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

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WOVE BAND

Most smart watches thus far have tried to mimic the design of traditional timepieces. The Wove Band says to hell with all that, instead using Polyera Digital Fabric Technology and E Ink film to wrap an always-on screen all the way around your arm. The custom Android-based OS enables app-like compositions that take advantage of the form factor, the multi-touch surface allows for complex interactions, the 9 axis sensor keeps track of your motion, and the ambient display mode lets it remain useful even when you're not wearing it.

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LAMPEMM ARMCHAIR

Inspired by a Serbian WWII monument, the bold, angular design of the Lampemm Armchair is sure to become a highlight of any room it's placed in. It's made using two cross-paired pieces of solid walnut, with a padded, upholstered seat and backrest and no unnecessary adornments.

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SOLU CLOUD COMPUTER

Cloud connected, yet able to work offline. Portable, yet completely comfortable working with a monitor and keyboard. The Solu Cloud Computer is a new device that aims to provide a novel computing experience. Its unique interface is designed around collaboration, and uses projects instead of folders for organization. The touchscreen lets you use it on-the-go, the wooden case gives it a touch of natural warmth, and the subscription model means you'll never have to buy an app again — you just pay a small monthly fee and get access to every possible app and service, as well as unlimited online storage.

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PARIS CATACOMBS

Millions of people sleep underneath the streets of Paris each night. They're all dead. No money is required for this Halloween night's stay in the Paris Catacombs, but you do need to be alive. This unique accommodation will be offered for a single night only, to the person (and their mate/spouse/death-obsessed partner) who best explains to the host why they're brave enough to sleep under the dirt. It's not for the faint-hearted, either, with the exposed skulls and bones of those long since deceased placed just inches from your bed, serving as a grisly reminder of your own mortality.

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Secrets Are Revealed and Worlds Collide in the Final Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer

The third and final trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is here. Now, before you watch, take a deep breath, make sure everything is quiet, and get ready, because it’s fantastic.

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Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Chemistry Lab Found Hidden Behind Wall

Conservationists working at the University of Virginia’s Rotunda have inadvertently uncovered a chemical hearth designed by Thomas Jefferson. The discovery is offering fresh insights into how chemistry was taught over 200 years ago.

The iconic Rotunda, constructed in 1826, is located on The Lawn of the original grounds of the University of Virginia and is currently undergoing renovations. Inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, Thomas Jefferson designed it to symbolize the “authority of nature and power of reason” and the separation of church and education.

Back in 1895, a fire destroyed much of the building’s interior. But during the 1850s, the chemical hearth—part of an early chemistry classroom—was sealed in one of the lower-floor walls of the Rotunda, which protected it from the fire. Recently, while preparing for the current renovations, workers examining the cavities in the walls unexpectedly discovered the lost chemistry hearth.

Back in Jefferson’s day, chemistry was taught on the Rotunda’s bottom floor. His collaborator, professor of natural history John Emmet, taught the classes. UVA Today explains how it worked:

The chemical hearth was built as a semi-circular niche in the north end of the Lower East Oval Room. Two fireboxes provided heat (one burning wood for fuel, the other burning coal), underground brick tunnels fed fresh air to fireboxes and workstations, and flues carried away the fumes and smoke. Students worked at five workstations cut into stone countertops.

Brian Hogg, senior historic preservation planner in the Office of the Architect for the University, said the chemical hearth may have been for Emmet’s use; the students may have had portable hearths with which they conducted experiments.

“Back then, the different experiments would get different levels of heat from different sources,” said Jody Lahendro, a supervisory historic preservation architect for U.Va.’s

Facilities Management. “For some, they would put the heat source under a layer of sand to more evenly disperse and temper the heat.”

According to Hogg, this may be the oldest intact example of early chemical education in the United States.

The University of Virginia will put the chemical hearth on display once renovations are complete.

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The First Ever Samples From the Global Seed Vault Have Been Retrieved

Deep in the arctic, inside over 400 feet of rock, a huge cache of seeds is stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in case of some global emergency. Today, the first of the seeds from that supply have arrived to replenish a collection sent away for safe keeping during Syria’s Civil War.

The plan was set in motion back in September, but the first samplesactually arrived just today to research labs for the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Area (ICARDA) in Morocco and Lebannon—and though they may be the first, they’re far from the last.

What’s especially interesting about this shipment though, is the path these seeds took: Originally part of ICARDA’s regional collection, they first shipped them off to Svalbard over concerns that spreading conflict in Syria could take out their supply. Now, the seeds have been shipped back to ICARDA (which is now relocated in Lebanon and Morocco). They plan to make duplicates of the original seeds, before sending back another set of fail-safe boxes to Svalbard, in case of some other disaster. Essentially, Svalbard isn’t acting as just a seed vault for a global-scale disaster, it’s also acting as a seed vault to guard against a series of rolling disasters, including human made-ones, that hit in localized ways.

Svalbard has long-billed itself primarily as a “fail-safe” option—and many people have understood that to mean that the seed vault is there in case of some worldwide doomsday scenario. But as this first shipment shows, it is not just disasters on a global scale that can wipe out our food supply, a series of regional disasters will do the job just as well. That the first withdraw from the global seed bank was in response to the need for safe-keeping incredible volatility in a region tells us a lot about the kinds of problems we can expect in keeping a future food supply.

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Unexpected Asteroid to Zip Past Earth On Halloween

We can expect a totally different kind of trick-or-treater this coming Halloween. A rather large asteroid—discovered less than three weeks ago—is set to to fly past the Earth at a distance not seen in nearly a decade.

The asteroid, dubbed 2015 TB145, was discovered on October 10 by astronomers using the Pan-STARRS telescope. The object measures about 280 to 620 meters (920 to 2,034 feet) in diameter, so it’s pretty big—about the size of a skyscraper. Or two. Not only that, it’s moving at a velocity of 35 km/s (78,830 mph or 12,600 km/h), which NASA describes as “unusually high.”

