One Step Closer to Cyborgs

Of all the cool gadgets and gizmos and random weird shit that sci-fi promises us will happen eventually, there are few that are expected to be achieved within our lifetimes. Given that I am younger than Game Boys, this means that there a good few decades of innovation awaiting us before we're all going around in hover cars.

But recently, it has been revealed that Federico Parietti and Harry Asada from MIT have brought mankind one step closer to cyborgs.

Remember when Bender sported these bad boys...?

Well, what was not made clear in that episode was that they were invented much closer to now than to then. And that they work on humans as well as robots.

Parietti and Asada have developed the prototype of a pair of semi-autonomous arms that are worn like a backpack and extend around the body. They are designed to be intelligent enough that they can be of assistance without needing a lot of tricky programming; they will learn and anticipate what their wearer wants them to do, having been programmed to perform specific tasks.

The work is being funded by Boeing and the prototypes were shown at the Dynamic Systems and Control Conference in Florida earlier on this year. The arms are being designed to help factory workers with jobs that require two pairs of hands; they are supposed to increase efficiency by letting that guy who would usually be the second pair do something more important with his time than just holding stuff.

They seem like they would be really useful once they have reached a point that they are available to industries. However, it is only a matter of time beyond that before they become commercialised and nerds like me get their hands on them and do awesome cosplays of this dude!

The New Contender in the Energy Market: Air.

Evironmentally, you really can't win. Statistically, I am kind of winning; my life is quite environmentally friendly - I am frugal with electricity, I walk most places and get the bus to all other places, I have a Friends of the Earth hoodie - but that it because I am a poor student and I live in expensive London and Tim Minchin was at the Friends of the Earth gig, so I don't really have much of a choice in these matters. For people who can afford choice, you're pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don't. Using technology is necessary, but bad. Driving a normal is bad, but driving an electric car makes you a pretentious prick. Also, electricity is bad. And electric cars are ugly as fuck.

But this could be about to change. The G-Wiz will still be hideous and you will still look like a douche if you even consider getting into one. But it won't be your only option.

Because of these dudes. These wonderful nerds - and I do love nerds - at Air Fuel Synthesis are making fuel out of air.

Out. Of. Air.

Earlier on in October 2012, they revealed the first successful demonstration of their techniques, showing how carbon, hydrogen and oxygen can be taken from carbon dioxide and water in the air to be converted first into methanol and then into petrol.

They didn't even have to go into any more detail to blow my mind. The idea has been around since the oil crisis of the 1970s, but it still feels a bit like science fiction to me. So they offer this helpful graphic to explain to nerd-groupies like me who have no real nerd credentials aside from enthusiam:

The problem with it at the moment is the energy efficiency of the process. Obviously, it would not be environmentally beneficial if more energy was put into it than is created by it, and this is still being smoothed out, but that makes it no less cool.

With funding, it will get there. Eventually. There are huge plans for the technology which could revolutionise the way that energy is created. The maths for its development on a much larger scale is already sorted out and, once it has some firmer backing from governments, it is hoped that it will be a contender against oil in the energy market.

Hopefully it won't make the same mistake as some of the other companies that have tried to save the world and will offer us some technology that isn't too ugly to touch.

$1.4 million Raised for Nikola Tesla Laboratory: Faith in Humanity Goes Up Ten Points

(Before you ask, I'm not keeping a tally but, if I was, Tim Minchin and his wonderful nerdy ilk would be responsible for most of them.)

Hardcore nerdism is apparently rife in Shoreham, New York, where the Tesla Science Centre at Wardenclyffe group has raised $1.4 million via online crowd funding to buy Nikola Tesla's laboratory in order to turn it into a museum. As a soon-to-be owner of a Nikola Tesla T-shirt, this excites me very much.

It being in America both disappoints and thrills me. I am disappointed because, unless by some miracle I suddenly get very rich, it is unlikely that I will be able to go. However, considering the sheer stupidity that has come out of America, I am overjoyed that this has happened at all. Reading about it only makes it seem so much better.

The point of the museum is that it is a place that is dedicated to science and education with Nikola Tesla - an inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist and futurist whose work led to the way electricity is used today - at its foundation.

Tesla was born in Serbia in 1856 and emigrated to America in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. He soon moved on to work for himself and conducted high-voltage, high-frequency experiments, which resulted in inventions that made him world famous. Essentially, he made explosions out of electricity for a living, which is pretty damn awesome as far as I am concerned, never mind everything else for which we have to thank him.

In typical mad-scientist fashion, he spent as much money as he made on more and more experiments and ended up dying penniless in January 1943. But still managed to keep his hair suspiciously neat, judging by the pictures of him.

In 1901, Tesla bought 200 acres on Long Island's north shore where he established what is now his only remaining laboratory. It was purchased with the intention of building a wireless transmission tower but was never fully operational. Wardenclyffe Tower - also known as Tesla Tower - remaining, even if in diminished form, as a tribute to his life and achievements is amazing. It seems only fitting that that the group also hope to have it provide space for companies to perform scientific research.

