The Prometheus League
Breaking News and Updates
- Abolition Of Work
- Ai
- Alt-right
- Alternative Medicine
- Antifa
- Artificial General Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Super Intelligence
- Ascension
- Astronomy
- Atheism
- Atheist
- Atlas Shrugged
- Automation
- Ayn Rand
- Bahamas
- Bankruptcy
- Basic Income Guarantee
- Big Tech
- Bitcoin
- Black Lives Matter
- Blackjack
- Boca Chica Texas
- Brexit
- Caribbean
- Casino
- Casino Affiliate
- Cbd Oil
- Censorship
- Cf
- Chess Engines
- Childfree
- Cloning
- Cloud Computing
- Conscious Evolution
- Corona Virus
- Cosmic Heaven
- Covid-19
- Cryonics
- Cryptocurrency
- Cyberpunk
- Darwinism
- Democrat
- Designer Babies
- DNA
- Donald Trump
- Eczema
- Elon Musk
- Entheogens
- Ethical Egoism
- Eugenic Concepts
- Eugenics
- Euthanasia
- Evolution
- Extropian
- Extropianism
- Extropy
- Fake News
- Federalism
- Federalist
- Fifth Amendment
- Fifth Amendment
- Financial Independence
- First Amendment
- Fiscal Freedom
- Food Supplements
- Fourth Amendment
- Fourth Amendment
- Free Speech
- Freedom
- Freedom of Speech
- Futurism
- Futurist
- Gambling
- Gene Medicine
- Genetic Engineering
- Genome
- Germ Warfare
- Golden Rule
- Government Oppression
- Hedonism
- High Seas
- History
- Hubble Telescope
- Human Genetic Engineering
- Human Genetics
- Human Immortality
- Human Longevity
- Illuminati
- Immortality
- Immortality Medicine
- Intentional Communities
- Jacinda Ardern
- Jitsi
- Jordan Peterson
- Las Vegas
- Liberal
- Libertarian
- Libertarianism
- Liberty
- Life Extension
- Macau
- Marie Byrd Land
- Mars
- Mars Colonization
- Mars Colony
- Memetics
- Micronations
- Mind Uploading
- Minerva Reefs
- Modern Satanism
- Moon Colonization
- Nanotech
- National Vanguard
- NATO
- Neo-eugenics
- Neurohacking
- Neurotechnology
- New Utopia
- New Zealand
- Nihilism
- Nootropics
- NSA
- Oceania
- Offshore
- Olympics
- Online Casino
- Online Gambling
- Pantheism
- Personal Empowerment
- Poker
- Political Correctness
- Politically Incorrect
- Polygamy
- Populism
- Post Human
- Post Humanism
- Posthuman
- Posthumanism
- Private Islands
- Progress
- Proud Boys
- Psoriasis
- Psychedelics
- Putin
- Quantum Computing
- Quantum Physics
- Rationalism
- Republican
- Resource Based Economy
- Robotics
- Rockall
- Ron Paul
- Roulette
- Russia
- Sealand
- Seasteading
- Second Amendment
- Second Amendment
- Seychelles
- Singularitarianism
- Singularity
- Socio-economic Collapse
- Space Exploration
- Space Station
- Space Travel
- Spacex
- Sports Betting
- Sportsbook
- Superintelligence
- Survivalism
- Talmud
- Technology
- Teilhard De Charden
- Terraforming Mars
- The Singularity
- Tms
- Tor Browser
- Trance
- Transhuman
- Transhuman News
- Transhumanism
- Transhumanist
- Transtopian
- Transtopianism
- Ukraine
- Uncategorized
- Vaping
- Victimless Crimes
- Virtual Reality
- Wage Slavery
- War On Drugs
- Waveland
- Ww3
- Yahoo
- Zeitgeist Movement
-
Prometheism
-
Forbidden Fruit
-
The Evolutionary Perspective
Monthly Archives: March 2022
There’s water everywhere, even on the moon – Delaware Gazette
Posted: March 8, 2022 at 10:50 pm
In the January 2022 issue of Science Advances, Chinese scientists announced further evidence that the moon may contain water ice.
