STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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OLYMPUS AIR A01 SMARTPHONE CAMERA LENS

Attaching a camera lens to your smartphone is a novel idea that’s gained popularity in recent years. But it’s safe to say that no brand has made a practical product actually worth purchasing at this point. The Olympus Air A01 looks to be the first.

Just like the Sony QX lens camera before it, the Air A01 lets smartphone users transform their phone into a capable shooter. It’s a 16-megapixel Micro Four Thirds sensor with a 1/16000 ultra high-speed shutter and 3x digital zoom. The lens easily mounts to user’s smartphones, and uses a handful of apps to replicate the experience of using a DSLR camera. Available in both black and white, it even comes with its own shutter button. The brand plans on releasing the product this March in Japan, but there’s no word as to whether or not this thing will make its way stateside.

[MIKA27]

VICE SEASON 3 TRAILER

http://youtu.be/Sr1mshEUuWk

VICE, the Emmy Award-winning show on HBO from the same people as the website, is set to premiere at the beginning of March. They’re still doing the same startling and groundbreaking coverage as the first two seasons, but now they’re traveling from Tennessee to Antarctica (and beyond!) with a slew of new hosts.

[MIKA27]

CHARBAY HOP FLAVORED WHISKEY RELEASE III

Whiskey, to put it simply, is nothing more than distilled beer. The beer used is typically hop free, but the folks at Charbay Distillery have perfected the art of adding hops, resulting in some fantastic whiskey.

Release III in the Charbay Lifetime Collector Series is a true game-changer, a hop flavored whiskey distilled using 20,000 gallons of Pilsner that yielded just 24 barrels of whiskey. Distilled in 1999, it spent six years maturing in American White Oak barrels and then eight additional years in stainless steel casks to continue the evolution. Only 2,700 bottles were released, all at an uncut cask strength of 134.2 proof.

[MIKA27]

Young Photographer Feeds And Photos These Brave Wild Animals

The 21-year-old can often be found spending his weekends and early evenings venturing into the woodlands surrounding his home. Armed with a DSLR and ehis trusty iPhone, he patiently waits for the forests inhabitants to make themselves known to him. Sometimes he has to wait hours, sometimes just a few moments it all depends on how peaceful, calm and secluded the area is.

How does he entice them to pose in front of his camera?

With an array of delicious nuts and crackers of course. With such a tasty platter on offer, he’s been able to attract all kinds of wildlife to within mere centimeter of his lens. He’s very mindful, of only giving them small and infrequent snacks so as not to disrupt their natural diets.

Regular visitors include birds, owls and energetic squirrels. At one point even a trustworthy fox came to nibble on one of his treats.

Here's a few of his spellbinding captures:

You can see more of Punkka's adventures with the wild animal kingdom on his 500px portfolio or why not follow him on Instagram?

[MIKA27]

Watch This Man Scale A Rock Wall With DARPA's Bionic Arm

The DARPA-funded DEKA Arm System is an amazingly life-like prosthetic arm controlled directly by electric signals from the muscles. It’s the first such prosthetic available to the general public. And it can help you climb a rock wall like a badass.

By plugging into the body’s electric signals, the DEKA arm allows for close to natural movement. That can mean delicate manoeuvres like picking up eggs. It can also mean, as illustrated in this new DARPA video, feats of strength like this Army volunteer amputee scaling a rock wall. Watch out, non-cyborgs. [DARPA]

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How To Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Rock And Bury It Forever (Hopefully)

What do we do with a problem like carbon dioxide? We want to remove the excess from our atmosphere, but how? In Iceland, geologists are burying the greenhouse gas with water, so that basic chemistry can turn it into solid rock inside what the New York Times calls “a geological soda machine”.

Storing carbon dioxide underground is not a new idea, but CarbFix in Iceland uses an unique approach. Conventionally, liquid carbon dioxide is injected into porous rock — like at Sleipner in Norway — where we hope the carbon dioxide will (eventually) turn into carbonate minerals after thousands or tens of thousands of years. Over that long stretch of time, the pressurised gas could escape through cracks into the air, leaving us right back where we started.

CarbFix wants to speed up the process of mineralisation, using something as simple as water. But lots of it. Carbonated water is acidic — just like your Diet Coke hence the wonderful phrase “geological soda machine” — which helps release elements like calcium with which carbon dioxide can react. In Iceland’s volcanic fields, the carbon dioxide is injected into basalt, where it should turn to calcite.

