“The image below is an up to date map of the solar system displaying the orbits of the terrestrial planets and the estimated position of thousands of known asteroids. This diagram is missing comets, space probes and, of course, the undiscovered asteroids. Even conservative estimates would suggest that for every asteroid on a dangerous Earth-Approaching orbit there are hundreds more which have yet to be discovered.”

“There are over 300 known objects on Earth-crossing orbits, the majority of which are potentially capable of causing death and destruction on a scale unheard of in human history.”

[...]

full at the Armagh Observatory site

Dear Buttons:

Oh, and then there was that Friday night – several years back while I was consulting at the chem firm with the Superfund site in the Midwest I’ve told you so much about – when I met Big Boy S at a Brazilian night club that was only a few blocks away from Chem Firm’s ultra mod 1960’s bachelor pad themed HQ.

As we were walking in, a woman was leaving. She knew S. and hopped up to give him the kind of hug everyone should receive (and give, we must share) at least once a day.

As she was hugging, I thought to myself “yes, you’re right libido – she is a really hot late middle aged woman” because those are the sort of formal, yet lightly colloquialised thoughts I think to myself on warm Friday nights when standing in front of Brazilian themed night clubs.

She left in a perfumed cloud.

I turned to Big Boy S. and said “damn, she’s a very attractive older woman.” He blinked in confusion then understood my error. “Older?” he whispered. “Dude, she’s 26. What you’re seeing is the time accelerating impact of club life, nicotine, E, really loud music and too little sleep.”

It turns out that S. was an accidental researcher, well ahead of his time.

Via 3 Quarks Daily..

Cranking up the music can exacerbate the club drug ecstasy’s deleterious effects on the brain, according to a new study. When scientists simulated a dance party for rats in the lab, the rodents suffered from reduced brain activity 5 times longer than their counterparts who took the drug in peace and quiet. The findings suggest environment may play a significant role in the harmful effects of the drug among humans.

To see how sound impacts the effects of ecstasy, Michelangelo Iannone, a neurologist at the Institute of Neurological Science in Catanzaro, Italy, and colleagues gave relatively low and high doses of the drug to 20 rats. The team then placed half of the rodents in a cage blasted with white noise and half in a sound-proof metal box, while monitoring their brain activity with a device called an electrocorticograph (ECoG). Turning the volume up appears to turn brain function down. Among rats given the high dose of ecstasy, those exposed to 95 decibels–the maximum noise legally allowed in Italian nightclubs–had ECoG readings half as high as rats not exposed to sound.

[...]

full here

Like many other children I dreamed of a better world.

In this imaginary world, human troubles and conflicts melted away like unsalted butter tossed on a running truck motor (as metaphors go, this wasn’t the best but I’m pressed for time and fixated on truck motors and butter).

The key to this sun kissed, mango scented era of peace and prosperity was the replacement of sloppy human rule and all its ‘isms with machine logic (yes that’s right, I was 12…it seemed both plausible and imminent enough at the time – let’s all blame Stanislaw Lem’s Golem XIV).

But not just any machines would have the privilege of telling us to collectively shut up, mind our manners and eat our veggies in silence – these world managing devices would be bio-machines, a marvelously strange and strangely marvelous mixture of the living and the manufactured.

An absurd fantasy to be sure and I’m retroactively ashamed of my childhood self for indulging in such…oh wait, there goes one now.

Here’s how it works in the age of easy access info…

At time X (let’s say 9:00 AM) I sit down with a cup of tea and decide to accomplish a long list of things that have to be accomplished.

At time Y (let’s say, 10 AM) I check a science feed and learn about a new planet discovered orbiting a red dwarf star some 28,000 light years distant.

The technique used to find this world is called gravitational microlensing. Because I’m the sort of hairless ape who likes to learn about these kinds of things I read about gravitational microlensing for the rest of the day – off and on. Productivity drops to appallingly low levels.

Tommorow, I plan to be more focused though the robot camel jockeys of Qatar might have a thing or two to say about that.