The evidence came from data collected by the Chinese Change 5 lunar lander, which touched down on the moons surface on Dec. 1, 2020. Thats good news for astronomers, who care about such seemingly arcane matters. It should be good news for the rest of us as well, as we shall see.
Water is a molecule composed of two atoms of hydrogen bonded to one atom of oxygen.
Many water-seeking spacecraft have orbited or landed on the moon. Scientists designed many of them to detect the hydrogen in water.
There is good reason to do so. Hydrogen loves to bond with oxygen, and the moon has an abundance of oxygen.
Of course, that oxygen doesnt exist in its gaseous, breathable form. The moon doesnt have an atmosphere. Instead, oxygen is bound with other elements to form oxides.
On both the moon and Earth, a common oxide is iron oxide, commonly known as rust. On Earth, another is dihydrogen oxide, commonly known as water.
Change 5s evidence is not conclusive proof for the waters lunar presence because one atom of hydrogen will also bond with one atom of oxygen, forming a group of substances called hydroxyls. Alcohols in their various forms are examples of hydroxyls.
Change 5s data may also indicate the presence of hydroxyls, cousins of water, but decidedly not water.
Humans have sent many orbiters and landers to the moon looking for water, but their tests are all designed to find hydrogen. Such is the difficulty some would say the fatal flaw of looking for water from 238,855 miles away.
So why not just bring back some rocks from the moon and subject them to detailed laboratory tests? Weve done it, and it didnt work.
Apollo 11, the first crewed lunar mission in 1969, and subsequent Apollo missions, brought back rocks that geologists on Earth analyzed for water. The Russians have done the same using robot spacecraft.
Water was consistently detected in small quantities, but the results were tainted.
Rocks from the moon have to be studied in an extreme vacuum to simulate lunar conditions. If a rock is exposed to even a whiff of earthly air, it will absorb water from it.
For that reason, all the Apollo rocks produced suspect results that geologists discarded as evidence.
Why should you care? Water is, after all, the stuff of life, an essential ingredient for its existence on our planet. Biologists say that life was born in the sea. When it moved onto dry land, it carried its water along with it.
Humans are made up mostly of water. An old Star Trek episode refers to members of our species as bags of water, and thats about right. Our skins are designed to hold the water in and keep it from spilling back into the environment from whence it came.
Finding water thus becomes critical for our eventual expansion into the cosmos. We cant carry very much water with us because its too danged heavy and bulky to tote around. If we plan to live on the moon, well have to make it from raw materials or mine it from the lunar soil.
How did the water ice get on the moon in the first place? Astronomers offer three possible explanations.
Scenario 1: Water may be the natural result of the processes that make moons and planets.
But theres a problem. The moon has no blanket of air like Earth, and it has a much lower gravitational pull than our planet. Add the heat from the sun, and water ice turns into vapor and escapes into space.
Much of the water the moon had early in its formation has by now disappeared into the inky void.
However, at the lunar north and south poles, there are places where the sun never shines. According to data gathered by the Lunar Prospector orbiter, most of the moons water is located at the lunar poles, where ice is mixed into moon dirt, called the moons regolith by astronomers.
Half a centurys worth of lunar data seems to replicate the polar findings. However, a set of Earth-based observations lead to an even more startling conclusion.
In 2020, using the Sophia telescope mounted in a Boeing 747 aircraft, astronomers saw signs of water on sunlit areas of the moon.
Scenario 2: Water came in the form of cometary bombardment.
Like all the larger objects in our solar system, the moon is subject to bombardment by comets, which contain a fair amount of water ice. Those comets are zipping along when they hit the moon. The resultant explosions reduce the comets to dust and bury their ice deep in the lunar soil.
