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

[MIKA27]

TOM FORD BLACK ORCHID

Most colognes have abstract names, meant to evoke a feeling rather than describing the smell itself. Not so with Tom Ford Black Orchid. This masculine scent opens with bold notes of black plum and orchid, mixing in patchouli, as well as various fruits, spices, and woods. In addition, it's designed to mingle with your skin's natural chemistry, creating a one-of-a-kind scent that's truly individualized.

[MIKA27]

IIKONE COFFEE BREWER

Crafted entirely from high-gloss, medical-grade stainless steel, the Iikone Coffee Brewer is as much a sculpture as it is a functional addition to your kitchen. Thanks to its unique, spider-like design, it's the only brewer around that doesn't obstruct the filter, resulting in tastier, less bitter coffee that's even more complex than what you'll get from a traditional pourover. It comes packaged in a hand-made wooden case, and is compatible with most 6-10 cup filters.

[MIKA27]

Here's what it's like to rent a MiG-29 to fly you above the clouds in the stratosphere

It’s good to be rich. Because when you’re rich you can easily justify the $18,000 necessary to rent—yes, rent—a MiG-29 fighter jet that will take you on the flight of your life to the edge of space. You fly above the clouds in the stratosphere at 70,000 feet in the air, you reach supersonic speeds, you hit 9Gs, and you get to experience weightlessness. The best part though? You get to take control of the MiG-29 too. This is probably the best experience money can buy.

MiGFlug is the company that rents out MiG-29s and other jets for people to rent so they can be a pilot for a day.

[MIKA27]

Incredible Video Shows an Orca Whale Hurling a Seal 80 Feet Into the Air

A film crew working off the coast of Victoria, British Columbia, has captured remarkable footage of a transient killer whale using its tail to launch a Pacific harbor seal some 80 feet (20 meters) into the air.

The footage was captured by Mike Walker, owner of Roll.Focus.Productions, who was filming a promotional video for a whale-watching company. In the video, a transient killer whale—dubbed T69C—can be seen launching a harbor seal some 80 feet into the air with a flick of its giant tail.

The seal toss happens at the 0:28 mark.

Transient killer whales, also known as Bigg’s killer whales, feed almost exclusively on marine mammals. Behavior like this is not without precedent; last year, a killer whale was filmed throwing a sea lion 20 feet into the air. The Earth Touch News Network quotes cetacean researcher Dr. Chris Parsons as saying that the behavior is likely a bit of practice:

They don’t often eat the seals [after hitting them]. But when they hit Dall’s porpoises, they do it to eviscerate them. They hit them so hard that their entrails pop out, which they leave behind after eating the muscle and blubber.

Walker says his team does a ton of whale watching, but witnessing an event like this is quite rare.

“Brett Soberg—owner of Eagle Wing—mentioned to us that it’s only the fourth time he’s seen an orca do that in about 20 years,” he told theHuffington Post. “It was spectacular. You can hear me yelling ‘Yes!’ over and over in the video.”

[MIKA27]

This Heroic Captain Defied His Orders And Stopped America From Starting World War III

It’s truly amazing that anybody survived the Cold War.

Over the past decade numerous stories have come out about Soviet and American military personnel who were given orders to fire nuclear weapons between the 1960s and 1980s. Their conscience stopped them, only to learn later that it was a mistaken order. We now have another horrifying story to add to that growing list of possible post-apocalyptic futures.

Former Air Force airman John Bordne is now an elderly man. But in the early morning hours of 28 October 1962 he and his fellow airmen nearly launched their nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Air Force has only now given Bordne permission to tell his story of how America nearly started World War III.

From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

By Bordne’s account, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Air Force crews on Okinawa were ordered to launch 32 missiles, each carrying a large nuclear warhead. Only caution and the common sense and decisive action of the line personnel receiving those orders prevented the launches — and averted the nuclear war that most likely would have ensued.

Captain William Bassett received the orders to launch his four nukes. They even went through three layers of security codes, getting confirmation each time that they were correct.

When the captain read out the target list, to the crew’s surprise, three of the four targets were not in Russia. At this point, Bordne recalls, the inter-site phone rang. It was another launch officer, reporting that his list had two non-Russian targets. Why target non-belligerent countries? It didn’t seem right.

Aside from targeting yet unnamed non-enemy countries, the other part that didn’t seem right was that they were only at DEFCON 2. If this was for real, they probably should have been at DEFCON 1. So the Captain stalled and called the Missile Operations Center, lying about not hearing clearly the instructions to fire.

The men with their fingers on the trigger were ready to launch the nukes, but by Bordne’s recollection, the Captain stalled again and ordered two armed airmen to “shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch without [either] verbal authorization from the ‘senior officer in the field’ or the upgrade to DEFCON 1 by Missile Operations Center.”

“If this is a screw up and we do not launch, we get no recognition, and this never happened,” Bordne recalled Captain Bassett saying in the harrowing moments before they nearly started World War III.

By Bordne’s account, the Captain told Missile Operations Center over the phone that he either needed to hear that the threat level had been raised to DEFCON 1 and that he should fire the nukes, or that he should stand down. We don’t know exactly what the Missile Operations Center told Captain Bassett, but they finally received confirmation that they should not launch their nukes.

After the crisis had passed Bassett reportedly told his men: “None of us will discuss anything that happened here tonight, and I mean anything. No discussions at the barracks, in a bar, or even here at the launch site. You do not even write home about this.

