According to Ben Livingston there is a 100% chance of rain today. How can he be so certain?

Does he gaze into a crystal ball and know the future? Does he understand weather patterns better than NOAA? Does he possess an alien device that measures the atmosphere and tells him the weather that will soon arrive? No, no, and no …

As it turns out, Ben Livingston knows it could rain today because he can seed the clouds to make it happen, provided the government allows him to do so. And as it turns out – they won’t. Why?

Well, to understand the issues involved one must realize that making it rain one place is actually denying rain in another. Also, doing so could change the trek of a storm, causing it to go in a poorly chosen direction and drop a bunch of rain on someone else who really doesn’t need it – or want it. Ah yes … legalities … they rule our modern world.

New Orleans Could Have Been Spared

When Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans a plan was on the table to seed the clouds, lessening the severity of the storm by draining its strength. However, no one could accurately predict how the storm’s direction would alter or the effects such a change would have. As such, the plan was withdrawn.

Still, one has to wonder … wouldn’t flash flooding somewhere else been preferable to the many lives lost in New Orleans? Well, there is a lot of difference between a natural disaster and a man-made one, so it’s understandable that the government backed away from this idea. The saving of thousands of lives just didn’t pan well when compared to the possibility of taking a life elsewhere that might not have perished otherwise. You see, our society isn’t based on the moral of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, and thus, this is why we couldn’t bring ourselves to give Ben Livingston’s daring plan a chance.

How Does Cloud Seeding Work

It’s actually quite simple. Typically, silver iodide is dropped into clouds and the water droplets then freeze around them and fall as snow. The falling snow then releases heat as it freezes, causing warm air to rise. This lifts moisture into the clouds which in turn produces more snow – though it might be rain by the time it reaches the ground.

That’s how we seed clouds, and this technology has existed since the 1950s! So, why does it all seem new now? Well, as it turns out, the American government isn’t wild about playing with the weather for reasons mentioned above, but this hasn’t stopped other countries from doing so.

Prior to the 2008 Olympics, Beijing used cloud seeding to empty rain clouds of moisture before they threatened to drench the city, and such activity is a common occurrence in China. Forever endowed with a can-do attitude, China has sought to control weather, allowing more of their land to become arable and suitable for planting.

But did it work …

Evidently so, as Moscow intends to seed its own clouds ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

While we continue to struggle in the US with the legalities of playing God, Russia and China have assumed the role with open arms. And given the amount of arid land each possesses it’s understandable, as they are looking at the improvement in life it offers their people versus the inconveniences that might occur.

So How Can We Use Cloud Seeding To Prevent Hurricanes

By forcing moisture out of a hurricane you take away a lot of its steam. For you see, hurricanes need moisture to intensify, which is why they eventually putter out when they cross dry land, and as we humans tend to live on that dry land, we don’t like the effects hurricanes have on our lives – not one bit! As such, it’s understandable that there are many people who would like to see hurricanes lessened in severity.

The real problem lies in what happens after the seeding. For you see, when you seed a cloud you also interrupt its pattern, allowing it to coast off in a different direction. In the case of rain this isn’t typically a terrible thing, but when you are talking about hurricanes it’s a far different story.

To knock a category 5 hurricane down to a category 3 is little comfort to those who get caught in its newly diverged path, and that’s what the government isn’t yet willing to risk. Provided it was possible to dissipate the storm altogether before it made landfall, then perhaps they would be more receptive, but this just wasn’t the case. That’s why the US doesn’t use cloud seeding to lower the intensity of hurricanes.

However, in the future none of this might be necessary. As we learn more about hurricanes there could come a day when a new technology could totally knock them down or divert them on a safely predetermined path, and that’s where some of our current weather research dollars are headed. Slay the beast or gain control of the leash, but never hit it and set it loose on the unexpecting neighbors – that’s our philosophy and it appears to be a sound one. Still, one can’t help but wonder how many lives could have been saved in wake of the Katrina disaster. With any luck, the next Katrina will strike at a time when we are much better prepared.

You might not know it, but mice get depressed too. As it turns out, mice that are neglected by their mothers at birth grow up to suffer the same level of anxieties we do. However, doctors believe they have found the cause – and a possible cure.

As it turns out, epigenetic marks in mice are rewritten by parental neglect and this appears to be one of the root causes of depression in mice. So, one would think recovery should be as simple as resetting these marks in the brain, and as it turns out it just might. In fact, scientists have already shown some success. By pumping HDAC inhibitors into the brains of depressed mice they have loosened the spools of DNA, allowing the cells to access the original genes again and erasing many of the signs of depression within 10 days.

So, can this work with humans, too?

How The Human Mind Works

The human mind is a soup of chemicals and neurons that is constantly rewiring itself. As this is the case, any external event can have a positive or negative effect on the brain, with depression often leading to a dramatic slide downwards.

If this theory holds true then some of us are preconditioned to become depressed, and the solution is then to rewire the brain into a more healthy pattern, allowing us to escape the bonding chains of depression. But do we honestly believe the way a person thinks can be modified? Given the limited success we’ve seen with various drugs it would seem we’re on the cusp of making a breakthrough, but we still have much to learn.

The trick is to directly realign the epigenetic marks properly, which switches back on our defense mechanisms for dealing with stress. In fact, depression is actually an inability to cope with stress, which is why such a treatment works in mice. But would it work in humans? As mice are a close analog to humans, then yes, it should work; however, as mice aren’t exactly the same there are no guarantees.

How Close Is This To Reality

According to this article, The Switches That Can Turn Mental Illness On and Off, it would seem we are very close. In fact, it’s already been shown in a lab that it can work with mice. So, in the future, the right medicine could actually help make life better.

One thing we want to be clear on is that sometimes mental illness exists at birth and sometimes it is brought upon by a tragic event. This is an important distinction, so that all people aren’t labeled as being prepossessed to mental illness from the onset. Tragic events such as 911, the Gulf War, and Vietnam, can lead people to signs of PTSD, which is an upsetting of the normal mental balance from which some may never recover. This isn’t to say that these people were made to become mentally ill, but rather that they have experienced a harrowing event that rewired their brain to invoke signs of extreme anxiety when it isn’t appropriate.

Though therapy is often given as the best treatment it’s actually nothing more than an effort to rewire the brain to a healthier line of thinking, and some patients resist this treatment. This isn’t to say that therapy is useless, as it most certainly isn’t, but that it can’t help everyone. As much as it takes a lot of stress to rewire the brain, it also takes a lot of effort to set it back on its previous course. This should make sense to all, as the human brain would use this as a survival tactic to prevent having its own thoughts turned against the individual.

Rewiring The Brain

So, it’s nothing more than a rewiring of the brain? That almost sounds insulting. As it should, considering the implication is that the brain has somehow become defective;  however, diabetics take insulin when their bodies are unable to produce enough of it, asthmatics use breathing treatments when their breathing pathways errantly restrict,  and patients receive chemotherapy when cancer ravishes through their bodies. So to speak, doctors are creating a treatment that might mend that which has become broken, and not attempting to malign the patient in the process.

Then why is it we’re unsettled by the whole thought of rewiring the brain? Perhaps it’s because we have been conditioned to believe any tampering with the brain is an attempt to gain control of an individual, or it could be that we fear it might say something ill of ourselves.

Let’s face it, our world is full of far more anxieties than it was centuries ago, so it’s no small wonder we don’t all succumb to mental illness. The fact that most of us don’t, says a lot for the resiliency of our species, and future treatments could help to bolster our ability to shake it all off.

That’s why we need not fear the stigma of rewiring the brain, as the intent is to reset the balance that was taken away from us and in so doing, restore a life to someone, allowing them to feel normal. For those suffering with depression this is the most traumatizing piece of the condition, as it creates a rift with society that spirals them down further, and if only this gate could be mended the quality of life for many would improve drastically overnight.

Is it all as simple as resetting someone’s pregenetic marks in their brain? If so, we all might have many happy days ahead of.

“Maybe that’s the reason why they call them eyeteeth”

That might seem like an odd way to start things out, but as we continue you’ll understand. For you see, a procedure has been developed that uses a person’s eyeteeth to help them see again. Is this miracle arrived at by way of magic? Actually, it’s a feat of modern medicine.

The real question is … how did someone would come up with the idea of using a tooth to restore someone’s sight? That’s a question we don’t have an answer for; however, we’ve learned how the procedure is done, and we’re aware that the results are nothing short of miraculous.

So, how is it that a tooth can restore sight to the blind?

From Bite To Sight

First, a small piece of the patient’s canine (eyetooth) is removed from their mouth and a hole is chiseled through it to hold a man-made lens. This is then placed under an eyelid. Next, the doctor removes a piece of skin from the inside of the patient’s cheek and places into the eye socket. This “eyepatch” remains in-place for two months, until it acquires its own blood supply.

With that done, the piece of tooth is transplanted into the eye socket, and the fold of skin is lifted and draped over the new base. Finally, a hole is cut into the grafted skin to allow light through, allowing it to act as a cornea. And in doing so, partial sight is restored.

Which brings abut the inevitable question … why are eyeteeth used for this procedure?

As it turns out, the human body is less likely to reject a tooth than it is a foreign object (such as plastic), and the canine’s shape and size make it perfect for the procedure.

Can This Restore Sight For Everyone

Unfortunately, no. Those blinded from birth will need to find another solution, as this procedure won’t repair nerve damage. What it does do is rebuild the cornea, allowing many who have lost their sight, due to an accident, to regain it again.