CarbFix began their first test field injection in 2012, and they’re now analysing their cores of rock for calcite. They have also scaled up their operations to inject 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide captured from a nearby power plant each year. It appears promising, but there is a big dollar sign hanging out next to a question mark over everything. The Times explains why:

But injecting huge amounts of water along with the CO2– 25 tons of liquid for each ton of gas — adds to the cost. CarbFix scientists have estimated that transportation and injection could cost about $US17 per ton of CO2, about twice the cost of transporting and injecting the gas alone. (These costs are on top of the much higher costs of capturing and separating CO2from a power plant smokestack.)

Without economic incentives, energy companies have no reason to invest in burying their carbon dioxide with water, especially if there are other cheaper solutions. The irony, though, is that over tens of thousands of years, CarbFix’s solution might actually be cheaper if it truly works as promised without leaking. But we humans are not so good at thinking in tens of thousands of years.

[NJP]

Testla would have known what that sub-station beam is all about.

[MIKA27]

Original Copy Of The Magna Carta Found In Forgotten Old Scrapbook

An unassuming scrapbook buried inside the archives of Sandwich, England turned out to hold quite a treasure: an original copy of the Magna Carta from 1300, one of just several that have survived all these centuries.

The Magna Carta Project announced the discovery this week, after verifying the tattered page found in December was indeed the real deal. It appears a British Museum official had compiled the document in a scrapbook in the late 1800s, which was then placed in the archives. There, it remained forgotten until now.

The copy is badly damage, missing about a third of its text and its royal seal. But the remaining writing and text — along with the date issued at the bottom — was enough to confirm its authenticity.

With this new discovery, the total known copies of the Magna Carta add up to just two dozen. The Magna Carta was reissued several times between 1215 and 1300, and this is the seventh copy of the 1300 version. Sandwich’s copy is an especially exciting find because its companion document, the Charter of the Forest, also survives. Only one other pair still exists.

In fact, it was research into Sandwich’s Charter of the Forest that prompted a historian to dig through Sandwich’s archives, eventually leading to the rediscovery of the town’s Magna Carta. Just goes to how you never know what’s hiding in the archives

[MIKA27]

Watch The First Behind-The-Scenes Footage Of The New James Bond Movie

Later this year, the 24th James Bond move, called Spectre, will hit the screens. In the meantime, though, you’ll have to make do with watching this first behind-the-scenes footage from the new movie.

While co-stars Léa Seydoux and Dave Bautista are interviewed, a moody Daniel Craig scuttles around the Austrian mountains, firing guns and punching people. Of course he does! That’s what he does best. There’s also a car chase across the snow — said to be one of the major action sequences of the movie. Spectre will be released in theatres in November.

[MIKA27]

How Dangerous Is Natural Asbestos When It's Blowing In The Wind?

Most of us, when we think of asbestos, think of the insulation in old buildings up for demolition. But asbestos fibres are naturally occurring minerals, and their natural habitats are deposits that meander all over the country. When wind blows asbestos off the hills, exactly how dangerous is it?

That’s the question at the heart of a controversy in Nevada, where geologists are locked in a battle with the state’s health department. In the New York Times, Deborah Blum reports on the work of geologists Brenda Buck and Rodney Metcalf, who have mapped Nevada’s naturally occurring asbestos in more detail than ever before.

In the past, when we still used asbestos, the fibrous minerals were mined from large deposits in the western United States. In Lobby, Montana, the site of a former asbestos mine, one-fifth of the residents ended up with asbestos-related lung disease. The long, skinny shape of asbestos fibres means they are easily lodged in the lungs, and a type of cancer called mesothelioma is often associated with asbestos exposure.

The asbestos mine in Libby, Montana

Are Nevada’s asbestos deposits, abundant but unmined, harming people? When an epidemiologist Francine Baumann conducted a preliminary analysis that she says found an unusual number of mesothelioma cases, Nevada responded by shutting down her access to the state cancer registry. The state health department says they have conducted their own analysis finding no danger and Baumann’s research was simply misguided. The Times has much more detail on the controversy.

