs hundreds of millions, minimum put new entrants at a disadvantage. The majority of the satellites going into space will continue to belong to and be launched by SpaceX; the rest of the market will likely be fighting for chunks of other large constellations. Additionally, the loss of Russian launch has effectively taken offline around 20% of global capacity, and Amazon bought up nearly all remaining viable launch partners until around 2025. Many companies that started building smaller rockets, like Relativity and Rocket Lab, are now moving upmarket to meet this opportunity. Well see rockets get as large as regular payload demand can fill by some estimates, tens of thousands of satellites by 2030.

However, although larger rockets are potentially very profitable, there is still demand in the smaller market, buoyed by significant startup activity.

If you have a single, 200-kilogram satellite you want to get into LEO, you wont be buying out an entire Falcon 9. The common solution to this is to buy a ride with a big rocket thats already launching and is sharing capacity. Last year, for example, SpaceX operated 3 rideshares to LEO to serve this remainder market starting at roughly $6,600/kg.

However, like a bus, you are subject to their timelines and destinations and, frankly, youre competing for capacity against their own Starlink satellites. An additional concern, in some situations, is that precise deployment into a specific orbital position is impossible without a dedicated launch. Currently, there also is a two-year (or more) wait time for rideshare missions. Many smallsat companies are already dealing with tight timelines, so any uncertainty or waiting around for launch is painful. This reality has opened the door for smaller, dedicated launch providers that map closer to smaller payload demand and have more personalized schedules and destinations effectively, a space courier.

There are dozens of companies working in this segment. Because the rocket is smaller and has lower development costs, weve seen a bit more flexibility on launch system design: launching from a mid-flight plane, hypersonic platforms, kinetic first stage, and fully reusable rockets. Right now, Rocket Labs Electron is the leader in this small / medium launch category, flying nine times in 2022 (I wouldve placed Rocket Lab in the Big category, given Neutrons development, if not for the success of Electron). Others, like Astra and Firefly, also succeeded in launching last year, and more are just behind them.

Candidly, though, I expect this market to be tough. While there is demand for dedicated launch, and it will surely increase in the coming years, there will likely only be a handful of players (or fewer) with meaningful market share. Today, whoever can actually launch will get business, although I expect this to change as more systems go online. (However, even successful launches wont save you if the economics dont work out, as recently exhibited in the case of Virgin Orbit.) Reliability and scheduling will be important differentiators against bigger rockets, but within the smaller rocket ecosystem, cost will be a differentiator in order to win business. Price declines will likely fall into three categories:

Were also already seeing companies like Rocket Lab, Relativity, and Astra focus their efforts on building larger, cheaper per unit rockets, like the Neutron, Terran R, and Rocket 4. Small rockets want to become medium rockets, if not larger SpaceX, too, began with the small Falcon 1 before focusing on the bigger Falcon 9. Additionally, companies in this segment have extended into adjacent markets; Rocket Lab actually makes much of their revenue from their Photon spacecraft, and Astra is focusing revenue efforts on their acquired propulsion system. All of this to say that the size of this dedicated launch market remains unclear, and survival might require expanding into other, higher-margin, spaces.

More pessimistically, as the big launch market grows to fuel mega constellations and higher-energy orbit destinations, they might also operate more rideshares. These alone wont cover the development costs of big rockets, but they can still be profitable to launch on a regular basis and they will likely draw demand away from dedicated launch. Furthermore, the development of efficient satellite propulsion systems and space tugs might eliminate the desire for precise orbital drop offs. Rideshare could do the hard part, then you can find another way to go that last mile once in orbit.

As noted above, governments are also large buyers of launch services, and their involvement definitely matters when it comes to how the launch market will evolve. In fact, 109 of the 186 launches globally last year were dedicated to government payloads. When it comes to industries relevant to national security, governments will go out of their way to maintain a healthy industry of domestic suppliers and, of course, space is becoming increasingly critical.