It truly is nothing less than a miracle, but the miracle isn’t for everyone. However, we can already foresee the day when we’ll be able to repair optical nerves, allowing those blinded from birth to see again. Until then, a small percentage of the populace can benefit from this procedure, which has already been successfully performed many times.

To date, several hundred people that were once blind can now see, which makes this truly a remarkable procedure for medical science.

One important note:  This procedure only replaces the cornea, much like a corneal transplant; however, there are conditions that make such an transplant impossible, which is why a surgeon by the name of Christopher Lui pioneered this technique. (Dr. Liu is a corneal specialist and a consultant ophthalmic surgeon who is based at Sussex Eye Hospital, Brighton.)

And if this still all sounds like science fiction to you, we welcome you to review the cases of two people who actually received this surgery:

Martin Jones: Blind man sees wife for first time after having a TOOTH implanted into his eye

Sharon Thornton: Woman has tooth implanted into eye

May the wonders of medical science never cease …

Daily in the news, we hear about more towns and cities being devastated by earthquakes. Is this because the world is coming to an end? Some believe this to be the case, but scientists know this fear to be unfounded. If anything, this year has produced less quakes than prior years, but you wouldn’t know that by watching the news.

The real issue at hand is that more and more people are settling down near active fault lines, placing themselves directly in the path of disaster. To make matters worse, the sliding of tectonic plates cause these fault lines to move slowly over centuries, making previously safe locations no longer docile.

Scientists are well aware of this trend and have been doing their best to predict disasters before they occur, but we still are nowhere near being able to tell when an actual earthquake will appear. And as evidenced by this article on Popsci, Top Italian Scientists Who Failed to Predict 2009 Earthquake Now Face Manslaughter Charges, scientists are now being held accountable for their inability to foresee future disasters.

Are they really to blame? Scientists all over the world already take a lot of heat for setting off false alarms with their predictions. The reason often given is no one wants to start an unnecessary  panic, but this places scientists in a situation where they must be able to predict exactly what day an earthquake will occur and this isn’t so easily done.

A World Constantly In Motion

Much like the thousands of cars that travel the streets of New York City, the tectonic plates of Earth are constantly moving around. This neverending dance goes on daily without notice – until two plates meet, rub together, or separate apart.

When two plates merge, they will continue to press together until one finally forces itself over the other;  however, you can also have two plates grind against each other, like along the San Andreas Fault. In either case, the rocks along the edge of the plates are distorted until they finally give way, which is what causes the shockwaves all along the fault line. The problem with predicting such an event is knowing when the plates are about to give way and move.

An excellent analogy is two equally sized sumo wrestlers trying to push each other out of a ring. We all know that the match ends when someone is forced out of the circle, but we can never be certain who will win and at what exact moment that victory will occur. Likewise, it is the same with earthquakes.

Here’s a small set of variables that are part of the bigger picture in predicting such events:  the difference in mass between the two plates, the speed at which each plate is moving, the force being exerted on them by other plates, the strength of the material at the edge of each plate … and the list goes on and on. With so many variables it’s no wonder we can’t predict earthquakes accurately. So, what are we to do?

Quelling The Big Quake

For one thing, people living along fault lines need to construct smartly, using materials and techniques that resist the effects of earthquakes. So to speak, houses made only of wood aren’t much protection against an earthquake. Evacuation plans are useless as well, as the shockwaves are often over before anyone can react,and it’s not a good idea to move around much during one of these episodes, as you could easily find yourself exposed to falling debris or you could be swallowed up by a sinkhole.

If you are misfortunate enough to find yourself amid a rumbling Earth, don’t panic, here are several things you can do to help insure your survival:

• If you’re inside a building, stand in a doorway or crouch under a table. Stay away from windows and any glass debris that could shatter and hit you.
• If you’re outside, stay out in the open away from buildings, electrical lines, trees, and anything else that could topple over and injure you.
• And finally, if you’re in your car, stop the vehicle in an area away from buildings and trees, and don’t go near any overpasses or underpasses. Stay inside the vehicle until the shockwaves end.

Other than that, your best option for avoiding an earthquake is moving to a place where the Earth is much less volatile in nature.

New Methods For Predicting Earthquakes

While we are getting better at predicting where an earthquake is likely to occur, we’re still many years away from saying when it will actually occur;  however, there is research being performed that hopes to someday provide us with a better warning system. For several years now, the U.S. Geological Survey has been digging deep holes along the San Andreas Fault and placing sensitive monitoring equipment inside to monitor the conditions down below.

By monitoring deep into the Earth it is hoped we will find a clue that will give us some advanced warning of when an earthquake might occur. Even if we could tell everyone, ‘Be on alert, as there might be a quake this week’, that would be progress. However, currently the best we can do is give a percentile chance of risk over a period of many years, and people can’t remain on-guard forever.

In time, scientists will find that one thing that always occurs just before an earthquake, and when they do early warning systems will go off, allowing everyone to know that the big one is on its way. Until then, all we can do is wait and cower, aware that the shaking we are now experiencing could very easily by the Earth beneath us.

September 11, 2001 changed America forever. No longer are we a country that enjoys our personal freedom; instead, we have become a nation on the brink of paranoia, in fear of the next attack upon our soil. As terrorism is the act of striking fear into a populous, the terrorists have most certainly won. But we’re learning how to fight back.

A vast network of surveillance has been cast over the US, monitoring every area of public interest. However, as the face of terrorism is always changing, everyone becomes a target of interest. So, how far will we delve into the private lives of our citizens to insure our safety? And what happens when our own technology is used against us?

Radio Frequency Identification Tags

The perfect surveillance device is one that the person being watched is unaware of. Imagine having your every movement through a city tracked and you quickly come to realize just how powerful this small device is.

No larger than a small wafer, RFIDs are used to track inventory as it moves from point A to point B. However, if carried by a person it allows them to be tracked as well. Place it inside a watch, the inner lining of a jacket, or a pair of socks, and you can monitor a person’s motions all day long without their notice. It would seem like the perfect spy gadget – but what if it were used by someone other than a spy?

The Wall Street Journal posted an article titled, Wal-Mart Radio Tags to Track Clothing, whereas the largest retailer in the US intends to use RFID tags to track their stock of clothing in the store. In doing so they can quickly be made aware of shortages, allowing them a faster means by which to track their inventory and insure no one arrives and finds an empty bin of pants. Now there’s nothing to fear in all of that, but what if someone were to take things a step further?

If someone designed a portable device to track these RFID tags, they could actually track the movement of people through the store. And provided the tags aren’t removed prior to leaving, they could continue to follow these people out of the store and rob them, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

GPS In Cellphones

A person can go home and change their clothes, and RFID tags have a limited range. To track people throughout a city we need something they will carry around with them at all times, and nothing is more popular than cellphones.

As more phones become enabled with GPS features, more people become traceable within an instant. Those same satellites that report your position to you could just as easily report this information to someone else, allowing thieves to know when you’re away from home – and how long it will be before they can expect you back.

A clever thief would only need to upload a file to your phone that would quietly broadcast your movement, and from there they would only need check your position every so many minutes.

And why stop there …

Getting Rich While Walking The Streets

Credit Cards are showing up that just need to be waved in front of a reader to process a transaction. These are a goldmine to thieves, as they need only carry a receiver with them and walk the streets of New York City, stealing a few dollars from each stranger they pass by. The transaction happens in an instant, and because it is a small one, it would go unnoticed. A simple walk through a busy intersection could easily net a clever thief several hundred dollars.

And why stop there?

Gas pumps are sprouting up with the same technology. So, why not place your own reader in close proximity to the one on the pump? The device would capture some of the funds and radio them into your account as you sat home watching TV. Who’s to say this isn’t already occurring? A few dollars is a small enough amount to go unnoticed, and some people might even mistake it as a surcharge for the convenience of using their card.

But We’re Protected From All Of This, Right?

Quite often, protections are put in-place because people have discovered how to work around a system and take advantage of it. As such, we have a habit of considering the solution after the problem has occurred. And with technology advancing at a breathtaking pace, so much is out there that could be taken advantage of.

As an example, wireless notebooks. We see them in many coffee shops, browsing the internet for free. However, as we browse the internet, other nefarious people could be browsing us. And what could they gain in the process? If we’re smart enough not to store personal info on our computers, then the answer would seem to be nothing, but that would be incorrect. For you see, access in itself is a prize.

How is this so?

With access to someone else’s computer you could use that notebook to gain future access to another that might store something more useful. After all, you need to return home some time, and when you do you will inevitably connect back into your home network, where you have your home PC – you know, the one you have behind a firewall, supposedly safe from hackers. Your notebook could then be used to hack your personal PC and the information gained could then be sent back to the original perpetrator.

Espionage Via Technology

Thinking on a global scale, espionage is made much easier with new and emerging technologies. And sometimes, the greatest of fears arise through the usage of the simplest of devices. Take this scenario, for instance.

A woman walks into a secure building and is halted by security. She claims she has a package for the receptionist and offers for the men to accompany her. For the moment, nothing seems suspicious.

She steps up to the receptionist and hands her a manila envelope, telling her that it’s a delivery for John Doe. The receptionist checks the roster and finds John Doe no longer works there, and the woman seemingly embarrassed, takes the envelope and leaves, with no one the wiser of what just transpired.

What everyone missed was the USB flash drive she stealthily dropped onto the desk as she handed the envelope over. The secretary finds it an hour after the woman leaves and is curious as to what it might contain, so she plugs it into her PC and finds its nothing more than vacation photos, so she sets it aside, certain the owner will come in for it later.