In fact, during the period of heavy cometary bombardment four billion years ago, the moon may have had enough water to form an atmosphere and even lakes of liquid water on its surface.
The moon had recently formed from a collision with a planet-sized object and Earth. As debris from the impact coalesced into the moon, it heated to a liquid ball of rock. It was warm enough to melt the cometary. The resulting gases could have formed an atmosphere.
Astronomers like Dirk Schulze-Maku argue that such life-producing conditions could have existed for 500 million years.
Scenario 3: Change 5s Chinese scientists and other astronomers argue that the sun produces the moons hydroxyls and water.
As the sun explodes, it generates a solar wind, a constant stream of mostly hydrogen atoms that strikes every object in the solar system. The hydrogen atoms combine with the oxygen in the lunar soil.
Herein lies a problem. The solar wind also prevents oxygen from binding to elements such as iron to form oxides. Besides, where does the abundance of oxygen come from in the first place?
The answer lies in Earths powerful magnetic field, which generates a long tail called its magneto trail. Japans Kaguya lunar orbiter discovered in 2007 that the magneto trail grabs oxygen from Earths atmosphere and transports it from our planet to the moon.
But what about that pesky solar wind that tends to block the formation of oxides?
The moons oxygen binds with other elements to form oxides when Earths magneto trail partially blocks the solar wind. That condition occurs once a month around the time when we see a full moon on Earth.
Granted, were not talking about much water. Based on the 1998 Lunar Surveyor results, NASA scientists estimated 330 million tons of ice spread out over 25,000 square miles of the lunar surface.
A lake made of all the liquid would cover only four square miles and be 35 feet deep. A cubic foot of lunar dirt might yield a half-gallon of water, and thats enough to sustain a small colony with drinking water.
Based on more recent spacecraft data, the Planetary Society estimates the total as about 600 billion kilograms of water ice, enough to fill 24,000 Olympic swimming pools.
That sounds like a lot, but it makes up only .01 percent of the lunar regolith.
It isnt nearly enough to satisfy the needs of human colonization. The average human on Earth uses about 100 gallons of water a day for drinking, bathing, and eliminating waste products.
The water would have to be mined at the poles from the lunar regolith and then transported, perhaps at long distances, to lunar bases.
A lunar base would have to recycle every drop of the precious liquid, including, ahem, water excreted from the body. Lets just say that lunar colonists would be drinking the same glass of water over and over again, if you get my drift.
If lunar explorers recycled carefully, they might have enough left over to use for other purposes.
Water is, of course, made up of hydrogen and oxygen. By breaking up the water into its component elements, we can produce oxygen to breathe. Also, hydrogen and oxygen make powerful rocket fuel when recombined. Gigantic tanks filled with liquid hydrogen and oxygen fed the Space Shuttles engines.
Separating hydrogen from oxygen requires a considerable amount of energy. Therefore, any lunar base would require a small nuclear reactor or several square miles of solar panels.
Does the moon have enough water to sustain such lunar bases? To find out, NASA is scheduled to land PRIME-1 at the lunar south pole very near a crater called Shackleton.
The mission will drill deep into the lunar regolith looking for water ice.
NASA chose that particular location because a previous mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Explorer, determined that the bottom of the Shackleton Crater, deep in shadow, may have 22 percent of its surface covered with water ice.
Eventually, lunar bases may become stopping-off points to more distant places like Mars and beyond. And that is reason enough to be excited about finding water on the moon.
Tom Burns is the former director of the Perkins Observatory in Delaware.