When 2015 TB145 makes its closest approach on October 31, it will zoom past the Earth at a scant 0.0032 AU, or 1.3 lunar distances. That’s about 479,000 km or 297,000 miles. This will be the closest object to flyby Earth since 2006 when NEO 2004 XP14 flew past at 1.1 lunar distances. After the Halloween flyby, no object will come as close again until August 2027 when NEO 1999 AN10 will approach within 1.0 lunar distance.

NASA says that 2015 TB145 will safely pass by the Earth and continue to following along its exceptionally eccentric and high-inclination orbit—which may explain why it wasn’t discovered until only a few weeks ago.

During the flyby, the asteroid will reach a magnitude luminosity of 10, so it should be observable to astronomers with telescopes. It’ll be seen best in the Northern Hemisphere, but the moon will be a relatively bright 80% waning gibbous at the time. Bad news for astronomers, but good news for the trick-or-treaters.

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A Wooden Macintosh Replica Proves The Original Deserved A Flashy Gold Keyboard

For years Love Hultén has been making gamers jealous of his woodworking and electronics skills with hand-crafted arcade cabinets, portable consoles, and handheld gaming units. But now he’ll be the envy of Mac fans too with a new replica of the original Macintosh he calls the Golden Apple.

It’s understandable why Apple chose to make the original Macintosh with a plastic housing instead of warm walnut wood; it was far cheaper to mass produce. But Hultén makes a strong case for skipping plastic altogether on his hand-crafted replica.

Even the Golden Apple’s custom keyboard is made from walnut, with gold-plated zinc keys backed by blue cherry MX tactile switches so it feels as good to type on as it does to look at. Given how many people have snatched up gold iPhones and MacBooks over the years, there’s no doubt a gold keyboard would be a big seller these days.

You won’t find the guts from an original Macintosh 128K inside the Golden Apple, though. Instead of cannibalising one of the original machines which aren’t so easy to come by these days, Hultén instead packed his recreation with a Mac Mini inside, and an optical DVD drive where the original only accepted floppy disks.

So where can you order one for your own private collection? Unfortunately, you can’t. Like many of Hultén’s creations, this is a one-off meant for his own personal use. All you can do is lust at it through your browser (although technically nothing is stopping you from building your own).

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TESLA AUTOPILOT MODE

We knew it was only a matter of time before other car manufacturers began using autopilot mode like the Google Car. Tesla is the latest company to apply the technology to their vehicles, as the Tesla Model S’s latest update adds “Autopilot Mode” into the mix.

The software update, properly named Tesla Version 7.0, engages the Model S’s advanced hardware that includes an ultrasonic sensors, a forward radar, forward-looking camera, and a digitally-operated electric assist braking system. With Autopilot, the car can steer inside a line, change lanes with just a touch of the turn signal, and control speed with its traffic-aware cruise control. It uses technology that will help it to actively avoid collisions to the front and sides of the car. The car is so advanced, that it’s able to find its own open parking spaces and parallel park into whatever space it finds.

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What Are The Odds Of An Alien Megastructure Blocking Light From A Distant Star?

A strange star located 1500 light-years from Earth is exhibiting strange flickering behaviour that’s leading some scientists to speculate that an alien megastructure is blocking the light. But what would such a structure be exactly and how likely is it that the Kepler space telescope has actually spotted one?

Right now the star KIC 8462852 is really hot — and not just because it is a F-type star — but because theKepler space telescope has discovered that it flickers in a highly unusual way, as if something is obscuring it. These dips in the light are different to what you would expect from planets blocking the star.

Scientists are failing to come up with an explanation for the phenomenon based on natural astrophysical processes, so attention has turned to the potential of an alien megastructure blocking the light. But what would such a structure be exactly and how likely is it that Kepler has spotted one?

Many Possibilities

It is true that dips in the light from the star are odd, both in shape and timing. They are unlikely to be caused by a surrounding cloud of dust, as the star is too old to have such a planet-forming disk. But what about a storm of comets? They are actually not very good at obscuring stars, so it is not all that likely either. Fragments from a planetary collision might work, except that such events are so rare that we would not expect to see any with Kepler.

The lack of a simple explanation has made a lot of people quietly (or not so quietly) ask whether this could be an alien megastructure, known as a Dyson sphere.

The Dyson sphere was first described by Freeman Dyson in the 1960s, who argued that a technologically advanced alien civilisation would use more and more energy as it grew. As the biggest source of energy in any solar system is the star at its centre, it would make sense that the civilisation would build orbiting solar panels to try to capture it. Such structures would take up more and more space until they eventually covered the entire star like a sphere. However, a complete sphere would be invisible to Kepler as it would absorb all of the light from the star, so signs of this would have to come from something currently under construction.

Could this be the case? I doubt it. My basic argument is this: if a civilisation builds a Dyson sphere, the sphere is unlikely to remain small for a long period of time. Just as planetary collisions are so rare that we should not expect to see any with Kepler, the time it takes to make a Dyson sphere is also very short: seeing it during construction is very unlikely. Even if we knew a Dyson sphere would eventually be built in a solar system the chance of actually witnessing it happening is low.

How do we know this? To build a Dyson sphere, one would need to disassemble a nearby body, like a planet, to provide the material for the solar captors. In a recent paper written with a colleague, we calculated that disassembling Mercury to make a partial Dyson shell could be done in 31 years. One way of doing this would be to mechanically disassemble the planet, much like we do in our aluminium and steel industries. From these industries, we know a lot already about the energy cost of such work, so the trick is to use already mined material to build more mining equipment and solar collectors to power it, achieving an exponential feedback loop.

The time it would take to disassemble any terrestrial planets is not much longer than for Mercury, while the gas giants would take a few centuries. Our aim in the paper was to show that using a small fraction of the resources in the solar system it is possible to harness enough energy to launch a massive space colonisation effort (literally reaching every reachable galaxy, eventually each solar system), but the important point is that this kind of planetary engineering is fast on astronomical timescales.

Image showing the region Kepler can see, where the mysterious star is located.

Over the history of an F5 star like KIC 8462852, even 1000 years to build a sphere is not much. Given the estimated mass of the star as 1.46 solar masses, it will have a lifespan of 4.1 billion years. The chance of seeing it while being englobed by a Dyson sphere is one in 4.1m.

