Roll over Einstein: Law of physics challenged (BLOG)

GENEVA (AP) — One of the very pillars of physics and Einstein's theory of relativity — that nothing can go faster than the speed of light — was rocked Thursday by new findings from one of the world's foremost laboratories.

European researchers said they clocked an oddball type of subatomic particle called a neutrino going faster than the 186,282 miles per second that has long been considered the cosmic speed limit.

The claim was met with skepticism, with one outside physicist calling it the equivalent of saying you have a flying carpet. In fact, the researchers themselves are not ready to proclaim a discovery and are asking other physicists to independently try to verify their findings.

"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, which provided the particle accelerator that sent neutrinos on their breakneck 454-mile trip underground from Geneva to Italy.

Going faster than light is something that is just not supposed to happen according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity — the one made famous by the equation E equals mc2. But no one is rushing out to rewrite the science books just yet.

It is "a revolutionary discovery if confirmed," said Indiana University theoretical physicist Alan Kostelecky, who has worked on this concept for a quarter of a century.

Stephen Parke, who is head theoretician at the Fermilab near Chicago and was not part of the research, said: "It's a shock. It's going to cause us problems, no doubt about that — if it's true."

Even if these results are confirmed, they won't change at all the way we live or the way the world works. After all, these particles have presumably been speed demons for billions of years. But the finding will fundamentally alter our understanding of how the universe operates, physicists said.

Einstein's special relativity theory, which says that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics," said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the experiment. "It has worked perfectly up until now."

France's National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research collaborated with Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory on the experiment at CERN.

CERN reported that a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds. (A nanosecond is one-billionth of a second.)

Given the enormous implications of the find, the researchers spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there were no flaws in the experiment.

A team at Fermilab had similar faster-than-light results in 2007, but a large margin of error undercut its scientific significance.

If anything is going to throw a cosmic twist into Einstein's theories, it's not surprising that it's the strange particles known as neutrinos. These are odd slivers of an atom that have confounded physicists for about 80 years.

The neutrino has almost no mass, comes in three different "flavors," may have its own antiparticle and has been seen shifting from one flavor to another while shooting out from our sun, said physicist Phillip Schewe, communications director at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland.

Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, author of the book "Fabric of the Cosmos," said neutrinos theoretically can travel at different speeds depending on how much energy they have. And some mysterious particles whose existence is still only theorized could be similarly speedy, he said.

Fermilab team spokeswoman Jenny Thomas, a physics professor at the University College of London, said there must be a "more mundane explanation" for the European findings. She said Fermilab's experience showed how hard it is to measure accurately the distance, time and angles required for such a claim.

Nevertheless, Fermilab, which shoots neutrinos from Chicago to Minnesota, has already begun working to try to verify or knock down the new findings.

And that's exactly what the team in Geneva wants.

Gillies told The Associated Press that the readings have so astounded researchers that "they are inviting the broader physics community to look at what they've done and really scrutinize it in great detail, and ideally for someone elsewhere in the world to repeat the measurements."

Only two labs elsewhere in the world can try to replicate the work: Fermilab and a Japanese installation that has been slowed by the tsunami and earthquake. And Fermilab's measuring systems aren't nearly as precise as the Europeans' and won't be upgraded for a while, said Fermilab scientist Rob Plunkett.

Drew Baden, chairman of the physics department at the University of Maryland, said it is far more likely that the CERN findings are the result of measurement errors or some kind of fluke. Tracking neutrinos is very difficult, he said.

"This is ridiculous what they're putting out," Baden said. "Until this is verified by another group, it's flying carpets. It's cool, but ..."

So if the neutrinos are pulling this fast one on Einstein, how can it happen?

Parke said there could be a cosmic shortcut through another dimension — physics theory is full of unseen dimensions — that allows the neutrinos to beat the speed of light.

Indiana's Kostelecky theorizes that there are situations when the background is different in the universe, not perfectly symmetrical as Einstein says. Those changes in background may alter both the speed of light and the speed of neutrinos.

But that doesn't mean Einstein's theory is ready for the trash heap, he said.

"I don't think you're going to ever kill Einstein's theory. You can't. It works," Kostelecky said. There are just times when an additional explanation is needed, he said.

If the European findings are correct, "this would change the idea of how the universe is put together," Columbia's Greene said. But he added: "I would bet just about everything I hold dear that this won't hold up to scrutiny."

Where On Earth Will NASA's Doomed Satellite Fall On Friday? (BLOG)

A dead NASA satellite will plummet to Earth on Friday (Sept. 23), and while the U.S. space agency doesn't know exactly where pieces of the massive spacecraft will hit, one thing is certain: North America is in the clear.

NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, is set to make an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere on Friday. However, it is still too early to tell exactly where the 6.5-ton spacecraft will fall. Scientists will likely have a much better idea of where the debris will land about two hours before the impact, NASA officials said.

But, NASA was able to rule out North America as being in the potential debris drop zone.

"Re-entry is expected sometime during the afternoon of Sept. 23, Eastern Daylight Time," agency officials said in a statement. "The satellite will not be passing over North America during that time period. It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any more certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 24 to 48 hours."

In the meantime, NASA and the U.S. Air Force will be closely monitoring the satellite and its decaying orbit.

"With re-entry we're always interested in day-by-day and hour-by-hour details," Mark Matney, a scientist with NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, told SPACE.com. "It's very difficult to predict how it's going to happen. With our models, we try to figure out what parts of the spacecraft — what materials — will interact with the atmosphere in terms of temperature and melting, and determine which of those will survive. But it's a very dynamic environment, the force is very intense." [Photos of NASA's Huge Falling Satellite UARS]



Wide range of possibilities

Current predictions of the potential impact zone cover a giant swath of the planet — anywhere between the latitudes of northern Canada and southern South America. Scientists will be able to refine these projections as the spacecraft makes its fiery journey through the atmosphere.

"It's partly a matter of not knowing enough," said Ray Williamson, executive director of the Secure World Foundation, an organization dedicated to the peaceful use of outer space. "The shape of the structure is not perfectly spherical, so when it heats up and starts to break up, it will break into odd pieces. Once it begins to break up, then they can get a better sense of where this is roughly going to hit."

