Gary McKinnon, the man accused of hacking into top secret military computers and accessing information is awaiting resolution after over ten years. But McKinnon has revealed some of what he has seen to the public pertaining to extraterrestrials. And as the world waits, the things he found point to a few possibilities.
When the flesh eating bacterial strain of MRSA known as USA300 was first recorded, it was held back by several factors, chief among them its inability to easily spread without the established health care infrastructure. But now the illness has left the hospital, spreading now on buses and other public spaces - and now can be passed on by such a simple thing as a sneeze.
As far as the end of the world is concerned, those interested in survival don't generally examine the monsters in zombie films as a potential real threat. Despite this, researchers at the Zombie Research Society have begun offering scientific explanations alongside their tongue in cheek attitude toward the creatures and suggest the zombie apocalypse is not a matter of "if," but "when." While we may not consider zombies a real world menace, some studies of diseases such as rabies have come up with some startling possibilities.
Is invisibility possible? A number of research teams around the globe are actively seeking a meta-material that will finally allow light to bend around an object and make it invisible. But one new concept of invisibility will not likely work as well for the military as it will for scientists looking to apply the new method to studies of magnetism, computers, gravity, and higher resolution microscopes. Meanwhile, research in the more traditional "metamaterial" allowing invisibility on the larger scale continues to make improvements.
It's the scene in the disaster movie where the plot really starts rolling. At 4:30 in the morning a phone rings and a respected astronomer receives a call informing him that an asteroid is heading toward Earth. After a moment of talk, the astronomer looks dead into the distance and makes an expository appeal that this is "the big one." Only in the case of 2012 BX34, the phone call ended far less dramatically.
One of the most daunting tasks in both space travel and speculation merges the two in trying to accurately describe what an alien race would be like if we actually did meet them - explaining their complex system of travel as well as their ability to survive the long journey that would last years between the stars. And as our understanding of the scale of the universe around us becomes more concrete, so have the channels through which potential alien visitors have been described. And in doing, three different theoretical types of alien visitors have arisen that humanity may do well to avoid contacting.
Even as 2012 arrives and uncertainty about the future abounds, technology is getting more incredible by the month. And yet even as the trend of broad strides toward high tech continues, there have been many attempts by the past to look into the future with open minds and open hearts. And as these hopeful images of the future past are played again, maybe we can get some idea of which technologies of today may be made manifest tomorrow - and which ones might be forever fantasy. Here are a few examples of how yesterdays prognosticators got it all wrong - and a few uncannily accurate predictions as well.
When residents of Grimsby started contacting the UK's "This is Grimsby" with reports that something unusual was going on in the sky in the afternoon over their town, it may have seemed obvious that the culprit was the Royal Air Force conducting flight tests involving jets breaking the sound barrier and creating a sonic boom. But after an announcement by the RAF, and additional reports worldwide of similar phenomena, it seems the answer may not be quite so simple.
As technology changes and we're left tiptoeing into the shallow end of what the full potential of invention might yield for humanity, economic forces have come like a tsunami threatening to stifle technological development on many fronts. We need only look at the killing of the shuttle program and the transition of space-faring responsibility into the private sector in the United States to see proof of how concrete the relationship between the two is. But just as the economy of today is driven largely by forces that came as the result of invention, what might the economy of the future look like and will it save us?
As we still find ourselves waiting twelve years after the dawn of the millennium for a flying car, new trends in energy development has led researchers to take their efforts instead in the direction of greener and more sustainable vehicles, including electric and hybrid cars. But one emerging technology will use the term "air car" without giving its occupants flight. This type of air car will instead be powered by air rather than soaring through it.
When the atom was first split and the idea of nuclear power eventually reached headlines, newspapers worldwide were excited about the prospect. In addition to the possibility of a nuclear powered future, citizens of many countries all over the world were excited in the wake of World War II with the idea that war may be over forever. But then public perception changed, and the public lost its love for nuclear power. And one professor says one of the bigger reasons was the portrayal of nuclear power in James Bond movies.
It's not a farm that grows robots, but rather one that uses robots to grow food. And it may be a look into the future of agriculture. Robotic development has been seen for years as one of the key ingredients to a society without the economic concerns it has today. But will the project be successful? Or will there be a new crop of controversy to thrive thanks to these metal machines?
When we think about folklore and urban legends, generally we don't imagine that the boundaries can be drawn merely at the edge of a city or even a state. How ambitious can a folklore legend be, when it supposes that the boundaries of its telling are not merely confined to our own universe? How incredible a claim can one story make? And how would the public respond to the discovery that somewhere out there is a fully equipped abandoned lab capable of transporting people from our own dimension to an alternate reality already populated with a rogue band of scientists who made their home there?