This is the probability assuming there will eventually be a sphere. Presumably only a few stars would have aliens and will be hidden this way, so the actual probability of seeing one in the process is much lower. Of the 150,000 stars Kepler watches we should not expect any of them to be in this state.

Junk Planet or Laid-back Aliens

Another possibility is that the structure is an abandoned, unmaintained Dyson shell. Such a structure would likely start gravitationally clumping together into streams of wreckage, which makes this sound like a promising explanation — at first. But the timescale of coalescing into a junk planet is likely faster than natural planetary formation timescales (100,000 to a few million years) since the fragments involved would be in nearly identical orbits from the start. So the probability that we are looking at Dyson remains is still low.

But it is indeed several orders of magnitude more likely for us to see the decay of the shell than its construction. Like normal ruins, these often hang around far longer than the time it took to build the original structure.

What about if the aliens were building the sphere extremely slowly? This is in a sense what we are doing here on Earth (disassembling it to a tiny extent) by launching satellites one by one. So if an alien civilisation wanted to grow at a leisurely rate or just needed a bit of Dyson shell they could of course do it.

However, if you need something like 30 quintillion Watts (which could correspond to a 100,000km collector at 1 astronomical unit around the star) your demands are not modest. Dyson originally proposed the concept based on the observation that human energy needs were growing exponentially, and this was the logical endpoint. Even at 1% growth rate a civilisation quickly — in a few millennia — need most of the star’s energy.

In order to get a reasonably high probability of seeing an incomplete shell we need to assume growth rates that are exceedingly small. While it is not impossible, it seems rather unlikely given how life and societies tend to grow.

Other Alien Structures?

Dyson shells are not the only megastructures that could cause intriguing transits. Research has suggested that an alien civilisation could, for example, sort asteroid material using light pressure, engineer climate using shades or mirrors, or travel using solar sails. Most of these tools are small compared to stars, but Kepler might notice them if there were enough of them.

Another study has calculated the possibility of detecting stellar engines — gigantic mirror arrays for moving entire solar systems — based on light curves. But unfortunately the calculated curves do not fit KIC 8462852 as far as I can tell.

In the end, we need more data. The stakes are high. If there is no intelligent life in space it means either that we are very lucky — or that intelligent species die out fast. But if there is (or was) another technological civilisation it would be immensely reassuring: we would know intelligent life can survive for at least some sizeable time.

But in truth, I think we will instead learn that the ordinary processes of astrophysics can produce weird transit curves, perhaps due to strange objects (remember when we thought hot Jupiters were exotic?). The universe is full of strange things, which makes me happy I live in it. But it makes sense to watch the star, just in case.

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How Will We Even Know New Lifeforms When We See Them?

“Why would NASA want to study a lake in Canada?”

Three different border guards asked me variations on that question, and while they ultimately let me pass, it was obvious they didn’t understand. Why is NASA interested in a lake in Canada? And what business is it of mine?

As exotic environments go, Pavilion Lake in British Columbia is rather ordinary. Certainly it’s remote — the closest major city is Vancouver, a long drive away over the mountains. The closest towns are light dustings of houses over the dry slopes, and the road winds for dozens of kilometres of empty desert country between them. The lake itself lies along a paved highway, and from the road it doesn’t look different to any other modestly sized mountain lake in western North America.

But below the surface, the bottom of Pavilion Lake is dotted with something resembling coral reefs: domes and cones and weird shapes much like artichokes. These are not corals, though, which are colonies of tiny animals: they are rock formations called microbialites, made by and coated in cyanobacteria. Sometimes misleadingly referred to as ‘blue-green algae’, these bacteria probably even made the rocks they live on, absorbing nutrients from the water and leaving stone behind. Like plants, they live on sunlight, and they thrive in shallow waters down the steep underwater slope to the point where sunlight fades to gloom.

They are the reason for NASA’s interest, and my visit. The people I’ve come here to see have even bigger things in mind. They want to know what the rare formations in Pavilion Lake might tell us about the origins of life on Earth, life on other worlds and, indeed, what life is, exactly.

Erwin Schrödinger was a clever guy. You may know him for the famous ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ thought experiment, the feline in a box that is neither dead nor alive until you look inside. However, one of his most interesting works is a slim book from 1944, based on a set of lectures Schrödinger gave in Dublin. It poses a single question: What is life?

The book is significant for predicting some important properties of DNA before they were discovered. Nearly a decade before the famous double-helix structure of DNA was uncovered, Schrödinger correctly recognised the key to how organisms evolve and pass information between generations as an ‘aperiodic crystal’: a chain of atoms that never precisely repeats itself. Even though each link in the chain contains the same atoms (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and phosphorus), their combination allows an enormous amount of information to be encoded.

Schrödinger’s simile was Morse code, which reproduces an entire language with only two ‘letters’. Today we know the DNA code has four letters (A, C, G and T), which by arranging and pairing can encode everything an organism needs to build proteins, run its metabolism, and live. This seems to be a significant distinction between life and non-life: the ability to pass information beyond simple reproduction.

Ordinary crystals reproduce themselves, but they only pass along the repetitious pattern of where the atoms go. They can’t evolve. Or, in the words of Schrödinger, it’s like the difference between “an ordinary wallpaper in which the same pattern is repeated again and again in regular periodicity and a masterpiece of embroidery, say a Raphael tapestry, which shows no dull repetition, but an elaborate, coherent, meaningful design traced by the great master.

The pontoon boat is loaded nearly to tipping point with people operating and monitoring submersible remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). These little robotic submarines are equipped with high-resolution cameras, and they’re scoping out the part of the lake where human divers will go later in the week. They also carry sensors to measure water temperature, pH, GPS position, depth and current. To achieve the perfect level of buoyancy, the ROVs are rigged with a weird mix of high-tech and low-tech equipment: state-of-the-art motors, and flotation devices made of Wiffle balls and bright orange swimming pool noodles attached with plastic cable ties. One submersible is snooping around on the lake bottom, taking high-resolution images of microbialites; the other’s job is to keep an eye on the first one and track general water conditions.

