How the Biological Sciences will transform everything... including life-span

Before commencing a rundown of amazing bio-wonder news, let's get back to the core matter at hand... waking up to the need to prevent a planetary collapse.

The Ocean Acidification crisis deepens. Writing in Science, experts say the oceans are heating, losing oxygen and becoming more acidic because of CO2.  If our future is more regions (the Caribbean and Mediterranean) becoming like the Black Sea, then we won't have to wait for sea levels to rise, before the oceans kill us in deserved revenge.

Denialist cultists out always scurry away and hide, or point and yell “squirrel!” whenever ocean acidification comes up. Because there are zero fox-narratives to evade this one.

The ocean has absorbed nearly 30% of the carbon dioxide we have produced since 1750 and, as CO2 is a mildly acidic gas, it is making seawater more acidic. It has also buffered climate change by absorbing over 90% of the additional heat created by industrial society since 1970. The extra heat makes it harder for the ocean to hold oxygen. Ocean acidification also causes shifts in the population of phytoplankton, which form the base of the marine food chain...some will die out, others flourish. 

FURTHER: that temperature rise could do what I fear most, cause a tipping point release of methanic hydrate ices along the ocean floor, turning the greenhouse into a runaway, possibly leading to a Green Sky. 

To see where this will lead, try fishing in today’s Black Sea… once-fertile waters that are now almost utterly dead.

So. Is the Anthropocene about to cause Earth’s Sixth Great Extinction?  “Using fossil records, scientists calculated a "natural" rate of extinction. For every 10,000 species, two go extinct every 100 years. In the past century, nearly 500 species have died off since 1900, rather than the nine that would be expected at natural rates.  Those include 69 mammals, 80 birds, 24 reptiles, 146 amphibians and 158 fish, and those figures are "highly conservative,"  a new report states.

Yes, be concerned!  Be passionate about this! I wrote about it back in 1988, in EARTH.  And yet… 

...and yet we are not quite at that tipping point.  All signs suggest that there is still some time. 

But we must act!

== Bioscience Updates ==

Bacteria as in situ cancer-detectors? Researchers have genetically modified E. coli bacteria into living sensors that can identify signs of diabetes and cancer -- capable of surviving inside a mouse's body for as long as a month.

Fascinating… if in desperate need of open-supervision… research now enables scientists to turn on-off specific clusters of neurons, making a mouse hungry or not, active or not.  An early result under President Barack Obama's 2013 BRAIN Initiative, which aims to advance neuroscience and develop therapies for brain disorders. The approach reflects a shift away from linking such illnesses to "chemical imbalances" in the brain, instead tracing them to miswiring and misfiring in neuronal circuits.

Great!  Only let’s do all this in the open, right? And it does make me wonder if the Goldman-Sachs AI overlords already have the ability to alter what I typ#&4,xosw2jpz88%$ gee I’m hungry. What was I saying? Never mind I gotta go to the fridge now…

Okay I'm back... and now...

Where was I before that sudden craving hit?

"Quantum Biology?" I used that phrase when I was twenty, as a joke in a very early sci fi novel. It got chuckles.  Not anymore. Researchers now see suspended, quantum bi-states in certain proteins involved in photosynthesis, possibly explaining nature's efficiency. Researchers now seek ways to incorporate the quantum lessons of photosynthesis into organic photovoltaic solar cells. Read further, how quantum effects may also be involved in the sense of smell... even consciousness!

Very interesting.  At least one aspect of aging might be the deterioration of bundles of DNA known as heterochromatin, which “spool up” portions of chromosomal DNA between uses, and a WRN protein that keeps these spools healthy. I'll wager we'll find these are already improved/more-effective in humans.

Also fascinating.  Active neurons seem to meddle in their own DNA.  “Scientists say they have discovered another mechanism used by neurons to maintain relatively consistent levels of synaptic activity so that neurons can remain responsive to the signaling around them.” 

A strange virus that can survive being boiled in acid could reveal how proteins and DNA can be put together in a way that's absolutely stable under the harshest conditions imaginable.

Promising...VirScan reveals your viral infection history in a single drop of blood. 

We’ve long known that DNA is made up of four nucleotides: A, T, C, and G -- adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.  (A fifth – Uracil – replaces Thymine in RNA.) Now a fifth  DNA nucleotide may have been discovered.  It is a deviant of cytosine called 5-formylcytosine (5fC).  And has been showed to persist in low levels in the tissues of mice, suggesting it plays a small but significant role… probably in the regulatory portions of the genome (not protein expression.)  From the Futurism site.