Am I making myself perfectly clear on this subject?”

Captain Bassett died in 2011 and nobody said a peep for over 50 years. Until now, of course.

Researchers are now calling for a complete account of this incident to be released and the National Security Archive has filed FOIA requests to that effect. You can read Bordne’s full account of this terrifying incident over at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. But for now we can add another near-miss of worldwide destruction to the history books.

[MIKA27]

Watch A Welder Turn Metal Rods Into A Gunk Of Metal Into An Intricate Door Knocker

Here’s a really lovely process of metal working from Artismia: he melts down these basic metal rods into this metal glob and then stylises and polishes and shaves down the glob into a beautifully designed door knocker. It’s surprisingly fun to see the entire transformation, like making art from nothing.

[MIKA27]

There's A Runaway Defence Department Blimp Floating Somewhere Over Pennsylvania

A military blimp that’s part of the military’s Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defence Netted Sensor System (JLENS) broke free of its tethers in Maryland today, and was last spotted crossing into Pennsylvania.

The rogue blimp, or aerostat, is part of an aerial detection system meant to be on the watch for threats from above. It’s actually one of two planned balloons, which are intended to float 3000m above DC and act as an early-warning shield for the city. In theory, it would monitor for cruise missiles and drone attacks on the East Coast. In actuality, it has met derision for its impractical aims and soaring costs.

Today, the aerostat gained its freedom and is currently cruising around Lancaster County, PA. NORAD has launched two F-16s fighter jets to monitor its progress. The blimp, which is about 76m long, is moving at about 48km per hour, according to ABC27.

While helium doesn’t appear to be a problem at the moment, deflation is. ABC27 reports: “Authorities said it is equipped with a device to slowly deflate it, but it apparently is not working.” Whoops. If you see the free-floating balloon on the loose, call 000. Do not attempt to engage.

[MIKA27]

Sleek Furniture Line Puts Your Bike Where It Belongs: On A Pedestal

One of the perennial challenges of urban living is the lack of space. Biking in cities is great, for instance — but only if you have a spot to store your bike. Some furniture designers in Chile are offering a creative (and attractive) solution.

The latest collection from Santiago-based Chol1 is a line of sneaky pieces with special slots for storing your bike. In some cases, the furniture makes it look like your hog is floating in mid-air while others tuck your two-wheeled transportation subtly behind couch cushions.

They all look terrific, and with prices ranging from $79 to $731, they’re also terrifically affordable. (Though it’s unclear how much it would cost to ship the furniture from Chile.)

The 2016 line of bike-friendly furniture is currently on pre-sale.

[MIKA27]

For 20 Years, Parisian Women Were Famous For Injecting Themselves With Perfume

It’s not just today’s media that reports on scandalous stories of foreign decadence that probably aren’t true. In 1912 the New York Times reported that Parisian women were injecting perfume into themselves. Sounds like a good idea to me.

For about twenty years, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, papers all over America periodically ran articles about how French women injected perfume under their skin. This was at a time when perfume was coming down in price and the middle class was growing. Many people, not only women, used scent, and there were detailed guides on what scent to use, when to use it, and where to apply the scent. (Some of the guides gave dire warnings. Certain scents were supposed to be intoxicating or sickening, especially to vulnerable young women.)

Today we take it for granted that perfume is applied to the skin. In late Victorian period, this was improper. Women applied scent to their handkerchiefs and their clothes, not to their bodies. This might be because a little scent wouldn’t make it through their layers of clothing. And, of course, only one “kind of woman” would need to be scented even when her clothes were off.

Injecting perfume, then, was both decadent and scandalous. It was probably cobbled together from a number of different stories — women using too much perfume, people drinking a little perfume as a show of wealth, and women injecting other things subcutaneously. While I’m not eager to shoot up a perfume, there was a seed of a good idea here.

We’re constantly bombarded with deodorant ads, mouthwash ads, and scented lotion ads. Reports of perfume injection state that the women “exhaled” the fragrance and that it emanated from their skin. Perfuming your saliva might get in the way of enjoying food, but finding a way to perfume sweat sounds like it could make someone a fortune.

If people are willing to dab things on their eyes every day to grow their eye-lashes longer, and inject botulism into their faces to stave off wrinkles, surely a pill or a shot that makes your sweat smell like orange blossom would be worth some research.

MIKA: One word for this story... "Women"

[MIKA27]

This Is How You Can Learn To Control A Submarine Engine On Land

Learning to control a submarine is not straightforward. But these days, the Navy doesn’t need to build as many large-scale physical simulators — because much of it can be achieved on-screen.

In this image, two sailors explore the engine rooms of a submarine using the Navy’s touch-screen training simulator. They can use the software to explore how the submarine’s power systems work, sliding controls and turning knobs to explore how it will react to their command. And if something goes wrong, they’re just stood at a computer — not stuck hundreds of meters underwater. [Navy]

MIKA: That's some serious Minority report stuff right there

[MIKA27]

Crazy Drone Footage Shows A Huge Lake Of Melted Ice In Greenland

The New York Times posted a story today about Greenland’s melting ice, which could add another 6 metres to global sea levels. To give us the real scope, they used video shot by a drone, capturing a huge lake of meltwater that’s one of many. It’s stunning, worrying, and strangely beautiful. (Mostly really worrying.)