I’m watching all this from the NASA ‘Mission Control’ trailer on shore, via a video feed from the ROVs. It’s an alien landscape: irregular green-grey mounds the size of tables, some in clusters, some alone, stretching farther than the camera can see into the submarine gloom. Looking at this lake bottom footage, I wonder how much this resembles early Earth. Based on fossil microbialites, ancient relatives of today’s cyanobacteria were probably some of the earliest life on Earth. The oxygen in our atmosphere was probably made by cyanobacteria billions of years ago, which converted the carbon dioxide-heavy atmosphere of early Earth into today’s balance of nitrogen and oxygen long before plants evolved. Modern cyanobacteria are more likely to make slimy mat-like colonies that cover the bottoms of remote lakes than the elaborate, rocky microbialites we see at Pavilion, so it’s probable that was the case 3.5 billion years ago too.

Weird as they look, the microbialites might be the only remotely familiar-looking thing to a time traveller who went back to the earliest days of our planet. Because life didn’t just make the air we breathe: to go anywhere, to observe anything on Earth, is to see an environment created by life. The chemistry of rocks, the oceans, the soil — everything has been shaped by life. And scientists have found organisms — mostly bacteria and archaeons, single-celled organisms that thrive in extreme environments — in every place, from rock fissures deep underground to clouds high in the atmosphere. In each environment, the organisms have adapted to their surroundings and shaped those surroundings to suit themselves in turn.

Traces of that mutual shaping are known as biosignatures, and they are one of Pavilion’s major draws for Allyson Brady. A geochemist at McMaster University, Brady is looking for ways to distinguish abiotic processes — those happening without life’s influence — and unambiguous biosignatures. “Once the bacteria are long dead,” she says, “the rock itself might still retain the kind of chemical signature that can say ‘this was created by a biological influence’, as opposed to a purely abiotic chemical one. We do see that in Pavilion.”

Biosignatures could be the key to telling us whether a similar stone reef we find on Mars is a fossil microbialite — a sign of ancient life that once existed — or a cruel mimic. The relative amounts of different isotopes or the presence of unusual molecules in the rock could reveal the chemical traces produced by the metabolism of microbes long gone.

Obviously, the better situation would be to see living microbes (assuming they exist), but that’s trickier than science fiction makes it sound. Any sample of microorganisms collected by a rover, probe or astronaut would have to survive exposure to the equipment, and then be recognisable as living things under a microscope. That’s a time-consuming process and would require some preliminary chemical hint that there’s something worth looking for at the microscopic level. In the absence of Star Trek tricorders to do automatic scanning, researchers look for biosignatures in the soil on Mars, on the ice of Jupiter’s satellite Europa and in the plumes of water shooting up from the ice volcanoes on Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn.

On the banks of Pavilion, I am perpetually buzzed by iridescent blue dragonflies, while a loon paddles by. After two days of ROV-only operations, human divers are now on the scene. To accommodate them, the team is taking an extra boat out to the dive site. This time I’m out on the water with them, although my primary task is to stay out of the way. In fact, my view was better back in the trailer: I am limited to watching the scientists watch the monitors and steer the ROVs, unable to witness what the divers are actually doing.

The hardest part of finding life elsewhere in the cosmos may be recognising it when we see it. Most life on Earth is microbial, and though we often associate bacteria with disease, most species care not for humans one way or the other. A huge number of species thrive in places that would kill us, and vice versa: deep water, acid caves, bitter cold or boiling hot. Yet there is still kinship between these organisms and us, though evolution and adaptation have separated us.

Because of that kinship, all life on Earth is built from cells; it all uses liquid water as part of its essential structure; it is all built of similar molecules containing carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and a few other common elements; and it all uses DNA and RNA to code information about itself and pass that information along to future generations. Yet we must ask: does life have to be that way? If we replayed the history of our solar system, would life use the same chemistry, make cells and shape its environment in the same way?

Life is organic, which simply means ‘molecules containing carbon’. Organic molecules are pretty common in our galaxy. Astronomers have found hints of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in comets, and nucleobases (the genetic ‘letters’ of DNA and RNA) in clouds of gas between stars.

But although water may be necessary for life, it’s so abundant on other worlds and in interstellar space as to be unremarkable. We’ve yet to find any sign of anything out there that could be construed as ‘life’.

Paradoxical as it may sound, there might be inorganic life, too: ‘organic’ doesn’t mean ‘living’. The silicon-based life that inhabits the popular sci-fi universes of Star Trek and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is the result of that kind of thinking. Silicon sits in the same column on the periodic table as carbon, so it is chemically similar. Ultimately the bonds it makes aren’t quite right, so we don’t see it forming the same kinds of molecules. Carbon seems uniquely able, among all the elements on the periodic table, to form structures with other atoms that are complicated enough for life.

DNA is certainly complex, which leads many researchers to wonder how it came to be in the first place. One common hypothesis is that RNA — which exists as a single chain, unlike DNA’s double chain — came first, but even RNA is complex. “Maybe life didn’t start with RNA, but started with something a little bit simpler,” says John Chaput of Arizona State University. “Whatever that simpler material was, it helped produce RNA.”

The ‘D’ in DNA and the ‘R’ in RNA represent the sugars deoxyribose and ribose, respectively. Deoxyribose and ribose are the ladder struts on which the genetic letters are rungs, but they aren’t the only possible sugars for the job. Artificial genetic molecules called ‘XNA’ can be built from other sugars: X could be any one of a number of other possibilities.

Chaput is most interested in the sugar known as ‘threose’, because the resulting molecule TNA ‘recognises’ RNA and links up with it, just as DNA links up with RNA. TNA is simpler than RNA and DNA, both in chemical structure and in how easy it is to make. Chaput and like-minded researchers wonder if TNA came first on early Earth: “Because TNA was simpler to synthesise, it arose early but was quickly taken over by RNA.”

XNAs are only one possible alternative route for life. Carbon makes many more molecules than are used by life as we know it. Proteins don’t use all the types of amino acids; DNA and RNA don’t use all the nucleobase ‘letters’ that are chemically possible. It’s possible life forms elsewhere could have the same basic organic chemistry and even have genetic codes similar to ours, but use different molecules in constructing their cells.