Oh, and the first wholly new antibiotic to be discovered in nearly 30 years “has been hailed as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the fight against the growing resistance to drugs. Teixobactin has been found to treat many common bacterial infections such as tuberculosis, septicaemia and C. diff, and could be available within five years. But more importantly it could pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics because of the way it was discovered.” … using an electronic chip to grow the microbes in the soil and then isolate their antibiotic chemical compounds.

A single-celled marine plankton has evolved a miniature version of an eye to help see its prey better. “It contains a collection of sub-cellular organelles that look very much like the lens, cornea, iris and retina of multicellular eyes found in humans and other larger animals." Weird!

Intracellular processing of memory? I’ve argued with Ray Kurzweil over whether the synapse is the only seat of memory and computation in the brain… or if some kinds of information processing takes place within neurons and possibly glial cells. If so then “singularity” crossover – when digital computers will have the same number of elements as a human brain – gets pushed back many more Moore’s Law doublings.  Now come signs not only of intracellular computation, but that at least one variety may be mediated by “prion-like” molecules inside our cells.

== Keeping up with our AI Overlords? ==

In an earlier posting I mentioned that: "Elon Musk has funded the Future of Life Institute to explore possible failure modes re: Artificial Intelligence. (Indeed, I believe I have the cogent and persuasive argument that can get any truly advanced AI system to back off from any simplistic "kill all humans" or tun-everything-into-intelligent goo scenarios.)  But agin, yay Elon. We need a society that looks ahead."

Or else... will we find ways to keep up organically?  Wow… here’s one for the Predictions Registry.  In EXISTENCE I portray new computer methodologies freeing and empowering folks along the Autistic Spectrum to do valuable work… and this article tells how the Israeli Intelligence Services have carefully nurtured and developed this approach, employing spectrum folks for their meticulous attention to certain types of detail and pattern recognition.  Of course another variant on the theme can be found in Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky.

Finally...

Looking back: See what your street in New York City looked like a hundred years ago in this interactive feature on Old NYC.

The crowning of Hillary? And the Pope Francis Effect

==  A premature coronation? ==

The pre-ordination or crowning of Hillary Clinton as the presumed Democratic Party nominee in 2016 was deeply premature.  Even if she winds up with the nomination, why would democrats forego the drama and press coverage of a contested series of primaries and debates? Hundreds of well-vamped and amped opportunities to put forward their shared -- or somewhat varying -- messages – what? Are they really so stupid they would bypass that? 

Even if Clinton were inevitable, the DP’s brightest should step up to tear some spotlight away from the GOP’s astonishing gremlin-frenzy, if only to contrast favorably against the giant rugby scrum of fifteen fanatics racing each other over right-wing cliffs of insanity.

 Hence I was interested to read this argument that the dems ought to take another look at Al Gore. Wow.

Oh, without any doubt, it would be a stronger America today, had cheating not robbed us of the legitimately-elected Gore Presidency, in 2000.  You cannot name a single metric of U.S. national health that did not plummet across the misbegotten reign of either/both Bushes -- one of them the worst president of the 20th Century and the other (I hope will turn out by 2100 to have been) the worst of the 21st. Even a tepid Gore span would have been brilliant, by comparison.  

(Please, please just accept the challenge and offer up one, even one, unambiguous statistical national health metric that attributably improved across either of the last two GOP-held presidencies. One. No? In which case, why should the Republican Party ever again be trusted with a burnt match?)

In fact, though, I do not yearn for Al.  He proved the adage that Democratic Presidents choose, as running mates, people who are qualified for the job, but uninspiring. From LBJ and Humphrey and Mondale to Gore and Lieberman and Biden, this trend is almost perfect. Of course, it is far better than the GOP's alternative fetish – wherein Republican nominees always appoint unqualified fools or horrors to be their Vice Presidential running mates. 

All right, there was one exception to that pattern – Ronald Reagan picked a VP who on-paper was eminently qualified, but who -- lest I reiterate -- ironically went on to become the worst president of the last 100 years. Even worse than his awful son. 

But no. A guy like Al Gore is not what we need right now.

What we do need is someone who can stand up next to Hillary, during debates, and rock the boat!  Alas, while Bernie Sanders sort of qualifies, the stuff he is saying is pretty standard on the left wing of the party. And no, I am not talking about Elizabeth Warren, though I would love to see her gain administrative experience for one term as Vice President or a cabinet secretary. No, neither she nor Bernie rock the boat the way I want -- by shattering the narrative.

