It’s the end of the month and we have all probably seen way too many crappy TV ads.
The following is my nomination for the most creative.
It’s from the makers of Guinness (the beer) and is called Evolution. Here is the making of the video.
It reminded me of the hillarious FedEx commercial from the Super Bowl this year mixed with the reverse chronological story-telling used in Memento.
And because we are all in the mood, 3 new lemurs have been discovered and the seasonal excavation of the L.A. Tar Pits has begun.
Via Cosmic Variance.
What do you get when you mix the posterboy of purity and innocence with the hedonistic vices of Malibu’s Most Wanted?
Jamie Kennedy finally turned Bob Saget to the dark side.
Mike Jones!
Following up with the idea of launching a von Neumann probe into space is yet another math exercise.
For simplicity sake, let us assume that this self-replicating nanofactory is the size of the Chandra X-Ray observatory, which is the heaviest non-military, declassified object launched into orbit in one piece (the Mir Station weighed 150 tons but was comprised of separately launched modules as is the ISS). Chandra weighs approximately 4800 kilograms or about 10,500 pounds.
Some of the assumptions being made include: momentum is conserved, that there is no atmospheric drag, and that the railgun launching the probe into space uses some kind of frictionless material (e.g. superconducting magnets) to accelerate the object. And for the sake of pushing the envelope, the probe will be launched at 90% of the speed of light.
So how does this jive with the all too famous equation: E = mc2?
Here is what we have so far: E = (4800 Kg) * (.9)(300000000 m/s)2. In order to achieve this speed it needs roughly 1,296,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy. Plus if you want to take into consideration launching it from some place like Earth, you have to factor in escape velocity, which is roughly 25,000 mph — fairly trivial.
It can be done Jim, but I don’t have my medicine bag
According to the Energy Information Administration, as of March 2006, the combined production of all nuclear power plants in the United States was approximately 63,721,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours. So generating the required amount of electricity necessary for launching the probe is realistically feasible.
The reason I used 90% of the speed of light in the example was that if an advanced civilization had mastered the use of self-replicating nanofactories, that it is quite possible for them to construct this launching device and attempt a voyage to Earth in less than 200,000 years.
And this is the main reason I do not think such a civilization exists in our galaxy, because if they had the capability to build self-replicating probes, they would also have the telescopic means to detect the presence of life on other planets and would attempt to explore them.
For instance, via spectrum analysis astronomers today can detect what kind of elements comprise extrasolar planets. They can tell whether or not a planet is rocky or a gas giant and if it has a relatively low-mass or is a brown dwarf.
Furthermore, extremely large optical telescopes in the planning stages, such as the OWL, will give astronomers on Earth an unprecedented look at the neighborhoods next door. And such devices would be readily used by a highly sophisticated civilization during their exploration and cataloguing of the cosmos.
Or another way of looking at it, in an effort to perpetuate their survival and prevent cataclysmic events such as asteroid collisions, an advanced civilization would construct devices capable of detecting things like NEOs as we do (e.g. Pan-STARRS). And to plan for the long run, to determine if any planet or star would eventually crash into their world, they would engineer bigger and better telescopes capable of detecting these masses. Thus, eventually mapping the galaxy and little old Earth.
Intergalactic planetary, planetary intergalactic
The only thing really bugging me is how a probe moving at such a high velocity would slow down without leaving a large impact crater somewhere. While I am familiar with aerobraking used by many probes (such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) to shed the tremendous velocities safely, how would you stop a 5 ton projectile flying at near the speed of light?
Perhaps long-period comets (like Halley’s) hold the answer: patience and many many orbits. In fact, while they themselves cannot self-replicate, have they not become an integral player in theorizing how biological life might travel across solar systems (i.e. panspermia)?