Aside from his brilliance as a scientist, Tesla was one damn incredible human. He lived his life by a strict routine, squishing his toes one hundred times per foot in the belief that it stimulated his brain. Judging by his work, he may well have been right. He worked from 9am to 6pm, at least, every day, often continuing until 3am once he had had his dinner. He walked 8 to 10 miles ever day to keep in shape; he was elegant, stylish and incredibly groomed (just look at his hair!). His gray-blue eyes, he claims, used to be darker until they lightened due to so much use of his brain.

Tesla never married, but even he admitted that it was a bit of a loss to the world that his genes were not preserved. Then again, he also said that being celibate allowed him a lot more time to devote to his work, which was most certainly a good thing. However, he was sociable, and everyone who knew him loved him. He was considered to be charming and lovely and poetic, and it is almost no surprise that so many women threw themselves at him.

After all, he made shit like this possible...

He was wonderful. If he were alive today, he still would be. It is a shame more men are not like him in this world. I am a little bit in love with him. And with good reason.

If I ever get the chance, I am going to that Tesla museum and I am going to behave like a stalkery little fangirl and I am going to love it.

Funds are still being raised on the Tesla Science Centre website to continue with the restoration of the laboratory and the creation of the museum.

It is going to be awesome!

I'm Going to Mars!!

It is virtually undisputed that outer space is supremely cool. It is creepy and mysterious and captures the imagination of people across the world. People devote their lives to the study of it, whether in the more abstract and often less accurate joy of science-fiction writing or in the pursuit of answers through hard study and research. It has warranted the creation of NASA, which is one of the most amazing things ever to have come out of America. Outer space is where the secrets of the universe lie; pretty much everything we can learn about Earth has been learned and all the mysteries left to solve are somewhat further afield. The only people who disagree tend to be unimaginative and drab, rather like this idiot, who can’t even structure a sentence properly:

Some dickhead's ignorant opinion, courtesy of Facebook

(I considered ranting for a bit about precisely why this is ignorant and about how beneficial ALL scientific research is, even when it's an accident, but I already did it, here, so I figured I didn't need to do it again.)

Very recently, NASA’s Curiosity Rover landed safely on Mars and has started sending back pictures already. They are amazing. They aren’t the best quality photographs in the world, but they did come from Mars. Obviously, this made me very excited and I enlisted Google and Twitter to take me on a big old nerd binge.

Bas Lansdorp

In doing so, I stumbled across the Mars One Project. It is a private enterprise run by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp and its aim is to set up a colony of human beings on Mars over the space of the next few decades. The mission objective is to “establish the first human settlement on Mars by April 2023”. The Mars One team has been working on the plan for it since early 2011 and have the support of a number of “ambassadors”, including the Chairman of the Netherlands Space Society, the co-creator of Big Brother and CERN physicist Prof. Dr. Gerard ‘t Hooft, who was presented with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1999 for his work on the quantum structure of electroweak interactions.

The first forty astronauts to be sent to Mars will be selected in 2013. They will all have to train for ten years so that they are prepared for their trip. A replica of the Mars One settlement will be built in the desert on Earth to serve as a place for the astronauts to prepare and train as well as to test the equipment. In January 2016, the “supply mission” will be launched, sending 2500 kilograms of food and other supplies in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. In 2018, a rover will land on Mars to explore the selected area to find the best spot for habitation. In 2021, two living units, two life supports units, another supply unit and another rover will have arrived on Mars, prepared for the arrival of the astronauts. All “water, oxygen and atmosphere” production will be ready by the beginning of 2022 and the first group of astronauts are due to be launched towards Mars on September 14^th 2022.

The first astronauts will be due to land on Mars in 2023 after an estimated 7-month journey, where the rovers will take them to their new home. More astronauts will be launched in groups of four every two years so that the colony will have reached 20 settlers by 2033. The Mars One team plan to send more hardware up with each additional group so that more and better exploration can take place as well as providing them with updated technology and providing better quality of life.

The plans for the 'settlement' to be built on Mars

Getting back from Mars is a hell of a lot harder than getting to Mars – look at how long it took for us to develop rockets on Earth. The astronauts will not be visiting, but emigrating to Mars, where they will be expected to stay, possibly for the rest of their lives. They will have to leave everything on Earth behind in the attempt to learn more about the red planet. Training for the astronauts before they leave will include staying in simulation bases to see how they cope with being secluded, away from everything they have ever known and loved, and being left with only the other astronauts. They must be extremely intelligent and able to cope in unfamiliar environments, as well as being able to solve any problems that may occur by themselves, especially those in the first team of four who will be alone for two years on a different planet. They must also have a knowledge of engineering, in case anything goes wrong with the technology, as well as the ability to cultivate crops and see to any medical problems. The team at the moment predict that they may well stay there for the rest of their lives, but it does not exclude the possibility that the technology necessary for a return rocket can be sent to Mars after a few years so that astronauts can return if they wish. Considering the state of technology now, and given the amount of time for proliferation between now and when the return rocket will be required, this is not an unreasonable estimate.

The settlement on Mars will include “inflatable components which contain bedrooms, working areas, a living room and a ‘plant production unit’, where they will grow greenery”. Within the settlement, the Mars One website predicts that the astronauts will “lead typical day-to-day lives”. There, their task will be building and researching. They will have to prepare for when the other groups land as well learning about Mars. Their research will include how people and plants respond to life of Mars as well as things like Mars’s geology and biology. Essentially, imagine everything the scientists throughout history have learned about Earth - forty people are going to be sent to do all of that on another planet.

Reading the information offered by the website does seem like they have thought of everything. It does not go into great detail, but it does offer an FAQ page as well as a contact address for anyone with further questions. The page explaining why and how the astronauts will emigrate to Mars is quite cool. They claim to have found a place where there is water ice beneath the surface that can be cultivated to provide hydration for the astronauts. They describe how everything will be powered by solar panels so that they do not need to go to the hassle of building a nuclear reactor for energy. They go to a lot of effort to ensure that people know that they understand what they are undertaking.

The Mars One website has a Sponsorship page, inviting businesses and companies of all sizes to sponsor the project and “play a significant role in creating World History” and “make the next giant leap for mankind”. However, the project will mainly be funded by having the whole thing being as a reality TV show. Suddenly it makes sense that the Big Brother guy is involved; otherwise, he really stuck out as a bit of a loser in amongst all those people with physics doctorates…

From the selection and preparation of the first astronauts, right through the launch of the first rover to the point at which a colony has formed on Mars, everything will be broadcast on television and be made available online for the public to view. The Mars One team insists that there will be no gimmicky bullshit like in most reality TV shows, that the integrity of the mission itself should be more than enough to attract people to watch. I know I would watch, but I’m a nerd, and generally I hate reality TV, so I don’t really know if I’m a good example.

I actually think this is brilliant. I don’t know if it will work. I don’t think that there have been enough critical analyses of the plans by people who have a lot of in-depth knowledge about all the necessary science for me to draw any proper conclusions. I have had a look at the Wikipedia entry for Mars One as well as the one for Prof. Dr. Gerard ‘t Hooft, the most advertised of the team’s “ambassadors”. I have had a very long look at the website and I, with my nerdy but nonetheless layman’s knowledge, think it is pretty awesome, but it only makes sense to remain sceptical before I have a bit more information. They seem very determined that everything go right and well and that all the science be absolutely fool-proof, so that they are taken seriously and so that they don’t end up stranding forty well-meaning astronauts somewhere between Earth and Mars without food or oxygen. It does feel a little bit like that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer went to space, but science is not about feelings – it is about doing research and getting results and using the information gleaned from crazy ventures just like this to make a better world for generations to come.

Now I know I’m not exactly astronaut material right now – but if Homer Simpson can do it, anyone can. Besides, there is another year before the selection begins and I will be thirty when the first team is launched, so I've got time to prepare. I won’t lie, I have already signed up for some free online study groups beginning in January of next year that focus on biology and other things that may come in handy with my application, but I was already signed up for one about astrobiology and I don’t have much going on during the time of course, so my nerdism probably would have led me to do them anyway.

I would like a bit more information about it, maybe some objective opinions about it from more than a handful of people. I would like to see the specifics of the plans – more details, for instance, about exactly how they expect me not to die. If this project really is as good as the website makes it out be (which it probably won’t be; nothing ever us, but we may as well be hopefully), I would happily sign up. Never mind that my nan doesn’t like me living as far away as London and is such a technophobe that there is no way she will trust the video messaging system, even though I know for a fact that they guys at CERN currently use Skype (Brian Cox did it at Uncaged Monkeys in December 2011; I was there, it was awesome).  Never mind that the minimum age limit is 25. Never mind that it may mean spending most of my life on Mars and much of the time beforehand training and studying to be competent enough to go to Mars. Never mind that if I do spend a lot of time studying and training and then end up not making the final cut that I would have wasted as much as ten years of my life (provided I start working for it now, or at least in the next six months or so) for something I never will do. None of that matters.

This is Mars. The planet. This is a chance to go down in history. This is dangerous and exciting and amazing and unbelievably nerdy. Space exploration is one of the coolest and most incredible things that mankind has achieved and it is all done by amazing nerds, which Hollywood will have you believe are all also total babes. This is not always untrue.

The fact is that Mars is the next thing that mankind has to explore. Maybe we haven’t learned everything there is to learn about the moon or even the Earth, but we will, and why shouldn’t we be heading off to Mars too, so we're there ready to start working when everything else is done? We all know it is going to be awesome, but you don’t have to believe me, because my opinion is only mine and I am obviously not the best spokesperson for this sort of thing.

Rather, believe Carl Sagan: