Building a Modular Moonbase (Sky at Night, July 2005)

A moonbase could start off with a few key components. In this concept, only the airlock, pressurised rover vehicles and spacesuit maintenance module have so far been delivered.

The next generation of lunar landers will be larger and tougher than the cramped Apollo modules. Three crewmembers will live aboard them for several weeks at a time. Inflatable modules will be attached to the airlocks, adding a little more space. Long-ranged wheeled rovers will be essential. Docking hatches will allow them to link up and create temporary exploration camps. They will be fully inhabitable extensions of the main base. Permament living quarters may eventually be constructed under protective blankets of lunar topsoil. The design of a real base, when it is finally built, will depend on its ultimate purpose, whether scientific, commercial or even for tourists.

This conceptual illustration shows a lunar lander in the process of being reconfigured into a temporary base. Reuse and adaptation are key principles.

The map shows the amount of sunlight that Peary crater receives. There are a few spots that show up white, indicating that they never get dark. Crucially, those sites are close to areas shown as black, which never see sunlight. These could harbour precious water ice.

Meteor Crater (Arizona, USA - Sky at Night, July 2005)

Nearly 50,000 years ago, a relatively small meteorite collided with the Earth in the Arizona desert. Only seriously studied since 1891, Meteor Crater first attracted the attention of astronomers when Daniel Barringer, a local mine owner who happened to a have a degree in geology from Harvard, first suggested its extraterrestrial orgins. In his memory the crater if often referred to as Barringer Crater and his family still owns the land on which the crater rests.

Results published in 2004 in the journal Nature suggested that the meteorite fragmented upon impact with the Earth´s atmosphere, spreading into a "pancake" covering about 200 metres. A slower impact would have been the result, with much of the energy being distributed in an atmospheric blast. It was this blast that produced the small, un-melted fragments of iron scattered around the crater.

Walking down into the crater is forbidden, but there are viewing points behind the visitors centre from which you can look down on the floor of the crater, and a trail leading in both directions around the limb allows visitors to get a proper look. The view is at its best once you walk away from the road and buildings and look across the crater to the flat desert beyond.

The nearest large town is Flagstaff and visitors should make the most of the opportunity to drive up the tree-lined hill outside town and visit the Lowell Observatory, where the discovery of Pluto was made in 1930.

(Chris Lintott, Sky at Night)

(*) Meteor Crater is located off Interstate 40 at exit 233, 35 miles east of Flagstaff, 20 miles west of Winslow, in Arizona, USA. http://www.meteorcrater.com/index.php

MAIL: Julio Navarro - comentario a tu post sobre ballenas‏ (in French, Le Monde)

No lo he podido incluir como comentario, quizá por demasiado largo.

Me permito pasarte un artículo de Le Monde sobre Japón y las ballenas. De acuerdo con este artículo, la ballena entra cada vez menos en la gastronomía japonesa, ¿entonces? Atención a los "fuertes lazos" entre el ministerio de pesca, el instituto de investigación sobre cetáceos y el grupo privado de Kyodo Senpaku:

Au sein de la Commission baleinière internationale (CBI), dont la réunion annuelle s'achevait vendredi 26 juin à Madère (Portugal), le Japon fait cavalier seul. L'Archipel persiste à exiger le droit de pratiquer la chasse commerciale à la baleine. Dans le même temps, il maintient ses campagnes de chasse à des fins dites "scientifiques", qui se sont traduites par la prise de plus de 10 000 de ces cétacés depuis 1988. LES RAIES ET LES REQUINS DE HAUTE MER EN DANGER Un tiers des raies et des requins de haute mer sont menacés d'extinction, selon une étude publiée, jeudi 25 juin, par l'Union mondiale pour la conservation de la nature (UICN). Les requins sont souvent des victimes accidentelles de la pêche au thon ou à l'espadon, mais ils sont aussi de plus en plus recherchés pour alimenter la demande asiatique en ailerons. Le grand requin-marteau ainsi que la raie mobula, qui peut atteindre 5 mètres de long, sont considérés comme les espèces plus menacés. L'UICN estime urgente l'adoption de mesures de protection. Sur le même sujet ECLAIRAGE La Commission baleinière internationale toujours dans l'impasse L'obstination nippone peut surprendre, car la question de la chasse à la baleine ne passionne guère le pays.



Un sondage, réalisé en 2006 pour le compte de Greenpeace, révélait que 39 % des personnes interrogées n'avaient pas d'opinion sur ce sujet. Seulement 35 % y étaient favorables, surtout des hommes de plus de 40 ans. En février, dans une tribune publiée par le quotidien Nihon Keizai, Masahiko Ishizuka, de l'université de Waseda, rappelait qu'il "n'existe pas de lobby national sur la question". "Il n'y a pas de demande forte de la population en faveur d'une position de fermeté à la CBI", constatait-il. A cela s'ajoute la faiblesse de la consommation. Selon la même étude, 20 % des sondés n'ont jamais mangé de baleine. En 2008, la société Kyodo Senpaku, qui mène les campagnes de chasse dites scientifiques, affirmait que la consommation par personne et par an s'établissait à 50 grammes. A Nagasaki, ville de tradition baleinière, elle atteignait 177 grammes. Des chiffres bien loin des niveaux observés dans le passé : au début des années 1980, avant l'instauration du moratoire sur la chasse commerciale, en 1986, la consommation annuelle s'établissait à 2,3 kg par personne. Depuis, le prix de la baleine a augmenté, au point de dépasser celui du thon ou du boeuf, mais il n'y a pas de pénurie. Les stocks atteignaient 4 800 tonnes fin avril, le double de leur niveau au milieu des années 1990.


Les causes de la fermeté japonaise sont donc à chercher ailleurs. Pour certains, elle découlerait de calculs politiciens. "Certains élus bénéficient des voix des villes de tradition baleinière, observe Kyoko Murakami, de Greenpeace Japon. Il existe des liens très forts entre l'Agence gouvernementale de la pêche, l'Institut de recherche sur les cétacés qui mènent les "recherches", et le groupe privé Kyodo Senpaku." Tous ces acteurs collaborent pour promouvoir la chasse, avec comme argument l'absence de menace sur certaines espèces de baleine, comme celle de Minke ou le rorqual commun. Selon eux, la production d'un kilo de viande de baleine polluerait moins que celle d'un kilo de viande de boeuf. CHOC DES CIVILISATIONS Surtout, ils défendent l'idée que la chasse baleinière relève des traditions nationales. Des indices laissent penser que cette activité se pratiquait déjà dans le nord de l'archipel à l'époque Jomon (14 000-400 avant J.-C.). Elle se serait développée pendant la période d'Edo (1603-1868). La modernisation des techniques de chasse à l'ère Meiji, après 1868, a permis l'essor de l'activité en pleine mer. Au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale, dans un contexte de pénurie alimentaire, l'occupant américain a encouragé la consommation de baleine. Bon marché et riche en protéines, cette viande était même servie dans les écoles. A la fin des années 1940, elle représentait 45 % de la consommation totale de viande du Japon. Qu'importe que ce chiffre ait ensuite diminué, l'Institut de recherche sur les cétacés persiste à clamer "l'importance, encore aujourd'hui, de la baleine dans l'alimentation japonaise". Partant de cette logique, les opposants à la chasse, dans l'archipel et à l'étranger, sont présentés comme des "anti-Japonais". Masahiko Ishizuka parle de "mini-choc des civilisations". Mais le Japon étant "un pays bénéficiant de nourriture en abondance", l'universitaire considère que "la baleine n'est en aucun cas indispensable au quotidien".

Philippe Mesmer.

Sahha

No Paradox for Time Travellers (Mark Buchanan; New Scientist, June 2005)

The laws of physics seem to permit time travel, and with it, paradoxical situations such as the possibility that people could go back in time to prevent their own birth. But it turns out that such paradoxes may be ruled out by the weirdness inherent in laws of quantum physics.

Some solutions to the equations of Einstein´s general theory of relativity lead to situations in which space-time curves back on itself, theoretically allowing travellers to loop back in time and meet younger versiones of themselves. Because such time travel sets up paradoxes, many reserachers suspect that some physical constraints must make time travel impossible. Now, physicists Daniel Greenberger of the City University of New York and Karl Svozil of the Vienna University have shown that the most basic features of quantum theory may ensure that time travellers could never alter the past, even if they are able to go back in time.

Wormholes could allow you to travel into the past and the future. http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/time-travel-wormhole2.jpg

The constraint arises from a quantum object´s ability to behave like a wave. Quantum objects split their existence into multiple component waves, each following a distinct path through space-time. Unfortunately, an object is usually most likely to end up in place where its component waves recombine, or "interfere", constructively, with the peaks and troughs of the waves lined up, say. The object is unlikely to be in places where the components interfere destructively, and cancel each other out.

Quantum theory allows time travel because nothing prevents the waves from goind back in time. When Greenberger and Svozil analised what happens when these component waves flow into the past, they found that the paradoxes implied by Einstein´s equations never arise. Waves that travel back in time interfere destructively, thus preventing anything from happening differently from that which has already taken place. "If you travel into the past quantum mechanically, you would only see those alternates consistent with the world you left behind you, " says Greenberger.

"This is a very nice idea," says physicist Avshalom Elitzur of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, who also suggests that further work in the area could help to clarify the nature of time itself. "Time is a very mysterious thing."

Why Japan Fights for Whaling - Whale Harvest on the Increase (New Scientist, June 2005)

One more for the record: British Police Brutality and the Double-Taser Arrest Probed (Video)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8101763.stm

Video footage of a man being shot twice with a Taser gun has been passed to the police complaints body.

The man was filmed struggling during the incident on Sunday night in Upper Parliament Street, Nottingham, as four officers attempted to arrest him.

A large group appeared and some people remonstrated with officers.

Nottinghamshire Police said no complaint had been made but they have referred the footage to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

The footage shows two officers trying to arrest the man who is lying in the road outside Nottingham's Theatre Royal.

But when they encounter difficulty, the officer with the Taser orders his colleague to let go of the man.


He then fires the Taser, which consists of two darts on the end of wires containing a 50,000 volt shock.

The two male officers were joined by two other officers who ordered the man to put his hands out.

When he failed to do so, the officer with the Taser fires it again, shouting: "Taser, Taser, Taser."

A crowd of 30 to 40 people quickly gathered and questioned the police's tactics.

The video was given to local radio station Trent FM and has also been posted on YouTube.

Leibniz (1646 - 1716): Lingua Universalis and Monadology in 2,400 words.

The partnership between mathematics and logic was initiated by the German mathematician and philosopher G. W. von Leibniz, who tried to find a lingua universalis - a language where errors in thinking would be equivalent to arithmetical errors - and Leibniz thereby laid the foundation for mathematical, or symbolic, logic. A decisive stimulus to its further development was the need at the end of the 19th century to bring to order an abundance of collection of axioms that were being used in various systems of mathematics in an intuitive manner rather than by logical deduction.

Leibniz Calculating Machine (replica)

Leibniz´s interests in his childhood and youth did not include higer mathematics, but rather philosophy, logic and law, subjects that also became the basis for his career as a diplomat. In 1666, Leibniz earned a doctorate in law; the same year, his interest in logic had led him to publish his first mathematical undertaking. Dissertatio de arte combinatoria, the aim of which was to reduce all truths of reason to a simple system of arithmetic. Understanding that permutations and combinations were part of such system led Leibniz to advance also these fields of mathematics, and that work directed him toward ideas for the developement of infinitesimal calculus.

The Condensed Edition of Gottfried Leibniz's Monadology... in 2,400 words
"The soul is the mirror of the universe."

http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/leibniz.htm

Sanctorius Sanctorius (1561 - 1636) Italian Physician

"God created everything by weight, measure, and number."
The Apocryphal Book of Wisdom (from Sanctorius Sanctorius´s Medicina Statica. Above illustration from an English edition printed in 1728)

Sanctorius spent long periods of time on a scale, making carefult registrations of his own weight and weighing all intake and excretions. Through his observations, Sanctorius made essential conclusions regarding evaporation from the human body. Sanctorius´s experimental research was greatly influenced by the methods of his contamporary Galileo, who, like Sanctorius, was at the University of Padua.

SACRED GEOMETRY: Chartres Cathedral

There have been many attempts to intepret the sacred geometry of Chartres. John James applies a series of geometrical figures to the plan. He explains that the Middle Ages gloried in multiplicity as part of the divine order, and "hence we should not be surprised when we find more than one geometric system inhabiting the one place, each flowing over the other, while being locked together at a few essential points like the labyrinth and the altar, which tehreby express the mosts acred and meaningful locations in the building."

Some interpreters go much further and relate the proportions and dimensions of the cathedral to what they regard as the "lost knowledge" of the Druids, the builders of the Temple of Solomon and the Order of the Knights Templar.

The basis of the design in the early Middle Ages was the application of a standard dimension or module, multiplying, sub-dividing and combining it. The unit of measurement, however, varied from place to place, from trade to trade and from one master builder to another. The basic dimensions was often the Roman foot (295 mm) but could be the Teuton foot or the French pied du roi, or the pes manualis, or foot-and-hand which was six-fifths of the Roman foot. Several of these modules were used by the various masters of Chartres. Added to this variety, there were several different systems of proportion in the Gothic period. John Harvey explains that "the two main systems were known as ad quadratum, based upon a square, and ad triangulum based on the equilateral triangle. Applied to the cross-section of a church, the system ad triangulum naturally resulted in a lower, more squat proportion of height and width."

Small wonder that the unravelling of the immensely complex geometry of a building like Chartres is the labour of a lifetime.