The weather is sunny and pleasantly warm, but Tyler Mackey and Frances Rivera-Hernandez are dressed for colder temperatures. They are in drysuits, preparing to dive into the cold waters of the lake to make sure all the equipment works before it is needed for scientific sampling later in the week.

Mackey’s focus is how microbes shape and are shaped by their environments, and how those interactions might show up in the fossil record on Earth. Much of his thesis work is based on ice-capped lakes in Antarctica. Rivera-Hernandez works for the Mars Science Laboratory team, which operates the Curiosity Rover currently exploring the surface of Mars. She is interested in seeing whether lakes on Earth might share geological attributes with now-dry lakes on Mars, which in the distant past may have been ice-covered pools.

There’s a lot of talk about Mars at Pavilion. The divers aren’t just collecting scientific data on the microbialites: they’re testing out software and protocols for doing similar things on the surface of the Red Planet. The divers are acting in the stead of astronauts walking on Mars; the boat they dive from is their ‘command centre’ (like one that may someday reside on Mars’ moon Phobos), and the big NASA trailer on the shore serves as ‘Mission Control’.

To make the simulation even more real, the software they use to communicate builds in a five-minute delay each way between Mission Control and the boat to mimic the travel time of signals across the 55 million kilometres from Mars to Earth at their closest approach. With that delay, the divers can’t get instructions directly from ‘Earth’, which means most actions they take must be carefully planned in advance. (By contrast, the Apollo astronauts had a less substantial communication delay of roughly one second each way.)

Future astronauts on Mars are unlikely to find anything so clearly living as the bacteria in Pavilion, but there might be the remains of dead microbialites. Palaeontologists have discovered fossils of the layered microbialites known as stromatolites in Australia, Greenland, Antarctica and beyond. Some from western Australia date back 3.5 billion years, not long after the molten Earth first solidified. If Earth-like microbes arose on Mars during a similar time period, but died out (or moved underground) when the planet dried up, there might be similar fossils.

Presently, surface water on Mars seems to be ephemeral and very salty, but that wasn’t always the case. “If there ever was abundant water [on Mars] — which there is plenty of surface evidence for — it probably would have been frozen over,” says Rivera-Hernandez. That makes cold-water lakes on Earth particularly interesting for someone with an eye on Martian life. Pavilion freezes every winter, and it might even have been covered with a year-round cap of ice during the last Ice Age. Some microbialite structures seem to be old enough to have survived that freezing-over.

In the 71 years since Schrödinger’s book, scientists have come a long way toward understanding how life works, but there is still no clear definition of what life is. Evolution is part of it, as is the related concept of passing genetic information from one generation to the next. Metabolism is part of it, altering the chemical balance of its environment in a way that wouldn’t happen otherwise. But while some things are definitely non-living and others decidedly alive, there’s a shadowy region in between.

That’s the realm of the viruses and the rogue proteins called prions — infamous for causing bovine spongiform encephalopathy (‘mad cow disease’). Viruses have DNA or RNA but must invade cells to reproduce. Prions are notable because they can transmit information and reproduce without DNA by hijacking other proteins, most damagingly inside brain tissue. Viruses and prions are often harmful, but some types of yeast benefit from prions, and mammals use virus DNA to keep mothers from rejecting fetuses in the womb. Neither are alive in a strict sense — they don’t grow or multiply without joining themselves to an organism — yet they can mutate and evolve under the pressure of natural selection.

“Clearly [a virus] has the capability of following Darwinian evolutionary principles, but not without a host cell,” says David Lynn of Emory University. To him, life and non-life lie on a continuum: “There is some transition where we might be able to distinguish something that is evolvable on a chemical level and something that is evolvable at a biological level.” In other words, there’s a blurry division between something that requires an external catalyst — a host cell, brain tissue — to evolve, and something that can evolve and reproduce on its own. At some point, lifeless chemical processes slipped across that division and became recognisably alive.

Lynn thinks a lot about the biochemical information carried in complex molecules, and how to understand evolution in that context. He and his collaborators are investigating whether proteins (which, in a chemical sense, are relatively long chains of organic molecules used in building cells) could store and pass along the same information that the genetic molecules do, without the need for DNA or RNA. But both DNA and proteins are complicated, so the question is whether something else came first in the history of life on Earth that set the stage for both of those complex chemicals.

The small Canadian lake of Pavilion is one place we can learn how to ask such questions. The various researchers at Pavilion, the biochemists working with XNA and the astrobiologists pondering life on other worlds — all of them are trying to understand life’s adaptations using the chemistries and materials in each place.

Bacteria like the ones living in Pavilion Lake today rarely build microbialite structures; although Pavilion is slightly more alkaline than other nearby lakes and has a higher mineral content, there’s no obvious reason for the structures’ existence. “What’s enabling these microbialites to exist in this lake? What is it that’s potentially so special about this lake?” asks Darlene Lim, the principal researcher at Pavilion. “That’s a pretty complicated thing to solve, and it needs a lot of different angles of perspective on it.”

All life on Earth is related, with a common ancestor deep in the geologic past. But perhaps life as we know it once coexisted with other biochemistries. If that’s true, over time our distant ancestors were more successful than organisms based on alternative molecular structures, using and shaping the environment until the other forms of life became extinct. That thought is sobering: the death not of a species, but of an entire avenue that might have grown to dominate the planet if history had taken another path.

These might-have-beens and never-weres aren’t merely the province of speculation. With Mars, with Europa, with thousands of catalogued exoplanets, the range of chemical possibilities could be huge. We cannot afford to assume all life would follow the same path it did on Earth, biologically or chemically.

‘What is life?’ is not a single question and doesn’t have a single answer. Perhaps it doesn’t need one. Wise souls such as Charles Darwin skipped over such philosophical shenanigans.

A tall chimney of rock stands on the mountainside overlooking Pavilion Lake. The Ts’kw’aylaxw First Nation people, whose land includes this whole area, speak of a great dragon living there, watching over the children of the lake. The cyanobacteria are in some sense the offspring of life from the youth of the world. But they are also modern, as all life is: adapted to its environment by the forces of evolution. And although it’s a vague definition, that’s what life is: the shaper, the shaped, the ever-evolving.

