A map of distant galaxies? This puts it in perspective!

Whoa, and I remember when the "little blue dot" used to refer to EARTH.  Nope, here the blue dot is the entire MILKY WAY GALAXY. But this really puts all the quadrant rivalries into perspective!

(Though I hope you still find this little reference to be of help…)



By Ken Croswell at ScienceMag.org ...

How to find your way home from deep space

If aliens ever abduct you to a galaxy far, far away, this map might help you find your way back home. Presented online today in Nature, the map spans more than 1.5 billion light-years, coloring the densest concentrations of observed galaxies red and areas with the fewest galaxies blue. 

Your home galaxy, the Milky Way, is the blue dot at the center. The red region above the Milky Way includes Virgo, the closest galaxy cluster, about 55 million light-years from Earth. The orange curve illustrates the key finding of the new work: It encircles galaxies that would fall toward one another along the curved white lines if space weren't expanding; the astronomers have named this huge assemblage Laniakea, after Hawaiian words for "spacious heaven." It is 100 quadrillion times as massive as the sun—equivalent to 100,000 Milky Ways—and stretches across more than half a billion light-years of space. 

… more...

Shields up! A better "invisibility cloak" unveiled

More treknology, folks:

I don't know what's more amazing—that science has already made more major strides in this area, or that the lead paragraph uses Harry Potter instead of Romulans:

'Perfect' Invisibility Cloak Uses Metamaterials To Bend Light

The days when invisibility cloaks were confined to the world of "Harry Potter" may soon be over. Physicists at Duke University announced Monday that they had successfully cloaked an object with "perfect" invisibility. ...

...So how did they keep these reflections out of the new design?

"Landy's new microwave cloak is naturally divided into four quadrants, each of which have voids or blind spots at their intersections and corners with each other," explains io9. "Thus, to avoid the reflectivity problem, Landy was able to correct for it by shifting each strip so that is met its mirror image at each interface."

Ah. Well, at least we got a Clue about the quadrants in there: "Secret passage to Gamma Quadrant: one wormhole move."

Once again, reality trumps Star Trek—amazing!

Forget your cell-phone example and your hands-off medical scanner prototypes.



What happened this weekend ...

Baumgartner Completes Record-Setting Jump

ROSWELL, N.M. — Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner landed gracefully on Earth after a 24-mile jump from the stratosphere in a dramatic, record-breaking feat that may also have marked the world's first supersonic skydive.

... was pretty much Trekland science fiction in 1994:


Okay, so technically—to echo Kirk's "orbital" skydive (and B'Elanna's via Holodeck, from Voyager's "Extreme Risk" )—a true "orbit" would occur at a minimum of about 100 miles altitude, and Baumgartner jumped from about 24. Thus, unlike Kirk's dive suit seen here (which likewise was recycled for B'Elanna's scene) there was no need for any high-friction re-entry "personal heatshield" tiles; Baungartner simply wasn't high enough up to encounter that kind of atmospheric friction heat.

 But still... wow. 

Ah—it's really Class M, after all?

(And no, this image is NOT an HD framegrab from the early seconds of the opening title of the newly remastered The Next Generation:)

In the second follow-up after its discovery in September 2010:

"Gliese 581g Exoplanet May Be 'Potentially Habitable' Alien World After All"

By: Mike Wall
Published: 07/23/2012 04:08 PM EDT on SPACE.com

... The ... planet was said to orbit in the middle of its star's "habitable zone" — that just-right range of distances where liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, could exist.

Just a few weeks later, however, another prominent research team began casting doubt on the find, saying the alien planet didn't show up in their observations. ...

But in a new study that will be published Aug. 1, 581g's discoverers examine the Swiss team's since-expanded data set and take issue with their conclusions, saying that the evidence supports the planet's existence after all. ...

...

"The take-away message is, regardless of who eventually gets bragging rights to the discovery of the first truly confirmed habitable Earth-sized planet, we are starting to find them in unexpected numbers, and unexpectedly nearby," Vogt said. "That means there are many, many out there, at least tens of billions or more, in our own galaxy alone."

BREAKING: Roddenberry Foundation gives $5M to stem cell research

This is amazing news—just being released today: $5 million for stem cell research from, basically, Star Trek and its fans via the Roddenberry family. We can go to the cliche that "the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree," except that Roddenberry Sr. didn't have the cash for most of his life to take this kind of direct, positive-future-now kind of action.

But he was able to hand a lot of it off to Junior (at right)—who is finding his own frontiers to explore that are true to the spirit behind Star Trek, that core value beyond mere entertainment that has influenced and inspired millions of fans with what we all know and call the "Roddenberry Vision."
 