Continue reading here:
There's water everywhere, even on the moon - Delaware Gazette
Posted in Mars Colonization
Comments Off on There’s water everywhere, even on the moon – Delaware Gazette
The Limits of Libertarianism – newgeography.com
Posted: at 10:50 pm
Over the past half-century, libertarians have played a critical role in the ever-growing war against governmental nonsense. If you want to read the best critiques of wasteful transit policy, sports stadia, government pensions or cancel culture, you can find it among liberty-minded outlets like Reason magazine, the Cato Institute and numerous free-market think tanks. They have provided a strong and necessary voice for free-market capitalism at a time when it faces serious challenges, notably from China and other state-directed systems.
Yet in recent years, libertarians increasingly seem less concerned with how their policies might actually impact people. Convinced that markets are virtually always the best way to approach any issue, they have allied with many of the same forces monopoly capital, anti-suburban zealots and the tech oligarchy which are systematically undermining the popular rationale for market capitalism.
Perhaps after the endless regulatory assaults of the Covid years, we could be nudging to a libertarian moment, the Wall Street Journals Gerard Baker hopes. But this would depend on having a vibrant social base, whose personal wellbeing is at stake, to push society in that direction.
The critical issue here is class. Libertarians tend to enjoy theory, but flounder when it comes to addressing the actual needs of people. Barely anyone today looks to former House speaker Paul Ryan, with his notions of privatising social security, or to other Fountainhead politicos of his ilk for leadership. The corporate superstructure has moved to the Democrats, while a large part of the GOPs class base notably small businesspeople, artisans and skilled workers feels abandoned by the corporate free-market Republicans and is more attracted to populist politics.
Nowhere is the disconnect between libertarianism and its traditional base of small-property owners more obvious than in housing. In their zeal, sometimes justified, to end the worst zoning abuses, the libertarians have allied themselves with two forces, monopoly capital and social engineers (also known as city planners), whose goal is not to expand the blessings of ownership, but to squelch it for all but a few. Their end game is to leave most people stuck in small apartments.
Libertarians have served as fellow travellers and allies to the hyperactive, oligarch-funded YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) movement. In essence, as former Cato fellow Randal OToole notes, the libertarian right has betrayed the very middle class that most supports conservative causes. OToole, who had been Catos land-use expert since 2007, was forced out in favour of an alliance, as he puts it, working hand-in-hand with left-wing groups seeking to force Californians to live in ways in which they didnt want to live.
Read the rest of this piece at Spiked.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Mr.TinMD via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
Read the original post:
The Limits of Libertarianism - newgeography.com
Posted in Libertarianism
Comments Off on The Limits of Libertarianism – newgeography.com
Cotton can’t square the circle between Reagan and Trump – The Week
Posted: at 10:50 pm
With an ambitious speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Monday night, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton became the latest Republican presidential aspirant to try and get himself anointed Donald Trump's populist successor. Cotton's remarks were noteworthy primarily for establishing him as a master of obfuscation who will go to almost comical lengths to paper over the party's many disagreements and contradictions.
One way to describe the fissures in the GOP is to contrast Reagan and Trump. The first was sunny and optimistic, a confident defender of democratic ideals who took a strong stand against the Soviet Union while championing immigration, free trade, and limited government at home. The second trafficked in anger and resentment, openly admiring dictators, denigrating NATO, and favoring closed borders and protectionist policies designed to insulate American workers from market forces.
Cotton elided these many differences by claiming that Reagan and Trump belong to the American populist tradition that traces back to President Andrew Jackson. According to Cotton, this tradition is known for proudly and unapologetically defending America's interests in the world and the interests of ordinary Americans against corrupt economic and political elites.
Cotton then set himself up as the truest successor of the Jacksonian tradition by calling out the biggest mistake made by each of his populist predecessors. Reagan, he claimed, should never have gone along with an immigration amnesty as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. As for Trump, his greatest error was supporting and signing the First Step Act, which passed the Senate in 2018 with 87 votes. (Cotton was one of 12 Republicans to oppose the bill.) It was championed by libertarians and widely hailed for its efforts to reform criminal law, sentencing guidelines, and federal prison policy to enhance fairness and reduce the inmate population.
