So I have kids and I am constantly looking for fun, educational, entertaining, games for them to play.  I like discovering open source free applications that satisfy this most of all.

Some examples of great programs: tux paint and tux typing.

Phun is different.  Where those two programs excel in teaching kids, Phun is just fun.

It's interactive in a way that not many programs are.  It actually has the playability that feels much like an RTS.  It does what you make it do now.  You add something and the environment acts upon it.

Watch this video.

And it's a toy...except it isn't: 

Radial engine:

Gears:

It's a remarkable achievement.

One big benefit I see in Phun over the other kid applications I've found is that Phun uses an almost standard application user interface.  The user needs to navigate menus and toolbars and context menus.  The other kid apps focus on learning something or doing something.  Phun does that also, but because of its complexity the standard UI is leveraged as the simplest solution.

This is a great side benefit.  Kids get exposure to the standard UI and how applications work.  This has direct impact on any and all other applications they might encounter.

If you have kids go get this program now.  Install it, run it and watch your kids be sucked in for hours.  Heck go do it yourself.  It's really addicting.

http://www.touchspin.com/chem/SWFs/pt2k61012.swf

We gotta keep this telescope operational: Hubble discovers 67 new gravitationally lensed galaxies

What is gravitational lensing?

Gravitational lensing occurs when light travelling toward us from a distant galaxy is magnified and distorted as it encounters a massive object between the galaxy and us. These gravitational lenses often allow astronomers to peer much farther back into the early universe than they would normally be able to do.

Here is a cool video of an Einstein Ring.

An Einstein ring is a complete circle image of a background galaxy, which is formed when the background galaxy, a massive, foreground galaxy, and the Hubble Space Telescope are all aligned perfectly.

Therein creating a complete circle lense effect.

So pretty pictures are nice, but what impact do these discoveries have on astro-physics?  Well read on dear surfer, read on.

...they can be used to create a census of galaxy masses in the universe to test the predictions of cosmological models.

Basically, since we understand how gravity works here, and we can get estimates of galaxy size out there, we can then compare and contrast and see if gravity remains constant from one side of the visible universe to the other.

As we relentlessly march into the future scientists continue to discover stuff about stuff.  And you know what we don't forget the stuff we already knew about stuff.  That is the law of accelerating change in a nutshell.

Some of the stuff we learn about stuff we had to already know about some other stuff before we could figure out the new stuff about stuff.

You follow?

Now some fairly bright scientists at Harvard have come across a technique for "starving" cancer cells and thereby curbing their growth. 

When the researchers forced cancer cells to switch to the other form of pyruvate kinase in the lab by knocking out production of PKM2, the cells' growth was curbed.

Mind-Reading Game Headset to Hit Market

Brain computer interface is coming.  And it's coming fast.  There are several companies set to hit the market with products over the next couple of years: Emotiv and NeuroSky.

Both of these products are focusing on the gaming market segment to begin with.  There they have a ready customer, willing to spend money on accessories, looking for new gadgets and typically younger, typically male.

If done correctly the experience gained from entering that market could lay the groundwork for many other segments: quadraplegics, fighter pilots, surgeons, artists, equipment operators, data/security experts. 

Eventually how about an everyday person in a wired world...

Eyes on prize: Visionary device gives hope

Once again our good friend accelerating change comes around to help us out.  This near achievement is only possible because of all the surrounding improvements and miniaturization in computers and silicon chip construction in general.

“There has been this explosion of interest in this field because basically the technology in the last 20 years has become miniaturized enough and sophisticated enough so that for the first time we can imagine building something small enough to put in the eye,” said Dr. Joseph Rizzo III, who founded the project in the late 1980s and co-directs the 36-member team.

What will be next.

The paralysed finger

Try this...it is impossible to lift your ring finger.

Essentially your index finger and pinky have independent extensor tendons whereas your middle and ring finger share one.

The index and small finger each have independent extension function through the extensor indicis proprius and extensor digiti minimi.

There you go, now you know.  Maybe you can win some bets at a bar now...

The much maligned International Space Station keeps moving forward oblivious to its critics.  Yesterday the Shuttle Atlantis blasted off with the Columbus Module aboard.

The Columbus module is another science module with the ability to hold 10 racks of scientific experiments.