Okay, since I started writing this missive there have been a couple more DP entries, Jim Webb from Virginia, for one, who represents the Blue Dog wing of the Party, a wing that should be nurtured! There are millions of Americans who are genuinely and sincerely somewhat-conservative by temperament, but who also know the Republican Party has gone  completely insane. They'll need reassurance that the other tent is big enough for them, and that it welcomes a diversity of (sane) views. Democrats who reject a sane Blue Dog out of hand are pure fools. Sane vs insane is vastly more important than "centrist versus slightly-left-of-centrist."

 One quirk that I might be the first to mention. A major NASA project might have to be re-named, if Jim Webb does become president.

Lincoln Chafee and Martin O'Malley have also declared in the Democratic race, and I am willing to look. Already the five DPs are more varied than the fifteen GOP fellahs, all of whom get 90% of their talking points from Roger Ailes.  (Though yes, Trump does entertain.)

Still, I am unsatisfied.  We need stronger drink. Maybe not for the nominee, but certainly earlier, during the debates and media discussions leading up to that decision!

No, I mean someone who would take the discussion off at vertical angles to the hoary, lobotomizing so-called “left right political axis!” Someone with solid administrative credentials and popularity and sanity and purpose – but who is bored with all the standard clichés, that are so expertly manipulated by Fox News.

I am talking about Jerry Brown.  

Okay, he’s old and would likely serve just one term. (Dig it, Warren fans?) But he is a masterful politician, hugely successful and popular in the U.S. state that outproduces all but maybe seven nations on the planet and is the source of half our world’s innovative drive. 

And he despises clichés! They bore him. He would take any and every Fox-Ailesheimers talking point and shred it, just for fun.  He would do what Hillary has proved incapable of ever doing –

-- he’d refuse to play Rupert Murdoch’s game. And hence, even if Hillary winds up being the nominee, she would sally forth from the convention across a landscape where every old-saw and hoary assumption has been up-ended. 

Will Jerry run? Alas, I doubt it. But oh, the fun we'd have! Heck he could even declare that he's doing it "for fun!"

... which brings up a weird hypothesis about Jon Stewart's suspicious timing. But save that for another (fun) occasion.

== Who would be the GOP’s “Jerry”? ==

Where to find one for the other side? A republican who hates clichés and gets bored by standard positions and who would laugh at attempts to discipline him to the Murdoch-Adelson-Ailes-Saudi-Koch party line?

Let’s see… is there one state in the U.S. that routinely produces such characters? Did I mention those mould-breakers Reagan and Brown? Well, sure.

Arnold Schwarznegger has uttered the words that so many of you ought to be saying, by now.

”As a Republican, I’m furious.”

The “Terminator” star and former California governor on April 3 blasted Indiana’s recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which many believe to be a thinly veiled attempt to excuse discrimination against gays and other minorities.  But our former “guvernator” went on to blast members of his party who “choose the politics of division.”

Oh, how I would love to see him take the stage, in coming GOP presidential nomination debates, and say that “emperor” Rupert Murdoch has no clothes! That the party of Goldwater and Buckley has been hijacked down paths of sheer insanity.  And that it is time for decent conservatives to save American conservatism, by getting mad at the hijackers.  

And no, I don't care whether he's "native-born." Remember, I am talking about the next 11 months of theater before the conventions.  That is when the actual national dialogue takes place. And boy do we need to shake up that dialogue!

Oh, but then there’s this... California trounces Texas, other states in job creation. And in almost every other category. Heck even if the official nominees are (sigh) "Bush versus Clinton,"*** we could still demand a special California debate.

 Jerry Brown vs Ah-nold in 2016!  

== Did Heinlein exaggerate with “Nehemia Scudder? ==

Via David Ronfeldt: It's evidently from an odd book by Norman Cohn, the expert on millenarianism famed for his book "The Pursuit of the Millennium". The quote may fit a discussion about some current U. S. political trends, though it was originally written for a different audience.

"It is a great mistake to suppose that the only writers who matter are those whom the educated in their saner moments can take seriously. There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures, and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history."   --From Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Oxford University Press, 1970, p.14). From the posting Fatal Attraction.

