Another Search Is On!

This time it's for martian hypothermophilic chemolithotrophs - martian analogues to terrestrial life forms that live in the warm underground biosphere.

1. Mars has an atmospheric pressure only 0.7% of that of Earth.
2. Typical martian temperatures are on the order of -63 C (-81 F).
3. It may well be that underground is the only place for life to flourish.

Why does NASA (and ESA for that matter) maintain silence regarding these subterranean life forms?
When will we be told just what has been found by the Martian rovers as they have dug into the surface of the red planet?
When will we actually learn who built the canals, and who covered them up before our orbiters arrived to map them?

We'll keep digging, and will report back here as more details become available.

Posted by Listener 43

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Water, Mars, Saturn, and Technocrats

"Suppose you were an idiot

 and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

Mark Twain knew whereof he spoke, my friends, and things haven't changed since his day.

Now your putative masters in Washington DC are trying to sneak in a vote to suspend the first amendment. Oh, they call it the Stop Online Piracy Act, but it's more like Stomping On the Premier Amendment.

It's hard to decide whether they're misguided but incompetent, or malicious but not quite sneaky enough. I don't think it really matters - in either case they need to be tossed out on their collective ears for even considering such an abrogation of the basic rights to free speech / freedom of the press / free association.

Morons.

Posted by Lewis Cannon

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Another Slippery Slope (there, I said it!) 

Another Slippery Slope (there, I said it!)

The loony Eurocrat wannabes over at the NTSB have decided that we're too stupid and immature to make adult decisions for ourselves. In keeping with the actions of their co-conspirators across the Atlantic, they're proposing that all States should ban all use of cell phones in cars.
They're even willing to come up with technology to make sure they won't work there, just so you won't be tempted to think for yourself.
Of course, there's no reason to believe that this is anything but the first step in yet another program to protect us from ourselves, since they're so much smarter than we are (otherwise, they wouldn't have landed those great jobs in the government and they'd have to work for a living like the rest of us instead, right?). Here's the way I see the progression:

1. No cell phones -
   they're distracting (and have managed to get us back to 1949 levels of traffic fatalities).
2. No coffee -
   it's distracting to drink, and spilling it in our laps could burn us. (Food will go at the same time, no doubt.)
3. No radio -
   unlike a conversation, you can't tell the radio to wait a minute while you deal with driving, so clearly that's not to be allowed.
4. No passengers in front seat -
   even when you tell them to wait, they're still there, and they're distracting.
5. No kids in back seat -
   kids just never shut up, and they drop their stuff and want you to get it for them.
6. No cars -
   if there's just one person in each car, there's no environmental justification; we just can't allow them - get on the bus, bub, and live where we decide there will be service for now.

Once again, our technocrat overlords are chafing at the limits imposed on them by rationality, laws, and the Constitution. As usual, these things are only minor inconveniences in their way of thinking, and using the power of the federal piggy bank to force us and the States to their will is simply a matter of framing the commands in the proper form - as veiled threats of withholding tax money for failure to comply with "voluntary" guidelines which limit and then dispose of such niceties as the fiction of individual responsibility and liberty.

Posted by Lewis Cannon

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Still Playing the unCERNtainty Card

1. The scientists at CERN's LHC have made the momentous announcement that they may have an announcement to make next year.
2. They've detected what might be a particle at what might be the correct energy for the Higgs boson - the so-called God particle.
3. Other commentators seem unwilling to take CERN's uncertainty at face value, preferring to trumpet solid evidence for the Higgs boson.

These fine folks seem to have bracketed the Higgs boson's expected energy range, seeing "something" at 124 and 126 GeV - the currently bandied-about mass of the Higgs is 125 GeV.
While they tell us that statistically, they don't feel justified in claiming to have found the particle, they feel this means that they will find it next year. While this may be little more than a way of assuring another year's funding for the experiments, it may also be yet another go at sending competing investigators on a wild-goose chase after yet another energetic red herring.
Or it may not.

I for one will be happy when this hunt is over - with its attendant sniping and misdirection - and we can all once again find ourselves in a universe which is permeated with aether.
The supposed emptiness of space would be most happily replaced by that aether, and then work can begin on Higgs field generators.

That, my friends, would be the most important next step coming from any such discovery. The generation of a Higgs field would mean the eventual achievement of faster-than-light travel. By creating the analogue of a noise-cancelling field, mass could be negated.
Imagine the possibilities - they seem nearly limitless.

I know I've been (and continue to be) suspicious of the folks at CERN and the LHC, but if they actually come through with this discovery - or even if one of their competitors manages the feat despite the false starts and red herrings thrown in their various paths - this could be the beginning of something truly wondrous.

Posted by Procrustes 17

Water, Mars, Saturn, and Technocrats

1. NASA's Opportunity rover has found a bright vein of what scientists believe to be gypsum.
2. This vein appears to have been formed by flowing water: Steve Squyres of Cornell says, “This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock.”
3. Russian efforts to reach Mars have been repeatedly foiled by "technical problems" with their spacecraft.

It seems apparent that there is some connection between the water on Mars and the unexpected water cycle among Saturn, Enceladus, and Titan.
Given that relationship, why won't NASA or the ESA release any information on how much of the Saturn water has been sourced from Mars, and how much from Titan?
When will our technocrat self-proclaimed overlords admit how much they know, and tell us just what threats exist here in our own solar system?

We'll continue to monitor developments and report back here as more information becomes available.

Posted by Listener 43

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Extinct Bees Back From The Dead?

1. A bee species (Cockerell's Bumblebee) went extinct last century - it was last observed in 1956.
2. Scientists in Europe have observed neutrinos moving faster than light
3. General Relativity indicates that faster than light = time travel to the past

When will the scientists at CERN release their entomological observations to accompany the results of their neutrino measurements?
Why do all branches of the federal government continue to remain silent on the threat of extinct species returning to life in the present due to uncontrolled experimentation by foreign scientists?
When with the news media report on this linkage?

We'll report back here as more information becomes available.

Posted by Listener 43

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