If

Feeling motivated and yet a little flustered right now.  Today is a good day for poetry.  Enjoy:

If

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head,

When all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat these two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: `Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

MSL ChemCam

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It has been an exciting few days for the Mars Science Laboratory team.  Ever since the successful landing of the Curiosity rover at the beginning of this week, there has been a constant stream of information regarding the mission.  Daily press conferences, consistent updates on social media websites, and, for a touch of fun, a barrage of edited images with MSL (such as Curiosity killing cats or Marvin the Martian investigating the over) have kept most of us space nerds pretty busy with our fanaticizing about the mission.

I honestly was one of those people who was a bit worried about the EDL system.  The sky crane was a complex feat of engineering; the fact that it worked is not only amazing but also humbling.  One thing I was not worried about was the awesomeness of the mission if the rover landed safely and operated as planned.  Today's article on Astrobiology Magazine discusses the ChemCam instrument on Curiosity (Astrobiology Magazine Thursday, Aug. 9th).  This is one instrument that I've been totally excited for.  ChemCam will vaporize rock targets up to 7 meters away with a pulsed laser and then will analyze the chemical signatures given off by elements within the rock when their electrons are excited by the laser and then re-emit the light, which a telescopic camera on the instrument can detect.  I know, super awesome!  This instrument is one nerd dream come true.  The rover can get around and use instrumentation on-board to analyze it's local surroundings, but ChemCam will allow for spectroscopic analyses from several meters away!  Superb!  I can feel the nerd in me salivating just thinking about it.

For more info, check out the ChemCam instrument's homepage: ChemCam

USB Gene Sequencer?

Genetics-based medicines, immediate identity determination, field-portable gene sequencers for use in medical work in foreign countries or for analyzing individual/community makeup of microorganisms in extreme environments, a way to determine what our children's genotype will be...  Well, maybe not that last one just yet, but that's probably not too far off.  A company in England, Oxford Nanopore, has claimed that they will have a disposable, direct-reading gene sequencer which can be plugged into the USB drive of a computer for immediate analysis!  Behold, the future is ever upon us!  The potential for molecular biological processing hardware such as this is wide reaching.  I have been wondering for some time when we would get around to full genotype sequencing in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.  This technology sounds promising.  It will use a method of direct-reading of gene sequences through electrochemical methods as the sequences pass through a nanopore.  I'm very curious to see when the company can get the product to the market, how much it will cost (I saw an estimate of $900 a shot, but I imagine it's going to be a bit more than that right out of the gate), and, most importantly, I wonder what the fidelity of the reads will be like with these mini gene sequencers.

Here's where I first heard about Oxford Nanopore's claimed technology:

MIT Technology Review

Another review (and, personally, a more thorough and thoughtful review):
80 Beats at Discover Magazine

This is the website for Oxford Nanopore:

Oxford Nanopore

Image Source: MinION from Oxford Nanopore's website

A little mind blown right now from reading a bunch on thermodynamics.  Going to crunch in some environmental organic chemistry before delving into some sci-fi for the evening.

Anakin Skywalker, The One

My friend and I went out last night to watch the new 3D release of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.  The 3D effects were somewhat pronounced in landscape scenes and space battles, but otherwise didn't really give much to the film and seemed somewhat unnecessary.  However, I did catch something that I'd never really put much thought into before.

When Qui Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) is speaking with Anakin's mother about her son and questions Anakin's paternal history, Anakin's mother responds with, "There was no father.  I carried him.  I gave him birth.  I can't explain what happened."

I don't know how I had missed that previously when watching this film.  The writers turned back into some of the older human mythologies and gave Anakin Skywalker a virgin birth.  Unlike mythological people from various ancient religions, where a god or some other mythical creature impregnates a human, they wrote this history for Anakin to be one where he may (they don't make it certain) have been sired by the midi-chlorians (the fictional sub-cellular organisms which inhabit the cells of all life in the Star Wars Universe and who are the supposed source of The Force; their name seems to come from mitochonria and chloroplasts, our endosymbiotic subcellular organelles).  I think it's interesting that they decided to go this route with the character.  Giving him a virgin birth story makes his character seem more superhuman that simply "in tune" with his universe, like most Jedi are.

I find it interesting that the prophesy that Qui Gon thinks Anakin is to fill, being The One who will bring a balance to the force, ends up being one who pretty much destroys everyone who has great understanding of the force.  Outside of the ideas of good and evil, light and dark, and such that permeate the story of Anakin Skywalker, perhaps his virgin birth could be taken to be something deeper in the story of this prophesy.  This is all just food for thought, but I leave it here with a quote from George Lucas on the subject:

"Now there's a hint in the movie that there was a Sith Lord who had the power to create life. But it's left unsaid: Is Anakin a product of a super-Sith who influenced the midi-chlorians to create him, or is he simply created by the midi-chlorians to bring forth a prophecy, or was he created by the Force through the midi-chlorians? It's left up to the audience to decide. How he was born ultimately has no effect on the way he dies, because in the end the prophecy is true: Balance comes back to the force." - George Lucas, Rolling Stone, June 2005

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing" - Helen Keller

Seems like it's been non-stop action these days.  Amanda will be defending her Masters thesis tomorrow!  I've been jumping around like crazy trying to review apps for the Soffen Travel Grant while reading articles in the RNA World hypothesis and preparing for next week's trip to the Mojave Desert.  Feels like regardless of how busy we are, I still feel like I'm not doing enough.  Hopefully I will have that sulfur spring up and running within the coming weeks.  I'd like to have an idea of how the spring will function before I depart to head back to Pennsylvania for xmas time.