Scientists at NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office estimate that at least 26 large pieces of the bus-size satellite will endure the scorching heat of re-entry. Approximately 1,170 pounds (532 kilograms) of material are expected to reach the ground, NASA officials said.

These pieces of debris will likely be scattered over a 500-mile (804-kilometer) long path. But agency officials have been quick to stress that there is very little chance that satellite chunks will smash intotowns or cities. [Amateur Astronomer Photographs Doomed Satellite]

Instead, it's much more likely that the debris will fall over water or remote, uninhabited areas, NASA officials said.

"There's always a concern," Matney said. "But, populated areas are a small fraction of the Earth's surface. Much of the Earth's surface has either no people or very few people. We believe that the risk is very modest."

Odds of human injury very low

For comparison, when NASA's space shuttle Columbia tragically broke apart during re-entry in 2003, debris from the 100-ton spacecraft was scattered across Texas, but did not damage any structures or injure any people.

"When [Columbia] came back, as the shuttle heated up, it broke into pieces — some of them very large, and some very small," Williamson said. "Even then, there was difficulty in trying to find the pieces that were spread over such a large area. It was such an unpopulated area that it was very difficult to locate all the pieces, even though they knew from videos pretty much precisely the track that it followed across the atmosphere."



NASA has calculated the odds of anyone anywhere in the world being hit by a piece of the UARS satellite at 1in3,200. But, the chance that you personally will get hit is much more remote, on the order of 1inseveral trillion, Williamson said.

Still, if anyone happens to stumble upon a piece of the defunct satellite on the ground, agency officials stress that for safety and legal reasons, it is best to leave the material where it is, and alert the authorities.

"If you find something you think may be a piece of UARS, do not touch it," NASA officials said. "Contact a local law enforcement official for assistance."

1-in-3,200 chance you'll be hit by fiery satellite chunks on Friday (BLOG)

Small fiery pieces of what was once a climate-monitoring satellite will hurtle towards the Earth's surface this Friday.

Unless you live in Greenland, Siberia or Antarctica, watch out for dazzling lights in the sky as red-hot lumps of NASA-grade aluminium descend upon our planet.

The space agency predicts that the debris from the 20-year-old Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) has a 1-in-3,200 chance of hitting a person, a scenario they consider "extremely remote". It is mostly likely the expensive shards will plummet into the sea, NASA said.

Sadly, if you do manage to catch a chunk of satellite, the US government expressly forbids you from selling it on eBay. The smouldering lump will remain the property of the United States and must be turned over to local police.

Most of the 6.5-tonne craft will burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, but NASA debris experts say that at least 26 large pieces of the satellite will survive the scorching temperatures of atmospheric re-entry.

And they could land anywhere between the latitudes of Northern Canada and southern South America – an area comprising most of the world.

The climate taster has been orbiting the Earth, sampling the ozone layer and chemical compounds in the upper atmosphere. When the $750m UARS satellite was launched in 1991, NASA intended it to last for three years. But it kept going until 2005 when NASA ordered the satellite to burn its remaining fuel and prepare for a suicide dive to Earth.

The last of its fuel is now gone, and the UARS has been gradually pulled closer to Earth. Some recent solar activity has also advanced its descent. This activity can cause the Earth's atmosphere to heat and expand, increasing drag on spacecraft.


thregister

'Switchblade' claw reveals how dinosaur fought (BLOG)

Battle damage linked to the fearsome curving talon of a newly discovered dinosaur relative of Velociraptor is shedding light on how it was used as a weapon, scientists find.

This research also adds to the mysterious complexity seen in the lost continent where this fossil was found, researchers added.

The newfound 75-million-year-old dinosaur is a feathered raptor namedTalos sampsoni— "Talos" in homage to a winged bronze giant in Greek mythology that could run at lightning speed and that succumbed to a wound to his ankle, "sampsoni" in honor of Scott Sampson of the PBS series "Dinosaur Train," and a research curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

The raptor dinosaurs, made famous by the book and film " Jurassic Park," all possessed unusually large, sickle-like claws on the second toes of each foot, which they held off the ground like folded switchblades.

A famous discovery made in Mongolia 30 years ago seemingly of a Velociraptor locked in mortal combat with prey — fossils dubbed the "fighting dinosaurs" — suggested these talons were used as weapons. Now the injured claw of Talos sheds even more light on how they lived with these weapons.

Little scrapper
Talos was a type of troodontid, a group of dinosaurs whose anatomy suggests they were closely related to birds.

Estimated to have been about 6 feet long and weigh about 83 pounds, Talos was neither the smallest nor largest troodontid. For instance, Talos was much larger than tiny troondontids such as Anchiornis, which may have been as small as 100 grams, while it was smaller and more slender than its approximately 8-foot-long cousin Troodon, after which this group of dinosaurs is named. "Talos was fleet-footed and lightly built," said researcher Lindsay Zanno, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. "This little guy was a scrapper." (Zanno is also a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.)

The researchers discovered the specimen in the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. The area is one of the last pristine dinosaur graveyards in the United States, with at least 15 new dinosaur species discovered there in just the past decade, including the turkey-like Hagryphus giganteus, horned dinosaurs Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops, duck-billed dinosaurs, including Gryposaurus monumentensis, two new tyrannosaurs and a number of armored dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs.

"Finding a decent specimen of this type of dinosaur in North America is like a lightning strike," Zanno said, referring to the fact that troodontids are known nearly exclusively from Asia. "It's a random event of thrilling proportions."

Researcher Michael Knell also voiced his excitement: "I was surprised when I learned that I had found a new dinosaur," said Knell, a doctoral student at Montana State University. "It is a rare discovery, and I feel very lucky to be part of the exciting research happening here in the monument." He stumbled across the remains of Talos while exploring the area for fossil turtles as part of his doctoral research.

Talon trauma
After the researchers began studying the fossil, they discovered what appeared to be signs of trauma to its second toe on its left foot, the one that would have bore an enlarged hook-like claw.

"When we realized we had evidence of an injury, the excitement was palpable," Zanno said. "An injured specimen has a story to tell."

Evidence of injury can shed light on how a body part was used, the researchers explained. An injury to the foot of a raptor dinosaur, for example, can yield new details about the potential function of its toes and claws.

