Europa’s Poles Have Gone ‘a’ Wanderin’
Orbiting its much larger parent body Jupiter, Europe is the sixth of at least 63 moons that call the big red planet home, and the smallest of the four Galilean moons. Discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei, she was named after a mythical Phoenician noblewoman who was courted by Zeus and became the queen of Crete.
And according to recent research her poles may have been on a long journey towards her equator.
Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and his colleagues have been studying imagery from the spacecraft Voyager, Galileo and New Horizon’s, in an attempt to map several arc-shaped depressions spared far apart on Europa.
Measuring in at about 500 kilometers long and with two of them lying exactly on opposite sides of the planet, the depressions are so shallow that, according to Schenk, “you would not notice them if you were walking on Europa.”
Plugging the imagery and data in to a computer model has provided Schenk’s team with what they believe to be proof that the surface scars are the result of a past rotation of the moon’s icy shell, measuring 80°— nearly a quarter-turn.
The theory goes that spinning spheres such as a planet push heavy lumps of material on their surfaces towards their equators. But if a buildup of, in Europa’s case, ice at one of her poles was to occur, it could have sparked what scientists describe as “true polar wander”, or, the movement of a planet’s poles away from their original start positions.
This is an important discovery, because for most planets – such as Mars and Earth – there are large amounts of friction between their internal layers. This makes slippage very slow. But if, for example, an icy crust was resting atop a subsurface ocean, the slippage would be a lot smoother and thus faster.
“We prefer the model of an ice shell moving over an ocean because it is much easier to reorient the shell than the entire body,” said co-author Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz, “and there is a plausible published mechanism for causing the shell to reorient by roughly 90 degrees.”
If indeed there lies underneath the surface a large ocean, than the chance that it also harbors aspects of life increase. And if nothing else, who knows, maybe someone can go and destroy Europa like they’re destroying Earth.
Schenk, Nimmo and Isamu Matsuyama of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (D.C.) report their findings in the May 15 Nature.
Air Force Colonel Wants Friendly Botnet
When you hear of spam or cyber attacks taking place, you can bet your bottom dollar that a botnet is at the bottom of it. Simply put, a botnet is a collection of computers – totally unaware of their involvement – being enslaved to do the bidding of someone. From there these zombie computers are able to send out masses of email or target servers and websites with masses of internet traffic.
Many believe that there exists a botnet so big that it could be infected on anywhere between 1 million and 50 million computers.
Now, a US Air Force colonel is suggesting that the U.S. military build their own botnet, as a variation on the Mutually Assured Destruction theory of nuclear weapons. In other words, if the U.S. military is attacked, so should be whoever is doing the attacking.
“The days of the fortress are gone, even in cyberspace,” wrote Col. Charles Williamson III, staff judge advocate for Air Force Intelligence in the Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. “While America must harden itself in cyberspace, we cannot afford to let adversaries maneuver in that domain uncontested.”
But instead of infecting innocent computers to become their botnets, Williamson is suggesting using computers that the Air Force would normally be throwing away.
Williamson’s suggestion has sparked intense debate in the computer security community. First and foremost on people’s minds is the safety and wisdom of allowing a military organization under governmental control access to a massive botnet such as this.
Allan Paller, the director of research for the SANS Institute, which operates the Internet Storm Center – an early warning system for computer attacks – believes that it would be much easier and safer for the military to coerce internet service providers to shut off traffic from hostile computers, rather than adopt a “carpet bombing” approach.
“To me it’s a silly solution to a problem that has much simpler solutions,” he said in an interview. “What’s wrong with it is that it’s not instantaneous, it’s not precise and it’s not entirely effective. There are defenses you can set up against it - whereas using a precision weapon, like working with the network guys, is pretty wonderful.”
Not surprisingly, there are those who see this idea as a good way to strengthen the United States’ cyber defenses. However given the inaccurate and imprecise nature of botnet attacks, and their inability to actually “defend” against another attack, one would suggest that this is only another game of “who has the biggest penis.”