As far as Cotton is concerned, the current surge in violent crime can be traced directly to this law, which supposedly encouraged the hiring of progressive prosecutors who engage in "nullification" by failing to prosecute criminals. The law also resulted in a drop in the prison population by "more than 400,000 inmates in 2020 alone," driven by the "faddish claim that our country has an over-incarceration problem" when in fact "we have an under-incarceration problem."
Combine this diatribe with other passages of the speech denouncing "globalism" and chain migration, calling for presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci to be fired and "held accountable," denouncing the indoctrination of "our kids with extremist nonsense" in schools, railing against China, and mocking President Biden's appeasement of Russia and listeners could be forgiven for assuming Cotton's vision of Jacksonian populism amounts to a nastier and more competent version of Trumpism that's also an outright repudiation of Reaganism.
If that's what Tom Cotton wants the Republican Party to stand for, he can certainly try to make it a reality and ride it all the way to the Oval Office. But he should admit the truth that this vision has as little to do with Reagan as it does with Abraham Lincoln, another president Cotton attempted even more absurdly to fold into the Jacksonian tradition. Anything else is deliberate mystification.
See the rest here:
Cotton can't square the circle between Reagan and Trump - The Week
Posted in Libertarianism
Comments Off on Cotton can’t square the circle between Reagan and Trump – The Week
Elon Musk Says SpaceX Is So Busy With Ukraine That It’ll Delay Starship – Futurism
Posted: at 10:49 pm
He says that SpaceX is reprioritizing on "cyber defense."Space Wars
Welp, Starship is delayed yet again.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Friday that there would be slight delays ahead for the companys experimental Mars-bound spacecraft. To blame, the billionaire said, was SpaceX having to dedicated more resources to fighting escalating cyber attacks on Starlink satellites by Russia after the space company sent Ukraine a shipment of its internet terminals.
Starships first launch has been delayed numerous times now, with much of it due to pending regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). However, this latest instance comes amidst a time of geopolitical turmoil caused by Russias invasion of Ukraine.
After being criticized for not helping the country, Musk sent a shipment of Starlink terminals to Ukraine, much to the chagrin of Moscow. The billionaire later tweeted that this would likely make SpaceX a target for Russian cyberattacks.
Some Starlink terminals near conflict areas were being jammed for several hours at a time, Musk posted on Saturday. Our latest software update bypasses the jamming.
It is slightly unclear why exactly a cyber attack or even anti-satellite attacks on Starlink would result in a delay of Starship. Is SpaceX pulling aerospace engineers to work on cybersecurity? Seems doubtful. In reality, it could just be a convenient excuse for Starships latest delay.
Still, with the head of Russias space agency continuing to post pro-Putin propaganda and remaining openly hostile to the US on Twitter, we might see the conflict impacting space exploration more than we would have previously thought.
More on Starship: NASA Descends Into Chaos as Moon Program Revealed to Be Way Behind, Over Budget
Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.
Visit link:
Elon Musk Says SpaceX Is So Busy With Ukraine That It'll Delay Starship - Futurism
Posted in Futurism
Comments Off on Elon Musk Says SpaceX Is So Busy With Ukraine That It’ll Delay Starship – Futurism
Donald Trump Reportedly Furious That Nobody’s Using His Glitchy Twitter Clone – Futurism
Posted: at 10:49 pm
"What the f**k is going on?"Crap App
Donald Trump is angry again. This time, itseems to be because no one seems to be using his glitchy Twitter wannabe, Truth Social.
After a fairly disastrous launch that included a massive waitlist for users along with a whole host of glitches, the former president is now allegedly mad at his team for the botched roll out. Sources told The Daily Beast that Trump has complained endlessly about it, and is looking to blame everyone but himself.
What the fuck is going on, Trump allegedly said on the phone referring to the app.