What she doesn’t know is that she has just infected her PC, and a program is driving through the building’s network, seeking a way to gather important data and broadcast it outside of the building. It sounds like the makings of a great spy novel … and it’s certainly within the realm of technology.

And this is where terrorism could be headed. No longer will terrorists be content with destroying buildings and taking lives. Their aim will be the core of our existence – our financial and secretive files. Imagine the damage to the US if the New York Stock Exchange were shut down for several days by a virus, or the calamity caused by the leakage of nuclear technology to non-nuclear nations.

Our modern lives are held in check by the safe-guarding of certain information, and yet, we see in the paper each week where hackers have managed to break into yet another bank and gain guarded financial information. In the future, the war on terrorism will not be fought by guns, but rather, by computers, and this is why more needs to be done to watch over what is occurring over various networks.

For instance, programs could be designed to spot suspicious transfers of funds, allowing crooks siphoning accounts to be caught red-handed. Also, programs could be designed to determine when one computer is attempting to use one PC to retrieve information from another. So, why isn’t this currently done? Because it imposes on our right of privacy.

To prevent others from spying on us, we need to allow someone the ability to monitor such attacks. And if we allow such monitoring to occur, we in turn open ourselves up to being monitored by the same institutions that are insuring out safety. For example, cameras staged to watch over the safety of commuters boarding a train could just as easily be used to spy on domestic individuals of interest.

And so we ask the questions … What will it take for us to feel safe again? How much personal freedom must be given up to insure that safety? Is technology worth our loss of freedom?

We’d like to think that all terrorism is rooted in a disparity over the inequalities of the world. A few are rich while so many are poor. By focusing our technologies on ending these inequalities, perhaps someday we can create a different world. For now, we can only exist in fear and hope for evolution to outpace our destructive tendencies.

It seems senseless to us that one man would strike out at another over needs, but when one has so little he feels he has nothing to lose. That’s why we must continue to advance as a species, with the hope that we might one day establish a utopia where most of the needs of our populous are met. And is that horizon anywhere within sight? Until we turn to the next page in life we will never know.

For now, we can only entrust our governments to protect us, sacrificing personal freedom with the hope it will allow us to lead safer lives. And if we lead good lives, then we must believe that any invasion upon our rights will prove unjustified and our personal lives uninteresting, allowing us to fall off the radar of interest. For it is the common man who enjoys the most freedom, as knowledge of his existence offers little gain to others.

Returning To Walmart

So, as the usage of RFID tags started this whole diatribe, we feel we must return to the past and answer the burning question … Do we refuse to shop at stores that might be imbibing on our privacy? Provided the tags are removable before leaving the store, then we see no harm in their existence.

As for Walmart watching us as we peruse around the store, they already have video cameras for that. As such, why should we be concerned, unless we’re doing something we shouldn’t be? Our real concern should evolve around watching over our finances and reporting any discrepancies we might find. For common folk like ourselves our money is all we have to offer of interest, which is why we need to be more virulent over watching where it all goes.

As for the really big stuff, we can only hope that our government has it all under control. With 911 almost twenty years in the past, we can see some progress being made, as there has not yet been another large attack on American soil. In fact, many such attempts have been averted. And what has been the cornerstone of such success … technology … watching over our enemies as they attempt to watch over us.

As the English language is easily misinterpreted, we must first say that we’re not talking about trains that crush cars, but rather, trains that can share the roadway by driving above the cars. Of course, this isn’t anything new as we already have monorail systems that do this, but the Chinese have placed a unique spin on things by placing the rails on the road.

Confused? We were too, until we read the article which you will find here, China Straddling Train to Solve Congestion. And the train does just what the article states, it straddles over the cars as it travels along the streets at speeds up to 37Mph.

The obvious benefit is more people being able to share the roadway, which cuts down on congestion. How much? Maybe 20%, but that’s not what makes this technology so inviting. The big bonus is delivered by the fact that the train can run on solar or electrical energy. So, if 20% of the populace rides on these trains, this will be a 20% drop in vehicle emissions. Now, that’s a big plus!

How Does It Work

Train tracks are laid out on the sides of the road and the train travels over them, much like a conventional train. The difference here is that the train forms a tunnel beneath itself that allows cars to pass through. The only inconvenience to traffic occurs when a train crosses over an intersection, but as the train is sharing the road with the cars it would most likely pass through the lights as the vehicles do. In this sense, little lagtime would develop as trains passed through.

Housing 1,200 to 1,400 passengers, these trains would work great during rush hours, carrying people to and from work, and once the infrastructure was in place, they shouldn’t cost much more to operate than conventional buses. In fact, if they can use solar energy for most of their power needs they should actually be cheaper.

Being that the case, we can expect to see buses like this in New York City and Los Angeles in years to come, provided the preliminary tests in Beijing goes well. Considering the coolness factor involved with riding above the cars on the street, we have no doubt that many will clamor on to take a ride on one of these trains. And considering the expense and frustration of driving a car in such a large city, they might even see it as a de facto means of transportation, nearly replacing the car all together. But we are getting ahead of ourselves, as there ere still many issues to be ironed out.

Let’s Kick It Up A Notch

The loudest detractors from this idea will be those who claim the trains are clogging up the intersections, which they very well might do. Well, we have an odd but interesting solution to this dilemma. Are you listening, Beijing?

What if they make the top car detachable? The bottom part would pull the train through the street and then would stop at the intersection, presumably to let people board and get off the train. At that stopping point the bottom car would then push the top car into the above-street intersection where the top car would be turned onto another section of track or pushed through onto the next street. With that done, the bottom car would creep backward to its original position and wait for the next top car to arrive.

With all train traffic electronically controlled and monitored these handoffs could occur safely with ease, and this would permit one train after another to be launched along the rails, allowing more people to be transported back and forth in a single day. Through rerouting, each top car would travel nightly back to its home spot, all ready for passengers the next morning.

In fact, if taken to this level, these trains could nearly replace cars all together; however, we do realize that stopping at each intersection will double the time needed to get from here to there, which is why cars will never totally disappear.

Traveling Via Pod Trains, Vertical Lanes, and Aircars

If there is any concept that will ever take cars off the road, then perhaps it would be some sort of pod vehicle where each car drives up to a train and interconnects with it, then disconnects when it nears its final destination. Each pod would add power to the train, metaphorically allowing it to pull its own weight.

So, what would be the advantage of such a system? Organized travel. Special lanes would be constructed for pods to connect to moving trains and this would prevent many accidents, as all vehicles would be moving together in unison. However, this idea is a long way off, as it would involve revolutionary changes in our current roadways. For instance, how would you safely detach from one moving pod train and then attach to another?

Another idea would be to create vertical lanes, which would be guide rails that allow traffic to travel over each other – much like China’s straddling train, except the rails would pull the vehicle from the road and place it on a higher track. An interesting idea, but one that is fraught with peril as drivers change tracks.

And then there are aircars, which avoid the roads all together. A workable idea, until you consider what happens when someone forgets to refuel or decides to drive intoxicated. Let’s face it … It’s not technological barriers that stand in the way of us having aircars, it’s the dangerous nature of human drivers.

Will China’s New Train Succeed

Our prediction is this idea will be a huge success, but only time will tell. Anything that helps to alleviate congestion and pollution in a city should always be welcome, but time is the teller of all tales.

One thing is for certain. If given the opportunity to ride over all of those puny cars, we’d gladly purchase a ticket to do so. Being that as the case, you can sign us up for tickets when they decide to make their first live run through the streets of Beijing. Until then, we’re pulling out our American-to-Chinese dictionaries to learn the phrase … How much is it to ride the new train?

If Marcus Ribbe, a scientist at the University of California, Irvine, has his way there could come a day when you never stop your car at a fuel pump again. No, he’s not some ecoterrorist seeking out to ban vehicles from the road, but rather, he’s one of several scientists who believe they can make a car that runs on air.

A car that runs on air? It might sound insane, but the skepticism is reigned in a bit when you are given more information – the car will actually run on propane, which will be produced by bacteria. Now here comes the good part – the bacteria will make the propane by breaking down carbon oxides in the air. That’s right … greenhouse gasses!

Provided Ribbe and his colleagues are successful, they just might create a whole fleet of cars that could reverse global warming. Amazing, right? And if the thought of cars running on propane makes you edgy, know that these same scientists are already working on making these same bacteria to produce gasoline.

Is this all a hoax? Not at all. In fact, this discovery was recently discussed in Discovery News, Gasoline from Thin Air?

So, how does it all work?

Bacteria, And The Plants That Love Them

Azotobacter vinelanddii, also known as A. vinelandii, is a bacteria found around the roots of certain plants, and its ecological function is to use enzymes to convert nitrogen into ammonia and other chemicals that are useful to the plants around them. Farmers have known about them for years, but until now, no one has had the technology to harness their abilities for a higher purpose.

By feeding the bacteria CO, instead of the nitrogen and oxygen it prefers, the enzyme in the bacteria begin to synthesize propane. In essence, this is turning a greenhouse gas back into a usable fuel. And as many of us already know, propane burns clean, which means vehicles using these bacteria as a fuel source would actually scrub the atmosphere over a period of time. Now that is a significant discovery!

However, don’t expect this technology to be here any day soon as there are many technological hurdles still left to leap over. The importance of this discovery is the cleaner future it could provide us, and that alone is enough reason to press the nose to the grindstone and investigate further.

