Tesla Tuesday: Telsa relates ET radio contact

Thanks to David Grinspoon, for this wonderful, found artifact:

“Brethren! We have a message from another world, unknown and remote. It reads: one… two… three…”

via Letters of Note: We have a message from another world.

In the summer of 1899, whilst alone in his Colorado Springs laboratory working with his magnifying transmitter, the inimitable Nikola Tesla observed a series of unusual rhythmic signals which he described as ‘counting codes’. Having just detected cosmic radio signals for the first time, Tesla immediately believed them to be attempted communications from an intelligent life-form on either Venus or Mars, and later said of the experience, ‘The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another’.

Stupid animatronic trick of the day

Photo: CC/Toni Lucatorto

Photo: CC/Toni Lucatorto

Japan is talking-up yet another bipedal robot (at least officials are not describing this one as a potential sexual partner, yet), to help humans settle-in on the moon, in about ten years.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan hopes to have a two-legged robot walk on the moon by around 2020, with a joint mission involving astronauts and robots to follow, according to a plan laid out Friday by a government group.

Specifics of the plan, including what new technologies will be required and the size of the project’s budget, are to be decided within the next two years, according to Japan’s Strategic Headquarters for Space Development, a Cabinet-level working group.

via The Associated Press: Japan aims for walking robot on the moon by 2020.

Scientist to 2012 doomsayers: "You're wrong"

CC/Gamerscore Blog

Doomsday 2012: It could happen, just not at the business end of an asteroid. Image: CC/Gamerscore Blog

Universe Today blogger mocks asteroid watchers:

Pinning 2012 doomsday scenarios on the end of the ancient Mayan “Long Count” calendar appears to be growing momentum amongst authors, websites, documentaries and my personal favourite YouTube videos. According to them, something bad is going to happen on or around December 21st 2012. Probably the most interesting difference between the 2012 doomsday scenario and the doomsday prophecies of the past is that almost every possible and impossible… or implausible harbinger of doom is being suggested as a planet killer.

via 2012: No Comet | Universe Today.

Moon landing? Don't believe your lying eyes

Space blogger to moon landing skeptics: Trust “scientists, engineers (and) the government.”

(Looks to good to be true. Photo: NASA)

Universe Today hopes this NASA image from the Apollo 11 mission (above) is so undeniably realistic-looking, few people will again dare to insist the U.S.’s moon landings were hoaxed. (Link, excerpt, below.)

Many conspiracists would be happy to see the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter prove them wrong. They just doubt it will.

Still Mythbusting | Universe Today
After last night’s “Mythbusters” show about the Apollo Moon Landing Hoax Myth, I’m cautiously hopeful that at least some people who believe(d) in this myth had their eyes opened and minds changed. Alas, there will always be folks out there who for some reason are set on not believing scientists, engineers or the government and won’t subscribe to any type of proof, be it scientific or television-ific. Perhaps the upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission will be able to take hi-resolution images of one of the Apollo sites.

Robots not good enough, say would-be Martians

A reluctant U.S. Congress might change its mind about sending humans to Mars, if Phoenix discovers organic matter, Planetary Society and Mars Society members hope (see believe).

In its NASA funding legislation, the Democrat-controlled body is seeking to bar any funds that might be spent on manned Mars missions. The Mars Society, meanwhile (which I joined for a year, because I had to have that membership card), is acknowledging this week its failure to capture the imaginations of many Americans. The organization plans to lobby Congress to support manned missions.

Will the Mars Phoenix Mission Clear the Way for Manned Missions? If organic compounds are present on Mars, they’re more likely to have been preserved in ice, which is why NASA targeted the Phoenix mission for the planet’s high northern plains, where they predicted about six inches of soft red soil should cover the ice so the digger shouldn’t have to probe too deeply.

"Kirk" calls for depopulation

If Man won’t do it, Nature will, William Shatner says.

(In the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” Kirk meets a wicked Spock in a parallel universe. He dissuades his first officer from eradicating an uncooperative humanoid race. Image: StarTrek.com)

from Mark:

Star Trek star William Shatner said last week that the earth is striking back against humans with natural disasters.

“They [people] are pressed together, defecating into the ocean,” said Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek. “The earth can’t take it.”

At one point in a long conversation with talk show host Glenn Beck, Shatner decried humankind’s penchant for reproduction. (See clip, and an excerpt from the transcript, below). It is a position he shares with his fellow transhumanist, Max More.