I've previously posted on warmer currents that are melting Greenland’s vast ice sheet. Today, the Times drone footage shows a big lake and river comprised of meltwater. Unfortunately, warmer global temps are speeding up the rate Greenland’s ice is melting, so these lakes and resultant rivers are becoming even more common. The number stretches into the thousands.

Since there’s only so much data scientists can comb through in a lab, there comes a point where going out into the field is necessary. But this rapidly liquefying ice field is treacherous: Rivers form sinkholes in the surface, called moulins. Fall into one, and you’re a goner. That’s why the team turned to drones.

The 4.5kg, camera-equipped UAVs were used to provide sweeping vistas of just how bad the melting ice has gotten. While the Federal Aviation Administration is still navigating the morass of evolving regulation for commercial and personal UAV flights here in America, the barren expanse of Greeland’s ice fields proved a perfect opportunity to let the drone fly.

The challenge? The bitter cold, which dipped as far as nearly -3C, shortened drone battery life to as little as 8 to 10 minutes. Photographer Josh Haner had to swap out memory cards as soon as he got those initial shots, in case the drone was later lost during the mission. A crash landing rounded out the list of scares and hiccups.

In the end, though, all was well, and some amazing shots were captured from crazy angles that only a drone could pull off. Hopefully the footage provides researchers — and the public — a better idea of Greenland’s serious situation.

[MIKA27]

THIS STUNNING GLASS SKELETON WILL HAVE YOU CLUTCHING YOUR PEARLS

This stunning anatomical sculpture of a glass skeleton is the work of Portland-based sculptor Eric Franklin. Titled 'Embodiment' it took him an incredible 2 years and around 1,000 hours complete the piece.

It's actually built using 10 hand-crafted sections of borosilicate glass tubing, individually placed and then seal together. It's a painstaking slowly process, requiring hours of patience and the lightest of touches. To achieved the glowing light effect, the sculpture is filled with ionised krypton which creates a similar ambiance to that of a neon light.

If there is even the smallest space or gap between any of the glass tubes, there's the potential for the gas to become contaminated and the entire piece losing it's eye-catching glow and fade.

You can see more of Franklin's remarkable sculptures and glass work through his official site

[MIKA27]

1932 HELICON PROPELLER CAR

In 1932 somewhere deep in the French countryside a project was underway to build an automobile with a slightly unusual method of propulsion. It isn’t known if the designer of the Helicon was a pilot or an aircraft engineer, but it’s clear that the car takes a significant amount of influence from early aircraft design.

The Helicon was originally powered by a an air-cooled boxer twin and utilised a wooden frame and body to keep weight as low as possible. Steering is accomplished using the rear wheels, the rear track is significantly narrower than the front and the rear axle is sprung to help smooth out the ride – but the front is rigid.

After a few years of use the Helicon was rolled into a barn around the time that WWII broke out across Europe. It stayed in the barn for decades until it was rediscovered in 2000, at which time a full restoration was undertaken.

It was decided early on to keep the car as original as possible, so the painstaking process of restoring the wooden frame, wire wheels, dashboard, steering wheel, steering gear, brake pedal, light switch, headlights, and the type plate began. The only significant change from the original car is the addition of a Citroën GS engine – chosen because the original powerplant had been lost to time.

The propeller is directly connected to the Citroën GS engine’s crankshaft, so increasing engine RPM translates directly into additional aerodynamic thrust, and braking is accomplished via drums on all four wheels.

Incredibly, the Helicon actually passed the required exams to be used on French public roads after its restoration – meaning it can be driven across the EU. Although you’d probably need to expect to be pulled over by the gendarme reasonably frequently.

If you’d like to see the 1932 Helicon in person you’ll be able to see it at The Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival on the 1st of November. If you’d like to learn more you can click here.

MIKA: There, problem solved for Red Bull racing Formula 1 engine and design for next season!

[MIKA27]

SALT SELF DEFENSE GUN

Everyone wants to keep their family safe, and while many of us believe guns are the best to way to do so, not everyone can get behind the idea of owning a traditional firearm. Armed with the belief of, “A firearm shouldn’t have to take a life, to protect a life,” the SALT self defense gun was created.

While the gun itself looks similar to your more traditional pistol, Adam and Andy decided to completely rethink the bullet. Instead of lead, SALT fires a specialized round that’s filled with a powerful toxin, opening up on impact, and causing anyone within the vicinity to become incapacitated. And due to the fact that the ammunition creates an incapacitating cloud, you don’t necessarily have to hit your target to stop them. The Chicago-based designers have taken to IndieGoGo to fund their campaign. Check out the video below. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

KTM ION ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE

You can usually immediately tell whether or not what you’re looking at is a motorcycle or a bike, but KTM has set out to prove that that’s not always the case. Their newest creation, the KTM ION, has onlookers all sorts of confused.

It’s built around the company’s newly designed electric engine. Each electric bike has a modern and unique frame that’s fixed without any suspension. The bike, which was designed by Daniel Brunsteiner, has an impressively thick rear tire that gives it an aggressive motorcycle look. It’s unlike any other design we’ve seen before. It features a 260V battery, bullhorn handlebars, flexible spokes and a leather saddle seat. It’s available in white or black, and regardless of which one you choose to buy, you can rest assured that no one else on the block will have the same one.

[MIKA27]

HUDWAY GLASS

You don’t need to spend your hard-earned cash on an expensive heads-up display for your dashboard. Why? It’s simple: you already have most of the capabilities on your smartphone. And with the Hudway Glass, you’re able to transform your smartphone into a HUD.