Creating A Better Air/Fuel Mixture

While the process above works well in a lab setting, it doesn’t fair that well in the real world. You see, inside a lab we can feed the bacteria CO and watch it produce propane, but this can only be done without oxygen or nitrogen present, or else the bacteria reverts back to producing ammonia. This leaves us with several options:

1)  We could fuel our cars up with CO, but where would it come from? A coal-fired power plant?

2)  We could fuel our cars up with gasoline and then pull the CO from the exhaust to make propane. However, now we need a car that can burn two different types of fuel.

3)  We could filter CO from the air, but this requires energy, and we might use as much (or less) energy filtering the air as we produce.

So, does this make the idea a mute issue? Provided we can find a passive (requiring no energy) way to filter out the needed CO, then no, it definitely is not a dead end street. However, even if it was, option 3 opens up the gateway to some very useful technology.

Industrial Strength Air Cleaners

We already have devices that pull CO from the atmosphere; however, these devices require power to operate, and most of our current power is derived from carbon emitting sources. So, let’s remove the power plants from the loop!

What we need to do is create a self-sustaining loop where the scrubber pulls CO from the air, the bacteria converts the CO into propane, and the propane is used to power the scrubber. If this loop can be created and ran on its own, then we will have solved the CO2 problem overnight. From there, it’s only a matter of creating these scrubbers and placing them around the globe.

To start, these scrubbers could be placed on factories, zeroing out their emissions. Provided the net cost is just the device itself, the companies would jump at the chance to use them, provided there was a steep fine imposed for those  refusing to do so. And if the scrubbers worked on factories, someone would make them small enough (in time) to work on vehicles. However, vehicles powered by CO from the air is probably a long way off.

From One Side Of The Fence To The Other

Let’s say we do, using this bacteria, manage to make CO into a new power source, and let’s say it’s highly profitable and successful. In fact, let’s go so far as saying we make cars and factories that run for free, on nothing by our previous CO emissions. Is this a good thing?

You’d be hard-fought to find someone who would say no, but if you said yes then you need to know that not all CO is bad. We do need a certain level of CO in the atmosphere, or else the temperature of the Earth will plummet, causing us to revisit the ice age. For those who have viewed the runaway heating effect of the Earth, you need to be aware there is a runaway freezing effect as well.

As the Earth grows colder, more ice grows around the polls. This ice reflects sunlight away, making the Earth colder, which in turn causes more ice to form, and before you know it we are encased in deep ice. In fact, the Earth was already a fully-fledged snowball once, and may have remained that way, had it not been saved by an age of heavy volcanic activity. However, with the internal core of the Earth growing cooler every century, it’s unlikely we could count on another age of volcanic activity to save us.

As such, like it or not, we would need to maintain the CO balance in the atmosphere. This would mean having some factories run on fossil fuels while others scrubbed them out of the air. And should the day come when we run out of fossil fuel we’ll be in big trouble – provided we haven’t already moved onto another fuel source.

Dependency is what causes extinction:  dependency on a certain climate, dependency on a certain food source, dependency on certain resources. As humans we have had a good run on this Earth, but only because of our ability to adapt to its many changes over the years. As this is the case, we need to continue being the chameleon and morphing ourselves to become a part of our ever-changing environment.

This is why all technology, regardless of its benefit to mankind, must be thoroughly scrutinized before being given to full use. Our thirst for power is what threatens to push our environment to the brink of disaster,  and only our instinct for survival can keep us from falling over the precipice.

Science and voodoo science don’t mix well …

They told us … but would we listen? Nah! However, we did keep what they said in the back of our minds, and we’ve decided … they were right! So, what does one do in a case like this? If you’re us, you move the voodoo science to a new site, and that’s exactly what we’ve done!

Weird Science is our new site for ghosts, UFOs, and anything else science can’t thoroughly dismiss to our satisfaction, and as this new site will be dedicated to the odd and the unexplained, we intend to delve much deeper into those areas while continuing our hard-science run here on ALCWI.

For starters, we have moved all of our current voodoo science articles to the new site, and from there we intend to write many more. Feel free to check out the new site, and remember, we’re still all about science. After all, just because we’re willing to dedicate a whole website to voodoo science, it doesn’t mean we’ve become believers overnight.

So, take a moment and check it out!

More and more electric hybrids are rolling off the assembly line, and we’re beginning to see some fully electric models as well. Ah … our greener future is just around the corner – or is that what we’ve been programmed to think?

Truth be told, the electricity that recharges those batteries comes from somewhere, and in a lot of cases its a coal-fired power plant. So, how can we say electric cars make for a greener Earth?

Is there really a measurable difference between the greenhouse gasses created by burning gas in our cars versus that created by burning coal to produce the electricity? Yes, we’re aware there are clean power sources that don’t pollute the atmosphere, such as nuclear power plants, but what percentage of our power do they currently generate? Clearly, most of the electricity we use arrives from a source that isn’t clean and we need to be aware of that.

We’re not saying the electric car is a bad idea. On the contrary, it’s a great invention. However, we need to make changes if we’re going to reap the ecological benefits. That’s where we find ourselves returning to our good old friend, nuclear power, but this time we need to think on a smaller scale.

In one of our first articles, The New Side Of Nuclear Energy, we predicted we would soon see small nuclear reactors dotting the landscape. In fact, we went so far as predicting we would have nuclear reactors inside of our own homes. Of course, that was pure madness – or was it? It would seem there are those out there in the private sector already experimenting with the idea, as witnessed in this article, Man Builds Nuclear Reactor in Brooklyn Warehouse.

The first thing that comes to mind is … is that a safe thing to do?!? As it turns out, nuclear fusion reactors produce no radioactive threat, so they are considered safe. But do they really work? Well, they’re not without their problems, but they might be more viable in the near future. And should that day happen to arrive in our lifetimes, we could see electricity stations sprouting up all over the world to produce power for electric cars.

How Do We Get The Ball Rolling

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the reason for this should be readily apparent. Inventors work on two premises:

a)  To invent something that helps others

b) To invent something that will make them rich and/or famous

Regardless of which premise motivates them, inventors focus their devotions to ideas that need to be brought to reality, and several thousand electric cars on the road should begin to fuel a lot of imaginations. After all, the person who provides a clean, simple, reliable, and cheap method to produce electricity for electric cars will have achieved both goals stated above.  So, why is the research taking so long?

If we are to ever control our environment, we must see the chess pieces begin to fall into place. The electric car is a very important piece. To this end we want to see more electric cars on the road, as they provide a need for cleaner power. In fact, we envision a day when every gas station has a small fusion reactor generating electricity for vehicles, but who would be willing to pull into a gas station and wait several hours for a recharge?

Fill ‘Er Up

One emerging technology could drastically reduce the recharge time. Graphene-enhanced batteries are in the works that can charge at a much quicker rate. While a normal battery might take 2 hours to recharge, a graphene-enhanced battery could recharge in under 10 minutes. Science fiction? Not according to Popular Science, as witnessed by this article, In Stores Soon: Graphene-Enhanced Li-ion Batteries That Charge In Minutes.

And who is to say the process couldn’t be made even quicker?

What if a machine reached into the trunk with one arm and slid out the old battery, while another arm slid in a fully recharged battery? The machine could then recharge the old battery as you drive off. If each battery change took five minutes it wouldn’t be much worse than the current wait one experiences at the pump, and having several spare batteries in wait would insure there would always be a fully charged battery in wait for each customer.

Once again, nothing will change until a need emerges, which means many more electric cars must hit the road before we dedicate our resources into making this happen. And the electric motorcycle won’t be far behind.

The Future Of Small Fusion Reactors

The current technological leap we need to overcome is the fact that fusion reactors use more power than they produce. As such, they make very poor power plants – small or otherwise. However, this will all change in time. As more people perform research in this area, a brilliant discovery becomes closer to reality. Sadly, results rule over much of our research, so we won’t see a lot of scientists dedicating endless hours until we near the finish line.

Looking down the road, we can see the huge payoff – clean and plentiful fuel. Our cities will literally transform overnight, right before our eyes. Smog levels will lessen until its eradicated altogether. That’s why we need to keep pushing toward greener technologies, as consumers are the sole driving force for technology. Companies deliver hours of research to deliver the products they believe we’ll want next, so we need to make it clear to them that we want greener power, to create a greener world.

If enough of us shout out, we will eventually be heard. Let’s demand a better future for ourselves, and all who will follow us in time …

The biggest challenge to our space program is communicating with the equipment we send out to explore it. For instance, it can take 10 to 20 minutes to send commands to a rover on Mars, depending upon its distance from Earth at the time the signals are sent. To make matters worse, a probe acting as a proxy above the surface must be in the right spot to relay those commands. This severely limits our ability to communicate, especially when we move onto the outer planets.

What every scientist fancies is a network by which instantaneous communications could be made, regardless of the time of day or the distance involved. Imagine how much ground we could cover daily on Mars if we could communicate with our rovers in real time. Currently, we have to plan each maneuver, upload it, and then await the results. This makes every foot into a mile.

We need to be able to instantly communicate across the cosmos, and we are on the verge of creating the technology which could someday allow us to do so. And if that isn’t enough … we’ll be able to instantaneously message people here on Earth too, regardless of where on our globe we might stand. How will this be possible?

Broadcasting Messages That Will Never Be Sent

Currently, our typical means of long-distance communication is to broadcast a message by way of radio waves. This is good, provided we have line-of-sight to where we are sending the message, or satellites are available to act as a proxy and pass it on. However, what if none of that existed? What if you were three miles below the surface of the Earth, in a deep mine, and had a cave-in? Worse yet, what if the phone line that allowed you to connect to the surface was ripped apart, leaving you with no way to call out for help.