Radicals are starting to simmer, and the fellows who are pulling the latest oligarchic putsch need to understand where it might all lead.  Those of us pushing for a normal, rhythmic moderate-pragmatic “reset” of the flat-open-fair social contract envision something like what Americans have done in most generations, including the two Rooseveltean flattenings… preventing the routine efforts to rebuild feudal pyramids of privilege that ruined 99% of societies, and keeping our flattened-diamond experiment going for another generation.

But read here, how others have already given up. The putsch has already gone too far, they claim!  Elias Isquith interviews Chris Hedges: “We have, to quote John Ralston Saul, “undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion” and it’s over. The normal mechanisms by which we carry out incremental and piecemeal reform through liberal institutions no longer function. They have been seized by corporate power — including the press. That sets the stage for inevitable blowback, because these corporations have no internal constraints, and now they have no external constraints. So they will exploit, because, as Marx understood, that’s their nature, until exhaustion or collapse.” 

Is this right?  No, not yet.  There are far too many positive trends, especially since 2013 was the best year for U.S. civil liberties in two decades or more. Something the far-left and the entire right – both of them allergic to optimism – will never admit.

Still, heed the sounds of pitchforks being sharpened and tumbrels being oiled. The Roosevelts were moderate–pragmatic alternatives to Trotsky, to Hitler, to Stalin, or Bakunin.  As I portray in Existence… any new feudal caste had better try lots harder to be actually smart, instead of delusional (like every other feudal caste, across all of time). Or else they should picture a Billion Bakunins, many millions of them armed not with pitchforks, but genetically engineered bugs. Then, envision them getting jobs serving drinks at high class resorts.

Negotiate with us. The enlightenment made you rich. Try showing it some loyalty.

 == The Pope Effect ==

Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory real..“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said. 

Further -- in words likely to anger some of his conservative critics, the pope backs the science of climate change, saying "plenty of scientific studies point out that the last decades of global warming have been mostly caused by the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) especially generated by human action" 

Yep… one more gol-durned "elite" trying' to use reality to bully the plantation -- er oligarch -- er, Fox -- er, "job creator" (yeah, that's it) lords.  Down with every elite who's not a confederate plantation lord!  You listening, God?  

Okay, okay, this fellow seems to be on his way to becoming the most reasonable and insightful and most humane pope any of us have seen.  Still, and while the messages have mostly been positive, so far, I have my limits. For example, when Pope Francis “denounced what he calls the “great powers” of the world for failing to act when there was intelligence indicating Jews, Christians,homosexuals and others were being transported to death camps in Europe during World War II.”  

While I agree with the actual statement, I find it hard to swallow coming from the Vatican, whose behavior during that same time was utterly accommodating to evil forces committing those crimes.

See this simple dissection of why certain religious dogmas are absolutely tantamount to treason.

Oh, but finally then there's this...

As we speak, Republicans are pushing hard to retract all accountability measures from their own No Child Left Behind reform of U.S. education. 

Now why would they do that? I thought the whole purpose of NCLB was to use testing and comparable metrics to find out where schools are failing so that attention can be focused on them... so that no child would be left behind! 

But oh... okay. It turns out the GOP is running as fast as they can to cancel all real measuring and accountability -- for one simple reason. The accountability testing under No Child Left Behind was blatantly showing that Red States are failing. They are falling more and more behind blue states and getting worse. 

So... shall we re-evaluate processes and try to do better? Um, did I mention these are republicans? Perception is all that matters! The solution is "don't you dare look at us!"

Oh, boy. The next year will be "fun."  Come on Jerry and Arnold ... and Jon... take off those quotation marks.


==================

*** I am still looking for a bold urban guerrilla theater ensemble to look at my script for a very easy political video. One that would be hilarious, pointed and devastating... regarding the problem of political "dynasties." Hey, don't get me wrong. Given any choice between a Bush and a Clinton (and their respective armies of factotums), it's a no-brainer. Another Bush could kill us all. And I got no beef against Hill. Except that we would never know a moment without shrill (even if unearned) rancor. This nominee cannot sooth Phase Eight of our Civil War, no matter how hard she wants to, or tries.

Still... do I have a bit of satire that could at-minimum make you all laugh and cry? Sigh.

  

Exploring the Scale of the Universe: Our place in time and space

First, on the very near scale, this miracle year in space just keeps delivering, with amazing results from Mercury, Venus, Earth-climate sensing satellites, Mars, a Mars-grazing comet, landing on another comet, visiting Ceres, more news from Saturn and Titan, announcing plans for a Europa mission, deploying a solar sail, arriving at Pluto(!) and confirming hundreds of additional extrasolar planets.  Plus now...