It is growing and finally becoming a significant platform in space.  I understand the critics that deride its lack of strategic space location.  Its in-between-ness that doesn't help us much to get anywhere else in the solar system.  I understand the critics that bring up the ROI on a manned space station and compare it to one of our probe missions like the Mars Rovers.

I understand all that.

But I believe it provides other benefits:

1. It teaches us how to construct complicated things in space.  What we are learning from the ISS will be crucial for ANY construction we do in space and if you think there won't be much call for that...well I disagree with you.
   
   This has been done over a period of years.  From a broad base of contributors spanning continents, languages, governments.  It's remarkable.
   
2. We continue to learn how to make livable habitats for humans in space.  We need to have this sussed if we are to do any sort of long range trips in the future - Mars anyone?
   
3. There ARE science experiments that can only be performed by humans in space.  The trick is identifying them and prioritizing them.
   
4. It is a manned presence in space.  Do you realize if things just stumble along like this for another 10 years or so that we might enter an era where mankind will always have a representative in space.  And in my opinion there will be increasing numbers of extra-terran humans as the years go on.  Too many people want to explore "out there".

I also think it is flippin' cool.  And in the grand scheme of government and society expenditures the entire space programs of all the world are hobbies.  NASA has had a 12-15 billion dollar budget since the 1980's.  Through all that inflationary time, where the value of its dollars has steadily decreased, it has maintained the program and accomplished significant things.

It will be fascinating to see if the burgeoning commercial space programs will interface with the existing governmental ones.  Stay tuned...

Update: The final volume of the ISS is going to be approximately 1000 cubic meters. It is more than half done but for the sake of argument let's say there is 500 cubic meters of livable volume in orbit right now.

Well according to the awesome intertubes a standard 40 foot shipping container has 67.5 cubic meters of volume inside it.  That means there are the equivalent of 7.5 shipping containers of habitat up there right now and in the end there will be approximately 15 shipping containers of habitable volume (a little less actually but close enough).

Now that is amazing.  The space boys and girls aren't just whistling Dixie.

2007 WD5 Mars Collision Effectively Ruled Out - Impact Odds now 1 in 10,000

Looks like it will miss by at least 4000 kilometers and most likely by somewhere more in the neighborhood of 26,000 kilometers.

Oh well.

Extraordinary!

And not just hearts:

The process, called whole organ recellularization, can be done "with virtually any organ," Taylor says.

Researchers create a new heart in the lab

Someday, doctors may routinely extract cells from heart failure patients and use them to reseed a new organ from a cadaver-derived ECM. What types of cells those would be isn't known yet.

What we are looking at is heart replacement with a NEW heart from your own cells.  No rejection medicine required.  Gimme new lungs too, oh and how about kidneys!

Wow!

I know you've been curious.

Well here is a fascinating article that talks about how huge Baleen [called Rorqual] Whales feed.

I mean we all know that they open their mouths and let the water flow in and then squeeze it out through the baleen and trap the krill.  But the latest research fills in the details.

Essentially they cruise along at 600 feet below the surface and then open their mouth, dropping their jaw perpendicular to their body.  This causes their whole mouth to act like a giant parachute and stops the forward motion of the whale completely.

What the whale does next came as a complete surprise to the scientists. “It was still swimming, but it was slowing down really fast,” Mr. Goldbogen said. Even as the whale pumps its powerful tail, it comes to a compete stop in three seconds.

And the amount of water that they capture in their mouth during a gulp is truly gargantuan.

Mr. Goldbogen and his colleagues calculate that in just three seconds, the mouth of a 60-foot fin whale fills with more than 18,000 gallons of water. That’s the same volume as a school bus, and weighs more than the whale itself.

Go read the whole article.  It's a fascinating read.

Accelerating change is going on all around us.  We see it in entertainment from computer games to movies.  We see it in telephones as they keep getting smaller and more feature rich.  We see it in cameras and music players and personal GPS devices.  Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

All of this creeps into our lives and becomes ubiquitous.  The changes quickly becomes invisible, expected and, in a weird sort of way, un-important.

But accelerating change is also affecting the sciences.

For example the hunt for extra-solar planets.  The first one discovered was in 1991.  Since then there has been a rapid pace of discovery.  The bulk of the discoveries essentially done by inference: careful detection of the wobbling of the star around which the planet[s] orbit. 