It’s an inexpensive phone accessory that sticks to your dash with one of the two included mounts. The gadget provides an augmented reality on the windshield using plastic to provide a heads-up display, and using it is as simple as flipping it up and tapping any of the HUD-supporting apps, such as Hudway’s GPS navigation app, Speedometer, Navmii, Baidu Maps, and more. Your phone won’t fly off of the cradle when you brake, either, as it has a non-slip grip that holds onto the back of your phone for dear life. The device is available on Kickstarter for an early backer price of $49. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

ELEVATE PORTABLE GRILL

Elevate Grill is a new gas grill, its greatest features are: its portability, you can fold it in two, just like if it was a standard briefcase, handle included, so you do get single hand portability, and its cooking space, with two large trays to cook your food, with an area of around 286 square inches, in fact the largest portable cooking area on the market. The Elevate Grill is equipped with a built in propane storing system, which delivers around 14k BTU of grilling power, so you´re pretty sure you´ll never get anything undercooked and you´ll be able to get that charcoal, high-temp taste on your grilled food. Because of it´s double sided cooking trays you can also manage and choose different temperatures on each side, so cook your greens on one side and your meats, or fish on the other. Cast iron built to last, with simple hinges and handles, it´s reliable and will surely be of use next time you´re enjoying the outdoors.

[MIKA27]

Dusting The Sky With Diamond Is The Latest Crazy Scheme To Cool The Planet

Geoengineering — hacking Earth’s climate system to reverse global warming — often sounds a bit preposterous, whether we’re talking about deploying giant space mirrors or dumping a bunch of iron filings into the ocean. The latest proposal? Dusting the stratosphere with billions of dollars worth of powdered diamond.

Yes, you heard that right. It might actually be time to move to Mars.

The new diamonds-in-the-sky geoengineering scheme isn’t the work of crackpots. It comes from a team of respected Harvard scientists, and it was published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. What’s more, it could actually work. It’s actually a variation on another idea geoengineering proponents have tossed around for years — spraying sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect and scatter the sun’s energy.

It’s Not a New Idea

The idea of cooling the planet with sulfate was inspired by the observation that large volcanic eruptions often have a rapid and dramatic cooling effect on Earth’s climate. Among other things, these eruptions belch tremendous amounts of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. Sulphur dioxide spreads around the globe quickly, creating a haze that blocks incoming sunlight. If volcanoes are doing this naturally, can’t we just mimic that process to undo some of the global warming damage we’ve caused?

Maybe, but maybe not. Off the bat, there are a few big problems. First, sulfates react with other chemicals in the stratosphere to produce sulfuric acid, which can damage ozone. And we’d really like to keep our ozone layer — it’s our first line of defence against the most harmful forms of solar radiation. Second, while sulfate aerosols are predicted to scatter incoming sunlight, they could also heat up the lower stratosphere, with untold feedback effects on atmospheric circulation patterns. In short, this idea might work, but it might totally backfire and we won’t know until we try.

Shine Bright Like a Diamond

According to Debra Weisenstein, a co-author on the new study, dusting the stratosphere with solid, nanometre-sized aluminium oxide or diamond particles poses fewer risks than sulfate — for starters, these particles wouldn’t produce nasty sulfuric acid. What’s more, the new study shows that diamond dust would be at least 50% more effective at scattering incoming solar radiation.

But like all geoengineering proposals before it, this latest one is premised on conducting a global experiment on our planet’s climate system, one with potentially far more dramatic consequences than the global climate experiment we’re already in the midst of. And as io9’s George Dvorsky put it, once we start geohacking the planet, we won’t be able to stop.

Writes Nature News:

The scientists warn, however, that both alumina and diamond nanoparticles carry unknown risks. Sulphates are reasonably well understood, thanks to research on volcanoes. By contrast, the chemistry of the solid particles — such as how their surfaces catalyse chemical reactions — is not as clear, although the Harvard researchers are doing lab tests to remedy that.

There’s an Easier Fix

Here’s another idea: Why don’t we put the billions of dollars it would take to fill the stratosphere with diamond toward developing renewable energy sources and weaning ourselves off fossil fuels? That’s arguably a much safer course of action, and progress toward the goal of a low-carbon future is already well underway.

According to a report by the International Energy Agency, renewable energy sources accounted for nearly half of all new power generation capacity in 2014. China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, has been leading the way, increasing its solar energy capacity by a full 18 gigawatts this year. Every year, the cost of wind and solar energy is falling. And while we’re not yet moving fast enough to avoid dangerous climate change, there’s still hope that world leaders will hash out much tougher carbon pollution resolutions at the global climate conference in Paris this December.

Or, you know, we could pump a bunch of diamond powder into the sky and see what happens. Hey, we’re nothing if not adventurous when it comes to planetary tinkering.

[MIKA27]

Drinking Denki Bran, the Mysterious Japanese Cocktail From the Meiji Era

Kamiya Bar, which located in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, is the oldest western-style bar in the city. The inside is like a cafeteria, with simple tables, minimal decor and excessively bright lighting. The logo slapped on the door looks like it was selected from a catalog of stock logos designed for business students. There are no initials carved into tables; there are no red lanterns hung from the ceiling; everything seems sterile and devoid of character. It’s out of place. But make no mistake, Kamiya Bar is something special, a Japanese drinking institution since 1880. The reason? Denki Bran.

