Step 1: Create a Body Apparatus
In today's edition: a moon's plume, genesis, the value of weather data, the audio recordings of the Yahi, and embryonic spaces.
***The Real Future Fair is coming to San Francisco, November 6-7. From now until the Fair, I'll be giving a couple tickets to the Friday conference away each time I send a newsletter. All you have to do is reply to this email with your name and your favorite place in the solar system, and I'll pick some winners.***
1. There's no more exciting place beyond Earth than Enceladus.
"Enceladus is an icy moon of Saturn. Early in its mission, Cassini discovered Enceladus has remarkable geologic activity, including a towering plume of ice, water vapor and organic molecules spraying from its south polar region. Cassini later determined the moon has a global ocean and likely hydrothermal activity, meaning it could have the ingredients needed to support simple life. The flyby will be Cassini's deepest-ever dive through the Enceladus plume, which is thought to come from the ocean below. The spacecraft has flown closer to the surface of Enceladus before, but never this low directly through the active plume."
+ OK, fine, Europa is equally as exciting.
2. What is life? is not a simple question.
"Because of that kinship, all life on Earth is built from cells; it all uses liquid water as part of its essential structure; it is all built of similar molecules containing carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and a few other common elements; and it all uses DNA and RNA to code information about itself and pass that information along to future generations. Yet we must ask: does life have to be that way? If we replayed the history of our solar system, would life use the same chemistry, make cells and shape its environment in the same way?"
"IBM on Wednesday announced an agreement to acquire The Weather Company's digital properties, including WSI, Weather.com, Weather Underground and The Weather Company brand. The TV segment — The Weather Channel — is not included in the deal, but The Weather Co. will license weather forecast data and analytics from IBM under a long-term contract, according to a statement by the company."
4. The mission to preserve very old audio recordings from the Yahi and other California tribes.
"In November, researchers at UC Berkeley will begin a three-year project to restore and translate thousands of century-old audio recordings of Native California Indians. The collection was created by cultural anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century and is now considered the largest audio repository of California Indian culture in the world. Nearly a third of the 2,713 recordings come from Ishi, the storied last member of the Yahi tribe who lived the last years of his life inside the University of California’s Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Ishi died in 1916 from tuberculosis. He was 54 years old."
5. Nancy Diniz's Embryonic Spaces project.
"step 1: Create a Body apparatus. Wearing the apparatus you must map the invisible forces around you. You are asked to design through mapping of body signals and atmospheric flows (temperature, humidity, air speed, activity, energy, light, sound)."
+ She's speaking at Eyebeam's lecture series in Brooklyn tonight.
On Fusion: Scientists found a way to float objects and create holograms with sound.
1. saturn.jpl.nasa.gov | @unlikelyworlds 2. mosaicscience.com 3. nbcnews.com 4. kqed.org | @subtopes 5. augmented-architectures.com
Step 1: Create a Body apparatus.