So the point here is that before 1991 we had NO evidence of planets orbiting other stars.  In theory we were 100% sure (or so close as to make no difference) that most stars had some planets, but we had no direct evidence.

Now there has been over 250 planets identified.

But wait that's not all!

Now there is a new technology under development by the Lyot Project, it's goal to create the necessary instrument and associated software to remove starlight from images thus allowing the much fainter planets to be viewed directly.  Astronomers will no longer need rely on inference to discover new planets.

This would be a remarkable achievement and would allow for a much greater number of planets to be discovered.  It would probably also allow for the discovery of Earth like planets and the reading of spectrums from the planets themselves.

What would the reactions be if we found a planet with a spectral analysis that matched Earth?  Orbit, temperature, water, oxygen?...

Would that spur some research into a viable star probe?  Just asking...

Accelerating change is cool.

Sites of interest:

• Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia
• How do astronomers find planets orbiting other stars?
• The Futurist is a big proponent of observing the accelerating change going on in many facets of our world and even in places we don't normally look. There are several entries that discuss the accelerating change that is going on in telescope technology.

Beautiful.

While there are plenty of pie in the sky nano-technology dreams out there: space elevator ribbon, artery cleansing robots, oxygen increasing blood.  But in reality those are still far off.

What we will end up seeing in our day to day lives will be more mundane applications that appear to have marginal impact on change, but over the long term may have as much impact as the grandiose ideas.

For example here: Nano-layered plastic sheet is strong as steel

This stuff could be used in a lot of applications ranging from grocery bags to space vehicle linings.  It will all depend on how efficient the process can become.  It sounds like the process uses simple materials and that there is potential for big automation.

It will be very interesting to see what other "mundane" nano-technology innovations come out over the next several years.

Paralyzed man's mind is 'read'

Eric Ramsay can only "speak" by moving his eyes.  Now scientists and doctors are on the verge of being able to interpret his brain signals as speach...

"We have been moving towards decoding primitive vocabulary for a while now. But this is certainly an interesting development, although invasive techniques, where something is out in someone's brain, such as these will of course carry risks."

This is remarkable.

The forefront of Brain Computer Interface.  This is not a completed interface but the doctors and scientists involved believe they are getting close.

Update:  Garrett Lisi is called on the carpet by a fellow physicist Luboš Motl for shoddy work.  Debunked?

Why? Well, we have seen that a completely continuous spectrum of people between serious physicists and manifest crackpots has been created and the recent fashionable trend is to accept an ever broader set of passionate amateurs and undereducated, intellectually challenged loons into the physics circles. [emphasis mine]

But the article is filled with vitriol and me being a layman when it comes to physics of this depth can't make a clear call as of right now as to what is true or false.

Anyways, I'll fall back on the truism, if it looks too good to be true then it probably is.  String theory has years of blackboard chalk and millions of lines of code behind it trying to disprove it and it hasn't been brought down yet.

Hadron collider, tell us what is the truth.

Posted previously:

Garrett Lisi - Surfer...Snowboarder...Supra-Genius!

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

Yes that is Garrett in the middle also.

Einstein for the 21st Century.

From what I gather there has been a breakthrough over the past several years with regards to an elegant geometric pattern named E8. It was first discovered in 1887 but only completely understood this year by mathematicians.

To solve that problem it took a huge effort.

Mathematicians are known for their solitary style of working, but the combined assault on what is described as "one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics" required the effort of 18 mathematicians from America and Europe for an intensive four-year collaboration.

Once the structure of E8 was understood, Garrett Lisi had a basis upon which to build his work.

In fact the article from last March regarding the understanding of E8 Symmetry has a lot of foreshadowing for the discoveries that Garrett has gone on to submit.

"This is an impressive achievement," said Hermann Nicolai, Director of the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany. "While mathematicians have known for a long time about the beauty and the uniqueness of E8, we physicists have come to appreciate its exceptional role only more recently - yet, in our attempts to unify gravity with the other fundamental forces into a consistent theory of quantum gravity, we now encounter it at almost every corner," he said, referring to efforts to combine the theory of the very big (general relativity) with the very small (quantum mechanics). "Thus, understanding the inner workings of E8 is not only a great advance for pure mathematics, but may also help physicists in their quest for a unified theory."