Created in 1882 by the bar’s founder, Denbee Kamiya, Denki Bran (“Electric Brandy”) is a brandy-based cocktail served in a shot glass that looks like a sawed-off trumpet’s bell. The drink—which can be consumed straight or as part of a larger cocktail—drove writers and creative types like Osamu Dazai and Sakutaro Hagiwara to take up residence at Kamiya Bar (or, “Mikahaya Saloon,” as it was originally known). The bar found its way into many books and films for this reason, and it helped the drink take on a mythical status.

Denki Bran became popular for its unique taste, which, while certainly brandy-forward, is noticeably different from the aforementioned cordial on account of the variety of ingredients used in its creation—gin, assorted herbs and other components. The recipe still remains a secret.

Today, you can stop by Kamiya Bar for one of two Denki Brans—a 30% ABV version or a 40% one. You can also snag a bottle to take home if the sprawling cafeteria is too packed. Best of all, drinking Denki Bran at Kamiya Bar is crazy easy on the wallet, as the legendary liquor only runs about $2 a pour.

So what exactly does Denki Bran taste like? Well, it’s definitely similar to brandy, and it’s very sweet. It smells slightly herbaceous, flowery even, with some berry notes. The consistency is like watered-down cough syrup, but the burn after you swallow isn’t nearly as rough as other liquors. Like Jägermeister, Denki Bran has a lot going on, but it’s not quite as brash as the German digestif. Overall, it’s far better than the price tag would suggest. If we had it here, and we were trying to save a few bucks, we’d gladly purchase a bottle.

[MIKA27]

The US Is Finally Heeding Warnings About A Monster Solar Storm

We’re all too familiar with the dangers posed by earthquakes, droughts, and hurricanes. But there’s another natural phenomena that represents a growing threat to our tech-driven society, and that’s space weather. And at long last, the US government seems to be taking the issue seriously.

Space weather scientists at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and NASA have warned for years that if a massive solar storm were to strike the Earth, the effects could be catastrophic. Think worldwide power and telecommunications outages, lasting weeks to months. Everything that relies on electricity, from our computers to our refrigerators to our water supply, could break down. “Frankly,” space weather consultant John Kappenman told Gizmodo, “this could be one of the most severe natural disasters that the country, and major portions of the world, could face.”

Apocalypse preppers have been stocking their EMP bunkers for years, but last week, the White House released the very first National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan. These two documents outline goals and strategies for improved space weather modelling, forecasting, and response coordination. Ultimately, they represent a roadmap toward a future where the unfortunate arrival of a giant solar storm doesn’t spell the end of modern society.

What’s Space Weather and Why Do We Care?

Space weather is a fairly broad term encompassing a bunch of stuff the Sun hurls our way, including high-energy x-rays, magnetized plasma, and charged particles. All of these can interact with Earth’s magnetic field, causing geomagnetic disturbances that light up the northern and southern skies with dazzling auroras. Most of the time, these cosmic light shows are beautiful and harmless.

Sometimes, however, things can get nasty, especially when the Sun releases a large burst of plasma known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). Large CMEs are unusual, and it’s even more unusual for our planet to line up directly in their path. But when that happens, CMEs cause geomagnetic storms that generate tremendous electric currents in the upper atmosphere. Some of this current makes its way into the ground, where it’s channeled by any and all conductive materials, including certain rocks, pipes, and electric cables. Currents from large geomagnetic storms can ultimately feed into our grids, melting transformers at the heart of power distribution centres.

Artist’s depiction of the solar wind colliding with Earth’s magnetosphere.

Because our power supply has become more aggregated and interconnected over the last decades, the effects of an outage at one distribution center could spread far and wide, impacting millions of people. “In the case of electric power grids, both the manner in which systems are operated and the accumulated design decisions engineered into present-day networks around the world have tended to significantly enhance geomagnetic storm impacts,” writes Kappenman in a report on the dangers of space weather. To illustrate his point, Kappenman cites a geomagnetic storm that occurred across Earth’s northern hemisphere in March of 1989:

This [storm] started a chain of power system disturbance events that only 92 seconds later resulted in a complete collapse to the entire power grid in Quebec. The rapid manifestation of the storm and impacts to the Quebec power grid allowed no time to even assess what was happening to the power system, let alone provide any meaningful human intervention. Over the course of the next 24 hours, additional large disturbances propagated across the continent, the only difference being that they extended much further south and came, at times, arguably close to toppling power systems from the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. to the Midwest.

Again, geomagnetic storms of this magnitude are rare, but it’d be unwise to assume we won’t see another in the years to come. In fact, a CME roughly four times larger than the one that caused the 1989 Quebec outages narrowly missed us in 2012. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” physicist Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado told NASA two years later. A report by the National Academies estimated that the cost of such an event could exceed 2 trillion dollars — the economic equivalent of 20 Hurricane Katrinas.

The Road Forward

Clearly, it’s high time we to start thinking about how to prepare for the possibility of a monster solar storm. The National Space Weather Action Plan released last week describes how the US government will coordinate efforts on space weather forecasting, infrastructure preparation and education. Here are some highlights.