Despite an initial spike of two million daily visits when it first launched, the self-described Big Tent social media platform has since cratered in traffic. The Beast dug into the data behind the app and found that Truth Social is doing either worse or about the same as other middling MAGA-friendly platforms like Gab and Gettr.
Those who do end up using the app dont seem to be sticking around either. The news site found that the average user stays on the site for just 90 seconds a very short stretch compared to the seven minutes people spend on Getter and nine minutes they spend on Gab.
As with so much of Trumps problems, though, he really doesnt have anyone else to blame but himself. After all, he hasnt used the platform or posted a Truth a single time since launching the app. This is despite the fact that the world is arguably undergoing some of the biggest geopolitical turmoil its seen since World War II.
All in all, Truth Social is looking like a big dud. Weve seen better launches from SpaceX Starship prototypes and Trump only has himself to blame.
READ MORE: Donald Trump Cant Stop Whining About His Failing Social Media App [The Daily Beast]
More on Trump nonsense: Donald Trump Says Global Warming Is Good Because It Means More Seafront Property
Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.
See the original post:
Donald Trump Reportedly Furious That Nobody's Using His Glitchy Twitter Clone - Futurism
Posted in Futurism
Comments Off on Donald Trump Reportedly Furious That Nobody’s Using His Glitchy Twitter Clone – Futurism
There’s a Rock Stuck in NASA’s Mars Rover’s Wheel – Futurism
Posted: at 10:49 pm
That doesn't look comfy. Wheely Annoying
NASAs Mars Rover, also called Perseverance, seems to have taken a stowaway on board to cart across the Red Planets surface.
On Friday, tech outlet CNETpublished a series of photos that show a medium-sized rock trapped in the rovers wheel. The outlet reported that space fans who enjoy reviewing the raw images the Rover messages back to Earth noticed the rock and voted several pictures of it as Image of the Week.
The first occurrence of the rock seems to have been February 6 and is available on NASAs Mars Rover photo gallery. The next shot NASA lovers noticed was taken on February 25. The rock seems to have eroded some in this photo and appears to be slightly smaller than in the first shot. The third and most recent shot was collected March 2. There appears to be a growing chip in the rock and small particles of Martian dust or the broken rock lie inside the rover wheel. The image below also comes from the official NASA website.
Despite the hitchhiker, the Mars Rover seems to be carrying on with business as usual. The rover is even breaking driving records, according to CNET. That may be partly due to Perseverances updated design, which CNET reports includes six wheels made from aluminum. It features cleats that give it traction on the rough, rocky and dusty terrain, and each wheel is just more than 20 inches in diameter.
Its good to hear Perseverance is, well, persevering, But we do feel a little bad about the trapped rock. Wouldnt you find it annoying if nobody was around to help you get a rock out of your shoe? Lets hope it falls out or breaks apart without causing problems.
More on space conflicts: Russia Releases Bizarre Video Of Space Station Breaking Apart
Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.
Read more:
There's a Rock Stuck in NASA's Mars Rover's Wheel - Futurism
Posted in Futurism
Comments Off on There’s a Rock Stuck in NASA’s Mars Rover’s Wheel – Futurism
Russia Is Officially Blocking All Access to Facebook – Futurism
Posted: at 10:49 pm
"Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information."Block for Block
Russias internet regulator Roskomnazor has announced that its officially blocking Facebook, in retaliation for the company blocking Russian state propaganda amid the countrys aggressive invasion of Ukraine.
The news is a worrying sign that the countrys authorities are starting to clamp down even further on the dissemination of information within its borders. It fits into a larger pattern, with antiwar demonstrators risking everything right nowas they march in the streets of Moscow where theyre being detained by the thousands.
The regulator claimed there were 26 case of discrimination against Russian media and information resources, as translated by TechCrunch, as its reasoning to clamp down on the largest social network in the world.