Once every 15 minutes you call up to the surface to insure everyone you’re all right, but the last call was made just 3 minutes ago. It will be 12 minutes before they’ll expect another call. Until then, you remain trapped below the Earth, with no one above aware of your plight. If only there was another way to send them a message.

This is much the same struggle we have when communicating with our probes and rovers out in space. If our equipment finds itself in a bad situation, we often discover this minutes or hours later and find ourselves with little precious time to respond. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we could just communicate with our equipment instantaneously?

Well, as it turns out, we currently can’t – but we can foresee the day when we’ll be able to. And why isn’t the internet abuzz with this new technology that will allow this to happen? Because it’s still in its infancy stages -but it’s all very real, and (so far) within possibility.

A Brief Lesson On Atomic Entanglement

You’ve probably already read the story whereas scientists have managed to teleport a particle 600 meters across a river in Austria. If you haven’t, the article can be found here, Teleportation goes long distance. Not all that impressive, right? After all, it was only 600 meters (actually only 55 meters, if you read the article closely), and it was only one particle. On top of all that, no actual teleportation occurred.

But the article said it did …

Did it? Really? Read it again!

In fact, what really happened was this … Two particles were entangled together, so that whatever happened to one could then be measured on the other. As this is the case, the actual particle wasn’t teleported; instead, it’s current spin was teleported to the other particle.

Useless, right? If that were the case we wouldn’t be writing this article. In fact, if we can stretch the distance by which we can perform this ‘teleportation’ then we will revolutionize the way we communicate in space, and current theory suggests there might be no limitation to how far we can teleport this information, so long as the particles are entangled before they are separated.

Can You Speak Binary

The odds are good that you can’t speak binary, and for those of you who can, you no doubt are fluent in Klingon and Romulan as well. But none of that matters, as our computers can speak binary and they do all of the translations for us. As such, being able to manipulate a particle between a state of a leftward spin and a rightward spin allows us to create a bit, which is the smallest amount of information a computer can store, process, and communicate.

One bit of information is nothing – merely a yes or a no in the world of computers. However, a number could be stored in 4 bits and a letter could be stored in 5. and if you add a sixth bit you get the choice of storing a letter OR a number. However, what if you’re more interested in storing a picture? Well, a pixel (one of many dots that are part of a digital picture) can be stored in as little as a byte, which is 8 bits. Increase the amount of bytes and you find yourself with the means of sending videos back and forth.

So, why the crash course on bits and bytes? Well, it’s actually quite simple. If you can teleport enough particles you can teleport a stream of data. In fact, you would probably want to create two streams of data – one for input and one for output.

To look at things in a different way, a Lite-Brite makes an excellent analog. For the younger folks reading the site, a Lite-Brite is a toy made by Hasbro that allows you to push pegs in a board and have them light up. By placing them in a pattern you can create shapes and designs. This is the kind of communication (Quantum communication) which we are proposing, where you would set the pegs in-place on your LiteBrite and they would appear instantly in the same configuration on another Lite-Brite, a far distance away.

2139: The DaVinci Rover Lands On The Surface Of Titan

No, we’re not aware of a current plan to put a rover on Titan, but our intent is to paint a scenario of what could someday be possible. Will this all actually happen? Perhaps, but for now let’s return to our dream.

DaVinci lands safely on the surface of Titan and heads forward, panning its cameras back and forth as it proceeds along. Inside the rover, the images are laid out on a display that’s entangled with an identical display on Earth. A driver watches the screen in front of him as he uses a joystick to drive DaVinci across the alien landscape, scouting for anything of interest.

80 meters from the landing point, the driver halts the rover and turns the camera to the left. He thought he spotted a geyser, which was unexpected. Turning up the audio gain, he hears a rumble that seems to confirm his suspicion, and then he focuses in on a brief plume of methane that’s rising into the atmosphere. The event lasts for only 2 minutes but it’s breathtaking nonetheless, and had he not been able to communicate his interest to the probe instantly the event would have forever been lost in time and remained unseen.

Remember, entanglement allows for instantaneous communication, so there is no time delay. As such, it’s like driving a car here on Earth and being able to see and hear everything around you in real time. Not only that, when you turn the wheel, the car responds instantly. This is remote science at its best!

But how likely is it to ever occur?

The Long Mile

Our current technology is finding it difficult to teleport the status of one particle, but in doing so we have proved it’s not impossible. However, for a mission like this to become a reality we would need to be able to teleport millions of particles per second. Is it within our ability to do so? At the moment, that remains an unknown.

The next hurdle is distance. Can we send an entangled particle that far and have it remain entangled? If we can’t, the mission could never occur, at least not as we planned it. And the final issue is miniaturization; can we design a quantum computer small enough to fit inside a probe, and yet, have it possess enough power to make such communications possible?

It’s a giant leap of faith to believe we can do all of this,  but let’s remember the leap we once took to land a man on the moon. Our species is capable of many wondrous things, so to say anything is impossible is to really say it’s not currently possible, but someday could be as we become more advanced.

Back Into To The Mines

Practicality is what drives much of our inventive nature, and while it would be fascinating to drive rovers in real time on Titan we need to bring this technology into a useful purpose on Earth before we will see any large amount of money dedicated to its research.

Going back to our mining accident … What if the miner had a phone capable of quantum communications? If this were the case then he could phone everyone above and tell them about the cave-in, allowing help to arrive 12 minutes quicker, which might be necessary to save lives.

Let’s not stop there.

We could build computers that are thousands of times faster. We could take down all of the communications satellites and replace them with ground-based communications relays. We could even remove terrorism from the skies by taking pilots (and cockpits) out of the planes and allowing them to be flown remotely from the ground. All of this is possible if quantum communications is brought to reality.

Of course, we also must be realistic and admit to ourselves that this technology could be like nuclear fusion, tantalizing us constantly with the possibilities but always remaining just out of reach. One thing is for certain, so long as we are willing to reach out and grasp for it, there is always a chance we just might bring it into reality.

That’s why we dream of the day when a brave little rover by the name of DaVinci will roll across the surface of Titan, sending back photos of a miniature Earth living through its primordial days. With any hope, some of those who read this will live to see that day. If that person should happen to be you, remember to tell everyone how we foresaw together the day this would all occur …

A while back we looked at several possible ways life might end for us on Earth, and we included the possibility that we might actually escape them all. So, why are we feeling the need to revisit this list now? Well, it appears number three on the list is quickly becoming a reality. For those not familiar with our list you will find it here, The Earths Final Days, and our downward spiral starts with the death of our oceans.

For those that didn’t look at the article, number three on the list was global warming. So, what does this have to do with our ocean’s dying, and what proof do we have that this is even occurring? We’d like to say it’s all some nonsense we made up, geared to sway everyone into global consciousness, but this just isn’t the case. We have much to be concerned about, and we need to stop lying to ourselves and wishing the problem away. The oceans are dying, and our ability to survive will be heavily tested within the next two centuries.

One doesn’t make a statement like that without offering proof, and to date, that proof has been climate models that many believe to be overly exaggerated to bolster scientists need for publicity. So, are all scientists out to make a name for themselves? Most certainly not! Though we do believe some scientists have stretched the truth a bit, we’d like to believe it was to make people more concerned about the environmental timebomb that continues to tick away.

Admittedly, we were on the fence ourselves, but the latest evidence given offers no means for escape. Our oceans are dying, and if they do, we might not be far behind.

All Life Starts At A Cellular Level

We remember reading something like that in a high school science book, but when we use this statement here our intent is different than it was back then. For you see, all life depends on something to fuel it, with larger things eating smaller things until we arrive at the smallest of organisms. In the case of the oceans, these organisms would be phytoplankton.

If all of the phytoplankton in the ocean were to die tomorrow, everything else in the ocean would soon perish as well. Situated at the bottom of the food chain, it’s the one living thing that holds life in the ocean together. Thankfully, it exists in abundance – or does it?

According to an article in the Maritime Headlines Examiner, ‘there’s been a forty percent decline in the amount of phytoplankton in the oceans since 1950.’ You’ll find the article here, Death Spiral Of The Oceans. And while that might not seem like such a big deal, consider this … Half of the world’s oxygen is produced by the photosynthesis in phytoplankton. As such, that’s a 20% loss in oxygen producing plants on this planet – and that’s just in the past 60 years!

Concerned yet? You should be, because the phytoplankton serve another important role in our ecosystem, the absorption of carbon from the atmosphere. So to speak, the less phytoplankton we have in the oceans, the more carbon we have in the air, and more carbon in the air makes the Earth warmer. To make matters worse, as the oceans grow warmer the phytoplankton die off. In fact, it’s the warming of the oceans that was the beginning of their demise.

The Train Has Left The Rails

As one problem creates the other in a cycle, we have a runaway greenhouse effect occurring that threatens all of life as we know it. Many say we still have a chance if we cut back on our carbon emissions, but with large countries like India and China entering the Industrial Age, what chance is there of that occurring. Even so, do we have the right to halt the progress in these countries to save the world? After all, it was us, not them, who switched on the doomsday machine.

Throughout history, mankind has always attacked problems head-on, but perhaps this is a day and age where we need to think differently. Preventing more greenhouses from entering the air only has the hope of stabilizing the climate. Wouldn’t it be far better if we spent our efforts discovering a way to remove what we have put there? We can not, and will not accept that there is no way to remove greenhouse gasses from our atmosphere, while others will accept the fact that these gasses, once removed would be costly to store and would probably have no useful purpose. Well, we consider the preservation of life on Earth a useful purpose!