Way to go, Rod—as he says, here's one way to bring Gene's distant Star Trek future one step closer to NOW.

And to get this out now, here's the press release in toto (boldfacing mine): a story in today's SF Chronicle cites studies and new researchers already in motion thanks to this gift.

Roddenberry Foundation Gives $5M to Gladstone for Stem Cell Research

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—October 19, 2011—The Gladstone Institutes and the Roddenberry Foundation today inaugurated the Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine at Gladstone, a new unit founded on an unprecedented $5 million gift from the foundation that was established to honor the legacy of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. 

“This gift is our largest to date, and with it, we hope to help accelerate advances in biomedical research,” said Gene Roddenberry's son Rod Roddenberry, who is co-founder and chair of the board of directors of the Roddenberry Foundation. “In addition, if our support can inspire one child to become a scientist, one organization to become more charitable, one person to simply invest himself or herself in improving the future of our world, then our foundation can be a catalyst in making the future envisioned through Star Trek a reality.”

The center will build on Gladstone's existing expertise in stem cell science, helping to speed the process by which discoveries are turned into therapies for a host of devastating illnesses.

“Today's biggest challenge for solving disease is getting the investments required to transform our basic-science discoveries into health solutions that can alleviate human suffering,” said Deepak Srivastava, MD, (left) who directs both stem cell and cardiovascular research at Gladstone. “We are a basic science institute—but with the purpose of solving three major disease groups.”

Indeed, Gladstone focuses on disease areas that afflict millions of people and their families: cardiovascular disease, viruses such as HIV/AIDS and neurological conditions such Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's alone afflicts 5.4 million people in the United States at an annual cost $183 billion, estimated the Alzheimer's Association. Without a therapeutic breakthrough, the number of Americans with Alzheimer's disease is expected to double by 2050.

On top of this, no single disease-modifying therapy exists for Alzheimer's or other devastating neurodegenerative diseases, said Steven Finkbeiner, MD, PhD, a senior investigator at Gladstone, adding that it takes an average of 12 years and as much as $1 billion to develop a drug for a neurodegenerative disease. “The tsunami is coming and we have nothing in the drug pipeline to treat Alzheimer's,” he added.

Research at the new center can help to change that, in part by building on pioneering work done by Gladstone senior investigator Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD. In 2006, Dr. Yamanaka and his Kyoto University team discovered how to reprogram skin cells into cells that, like embryonic stem cells, can develop into other cells in the body. This discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, has since altered the fields of cell biology and stem cell research, opening promising new prospects for both personalized and regenerative medicine. Dr. Yamanaka currently divides his time between Kyoto and San Francisco, as the director of Kyoto University's Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA)—which focuses on drug discovery and regenerative medicine—and as a senior investigator at Gladstone.

To further develop Dr. Yamanaka's iPS technology in order to create patient solutions, the Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine at Gladstone today is also announcing a collaboration agreement with CiRA. This accord will clear a path for these two leading stem cell centers to freely exchange materials and knowledge—all in order to accelerate the advancement of their stem cell research results into therapeutics to improve human health.

Ideally suited to do that, iPS cell technology and subsequent cell-reprogramming discoveries opened the door for scientists to create human stem cells from the skin cells of patients with a specific disease for research and drug discovery, rather than using conventional models made in yeast, flies or mice. As a result, the cells contain a complete set of the genes that resulted in that disease—representing the potential of a far-superior human model for studying disease development, new drugs and treatments—while also avoiding the controversial use of embryonic stem cells.

“The Roddenberry gift will help us create the human, iPS-based disease models that we need to accelerate the development of drug therapies for a host of devastating diseases, honoring Gene Roddenberry's call to ‘live long and prosper,’” said Dr. Srivastava.

About the Gladstone Institutes
Gladstone is an independent and nonprofit biomedical-research organization dedicated to accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and innovation to prevent illness and cure patients suffering from cardiovascular disease, neurological disease or viral infections. Gladstone is affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco.

About the Roddenberry Foundation
The Roddenberry Foundation supports and inspires efforts that create and expand new frontiers for the benefit of humanity. It funds innovative solutions to critical global issues in the areas of science and technology, the environment, education and humanitarian advances.

About CiRA
Following the generation of human iPS cells by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka and his team in November 2007, Kyoto University established the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application within the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (ICeMS) in January 2008 to further promote scientific advances in the fields of induced pluripotency and reprogramming. CiRA is the world's first institute to focus specifically on these areas, and its researchers strive to realize the potential medical benefits of these cells as rapidly as can safely and responsibly be done. CiRA became an independent institute in April 2010, under the leadership of Dr. Yamanaka.