Another problem to be solved is the fact that hackers do not often allow themselves to be geographically tracked, thus providing for the possibility that wherever the U.S. botnet is targeted, may not actually be the ones attacking. Using a method called I.P. Spoofing hackers are often able to fake their location.
Williamson notes that the botnet shouldn’t be allowed to attack privately owned computers in the U.S. without an official order from the president. This idea sort of presents the picture of a second man carrying a second “football” – the suitcase with nuclear missile launch codes – after the present, and a giant red “botnet” button!
In reality, the U.S. should focus on strengthening their defenses, instead of following a decades old approach that nearly brought the world to nuclear war (Cuban missile crisis anyone?). The simple fact of the matter is, if the US was to retaliate to a botnet attack, the internet across the entire planet would suffer dramatically, because no matter how you swing it, the attack is an increase of internet traffic, thus slowing down all the legitimate traffic.
Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World
I’m a big fan of Flight of the Chonchords, and my mate Jeff passed this newly released video on to me… You just have to love these guys, and who else can turn rolerskates and ladies in to a peace movement?
Robots to Help Explain Underwater Volcano Growth
The history of Earth’s tectonic plates is a fascinating one, and worth study. As they are pulled apart by forces in the Earth, rocks from deep within the mantle are pulled up to fill in the gap left behind. As they rise, the rocks start to melt and subsequently form thousands of volcanoes on the sea floor. Over time, the volcanoes cluster together and form giant ridges.
One of the most significant and largest of these ridges is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. A divergent tectonic plate boundary it runs for about 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) from the Arctic Ocean to near the southern tip of Africa. The MAR separates the Eurasian Plate with the North American Plate in the North Atlantic, and the African Plate from the South American Plate in the South Atlantic.
Now, scientists from Durham University plan to use robots in an expedition to study the growth of underwater volcanoes. Sailing about Britain’s Royal Research Ship James Cook, an international team of 12 scientists will depart from Ponta Delgada, San Miguel, in the Azores, on Friday May 23.
The five week expedition will send explorer robots to map individual volcanoes along the MAR, almost three kilometers below the surface of the sea. But while the peaks of these volcanoes reach to these heights, their flanks descend an additional five kilometers.
After the explorer robots have finished their work, they will then use a robot called ISIS to collect rock samples from the volcanoes. These rock samples will be dated using radiometric dating and by measuring the changing strength of the Earth’s magnetic field through time by studying the natural magnetism of the rocks themselves.
Principal investigator Professor Roger Searle, in the Department of Earth Sciences, at Durham University, said: “The problem is that we don’t know how fast these volcanoes form or if they all come from melting the same piece of mantle rock.
“The ridges may form quickly, perhaps in just 10,000 years (about the time since the end of the last Ice Age) with hundreds of thousands of years inactivity before the next one forms, or they may take half-a-million years to form, the most recent having begun before the rise of modern humans.
“Understanding the processes forming the crust is important, because the whole ocean floor, some 60 per cent of the Earth’s surface, has been recycled and re-formed many times over the Earth’s history.”
In addition to Searle, his team of scientists will include members from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, the Open University, the University of Paris and several institutions in the USA.
Diary of a Writer - Episode 008 - Comics!!!
I don’t know why I’m awake, but I am, and thus I decided to make the most of it and do a Diary. I step back in to my podcast and let you in to see my opinion about comics, including Queen and Country Definitive Edition 01 (check the Amazon link in the sidebar). It is a brilliant book, one definitely worth looking at if you get the chance!
Also, having been newly appointed to the Geeks of Doom contributing staff, I comment on what is coming up in the way of comic reviews, including DMZ volume 1, Sandman volume 1, and a manga version of Romeo and Juliet (cannot wait!).
Anyway, that’s it from me, I’m going to go potter around the house and see if sleep is anywhere about. Otherwise, I have books that want reading!