"Normally we think that the most pristine fossils we can find perhaps yield the most important information, but in fact sometimes it's the beat-up, damaged, injured specimens that can give you clues about the biology of an extinct animal you wouldn't have otherwise," Zanno told LiveScience.

Using a high-resolution micro-CT scanner, Zanno and her colleagues saw the injury was restricted to the toe with the enlarged claw — it had either been fractured or bitten and then suffered from a localized infection.

"People have speculated that the talon on the foot of raptor dinosaurs was used to capture prey, fight with other members of the same species, or defend the animal against attack," Zanno said. "Our interpretation supports the idea that these animals regularly put this toe in harm's way."

Intriguingly, the injured toe showed signs of the kind of changes in bone that occur over many weeks to months, suggesting that Talos lived with a serious injury to its foot for a long time.

"Whatever it typically did with the enlarged talon on the left foot, whether that be acquire prey or interact with other members of the species, it must have been capable of doing so fairly well with the one on the right foot," said researcher Patrick O'Connor at Ohio University.
Footprints made by raptors closely related to Talos suggest they all held the switchblade talon off the ground when walking.

"Our data support the idea that the talon of raptor dinosaurs was not used for purposes as mundane as walking," Zanno said. "It was an instrument meant for inflicting damage."

Talos meals
It remains uncertain what Talos might have eaten. "Many are still debating over what its relatives ate," Zanno said. "My recent research suggests it was probably either a carnivore or an omnivore, eating some degree of prey."

Talos lived in a warm greenhouse world devoid of polar ice caps. In what is now North America, a shallow seaway that ran from the Gulf of Mexico through to the Arctic Ocean divided the continent into two landmasses, East America, or Appalachia, and West America, or Laramidia, for several million years.

"The area was basically the complete antithesis of what it is now," Zanno said. While the area is now quite dry, "it was extremely wet then, a very, very lush environment, almost swampy, and regularly bombarded by massive storms coming in off the seaway that divided North America at the time."

Mysteriously, the dinosaurs of the lost continent of Laramidia appeared to be unusually diverse. Normally, large animals are expected to span the whole area in which they live, as is the case with coyotes and mountain lions nowadays, and this might be expected to prove true with relatively small continents such as Laramidia. However, dinosaurs from the rock formation holding Talos are entirely distinct from ones living just a few hundred miles to the north in what is now Montana and Alberta.

"We already knew that some of the dinosaurs inhabiting southern Utah during the Late Cretaceous were unique, but Talos tells us that the singularity of this ecosystem was not just restricted to one or two species — rather, the whole area was like a lost world in and of itself," Zanno said.

When it comes to how this diversity might have developed, "we're just asking that question now," Zanno added. "Some preliminary research done by a colleague of mine suggests there may have been geographic barriers — mountain ranges and rivers — dividing up populations, keeping them isolated for long enough to become new species."
Much could still be found in this region. "We're going to continue scouring these badlands — this area is one of the last dinosaur graveyards anywhere in the United States," Zanno said.
The bones of Talos will be on exhibit for the first time in the Past Worlds Observatory at the new Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. The scientists detailed their findings online Monday in the journal PLoS ONE.



livescience

Mysterious 'booming sounds' perplex scientists (BLOG)

(MSN)Mysterious booming sounds are occasionally heard on the North Carolina coast, often powerful enough to rattle windows and doors. They cannot be explained by thunderstorms or any manmade sources — their source is a mystery.

Such dins are not unique to North Carolina or the modern age. People living near Seneca Lake in upstate New York have long known of similar booming sounds, which they called "Seneca guns." In coastal Belgium, they are known as "mistpouffers," or fog belches; in the Ganges delta and the Bay of Bengal, "Bansal guns;" in the Italian Apennines, "brontidi," or thunder-like; and by the Harami people of Shikoku, Japan, "yan."

"What's going on is an interesting challenge, whatever it might be," said seismologist David Hill, scientist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey office in Menlo Park, Calif.

Long list of explanations

A host of plausible explanations may now exist for these enigmas, including earthquakes, rock bursts, mud volcanoes, explosive venting of gas, storm-driven waves, tsunamis, meteors, distant thunder and so-called booming sands.

"It seems there is quite a range of processes in nature that might be responsible," Hill told OurAmazingPlanet.

"Earwitnesses" described sounds like booming cannons or falling stones accompanying small to moderate earthquakes in England from 1880 to 1916. In 1975, U.S. Geological Survey researchers managed to record both acoustic and seismic signals of an earthquake swarm in California, finding that three earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 2.0 to 2.8 produced sounds that began within 0.02 seconds of the arrival of seismic waves at the scientists' station. Similar results were seen with quakes in the French Pyrenees in 2004.

All in all, audible sounds from earthquakes might be perceived even when shaking is not, Hill suggested. For instance, while earthquakes are rare in coastal North Carolina, they are relatively common in the Charleston area of South Carolina, the site of the 1886 magnitude 7.6 Charleston quake, and the Catskill Mountains that Seneca Lake is located within do host low-level earthquake activity. Locals could be hearing an earthquake that is too small for them to feel.

Also, rock bursts, where long-buried rock can suddenly release stress, often because of mining removing confining material above it, can essentially be seen as a type of small, near-surface earthquake. Scientists have reported feeling perceptible jolts and hearing sharp booming sounds from such bursts, Hill said.

Giant waves might also be responsible for the mystery sounds, Hill suggested. Scientists have found that booming sounds are apparently familiar to big-wave surfers during extreme waves. In addition, after the catastrophic 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami, multiple witnesses said they heard loud, offshore booming sounds closely accompanying two or three of the largest waves that struck the coast at any given site.

"I was surprised to learn about the possibility that tsunamis produce these kinds of sounds," Hill said. "I don't think anyone understands that process."

Hill suggests the sounds heard off the coasts of North Carolina, Belgium and the Bay of Bengal might be large waves caused by distant storms that break well offshore, beyond outer banks or barrier beaches. Such waves might also disrupt offshore methane hydrate deposits, leading to explosive venting of high-pressure gas trapped deep within the Earth.

Another possibility is meteors. Meteors can generate sonic booms and explode dramatically as they plummet from space. Given how long it can take a shockwave to reach the Earth's surface from the upper atmosphere, visible signs of the meteor can vanish before its sonic boom is heard, especially during the daytime, Hill noted.