As for who should foot the bill … every factory that wants to remain in business. Allow them to throw up in the air what they will, but they must be responsible for removing twice as much from the air as what they put into it. For every factory there needs to be some device in-place to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, and they must store it safely. And what will that cost? With the right technology, it might not cost much more than the devices already in existence that only seek to limit the damage done to our atmosphere.

But what if we remove too much and the climate goes into global cooling? Well, then we just release some of the trapped greenhouse gasses and warm it up a bit. Imagine a lifetime where we can control the climate, rather than one where the climate threatens to end our extinction – that’s the world we want our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live in.

Pulling Toxicity From The Sky

How does one filter CO2 and other greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere? Sadly, we don’t have an answer for that question. While many theories have been proposed, none are without their difficulties. Air capture through “artificial trees” seems to be the least environmentally impacting so far, but the cost to filter the air is costly, provided the goal is to reduce the CO2 levels and not just to keep them stable. (see Pulling CO2 from the Air: Promising Idea, Big Price Tag)

In fact, just keeping the levels stable is costly in itself.

Others have proposed seeding the oceans with iron to stimulate CO2 absorbing bacteria into overpopulation, but that could destabilize the oceans even further. And let’s not forget, there are those who want to launch mirrors into space and use them to deflect the sun’s rays – but what if one of those mirrors turns the wrong way? That could make for a serious problem if it clambakes a city near the equator or freezes out a northern population near the polls.

One thing is for certain, we need ideas to resolve this global issue, and there is currently a contest being held with a $25 million dollar purse for the inventor who finds the solution. Too bad the contest already closed earlier this year,  but we can hope that there’s a winning entry there to be had. You can find information on this contest here, $25 million prize for greenhouse gas removal.

So, have we finally killed our planet?

Our hope is that mankind is resourceful enough to stem off this disaster, but it’s quite possible that the Earth may finally rid itself of the virus known as humans, and then in a few million years the Earth will repair what we have done and a new dominant form of life will walk upon the surface.

Let’s not give up on ourselves yet. We’ve weathered many catastrophes in the past, and if we somehow manage to survive this one, then it’s certain we will survive as long as the dinosaurs did – provided we aren’t taken out by one of the other items on our doomsday list.

It’s official,  Kepler has detected over a hundred earth-sized objects light-years away (see Other Earths Exist). However, it’s not time to break out the champagne – at least, not yet. In our search for life on other worlds, this is just the beginning – and a shaky one at that. For all we know, Kepler might have spotted 140 really large comets passing in front of alien suns. We believe a few of these objects will be actual earth-size planets – but will any of them be earth-like?

That’s the distinction that has to be made, for if we are to spot alien life from afar we need to look for worlds actually capable of harboring such life. We’ve already looked at the eight planets in our own solar system, and to date, only one world harbors life (Earth) and only one other could possibly tolerate its existence (Mars). Of course, one could make an argument for life in the oceans of Europa or some alien biology on Titan, but we’re looking for intelligent life to communicate with, and such life probably won’t spawn in these abysmal environments.

Would spotting bacterial life on Mars excite us? Perhaps, but within days it would be old news. However, if we spotted a civilization like ours light-years away, the talk would go on for thousands of years. As this is the case, we need to know how we will locate such civilizations and confirm their existence, and science is on the cusp of being able to deliver this information.

Follow The Water

This has been NASA’s mantra for many years, as we believe any life like us will be water-based. With evolving technologies we could possibly detect water on remote worlds, but what would this prove? Water alone isn’t proof of life. For instance, you could draw water from rocks on the moon, but would that water contain life? No. As such, finding water signifies a possibility, but it’s not a definite sign of life.

So, should we be looking for amino acids instead? Again, it’s another precursor to life, but not proof that it actually exists. After all, we can find amino acids on asteroids, and they aren’t harboring alien life any time soon. Perhaps our search needs to change its focus a bit. So, what is it we should actually be searching for?

The Key Signature Of Technology

If we use our own development as a sign of how other technological societies might come into being, then we can assume each of them, at some point, will have to burn fossil fuels to advance their culture.

Why do we say that? Well, we currently use fossil fuels to power our society and our technology, so it makes sense other advanced civilizations outside our world would need to do the same. We burn fossil fuels to power cars, planes, homes, businesses, factories, and the list goes on. Let’s face it, if all of the fossil fuels disappeared from the Earth tomorrow we would be sent back into the stone age. Of course, an argument could be made that we would turn our focus to nuclear energy, but one first needs to build the technology to harness the atom, and the tools needed would be created through the burning of fossil fuels. There just is no means to jump straight to nuclear energy.

Allow us to illustrate why …

Let’s Meet The Nucleoids

Let’s say we know of another intelligent species 50 light-years from Earth, which we shall call the Nucleoids, and they somehow have discovered a theory by which they can generate nuclear power to generate electricity, which will then be stored in batteries and cells to power their whole civilization. What a utopia it would be, a civilization designed around zero carbon emissions – but could it really be done?

By laying concrete and stone, the Nucleoids design their cooling towers. They then dump the radioactive material into the water and it generates steam, which turns a paddle wheel. The paddle wheel then turns a generator, which generates electricity. And already we have a problem …

Other than the fact that this setup probably wouldn’t generate enough steam to turn the paddle wheel, we have a bigger issue … where did the metal come from to create the generator? For that matter, where will the metal come from to create the capacitors that will store the electricity? It would seem the nucleoids need to mine for metal and process it, if their hopes for a zero emission power source are to become a reality.

So, how does one work metal into meaningful forms? Well, unless you intend to hold metal over an active volcano (not a very good idea) you’ll need to produce enough heat to smelt the metal and make it malleable. This requires a lot of heat, and that heat would need to be produced by the burning of fossil fuels.

On another note, the simple reactor we designed above would be extremely dangerous. After all, without any kind of material to insulate the workers from the radioactivity, they would all be dead within days. All of this would make the burning of fossil fuels a lot more attractive to use as a starter fuel for society, and once they came into use it would take some time to develop enough technology to make nuclear power a safe, and viable, alternative.

What do we learn from this example? We learn that all civilizations that advance technologically will almost certainly experience an industrial age, and we also can surmise that such an age will come before they are technologically advanced enough to travel the distance between the stars – much like the spot we are in now – as higher yielding power sources will almost certainly require nuclear fuel, which would then dawn a cleaner era in power generation.

In the end, finding civilizations among the stars that are much like ours leads us not to look for water, but rather, the burning of fossil fuels.

Mankind’s Signature

As early as the 1300′s you can find written accounts where mankind has been plagued by smog, an unwanted bi-product of burning fossil fuels. And this smog, so to speak, is mankind’s personal signature on the atmosphere. The more advanced we become, the higher the concentration goes, but a time will come when it will decrease as we advance on to cleaner fuel sources.

And one asks … how could we possible have had smog over 700 years ago? Didn’t the industrial revolution start in the 1800′s? Yes, it did. However, coal has been used as a fuel source for many years, keeping us warm through long cold winters. And in places like London where many people gathered together to live, their combined burnings created smog layers in the atmosphere. So, while smog seems to insure a civilization does exist, it doesn’t guarantee they will be as civilized as us. But it does show promise that they someday could be!

Did We Get Lost Here

You might wonder if we have fallen off the path in this discussion. Truth be told, we have actually laid the railway tracks straight to the station. We now only need to lead in the train, so here is the final stake needed to allow the railway to be finished.

If we find nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere of an alien world, then there is a good chance we have found a far off technological society that is struggling, much like us, to advance itself. Whereas, a clean atmosphere would state nothing definite:  no life, no intelligent life, intelligent life beyond our technological level, or intelligent life that has already departed to the stars.

Smog, on the other hand, would show a strong possibility that intelligent life does exist on an alien world and other tests could be done to narrow the focus further. We could also look for ozone depletion, which would be another good sign of a civilization making a signature on its homeworld.

Our own self-destructive tendencies could be the key puzzle piece to finding alien civilizations, as it would seem such growing pains are needed for any species to advance technologically. Ourselves, we saw no need to repair the damage we had done until it grew to epic proportions. This being the case, we could clean up our act today and it would take centuries or more to remove proof of the damage we have done. With alien worlds the result should be the same.

That’s A Lot of Speculation

More so, we expect many to think this is a lot of ______. After all, who is to say other worlds couldn’t evolve differently? Well, we considered that possibility, but couldn’t arrive at a technological zero emission world without creating a lot of smog along the way.

To understand our view you need only look at the world the way we have. If fossil fuels had never existed and every rock on the surface contained iron, how would we safely melt this metal to make it malleable enough to construct our current society? You can invent any technology you want, but you will find (as we did) that creating that technology will involve the manipulation of metal in some way, shape, or form.

Electricity, in and of itself, couldn’t exist without the metal wires needed to transfer it from one place to another. Wind, solar, and water power can provide power, but the transfer of that power is limited to the immediate vicinity without some means by which to store and transfer it – which again requires metal.

In fact, without metal our society could never have evolved. So all technological societies must learn to work with metal at some point, and during that technological dawning they will have to burn fossil fuels.

As this is the case, the search for extraterrestrial life not only becomes a search for water .. it also becomes a search for smog. The reasoning for this is simple. Our search isn’t about proving life exists outside of Earth, as that’s simply a means to lead us to our true destination. It’s about finding intelligent life, like us, among the stars.

