I recently saw a vid on why we haven’t encountered any signs of intelligent life in the universe.  I can’t cite any reference on the web regarding this information (sorry to say).  Hopefully one of the commenters can fill in the gaps.

Regardless, the gist of the vid was this:  The reason why we haven’t detected signs of (hyper) intelligent life is because they suffer the same problems we do:  planned organic obsolescence.  The vid referenced a concept that Ray Kurzweil had thrown forth: all universal life goes through a series of evolutionary stages.

* Stage 0: Biological evolution.  Chaos.  Where we are right now.

* Stage 1: Complete mastery of planetary energy

* Stage 2: Complete mastery of the solar system energy

* Stage 3: Complete mastery of galactic energy

* Stage4: Complete mastery of universal energy

Stage 1 is the most interesting to us as a species.  Mastery of planetary energy does not refer only to raw energy production.  It also refers to human capability.  In other words, if all humans suddenly began working in unison, destroyed all borders, and removed all racial/social constructs, what could we achieve?

In this theory, the reason we haven’t seen any signs of intelligent life is because all life in the universe suffers from the same inane issues we do: pettiness, greed, corruption, competition, and ignorance.  Just as the Romans, the British, The Mongols, Aztecs, Mayans, etc etc etc, we keep falling backwards.  We never reach the level of unity required to reach Stage 1.

Why can’t we, as a species, achieve stage 1?  Considering the awesome benefits which would be at our finger tips, why do we avoid transcendence with such vigor?  I suggest the reason may be that we are biologically motivated to not step beyond our self imposed boundaries.  It’s a very convenient way to keep the territories of animals in tact with nature.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of our own success.  Fear.  How do we rid ourselves of fear?

That is what I’ve been pondering.  How do we rid ourselves of, well, human nature?  Where do we attack the problem?  What exactly is the problem?  How do we achieve Stage 1?   Do we want to?  So many questions and no answers.

One thing is for sure, we have no direction.  We think from day to day while genus’s like Kurzweil see what we do not…hope.

One of the things I found out about years ago that too many people have not heard of today is how you can use your computer’s idle CPU time to advance science. It all started when the SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) and the University of California at Berkley started up SETI@home deployed on a large scale the concept of distributed computing. The concept is simple basically computer tasks are broken up into thousands and thousands of small tasks that can be distributed to thousands and thousands of personal computers. The result of using so many computers is creating a super computer where scientists can crunch huge amounts of data in relatively shorts amounts of time.

Now there dozens of projects that use distributed computing and a simple to use program called BOINC (Berkley created this software as well) is used to organize and run these different projects.  These projects range from creating an accurate three dimensional model of our Milky Way galaxy (MilkyWay@home) to predicting climate change (climateprediction.net).  Of course many of my personal favorite projects have to do with chemisty, biochemistry and particle physics.  The program BOINC is very easy to use and it’s simple to attach yourself to many interesting projects.  It requires fewer computer resources than you might think and I barely notice it is running.  Currently there are Active: 328,838 volunteers, 582,721 computers and you can download the program BOINC here.

Many projects have interesting 3D animated graphics you can view when the project is running and a few even have screen savers.  A few projects I am attached to now are as follows:

SETI@Home or what I like to call “is their anybody out there” project.   The website describes the project in a short message below.

SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.

Following is a screen shot of it runing one my computer and a short video of the screen saver.

Rosetta@home information from their website.

Rosetta@home needs your help to determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins in research that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases. By running the Rosetta program on your computer while you don’t need it you will help us speed up and extend our research in ways we couldn’t possibly attempt without your help. You will also be helping our efforts at designing new proteins to fight diseases such as HIV, Malaria, Cancer, and Alzheimer’s.  (the project has a nice screen saver as well)

Following is a good video describing the Rosetta project from YouTube.

Below is a screen shot of the program calculating the tertiary protien structures.

Einstein@home is another great project that objective is to detect the presence of gravitational waves in our galaxy that were predicted by Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity.   Description of the project is listed below from the website.

According to Albert Einstein, we live in a universe full of gravitational waves. He suggested that the movements of heavy objects, such as black holes and dense stars, create waves that change space and time. We have a chance to detect these waves, but we need your help to do it!

Einstein@Home uses computer time donated by computer owners all over the world to process data from gravitational wave detectors. Participants in Einstein@Home download software to their computers, which process gravitational wave data when not being used for other computer applications, like word processors or games. Einstein@Home doesn’t affect the performance of computers and greatly speeds up this exciting research.