Today, only a handful of nations can regularly enter orbit. There are effectively three players the United States, Russia, and China with distant rivals in Europe, India, Iran, Israel, and South Korea. Perhaps most concerningly, China has accelerated their launch efforts in recent years and plans to deploy a 13,000-satellite mega constellation of their own. In 2022, the launch geographic split looked like this:

There is global demand for launch; last year, SpaceX flew 3 missions consisting of foreign government hardware, and there are many international satellite companies seeking orbital access. The largest launch providers will remain in the largest economies, but growing international demand will likely be subsidized by the governments that want it and channeled toward domestic industry. The days of SpaceX launching German or Japanese government satellites will likely disappear.

If a nation doesnt have launch capacity, and can afford it, they will likely develop it. South Korea has recently achieved this, and Australia is attempting to follow later this year. However, accessible launch pads are a limiting factor here, as most countries lack good locations. Many of Europes launches, for example, take place in French Guiana. To address this, well likely see countries partner to develop shared launch pads, or focus on alternative launch methods that do not require them like launching from a mid-flight plane.

Why does launch capacity matter? Tactical response: the ability to quickly design and launch a spacecraft to replace a damaged satellite or other more kinetic things. A country with security concerns should not rely on another nation for this service. In time, I expect most advanced nations to develop a domestic launch industry, likely small payloads, if only to maintain rapid response capabilities in times of conflict. Tactical response is an explicit goal of the U.S. Space Force, and last year Firefly was selected to take part in the third TacRS exercise, Victus Nox

The rise of the commercial launch industry catalyzed the growth of the modern space economy both directly in orbit and in markets enabled by assets in space. Like the transcontinental railroads of the late 19th century, many of these companies will not survive, but their efforts will lay the foundation for a new frontier. No doubt, SpaceX has been the chief architect of this progress so far.

However, even with weekly Falcon 9 launches, it is still incredibly expensive to move mass into and around in space. This is in part because even the best rockets suffer from the tyranny of the rocket equation, a physics principle illustrating one of the fields great challenges that it takes propellant to lift propellant. While aircraft typically take off with around 50% of their mass being fuel, rockets hover around 85%, counting both fuel and oxidizer (liquid oxygen). To minimize total propellant needed for a mission, weight is shed mid-launch. Often this involves dropping the heavy and high-thrust first stage after ascending beyond the thicker parts of the atmosphere. By reducing weight mid-flight, achieving orbital velocity with the second-stage engine is easier. Typically, the second stage burns up in the atmosphere upon re-entry.

SpaceX has achieved a number of firsts here. Namely, pioneering rapid re-use of the first stage through vertical landing, and developing some of the best rocket engines with the Merlin and Raptor, the latter vying to be the first full-flow, methalox propulsion system to reach orbit. In terms of rocketry, this would be a significant achievement that helps balance specific impulse (fuel economy), propellant storage mass, and pure thrust tempering the tyranny of the rocket equation.

Like an aircraft, however, building a rocket is far more expensive than fueling it the Falcon 9s propellant costs are only around $200,000 per flight. By far the most expensive part of a rocket is the massive first stage, nearly 60% of the total cost for the Falcon 9. A reusable first stage amortizes this across a number of launches, now exceeding 10 for the Falcon 9. Naturally, reducing the largest cost factor shook the launch market.

The question now is: What is next for launch in its current state? Looking farther forward, what new opportunities will open up when the next step function decline in launch costs occurs?

A wave of new rocket companies seek to dethrone the Falcon 9 by achieving even greater reusability and further reducing production costs. Personally, Im excited for Stoke Spaces fully reusable rocket, Relativity Spaces 3D-printed engines, and Rocket Labs structural innovations in their Neutron launch system. Real competition in the launch market is coming, and its likely well see Falcon 9s dominance and margins erode as competition comes online.

However, SpaceXs Starship, a 100,000-kg-payload, fully reusable rocket will completely change the space ecosystem. And this is not just for deploying large volumes of Starlink satellites. Starship makes space markets of physical goods, and moving people, become very real possibilities.

While Starship will not launch at breakeven, nor severely undercut existing prices, it will nonetheless usher in an era of larger payloads, unconstrained by mass, for both in-orbit and deep space objectives realistically, something closer to $1000/kg would still shake up the market. A Starship sitting in LEO could also act as a gas station, fueling a web of spacecraft activity serving commercial stations and transporting assets throughout cis-lunar space. With Starship for logistics, budgets for a Moon base become comparable to other government research programs, and the supply chain necessary for a Mars colony becomes achievable.