[MIKA27]

This Arkham Knight Batmobile Go-Kart Is Worthy Of All Your Envy

Tearing through your town in a full-size replica of the tank-like Batmobile that Batman drives in the Arkham Knight game is sure to get you pulled over in no time. But a smaller go-kart version of that same Batmobile? Your local police might just ask to take it for a spin.

The owner of this Batmobile didn’t build it himself, though. Like Bruce Wayne, someone else did all the hard work for him. But instead of having to foot the bill, Francis actually won a Super Gamer Builds contest where a bunch of talented artists and builders turned a two-seater go-kart into this crime-fighting ride designed to accommodate a single vigilante passenger.

Francis isn’t a crime fighter, though — as far as we can tell. But he might want to find a secret underground cave to park this Batmobile in. Because there are probably plenty of Arkham Knight fans who would love to take this for a spin — with or without his permission.

[MIKA27]

First Fukushima Recovery Worker Diagnosed With Radiation-Linked Cancer

When Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered its meltdown in 2011, over 44,0000 workers helped safely take it offline. Now, more than four years later, comes the first diagnosis of cancer in a recovery worker to be linked to radiation exposure during the work.

The Washington Post reports that on Tuesday Japan’s ministry of health, labour and welfare announced that an unnamed recovery worker had been diagnosed with leukemia. They also admitted that the cancer was related to the work he performed at the plant, and that he has filed a compensation claim.

Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun has reported a few more details. The man is said to be 41 and worked near the No.3 and No.4 reactors at the plant between 2012 and 2013. He was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, which is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow, in 2014.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has extensively documented its attempts to shield workers from as much radiation as possible, and provides monthly reports to the Japanese ministry of health about the exposure its workers suffer. The radiation dose limit at the site is 1.71 mSv per month; as of August,the average worker dose was .31 mSv.

Asahi Shimbun reports that the man diagnosed with cancer was exposed to 16 mSv. It’s worth noting, however, that he wasn’t an employee but a contractor, and reports suggest that contractors have been exposed to higher doses of radiation than employees.

[MIKA27]

Watch A Bat Get Hand Made From Three Planks Of Wood

It’s a lot of fun to watch Darbin Orvar hand make a beautiful bat from maple and walnut planks. Seeing the separate pieces get merged together to form a block and then seeing that block get shaved down to reveal a cylinder and then to see that cylinder get turned and shaped into a bat is a really fascinating process.

[MIKA27]

Own A Piece Of The K-T Layer With These Ceramics Glazed With Deep Sea Mud

Chances are you’ll never plumb the depths of the Mariana Trench or explore the ruins of an ancient shipwreck. But you can hold part of geologic history in your hand with these ceramic pieces glazed with various muds collected from the deep sea, courtesy of The Soft Earth Speaks.

Back in 1996, a sailor with the U.S. Coast Guard offered potter Joan Lederman a bucket of mud from the deep sea floor, figuring she might find it useful for her pottery. As R.R. Helm writes at Deep Sea News:

“Joan stuck some mud in the kiln spyhole, and it melted into a glassy puddle, catching her completely off-guard. In her quest to learn more about the mysterious melting properties of this deep-sea mud, Joan met staff members at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who gave her little samples of sediment from all across the globe. And each one melted into a different pattern on the clay. Some sediments fired soft green, others a crackly brown.”

She’s been using deep-sea muds as ceramic glazes every since. “When I melt Earth’s deposits into ceramic glazes, and observe the outcomes, I am closest to fathoming deep time and vast space,” Lederman writes on her site. “Metamorphosing materials by fire amplifies the nature of the materials and awakens a sense of participation with Earth’s core dynamics.”

There’s pottery glazed with mud from the mid-Atlantic Ridge, as well as from a Phoenician shipwreck, circa 8th century B.C., not to mention a green-glazed bowl with the texture of orange peel, courtesy of mud from the Havre Seamount (an underwater volcano off the coast of New Zealand). If you’re looking for the perfect gift for a dinosaur buff, she’s got items glazed with sediment from the K-T boundary layer— evidence of a possible asteroid strike that some paleontologists believe may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Rarest of all is a small bag of mud harvested from the Mariana Trench — you know, that hydrothermal vent in the Mariana Islands (near Guam) that’s pretty much the deepest place on Earth. It’s so rare that Lederman only uses it for accents, rather than a full glaze.

You can see more of Lederman’s work, and snag a few of these ceramic beauties for yourself, at her online store. But it will cost you: mugs will run you a fairly reasonable $US60-$US70, but the large plates run anywhere from $US250 to $US875, depending on the rarity of the mud used in the glaze.

[MIKA27]

This Aluminium Box Is Pioneer's Take On The Portable HD Audio Player

While most people now rely on their smartphone for music, there’s recently been steady trickle of portable HD audio players that provide the option of a little more sonic clarity. This is Pioneer’s new take on the idea, crafted from a slab of aluminium and stuffed with an Android OS.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the XDP-100R is machined from a solid piece of alminum, while inside there are two circuit boards — one for the regular processor to run the OS, another for the audio components in order to “eliminate the effects of digital noise,” according to Pioneer.

Elsewhere, there’s a 4.7-inch 720p display, 32GB of internal storage, and two MicroSD slots, each each supporting cards with up to 128GB of storage. The Android-running device will support lossless FLAC, MQA, and ALAC, as well as DSD audio up to 11.2MHz being played from all that memory. All of that hardware occupies a frame measuring 13 by 7.6 by 1.3 centimetres wide — so you’d notice it in your pocket.

It’s hard not to compare it to Sony’s reborn Walkman, the NW-ZX2, which seems similar in terms of spec and size. However, the Wall Street Journal does report that Pioneer’s device will cost around $US500 when it goes on sale in Japan later this month — which compare favourably to $US1,200 for the Sony. There’s currently no word on Australian availability, but it certainly sounds like a more affordable option when it does arrive.

If, of course, an HD audio player is really worth it. Your ears can only ear so much, after all.