Establishing the “Godzilla” Storm: On the science front, a key component of the White House’s new plan is figuring out just how big these suckers can get. To this day, the largest solar storm recorded on Earth was the 1859 Carrington Event, a series of powerful CMEs that ignited the northern lights as far south as Cuba, causing global telegraph outages. The Carrington Event has always been our benchmark for really big storms, but in recent years, observations of Sun-like stars beyond our solar system have shown that “superflares” — 1000 times larger than the Carrington Event — can and do occur. In 2012, a study published in Nature estimated that such a flare could strike the Earth every 800 to 5000 years. That’s a pretty wide margin of uncertainty for such a potentially devastating event. Clearly, we need to get a better handle on the upper size limit of our own Sun’s eruptions and the actual risk superflares pose.

Monitoring Vulnerability on the Ground: While we know that large pulses of electric current pose a danger to power grids, experts don’t agree on just how vulnerable our infrastructure is. The White House Action Plan calls for a nationwide assessment of vulnerability that includes factors like the age and design of grid infrastructure and the underlying geology. The DOE has also been tasked with developing a grid monitoring system that would “display the status of power generation, transmission, and distribution systems during geomagnetic storms.” Real-time monitoring tools like this could be used by grid operators who need to make fast decisions about when to shut things off.

Improved Forecasting: A big aspect of our vulnerability to space weather is the fact that we have almost no lead-time before a large storm strikes. If a CME is heading straight for us, our first notice comes from the space weather monitoring satellites situated at the L1 Lagrange point 1.6 million kilometres in front of Earth. At best, these satellites give us about an hour’s notice. There’s a lot of room to improve our forecasting, and it starts with a better understanding of when and how large solar flares and CMEs occur. The White House Action Plan calls for more research on solar dynamics. Just as we can use weather models to predict the onset of tropical storms, with better solar models we might be able to forecast days, or even weeks in advance, when the Sun’s gearing up to punt a a giant blob of plasma our way.

An large solar flare captured by NASA on March 6th, 2012.

Cooperation: Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of a large geomagnetic storm is that its effects could be felt globally. This makes space weather unique among all natural disasters humans face, and it underscores the need for international coordination. To that end, the White House Action Plan outlines a number of goals and targets, including 1) an international meeting on the social and economic impacts of a large solar event, 2) multi-national acknowledgement of space weather as a global challenge, 3) facilitating open-access to space weather data across agencies and countries, 4) developing international standards for solar storm measurements and scales, and 5) developing a set of “mutual-aid arrangements” to facilitate response efforts worldwide.

The last thing we want is for a bunch of power-hungry humans to panic. We’re all in this together, and it’d be nice if we didn’t devolve into a society of cannibalistic road warriors overnight.

The new space weather action plan is just a roadmap, and we’ve got a long way to go before our IT-driven world can consider itself safe from the ravages of a monster solar storm. While I personally would have liked to see more focus on tangible ways we can improve our infrastructure — for instance, Kappenman has already developed low-cost capacitors that could be used to block current from flowing into a grid — I’m happy that the US government is starting to pay attention to the threat. Perhaps one day, we’ll live in a world where we don’t all need Faraday cages, solar bunkers, DIY radios and farming knowledge to survive this cosmic disaster.

But hey, if you’re into those things, more power to you (literally). You’ll probably outlast us all.

[MIKA27]

Here's The Trailer For The X-Files Reboot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1SmJUBT5q0

The truth is still out there, it’s just that the people searching for it are all a bit older now.

FOX posted the first trailer for the X-Files reboot slated for next year, and all the usual suspects are back for another go on the conspiratorial merry-go-round.

No word yet on who will screen the show in Australia, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled for the news.

[MIKA27]

There Were Once Papal Cartels Moving This Chemical Through Europe

Today, alum, as a chemical, is barely good enough to rub on your armpits as deodorant. During the 1400s, it became so crucial to the economy that the Papacy formed cartels to protect its monopoly on the trade.

Alum is known more specifically as potassium alum KAl(SO4)2, a combination of potassium, aluminium, sulphur, and oxygen. These crystals can firm up the walls of cells. When you bite down on a pickle that’s still crunchy, even though it’s been in a jar full of brine for months, or a maraschino cherry that’s firm, despite having been suspended in syrup, you’re probably eating a little alum.

Alum is also a natural bactericide, so it’s one of the main ingredients in deodorants. Unfortunately, it doesn’t limit its damage to bacteria. According to the FDA it’s safe to consume small quantities of alum — the page on potassium alum sulfate points out that between trace elements and aluminium cooking pans there’s aluminium in most foods — but many people avoid foods or deodorants with alum in them.

About five hundred years ago, alum was mainly used as a mordant for dyes. Mordants form compounds with the dyes, which then attach to the cloth or tissue being dyed. They’re the reason why dipping a bit of cloth in soapy water doesn’t wash the dye right off of it.

Textiles were one of the first industries to span multiple countries. Wool could be made in one country, spun and woven in another, and made into clothing in a third. Many nations were dependent on the textile trade, which meant alum was incredibly valuable. Fortunately, it was plentiful. Unfortunately, it was most plentiful in the eastern Mediterranean, which was controlled by the Turks. As this was during the stretch of time when Christians were trying to expand into Muslim-controlled territory and Muslims were trying to expand into Christian-controlled territory, Christian Europeans buying alum would essentially be enriching the enemy.

In 1462, miners at a Papal-controlled mine near Rome found large deposits of alum. Suddenly, no one had to make the choice between fighting new crusades and keeping the economy going. There was enough alum for everyone, and the Pope himself was selling it. As soon as the trade was established, cloth makers discovered that their troubles weren’t over. The Pope needed money as much as anyone else, and the 15th century Popes had not only control over alum, but a religious reason to condemn anyone who wasn’t buying what they were selling.