Photos: Roddenberry Dive Team (top); SFGate.com (bottom)

Yep, another one: the Star Trek/"Email" creation link

Didn't exactly realize it til today, on the 29th birthday of the copyright of the term "email"—another brand lost to generic language use!—but the guy behind the name and early system credits Star Trek for that, too.


Says developer V.A. Shiva on his website, getting attention today in news stories for the anniversary of his Aug. 30, 1982 copyright filing—first developed at age 14!—for his EMAIL messaging system.

"The two words, 'Electronic' and 'EMAIL' juxtaposed together for me originally brought images of vaporizing paper and somehow transporting it across electrical wires, like the transporter in Star Trek," says Shiva. "That is how NEW those two terms next to each other were in 1978." 

Once again, it's NASA and/or Star Trek that inspired the dreamers—plus, in this case, a a college computer lab professor's personal challenge to create such a system. We never know where, or how—but it comes back, time and again. And it's waaaay beyond just cell phones.

That's why we need them BOTH back—at full funding, and more frequently than just the occasional splash! (I'm lookin' at you, Congress and CBS...)

There's a lot more about it all on Shiva's website (Shiva, at left), including a great timeline infographic about his work and others' in the development of email—a great snapshot for those of you whom this all sneaked up on, or for those of you who never knew anything else!

Yes, but can *it* eat tritanium?

If you're a good little Trekland dweller—and I know you are—I'm sure your mind turns to thoughts of Bird-of-Prey hulls when you read this headline:

New Species of Rust-Eating Bacteria Destroying the Titanic

... Using DNA technology, Dalhousie scientists Henrietta Mann and Bhavleen Kaur and researchers from the University of Sevilla in Spain were able to identify a new bacterial species collected from rusticles (a formation of rust similar to an icicle or stalactite) from the Titanic wreck. The iron-oxide-munching bacterium has fittingly been named Halomonas titanicae. ...

I wonder if it's just A Matter of Honor that there's no fat, pissed-off Klingon commander out there bellowing about how losing the Titanic ahead of schedule to these little beasties is really just a Federation trick?

Can't you just see the real "rusticles" sitting pretty as undersea snacks here?

The pods are still *not* overloadin'—but getting there

Did you hear?

Now instead of mere nano-seconds, scientists had figured out how to capture and sustain real anti-matter for... longer.

Here's a more mainstream layman's take on this breakthrough—actually, just another step toward Cochrane's engine....

...And here's a more in-depth piece from Nature.com.


I just hope those CERN scientists have their core ejector systems in better shape than Starfleet usually did.

Yes, but do those molecules purr?

This life-imitating-art thing is just getting way outta control ...

Now, if only they can find The Klingons Among Us.

The Trouble With Tribbles In Diabetes
Main Category: Diabetes
Also Included In: Genetics
02 Jul 2010

Named for the furballs whose astonishing fecundity made them stars in early Star Trek episodes, the tribbles protein, first identified in fruit flies, aids in regulating many cell processes in humans. Joslin Diabetes Center researchers now have identified mechanisms triggered by a variant of the tribbles gene that cause trouble in insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells and that offer a promising target for therapies for people with type 2 diabetes, even if they don't carry that gene variant. ...

'Impulsive' flights to Mars? 'We' told you so

To Mars in 40 days rather than 180? It's a great leap for rocketkind!

And check out that engine name:

...Ad Astra's Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) ionizes gases such as xenon or hydrogen to create superheated plasma stream for thrust. ...

New Rocket Engine Could Reach Mars in 40 Days
By Jeremy Hsu—SPACE.com Contributor

Future Mars outposts or colonies may seem more distant than ever with NASA's exploration plans in flux, but the rocket technology that could someday propel a human mission to the red planet in as little as 40 days may already exist.

A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time.

....VASIMR and the necessary power sources could get a boost in the coming years. NASA's new five-year budget includes more than $3 billion for developing heavy-lift and propulsion technologies, as well as a Game Changing Innovation program that similarly targets next-gen propulsion and power sources. ...

Image: VASIMIR installed on ISS (NASA concept art)

Stunning development, but it's still no go against cloud vampires

OK, so what if this only works on worms...for now. Didn't you ever see Tremors?
(Or... what was that other big worm movie? "Sand"?)

Star Trek-like phaser developed

Scientists have developed a Star Trek-like phaser, capable of causing paralysis with a beam of light. However, anyone hoping that the machine will become a powerful new weapon could be disappointed: scientists have only proven the effect on worms. ...

In any case, this is a small but tremendous jump—and once again, the writer couches it in Trek terms because that's how the mass public can best digest the concept. Even in England:

Meanwhile, maybe this R&D would move along a lot faster if we all took notes from here ....