Cancer clusters are rarely as clear-cut as Hollywood portrays it in Erin Brockovich. More often than out, it comes out to an unglamorous arguments over statistics. But naturally occurring asbestos is more prevalent than we previously thought. Geologists are finding them in the midwest and on the east seaboard. Asbestos has been around us all along, but we’re only now beginning to figure out exactly how dangerous they are.

[MIKA27]

Amazing Aerial Photos Show Las Vegas Like You Have Never Seen It Before

After capturing the most amazing images of New York ever, Vincent Laforet is using the same technology to photograph other major cities around the world. This is Las Vegas. The results are even crazier than NYC — with this unprecedented clarity and from this vantage point, Sin City looks like the world of Tron. Unreal.

To capture these unprecedented crystal clear pictures, he used the same equipment as in New York:

Armed with cameras such as the Canon 1DX and the Mamiya Leaf Credo 50 MP back- both capable of shooting relatively clean files at 3200 & 6400 ISO and a series of f2.8 to f1.2 lenses including a few tilt-shift lenses (see image above.)

I was finally able to capture some of the images that I’ve dreamed of capturing for decades.

Vincent Laforet is a director, photographer, and a pioneer in tilt-shift, aerial photography, and in HD DSLR cameras for shooting film. He won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his images of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s conflicts after 9/11, plus three prizes at the 2010 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, Life and many other national and international publications have commissioned his service.

Follow him on his blog, Twitter, Facebook, Storehouse and Instagram.

[MIKA27]

The Most Iconic Race Cars In History Captured In Beautiful Paintings

Tom Havlasek is a painter who is obsessed with motorsports. His large format pieces, all made using acrylic, capture the perfect angles of some of the most iconic race cars in history. I would love to have a couple hanging on my walls. See if you can identify all of them.

You can follow Tom Havlasek’s work on Facebook.

[MIKA27]

The Fascinating Engineering Details Of The Titanic From A 1909 Journal

It’s over 100 years since the Titanic’s final, fateful journey. But tucked away in engineering journals dating even further back are some fascinating details about how the ship was built — and in this video, Engineering Guy Bill Hammack casts a thoughtful eye over them.

Having sifted through images and information held in copies of The Engineer published between 1909 and 1911, Bill describes the building of the Titanic and its twin the Olympic. He covers everything from their build in dry docks, how their engines, steering mechanism and propellers worked, and what did for the ships in the end. It’s a fascinating 11 minutes

[MIKA27]

Nissan’s Outlandish New Race Car Is a Much-Needed Dose of Insanity

Nissan’s 1,250-hp, 1,940-pound GT-R LM Nismo race car is built for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Look at it. It’s ridiculous. The red topsides, the square flanks, the weird bubble canopy. That long fin, which offsets an even longer front. The car is all snout, like the Tim Burton Batmobile. It is all snout and four wheels and that giant tail fin and exhausts blatting up from the middle of the nose and wait exhausts in the what with the where now?

This is Nissan’s 1,250-hp, 1,940-pound GT-R LM Nismo race car. A closely kept secret before it was introduced to the world via a Super Bowl commercial, it’s purpose-built for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the French endurance event held on a mixture of private corners and closed public roads. Le Mans has taken place virtually every summer since 1923; it is one of the most mind-blowing and celebrated events in motorsport, a cross between traveling circus and an entire season of Formula 1 crammed into one weekend.

The event in question is important, because it is insane. I once heard Le Mans described as a bar fight where no one has slept for days and the bartender is handing out free broadswords and speedballs, but that’s inaccurate. It’s far more brutal and senseless. The most famous stretch of pavement at Le Mans is a two-lane public highway where even the slowest cars clock 180 mph. The event hosts a mix of amateurs and professionals and is stupefyingly expensive for either. In 2014, Volkswagen reportedly spent a combined $1 billion to have its Audi and Porsche subsidiaries battle each other for the race’s top honors. Simply running a street-based Porsche 911 as an amateur can cost upward of $500,000. And no matter who you are or how much you spend, there’s a good chance your entire investment will evaporate—poof!—if the car breaks irreparably or if someone else crashes into it. Both of which happen a lot.

It’s front-engine and front-wheel-drive, unlike every top-level modern Le Mans car ever.

Front Engine, Front Wheel Drive

Nissan wants into this melee. The last time the company took to Le Mans, it was as engine supplier to the Ben Bowlby-designed DeltaWing, an experimental, arrow-shaped car intended to return a degree of free thinking to top-level motorsport. The GT-R LM, built by American Formula 1 legend Dan Gurney’s All American Racers, is more than just an engine. And like the DeltaWing, a host of naysayers insist the car won’t work.