Following is a video of the interesting screen saver that comes with the project.

Climateprediction.net is one of the most interesting projects out there which includes about 100,000 simulation scenarios.  A short description of the project is contained below:

Climateprediction.net is a distributed computing project to produce predictions of the Earth’s climate up to 2080 and to test the accuracy of climate models. To do this, we need people around the world to give us time on their computers – time when they have their computers switched on, but are not using them to their full capacity.

The project has great interactive graphics capabilities and a screen saver that shows the resulting temperatures, pressures, cloud cover, rain & snow that the many models suggest.   Following is a short YouTube video showing the screen saver.

Following is a short documentary about the climatprediction.net project that was hosed by Sir. David Attenborough and was shown on BBC TV.

Below is are two screen shot from the project from results calculated on my computer showing predicted temperate changes and changes in rain and snow fall, respectively.

QMC@HOME Quantum Monte Carlo simulations used in calculating quantum properties for various chemicals.  The following describes the QMC project form the website below.

Quantum Chemistry
- is the science that invents smart approximations to Quantum Theory to predict molecular information with high accuracy. Nevertheless the solving of even approximated quantum chemical equations for real life systems require huge amounts of computing power.

Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC)
- is a very promising method new to Quantum Chemistry. One of the major advantages of QMC is the ability to perform massively parallel calculations, which can be utilized to broaden the horizon of calculable systems by distributing the work over hundreds or even thousands of processors.

Quantum Monte Carlo At Home (QMC@HOME)
- is a project designed to further develop the Quantum Monte Carlo method for general use in Quantum Chemistry. With the help of volunteers all over the world we want to aquire the computing power that is needed to test and further develop the opportunities of the promising new approach of Quantum Monte Carlo.

Here is a screen shot of a QMC simulation created by the program.

MilkyWay@home from their website:

The goal of Milkyway@Home is to use the BOINC platform to harness volunteered computing resources in creating a highly accurate three dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy using data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This project enables research in both astroinformatics and computer science.  Following is an image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey project.

There are other great that are not as flash but just as scientifically worthwhile.  Some of the other projects are as follows:

ABC@home a maths project to prove the ABC conjecture.

AQUA@home (Adiabatic QUantum Algorithms) is a research project whose goal is to predict the performance of superconducting adiabatic quantum computers.

Cosmology@home which is a program that’s objective is to model the universe.

Several projects have been completed that have helped scientists and medical researchers understand the spread of maleria using computer models and simulations for predicting population growth and density around the planet.  The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) team is set to start distributed computing projects once they start receive data from the enormous device.

BTW I used one of my favorite fonts in the top graphic named “quark” heh.

The Higgs Boson aka the “God Particle” is the talk of the popular science community now because billions and billions of Euros were spend on the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) so that it might be discovered.  But maybe more elusive in a way is the search for the source of dark matter.  Dark matter is the “missing” matter that is theorized to account for 80% of the extra gravitational effects physicists observe in the universe.  One class of particles that is thought to impart these massive gravitational effects are called WIMPS (Weakly Interactive Massive Particles).  The problem is that while these particles are theorized to be relatively large they interact very little with other forms of matter, for example they have no electromagnetic interaction with other particles, that they cannot be detected directly.

Experiments to find these WIMPS all occur deep under ground to minimize the effect of other types of radiation.  WIMPs even they they are relatively large are thought to pass right through the earth without any resistance but physicists have developed exotic detectors to discern the presence of WIMPs.

Physicists think they might have kind of detected these WIMPS in an ongoing experiment.

Experiment Detects Particles of Dark Matter, Maybe

by Ron Cowen

Analyzing results of an experiment in a northern Minnesota mine, physicists report the possible detection of particles of dark matter — the proposed invisible material believed to account for about 80 percent of the mass of the universe. The physicists caution, however, that there’s about a one in four chance that ordinary subatomic particles, rather than dark matter, could account for the signals.

The experiment, called the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, relies on 30 detectors made of germanium and silicon crystals cooled to just above absolute zero. The detectors record tiny vibrations imparted by a proposed type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. WIMPs streaming in from space would very rarely jostle the germanium nuclei, some 800 meters underground in the Soudan mine, generating a tiny amount of heat and slightly altering the charge on the detectors in a characteristic pattern.

About the only thing I promised myself this New Year is that I would spend more time going back to my scientific roots.  So expect at least one article a week that is science related.