Medical science is no stranger to the strange or even the miraculous. The story of Henrietta Lacks' destiny to give rise to an immortal self-cloning generation of cells and others would become a foundational stone in many laboratories. Though the cells are only a tiny fraction of her being, they contain the vital essence of who she once was and the incredible mystery of human immortality. In terms of biomass, if all of the HeLa cells grown from the tiny cluster retrieved without Henrietta's knowing were put into a single pile they would weigh 20 tons.
When a winter storm rolls through and kills electricity on a block or even throughout a whole city it's a mystery easily solved when a downed power line or damaged transformer is discovered. But in Kingsclere, Hampshire the real cause is a bit more difficult to discover as the number of devices affected has spread even to remote control key fobs and cell phones. What's the disaster causing devices in this small village to be disrupted even when they have power going to them? And has this sort of thing happened before?
In recent years the idea of receiving information through a signal transmitted directly to the brain has increased significantly. Ever since science first tiptoed toward the hidden potential of technology as a teaching mechanism, people have often wondered if one day the average person will be able to simply go to a medical facility instead of a training academy and come out a skilled athlete. And that's precisely the technology scientists at Boston University are exploring.
After years of hearing holiday complaints about illness around Christmas, scientists have come to a troubling conclusion about the centerpiece of the festivities in many homes. Dubbed "Christmas Tree Syndrome" this mystery ailment may have finally found an explanation as scientists take a moment to look at the trees themselves. But will this syndrome threaten the institution of Christmas? Or is there a miraculous answer to the problem that still lets us keep the tree without the ill effects?
A new type of bandage being developed by scientists at the University of Illinois has the potential to shorten the amount of time required for healing to take place and actually serve to quicken the healing process. The researchers noted that their tests on chicken embryos resulted in a direct mirroring of the blood vessels to the pattern on the bandage, meaning in the future healing could be stimulated to mimic a specific pattern and be programmed in the future.
Witnesses living in Cowley Kansas are not exactly used to anything quite so extraordinary as this being hauled through their town as they head into work or home or about their daily lives. In fact, it would be difficult to determine just when the last time something this strange happened. But as they noticed construction crews pulling up signs and then replacing them afterward, they looked out and saw a massive unexplained craft resting on a truck bed covered in what appeared to be a thin tarp. The incident passed uneventfully, but attracted many questions. What was this mysterious craft? Why did it look exactly like a traditional flying saucer?
After a panel of advisers recommended that key elements of a paper on the new bird flu strain are redacted and controlled, scientists are pushing back stating that the research is in the name of vaccine production and must reach viable researchers who are attempting to cure the illness before it becomes a massive problem. But as the power struggle continues, a key question is coming out - and it's clear why this controversy is a bit more complicated than it looks at first.
When scientists at the Savannah River Site looked down into a holding pool containing several spent nuclear fuel assemblies, there was essentially one thing they were convinced could not be in there with it - life. And yet that's precisely what they found when they spotted a mysterious spider-web stretching through the pool. Now they're trying to determine whether this is some kind of new organism or something else entirely. And while it might sound like the plot to a 1950's B movie, it's got more than a few scientists a bit concerned, and more than a little intrigued.
The idea of harpooning a comet seems in some way similar to the story of Moby Dick and the Great White Whale. But as humanity's ambitions escalate to titanic proportions, a new development by NASA will make safe what would ordinarily be an extremely dangerous mission - the harpooning of an entire comet as it soars through space.
Scientists working from Stuttgart, Germany have developed a steam engine so incredibly small it must be seen with a microscope. And while it may sound like a typical hobby experiment for a lab to be spending research dollars on, when you think of the incredible amount of work that could be performed by such tiny machines, and begin to apply it to things like nanotechnology, power generation, and power storage, the potential becomes quite a bit more interesting. The Stirling engine, or as it is most commonly known the steam engine, is an old technology but if you ask some, it has never gone out of style.
As the mystery of what has been eating geese in the river Lea continues, some new theories are arising as to just what this mystery creature could be. But while more conventional creatures are still on the table, some have raised questions about whether this might actually be a far more mysterious thus far unknown creature - similar to the missing monster of Loch Ness.
Ever since the Beatles were first rumored to use back masking to place hidden messages in their songs in 1969, people have started looking at their music in a new light, playing songs backwards and looking for any hidden meaning that may be contained within. But these fans may be interested to learn of a radio station deep in an undisclosed roaming location throughout the world. This radio station emits a mysterious and distorted sound that some have said sounds almost like songs being played backwards. But when you hear it for yourself, you'll be more than ready to turn it off. Even those familiar with enigma and numbers stations often find themselves changing the dial - it's just that creepy.
