Category: FINALLY

Cyborgs Move Among Us

They’re on the weird side, but with a fascinating notion: their “art lies in the creation of their own senses.”

neil harbisson

This is Neil Harbisson. That thing on his head is an antennae he had planted IN HIS SKULL.

The antenna allows him to perceive visible and invisible colours such as infrareds and ultraviolets via sound waves. The antenna’s internet connection allows him to receive colors from space as well as images, videos, music or phone calls directly into his head via external devices such as mobile phones or satellites.

moon ribas

This is Moon Ribas (way to go, mom and dad).  She has connected her elbows to global seismic sensors.  She is developing a “motion sense” for planetary movement.

She gives performances, Waiting for Earthquakes, where she stands, waiting for earthquakes. If there is no earthquake she just stands.

It’s hard to describe this without snark because WTF. BUT… amazing. And bold.

And there are civil rights issues. Apparently people see them and freak the fuck out. WHICH IS BIGOTRY and they’re fighting it.

Hopefully they don’t aspire to Star Trek villainy.

To advance the cause of cyborgery Moon and Neil have a Cyborg Foundation.

Neil Harbisson

Neil Harbisson website site web


Scalia’s Funeral: A Strikingly Literal Metaphor For Burying Bigotry

An oppressor goes silent.

It’s regrettable this potent mind chose not to be an ally to personal freedom and citizen equality.


NOBEL WORTHY HISTORIC DISCOVERY OF GRAVITY WAVES AMAZES STEPHEN HAWKING

Colliding blackholes generating a spacetime hurricane.

I’m thinking physics news that amazes Hawking is historically amazing.

“This is just the first step in a much larger and more exciting development,” says Ilya Mandel, a theoretical physicist at the University of Birmingham, UK. Gravitational waves will join γ-rays, X-rays and radio waves as “part of the toolkit that we have for understanding the universe”, he says.

I love this part of the story: they auralized it.

 

 

The physicists who discovered this described the collision of these two black holes as a “storm in spacetime.”  <– ridiculously cool phrase.

Visualization of the two black holes hooking up and having a spacetime storm baby.

 

 

The historic Physical Review Letters:

http://journals.aps.org/prl/

Great graphics from the article:

black holes colliding

black holes colliding

Nature’s presentation of how the gravity waves were detected:

Einstein’s gravitational waves found at last

LIGO ‘hears’ space-time ripples produced by black-hole collision.

 

How they found it.

Einstein’s gravitational waves found at last

One hundred years after Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, scientists have finally spotted these elusive ripples in space-time. In a highly anticipated announcement, physicists with the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) revealed on 11 February that their twin detectors have heard the gravitational ‘ringing’ produced by the collision of two black holes about 400 megaparsecs (1.3 billion light-years) from Earth.

 

 

 

 

graviton

Graviton, master of gravity.


FINALLY a bioreactor for kids

LrMobile0802-2016-04572347163272316

Awesome. And this is exavtly  the kind of thing unlikely to have any negative unintended consequences of any kind as some of these young people become angry adolescent biohackers. Still: awesome.

Homebrew biology kit brings synthetic biology to the masses

Ever wanted to create your own organism? It’s now easier than ever. Just take a dash of E. coli, a pinch of jellyfish DNA, stir well and heat gently. As it bubbles away in a vial mounted on top of the stylish wooden box, the mixture slowly turns red.