Heard of the Medici family? They gained part of their wealth because, for a time, they were granted a monopoly on Italian-produced alum. Everyone involved in the trade had reason to keep the price high, so soon the Papacy formed cartels of miners, refiners, bankers, and traders who cooperated so that no one really had a choice about what price they wanted to pay for alum. If they wanted a choice, and thought about trading for Turkish alum, they could enjoy their excommunication.

Eventually, Pope Julius II pushed the price too high. Entire economies broke down because no one could afford to pay the Pope’s price for alum. Something had to change, and soon it did. Kings, emperors, and bankers quietly came up with a scheme to import, “launder,” and sell foreign alum. At least one historian makes a case that this illegal chemical trade is partially responsible for England’s rise as a nation. King Henry VII allowed foreign ships to come in, carrying Turkish alum. This gave it an air of plausible deniability, and exported the alum to cloth-dying countries. King Henry VII took a fat cut of the profits and filled the royal treasury sufficiently to build up the nation.

What a difference a crystal makes.

[MIKA27]

Watch The First Footage Of The Planet's Most Elusive Whale

An international team of marine biologists has made the first-ever field observations of rare Omura’s whales — one of the least known species of whales in the world — while working off the coast of Madagascar.

Omura’s whales are so rare that scientists are not sure exactly how many exist.

“Over the years, there have been a small handful of possible sightings of Omura’s whales, but nothing that was confirmed,” noted lead author Salvatore Cerchio in a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutionrelease. “They appear to occur in remote regions and are difficult to find at sea because they are small — they range in length from approximately 33 to 38 feet — and do not put up a prominent blow.”

Cerchio, who works out of the New England Aquarium (NEAQ), says that all previous knowledge came from eight specimens of Omura’s whales taken in Japanese scientific whaling off the Solomon and Keeling Islands, along with a couple of strandings in Japan.

After a possible sighting near Madagascar in 2011, the team decided to relocate their efforts to the region. It proved to be an excellent move, resulting in the two year study, the details of which now appear at Royal Society Open Science.

“This is the first definitive evidence and detailed descriptions of Omura’s whales in the wild and part of what makes this work particularly exciting,” he says.

The researchers observed 44 groups and were able to collect skin biopsies from 18 adult whales. These samples were sent to Northern Michigan University for DNA analysis, the results of which confirmed the species as being distinct. Up until recently, some scientists thought that Omura’s whales were actually Bryde’s whale.

Cerchio’s team documented various physical and behavioural characteristics of the whale.

They’re mostly dark grey, but have a prominent white patch on their right lower jaw. They lunge feed, which means they subsist on a steady diet of zooplankton. The presence of so many mothers with young calves suggests that the study site was at or near a breeding habitat where females give birth. The team was also able to make recordings of Omura’s whale song, which appears to be a male-limit trait (which isn’t unusual among whales, including sperm whales).

[MIKA27]

New Clues to Van Gogh’s Suicide

AMSTERDAM — In the voluminous letters of Vincent van Gogh, who lived on the brink of abysmal poverty and deep depression in the 1870s and ’80s, he would write from time to time about the gas lighting that he wanted and needed to keep working into the night. Candles were too dim; electric lights not yet widely available. But lighting gas, manufactured from coal and often full of impurities, could be had for a price.

In fact some of Van Gogh’s most well-known paintings, including the famous “Café de nuit,” were painted by gaslight. And at the height of his powers, which often coincided with depths of depression, he thought it a major accomplishment to get gas piped into the house he had rented in Arles, in the south of France, in 1888.

That may have been his undoing, as a new theory about his psychological condition suggests.

Dutch chemical engineer Rene van Slooten came up with the hypothesis this year after watching a television documentary about the artist. A Dutch actor was talking about a painting of Van Gogh’s house in Arles and noted that the street had been broken up because Van Gogh was having gas lighting installed. “That’s when the alarm bells started going off for me,” Van Slooten recalls.

Experience suggested to Van Slooten a new scenario that could explain Van Gogh’s illness and perhaps even his decision to take his own life at age 37. During Van Slooten’s career as a chemical engineer he’s often worked on the use of gas and the prevention of gas poisoning in industry and is well versed in the risks: “With the early gas lighting, toxins and heavy metals were released, such as carbon monoxide, lead and arsenic, metals which we now know are responsible for various ailments such as fainting, short temper, depression, psychosis and suicidal tendencies.”

Van Gogh had first begun to exhibit signs of severe mental illness in Arles in 1888, about the time he had the gas brought into his rooms, although drinking absinthe and cognac certainly heightened his problems. “If the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass more to stun myself,” he wrote to his brother and patron, Theo van Gogh.

As a study in The American Journal of Psychiatry noted in 2002, Vincent soon became still more disturbed: “Feverish creative activity alternated with episodes of listlessness to the point of exhaustion. Unpredictable mood shifts of dysphoria alternating with euphoria or with indescribable anguish became more frequent.”

Contrary to the conventional lack of wisdom about Van Gogh’s work, there was nothing crazy about his brushstrokes or his color, which he intended for emotional impact that transcended the subject matter—precisely the effect he achieved, and that led to eventual recognition of his greatness. And the letters he wrote from Arles are lucid, but frightened, as he talks about what’s going on in his head.