Since our beginnings we have been alone in the universe, and it is our destiny to continue reaching out to the stars until we find the brethren we know to be out there … somewhere … just waiting to be discovered. And finding our lost relatives in the stars is also a step, as our final destination is to speak to another civilization and share with them all that we are and all that we’ve learned.

We never chose to be alone in the cosmos, and we’ll continue our search until the day comes when we receive proof that there are others out there, like us, searching the stars and wondering what life must be like on other worlds.

The red planet has always charged our imagination. For centuries we have dreamed of a Mars, teeming with life, but what we have found so far has done little to provide proof of what many of us believe must still be there, hidden somewhere under the red martian soil.

The lack of proof is no fault of our own, as Mars is a very difficult place to reach. And for all we know, what we will eventually find might be no more than fossils, billions of years old. Still, finding so much as one martian fossil would prove that life can happen elsewhere in the universe, and that spark would re-energize the search for intelligent life in a way we can’t begin to consider. Knowing this to be true, NASA refuses to give up on Mars, and they have already planned their next steps.

November 25th, 2011, the Mars Science Laboratory will launch toward our red neighbor, providing yet another rover on the surface of Mars. Going by the name of Curiosity, this rover will try to do what no other has done before, perform a precision landing on Mars! And while its mission there won’t be to find life, it will arrive on the red planet with a bevy of tools that will hopefully tell us if life is, or ever was, possible on Mars.

Curiosity is expected to last one Martian year (686 Earth days), but we need to remember that Spirit and Opportunity were originally only slated to last 90 days, and they lived on for five long years! As such, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think Curiosity has the same odds of living a long life on Mars.

MAVEN, currently scheduled to launch in late 2013, is the next scientific probe to head for Mars, but it won’t touch the surface. Instead, it will sample the atmosphere, determining how fast its being lost to space. The concept is, by knowing how fast the atmosphere is escaping we can wind back the clock and determine how long ago it was that Mars was applicably able to allow microbial life to flourish.

Yes, we no longer assume we will find little green men on mars, but would it be any less of a find if we discovered little green algae once flourished on the surface? The search for life is just that … a search for life … whether it happened in the past or is happening in the present is of little consequence. And in that quest, we must first determine if life is, or ever was, possible. So, in that sense, MAVEN is a cheap way (by NASAs standards) to learn a bit more about that red dot in the sky sharing our orbit around the sun.

But what about future missions? Surely, NASA has bigger plans than this? And as it turns out, they do.

To Mars And Back

One of the plans on NASAs drawing board is a mission that will collect samples from Mars and return them to Earth. This one is of high interest to us here at ALCWI, as we see this as the next best thing to going there ourselves. You will find our thoughts on such a mission in this article here, Simpler Missions To Mars Are Needed, but to summarize, we can learn more from one mission bringing samples back from Mars than we ever could from 20 robotic warriors scouring the planet.

The current timeline for such a mission places it somewhere around 2025, provided ample funding is made available for such a venture. Of course, such a mission isn’t without its technical difficulties. Mars has never been an easy target to begin with, so the thought of flying there and back makes many scientists squeamish, with the landing and takeoff phase (from Mars) being the most questionable parts of the journey. Still, the technology exists, if we’re daring enough to see it through.

Of course, some would assume the most dangerous portion of the journey would be the return through Earth’s atmosphere, and they would be wrong to worry about that. If need be, we could catch the probe on its return trip and bring it back down on a shuttle. Yes, it would be difficult, but no less so than it would be to bring back a probe from Earth orbit. If the cargo pod could be jettisoned from the returning probe, and it was of a reasonable size that it could be easily captured and stored, then the return to Earth wouldn’t be all that bad.

Thinking further down the pipe, we could possibly create a mechanism whereas samples could be fired up from the surface of Mars and captured for return to Earth, allowing future missions to just fly over Mars, capture the sample, and return it. It’s possible several samples could be collected this way, allowing one dangerous landing to provide numerous samples.

Sending Our Own Aliens To Mars

As with Viking I and Viking II, we could send a flurry of rovers to Mars in search of actual life (not just proof that it was, or is, possible). This concept is still on the drawing board, but the dismal results from the first Viking missions make this one unlikely. Having already declared Mars a dead world, we see ourselves more as looking for the deceased than we are for the living.

When we consider this scenario, an interesting cartoon enters our minds where a probe is digging around in an ancient fossil bed on Mars looking for life and reporting back that none exists, when the proof it once was there is in the soil surrounding the probe. Sadly, this is a possible reality, as fossils could easily be mistaken for rocks by probes. After all, What proof of life does a machine get from something that’s no longer alive?

In our honest opinion, sending machines to Mars to search for current signs of life is a dead-end, even if it somehow exists. Yes, that sounds harsh, but consider it from our point of view. If life once existed on Mars, then finding a fossil record would prove it. However, if life still existed on Mars, it would find its way to becoming fossilized. The search needs to be for fossils, and if we find those we can then determine how long ago life lived on Mars, and we can decide if there is reason to expect life might still have a foothold there today.

So to speak, if we find a fossil on Mars that’s barely a thousand years old, that’s good enough reason to start looking for present day life. Otherwise, it becomes a search for life among ancient bones – and that search is ultimately doomed to fail.

Digging In Deep

Another interesting idea on NASAs plate is to burrow into Mars and see what lies below the surface. After all, we’ve mapped the whole surface, and yet, we know so little of the geology underneath. Perhaps we will find underground streams that have somehow survived through the ages. We know that there’s still an appreciable amount of water on Mars, so it is conceivable that some of it might still flow underground. Also, there is a better chance of encountering extremophiles, hidden away from the harsh Martian surface.

However, this isn’t what interests us most about this idea. In fact, we actually would see such a mission as practice for a bigger one – the exploration of Europa. If we can send a probe to Mars and dig deep into its surface, then there would be no reason to suspect we couldn’t do the same trick on Europa. And if ever there was a chance of finding alien life that’s still living, then perhaps Europa is the most idealistic place to visit. However, a lot of ice stands between us and the ocean we believe is there. As such, we need to practice drilling down through an alien surface, in an environment nearly as hellish as the one we would propose to visit next.

Our First Manned Missions To Mars

As much as we’d like to see this happen, it would take an Earth-shattering discovery to prompt anyone to send this idea to the top of the list. Manned missions are far too risky, and we aren’t about to send a human to do something that could just as easily be done by a machine.

However, if we found some proof of life on Mars, this would be enough to get the creaky wheels oiled. Within 20 years we would see the first manned mission to Mars, though it might not be NASA that gets there first. A new space race would begin, with every international power wanting to be the first to set a man on Mars, and a ticker tape parade would await for those men as they brought back physical proof of life on another world.

50 more years into the future and we would have bases on Mars, from which scientists would pop out daily to make more discoveries of life on the red planet. Yearly, rockets would rotate scientists to and fro, carrying back the latest titillating finds and we would all look at them in awe and wonder. But is this an actual reality, or did the red planet miss its chance at spawning life?

Was Mars Always Dead Or Was It Once Fertile

That’s the question that constantly walks through scientists minds. There’s no question that Mars once had water and an atmosphere that could have allowed for life. However, Mars doesn’t seem to have stayed a fertile bed for long, and it’s possible life never had enough of a chance to grab a foothold. Still, a Martian rock named ALH84001 hints at the possibility that life did actually gasp for air on Mars, and it’s that hope that keeps us looking up to the red planet for a possible sign that we weren’t always alone.

And then there is the enigma being postulated by some new age scientists. What if life never started on Earth, and instead, it actually started on Mars? It’s possible, given the fact that Mars is smaller and would have cooled first. If it had spawned life in its early years, then perhaps some of that life was sent to Earth by way of a meteor collision. In that instant, a small piece of Mars could have sailed off to Earth, providing the seed to offer life on its sister world. For all we know, we could all be descendants of bacterium that first found their foothold on Mars, but much will need to be done to ever prove such a theory possibly true.

That’s why we find ourselves drawn to Mars, and we why feel the need to keep returning. Did Mars ever harbor life? Standing on Earth, we will never know. And so, we will continue to search the distant red desert until our curiosity has been sated.

Back in February we discussed black holes in an article titled, Diving Into The Rabbit Hole. For those that haven’t read the article, we discussed an interesting theory whereas every black hole leads out to another universe on the other side. Unfortunately, by the end of that article the laws of physics came to town and voided the warranty on that theory; however, New Scientist has taken a different spin on this theory in their article titled, Every black hole may hold a hidden universe. Is it possible they found the loophole we missed? We’re not so sure.

First off, we want the staff at New Scientist to know we are huge fans of theirs. We’d also like to concede that they have their ear closer to the pavement than we do, allowing them to hear things far in advance of when they would ever strike our ears. As such, they are a near omnipotent source of info in the science world. However, being first to report the news can sometimes put one in the uncomfortable spot of not foreseeing its causal relationship with hard science. That’s why we felt the need to delve into this story to see if it floats.

Hidden universes inside of black holes … It’s the story that makes every fictional author’s eyes go glossy; however, it doesn’t do much for those in the non-fictional world. Oh, we aren’t saying you couldn’t form a small universe inside of a black hole, but a large one is out of the question, for reasons we will delve into soon enough.

For the moment, we will play the devil’s advocate and give this new theory a fair chance. After all, denouncing something written by New Scientist feels about the same to us as it would to fly to DisneyWorld and kick Mickey Mouse in the shin. We look up to our heroes because they have a proven track record for leading us down the right path, so it should be obvious why we are a bit skittish about tapping one of our favorite science magazines on the shoulder and asking them if we somehow became lost.