On February 24, Roskomnadzor sent requests to the administration of Meta Platforms, Inc. remove the restrictions imposed by the social network Facebook on Russian media and explain the reason for their introduction, the regulator wrote in in its announcement, claiming that Facebooks parent company Meta ignored its requests.
Last week, Nick Clegg, Metas VP of global affairs, wrote in a statement that Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labeling of content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations.
We refused, he said.
Today, Clegg expanded on the companys position in light of Russia decision to block the platform.
Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out, he said in a statement.
Its a serious crackdown on the spread of free information. And it might even backfire: by blocking Facebook, Roskomnazor is also cutting off one of the biggest facilitators of the spread of online misinformation and propaganda.
READ MORE: Russia says it will block Facebook, clamping down further on flow of information [TechCrunch]
More on the situation: NASA ISS Engineer Says Relationships With Russian Counterparts Still Cordial
Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.
The rest is here:
Russia Is Officially Blocking All Access to Facebook - Futurism
Posted in Futurism
Comments Off on Russia Is Officially Blocking All Access to Facebook – Futurism
Scientists Say We Really Have to Talk About Boning in Space – Futurism
Posted: at 10:49 pm
Sorry to be crude, but it's important.Orbital Healing
The topic of sex in space has remained taboo ever since we ventured into the great unknown for the first time.
But scientists are now arguing that its something we should be actively discussing and studying, Mic reports. After all, if we ever want to become interplanetary or embark on extraordinarily long journeys through space we should know how to boink in microgravity, or if its even possible.
Hell, space tourists might want to know if sex could ever be part of their brief journey into orbit one day. Who knows: it could even be an amazing experience.
In a research article published in December, a team of Canadian academics argued we should be embracing space sexology as a new discipline of study.
To move forward, space organizations must stop avoiding sexual topics and fully recognize the importance of love, sex and intimate relationships in human life, the team wrote in an accompanying piece for The Conversation last year. We have what it takes to pave the way for an ethical and pleasurable space journey, as we continue to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Scientists have studied the effects of microgravity on the human body extensively. But getting it on in space is almost a complete blind spot.
NASA has been dismissive of the subject, undermining concerns over the effects low gravity environments on sexual health in the past, according to Mic.
There are a couple of reasons NASA has been so puritanical about sex in space. For one, sexual activity in space could jeopardize the harmony of a crew and thereby mission directives. Then theres pressure from conservative-leaning lawmakers.
No research has explored intimate relationships, nor the human experience of sexual functions and wellbeing, in space or space analogues, or how any of this can affect crew performance, Simon Dub, Concordia University psychologist and co-author of the research article, told Mic.
But fortunately, times are changing. While we still arent entirely sure if human reproduction and conception can even occur in microgravity, scientists are opening up to the idea.
Should a future need for more in-depth study on reproductive health in space be identified, NASA would take the appropriate steps, a NASA spokesperson told Mic.
READ MORE: Inside the Push to Study Sex in Space [Mic]
More on sex in space: We Need to Talk About Gay Sex in Space
Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.
Here is the original post:
Scientists Say We Really Have to Talk About Boning in Space - Futurism
Posted in Futurism
Comments Off on Scientists Say We Really Have to Talk About Boning in Space – Futurism
Report: The NFT Bubble Could Be Starting to Burst – Futurism
Posted: at 10:49 pm
It's not quite that simple.Bubble Pop?
The NFT market is starting to cool down, Bloomberg reports. The average trading value of the nonfungible tokens has dropped precipitously lately, declining from a record $6,900 at the beginning of the year to under just $2,000, according to NFT tracker NonFungible.
The trend has only accelerated ever since Russia started the invasion of Ukraine, a great source of global uncertainty thats dealt a major blow to markets across the board.
Is this the last stop on the NFT gravy train? Theres certainly some evidence that the hype is really starting to cool down but the situation is more nuanced than that, with the number of unique traders getting into NFTs still on the rise.
Besides, as recent history has shown, the crypto world is full of surprises.