Front-engine and front wheel-drive is unheard of in this level of racing, but Nissan’s got its reasons

The GT-R LM fits into Le Mans’s P1 class, the top-level, roadgoing-spaceship group that holds machines like the Porsche 919 and Audi R18. Like those cars, the Nissan features a hybrid powertrain, albeit one far removed from that of a Prius. Unlike the Porsche and Audi, however, the Nissan breaks a host of modern race car conventions. It’s meant to be different: Nissan specifically told Bowlby, the team principal and technical director, to reach for something new. Chiefly, it’s front-engine and front-wheel-drive, unlike every top-level modern Le Mans car ever.

This is important for a number of reasons. Conventional wisdom holds that purpose-built race cars don’t have their engines in the front, and they sure as 200-mph hell aren’t front-wheel-drive. Blame physics: generally speaking, everything from high-speed chassis balance to aerodynamic potential improves when you place a car’s engine just behind the driver.

Nor is front-drive traditionally sensible. Weight transfer means the drive wheels are unloaded during acceleration, and more important, often overloaded, being responsible for braking, steering, and power delivery, often at the same time. Rear-drive, mid-engine racing cars have dominated motorsport since the 1960s because the layout simply works. (Production-based race cars are the sole exception, most often in the World Rally Championship or touring-car racing.)

Note the popped-up access ports on the nose and the unusual location of the exhausts

Defying conventional wisdom is one thing. Making it look silly with something that might actually work is another.

The GT-R LM was drawn up to solve a problem that has long plagued race engineers and designers. The engine of any race car is a large percentage of its total mass, mid-engine setups are used to improve weight distribution and performance. The tradeoff is a lack of weight on the front axle during acceleration and a subsequent loss of grip or stability. Engineers compensate by generating downforce with aerodynamic devices like wings on a car’s nose, but it’s rarely enough. Putting the engine up front puts weight over the axle, which is good for traction, especially if the power is going to those wheels. That’s why the rear-engined, rear-drive Porsche 911 isn’t known for excessive wheelspin and front-drive street cars grip well in snow. Bowlby also pushed the car’s cockpit as far back as was practical from a packaging standpoint, to mitigate the unequal weight distribution.

THE GT-R REPRESENTS SOMETHING ELSE, A DOLLOP OF BALLS-OUT CHANGE IN A TRADITIONALLY STODGY ENVIRONMENT.

Nissan also got creative with aerodynamics. Instead of putting twin-turbo V6’s running gear (coolant and oil radiators, that sort of thing) near the back of the car, Bowlby crammed it up front, in the nose. That freed gobs of room in the GT-R’s flanks and rear, which Bowlby optimized for flow-through aerodynamic tunnels, allowing air to travel relatively uninterrupted from the car’s nose to its tail. When you look at the car from overhead, or with the body off, the tunnels appear to part around the driver compartment like a stream flowing around a boulder. In theory, this would allow for a tremendous amount of aerodynamic downforce to be produced and more cleanly managed. It’s like how a shrouded propeller on a ship offers more controllable thrust than one just hanging out in the open. Shorter version: If Bowlby’s right, the Nissan will produce a remarkable amount of aerodynamic grip, enough to outweigh its disadvantages. And without the penalty of excess drag.

It’s a rare splash of craziness in a field that’s become too governed by rules and convention

This is remarkably, awesomely, wonderfully cool. The theory is fascinating, and you have to applaud any time a skunkworks kicks out something that defies established wisdom, especially in a public forum. But above all, the GT-R represents something else. It’s a guy rethinking things with visible difference. It’s a large company placing a massive bet on a huge risk for the sake of being different, which large companies almost never do. It’s dollop of balls-out change in a traditionally stodgy environment.

That is the takeaway. Racing isn’t supposed to be stodgy. It’s supposed to be so goddamn wonderful batshit you can’t stand it, all noise and rumble and burning money and cavitating testicles. You are not supposed to watch the Daytona 500 or an F1 race and be able to flip the channel halfway through. You are not supposed to look at a NASCAR stocker or a Top Fuel dragster and see another generation’s innovation gone stale. The cars aren’t supposed to all look the same. The creativity and humanity on display is supposed to be visible and interesting as much to the layman as to the engineer. The excitement isn’t just machinery, and it isn’t just what people do with it. It’s the give and take between the two, the successes, failures, and motivations that reveal the humanity of the people involved.