Under the right circumstances, even sand dunes can generate a variety of sounds, including whispering, humming, whistling and squeaking. Booming sands, comparable to rumbling thunder, can be heard to distances of 6 miles and for as long as 15 minutes, are possible as well. They generally appear limited to large sand dunes in arid climates with steep faces pointing away from the wind, and seem to require loosely packed, very smooth, almost spherical sand grains.

"In the eastern desert in Egypt, the Bedouins have a long history of hearing booms and avoiding that area — after installing seismometers there, researchers were able to go back and see these sounds seem correlated with small earthquakes that caused booming sands," Hill said.

In the future, after potential artificial sources of mysterious booming sounds are ruled out, such as military exercises and quarry blasts, seismic networks could quickly reveal if earthquakes or volcanoes were responsible. For instance, the USArray, a mobile network of seismometers, is currently moving east across the United States and "it might help resolve the issue of what the sounds on the North Carolina coast are," Hill said.

Planet Like 'Star Wars' Tatooine Discovered Orbiting 2 Suns (BLOG)

It's a real-life Tatooine. A spectacle made popular by the "Star Wars" saga — a planet with two suns — has now been confirmed in space for the first time, astronomers revealed.

Scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope captured details of a giant planet in orbit around the pair of binary stars that make up the Kepler-16 system, which is about 200 light-years away.

"This discovery is stunning," said study co-author Alan Boss at the Carnegie Institute in Washington. "Once again, what used to be science fiction has turned into reality." [See an image and video of Tatooine planet Kepler 16b]



When Tatooine was depicted on film, many scientists doubted that such planets could really exist. Now there's proof.

"It's possible that there's a real Tatooine out there," said John Knoll, visual effects supervisor at the special-effects firm Industrial Light and Magic, which was behind the "Star Wars" films. "Kepler 16b is unambiguous and dramatic proof that planets really do form around binaries."

The new discovery is expanding the bounds of what scientists, as well as filmakers, can conceive, he said.

"Again and again we see that the science is stranger and cooler than fiction," Knoll said during a NASA press conference today. "The very existence of these discoveries gives us cause to dream bigger, to question our assumptions."

The planet, dubbed Kepler-16(AB)-b, passes in front of both stars in view of the satellite, regularly dimming their light. Each star also eclipses its companion as they orbit each other. Altogether, these motions allow scientists to precisely calculate the masses, radii and trajectories of all three bodies.

The newfound planet keeps a distance from its stars nearly three-quarters that of the distance between the Earth and the sun. It is somewhat like Saturn in size, although nearly 50 percent denser, suggesting it is richer in heavy elements. [10 Real Alien Worlds That Could Be In 'Star Wars']

"Kepler-16(AB)-b is not habitable as we know it," said study lead author Laurance Doyle , an astrophysicist at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

This alien world travels on a nearly circular 229-day orbit around its two parent stars, Kepler-16A and Kepler-16B, which are about 69 and 20 percent as massive as the sun, respectively. The stars keep close to each other — only a fifth of the distance between Earth and the sun on average, which is closer than Mercury gets to the sun — completing an orbit around each other every 41 days, researchers added. [Infographic: New Planet is Like "Star Wars'" Tatooine]

Worlds that orbit around two stars, known as circumbinary planets, had been hinted at before. Stars in pairs both orbit around a point in space called barycenter, and researchers at times saw these orbits were slightly off, suggesting the presence of a planet tugging at both stars. However, Kepler-16(AB)-b is the first planet that scientists have detected directly passing in front of, or transiting, its stars, temporarily dimming their light.

Since the movements of this world and its two stars are all virtually confined to the same plane, the researchers suggest they all formed from the same disk of dust and gas. Planets that were captured from other star systems might be expected to orbit at a range of angles.

"Now that we know how to detect circumbinary planets, I think we are going to find a lot more rapidly," Doyle told SPACE.com.

The scientists detailed their findings in the Sept. 16 issue of the journal Science.

NASA: Satellite pieces to hit Earth in a week (BLOG)

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. space officials say they expect a dead satellite to fall to Earth in about a week.

NASA has been watching the 6-ton (5.4-metric ton) satellite closely. On Friday officials moved up their prediction for its arrival to Sept. 23, give or take a day.

NASA scientists have calculated the satellite will break into 26 pieces as it gets closer to Earth. The odds of it hitting someone anywhere on the planet are 1 in 3,200. The heaviest piece to hit the ground will be about 350 pounds (159 kilograms), but no one has ever been hit by falling space junk in the past.

NASA expects to give the public more detailed information early next week. For now, all continents except Antarctica could be hit by satellite debris.

Hospital celebrates after conjoined twins separated (BLOG)

NASHVILLE, Tenn — Joshua and Jacob Spates, who spent their first seven months outside the womb as conjoined twins, are recovering in the pediatric intensive care unit of a Memphis hospital after a successful 13-hour surgery to separate them.

Dr. Max Langham, team leader for the separation, said on Wednesday that all involved are enjoying a "celebratory mood of how well Joshua and Jacob are doing."

The twins, who were joined at the spine, were separated August 29. Two weeks later, not only are the boys healthy, "both of them are using their legs and getting ready to try to crawl out of bed," Langham said.

"Most conjoined twins don't ever get a chance to get to separation because they die from complications at delivery," said Langham, chief of pediatric surgery at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital.

Conjoined twins occur in one out of 100,000 births. These boys were born pygopagus twins, joined back-to-back at the pelvis and lower spine, but with separate hearts, heads and limbs.

This condition occurs in just 15 percent of the cases of conjoined twins, according to Le Bonheur.

It took a 34-member pediatric surgical team 13 hours to separate the Memphis brothers' spinal column bone, nerves and muscles and to complete gastrointestinal repairs.

An ultrasounds last November confirmed that the two boys were conjoined. After being monitored for eight weeks, the babies -- who had a shared rectum, muscles and nerves -- were delivered via Caesarean on January 24.

Two days later, surgeons performed a colostomy and inserted a gastrostomy tube to assist with nutrition and waste elimination, according to the hospital press office.

Doctors had to deal with a number of other conditions in the following months. Joshua had a single kidney, a heart defect and calcifications in the spleen and Jacob had a two-vessel umbilical cord and a heart defect.