The Planetary Resources Arkyd 3 Reflight (A3R) spacecraft deployed successfully from the International Space Station’s (ISS) Kibo airlock and has begun its 90-day mission!  Asteroids hold so much more potential for human development - in the near futurre - than returning to the sterile desert of the Moon. 

All right, it's been the best year for exploratory space missions since 1972... (though let's root for SpaceX to get smoothly across its current rough patch.) Teach this to your kids and neighbors! It's a civilization that - if flawed - is reason for great pride. On the other hand, let's not get carried away.  We're just getting started and the universe is pretty darn big.  

How big?


== There's a whole lot of space in space! ==

How to envision the immensity of the universe? Almost beyond our comprehension... here is a list of just a few interactive sites that let you zoom or scroll through the vastness of the cosmos, scaling in from galaxies to planets to buildings to atoms and quarks -- or to explore the realm of Time... from the Big Bang through the evolution of life on Earth and the history of humanity. Many of these are wonderful resources for teachers... and for those who want to expand their horizons...

Magnifying the Universe

1) Magnifying the Universe: I've always been a big fan of "powers of ten" style zoom-in and zoom-out graphics and films that bring home the incredible ranges of scale that we must deal with, in our puny, brittle minds.  Now see this supercool slide-able graphic that really brings it home. Dizzyingly fun: this interactive version of the universe (from Number Sleuth) takes you in scale from a hydrogen atom to a cell to a human to a star -- then on to our galaxy, local superclusters and beyond. Explore!

The Scale of the Universe

2) The Scale of the Universe: This interactive site (from Cary Huang) expands in scale from the extremely small to the incredibly immense -- starting with quantum foam (at the Planck length of 10 -35 m) to neutrinos, quarks, atoms, and cells all the way up to humans, buildings, planets, stars, galaxies and superclusters (on the gigaparsec level). You'll encounter a wide range of lesser known units for measurement: yoctometer, heptameter, attometer, femtometer, picometer...

3) If the Moon Were Only One Pixel: This ginormously accurate scale model of our solar system (from Josh Worth) lets you scroll from the sun to Earth... and all the way out to Pluto (if you have the extraordinary patience to go that far). Read the comments along the way (Most of space is just space... and passing through the Asteroid Belt you will never actually see a single asteroid.) This truly lends some perspective on the vastness and emptiness of just our solar system... and perhaps our insignificance in the grand scale of things.

4) The Scale of Our Solar System: This infographic (from Space.com) lets you scroll out from the sun to the outer reaches of the solar system, past the Kuiper Belt to the Oort Cloud, marking off the astronomical units in terms of the distance travelled by light from the sun, from 1 to 14 hours. It also shows the relative distances traveled by the New Horizons, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes.

The Known Universe

5) The Known Universe: This gorgeous six minute film (from the American Museum of Natural History) zooms you from the Himalayan mountains, to the orb of planet Earth -- through the outer reaches of our solar system to the spiral of the Milky Way galaxy to distant quasars in the depths of space... then reverses course to plunge back toward home.

Noteworthy.  If you visit and use ALL of these sites, some of these scale notions might sink in better than with just one. Check in and let us know the psychological effects!

6) How Big is Space? This interactive site from the BBC allows you to pilot your rocket ship up through the layers of the atmosphere through the planets, then out to the edge of the solar system, passing the New Horizons and Voyager probes along the way.

The Interactive Universe

7) The Interactive Universe: this site from the History Channel is less extensive than the others listed here, but it provides information as you click to zoom in on the sun, planets, asteroids, comets, nebulae, then on to the Andromeda Galaxy or black holes.


8) 100,000 Stars: an interactive 3D visualization (created for Google Chrome) of our stellar neighborhood, showing the location and identity of over 100,000 nearby stars. Zoom in to explore.

9) The original Powers of Ten clip: This 1977 film by Charles and Ray Eames begins at a lakeside picnic near Chicago. Starting at a scale of one meter, the film moves outward by a factor of ten every ten seconds, zooming out to Lake Michigan to the globe of the Earth, then on to the solar system, the galaxy, then out the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies... before diving back to our earthbound picnickers and closing in explore inside a single carbon atom. Narrated by the great Phil Morrison, of SETI fame.

And now on to Time...

Chronozoom

10) Chronozoom: This visual timeline of the universe expands from the Big Bang to the birth of the Milky Way Galaxy to the formation of our planet, then on through Earth's geological eras... to the prehistory of Earth, the evolution of life and the history of humanity. This open source project (designed at Microsoft Research and UC Berkeley, and developed at Moscow State University) also has links to a wealth of teaching resources for the classroom.