We Need This Car

But creativity is no longer obvious in the sport. What was once a breeding ground for silly and ridiculous ideas—the six-wheeled Tyrrell Formula 1 car, that time Lotus took a jet-powered four-wheel-drive doorstop to the Indy 500, the ducted-fan-downforce of the Chaparral 2J Can-Am—has become a paranoid, infinitely policed theater of the absurd. Years of “dangerously” increasing speeds, safety concerns, foot-thick rulebooks, and cost-capping has left modern racing full of nearly identical “spec” cars, from Indy to the 24 Hours of Daytona and everywhere in between. Most top-class prototypes at Le Mans resemble each other, and more so than at any other time in history. F1 is so tightly regulated, the cars are no longer as exciting to watch as they once were—differences between cars mostly come in hyper-secretive aerodynamic tweaks, work that can’t be seen from the stands. Tight rules have driven innovation to the crevices, where it’s rarely seen and even more rarely appreciated.

The GT-R is not quite as crazy as the Chaparral 2J Can-Am, which came with a 45-hp snowblower engine that powered fans on the back, to keep the car glued to the ground

The worst part of all this isn’t that the racing is boring to watch. All else being equal, a pack of nearly identical race cars will produce tight competition, and tight competition is usually entertaining. But audiences for motorsport are shrinking and graying. The cars are only appealing to a minority, and very few of them offer what pundits call the WTF Factor—that quality that prompts an uninvolved bystander to say, “I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s so awesome, I have to have more.” Much of what’s out there is not new or different, merely an evolution on a decades-old theme.

Bowlby’s Nissan is great because of what it represents. It’s not what everyone else is chasing. It looks weird because it is weird. Maybe it fails, maybe it doesn’t, but it’ll be remembered, and it will have answered a question and made people happy. Which, all things considered, may be all that really matters.

The emotional gut punch that defies logic. The noise, the sound, the feeling on display. The deeply human pull of something you love but can’t explain why. The dream of the ridiculous.

All that goes to Le Mans this summer. I can’t wait.

[MIKA27]

Purple UFO Witnessed by TV Crew Filming Politician in Peru

Politicians in Peru are just like those in the U.S. – it takes something spectacular to get them to stop talking to a camera. That’s exactly what happened this week in Lima, Peru, when a TV crew doing an interview with a politician was interrupted by the sight of a purple UFO hovering over a construction site.

Lima Congressman Renzo Reggiardo was taping his program “Alto al crimen” (High Crime) at 10:30 am on February 10 in the Miraflores District of Lima when one of his camera operators noticed something in the sky behind him. They saw what appeared to be a purple disc spinning in place about 200-to-300 meters (650-to-980 feet) over a building currently under construction. Congressman Reggiardo stopped the interview (really!) and allowed his crew to continue filing the UFO.

Many witnesses observing the purple UFO over Lima, Peru

The crew caught the attention of many people who came out to observe the UFO and offer suggestions on what it might be. Miraflores is near the beach but the object doesn’t appear to be a paraglider. The object was too large to be a drone and didn’t look like a balloon or bag. Witnesses said the object remained over the construction for two hours before leaving.

http://youtu.be/Wpxv5y_BG9E

So what was this purple UFO? Since multiple videos were taken, CGI or dust on the lens is out. Eduardo Chávez Guerra, a member of the “Alto al crimen” crew, said the video he put on YouTube was 1080p HD video. Since he’s a professional with a TV camera, one would think the quality would have been better.

A close-up of the UFO

Then there’s Congressman Reggiardo. Although he certainly wanted the camera back on him, he allowed his crew to film the UFO. If he believed it was a UFO, why didn’t he call the military or air force to investigate? Did he know what the object really was? Was he under orders not to confirm it or cause alarm? Did it have to do with what was under construction or what the UFO might be observing?

Congressman Reggiardo, it’s a “high crime” that we can’t find out more about this UFO.

[MIKA27]

BAE AIRCRAFT EXHAUST LAMP

Are you looking to make a bigger statement with your lighting than say, a $19 purchase from Target? I think a 6-foot-plus tall lamp with a shade made from aircraft parts is a damn fine place to start.