The Night Café by Vincent van Gogh, September 1888.

“I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head,” he wrote, “and at times I have attacks of melancholy and of atrocious remorse.”

In December of 1888, after an argument with Gauguin and at a time he was hearing voices, Van Gogh cut off a portion of his ear and gave it to his favorite prostitute, asking her to guard it for him. After that he was in and out of a hospital, eventually committing himself to a mental asylum at Saint Rémy—where, Van Slooten notes, he was still exposed to carbon monoxide fumes from gas and paraffin. In 1890 Van Gogh left for Auvers-sur-Oise, closer to Paris, where he spent the first weeks of the summer painting furiously and brilliantly before, finally, shooting himself in a field and dying in his grim, nearly lightless room above an auberge off the town square.

Van Slooten, whose gaslight theory has been widely reported in the European press, argues that the cumulative effect of gas poisoning may have been similar to that suffered a few decades earlier by the American poet and writer of horror tales, Edgar Allen Poe, and his wife Virginia. Research done on the hair of Poe, who died in 1849, and his wife Virginia, who died of tuberculosis in 1847, shows that she, at least, suffered considerable poisoning. “The level of uranium in Virginia’s hair when she lived in gas-lit New York City was very high, similar to that found in uranium miners, and approximately 15 times today’s normal level,” concludes one report on the tests.

Van Slooten published his theories on Poe and on Van Gogh last summer in the Baltimore Post-Examiner (Baltimore being Poe’s hometown). But his Van Gogh hypothesis didn’t convince everyone.

Retired neurologist and Van Gogh specialist Piet Voskuil, for instance, finds the theory highly unreliable. “Van Slooten is drawing broad conclusions based on a lot of suppositions," Voskuil says. “As a medical specialist you think about how and when you can arrive at a probable diagnosis. What Van Slooten is doing is assembling facts and arguing towards [a conclusion], using Van Gogh as a figurehead. That’s not scientific; it’s not clinical thinking. This subject just needs so much more before you can draw a conclusion like that. Where are the other patients? Why didn’t his roommates”—Paul Gauguin was one of them—“suffer the same symptoms?”

Van Slooten is not shooed away so easily and seems to enjoy a little jousting. “I think he [Voskuil] is not open to the medical facts of this theory. He’s a neurologist who has been specializing in Vincent van Gogh for years, and he’s not the only one. The American Journal of Psychiatry published an entire article a few years ago about the illness of Van Gogh, in which over 30 diagnoses are listed. That’s what Voskuil bases himself on. And there am I, an outsider, who comes with an entirely new story, well” — Van Slooten barely suppresses a giggle—“he doesn’t like it very much.”

Voskuil’s retort: There’s no evidence of a surge in mental patients in Arles linked to gas light during that time. “There are so many different ways to explain Van Gogh’s symptoms.”

However true that may be, it does not exclude the possibility of exposure playing a role, if only as an aggravating factor. To this day carbon monoxide poisoning continues to be a silent killer. In the Netherlands alone, 10 to 20 people die each year and around 80 are committed to hospital because of gas poisoning, even though it’s natural gas, much cleaner than coal gas, that is commonly used in Dutch households for cooking, water heaters and furnaces.

“Chronic exposure,” says Van Slooten, “inhaling of small doses of gas during longer periods of time, for instance because your steam boiler isn’t adjusted right or because your furnace went out, can cause all kinds of psychological effects like: depression and psychosis, nightmares and anxieties. These symptoms are often not spotted as poisoning by physicians who ascribe them to other causes.”

Voskuil remains skeptical: “Van Gogh had specific symptoms all his life. Everyone has an opinion on the matter. But research should be conducted with a certain kind of scientific validity. What was the cause? What were the triggers? Was it his use of absinthe? Why was there such a sudden beginning and end to his ‘episodes’? The theory of the lighting gas exposure has been suggested before, it doesn’t hold.”

Oh, but it does, argues Van Slooten: The artist may just have been more susceptible than others, and the record of his life suggests that may be the case. “Van Gogh was depressed before, but I think it coincides with previous exposures to lighting gas,” says Van Slooten. “Like the time he had an ‘episode’ in Paris, when he stayed with his brother, who had gaslight, or when he was staying in Antwerp, where he lived and did an evening course at the academy of arts, which had gaslight, too.”

About some things nobody disagrees, like the fact that Van Gogh had serious psychological issues. He sold virtually no canvases during his lifetime, and he felt he was a burden on his brother. But whatever the sources of his madness, “the storm within,” there is no question that the genius endures.

[MIKA27]

MERCEDES-BENZ VISION TOKYO

Autonomous driving is the latest trend in the automobile industry, so it’s only right that Mercedes has decided to throw its name into the hat with their latest unveiling, the Mercedes-Benz Vision Tokyo concept.

It’s basically a high-tech lounge on four wheels that uses Deep Machine Learning and Intelligent Predictive Engine technology along for the ride, meaning it becomes more and more familiar with its occupants and their preferences. The concept is powered by an electric engine and a hydrogen fuel cell, which would give it a driving range of over 600 miles. The design looks like something straight out of the year 2099, sporting a futuristic look with cool blue glows aplenty and a sleeked back exterior. It’s a homage to the urban Generation Z, those who have grown up with the new media in a connected world. If this is the mini-van of the future, count us all in.