Global uncertainty and political unrest are likely contributing factors to the overall decline.
What I would say is the last week or so has seen a significant decline perhaps as much as 40 percent in floor prices for the most desirable NFTs, Bloomberg writer and crypto investor Aaron Brown told Bloomberg.
Some collectors are starting to cut their losses. One user sold a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT today for $224,000in a $67,800 loss, as Fortune points out.
Increased scrutiny from US regulators could also be contributing to the decline. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced this week that its investigating whether NFTs are securities and should therefore be regulated as such, according to a separate Bloomberg report.
Its also a jumble of mixed signals, as not every NFT marketplace is affected. Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs saw sales rocketing 59 percent over the last week, according to NFT data management website DappRadar. CryptoPunks were also up 118 percent.
Trading volumes are down in general, but the demand measured by the number of unique traders and sales count is increasing, Dapp Radar analyst Pedro Herrera told Bloomberg. So while were seeing less volume, theres more activity, even though Ukraines conflict is definitely driving away the attention from trading.
Its hard to say where the NFT market is headed next. And in the crypto world, it wouldnt be the first dip and subsequent rise.
READ MORE: NFT Mania Show Signs of Cooling as Average Price and Sales Decline [Bloomberg]
More on NFTs: Knockoff eBay NFTs Are Kind of Based, Actually
Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.
Read the rest here:
Report: The NFT Bubble Could Be Starting to Burst - Futurism
Posted in Futurism
Comments Off on Report: The NFT Bubble Could Be Starting to Burst – Futurism
White House Brags That America Is Producing More Oil and Gas Than Ever – Futurism
Posted: at 10:49 pm
The price of oil is through the roof right now as Russias invasion of Ukraine continues to send ripples through the global supply chain.
Its a telling moment, considering that much of the world has been nominally working to end its reliance on fossil fuels but now, countries are now racing to secure oil supplies from elsewhere.
The Biden administration, for one, is doubling down, bragging that it has the United States producing a record amount of oil and gas.
US production of natural gas and oil is rising and approaching record levels, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Sunday. More natural gas than ever this year, more oil than ever next year, and, even with a global pandemic, more oil production this past year than during the previous administrations first year.
The context is that as the international community works to distance itself from Russia after the invasion, its now looking to lessen or end its reliance on Russian oil, which is proving predictably difficult.
In 2021, the US imported about eight percent of its oil supply from the Eastern European nation alone.
Prices soared this week, hitting $139 a barrel, following the US hinting at banning Russian oil and gas while importing more from other countries to make up the difference.
Over the weekend, senior US officials met with Venezuelan leaders, presumably with the hopes of securing oil imports, despite the severing of diplomatic ties in 2019 over Nicolas Maduros authoritarian rule.
Germany finds itself in even more of a predicament.
At the moment, Europes supply of energy for heat generation, mobility, power supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way, German chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a Monday announcement, noting that Russian imports are of essential importance.
In short, the Western world is still extremely reliant on Russian oil, which could back it into a corner as the violence continues in Ukraine.
But does it have to be this way? The answer to the United States woes is as evident as it has ever been: ending the reliance on fossil fuels once and for all, regardless of where its being imported from.
And in its defense, the Biden administration seems aware of that simple fact.
The only way to protect US over the long term is to become energy independent, Psaki wrote in her Sunday announcement. That is why the President is so focused on deploying clean energy technologies that dont require fossil fuels bought and sold on the global market, which will always be vulnerable to bad actors.
READ MORE: Europeans throw cold water on possibility of Russian energy ban [Axios]
More on oil: Elon Musk Says We Need More Nuclear Energy After Russia Targets Power Plants
Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.
Go here to read the rest:
White House Brags That America Is Producing More Oil and Gas Than Ever - Futurism
Posted in Futurism
Comments Off on White House Brags That America Is Producing More Oil and Gas Than Ever – Futurism