Drawing on the style of the A.E Cremer Parisian lights of the 1950s, the Exhaust Lamp from Fallen Furniture promises to tower over just about everything in your home, both literally and aesthetically. The stainless steel exhaust cone comes from a BAE 146 before undergoing an intricate mix of sanding, polishing and heating to get that dreamy mix of blues, golds, and purples. The polished stainless steel stand has been designed and manufactured from the ground up, and the lamp-head features Italian holophane glass. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

THE ORIGINAL GIBSON LES PAUL BLACK BEAUTY IS FOR SALE

There aren’t enough words to describe the importance of this guitar. Without this Gibson Les Paul prototype, dubbed Black Beauty, none of the other Gibson Les Paul guitars would exist.

Designed by Les Paul and produced by Gibson, this guitar is a bonafide piece of music history. Eric Clapton. Bob Marley. Peter Frampton. Pete Townshend. Paul McCartney. Hendrix. Kravitz, Santana, Zappa and Page. It’s been said that none of them would have achieved their fame without Les Paul’s iconic guitar. We’re not quite sure we’d go that far, but there’s no denying the significance of Black Beauty. Estimates say the guitar could sell for over $2,000,000 at auction, which might be a small price to pay for a piece of history if you’re a person with a big pocket book. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

Mammoth Ice Breaker Frees Australian Vessel Trapped In The Frozen Ocean

Despite all our advanced shipbuilding and navigation tech, sailing through Arctic or Antarctic waters can still treacherous — as an Australian fishing boat discovered after it got stuck in in the ice this week. Today, the US Coastal Guard’s icebreaker, Polar Star, came to the rescue.

Polar Star has been around since the 1970s, and it is a tank. With a 5cm-thick steel hull and incredibly powerful engines, it’s still doing what it was built to do four decades ago: Cutting through thick ice to do everything from saving stranded vessels to delivering supplies to McMurdo Station by clearing a path to the station — as seen in the AP photo above from late January.

This week, Polar Star was assigned a different task: Rescuing the Antarctic Chieftain seen above, a vessel with a crew of 26 that was stranded in the ice with badly damaged propellers. According to the LA Times, Polar Star reached the trapped boat today — and is now towing it out of the ice floes to safety.

Check out a few of the AP’s photos of the rescue below — this is the stranded boat, shot from the deck of Polar Star.

[MIKA27]

The US Just Approved Its First GMO Apple, Which Doesn't Turn Brown

For years, a small Canadian company, Okanagan Specialty Fruits, has been touting its Arctic apple, which doesn’t turn an unsightly brown after being sliced. The US Department of Agriculture finally approved it for planting this week.

The Arctic apple uses a technique called RNA interference (RNAi) to block the enzyme that normally causes browning. The USDA deemed that the apple carries no risk for other plants. And the company is now undergoing voluntary testing with the FDA to prove its apple is safe to eat. It will still be a few years before its apple trees grown up to bear fruit.

In the meantime, the controversy over a new GMO apple is already brewing. GMO corn and soybeans are pervasive in the US food supply, but the Arctic apple will be one of the first GMO plants marketed directly to consumers. A similarly modified potato, which has fewer potential toxins when fried, was approved last year — only to have big companies like Frito-Lays and McDonald’s immediately disavow them.

Getting USDA approval is a big step for Okanagan Specialty Fruits, but will customers actually flock to its apple even if the FDA deems if safe? With GMO such a toxic word, the Arctic apple will have to work hard to avoid the fate of the Flavr Savr tomato, a genetically modified tomato that never took off.

[MIKA27]

'Mars One' Mini Documentary: Why You'd Want To Go On A One-Way Trip To Mars

Mars One is the program that’s planning on sending four humans on a one-way trip to Mars to establish a human colony. Applications are in, a shortlist has been made, and all that’s left to do is um fly to Mars, build a colony, and die a lonely death among the stars. The Guardian has asked a few of the colonist hopefuls why they want to go.

In this ten-minute documentary, cheerfully titled ‘If I die on Mars’, Guardian Docs is looking to tackle some of the less scientific questions. For example, whether they will be sad to abandon their friends and family on Earth, how they will live without sex, and — perhaps most pertinently — whether everyone who applied for this suicide mission is, by definition, crazy.