[MIKA27]

F-35: Why There's Nothing Like Australia's New Warplane

The initial squadron of America’s most expensive weapons system ever built is on track for “initial combat use” by August 2016. This is where they’re being built.

Fourteen years ago this month, Lockheed Martin won the contract to build America’s premier fifth generation stealth fighter jet. Australia has committed to buying up to 100 of the F-35A variant.

We toured Lockheed Martin’s massive production facility in Fort Worth, Texas, where the three F-35 Lightning II variant aircraft are designed and manufactured.

Here is a look at the unique capabilities of the F-35 variant aircraft.

The F-35 is the Pentagon's largest arms program, with an estimated price tag of $391 billion over the next five decades.

The US Department of Defence expects a total fleet of 2,457 F-35s over the next five decades.

The lightest of the jets is the F-35A.

The F-35B is in the middle at 14.3 feet tall and weighs 32,300 pounds.

The F-35C is the tallest and the heaviest.

The F-35A and F-35B have the same wingspan and nearly the same length.

Designed for the Navy, the F-35C features longer wings to create drag for the jet to slowly land on aircraft carriers.

The F-35C has another unique wing design.

'During a normal F-35C launch, the jet goes from zero to 150 miles per hour, travelling the 310-foot length of the catapult in about two seconds,' according to Lockheed Martin.

According to Navy officials, the at-sea developmental testing of the F-35C is almost done.

The F-35A is the only variant that has an internal gun; aside from that, the jets have similar designs.

All three variants are coated with a special material to avoid radar.

And obviously, the F-35 jets have some serious firepower.

The F-35C carries 19,750 pounds of fuel, the most fuel of the variant aircraft. All jets have the capability to be refueled in air.

However, the F-35A is refueled differently.

9 nations have already placed orders for America's premier fighter jet.

[MIKA27]

COLD BRUER 2

There’s nothing like a cold caffeine jolt to get you through the afternoon, and we’ve found that a good cold brew coffee is the best way to do that. Our favorite cold brew coffee maker is back, and redesigned for the holiday season.

The Cold Bruer 2 refines the design of its predecessor, while also giving you the ability to brew up to 20 ounces of coffee in just 4 hours. The new build is a bit sleeker and slimmer (sporting an hourglass inspired silhouette), and is made from stronger Borosilicate Glass paired with food grade silicone parts throughout. All you have to do is fill it up with water, adjust the valve to your desired drip rate, throw it in the fridge (where it will spend the evening), and when you wake up, you’ll have a homemade cold brew, ready to enjoy. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

8 Watches More Expensive Than a Ferrari

Sometime last year I published a piece about watches more expensive than a Ferrari. Each and every one of those watches is still more expensive than your supercar of choice because great watches appreciate in value like the cars they’re more expensive than, but that list was hardly comprehensive. Here are 8 more watches more expensive than a Ferrari, some of the most expensive watches in the world. I know we’ll never be able to afford anything on this list, or even comprehend how half of them work, but sometimes it’s fun just to window shop.

Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260

$10,000,000+

With 57 total complications (including eight Hebrew calendar functions, seven alarms, seven perpetual calendars and nine astronomical functions), close to three thousand parts and eight years of work from three separate specialist watch makers, the Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260 is the most complicated watch ever made. We don’t know how many parts and complications were used to build the Death Star, but we’re willing to bet that, if you factor in size, this watch is more complicated. Even if you had $10 million burning a hole in your pocket, this was specially made for a private collector and is one of a kind

MB&F Horological Machine No 6 (Space Pirate)

$230,000

MB&F (aka Maximilian Büsser and Friends) is responsible for some of the most ridiculous creations on the market. The HM6, dubbed the “Space Pirate,” features a biomorphic case with a 360° viewing sphere at each of the corners. Two spheres are used to display hours and minutes, while the others house turbines to regulate the winding system. In the middle of the watch you’ll find a 60-second flying tourbillon with a retractable shield to protect from UV radiation. If you need a watch for your next trip to outer space, this is the one you want.

Greubel Forsey Quadruple Tourbillon

$830,000+

The Greubel Forsey Quadruple Tourbillon Secret isn’t the most expensive watch on this list, but you could still pick up every supercar you had a picture of on your walls as a kid—except the Porsche 959 at today’s prices—with enough money left over to build a fancy new garage for less than the cost of this watch. What are you getting instead of a Ferrari Testarossa, Lamborghini Countach and BMW M1? Four independent tourbillons housed in an asymmetrical case with either a 5N red gold with anthracite dial or a platinum case with silvered-fold dial. Each watch takes a full year to make and is hand-finished by 18 different people.

Christophe Claret DualTow NightEagle

$500,000+

Christophe Claret’s DualTow NightEagle was inspired by the American F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft, but unlike its inspiration, this watch will never go unnoticed. Hours and five minute increments are displayed with specially designed, parallel rolling belt indicators on each side of the dial that are powered by cylinders designed like the wheel rims of a Bugatti T35. You’ll also see the innovative single-pusher chronograph operating with the use of nine identical planetary gears that were designed to resemble a celestial nebula. With production limited to 68 pieces, there are about as many of these watches as there are actual F-117 Nighthawks.

Franck Muller Aeternitas Tourbillon Repeater 8888 GSW T CCR QPS NR

$1,500,000+

Franck Muller has been making supremely complicated watches for over three decades and was one of the first to make a tourbillon visible from the front. In case the face of the watch you see here doesn’t paint enough of a picture, the man is known as the “Master of Complications.” The Aeternitas Tourbillon Repeater 8888 GSW T CCR QPS NR has a name almost as complicated as the watch itself, but each of the close to fifteen hundred parts serves a very specific purpose. If the mechanical masterpiece of the only “Grand Sonnerie” time-keeper with a dial visible tourbillon isn’t quite luxurious enough for you, it also sits on a hand-sewn black alligator strap

Jaeger-LeCoultre Hybris Mechanica à Grande Sonnerie

$1,100,000+

Once the “world’s most complicated watch,” the Jaeger-LeCoultre Hybris Mechanica à Grande Sonnerie was originally released as part of set of three watches that, combined, had over 55 complications. This watch alone has 26 different complications, but the functions that the 1,472 parts produce are limited to time, perpetual calendar and a complex sonnerie chiming mechanism that plays the entire Westminster chimes melody. It’s a complicated watch that’s highly collectible, but ultimately it’s more about a clean aesthetic than cramming in everything but the kitchen sink. It’s the Jaguar E-Type of watches.

