Futurismic

It sounds like something Bruce Sterling foresaw as long ago as Islands in the Net: Larry Dignan on ZDNet looks at a patent for a structure that would sit offshore like an oil rig:

Google is pondering a floating data center that could be powered and cooled by the ocean. These offshore data centers could sit 3 to 7 miles offshore and reside in about 50 to 70 meters of water.

….Now wild-cards abound. Jurisdiction issues will occur. Are states really going to allow Google or anyone else place these pontoons offshore without some tax hit?

And will Google take advantage of such a setup to bank your data like the Swiss bank money?

[Rusting sea forts in the Thames estuary photographed by phault; story tip: Gregory Frost]

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Horror writers in search of a plot need look no further: a weasel-like predator known as the fisher is making itself right at home in your Northeast or Midwest suburbs! The mixture of eco- and morality tale make it the perfect story device, given that they were almost wiped out by trappers and foresters in the last century, but reintroduced to prey on porcupines. The New York Times describes a householder’s encounter with a fisher that tried to eat her German shepherd’s face:

“I had never seen anything like it,” Ms. Beaudry recalled. “I didn’t know what it was. It kind of looked like a fox. But it was very, very ratty looking and had fangs and claws. It was creepy looking, but not that big.”

More animals-out-of-place news: The Caribbean monk seal, extinct. The Chinook salmon, endangered in the U.S., is thriving so well in Chile and Argentina that it could disrupt freshwater and marine ecosystems. And there’s thumbnail-sized quagga mussels clogging up the Colorado River. What other displaced creatures might be cast in near-future fiction?

[Image: Wikimedia Commons]

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Last month, PayPal mastermind Peter Thiel pledged $500,000 to The Seasteading Institute. Co-founded by Patri Friedman (grandson of Milton), the Institute’s official mission is to

Establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.

In an article for the Wired website, Alexis Madrigal zooms in on the original motivations of the Institute’s founders;

True to his libertarian leanings, Friedman looks at the situation in market terms: the institute’s modular spar platforms, he argues, would allow for the creation of far cheaper new countries out on the high-seas, driving innovation.

“Government is an industry with a really high barrier to entry,” he said. “You basically need to win an election or a revolution to try a new one. That’s a ridiculous barrier to entry. And it’s got enormous customer lock-in. People complain about their cellphone plans that are like two years, but think of the effort that it takes to change your citizenship.”

While over at the excellent BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh has turned his mind to the potential implications of “seasteading”;

What interests me here, aside from the architectural challenge of erecting a durable, ocean-going metropolis, is the fact that this act of construction – this act of building something – has constitutional implications. That is, architecture here proactively expands the political bounds of recognized sovereignty; architecture becomes declarative.

Sovereignty for sale? Whether you see this as a laudable quest for self-government or - as China Mieville argues - a morally bankrupt flight from responsibility, there are definite echoes of a certain late-80s paperback. But who knows? $500,000 might just be enough to give this scheme some real momentum.

[Image by Valdemar Duran, via Wired]

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When people suggest humans should colonise space, it’s often said that first they should attempt to conquer an alien world on our own doorstep - the oceans. The deep cold and pressure of the seabed is just as much a challenge as the vacuum of space and the creatures that live there are just as strange as any in science fiction.

Take a look at some of these Tunicates, that look like glass tulips rising in stems from the seabed. A recent Antarctic expedition found many new species a mile underwater.

Martin Riddle, leader on the research ship Aurora Australis, said yesterday: “Some of the video footage is really stunning. Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters. Many [of the animals] live in the dark and have pretty large eyes. They are strange-looking fish. In some places every inch of the sea floor is covered in life. In others we can see deep scars and gouges where icebergs scour the sea floor as they pass by.”

Whilst space has its own challenges and fascinations, there are still some parts of our world that have never before been glimpsed by human eyes.

[story and image via the guardian]

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Sailors have told tales for centuries of giant waves arising in calm seas and swamping boats unlucky enough to get caught in them. Scientists knew better, of course, and said such stories were simply myths–until recent studies confirmed that these giant rogue waves not only exist, they exist in higher numbers than anyone expected.

The photo above is a rare image of a rogue wave, taken by first mate Philippe Lijour aboard the supertanker Esso Languedoc during a storm off Durban in South Africa in 1980. The mast at far right stands 25 metres above mean sea level; mean wave height at the time was between five and 10 metres. The wave approached the ship from behind before breaking over the deck, but caused only minor damage. (Image: Philippe Lijour via ESA.)

Now a researcher at the Universidad de Alcalá in Madrid, in collaboration with the German research centre GKSS, has come up with a software tool that can allow ships to detect approaching giant waves in time to prepare for their arrival. (Via ScienceDaily.)

The same tool may also have environmental uses: it could be used to predict the exact trajectory of oil spills, for instance.

Meanwhile, somewhere an Ancient Mariner is muttering, “Told you so.”

Here’s a column I wrote on rogue waves a few years ago.

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This funky partly-submerged oddity is a design for a floating house, with five stories and enough room for six people. Featuring a bathroom and guest room slightly underwater and a lower level observation room for looking into the ocean depths, this would be a room fitting of many a sf or Bond villain! It even includes an electrical generator and enough storage for weeks of food and water. The entire structure is plastic, fibreglass and acrylic but will cost potential buyers a cool $2.5 Millon, which isn’t actually that much compared to a lot of mansions these days.

[via Neatorama, photo by sub-find]

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As Jamais Cascio and others have pointed out, geoengineering - large-scale technological projects aimed at averting the climate change crisis - should only be considered as last-ditch options, because they come with the risk of actually making things worse.

Take for example James "Gaia" Lovelock’s suggestion that we install hundreds of huge pipes in the ocean, with the aim of channeling nutrient-rich deep water to the surface to promote the growth of algae and (hopefully) absorb more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Lovelock himself admits that there’s a risk of the plan backfiring, but he says he’s worried enough that he thinks traditional scientific caution should be left behind. I hope he’s wrong - but even if he is, we could be doing a lot more to solve the problem than we already are. [Via BLDGBLOG] [Image by Jurvetson]

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