This is what a Jurassic forest may have sounded like
Researchers re-create the chorus of noise produced by ancient insects.
Science | AAAS
Scientists Simulate Alien Civilizations, Find They Keep Dying From Climate Change
In a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study that was spotted by LiveScience, scientists conducted simulations to see just how long extraterrestrial civilizations could survive if they kept up similar rates of growing energy consumption to our own.
They found that the aliens kept dying off within just 1,000 years because their planets would always get too hot to remain habitable.
Futurism.com
Pedal Steel Guitar vs Nuclear Missile | Nate Hofer | Tedxkc
Can beauty defeat the war machine? Can we détente again? In this poetic, personal meditation, artist Nate Hofer's music, photography, and storytelling transcend "the new Cold War" to create hope and — for a few peaceful minutes — a place where old ideas can die beautifully.
TEDx Talks via YouTube
Humanoid Dinosaurs Revisited Again: Russell and Séguin’s Dinosauroid at (Nearly) 40 Years Old
A blog post examining the imaginary, human-shaped theropod invented during the early 1980s by paleontologist Dale Russell and artist and model-maker Ron Séguin.
John Conway | Tet Zoo
Crank Book Covers
This post presents a selection of crank titles with cover art by SF artists.
via { feuilleton } A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart
The Intersection
Set in the near future, 'the Intersection' journeys from a violent present to a cooperative future. Telling stories of active hope from those who have fought to reimagine extractive technology, to serve community, support nature, and value planetary relationships.
It is commissioned by Eshanthi Ranasinghe, Julia Solano and Nicole Allred, Exploration & Future Sensing, Omidyar Network, and is conceived and produced by Superflux 2021.
via YouTube
Nanoracks, Voyager Space, and Lockheed Martin Teaming to Develop Commercial Space Station
Nanoracks, in collaboration with Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT], has formed a team to develop the first-ever free flying commercial space station. The space station, known as Starlab, will be a continuously crewed commercial platform, dedicated to conducting critical research, fostering industrial activity, and ensuring continued U.S. presence and leadership in low-Earth orbit. Starlab is expected to achieve initial operational capability by 2027.
via PR Newswire
Earth Could Be Alien to Humans by 2500
Unless greenhouse gas emissions drop significantly, warming by 2500 will make the Amazon barren, Iowa tropical and India too hot to live in.
The Conversation | Scientific American
The Amazon rainforest is losing 200,000 acres a day. Soon it will be too late.
In short, the Amazon is dying. Entire genetic libraries and symphonies of species – trees, birds, reptiles, insects and more, eons in the making, fine-tuned by natural selection – are being wiped out to make room for methane-belching cows.
The Guardian
Which Climate Threats Are Most Worrisome? U.S. Agencies Made a List.
WASHINGTON — Less food. More traffic accidents. Extreme weather hitting nuclear waste sites. Migrants rushing toward the United States, fleeing even worse calamity in their own countries.
Those scenarios, once the stuff of dystopian fiction, are now driving American policymaking. Under orders from President Biden, top officials at every government agency have spent months considering the top climate threats their agencies face, and how to cope with them.
The New York Times
One in three trees face extinction in wild, says new report
The report, State of the World's Trees, found that at least 30% of the 60,000 known tree species face extinction.
Some 142 species have already vanished from the wild, while 442 are on the very edge of extinction, with fewer than 50 individual trees remaining.
BBC News
Care at Scale: Bodies, Agency, and Infrastructure
"We need to have a conception of infrastructural citizenship that includes a responsibility to look after each other, in perpetuity."
Deb Chachra | Comment
Alien 'Dyson spheres' could be harvesting the power of black holes
Technologically-savvy aliens could be powering their society using a hypothetical megastructure called a Dyson sphere to harvest energy from a black hole.
Because black holes smoosh a gargantuan mass into a tiny area of space, they are smaller than stars and therefore potentially easier to encircle. A species that chooses to "build a Dyson sphere around a black hole can save a lot of material," Hsiao said.
Space.com
Kim Stanley Robinson: a climate plan for a world in flames
Humanity stands on the brink of disaster. But with creative thinking and collective will, we may still have time to avert catastrophe.
The Weekend Essay | Financial Times
Extreme weather takes climate change models ‘off the scale’
Climate scientists have said the severity of these events is simply “off scale”, compared with what atmospheric models forecast — even when global warming is fully taken into account.
“I think I would be speaking for many climate scientists to say that we are a bit shocked at what we are seeing,” said Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London.
Financial Times
Global heating pace risks ‘unstoppable’ sea level rise as Antarctic ice sheet melts
World faces ‘abrupt jump’ in pace of ice loss around 2060 unless emissions reduced to meet Paris agreement goals, study warns.
The Guardian
TENEX
"A solid state volumetric OLED display. Video is now live on my YouTube channel. You’ll want to check it out."
—Sean Hodgins, via Twitter
#cyberpunk #diy
Multiple Destroyers Were Swarmed By Mysterious 'Drones' Off California Over Numerous Nights
The disturbing series of events during the summer of 2019 resulted in an investigation that made its way to the highest echelons of the Navy.
The Warzone