Henry Graves Jr. Patek Philippe Supercomplication

$21,000,000+

No list of expensive watches would be complete without at least one entry from Patek Philippe, but the Henry Graves Jr. Supercomplication is in a world of its own within the scope of the Patek Philippe universe. Beginning in 1925 and constructed over a period of seven years, the Henry Graves Jr. Supercomplication houses 24 different complications in a gold, double-dialed and double open-faced case with the entire piece weighing over a pound. The world’s most expensive watch has been owned by at least one member of a royal family and is so significant that it has its own Wikipedia page.

Jean Dunand Shabaka 2015

$500,000+

Founded in 2003 by Theirry Oulevay and Christophe Claret, Jean Dunand was named after a Swiss-born artist who was one of the great craftsmen of the Art Deco movement. The luxury, glamor and exuberance that the period represented can be found in all of Jean Dunand’s timepieces, but most apparently in the 2015 release of the Shabaka. The watch might be housed in a round case and have rotating hands to display the time, but the perpetual calendar is unlike anything you’ve seen before because it uses multiple rotating cylinders to display day, date and month. If the opulent, dark red, casino-style dial isn’t quite your speed, don’t worry—each and every watch will be completely unique and made to order based on your preferences.

[MIKA27]

MEATER SMART MEAT THERMOMETER

Wireless thermometers are nothing new, but they all have one annoyance in common: a probe that's tied to the main housing via a cord that can get tangled, smashed, burned, or otherwise just get in the way. The Meater Smart Meat Thermometer does away with this by integrating its electronics into the probe itself, meaning it can go not only in the oven or grill, but on a rotisserie or in a sous vide setup, as well. Its accurate to a single degree, and has a dual sensor system that lets you keep an eye on the internal meat temperature and ambient temperature simultaneously, letting it give you an estimated time for when the food will be ready via an app, and making constant monitoring of your smoker's temperature unnecessary.

[MIKA27]

1956 FERRARI 290 MM

Built by the Ferrari factory with the personal involvement of Enzo Ferrari, this1956 Ferrari 290 MM is one of the most impressive cars to hit public auction. Constructed for five time World Drivers' Championship winner Juan Manuel Fangio, it boasts a 3.5-liter V-12 engine and is one of four 290 MMs ever built. It's been maintained incredibly, retaining the original chassis, engine, gearbox, and body. The auction presents collectors with an incredibly rare opportunity to bid on a legendary piece of racing history, just in time for its 60th anniversary next year.

[MIKA27]

GREEN MOUNTAIN DAVY CROCKETT WIFI GRILL

The convenience of pellets. Anywhere you go. The Green Mountain Davy Crockett Wifi Grill is a portable cooker with some typically house-bound features. The grill is the company's first to use an open flame technology, giving your food added flavor, and has built-in Wi-Fi to let you set your desired grill temperature in 5º increments from 150-550º F, check on the internal temperature of your food using the included meat probe, and utilize presets to automate the process. The peaked lid helps accommodate larger cuts of meat, it can run on 12V or 120AC power, making it ideal for tailgating, and the foldable legs make it easy to transport.

[MIKA27]

EMBER SMART MUG

Temperature. It's a vital component of every hot beverage we consume. And until now, it's been incredibly difficult to regulate. The Ember mug provides the perfect vessel for consistent drinking temperatures for your coffee or hot tea — and will keep it that way for up to 2 hours. When coffee is ready, it's usually too hot to drink, and when it's ready to sip at the perfect temperature, it doesn't stay there very long. Ember cools things down to the ideal temperature without the need for complicated buttons or instructions, just rotate the dial at the bottom to set the temperature and enjoy. It's leak proof, portable, and easy to charge using the slim, compact coaster. You can even pair via Bluetooth and adjust the temperature using your smartphone when your Ember isn't at arms length.

[MIKA27]

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is obliterating all the movie pre-sale records

Last night tickets for J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens went on sale, and the onslaught of fandom promptly brought down nearly every ticketing website in existence — but that wasn't enough to stop the movie from breaking some serious sales records. In a statement, Fandango announced that it saw its website traffic surge to seven times its normal peak levels (that would explain the downtime), with The Force Awakens ultimately pulling in eight times the ticket sales as Fandango's previous first-day pre-sales record holder.

As a point of comparison, the record was set back in 2012 when tickets for the first Hunger Games went on sale. That movie went on to rake in over $152.5 million in its domestic opening weekend, but with many Force Awakens screenings already sold out throughout the weekend (and more showtimes being added) that number starts looking pretty small. The number that Disney no doubt wants to beat is the $208.8 million that Jurassic World raked in during its opening weekend this year, and judging from the early interest, that record looks like it's easily in sight.

AMC Theaters saw its previous single-day sales record shattered more than 10 times over, with the chain selling out over 1,000 shows in just 12 hours, with IMAX the clear winner: according to AMC, 38 percent of its ticket sales gross came from IMAX screenings. In fact, according to IMAX itself the movie has broken "every IMAX record," generating $6.5 million in sales across 390 screens in the US. (Rounding things out, MovieTickets.com also had its biggest first day of sales in the service's history, with 95 percent of the tickets sold in the last 24 hours going towards Star Wars — even though the movie hasn't even been on sale yet for a full day.)

Pre-sale numbers like this are certainly fascinating, but they're not necessarily a reflection of long-term box office performance. What they do indicate is pent-up demand, and in the case of Star Wars it's largely been due to a carefully crafted and orchestrated promotional and release strategy that has let longtime fans feel that the film is speaking to them (versus that cognitive dissonance that seemed to take place with the prequels), while also giving away very little about the movie itself. It's been a mix of exuberant hype and secrecy that is paying off, and while movies usually have to worry about box-office drop off in the second week, the way this movie is going, it won't be surprising to see screenings sold out in advance weeks after the film opens.