Looking further ahead, we might envision a science-fiction-inspired single-stage space plane something like a Star Wars X-Wing that can take off from a standstill, reach cruising speeds, and then accelerate into deep space. Completely optimizing launch systems for specific atmospheres and speeds a transition from jet engines into rockets is incredibly difficult, but it is theoretically optimal when it comes to high-speed flight. At slower speeds, air-breathing jet engines would minimize the perils of carrying oxidizer, and wings enable assistance from aerodynamic lift. Reaching orbit is a speed, not an altitude, and if you leverage jet engines when accelerating in the thicker parts of the atmosphere, before igniting faster rocket engines, competing with Starship prices might be feasible. In this sense, one could consider many hypersonic companies as efficient launch booster stages. I remain hopeful that more advanced technology will make this sci-fi vision achievable, pioneering orbital access that mirrors modern air freight rates of around $2 to $5/kg.

Launch is the beautiful beginning of a never-ending journey. To reach orbit, let alone build a business out of it, is exceedingly difficult. In a world of increasing unseriousness, the sheer complexity of it all gives you hope, reflecting mankinds fiery spirit and deep, eternal curiosity for the mysteries of space.

* * *

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Space Launch: Who, What, and Where We're Going - Andreessen Horowitz

How to watch SpaceX launch Crew-8 astronauts to the space station on March 2 (free livestream) – Space.com

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SpaceX is poised to launch three astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS) this week on the company's Crew-8 mission for NASA.

The crew members' spacecraft, SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavor, will ride atop a Falcon 9 rocket on its fifth flight from the historic Launch Complex-39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff is currently scheduled for no earlier than Saturday, March 2 at 11:16 p.m. EST (0419 GMT on March 3). Liftoff had been scheduled for early Friday morning (March 1), but bad weather forced a delay.

Crew-8 includes NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (mission commander), Michael Barratt (mission pilot), Jeanette Epps (mission specialist) and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin (mission specialist). The quartet will spend roughly six months aboard the orbital lab, taking part in over 200 research investigations and tending to space station maintenance.

Related: 'It's white-knuckle time:' NASA chief stresses safety for Crew-8 astronaut launch

NASA's broadcast of the Crew-8 launch coverage will begin Saturday at 7:15 p.m. EST (0015 GMT on March 3), and will be available here at Space.com.

Coverage of Crew-8's ride to orbit will involve checkpoints beginning with Falcon 9's main booster returned to SpaceX's landing zone at Cape Canaveral and culminating in the release of Endeavor from Falcon 9's second stage. Following the spacecraft's orbital insertion, the Crew Dragon coverage will then switch to an audio-only feed until the beginning of the rendezvous and docking broadcast.

Approximately two hours after liftoff, NASA is expected to hold a post-launch news conference. The early-morning mission check-in will include NASA's commercial crew program manager Steve Stich and ISS program manager Joel Montalbano, as well as SpaceX director of Dragon mission management Sarah Walker.

This is Montalbano's final crewed mission as ISS program manager. Continuing his service to NASA, Montalbano has been promoted to NASA's deputy associate administer of space operations. NASA announced that Dana Weigel will begin as ISS program manager April 7; Weigel will be the first woman to hold the role.

Once in orbit, Crew-8 will spend a little more than 15 hours catching up to the ISS.

Rendezvous coverage is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT) on Sunday (March 3), about 2.5 hours before docking is expected to take place. Crew Dragon Endeavor is slated to dock to the forward-facing port of the station's Harmony module. Hatch opening will occur about two hours later, after which the current space station crew will come together with members of the newly-arrived Crew-8 for a welcome ceremony a long-standing tradition whenever astronauts first come aboard the ISS.

Crew-8's arrival will also mark the imminent departure of the station's Crew-7 astronauts. NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli,European Space Agency(ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov launched to the ISS aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endurance in August. They'll soon be wrapping up their own six-month stay.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:20 a.m. ET on Feb. 29 with news of the launch delay to March 2.

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How to watch SpaceX launch Crew-8 astronauts to the space station on March 2 (free livestream) - Space.com