[MIKA27]

Watch How A Vicious Barracuda Eats Half Of These Fishermen Catch

A few days ago, these guys were fishing in Alfonse Island, Seychelles, when a giant trevally bit the lure. As soon as they started to reel the fish in, a vicious barracuda appeared and ate half of it leaving the fishermen in shock.

Sharks might be the first thing that comes to mind when we think about ferocious sea creatures, but barracudas are pretty dangerous too.

[MIKA27]

How to Survive Winter in Antarctica

The final flight out of the South Pole was Friday, February 13—the last chance to leave until mid-November. Those 40 or so people staying the winter will have no way out of Antarctica for around nine months. They won’t even be able to venture more than a mile or two off the base, because all the facilities are in a condensed area, and there's no point in sightseeing during the four months of darkness and two more of twilight.

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is the southern-most of the three U.S. research stations down in Earth’s basement. It is located about a hundred meters from the pole itself. It houses around 150 people during the summer and 50 during the winter. The other stations are McMurdo Station, located on Ross Island, and Palmer Station, on Anvers Island. McMurdo is the most populous of the bunch, with 800 to 900 people residing there in the summer and nearly 150 during the winter. Winter on Antarctica’s Ross Island is slightly shorter than at the South Pole. This winter, planes will fly intermittently out of McMurdo, where winter begins on February 28, and the station’s summer crowd arrives on October 1.

The U.S. Antarctic Program doesn't fly over Antarctica during the winter, even between bases, because temperatures get below -50 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which gasoline freezes. In the depths of winter, around the beginning of July, temperatures can drop below -100 degrees Farenheit. Compounding the cold is the altitude—the South Pole station is nearly 10,000 feet above sea level. In such conditions, even breathing can be painful. Many who attempt to join the 300 Club—a group that endures a 300-degree temperature change by heating themselves in a 200-degree sauna and then streaking naked to the pole and back in sub-negative-100-degree weather—will often wear a scarf, if nothing else.

One of the most disorienting parts of living at the pole is that the sun neither rises nor sets. If a full day is the time between two sunrises, a full day in the South Pole lasts approximately 8,760 hours (24 hours multiplied by 365). This is because, at the pole, the sun rises just once a year and sets many months later. During the summer there are 24 hours of sunlight, and, during the winter, 24 hours of darkness.

There are significant health concerns that result from extended periods without sunlight. The most notable health effect is depression. Those with seasonal affective disorder might be particularly vulnerable. As a result, according to Peter West, who manages Antarctica-related media for the National Science Foundation, there is an intensive screening process for prospective workers. The tests for physical and mental fitness are much like those given to astronauts. The best way to avoid emergencies, West says, is to reduce risk.

This screening is generally successful. Bill Coughran, an area manager who spent several winters in the South Pole and is there right now, says, “We are naturally very safety-conscious. The most common accident would be back strain or the odd slip.” Polly Penhale, who is in charge of health and safety for the U.S. stations in the Antarctic, echoes, “The most common accidents are minor ones. Strains, muscle pulls, getting cut in the kitchen. Summer and winter aren’t all that different.”

When an emergency does happen, there are a few nurses and general physicians at the base. However, there aren’t any specialists. For psychological treatment and physical ailments requiring specialized help, the Antarctic bases have a partnership with the University of Texas Medical School. “There’s a rigorous telemedical program,” Penhale explains.

Still, no matter how mentally fit the person, lack of sunlight causes a deficiency in Vitamin D. Without enough sunlight—the amount needed depends on the color of a person's skin, and how much is exposed—it’s common to become sick and depressed. When asked whether stations typically have a sunroom for those who stay the winter, West replied, “Individuals may have their own lamps. But there is no program-wide room with Vitamin D lamps.”

The people I spoke with didn’t seem overly concerned about any instances of depression that might result from Vitamin D deficiency. Katy Jensen, a risk and opportunity manager who has wintered at the South Pole, says, “I think each of us experienced occasional periods of homesickness or feeling blue, but we tried to recognize that it was normal, and temporary, and we were surrounded by good friends who could help each other get through it.” Coughran takes a more come-as-it-may stance, “Naturally months of isolation have their ups and downs.”

Peter Rejcek, who wintered as a “carpenter helper” in 2004 and is now an editor for The Antarctic Sun, contends that winters are not as lonely as they might seem. “You’re living and working in pretty close quarters, so the problem is more about finding personal space than being lonely. You’re working long hours, so by the end of the winter, you’re pretty exhausted, even if your job isn’t that physical.”