The Quest for the Ark Continues
Archaeological quests haven’t been popularly exciting since Indiana Jones went off the screen. Maybe that’s because most archaeological escapades involve a lot of digging in one spot, rather than jumping all across the countryside, being chased by huge perfectly spherical boulders, and shooting at Nazis. However as a history buff, I find this latest story no less exciting for the fact that Indie is missing.
The Ark of the Covenant – the sacred container out of Biblical history that contained the Ten Commandments, written by God for the people of Israel – has long been an item of archaeological interest. When did it disappear, who had it last and where did it go?
Now, German researchers from the University of Hamburg have found the remains of the palace of the Queen of Sheba. In particular, they have found what they believe to be an altar that may once have held the Ark.
The last recorded location of the Ark is in 2 Chronicles, chapter 35, verse 3, of the Old Testament, where King Josiah had placed the Ark in to the Temple. However soon after (chronologically), the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the ark passed in to legend.
Many theories exist, including the deliberate burial of the Ark under the Temple Mount, but the one that is relevant to the German expedition is the theory that together, King Solomon and the Queen of Sheeba had a child together, Menelek I, and that he removed the Ark.
Professor Helmut Ziegert, of the archaeological institute at the University of Hamburg, has been supervising a dig in Aksum, northern Ethiopia, since 1999. “From the dating, its position and the details that we have found, I am sure that this is the palace [of the Queen of Sheeba],” he said.
After the death of the Queen of Sheeba, Menelek replaced the palace with a temple worshiping Sirius (or Sothis, the Greek for the star Sirius). The German researchers believe that the Ark was built in to the altar. “The results we have suggest that a Cult of Sothis developed in Ethiopia with the arrival of Judaism and the Ark of the Covenant, and continued until 600AD,” an announcement by the University of Hamburg on behalf of the research team said.
This recent announcement has once again however spread discontent throughout the world of archaeology. For a long time the discussion has raged as to whether archaeology should be involved in myth-chasing. Because, regardless of whether the Ark is “found”, there is no way that it can be identified as the original that carried the Ten Commandments.
MIT Students Demonstrate the Power of Android
The second half of this year is going to bring with it one of the most highly anticipated technology releases, paralleling last year’s release of the Apple iPhone. Google, the internet search and advertising giant, will be releasing its Android operating system for mobile phones.
Google is billing Android as “a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.” Some may call it Google’s answer to the iPhone, and for a long time it was already billed as “the iPhone killer,” long before the software development kit was released.
The Android is going to be a very open platform, where anyone can affect changes. Whereas before, wireless companies had a large amount of control over the phone and its software, with the introduction of Apple’s iPhone, things have been shook up: Google plan to take that a lot further with Android.
Android’s openness has been put through the wringer over at MIT though, after Massachusetts Industry of Technology professor Hal Abelson asked his computer science student’s one question; what do you want your cell phone to be able to do?
Their task was to design a software program for mobile phones that will use the upcoming Android operating system, and though they didn’t have any phones to work on (they used a computer simulator to design their programs), the opportunities they glanced are mesmerizing.
Seven teams of students set to create a program that embodied what they thought a phone should do; and it appears that the general consensus is that it should lock in to your location. One project named GeoLife, is designed to send a message or buzz the user when they pass by a geographical location (a supermarket, chemist, etc) if a note on their to-do list requires them to enter. For example, if you need milk and it’s on your to-do list, then when you pass by your local supermarket… bzzzt!
Another project named Locale was designed to let users configure their phones to automatically adjust their settings upon arriving at a different geographical zone. For example, the phone would switch to vibrate mode in the office, silent mode at the theatre (or at your mother-in-laws house), and ring everywhere else.
Locale was also advanced to the finals of a $10 million Android developers challenge that Google is running.
”This class is a glimpse of the future, and what’s nice, the not-so-distant future,” Abelson said Friday at a gathering where the students presented their final projects.
All of this comes just under a week after Reuters reported on comments made by Professor Jonathan Zittrain in his new book regarding the possibility that this new era of gadgets – blackberry’s, iPhone’s, etc – threaten the future of the internet.