Langham said members of the medical team "spent over a month" planning and rehearsing the operation.

The doctor said the trickiest part of the surgery involved dealing with the part of the spine shared by the boys



reuters

'Stem Cell Zoo' May Aid Endangered Species (BLOG)

Stem cells are quickly becoming an important tool for human medical treatments, and researchers are betting they will also be a useful tool for zoo animals. They are working to create stem cell lines from zoo animals, for use in treating animal diabetes and other ailments as well as helping the animals reproduce.

The scientists have already created a "frozen zoo," which contains different types of cells from every animal there, and now they are putting together a "stem cell zoo."

"There are only two animals in it," study researcher Inbar Friedrich Ben-Nun, of The Scripps Research Institute, said in a statement, "but we have the start of a new zoo, the stem cell zoo."

Stem cells are prized, because they can be turned into any type of cell in the body, a characteristic called pluripotency. The cells can even be turned into sperm or egg cells, and used in assisted reproduction to make more individuals of the species.

"The most important thing is to provide these stem cells as a resource for other people taking some of the next steps," said Jeanne Loring, also of The Scripps Research Institute.

Endangered stem cells

The researchers started with two species: the drill primate, a highly endangered primate genetically close to humans, and the northern white rhinoceros, which is genetically far from humans and alsoincredibly endangered.

To create the stem cells, the researchers used the same genes that are used to turn human cells pluripotent; they inserted those genes into the animals' skin cells. They had originally tried to use genes from the animals themselves and their close relatives, but after more than a year of trying they were having little success.

The new technique isn't very efficient yet, transforming just a few cells into stem cells at a time, but that's enough, the researchers said.

Stem cell therapies

Both animals, the researchers said, were chosen because they could benefit from stem cells now. For instance, the drill primate suffers from diabetes when in captivity, and stem cell-based treatments for diabetes being researched in humans suggest the same may work in these primates.

The rhinoceros was chosen because it is one of the most highly endangered species on the planet, with only seven animals, all in captivity, in existence (two of which are in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park). They haven't reproduced in several years, and because the population is so small there is a lack of genetic diversity, which could affect their survival.

If the researchers can use the stem cells to make sperm and eggs from skin cells of deceased animalsin the frozen zoo, they could reintroduce some genetic diversity into the population, while also increasing its size.

"The best way to manage extinctions is to preserve species and their habitats," study researcher Oliver Ryder, of the San Diego Zoo, said in a statement. "But that's not working all the time."

The rhinos are a perfect example, he said, because there are so few. "Stem cell technology provides some level of hope that they won't have to become extinct even though they've been completely eliminated from their habitats."

The study was published today (Sept. 4) in the journal Nature Methods.

Too wacky? Moving water from flood to drought (BLOG)

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the soggy East tries to dry out from flooding and Texas prays for rain that doesn't come, you might ask: Isn't there some way to ship all that water from here to there?

It's an idea that has tempted some, but reality gets in the way.

A Texas oilman once envisioned long pipelines carrying water to drought-stricken Texas cities, just one of several untested fantasies of moving water vast distances. Parched Las Vegas still wants to indirectly siphon off excess water from the overflowing Mississippi River. French engineers have simulated hauling an iceberg to barren Africa. There are even mega-trash bags to move heavy loads of water.

There's certainly plenty of rainwater available. Tropical Storm Lee dumped enough on the already saturated Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Gulf Coast to bring 9.6 inches of rain across the entire state of Texas, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and The Associated Press.

"One man's flood control is another man's water supply," said Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. "Doesn't it make you want to think about a larger distribution that helps both? That's the crazy part of this. It's a win-win. There's no loser."

But moving vast quantities of water is not simple or cheap, and thus not realistic, experts say. Mostly, it's too costly and political.

However, these dreamed-up concepts show that a quiet water crisis is getting more desperate.

"We will go to any lengths to avoid confronting the reality of water shortages," said University of Arizona law professor Robert Glennon, author of the book "Unquenchable."

"What all those zany ideas suggest are the traditional beliefs that we can control nature and there must be some oasis out there where we can go to, to import water."

But those are mirages, he said — tempting, but not realistic.

Mike Halpert, deputy director of the NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, knows the temptation. He's about to fly from Washington, which has had 7 inches since Monday, to Houston, which got about that amount of rain for the entire spring and summer. All that D.C. rain would be enough water for every person in Houston for 10 days.

He jested that he would love to carry water in his suitcases. He said colleagues have been "joking that we'll send Texas our water. Will they send us their oil? But I don't think that's going to fly."

The trouble with water is "there's enough quantity but it is not always in the right places," said G. Tracy Mehan, who was chief water regulator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration during the George W. Bush Administration.

So how about moving it?

"The short answer ... is that it costs too much. It's not a technical problem," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Studies Institute and a MacArthur genius grant recipient for his work on water.

Las Vegas' grand proposal is to take water from the mighty Mississippi in a series of smaller pipeline-like exchanges among states just west of the Mississippi to refill the overused Colorado River. There are no official cost estimates, but it likely would be in the hundreds of billions dollars. Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens abandoned his plans for a massive water pipeline stretching across Texas to just moving water around the Texas Panhandle.

Water weighs a lot — about 8.3 pounds per gallon — so moving massive amounts, often up mountains, costs a lot, Glennon said. Gleick notes that conservation and efficiency are cheaper.

Building a pipeline to pump water from flooded areas is foolish because each year it is somewhere different that gets drenched, so you can't build something permanent based on a couple of years' unusual rainy weather, NOAA's Halpert said.

For purely moving water, Gleick likes a smaller-scale concept: the trash bag. A California firm has designed Spragg Bags "with the world's strongest zippers" that haul millions of gallons of drinking water from one place to another over the ocean, said inventor Terry Spragg. It's been used in Greece.

When asked the cost to haul excess water by bag from the flooded Northeast to Texas, Spragg declined to say. "It just wouldn't be practical. It's just too distant... Forget about taking it from New Jersey or Pennsylvania, there are sources that are closer."

If you want to go high-tech for water, desalination — taking salt out of ocean water — and reusing wastewater for drinking water are cheaper and more realistic, said Gleick, author of the book "Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water."