On another note, today would be Carl Sagan's 87th birthday!  The Secular Students and Skeptic Society here at CU Boulder have put together an event for this evening in the planetarium for watching an episode of Cosmos on the dome.  I think, regardless of the work I have to do, that I will have to partake in this event!

Language

Just watched this video, a TED talk from Mark Pagel:



I found the discussion to be intriguing.

I don't necessarily agree with everything he said.  Indeed, I wonder if some anthropologists cringe and shudder when he suggests that chipanzees cannot "ape" the actions they see.  I think the fact that many of them can use a stick to get ants out of the ground in the first place is a sign of some level of sharing of ideas between individuals.  Also, it is curious to wonder if the evolution of language is a necessity for intelligent/conscious organisms to create civilizations.

I do like how the speaker links the development of language to our mental capacity for not only "aping" the acts of others, but also of sharing our acts with others.  Language is a technology.  Many people may not see it as such; they may take speaking and language for granted.  But language is a tool we developed within ourselves.

We are now developing languages in new ways.  We're building mathematical languages and computer languages which have allowed us to increase our capacity for computation, modeling, and data structuring.  Looking forward to a future where we may one day come into contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings, I have to wonder about the role language will play in our exchanges.

Will it be as simple as creating some "galactic rosetta stone" which will allow us to translate our languages together, or will the language barrier be so complex, so different, that we will feel utterly disconnected from whomever else is out there?  We use manipulations of air and our internal organs to create sound.  We can use tools, such as musical instruments and computers, to create other sounds.  This is our language.  We also have gesturing, which can very much be a part of our language.  I wonder how an intelligent extraterrestrial being may perceive our language.  Would it be common that developing biological and mechanical devices for creating vibrations in the local medium is the primary source of language?  What if E.T. phones home with something other than sound?  What if other beings have evolved a biological ability to speak through pulses in electromagnetic radiation (beyond our simple computer screens and written language; I mean a real ability to transmit and receive light signals as a form of language)?  What if other beings have language on the level of producing structure in molecules and then transmitting those molecules?  That would make "shaking hands" a whole new experience.  It is intriguing indeed to wonder what the language barrier will be between ourselves and any other intelligent organisms we may one day meet.

Just more to ponder.  

I just took a survey for a young student who is interested in astrobiology.  One of the questions was about whether or not the surveyed individual believed we were "alone" in the universe or not and why.  Here is the short answer I supplied after clicking the option for "I believe it is highly likely that we are not alone":

I'm sure most people in my profession would answer this with the traditional "waste of space" quote, but I'll try to be a little more from-the-heart with my answer.  From the years I've spent earning degrees in biology, chemistry, and now geology, as well as the time I've spent reading and thinking about myself, about our species, about our place in the universe, I have come to believe (yes, a scientist can have beliefs) that life, life as we know it and maybe even life as we don't yet know it, is extremely likely to exist in our universe outside of Earth.  With the billions upon billions of stars in our known universe, many of which we are slowly but surely learning have their own planetary systems, it is highly likely that there are other places where life may have originated and where biological evolution may have begun.  These places need not be Earth-like.  There may be a multitude of ways in which life can originate and develop.  However, that remains as well-founded speculation.  To be even more forward, there likely are many planets in our known universe which have near-the-same planetary dynamics as our Earth and which may have allowed for the origination and evolution of life as we know it.  I do not believe our Earth is rare.  I do however believe our Earth is special.  It's special because it's our home, our cradle.  One of the drivers in my growth as an astrobiologist has been is my sincere wish to understand our world better, and to maybe help humanity in understanding ourselves as we slowly begin to look out at the cosmos that lie beyond our cradle.

Cosmobiology?

When I first named this blog "A Cosmobiologist's Dream", I really had intended to use the word Astrobiologist instead. However, astrobiologist.blogspot.com had already been taken and I thought that this would be just as fitting.  

Well, it turns out that the term cosmobiologist has been used for a little bit of time to imply a certain type of astrology, something I have no interest in being too closely connected with. I have been considering changing the name of this blog and the URL, but I think that would be giving too much credence to those zany astrologers out there. No, I think I'll keep this term and use it the way I think it should be used. If others wish to use it in an astrological (pseudoscientific) sense, than that's their prerogative, but the term appears as though it should be scientific and so I will use it as a scientific term.

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."  ~John Steinbeck


Good night world!