Unlike home computers, new Internet-enabled gadgets don’t lend themselves to the sort of tinkering and collaboration that leads to technological advances, he says. And while Apple’s iPhone has only just opened itself up to third party applications – though with a neurotic caveat that they must pass Apple’s OK first – Google’s Android is definitely going to lay waste to Zittrain’s views.
However Zittrain’s views are emblematic of a naïve and almost obsessive point of view. From the Reuters article; “Society should resist more regulation and place its trust in the Internet’s users. The success of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written and edited by its readers, shows how self-governance can work.”
The idea that Wikipedia has been an unqualified success is far from true, and the “self governance” of the internet has yet to fully prove itself as foolproof. One need only reflect on the level of discourse on Digg to realize that the internet, and the social group, is a long way from rightfully inheriting the reins of devices like the iPhone.
DARPA’s Fight on the Internet Begins
One of a number of groups or people attributed with the creation of the internet are now intent on finding ways to protect from cyber attacks. DARPA – the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – have announced their desire to create what they are labeling a National Cyber Range.
Pretty much a firing range for nerds!
The goal of the NCR is to provide a virtual world where those who will be defending against cyber attacks in the future can train, learn, and build their skills in doing so. In the wake of allegations that countries like Russia and China have been making cyber attacks on countries like America, this is no wacky mind control experiment; this is the future.
The Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the National Cyber Range was published on May 5, in an attempt to sway Congress to allocate money to DARPA for just this project. The 47 page briefing (.doc) outlines everything from top to bottom, and how DARPA hopes that their project will work, and subsequently help fight.
The NCR must be capable of taking a physical computer and rapidly creating a functionally equivalent, logical instance of that machine that can be replicated repeatedly … Given a never-before-seen physical computing device [the Range must be able to] create logical instantiations of the physical native machine that accurately replicates, not only the software on the machine, but hardware to the interrupt level, chipset, and peripheral cards and devices.
Another intriguing idea is one that definitely throws in to the air a whole bunch of metaphysical and philosophical questions. “The NCR must replicate realistic human behavior on nodes.” In other words, the NCR will be filled with simulated human beings to play the role of mythical sysadmins, users, etc. In addition;
Replicant behavior will change as the network environment changes, as the replicated “outside environment” (i.e. DoD DefCon, InfoCon, execution of war plans, etc) changes, and as network activity changes (detected attacks, degradation of services, etc).
These automated replicants will be responsible for controlling all physical interaction with computer peripherals like mice and keyboards, as well as driving all common applications.
But all of that is just the background for what the NCR is all about. “The NCR must provide, on demand, a dedicated, sophisticated OpFor to execute and respond to attacks or defenses as required.” These are not going to be just your average nerd with some latent hacking or cracking ability; these are hardcore nerds with some real talent.
Capabilities include sophisticated cyber activity, from defending national assets, to computer network attack … Provide OpFor with an interface for individuals and teams to replicate cyber adversaries outside an enclave … Provide secure planning and operations space within the facility to support supplemental OpFor provided by the Test Director [and] Establish a defensive tools library for use on the range.
It is going to be really interesting to watch the development of this, and one day I’m looking forward to one of those Discovery channel videos giving us an inside look at the NCR.
Review: Rann-Thanagar Holy War #1
or, Superheroes. In. SPAAAACCCE!
With a Crisis in the DC Universe there inevitably comes a return to Rann and Thanagar. Thus, for all of us who enjoy a bit of the good old science fiction, all of our space heroes come together to deal with some cosmic threat that somehow always ends up focusing on Rann and/or Thanagar.
So the first entry in DC’s Final Crisis turns out to be the Rann-Thanagar Holy War, and it looks as if Jim Starlin, writer of this series, has a definite issue with religion.
As a religious person myself, I was immediately intrigued by the dialogue throughout this story. I was not offended, as it offered an entirely justifiable opinion of much of today’s religion; heavy handed and unnecessarily harsh. Adam Strange – a man who clings to science like a drowning man to a life-raft – is baffled by the Rannians turn away from science to a religion that, in addition to be flimsy, is focusing on the evil of Lady Styx (see below).