Most people who stay the winter do it to keep the bases operating. A year-round maintenance staff ensures that drainage, electricity, and other essential operations continue to run smoothly. Rejcek says, “There is a core group of positions that need to be filled each year, such as power plant mechanic or cook. My winter involved major construction of the new research station, so there was a large construction crew on site. Major upgrades, installations, and maintenance for experiments are scheduled for the summer.” Most of the scientists leave, Rejcek says, but each experiment, such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, has a winter-overseer to troubleshoot any problems, and a few research assistants stay to maintain autonomous experiments.

Winterers often work six days a week of double-digit hours. But for their downtime, the base has a gym, crafts room, library, and hydroponic greenhouse. “People are always volunteering to teach different classes, like yoga, dance, or even a foreign language,” Rejcek says. “There’s usually a band or two that will form and play shows during the winter.” He denied the existence of a bar, but other reports indicate that the South Pole used to have a drinking spot called Club 90 South.

Jensen found an even better way to pass the hours. “After sunset in March, there’s about a month of gradually darkening twilight, so every day you can walk outside and see more stars than you saw the day before. The moon is up above the horizon for two weeks at a time, so you swear you can watch it change phases. And the auroras!”

[MIKA27]

Time Travel IS Possible, This Physicist Just Demonstrated It

For many the concept of time travel is nothing more than domain of science fiction writers and Hollywood movie magic, but what if you could experience the phenomenon for yourself, would that make you a believer in the seemingly impossible?

Brian Cox, a highly respected British physicist and BBC Science presenter (he’s also a Professor of Particle Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester) recently demonstrated the time travel IS in fact possible and not solely confined to the world of mere fiction and film.

You wouldn't even need a machine like this either.

Providing certain conditions are met and that you agree on the concept and principles associated with the speed of light, you too could become a time traveller.

Now wouldn't that be something?

In just 4 minutes, his illuminating and insightful talk might just change everything you thought you knew about time itself.

[MIKA27]

OIL & INK

Oil & Ink is a travelling pop-up gallery dedicated to motorcycle related art, each print is limited in both production volume and price, with $100 being the maximum charged for any one work.

This year Oil & Ink will be travelling around the United States and across to France for the Cafe Racer Festival in June, if you’d like to see tour dates and learn more about the artists you can click here.

[MIKA27]

BARN FIND: MESSERSCHMITT BF 109

It isn’t everyday we stumble across a barn find quite as remarkable as this Messerschmitt BF 109, or more accurately, this Hispano Aviación HA-1112. It isn’t commonly known that the Spaniards built licensed copies of the Messerschmitt from 1942 onwards, although they weren’t produced in any significant numbers till after the war due to constraints on the supply side.

An agreement was reached between Messerschmitt AG and the Spanish Government to supply the Spanish armed forces, the airframes were built from German designs in Spain while the DB605A engines, propellers, instruments, and weapons were supplied from Messerschmitt.

It wasn’t till the late 1940s that a notable number of Hispano Aviación HA-1112s were airborne, but the aircraft remained in production through till 1954 and remained in service with the Spanish until 1965 – largely for use in the African colonies.

Interestingly, almost all of the HA-1112s that were made were fitted with Rolls-Royce Merlin V12s. There were a huge number of them available as military surplus in the post-war years so Spain bought hundreds of them and figured out a way to retrofit them to the BF 109 airframe – this wasn’t as straightforward as you might imagine due to the fact that the aircraft was designed to operate with the Daimler-Benz DB 605 inverted V12.

By the end of production in 1954 Spain had built 239 Hispano Aviación HA-1112s, many of them stayed airworthy for over a decade past their initial production and as a result they were used as faux-Messerschmitts in films like Battle of Britain, Der Stern von Afrika, Memphis Belle, and The Tuskegee Airmen.

The barn find Hispano Aviación HA-1112s you see here were all used in the filming of Battle of Britain before finding their way into a warehouse and being largely forgotten about. They were recently purchased by a wealthy enthusiast which led to a spike in interest. As a result of this, the new owner has decided to sell one of the complete airframes with its matching Merlin V12 – although this may be a restoration far beyond the capabilities of most, it would be fantastic to see at least one of these planes take to the air once again.

Click here to buy yourself a plane or to learn more.