Blu-Ray Laser Phaser! -

Class M, Class M—My Kingdom for a Class M!

Yup, we're getting there.


No matter who's formula you use... Drake's or Roddenberry's ...


..it looks like the Earth-like extra-solar planet tally is already starting to take off:

WASHINGTON — European astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop. ....
Astronomer Stephane Udry of the University of Geneva said the results support the theory that planet formation is common, especially around the most common types of stars.
"I'm pretty confident that there are Earth-like planets everywhere," Udry said in a Web-based news briefing from a conference in Portugal. "Nature doesn't like a vacuum. If there is space to put a planet there, there will be a planet there." ....

Captain, there be Kelvans HERE!

It's too bad Mike, Denise, Dave and Niel didn't have THIS image of the Andromeda Galaxy in time when they Remastered "By Any Other Name." But still, it's an amazing first—wondrously detailed like never before.

Turns out this is an ultraviolet image taken by the SWIFT satellite in Earth orbit, and snapped while moonlighting from its primary mission of studying gamms-ray bursts.

No word yet on the current radiation levels in the Andromeda Galaxy, or any empires of brainy, hundred-tentacled giants.

First "hardtop" exo-planet!: I'm guesing Class B or E, maybe N?

Love it when our infant science keeps taking its baby steps toward the optimistic, expansive worldview of Gene's Trekland science ...

So here comes word today of the next baby step in our extra-solar planetary science: we've had planets confirmed before, but until this week they were all known to to be Jupiter-like gas giants. So now--meet one you can take a "giant leap for mankind" on: CoRoT 7b, our first known hardshell planet beyond Sol's own four. (Cue: "Rocky" theme ... if you get it ...)

For the big-picture terminologists, its star is currently named TYC 4799-1733-1, about 500 LYs distant; the "CoRot" comes from the CoRoT French/ESA surveying satellite that made the discovery, "CoRoT 7" being its own mission name for the star and "b" being the system's second planet ID'd.... and "TYC 4799-1733-1 I" being just a bit on the clunky side.

(The art, BTW, is an artists's official rendition of "CoRoT 7b").

Trek-style planet disaster—but a looong episode!

Since the days of "All Our Yesterdays" and "True Q" and even Star Trek-2009 style, our fictional planets have found themselves in fictional trouble. One of the coolest contributions Mike Okuda and Rick Sternbach made for the TNG writers as part of their technical consulting was a "Celestrial Bestiary" in the writer's in-house technical guide, offering real-life science disasters when such potential backdrops are needed behnd the character plots of scripts.

But now here comes word of what's loosely called a "suicide planet": a huge gas giant being pulled into its star from an insanely close and speedy orbit to begin with:

Suicidal Planet Seems On Death Spiral Into Star

... So why hasn't WASP-18b already gone "poof"? Hellier's team figures that the solar-type star (spectral type F6) is about a billion years old. Yet tidal theory argues that the big planet will edge close enough to be torn apart in well under a million years....

Don't set your DVRs to record this story any time soon, though: Note that the Big Finale is not expected to arrive for a million years, at least...!

It was 400 years ago today: the lenses that shook the world

As we await the hoped-for launch of Discovery this week through another delay ...

Thanks to my old buddy Kevin for reminding me—he was far more than a shuttlecraft namesake:

400 Years Ago Today, Galileo Invented Astronomy and Modern Science

A wonderful "down to earth" essay from Astronomy Today, short of any pretentiousness puffery:

... Being a professor, he really just wanted to make some extra cash, and the telescope was marvelously useful to sailors, soldiers, and craftsmen alike.

Sound like a certain warp pioneer to you?

Seriously, take a read—and let's renew again the power of observational and empirical science over hearsay and myth. It's where Gene came from.

And now--Schooldesk Trek!

They love to throw Star Trek into the lead of all kinds of mainstream science news stories. Sure, it's a great compliment that shows how iconic Trek is re: how the layman relates to science and new technology—but newshounds do it all the time.

Well, now we've gone from basic Trek future concepts ... to hero props ... to background props ... to set dressing.

Yes ... school desks!

Check out how researchers at Durham University in northeast England have unveiled a touch-system interface self-described as "Star Trek"-like. Very cool and helpful, obviously—the wave of future learning. But is this story a sign of how deeply Trek has permeated modern-day life and design ... or are science reporters just Trek-drenched? And will any new "future" Trek TV series find it impossible to reinvent futuristic design if THIS is how quickly real life catches up?

For some reason, I think we are far from being "tapped out" on touch-interfaces.