In a strange blurring of real and virtual reality, both Shatner and his Star Trek character are heroes to the transhumanists, who view the human body as limited, imperfect, and in need of artificial augmentation.

The transhumanists also want to bring about “a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.”

Shatner, a vigorous 74-year-old (he also appears to have been “under the knife”), was on Beck’s show to flog his new autobiography, Up Till Now.

Note: I was a contributing editor to one issue of Glenn Beck’s magazine, Fusion. — mb

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2xn35NpdA]

Glenn Beck – Interviews – Shatner v. Glenn
Well, nature, nature eventually will take care of that problem like they did, like nature does with animals. We’re overgrazing. So when deer multiply, when the natural order of things is disturbed and predators are taken away, for example, the deer, they overpopulate, they eat too much of the food and they starve. And we’re going to — if we don’t curb — how do we stop the overpopulation? I guess it’s by education and saying you’ve got to have less children, you can’t have all the children you want anymore. There’s a difference in the world now. Or nature will take care of it.

Sci-Fi cover for a real-life agenda?

A Second Life transhumanist, despite her sim’s ties to movement leaders and government agencies, insists it’s all “science fiction.”

Fishers of pre-posthumans? Second Lifers drop a line in the Extropia sim. (Image: From the Extropia Core website)

by Mark Baard

One of the founders of Extropia said this week denied she is propagating any ideology through the online sim.

Extropia founder and blogger “Galatea Gynoid,” as she’s known in Second Life, this week posted a rebuttal to “certain people” (see excerpt, below) who see more to the sim than an evolving work of pure fiction.

Extropia is an area within Second Life where people, via their 3D avatars, gather to discuss transhumanism, science and science fiction.

Gynoid says she started Extropia so that she and like-minded Second Lifers might enjoy an alternative to the depressing, dystopian sims they found elsewhere in the metaverse.

But Gynoid, by trying to have it both ways, may be trying to duck criticism from those who see the transhumanist agenda at work in Extropia.

By co-hosting events with real life (RL) transhumanists and U.S. government agencies, for example, it is clear that Extropia is more than fiction. It is also a meeting place for believers.

Extropia co-hosted a NASA “future forum” on May 14. And in two weeks, the sim will host a technology and religion conference meant to “re-cast our understanding of ‘humanity’ in the Third Millennium.”

Why “Extropia”? | Extropia Core
There are certain people out there who are insisting you need to subscribe to a particular ideology to be welcome here. The funny thing is, the majority of the Board of Directors wouldnt [sic] be allowed in Extropia if what they said is true. I myself, the founder and owner of the sims, would not be allowed in Extropia if what they said was true. Its utterly, patently ridiculous.

A different "Spitzer" story: Scope spots H2O in space


Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope have spotted organic material and water vapor swirling around a young star (artist’s conception, above). The star, AA Turi, is less than a million years old — a baby in celestial terms. It is one of several young stars surrounded by disks containing similar materials.

The orbiting Spitzer is the last in the Great Observatory family, which includes Hubble.

Spitzer Finds Organics and Water Where New Planets May Grow
With their new procedures, they were able to detect the minute spectral signatures for three simple organic molecules–hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and carbon dioxide–plus water vapor. In addition, they found more of these substances in the disk than are found in the dense interstellar gas called molecular clouds from which the disk originated. “Molecular clouds provide the raw material from which the protoplanetary disks are created,” said Carr. “So this is evidence for an active organic chemistry going on within the disk, forming and enhancing these molecules.”

Eye-to-eye with "eye" of Venus

Venus: another planet with a vortex scientists can’t explain

The European Space Agency reports that Venus’s south pole (the yellow dot in the image, below) has “an enormous structure with a central part that looks like the eye of a hurricane, (which) morphs and changes shape within a matter of days, leaving scientists puzzled.”

One ESA scientist says the vortex is the result of gases swirling down to the planet’s surface, “similar to what you might see in your bathtub once you have pulled out the plug .”

ESA Portal – The puzzling eye of a hurricane on Venus

The puzzling eye of a hurricane on Venus

13 March 2008
Venus Express has constantly been observing the south pole of Venus and has found it to be surprisingly fickle. An enormous structure with a central part that looks like the eye of a hurricane, morphs and changes shape within a matter of days, leaving scientists puzzled.