Here Is Today website

11) Here is Today: By progressively clicking, this site (from Luke Twyman) takes you from "Here is Today" to the month, year, century, millennium, epoch, compressing the timeline to reach the geologic period, era, then eon of Earth’s history ... and then expands to show the lifespan of the universe.

Evolution: What's Next?

12) Evolution: What’s Next? This site (from John Kyrk and Uzay Sezen)) offers a slider to move through time: it shows the formation of various elements after the Big Bang, then moves through the accretion of the sun and planets... and on to the formation of the earth's atmosphere and evolution of life.

Human Evolution Timeline

13) Human Evolution Timeline: this interactive (from the Smithsonian Institution) traverses the milestones in the evolution of humans  -- through australopithecus, paranthropus, to homo erectus, charting climate fluctuations along the way.

A few more amazing sites well worth your time...

Historic Spacecraft website

14) Historic Spacecraft: a comprehensive exploration of space history, with photos, drawings, updates and background information (accumulated by Richard Kruse) -- covering space probes, rockets, rovers, launch pads, space suits...plus timelines, size comparisons, cut-away views, history, quotes and more. Truly a wealth of information!

Atomic Rockets website

15) Atomic Rockets: "So You Wanna Build a Rocket?" is an incredibly detailed website devoted to rocket and spaceship design. The site (from Winchell Chung) offers equations, designs, illustrations, even parts lists, behind rocket drives, space stations, spaceships, spacesuits, weapons and so much more. It has entries on Space Law, world building -- and more far-out speculation on aliens and space colonization. A wonderful resource for authors seeking scientific accuracy -- and an aid to getting the science right in science fiction films or stories.

Science Fictional Spaceships by Dirk Loechel

16) Size comparison of Science fictional spaceships by Dirk Loechel -- an epic-scale illustration that shows side-by-side images of spacecraft from Star Trek to Star Wars, Dr. Who to Stargate and Starship Troopers. Really fun to explore.

Though... ahem... you guys are missing some (* cough Streaker! *) classics that were included in a similar display at Seattle's (alas defunct) Science Fiction Museum.

17) A 360 degree view of the flight deck of the Discovery space shuttle: A dizzyingly detailed virtual tour of Discovery's deck during its last mission STS-133. Discovery is now at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in DC.

Mars Trek website

18) Mars Trek: Fly over the surface of Mars! Explore the planet in 3D with this NASA site: Click and zoom, pan in and out to view the detailed surface geology of the red planet. Almost like being there! You can also access and visualize scientific data sets by overlaying information from probes such as the Mars Rovers - Spirit, Opportunity, Sojourner, and Curiosity.

Earth Wind Map

19) Earth Wind Map shows up-to-date air and ocean currents across the globe -- showing stunning atmospheric circulation patterns. Another site for visualizing wind forecasts is Windyty.  Or see the wind map of the U.S. -- with surface wind data and circulation patterns, updated hourly. See also this collection of beautiful weather maps -- providing essential data on our planet. 

20) Deep Space Network: Our Eyes in the Sky: Which spacecraft are phoning home right now? Check out NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) -- an international array of radio antennae that communicate with interplanetary space missions. These include antennae in California (Goldstone), Madrid and Canberra. View which antennae  are actively receiving signals, which spacecraft are currently talking to earth.  

21) Satellite Flybys: Do you want to look up and see the Hubble Space Telescope? Enter your location, and this site (from SpaceWeather.com) shows which satellites are currently overhead. It tells when the satellite is over the horizon, the direction to look, and the magnitude. Similarly, Heavens Above charts the visibility of the International Space Station.  

22) Space Engine is a free space simulation program that enables you to explore the universe, pilot a starship -- and land on any planet, moon or asteroid. Or try Explore Mars Now, which allows you to explore a simulated Mars base, and walk through the habitats, laboratories, rovers and greenhouses necessary for a manned mission to Mars.

23) And finally... XKCD's take on illustrating scale: the observable universe from top to bottom, showing height above earth's surface on a logarithmic scale.

Left out?  The wonders of BIOLOGY!  Feel free to chime in with your favorite anatomical, functional, species and other depictions of that fascinating world.  We'll give that run-down another time. (And of course you'll see lots of political-social-economic maps, across the coming year!)

Explore...and be amazed!