So perhaps the discovery that Garrett made would have been reached soon by other physicists.

But credit needs to be placed where it is due.  For Garrett has a great mind that was able to see a potential answer to one of the great remaining questions in physics and mathematics. 

So interplanetary travel...cool yes?

How do we do it?

Shane Ross gives a compelling speech about the use of LaGrange points as entry and exit points into orbits of planetary bodies. The Interplanetary Transport Network

Essentially there are low energy paths that lead from Earth orbit to L1 or L2.  There are then low energy paths that lead from L1 to the Earth-Sun LaGrange point called E1 or E2.  And from there more low energy paths to the LaGrange points around other bodies in the solar system.

He uses the Genesis project as an example of very low energy orbits.  The Genesis project used these low energy pathways to make its way from Earth to L2 and from there to E2 where it stayed and sampled the solar winds for 2 years.

It then used the reverse of those paths to make its way back to Earth again.

Genesis was able to do all this travel while using "...five hundredths of 1% of the fuel that it takes to get a rocket into Earth orbit."  That is remarkable.

The major point of this whole speech was summed up early: Once you reach Earth's orbit you are halfway to anywhere.

Here is a little lighthearted graphic from the speech defining the low energy pathways as a Metro map.

Transit stop

Professor Ross argues that the Lunar L1 location become a gateway station. 

It's the best location for a manned space station because: travel time is a matter of days from the Earth, launching craft and maintaining craft from that location is cheap, launching from L1 up to E1 or E2 is cheap and therefore exiting the local Earth system to head to other planets is cheap as well.

It becomes the closest rest stop on the interplanetary highway.

Can we get into orbit cheaply?

So then the remaining hurdle is getting into Earth orbit.  If we can make that cheap then the entire process of interplanetary travel becomes inexpensive. 

What technology are we working on right now that might lower the cost of getting payloads into orbit?

Space Elevator.

Does it feel like we are on the cusp of a convergence here?  If we are able to tie these two sciences together, the engineering feat of a space elevator with the comprehensive knowledge of how to navigate the solar system's "currents", what will the bounds of our exploration be?

Cheap Planetary Travel

It would no longer require huge chemical rockets to get from Earth to Mars or Jupiter or anywhere for that matter.  It would be like nudging a stick out into a stream and watching it float on down to the next stop.  Only you would be able to nudge the stick back upstream as well, whenever you wanted.

Download and watch the video it's compelling.

This story appears to be jumping the gun a bit: Micro-robot that can clear arteries.

Larry Greenemeier over at Scientific American appears to be skeptical: Not seeing evidence of artery-cleaning nanobots

And wouldn't something so prominent be found on the universities own website?  http://chonnam.ac.kr/en/, I can't find a mention of it anywhere.

So while cool and impressive and probable in some near future, I think it is premature to say it has already been invented.  At least the jury is out until we have more concrete evidence.

Quantum chip rides on superconducting bus

The connection of two Qubits on a chip for the first time.  This is a crucial first step, a proof of concept, that will lead to true quantum computers.

In effect, says Johannes Majer, a member of the Yale team, the researchers have created "a quantum bus". A bus is used in conventional computers as a conduit for information among the various components – but its quantum chip equivalent has never been made before.

With the predictions for the end of Moore's law I refer you back to Ray Kurzweil's great essay on accelerating change that stipulated the doubling of computing power was not bound to the integrated chip.  The phenomena both preceded the integrated chip and will in all likelihood continue after the silicon chip is no longer viable.

The creation of a working quantum computer might be as momentous an event as the creation of the transistor.  History will of course judge.

Just an example of accelerating change.

There were rooms and devices in history that could be categorized as planetariums dating back to the 13th century, but the first true planetarium was created in Munich in 1920.  [ref. linky] [wikipedia]

That planetarium used a metal dome with holes poked in it to project the lights onto a domed ceiling.  This technology remained largely unchanged for 60 years.

Since then we have seen rapid change.  With computer processing  power increasing continuously it is now possible to provide dynamic content up onto the dome.  I went to a local planetarium last year and the experience was more like a trip through space than a lecture from an instructor.  It was remarkable.

But it doesn't stop there.