963 Million People Undernourished Worldwide (The Independent, U.K.)

Getty Images

By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent. Sunday, 28 December 2008

Some 963 million people are now undernourished worldwide, according to the most recent survey of the crisis by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the UN body expects the situation to worsen with the recession. "The number will rise steadily next year," an FAO spokesman told the IoS last week. "We are looking at a billion people. That is clear." The FAO fears the tally will go on increasing for years to come.


This directly contradicts an undertaking by the world's leaders at a special summit in September 2000 to "reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger" from 1990 levels by 2015, as part of an ambitious set of Millennium Development Goals.


At the time, and for several years afterwards, the goal looked achievable, if challenging. Between 1990 and 2005 the number of undernourished people stayed more or less the same at between 800 and 850 million, even though world population grew by 1.2 billion, meaning that the proportion of a rapidly increasing humanity that went hungry was steadily falling.


Several countries – including Ghana, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Jamaica and Costa Rica – actually exceeded the target years ahead of time, while others such as Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Mozambique were on track to achieve it. Twenty-five developing nations looked as if they would be able to halve the absolute number of their hungry – not just the proportion of them in their rising populations – by the target date.





http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/year-of-the-hungry-1000000000-afflicted-1213843.html

Beauty in Mathematics (Keith Devlin; Mathematics: The New Golden Age)

It was Bertrand Russell who wrote, in his 1918 book Mysticism and Logic, that: "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture. " Another famous British mathematician, G. H. Hardy, wrote in his book A Mathematician´s Apology (1940): "The mathematician´s patterns, like the painter´s or the poet´s, must be beautiful, the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. " Both writers here were thinking of a highly abstract form of beauty, an inner beauty known to all professional mathematicians, but which for the great majority of us must remain forever unseen, and very likely not even dreamt of. It is a beauty of logical form and structure, of elegance of proof, a beauty which can be glimpsed only after a long and arduous apprenticeship has been served.

Or at least such was the case until the early 1980s, when the development of the electronic computer, and in aprticular its graphics facilities, gave rise to some new mathematical developments that changed everything. Chaotic dynamics is one of several names which have been given to one new area of mathematics that the computer has opened up. Though some of the mathematics involved in this subject is as hard and as abstract as any other examples of the mathematician´s art, the essential beauty of the resulting structures can be displayed on a computer screen for all to see, professional and layman alike. Hard copies of computer-graphics displays formed the core of an exhibition organized by the German Goethe Institute, which began to tour the world in 1985, finding its way into both university mathematics departments and public art galleries alike. The film industry too was not slow to appreciate the potential of the new mathematics, and increasingly ideas from complex dynamics are being used in the creation of graphics for science-fiction films.

Benoit Mandlebrot

The figure below shows just one of a great many pictorial representations of the kinds of structure which are commonplace in this new field. Remarkable though it may seem, the complexity in that figure results from some quite simple mathematics.

Fractal art - a view into Mandelbrot´s world

PATTERNS IN NATURE: Star Trails (National Geographic)

Star trails radiate in the sky above trees in the Salmon River wilderness of Idaho.
Photograph by Michael Nichols.

Star trails pop over Mariscal Canyon in Big Bend National Park, Texas.
Photograph by Jack Dykinga.

Star trails spiral across the night sky above Joshua Tree National Park in California. Photograph by Tim Laman.

Star streaks glow in a purple sky above the Mitten buttes of Monument Valley, Arizona. Photograph by Michael Nichols.

Star trails streak above palm trees in Baja California, Mexico.
Photograph by Bill Hatcher.

A time-lapse exposure captures the streaks made by stars over sandstone formations in Utah. Photographers capture "star trails," the movement of stars across the night sky, by keeping the camera shutter open for hours instead of seconds. Photograph by Bruce Dale.

Get these wallpapers @ http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photos/patterns-star-trails/sandstone-star-streaks-photography.html

Amazon Deforestation (NASA Earth Observatory)

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/deforestation.php

The state of Rondônia in western Brazil is one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon. In the past three decades, clearing and degradation of the state’s original 208,000 square kilometers of forest (about 51.4 million acres, an area slightly smaller than the state of Kansas) has been rapid: 4,200 square kilometers cleared by 1978; 30,000 by 1988; and 53,300 by 1998. By 2003, an estimated 67,764 square kilometers of rainforest—an area larger than the state of West Virginia—had been cleared.

By the beginning of this decade, the frontier had reached the remote northwest corner of Rondônia, pictured in this series of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Intact forest is deep green, while cleared areas are tan (bare ground) or light green (crops, pasture, or occasionally, second-growth forest). Over the span of eight years, roads and clearings pushed west-northwest from Buritis toward the Jaciparaná River. The deforested area along the road into Nova Mamoré expanded north-northeast all the way to the BR-346 highway.