Science

China wants to be the first country to build a practical space-based solar power station. Space-based solar power would presumably be much more sustainable and clean than fossil fuels and more efficient than the current sustainable energy sources we have on Earth. There are many problems still to be solved before these power plants can exist so China’s expectations are more wishful thinking than based on reality.

Astronomers have found a massive gas-giant that is astonishingly 23.9% as massive as the star it orbits. For comparison, Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system but its mass is only 0.09% of that of the Sun.

An interesting article about an accident involving a Minuteman I nuclear missile 53 years ago. A short-circuit caused one of the retrorockets to fire and as a result the cone containing the nuclear warhead detached and fell into the silo. Ultimately the warhead casing was intact and nothing more serious happened, but the story reminded me of the Damascus Incident in which a fuel leak on the Titan caused a major accident. Eric Schlosser’s book, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, is a fantastic tale of this and other “broken arrow” incidents.

Rodney Brooks writes about the 7 Deadly Sins of AI Predictions. The text articulates a lot of my personal doubts about much of what I see on the news regarding AI. Some people seemed to read this article as a rebutal of AI itself, which I find puzzling as I did not read that at all. If anything, Brooks seems to believe AI will be much bigger than we can possible imagine. He does talk about predictions being flawed. I can’t argue with that.

The Canadian Space Agency is worried about Canada’s vulnerability to solar flares and the like. As a first step, it has published a request for proposals to run studies on the effects of space weather events on the Canadian infrastructure (PDF). The study won’t focus only on cataclysmic scenarios but also at more-routine effects of space weather, like solar wind, flares that affect radio frequencies, radiation storms that send particles towards us and geomagnetic storms that can disrupt satellite systems and other technologies. If you know me, you’ll know a solar flare frying the electrical grid is my nightmare scenario.

After six years in service, the first Chinese space station, Tiangong 1,
is set to fall back to earth sometime in the next few months. Still not clear exactly when, it should happen late this year or early 2018. I’d love to get my hand at a piece of that. As a space exploration geek, I find it incredibly sad that the Chinese space program is relatively secret. I’d love to know more.

• The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis reports that India is cancelling plans for huge coal power stations because solar energy prices are lower, which, if true, represents a huge threshold for sustainable energy productions. If solar energy is cheaper than coal (and other types of energy), that means the market itself will naturally migrate over.
• A company is suggesting that young blood cuts cancer and Alzheimer’s risk, which seems like a huge deal. That said, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. For example, the company’s trial did not have a placebo test group.
• A new paper describes a test in which they were able to restore damaged brain cells in mice using stem cells.

I have a friend who is all into the whole evolutionary psychology fad. It’s useful when you want to rationalize bad behaviour. I once told him that evolutionary psychology was pseudoscience to which he replied saying that I was just trying to negate the world as-is.

But apparently I’m not alone, as Jonathan Marks writes (emphasis is mine) —

I can’t shake the feeling that the methodologies I have encountered in evolutionary psychology would not meet the standards of any other science.  For a notable example, it is apparently a revelation to evolutionary psychology that one cannot readily generalize about the human condition from a sample of humans that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Perhaps this was news in psychology – creationist, evolutionary, or otherwise – but, sad to say, everybody else who works with cultural diversity knew that a really long time ago.