We now have sophisticated programs available to everyone for free that exceed the capabilities of ANY planetarium that was built before the year 2000.  Stellarium [linky] is only the most sophisticated example.

The power of a full planetarium placed in your hands for free.

Accelerating Change:

This is only one trivial example of accelerating change in our lives.  We have the capabilities at our fingertips that only large institutions have had in the past.  And even those institutions, whether business or government, have only had THOSE capabilities for a hundred years or so, before that essentially nobody could do these things.

And we take it all for granted.

We shouldn't.

We live in an age of miracles.  It is not an age of once in a blue moon someone gets healed by some mysterious means or someone walks on water or something trivial like that.  It is an age where the miracles are so common and ubiquitous that they have become mundane.

Not sure about the net balance of energy in this reaction but he is igniting saltwater with radio waves.

The question is how much energy doe sit take to create the radio waves to begin with?

So this comes up in sci fi a lot, beginning with "2001: a space Odyssey". In that movie Dave has to jump from the pod to the emergency airlock without a helmet.

He does it and it takes some seconds, approximately 10 or so..

It happens in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy wherein Arthur and Ford are thrown off the Vogon Constructor Fleet ship and are rescue 29 seconds later by Zaphod in the Heart of Gold.

Total Recall had it where Quaid and Melina were exposed to the partial atmoshpere of Mars for awhile until the atmosphere kicked in.

It's in the new movie Sunshine too.

So how long can a human actually survive in the vacuum of space?

Turns out we actually have an incident, where the astronaut survived.

At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds. The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

[linky]

Bottom line: you have about 15 seconds until you pass out...and that will result in you...um...dying.

It's a nasty ride, you're blood boils, your skin blisters, you lungs might explode if you try to hold your breath...icky, icky.

Here is a great article about a person with lifelong hearing loss.  Through his life he has repeatedly purchased and used hearing aids and been uniformly dissapointed.  Each one has been little more than an amplifier of sound, which doesn't really solve the problem.

Recently he got a modern cutting edge model.

And then humming.

And I asked, what’s that?

I turned to the audiologist who said, the humming is the light fixtures overhead. I looked up and it occurred to me that the world was opening up in waves around me within this tiny office. I could hear the secretary a room away on the phone and the printer printing and a phone ringing behind me, and I knew right were it was.

Wow! Right now I hear the refigerator running on the other side of the office. And I can make out the highway sounds in the background...just. This guy has NEVER heard the background sounds of life. Until now.

Go read the whole thing.

So I've talked about World Wind, [linky] which comes with an interface for several planets and the moon.  Well now Google has gotten into the act and created a moon map. [linky]

Google goes one better by highlighting the locations of the moon landings.

Great little video that explores the powers of 10.

The Drake Equation is the equation formulated by Frank Drake.  It is a speculative equation that is used to attempt to estimate the number of civilizations alive and kicking in the galaxy today.  It is stated as such.

N = R* × f_p × n_e × f_l × f_i × f_c × L

So why are you bringing this up Greg?  Well I'm glad you asked.  Astronomers have been using highly specialized techniques lately to detect planets around nearby stars, in general by detecting the wobble in the star's path caused by massive close orbiting planets. 

So historically we have been able to Estimate R*, which is the estimate of the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. 

And recently, with our new capabilities, we have been learning about how our estimates play out with f_p, which is the estimate for the fraction of the stars that have planets around them.

But the rest of the variables have been wild ass guesses.

Now Astronomers have spotted a potential n_e data point.  n_e is the number of planets per star that might sustain life. [linky] They believe they have spotted a candidate planet.  Now this in its own right doesn't tell us much.  What it does reveal is the growing capability of astronomers to detect smaller and smaller planets.

"On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X," Delfosse said.

As the technologies and skill of the astronomers continue to increase, we may very well nail down the front end of the Drake equation.  We may statistically "know" three of the seven variables.

If we can refine our techniques and increase the power of our telescopes even further we might be able to answer f_l which is the fraction of planets where life evolves.  Spectroscopic analysis comes to mind.

With knowledge of four of the seven Drake equation variables we will have a much better grasp of our standing in the universe.

Beyond that we really need a way to communicate with the intelligent life supposed in f_i and f_c.  But still...

Update: Let's hear what Carl Sagan has to say about it: