Milky Way Bigger than first thought

According to new information, the Milky Way Galaxy is about 15% wide and 50% more massive that previously thought. This means that our Milky Way is actually similar in size to the Andromeda Galaxy. These findings suggest that our own galaxy and Andromeda will collide much sooner (within the next 3 billion years) than previous estimated. The recent article from AP discusses these latest findings.

Back from Wyoming

Sunday was long. I spent much of it waiting at the airport for a flight that kept getting delayed. Not delayed by 30 minutes, but by hours and hours. Why was I in Wyoming waiting for a flight? Allie and I visited my folks. It was great seeing my parents for the first time in awhile.

As for Wyoming, I'm sure its citizens enjoy that state. I, on the other hand, will be very selective as to when I visit it in the future.

Version 2

I do not feel my soulmate calling out to me anymore
I miss you.
I am over you
I will love you my entire life
I am alone
You are near, but not here
I am in the wrong place
I am not alone
What once seemed wrong, now seems idyllic
I am released
I love you
I have learned to not yearn
I regret this and take proud in it too
I once felt like the desert without you
I am now a wandering sailor on wild seas
This prose is about me
I became
I am becoming again
That is was I am suppose to do
I fear new love
I want to experience it
Journey
I want to be selfish
I am generous
Love is generous and selfish
I am love
I fear myself
Nervous at life’s mundane moments
Confident when sublime engulfs me
You engulf me
I feel you
Love becomes without finale
This prose is my search for you
I am contradiction
I became because you are in my life
I become again because you are not now here
You are near, guiding
She has not come yet
I am waiting to become with her
Love,
Yours always

(circa 2001)

Wyoming Trip

 November 13, 2009 to November 17, 2009 with Patricia Lorono and Alice.

Visited Riverton, Wyoming. (Original post/backup link)

Predictions of Evolution of Alien Life

Evolution of life on other worlds is seeming more likely as human knowledge of the Universe expands. David Zeigler has recently proposed eleven Evolution Predictions of what abilities or traits will evolve on other worlds, conditions allowing. The predictions are that some lifeforms will be the following:

• Water dependent and carbon based.
• Chemosynthetic (chemical based energy synthesis) or photosynthetic (light energy synthesis).
• Heterotrophic and predators of heterotrophs (food chain of lifeforms).
• Passively or actively mobile to seek out optimum conditions. As such, body plans will evolve something similar to what we would identify as a head, with arrays of sensory organs.
• Sessile (non-mobile or anchored in place).
• Powered flight (birds, some insects, bats, pterosaurs), or at least directed gliding (flying squirrel, flying fish).
• Parasites, which on Earth account for over 65% of the total number of species.
• Genes will be selfish, and natural selection will spawn adaption to the environment.
• Will have senses, especially sight, sound, touch, heat detection, etc.
• Motile, organisms will have natural attraction and repulsion to stimuli.
• Large bodies of water will foster a wide variety of lifeforms, which may independently evolution similar adaptions.

The list seems a little incomplete and maybe not well organized. It is a good starting point in the discussion of what we can expect to find on other worlds. It can help us in knowing where to look, as well. Perhaps this list is formed from human prejudice. However, with only Earth as our example, this (at least for the time being) seems to be a fair set of predictions.

Source: Skeptic Vol. 14 No. 2, 2008 - Predicting Evolution


Related articles

• Video: What Would Trees Look Like On Other Planets?
• Predictions of Evolution of Alien Life
• Communicaion with Alien Civilizations
• Odds of Humaniods Evolving again
• Part 5: Blue Plants
• Part 4: Silicon Life
• Part 3: Arsenic Life
• Part 2: Exotic Amino Acids
• Part 1: Mirror Life

Tuesday Two: SolidWorks World edition

There's been many inventions and innovations that have been profiled at the various SolidWorks World conferences. This week's Tuesday Two covers to wind power winners that are getting notice.

Tuesday Two

Magenn has an innovative balloon wind power generator which goes by the name Mageen Air Rotor System (MARS). It floats far above the ground to take advantage of wind that is more reliable than ground based turbines. Here's an ancillary article in Design World on material used to make MARS.

Jeff Ray gives us an update on MicroWind Technologies which makes relatively small rooftop wind turbines called MicroWind Residential Turbine which will be able to produce 3 kW. They also have the MicroWind 300W which can be lamp post mounted.

Epoch-Fail

The Smart car that just isn't all that smart. It is not much bigger than a go cart, while only netting 41 MPG highway (which is worse than many real cars already on the market). Too much is sacrificed in both functionality and safety for no real gain; and don't get me started about the price for the "well equipped" version! For that, it recently ranked as the worse car of the 2000's by Cars.com, not to mention it wins this week's Epoch-Fail award!

Largest building ever built *discovered* in Egypt

If ancient descriptions are correct, and if the recent discovery is what some think it to be, the lost Labyrinth of Egypt may be at Hawara. This was a massive temple that was described by many ancient authors, such as Herodotus, to house 3000 rooms. The walls of each room were filled will paintings and hieroglyphs. Some have presumed this labyrinth housed the lost Hall of Records, dispite other theories that place it under the Great Sphinx of Giza. I'm not going to go on about this. Just check the links.

Ocean

Blue Dark Ocean Depths
Strange Living Treasures Hidden
Where The Monsters Dwell

13 and 13 coworker complaints and such

ThomasNet has had a blog. Apparently, it's been running in some fashion or other since 2000. Of course, back then maybe they didn't label it as a blog, but that's really what it was. There's a couple of articles that caught my attention recently.  (Original links no longer function, so please use the backup links.)

• 13 types of irritating coworkers (backup link)
• 13 Types of coworkers we like (backup link)

In these articles, David R. Butcher explores the best and worst traits in our coworkers (and ourselves) at work. His likes and dislikes may seem a bit arbitrary. He complains about the suck-ups in the first article, but lauds the jokers in his second. He makes the obvious observations regarding the positive coworker; yet in a sense of irony, he complains about the complainers. It's a fairly entertaining read.

Yet another Earth-world Found!

As technology and techniques in the hunt for terrestrial planets improves, we are finding that terrestrial planets seem to exist in a wide variety of star system types. In a presentation to the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, MI on June 2, a team of astronomers stated that they used the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics II telescope (New Zealand) to find a planet around a brown dwarf star. The planet is estimated as being about three times the mass of Earth.

The particular world discovered by the scientific team orbits a start about 300 light-years from our Solar System. It's orbit is likely as large as that of Venus around our Sun. According to current estimates, it most likely is made up ice and rock.

As more worlds are found, it seems to me that human understanding must accept that there is a very high likelihood that life exists beyond of Earth. There may come a day in our life times when such existence of life becomes completely undeniable.

Source: Astronomy Sept 2008 - Another super-Earth discovered

Oh my Bevie

Oh my Bevie
Find your way back to me
I've missed you
Bring back the happiness
Remember
Our care for each other
Oh my Bevie
Find your way back to me
Dear sweetie
You never leave my thoughts
My lost one
I'm here for you always
Oh my Bevie
Find your way back to me
Tender Love
Strange, so strong, yet fragile
Bring back
Love uncommon on Earth
Oh my Bevie,
Wondering
Through this life, yes I am
Living on
I do live my own life
Oh my Bevie
Find your way back to me
Memories
have of a life of their own
Longing here
for them renewed again
Oh my Bevie
Find your way back to me
Share times
We have lost to this gap
Healing now
Life goes on in tragedy
Oh my Bevie
Find your way back to me
Love Always

(circa 2001)

Communication with Alien Civilizations

SETI, whose job it is to find proof of alien civilizations, has yet to find any alien civilizations. The methods employed by SETI has so far focused on trying to receive messages via the EM spectrum for alien communication.

So far, SETI has been looking for messages from other alien civilizations in the form of "Anybody out there?" However, it may soon be looking for any signs of other alien civilizations by attempting "to eavesdrop on stray signs of intelligence leaked accidentally into space by other civilizations", says Steve Nadis in his Astronomy article titled Eavesdropping on E.T.: Could Changing Channels Tune Into Alien Civilizations?.

There is a quiet zone in the EM spectrum between 1 and 10 GHz. Fewer objects in the universe naturally transmit in that frequency range. If other alien civilizations know this, they may choose to intentionally transmit signals at that level. However, it may be easier to look for signals that alien civilizations naturally put out. The problem is that there is so much background noise at other frequencies, both from the Universe and Earth itself (our own civilization). Some scientists hope that a new radio-telescope coming on line in Australia called Murchison Wide-Field Array (MWA) will allow them to find anomalies that may be leaked transmissions of other alien civilizations. Though MWA is really meant to study the end of the Universe's Dark Ages (when stars began to form), it will also be able to find transient signals that may be signs that something else is out there.

Earth has been broadcasting its presence since the 1920's. Maybe another civilization has been doing the same for much longer? We will soon see.

Reference: Astronomy May 2008, Eavesdropping on E.T.: Could Changing Channels Tune Into Alien Civilizations?, by Steve Nadis

Related articles

• Video: What Would Trees Look Like On Other Planets?
• Predictions of Evolution of Alien Life
• Communicaion with Alien Civilizations
• Odds of Humaniods Evolving again
• Part 5: Blue Plants
• Part 4: Silicon Life
• Part 3: Arsenic Life
• Part 2: Exotic Amino Acids
• Part 1: Mirror Life

Tuesday Two: Sponging up energy

Tuesday Two

Get nearly perpetual power with these little energy cells that can recharge by harvesting ambient energy, such as kinetic, electromagnetic, heat, radio frequency, and light. This may change everything from hand held devices to desktop computers.

In real life Star Trek technology news, there's a phrase (not phaser) translator called the Phraselator which will translate statements into one of several languages. It's one-way translation today, but with two of these, you just might be able to carry on a short conversation about the weather with just about anyone on the planet.

Epoch-Fail

To prepare you for your American Idol debut, the Perpetual Kid website (purveyer of many potential Epoch-Fail canidadates) has the Shower Mic Sponge.

Hiller Aviation Museum

I recently had a chance to visit the Hiller Aviation Museum. It's an interesting place. The museum is housed within a former industrial building.

In the main entrance hall, the visitor can view a sizable restoration shop with its menagerie of old equipment and tools. The shop is bigger than some machine shops. There are also many scaled airplane models dangling from the ceiling. Let's not forget the rather sizable souvenir shop. Yes, I bought the t-shirt. :)

The main viewing room is the entire right side of the building. It houses many full scale and scaled air machines, with some original airplanes mixed with replicas. Where there's space to fill, you'll find an airplane or parts thereof.

One of the more interesting facts promoted at this museum is that there where successful attempts at powered flight long before the Wright Brothers. The Herman Avitor Jr. (or just Avitor) was powered by a 1-hp steam engine that drove twin propellers. It was was the first successfully flown heavier-than-air aircraft to employ a three-axis control system. It was built in San Francisco, CA. In 1869 it took flight near the modern day SF Int'l Airport. Sometime after its first flight, the contraption was destroyed when it caught fire.

Another interesting exhibit was the Pepsi Skywriter, used by Pepsi to promote their product for a few decades starting in the late 1920's. I'm not sure if this is a replica, but it is interesting to see the old Pepsi logo and figure how long ago companies where using inventive new marketing techniques to promote their products.

For You

Flowers I present by love
for my baby, whom I adore

Run to me, my love, kiss me
and feel my heart beat for you

Lean your head on my shoulder
I am your support for life

Guide your heart to my harbor
I shall protect you from storms

Open your places hiding deep
and I will handle with care

Your dreams have haven in me
Our dreams we share as you sleep

These flowers represent all
of my expressions of love

For You


Copyright ©1999, 2001 & 2003 Matthew Lorono All rights reserved