When we think of the amount of effort that went into capturing a tiny chunk of the moon, the wealth is quite a sight to see. The Apollo program resulted in hundreds of pounds of the tiny rocks being brought back to Earth for the public, but a significant number of them have gone missing - or have been outright stolen since then. NASA recently reported that it hopes to increase its inventory controls to afford better mastery over the samples returned to Earth after studying the rocks lost.
In the future, if we do eventually reach our potential as a space-faring species, one of the major limitations of our abilities will come -as it always has- in how we are able to survive in the environment deep in space. But recent developments in the fields of 3-D printing and green technology have fused in such a way that may have been overlooked by what has overwhelmingly been considered a technologically driven field. In order to escape the harsh conditions of man's humble beginnings, our species has had to consistently use the materials available to push ourselves forward. But what building materials are present on - for example - Mars?
Outspoken scientists in the field of genetic research have long been interested in the idea of bringing back previously extinct species to allow them to once again walk the Earth. And to their credit they have been able to uncover quite a bit in the way of scientific evidence suggesting it will not only be possible, but feasible in a very real way. And now there is a new projected timeline suggesting we may have reached the level where a sort of park very similar to Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park may be possible within the next five years. Are we ready for it?
In the 1961 episode of the Twilight Zone, "The Invaders" we came face to face with the difference size may play between humanity and extraterrestrials in a large way. Of course it wasn't the first time the idea that aliens may be extremely small (or extremely large compared to us) but it did become a cultural staple that suggested to us that our own understanding of even the most basic things could change significantly if we were to expand beyond our own world. And a few principles in energy and time travel suggest that future explorations into time and space may not be quite as big as we once thought.
The X-37B is one of those spacecraft that has set the conspiracy theory crowd ablaze with speculation. Unlike previous orbital missions, this new craft has been kept completely secret from nose to stern and everyone is asking what all the hubbub is about. But as the craft, originally intended to come down 270 days later since its launch in April of last year, remains in orbit even longer than expected, some are beginning to wonder if something has gone awry or if this is all part of the original plan with the top secret space shuttle.
In the long lasting search for a fusion reaction capable of producing more energy than is required to power the device itself, there have been a number of breakthroughs but ultimately none that result in a fusion reactor capable of generating power. And now scientists have created a method of producing plasma using only a few dollars worth of components in a lab. The method emits light bright enough to be seen in a darkened space or, in some rare cases, in sunlight.
South Korea, one of the hopefuls at the head of robotic development has introduced several robotic sentries that look more like toys than actual guards in one prison. The guards, which are being distributed in the city of Pohang are part of an effort to reduce the work load on prison guards to ensure that fewer guards can prevent violence and suicides while in the prison walls. Is this the candy coated future of mechanized law enforcement?
NASA explorations are generally thought to be about the best parts of what being human is all about. The thrill of discovery, cooperation, and the powerful image of humanity reaching beyond its humble beginnings to stretch out into the stars is only one of numerous important elements in the Mars story. And yet it seems like the exploration of distant planets may inadvertently destroy very simple alien life if it explores without caution a place like Titan. So far they have been careful with prospective alien ecosystems, but how will we explore a planet where any single point could secretly harbor alien life?
Scientists have developed a way of tracking the habitability of planets where life may exist outside of Earth. And so where science was once hoping to discover life on other worlds by chance, a new system that categorically evaluates each new prospective world studied according to a series of criteria and then assesses the likelihood of each world actually harboring life has been developed.
It's finally happened after decades of research. And it turns out the flu virus developed from H5N1 may (or may not) be deadly enough to wipe out civilization if it ever got out of control. And now the recipe for how scientists achieved this doomsday strain might be published pending a review by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. Has science gone too far this time? And why were people developing a deadly flu virus like this in the first place?
In the 1960's a space race style competition was going on internationally with the ultimate realization when man first actually made it to the moon and set foot on its surface. After this, the cold war ended shortly afterward and as a result competitions like these have seemed lest urgent. Instead, the profit driven world of more terrestrial matters has supplanted the "less profitable" ventures such as space exploration. But there may soon be an upcoming race that will be both as profitable and as promising to mankind as the space race: the race of super computing. And it may have just as much of an effect on our lives as the race into the stars - without the same limitations.
Life on Pluto, once thought to be virtually impossible, is now being discussed - possibly for the first time after a new model has come forward suggesting the planetoid may have vast liquid oceans beneath the surface ice heated by something scientists hadn't thought of before. And even if life doesn't become part of the final equation on Pluto, the very concept of a radiation heated world is enough to give a second look at what we once thought we knew about life on other worlds.
After over 40 years of mystery the DB Cooper case may finally see closure thanks to the most unlikely and tiny of particles discovered on his tie decades later. If you haven't already heard of the mysterious DB Cooper and his fateful hijacking of a plane along with over $200,000, he was one of the most notorious hijackers of the 1970's. And the mystery of his identity has made him and the FBI sketch of him famous. But if the mystery ends now, then it will be due to a strange piece of evidence unearthed by the FBI leading in an unlikely direction.