While the rest of the blog world is obsessed with what President Obama WILL SAY, WILL NOT SAY or are presumptuous and insist on what he MUST SAY, I will opt to wait for what the president DOES SAY. My only recommendation is to judge what the president says by your own brain not some pundit’s brain.

Until then enjoy these latest images from the Hubble after the last mission to refurbish the historic telescope.

Carina Nebula

Soap Bubble Nebula

Active Super Massive Black Hole at Center of Galaxy

Planetary Nebula Kohoutek 4-55

Most distant stellar Explosion viewed by humankind.  The Universe was only 650 millions years old.

When Galaxies Collide.  One day our galaxy will collide with the Andromeda Galaxy.  But humankind will be long gone.

Close up of Jupiter’s Red Spot and Surrounding Storms

Planetary Nebula 10,000 Light Years Away

Two of the Galaxies Largest Stars

A Galaxy Cluster that Creates Stars at Twice the Rate of Most Galaxy Because of Enormous Gravitational Forces

A dust ring, seen in red, surrounds the star Fomalhaut.  The bright dot in the lower left quadrant is a far off planet seen for the first time called Fomalhaut b.

Ribbon-like Remnant of a Super Nova about 1,000 Years Old

Click on Link to See All the Images Released with more Detailed Descriptions

What does multi-dimensions look like?  (Calabi-Yau Model)

There are scientific discoveries and then there are scientific discoveries that rock our reality. Some of the major scientific discoveries that changed our perception of reality are listed below more or less chronologically.

1. Fire sure it probably just gave you a good chuckle mentioning fire but for the first time man could control a tiny sliver of nature for light, warmth, protection and cooking food.
2. Early math including Euclidean geometry and algebra which were the basis for all modern architecture.
3. Discovering the planet was round was not the center of the universe thanks to Kepler, Galileo and many others.
4. Newtonian physics and calculus where humankind discovered that everything on earth and in the heavens worked in a beautiful symphony of clockwork type movement.
5. Freud who was the first to develop the science around human behavior and motivations.
6. Darwin’s theory of Evolution which for the first time gave us a path to how humans and other species develop.
7. Electricity and magnetism that not only fuel the industrial revolution to this day but established the first science of the unseen.  While Edison gets the most credit by inventing the light bulb for applied electronics Tesla was the real genius that gave us alternating current that we use today.
8. Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity that set in motion modern astrophysics and was the first highly anti-intuitive scientific theory which predicted things thought to be crazy before like black holes.
9. Einstein’s most famous equation of all E=mc² which first predicted the tremendous power in the atom.
10. Hubble whose work in modern astronomy discovered the red shift and lead the way to Big Bang Theory first proposed by Georges Lemaître which gave us the first idea of how the universe came into being.
11. Heisenberg’s and Schrödinger’s discovery of quantum mechanics which just turned the world of classical physics on it’s head saying anything is possible but nothing is certain.
12. Watson and Crick who discovered DNA which is the basis of most life on this planet.
13. Plate tectonics that is now the basis for all global geology theory discovered by Wegener when he discovered that the Atlantic Ocean was getting larger.
14. String and M-theory where multiple dimensions are seen not only as possibilities but required to explain things like the relatively weak force of gravity.
15. Mapping the human genome.  I was simple ecstatic when President Obama chose the head of the genome project Francis Collins to head up the NIH because gene therapies (like stem cell treatment) are the next big advances in medical technology.

The mountain of scientific understanding that the last five major advancements in physics opened up are simply incredible because once the boundaries of determinist and intuitive physics were broken the possibilities literally remain endless.  Quantum field theory, Steven Hawking’s microscopic black holes, the unification of electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, variable gravity and speed of light, multiverses, super conductors, wormholes, chaos theory, nanotechnology, etc.  Humanities understanding of science is growing exponentially and projects like the Hubble even though it’s coming to an end, the JET plasma induced fusion reactor and the new LHC at CERN will continue to fuel new discoveries.

My list is probably skewed towards physics discoveries so please feel free to add to my list of discoveries that you think changed our perceptions of reality.

One of the THCs just because I can.

The Hubble Telescope Deep Field surveys into the previously thought darkness of space opened our eyes to how expansive our universe really is. If the following video does not humble you and help you understand what a limited place we take up in the grand scheme of the universe nothing will.  It is important to be humble because one of our biggest faults as individuals and as a species is to overestimate our importance.  This arrogance leads to people believing we are more important that the Gaia, every other species and our fellow human beings.  If people had more humility about our place in the universe we would not be as fixated on our petty differences and cherish our existence.

Enjoy!