The White Hole Theory

White holes are theorized dimensional gateways. In fact, it has been propositioned that at the bottom of each black hole is a white hole, funneling away everything that a black hole devours – and on the surface this makes sense.

It explains so much of the big bang. It makes everything work. Subatomic particles spit out of a white hole, meld together into matter, and then form gravity to bond together and form stars, galaxies, and the rest of the universe. You even have an explanation for expansion, which is then proposed to be more particles being pulled through the white hole and forcefully causing the universe to continuously expand.

It’s an eloquent solution, so why isn’t it an accepted one? Well, you would need a black hole capable of swallowing a whole universe on one side and spitting it out on the other. Given what we have seen of black holes so far, they grow to become enormous, but not so large that they could swallow the whole universe. In fact, in our universe they seem to be content with eating doughnut holes out of the center of galaxies, which hardly makes them out to be devourers of whole universes.

But that’s not the theory that was brought to the table. Instead, the concept is one where a whole universe exists within a black hole. Is this even possible? Again, there is the issue of not enough mass to create everything around us, but there is an escape from that … space distortion.

Universal Inflation

If you stretched tiny pieces of matter to make them larger, then it would make sense they would occupy more space. In this sense, a galaxy could be stretched enough to become its own universe inside of a black hole. However, we wouldn’t find black holes inside of black holes as the same force to create the original black hole would stretch and weaken space, making such structures more difficult to form. If anything, we could expect one or two wimpy black holes in such a stretched universe, and yet, we are told there is one at the heart of nearly every galaxy.

This provides another possible theory where black holes devour galaxies until they are full and then burp them out, only to repeat the cycle again. As before, this doesn’t work, as the ejection process should destroy the black hole. So, what’s left to make this theory stand up?

What about macro-theory, whereby each universe is made up of smaller particles than the last? Again, a decent idea, but it can’t explain black holes inside of a black hole. The whole premise comes down to finding whirlpools inside the middle of a giant whirlpool, and we already know that the energy to keep the cycle going just doesn’t exist in nature – nor should it in space.

One Final Bridge To Cross

As stated previously, if a black hole were to somehow burp out all of its contents then the black hole would cease to exist. So, let’s go deep into the box and say the big bang was nothing more than a black hole that obliterated itself – much like when a star goes super nova.

If this were the case, then all the tightly packed particles would fire out at speeds that could exceed the speed of light. How so? The speed of a photon helps us derive the speed of light – the universal speed limit. However, the subparticles of photons could possibly outdo this speed limit. As we live in a world populated by matter, it’s not something we could readily test, but if a black hole were to devour all of the matter around it the explosion would happen in an empty vat of soup, allowing for a finite time of infinite expansion.

If this were the case, then the universe began at a speed of expansion faster than the speed of light, making it impossible to see that first moment of creation. Maybe we actually live in a sub-universe and all that we see and believe could actually be a small piece of an even bigger universe, and given the distance between galaxies it’s conceivable that these universes are also very distant from one another. However, as they spread out toward one another gravitational attraction would pull these universes toward one another, causing expansion to keep occurring, and at a pace that would grow over time.

What proof would there be for such a theory? Well, if we saw galaxies traveling in an odd manner this could be offered as proof. In fact, we have witnessed these dark flows where galaxies don’t move as they should, and this could be a meeting of two universal boundaries, where the attractive forces weaken, strengthen, or pull in a different direction, depending upon how both universes meet. However, dark flows are not yet universally accepted by scientists as the theory hasn’t held up to solid science yet. Still, it does make one wonder.

The Universal Black Box

We can’t bring ourselves to subscribe to whole universes growing inside of black holes, but we need to remember that science sites report the news – they don’t create it. As this is the case, we can’t fault New Scientist for reporting what was handed to them. And while we could ask why they didn’t look deeper into this story, as we did, the answer is simple. For all we know, this theory could be yet another quirk of nature which will eventually be proven true, but beyond our current nature to conceive.

Even the Big Bang Theory (which is widely accepted) provides us with sleepless nights. Though a mathematical model can be offered that seems to make it all ring true, we can’t help but wonder if we have the equation, but we’re still unsure what the variables all mean. So to speak, we could write an equation that states 2 parts x combined with 1 part y creates water, but unless we state x=hydrogen and y=oxygen, we get the math right and the actual application of it wrong.

This is why we continue to ponder the creation of the universe. Having a mathematical model that works taunts us, as all we need to do is understand the variables and how they fit in. And that’s what scientists do … determine the variables and the importance of the role that they play.

And so, while we here at ALCWI believe it impossible for a universe to exist within a black hole, by no means can we ever fully dismiss the theory. To do so infers knowledge that is beyond our means, derived from past knowledge which could easily someday be proven wrong. And this would be the reason that scientific sites report the news they are given, for as much as they might possibly doubt the information that they receive there could come a day when it’s all proven to be right – and on that day, New Scientist will say they were there when the story needed to be delivered to the public, and ALCWI was there to question the story’s validity, offering up the side of science that demands all theories be investigated until they are either proven true or proven false.

For every new theory there must believers and naysayers, with each playing their role. The believers push out the theory and the naysayers try to destroy it. Between the two sides new information is discovered, and this is the research that grows to enrich our lives. As such, we must play our role, knowing fully well that we might be wrong. And in this one small instance, we’d like for this to be the case.

Our Earth Isn’t Alone! We’ve waited a long time to say that. In fact, this earth-shattering news is enough to cause us to break from tradition and post a story on an even date! For those not in the know we only put out stories on odd numbered dates, but could news like this actually wait until tomorrow? Not a chance!

So, what’s all the hubub you might ask? Well, according to Science Magazine, news has leaked out on Kepler’s progress, and our proud, young telescope has been quite the busy boy! You can find the article here:  Data Leak: Galaxy Rich in Earth-Like Planets.

That’s data leak … as in ‘it isn’t fully verified yet’.

So, how many Earths did they find? 140!However, by Earths we are referring to stellar objects with a radius no more than twice that of our own Earth. That means these planets could all be fiery cauldrons, like Venus, or frozen deserts, like Mars. But don’t lose any of that enthusiasm, as the probability is high that at least a few of these worlds will be in the Goldilocks Zone, which means there might be some Earths out there just like ours!

So, why is NASA keeping so mum about the whole thing? Have they lost their enthusiasm? Not a chance! In fact, they are confirming the data, even as we read this, to see just how many Earths they have really found. It’s inevitable that some will prove to be false positives, but we believe 40 to be a conservative estimate for how many we suspect will be the real deal.

And how many of these will be capable of holding liquid water? Maybe five, but if there is even just one, imagine how amazing that would be! And why is that? Well, Kepler is only observing one portion of the sky. As such, finding one actual Earth in that small patch infers that there must be many more throughout our galaxy … and the universe. And where there are Earths like ours, there are opportunities for life (as we know it) on other worlds!

Let’s Analyze This Deeper

The news stops there, and from here we continue on by speculating a bit. After all, why just report the news? Why not ask ourselves where this discovery will take us?

If (and yes, it’s still an if) we find another earthsized world in the Goldilocks Zone, then the next thing we will need to do is point our telescopes at this world and analyze it to see if it has water in its atmosphere. And what if it does? Well, then SETI needs to dedicate one telescope to sending signals to this world and another one to listening in for a reply. Yes, it will take many years to receive one, if it’s to occur at all, but targeting an earthlike world might be our best chance at contact.

Just knowing that there is another Earth out there with an ocean would be enough to make every scientist salivate for months. We would finally know that our Earth wasn’t a fluke, and then there would be one thing left to prove … that life on Earth isn’t a fluke either.

Why Haven’t We Seen These Earths Before

As we reported here, Extra Solar Planets: Where Are The Other Earths, the problem with finding other Earths is the fact that they are so small. As such, we weren’t certain Kepler had a keen enough eye tosee them. Thankfully, it did, or we wouldn’t be writing any of this.

And this takes us back to our prediction, which was a 1 in 2 chance of finding a world near the size of Earth in any system. We still stand by this prediction, though we must again state that this doesn’t mean the world will contain liquid water – or life. At this point in the game does it really matter? Just being able to detect many worlds near the size of our own opens the distinct possibility that there is another Earth out there, waiting to be discovered – and don’t be surprised if one is found within 16 light years of our own solar system.

Given this latest data, we predict an earthlike world with liquid water will be found within the next 2-5 years. Of course, many would say that’s a really big roll of the dice to make a prediction like that, but we intend to be around to see it happen, and we’ll refer you back to this article when it does.

Earth Is No Accident

All our lives we have been taught that Earth was a miracle in the cosmos that could never occur again. In our own lifetimes, we will see that statement undone, as we learn the miracle has happened all over the Milky Way galaxy and throughout our universe.

Earth was never an accident. It was merely a seeding of the right ingredients in the right place, and it would be presumptuous for us to believe it could never happen elsewhere, given the vast size of the cosmos. And life is no accident either. If we could travel the stars the same way we walk through doorways we would already know we are not alone. And while this makes no statement that any alien civilization has ever actually visited us, it does state that such a journey could be possible – if not here, then elsewhere.

As our knowledge of the universe continues to grow, we find ourselves possibly losing that which once made us unique. But fret not, for the knowledge of other Earths could be the salvation of our species, should our homeworld ever decide to grow barren and unwilling to tolerate us any further.

And so we must say that today is a great day in the cosmos, for a small world by the name of Earth finally discovered that it might not be so alone as it had once thought. And for this, we are very happy …