When we think about colonizing other planets, generally it is accepted that there will be a period of time when we will be unable to do anything but subsist in the most basic capacity in an artificial environment. But are there specific technologies that will make this simple existence fuller? What technologies must we develop in order for our Mars mission to become a full civilization?
Experts on the field of Artificial Intelligence are numerous, and yet it's been a so far overwhelming task for the field to unify all of those theories into a single strategy to bring about an intelligent artificial being that can exceed the capabilities of human reasoning, pattern recognition, and variability. The Singularity is a concept proposed by futurist Ray Kurzweil to suggest a point at which a computer will be better able to design and program AI systems than a human would be. But what if that AI, when asked to create a better machine than itself said no?
In the 1950's it was a commonly held belief that by the year 2000 life on the Moon would become possible and that humanity would gradually spread out to Mars and even beyond to begin colonization of other worlds. And those projections were not necessarily overly ambitious. Had the desire to move into space truly gripped us at the same level as our desire to communicate with one another, then it seems fairly likely that we would have developed the technology and infrastructure necessary to make this happen. But instead of computers getting larger and more independent, they god smaller and more connected. But when the information age eventually reaches the moon and beyond, what might it look like?
Area 51 is a place normally associated with coverups, extraterrestrial craft, and mysterious lights in the sky. But while we may never know what goes on in the Groom lake facility, it appears China is building its own mystery site that may prove just as mysterious as Area 51. The location is so secret it is in the middle of the Gobi desert with the nearest road 50 miles away. The only way to get to the mystery site it appears is to reach it by air. So are the contents of this Chinese Area 51 comparable to the rumors in the US?
Saturns Moon Titan has had a long journey in the constant consciousness of science since its discovery in 1655 by French Astronomer Christiaan Huygens. The mystery of Titan was comparable according to many astronomers to another astronomical body which has constantly evaded even the most penetrating scrutiny of science, Venus. And as astronomers look closer at this mysterious moon of water orbiting Saturn, it appears the case for life is quickly coming together. Not only may there be an ocean beneath the icy surface, there may actually be quite a bit more.
Can you imagine being stuck in a small box no larger than 1,500 square feet for a period of weeks? What about for over 500 days? That's precisely what volunteers just got finished doing in a study that lasted over a year attempting to watch the movements and actions of six volunteers to see if the isolation would give them a phenomenon known among astronauts as cabin fever or "space madness." The study was an attempt to get a deeper insight into the journey to Mars.
When doctors decided on a treatment for Mandy Sellars' condition, she secretly knew it would only be a matter of time before her large leg began to grow back again. But while the idea of regenerating a limb may sound good, in the case of Mandy it was a nightmare waiting to happen.
Popular logic suggests that killing any cell is likely a bad thing for us - in that we lose a microscopic part of ourselves that then must be replaced through normal cell division. But scientists working at the Mayo clinic have found a therapy that targeted and destroyed a very specific type of cell in mice. And the results were dramatically fewer age related illnesses and raised general health. And so it seems a number of age related illnesses can in part be traced back to these cells. Could a final cure for death be far off?
Physics, which has been considered a single set of rules designed to determine how the universe works in a given time span has revealed yet another possibility to surprise scientists. Not only were the ideas we previously had about the laws of physics thrown into question, scientists are wondering if we will ever fully understand what makes this universe tick as we look further out into it. And so scientists may have to once again revise the definition of what is possible.
Are scientists and mystics forever destined to be distant from one another? Is there a time in our future when the two may walk side by side or even reside within the same organizations? And will there forever be conflict between the world of absolutes and the world of intuition? Taking into consideration a few of the long held beliefs on both sides, it seems they are destined to one day fuse.
For years we've seen high technology space operas tell us of "Tractor Beam" technology which allows a vessel to take a hold of an object in space and rather than repel it outward, actually pull it in toward the vessel. The technology is often seen as a sort of force field that can be emitted, but then instead of repelling objects outward actually pull them in. And now NASA has taken a few steps to actually make this high science fiction technology a reality. Displaying a level of expertise previously unseen outside of fiction, they say devices such as these may one day be used to take samples in space and even manipulate objects a bit closer to home.
Generally when we think about an embassy, we think about a group of humans who are transferred to another location and set up their own space within that country, which is to be respected as though it were the border to the country itself. But in times when an actual embassy becomes too dangerous or when the practical applications of actually living in another country are no longer practical an alternative may be necessary. And the US government has come up with a novel approach to the idea of diplomacy by making a "virtual embassy." But while the idea may seem odd for our own planet, it may be a brilliant solution to one of the problems of sovereignty and diplomacy on other worlds.