Possibly one of the best lines that I’ve seen in comics for a good long while comes from Animal Man, towards the end of this issue, as he sits down with Kory and Adam Strange. “You planning on zeta-beaming a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses to Rann or something?” Priceless! It’s what I’d do!
The cast of this book is definitely going to make for interesting storytelling. Obviously Adam Strange, Kory (aka, Starfire) and Animal Man are going to star, after their long journey home after the last Crisis (check 52 if you missed it). Joining them are names like Tygor, Hawkman (Carter Hall), Comet (though not for long), Starman, Bizarro (who isn’t as villainous as one would immediately imagine), and a host of villains including Find and Seek, Lady Styx (I think) and some other dude I’ve been unable to identify.
Summarizing this issue won’t be easy, so I won’t really try. Following in the footsteps of 52 (and other Crisis events) it follows a multitude of events and characters rather than one. But there does seem to be an overarching anti-religious tone, as I mentioned at the top. Both Thanagar and Rann are experiencing religious revivals, the former bowing to a name called ‘The Profit’ (spelt correctly btw) or ‘The Nameless One,’ and the latter somehow turning their religious fervor to Lady Styx.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Rann has suffered mightily at the hands of Lady Styx previously, after she forced them all to worship her through some sort of virus. Well it looks as if the Rannians have been left with some latent need to have faith in someone or something, and they’ve turned their attention to back Lady Styx.
Another storyline focuses on Hardcore Station, one of those interstellar mining outposts that in any story they appear in always inevitably turn in to a breeding ground for “questionable deals and smuggling.” Captain Comet, now just Comet, has just returned from briefing the JLA and is being contacted by Adam Strange. However a pair of villains I’ve never heard of (the afore mentioned Seek and Find) have turned up on Hardcore to work for some priestly alien looking dude. It’s all connected, I think!
The only other storyline worth mentioning is Starman’s, protector of Throneworld, who encounters Bizarro. Now, sure, Bizarro takes out most of the Throneworld imperial guard before meeting Starman, however it appears that he’s just lost and hungry. So instead of just running in and fighting, Starman has to turn to “somewhere between my royal ears” for the answer, and takes Bizarro inside for something to eat (MEAT!).
There is one last amusing note to make, and that is Comet’s briefing of the JLA. It’s oh so very political, and targeted at the US government (Starlin’s writing, not Comet’s briefing), as Comet announces that “no invasions [of Earth] are planned because no one feels they’re needed.” Why don’t any of the alien groups out “there” feel that they are needed? Because of Earth’s “pollution, especially in the greenhouse gas department, nuclear proliferation, regional wars and [our] out-of-control overpopulation.” Subtle. Very subtle.
Ron Lim’s pencils and Rob Hunter’s inks are really quite nice in this issue, and make up for a bit of a confusing and preparatory storyline. Adam Strange and Hawkman’s early interactions are really well drawn, with hard lines for hard men. Starman also is really well drawn, as the top half of his face is hidden beneath a mask, his mouth is left to do the expressions normally accounted for by mouth and eyes and eyebrows, something that Lim manages perfectly.
The story for this get’s a 4, as I am now immensely curious as to how the rest of this eight part series will fall out. The art gets a 4 as well, detracting points mainly for Kory and Robin’s depictions in the Titans Tower scenes half way through the book, not to mention Red Arrow’s buzz-cut. Either way, this is definitely a Final Crisis book you’ll want to get your hands on!
Colbert talks to the ISS
Speak about your exclusive interviews, check out this clip from The Colbert Report, where he speaks to a member of the current crew aboard the International Space Station. Unlike so many of Colbert’s interviewees, this guy - Garrett Reisman - seriously holds his own!
Review: Logan #3
With the ability to review comics comes a renewed desire to read comics, and I was really looking forward to the conclusion of this story. It’s been an interesting tale that once again put Wolveri