In Big Spring, Texas, they are looking at reusing wastewater by treating it and then adding it to the fresh water supply. Orange County, Calif., has a state-of-the-art water recycling program. And on the International Space Station astronauts use a system that turns their urine into drinkable water. Tampa has a new $158 million water desalination plant that can produce as much as 25 million gallons of water a day from the sea.

While those who need more water say the challenge is just a matter of balancing out too much and too little, other experts say there is a bigger problem: 1 billion people on Earth don't have clean drinking water.

"Absolutely there's a water crisis, but it means different things in different places," Gleick said. "In Africa, it's people dying because they don't have safe drinking water. In Texas, it means people at risk and property being damaged because there's a natural drought. In some places, it might mean not enough water to make semiconductors and grow food.

"Nature always distributes water unevenly — that's just the way it goes," Gleick said.

In the 20th century in the United States, the answer to water shortages was to drill another well, tap another aquifer, build more dams, divert more rivers and build pipelines, Gleick said. But now "we're running into limits."

Politics is almost as big a barrier as price. Legal battles over water run rampant in U.S. history, especially out West. But now they have gone nationwide, along with shortages. North Carolina has sued South Carolina, Florida has sued Georgia and Alabama, and the Great Lakes states have banded together to fend off water diversions, Glennon said. The Great Lakes region has been in and out of court over water rights for about a century.

"People are concerned about water rights. Even in eastern water-rich states, you don't want to be giving it away," said Robert Holmes, who deals with the problem of too much water. He is the national flood hazard coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey.

University of Colorado natural hazards professor Kathleen Tierney put it more bluntly: "As we say in Colorado, whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over."

Mars rover finds evidence of ancient water at new hotspot (BLOG)

NASA's Opportunity rover has found another spot where warm water may have flowed or percolated on Mars long ago, researchers announced Thursday.

Opportunity made the find while studying a rock on the rim ofMars' huge Endeavour Crater. The rock, called Tisdale 2, has unusually high levels of zinc and bromine, elements often depositedby water — especially hot water. The rock is unlike anything else ever seen up close on Mars, researchers said.

On Earth, life just needs water and energy to get a foothold, and hydrothermal systems teem with microbes. Such sites are thus good places to look for evidence of ancient life on Mars, which is cold and dry today.

Opportunity's twin rover, Spirit, discovered strong evidence of an ancient hydrothermal system near its landing site back in 2007. While researchers are still interpreting Opportunity's data, they think Endeavour's rim might well harbor another one. [Mars Photos by Spirit and Opportunity]

"When you find rocks on Earth that are rich in zinc, they typically formed in a place where you had some kind of hydrothermal activity going on," Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for Spirit and Opportunity's mission, told reporters Thursday. "This is a clue that we may be dealing with a hydrothermal system here."

A cradle for life?
Endeavour is a giant impact crater about 14 miles (22 kilometers) across. Opportunity just arrived at its rimon Aug. 9, at a site called "Cape York." The region looks completely different from other parts of Mars that Spirit and Opportunity have explored, researchers said.

Tisdale 2, which is about the size of a footstool, is the first rock the rover has examined in detail at Endeavour. So, researchers stressed, their investigation is still preliminary. They can't yet say for certain that Opportunity has uncovered a long-dead hydrothermal system — but it's a possibility.

Further, this system might be even more exciting than the one Spirit found four years ago. The warm water in that system was likely to have been very acidic, Squyres said. So was a lot of the other water bubbling out of the Martian ground long ago, both near Spirit's site and near Opportunity's site.

But the rocks and soil around Endeavour might be more neutral and thus more benign, researchers said. NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars have gathered compelling evidence that there are clay minerals in the area. And clay minerals don't form in acidic conditions.

"So if there really are clay minerals present, as we suspect there are," Squyres said, "then that points to water with a very different chemistry — water that's more neutral, and conditions that would have been more suitable for life."

A hydrothermal system doesn't necessarily mean flowing water, he added. Hot water vapor may have also moved through the rocks long ago.

And it was long, long ago — likely billions of years, researchers said.

This rock, informally named "Tisdale 2," was the first rock Opportunity examined in detail on the rim of Endeavour crater. The 12-inch-tall (30-centimeter-tall) rock has textures and composition unlike any rock the rover examined during its first 90 months on Mars. Its characteristics are consistent with the rock being a breccia — a type of rock fusing together broken fragments of older rocks.

The heat to power this system may have come from the impact that created Endeavour, Squyres said. Such a destructive event would have transferred mammoth amounts of heat to the red dirt and rocks.

Just getting started
Researchers hope to flesh out just what's going on at Endeavour over the coming weeks and months. Opportunity, after all, has only just begun studying the giant crater.

"Amazingly, after seven years and eight months, we're embarked on a brand-new mission," said Ray Arvidson, the rover mission's deputy principal investigator at Washington University in St. Louis. [Video: Opportunity's 7 Years of Mars Roving]

Opportunity and Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004, on what was planned to be just a three-month mission to search for signs of past water activity on Mars. Both robots delivered in a big way, finding lots of evidence that the Red Planet was a much wetter, warmer place in the ancient past.

The twin rovers long outlasted their warranties.

Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010, and NASA pronounced the rover dead this past May. Opportunity, however, is still going strong. It has now covered 20.8 miles (33.5 kilometers) on the Martian surface — more than 30 times its original distance objective.

Opportunity is showing some signs of its advanced age. Mission engineers have been driving the rover backward for the last few years, for example, to distribute the wear more evenly among the rover's gear mechanisms.

But the rover keeps chugging along. And it finally reached Endeavour, which has been its targeted destination since August 2008. The mission team is excited to start studying the crater's environs in detail.

"This has the potential to be the most revealing destination ever explored by Opportunity," said Dave Lavery, program executive for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This region is substantially different than anything we've seen before."

Scientists find underground river beneath Amazon (BLOG)

Brazilian scientists have discovered an underground river some 4,000 meters (13,000) feet deep, which flows from west to east like the country's famous waterway.

A statement this week from Brazil's National Observatory named the underground river Hamza and said it represents one of two different draining systems for the large rainforest region.

A team of scientists led by Elizabeth Pimentel came to the conclusion from studying 241 wells drilled by the state oil giant Petrobras in the Amazon region.

Even though the two rivers cover a similar path they have differences. The underground river flows at a far slower pace and empties into the ocean deep underground.

"It is likely that this river is responsible for the low level of salinity in the waters around the mouth of the Amazon," the statement said.

Jaw-droppingly gorgeous video captures the Milky Way as Earth spins (BLOG,VIDEO)

Tempest Milky Way requires very little exposition before you watch the video. It's essentially 3 minutes of incredible, jaw-dropping scenery as the Earth spins, the stars revolving through the night sky as if riding a conveyer belt. The clarity and detail presented is absolutely astounding, giving you the chance to watch the sky in breathtaking color. Obviously, it reminds us a little of another timelapse video of the Milky Way, which was also quite a hit.

Randy Halverson created this video entirely using views of the sky in South Dakota. He was challenged getting good shots of storms and stars. Since all of the scenes were shot via timelapse photography, it wouldn't take much to ruin a chunk of footage. If the storm wasn't moving just the right way, or if the lightning wasn't quite right, then Randy couldn't use the images. This video became an endeavor of careful patience and detail-oriented composition.

The video was shot between June to August. The music was created by Simon Wilkinson at The Blue Mask and Randy's cameras include a Canon 5D Mark II, a Canon 60D, and others. Randy used a camera dolly from Dynamic Perception to achieve steady motion in the video.

Tempest Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Three earthquakes in three days. More than coincidence? (BLOG)

Colorado, Virginia, California: three earthquakes across the United States in three days. Aside from the apocalyptic questions some are raising, was this more than an earth-trembling coincidence? Or was there some scientific connection between these three events?

First there was the magnitude 5.3 earthquake near Trinidad, Colo., the largest earthquake in the state since 1973. Then a magnitude 5.8 quake centered in Mineral, Va., jarred a region from Charleston, S.C. to Boston. Finally, there was a relatively mild 3.6 rattler in the San Francisco area Tuesday night.

What’s going on here?

IN PICTURES: East Coast earthquake

Experts say that while the Colorado and East Coast earthquakes were unusual, the first one did not trigger the second. Nor did the San Francisco quake have anything to do with the two that preceded it.

“They really are unrelated,” says Meredith Nettles, a seismologist at Columbia University. “There really is no causal connection.”

“This is pure coincidence,” concurs San Diego State University seismologist Tom Rockwell.

“That’s because small earthquakes don’t change the state of stress very much in the crust of the earth, so the effects will be only local,” he says.

While this week’s earthquakes made news – with earthquake tremors and hurricane Irene on the way, some people in North Carolina wondered if a plague of locusts was next – the earth’s shake-rattle-and-roll is going on all around us almost constantly.

In just the past week in the US alone, there were about 700 earthquakes perceptible to detection equipment. And as the US Geological Survey puts it, “there's a 100 percent chance of an earthquake today” somewhere in the world.

This map shows the earthquakes around the world in the past week, and this map focuses on North America. It's clear that most seismic activity is around the Pacific Rim.

More than 700 earthquakes a year around the world “may be sufficiently strong to cause property damage, death, and injury,” according to the USGS, “but fortunately, most of these potentially destructive earthquakes center in unpopulated areas far from civilization.”

One of the largest recent earthquakes (magnitude 6.8) occurred July 31 near the north coast of Papua New Guinea. (Because they’re figured logarithmically, a 6.8 quake has ten times the amplitude of a 5.8 one.)

[UPDATE: A magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit a remote area of Peru near the border with Brazil Wednesday. There were no reports of damage or injuries, according to the Associated Press.]

Though aftershocks can be expected to occur, even larger earthquakes are unlikely to trigger major events elsewhere, according to a report in the journal Nature Geoscience last year.

“Based on the evidence we’ve seen in our research, we don't think that large, global earthquake clusters are anything more than coincidence,” said Tom Parsons, USGS geophysicist and author of the study.

Earthquakes in the central and eastern United States, although less frequent than in the West, typically are felt over a much broader region.

“East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as 10 times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the West Coast,” according to the USGS. “A magnitude 5.5 eastern US earthquake usually can be felt as far as 300 miles from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 25 miles.”

As San Diego State University's Dr. Rockwell explains it, that’s because of the difference in earth’s crust on the two US coasts: the West is mushier and more broken up, the East is old granite.

Using a sound metaphor, Rockwell likens the West’s crust to a block of wood, the East to a brass bell with the sound of the bell heard much farther away.

“Seismic energy gets transmitted farther and stronger with high-quality rock,” he says.

Related to this, Columbia University's Dr. Nettles notes that it probably was a good thing that the Virginia quake was located between populated areas. “If you’re going to have an earthquake of this size on the East Coast, that was a pretty good place to have it.”

IN PICTURES: East Coast earthquake

10 Sci Fi Inventions that Should not be Invented

There are tons of awesome inventions in sci fi movies and books. Things like faster than light travel, force fields and bionic implants. There are also some things that, on the surface, seem like they would make life easier and simpler. This is a list of sci fi inventions that seem great, but are really more trouble then they are worth.

10. Flying Cars

Flying Car

Imagine being stuck in traffic. It sucks right? Now imagine that you could flip a switch, and suddenly your car would begin to rise into the air. You fly over all those suckers stuck in traffic, gloating. Now that you’re flying, imagine running into a tree. Next, imagine getting into a fender bender with another flying car and plummeting toward your death in a flaming heap of twisted metal.

Flying cars would undoubtedly solve a number of problems. The only thing is, they would create a whole new world of problems. To keep from running into every single power line and radio tower we would need to create laws dictating where you could drive. Kind of like creating flying roads. Of course, as soon as you get enough flying cars, you get a traffic jam on the skyways, thus negating the purpose of having a flying car.

9. Cryogenic freezing

Cryopreservation

Cryogenic freezing actually exists today. Every year, dozens of people elect to be frozen in the hope that medical advances will progress to the point where they can be thawed and cured of their diseases. Despite obvious risks and expenses, this process has been around for decades.

Now, let’s assume that medical science advances to the point where it is possible to thaw the frozen bodies and heal any diseases which might have occurred. Suddenly, you can just go freeze yourself and thaw yourself at some point in the future. The question is then, what happens to the population when people who would have otherwise died, are brought to life in the future? Talk about overpopulation.

8. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Movies and literature are chock full of robots. It’s quite possibly one of the most cliché objects in sci fi media. Despite this, robots are very real today and AI is not far off. Wouldn’t it be great though, to have a servant who will do anything you ask? Or perhaps a lover who never ages? What about a machine that completely supplants all menial laborers?

The answer is no, it would not be great. AI is a common theme in sci fi and usually it causes more problems than solutions. If you don’t believe me, think about the facts. The current trend is that every two years processors double in speed, halve in size and halve in price. Assuming this trend continues, in 20 years you’ll be able to purchase a computer the size of a postage stamp that’s smarter than the human brain, for about $1. Now who’s the superior species?

7. Prediction of the future

Time Viewer

Wouldn’t it be great to stop murders before they happened? How about wars? What about knowing next week’s lotto numbers? Worthwhile goals, all of them. And entirely within reach with a time viewing machine. Imagine how many problems would be solved. No more war, famine or pestilence. The complete utilitarian society, right?

Wrong. So let’s say, hypothetically speaking, that the US has a time viewing machine; this machine then predicts that China is going to attack Los Angeles. To prevent this from happening, the US issues a preemptive strike, thus starting a war in which China launches a missile headed straight for California. Thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is true of any major man made catastrophe.

6. Teleportation Device

Teleporter

Imagine a world where you can travel to New Zealand on Saturday, then stop over in Denmark for quick visit on Sunday, before you have to be to work on Monday. No longer do we have to use precious fossil fuel to travel. Terrorism in travel is a thing of the past. Until a terrorist teleports a bomb into the White House.

First, let’s assume that there is some sort of safety protocol in place to prevent things like that from happening. Technically, a teleporter breaks down all of the atoms in your body and sends them to the destination, where they are then reconstructed. The only problem with this is the actual transmission of the atoms. That’s where information age comes in. It makes far more sense to just transmit the blueprints of your atomic structure to a reconstruction device. Essentially, a teleporter is just a fax machine. The problem arises in the early use of such devices. Have you ever made a copy of a copy of a copy? Even using the highest quality copy machine, the quality degenerates rapidly. At first, it might not be noticeable. What are a few atoms from a hair? Or a fingernail? Or your heart? We’re not sure what even the smallest change in your atomic structure would do.

5. Nanobots

Nanobots

Cancer has been cured! The human lifespan numbers in the centuries. All degenerative diseases have ceased to exist. Major injuries heal within seconds. Recreational drug use no longer has any negative effects. Hangovers are a thing of the past.
Nanobots have cured the world. These self replicating robots are now injected into everyone as a natural immunization. To describe the horrors of these machines, here’s a quote from Eric Drexler’s book Engines of Creation:

Imagine such a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals, making copies of itself….the first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combined – if the bottle of chemicals hadn’t run dry long before.

Part of the appeal of nanobots is that only a few need be injected and they can replicate in the human body. This also describes the danger. To put it succinctly: We are the Borg. Lower your shields. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance if futile!

4. Weather Control

Weather Control

Welcome to the future. Global hunger has been solved. The world community lives in utopian tranquility without hurricanes, tornadoes or floods. The human race can now turn its gaze to more worthwhile things like space travel and beer.
The problem with weather control arises when we unleash specific weather on delicate ecosystems which cannot exist except under certain conditions. If this hurdle is overcome there is no reason we shouldn’t have a weather control device. Until it breaks. Then a world lulled into complacency by good weather is suddenly thrown into a natural disaster. Or, in a worst case scenario, a hostile foreign power takes over our weather control devices and unleashes storms of unimaginable power and magnitude against us.

3. Genetic Engineering

Genetic Engineering

Perfect humans. Engineered from before birth to be the best of the best. What could be better than having the perfect child, with no possible risk of inherited flaws? All without the use of those messy nanobots. I think the movie Gattaca (1997) says it best:

We want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built in already. Your child doesn’t need any more additional burdens. Keep in mind, this child is still you. Simply, the best, of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.

The danger arises not from any physical aspect of genetic engineering, but rather the social aspects. When you begin to breed perfect humans, you create an entirely new social class. Bringing discrimination to new levels, the class you belong to will not be determined by social status, income or the color of your skin, rather, the build of your genes.

2. Holodecks

Holodeck

After a stressful day at work, what could be more relaxing than coming home and relaxing in a nice peaceful meadow? Perhaps going for a relaxing drive in your flying car? With a holodeck, you can go anywhere, be anyone, or do anything. With the way videogames are heading, holodecks are not too far off. Imagine that you can have anything you want. Any fantasy you have is possible. And there is the danger.

It’s the perfect drug. Why would anyone bother going dealing with their crappy wife and kids when they have the perfect life in the holodeck? Why would anyone bother dealing with reality? You want to be Emperor of Rome? Sure! You want to be Blackbeard the Pirate? Why not? You want to have sex with Marilyn Monroe? Whatever you want is possible with the holodeck. It’s been jokingly put forth that the holodeck would be the world’s last invention. The thing is; it would be. Why bother inventing anything else when you’ve already invented the perfect world?

1. Replicators

Replicator

Replicators are the solution to nearly every problem the world has. Imagine no more world hunger. No longer is there any energy crisis. Never again will there be a shortage of medical supplies. The perfect world where you can have anything you want.

Until the complete and utter collapse of society. You see, the replicator would make work obsolete. There would be no need for money. As a matter of fact, you would only need one large replicator and you could replicate another one. You could make anything from fresh pizza to a molecule-for-molecule exact reproduction of the Hope Diamond. The last day of the world will come when anybody can make anything.

Bonus: Time Travel

Time Travel

Though not actually possible, time travel would create incalculable problems. Imagine going back in time and you meet a nice girl and take her out and things happen and you go back to your time and nine months later, she gives birth to your father. You kind of have to ask yourself, “What?”
The slightest change in the past would create ripples into the future. Only you would know about those ripples, because to everyone else, that’s just the way history turned out. Then let’s say you go into the future and copy the blueprints for some fantastic machine like a replicator. You bring it back to your time and invent it and somewhere along the line some knave steals your blueprints. Oh wait! That knave was you! It just doesn’t work.

Science vs. Faith