No, it’s not another giant meteor scare. Dr. Richard J. Gott, using a philosophical and scientific principle called the Copernican Principle, predicts how much longer things can last; presidents’ tenures, dogs lives, and the human species. Our future? Anywhere from 5100 years to 7.8 million. And he makes this prediction with 95% accuracy. To beat that range, he believes we will need to colonize another world (potentially Mars) in the next 46 years, and he uses the Fermi Paradox to back up this assertion. I don’t know about you, but I think 7.8 million years would be woefully inadequate.
Greening the Red Planet – scientists test plausibility of Martian trees
If we were to colonise Mars, we’d need to give it an atmosphere. The best way to do that would be to duplicate the creation of atmosphere here on Earth – by letting plant life do the work for us. With this in mind, scientists are investigating
the trees that grow on a lofty extinct volcano in Mexico, to see if their ability to survive in the thin atmosphere could be transferred to the Martian surface. [Colony Worlds] [Image by Redvers]
More tech for the military
Thanks to the huge budgets involved, the military forces of the world tend to get a chance to play with all the best new technology before anyone else. The US Army Flight School is adopting a new augmented reality helmet for training purposes, which enables the wearer to see tactical information and thermal imagery, and to focus on distant objects. A more long-term Pentagon plan is to adopt militarily useful iterations of directed energy technology – to build laser blasters, in other words. Another technology that soldiers are more likely to get before the rest of us, albeit due to the most unpleasant of circumstances, are cybernetic limbs like the iHand prosthesis, a myo-electric replacement hand that can lift delicate objects without crushing them.
“Worldbuilder’s Bible” available for download
Aspiring space opera writers, take note: you can now download the Rand Corporation’s 1964 report document “Habitable Planets for Man” as a PDF file for personal use, a piece of work
described as being the ultimate guide to creating plausible fictional worlds … even though it was meant for more ‘serious’ purposes. [SlushGod] [image by SideLong]
Get big pimping with your own personal luxury submarine
If you’ve got a few million laying around, and you’re not satisfied with a megayacht for your own conspicuous display of wealth? Then you’ll want a megayacht that submerges at $15-200 million.
US Submarines has a number of submersible luxury vehicles that are eyecatching but that seemed more like vaporware due to the fact that the site features computer drawings of them, not actual units in operation. But apparently civilian submarines in general are becoming enough of a problem that the US Navy is cautioning its fleet to be careful around coastal areas where they might bump into civilian subs.