Month: July 2017

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Why asteroids loom as future space frontier

Asteroid mining
In this artist’s conception, a mining spacecraft makes a rendezvous with an asteroid. (SpaceResources.lu)

It’s been 55 years since satellite communications became the first commercial space frontier, and space tourism is looming as the next frontier. But what comes after that? Would you believe in-space mining and manufacturing?

Those are the opportunities that came to the fore on July 29 when members of the Association of Professional Futurists gathered at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

“The big change that I foresee is when we begin to live and work on the asteroids, using them as the resources for our civilization. … We are going to see a leap in productivity to create wealth and to allow us to do things without harming the Earth,” said Brian Tillotson, who is the systems technology chief engineer for Boeing Research and Technology and a Boeing senior technical fellow (as well as a science-fiction writer).

“It’s going to be much bigger than the industrial revolution, and this time it’s going to be good for the Earth, not bad for the Earth,” Tillotson said.

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Here’s how the eclipsed sun’s corona will look

Solar corona
This image shows field lines of a solar coronal magnetic model based on measurements from the National Solar Observatory Integrated Synoptic Program, one solar rotation before the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse. (NSO / NSF Graphic)

Skywatchers will see a rare celestial sight during the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse: the sun’s shimmering outer atmosphere, known as the corona. What will it look like? Astronomers worked their magic to give us a glimpse.

The corona is more than just a fuzzy halo: The superheated gas that makes up the sun’s outermost layer tends to follow the patterns of magnetic force that arc around the sun.

To come up with their preview of the corona, researchers at the National Solar Observatory in Arizona modeled the sun’s magnetic field as of July 25, which was 27 days in advance of the solar eclipse. That’s important, because it takes the sun 27.2753 days to make a complete rotation.

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We’re ‘likely’ to break climate speed limit

Global warming projection
This projection shows how a rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius is expected to affect North America, Greenland and the Arctic. (NASA Graphic)

A statistical analysis led by researchers at the University of Washington sees almost no chance that the world’s nations will be able to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over the course of the 21st century, as promised in last year’s Paris climate accord.

“Our analysis shows that the goal of 2 degrees is very much a best-case scenario,” lead author Adrian Raftery, a UW professor of statistics and sociology, said today in a news release. “It is achievable, but only with major, sustained effort on all fronts over the next 80 years.”

The analysis, published in Nature Climate Change, is consistent with the mainstream view held by climate scientists and policymakers.

In discussions about the future effects of climate change, the 2-degree mark has been called a “speed limit” that, if broken, would significantly heighten humanity’s peril. But even as the goal was being set, experts voiced worries that it would be very hard to stay below the speed limit by 2100.

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Oregon braces for eclipse’s agony and ecstasy

Mount Jefferson
Oregon’s Mount Jefferson looms on the western horizon outside Madras. The fields on either side of the blacktop road will be turned into a “Solartown” campground for 4,900 tents during the runup to the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

MADRAS, Ore. – If there’s one thing central Oregon has in abundance, it’s open space. And that’s a good thing for the total solar eclipse that’s due to sweep through the region on Aug. 21.

Even though hotel rooms are sold out anywhere that’s even near the 70-mile-wide zone of totality running across the state, there’s still a good chance of finding an enterprising landowner who’ll rent you a camping spot.

But if there’s one thing central Oregon doesn’t have a whole lot of, it’s four-lane highways.

That’s likely to be an issue for the hundreds of thousands of eclipse-chasers who are expected to swarm into towns like Madras, Prineville, Mitchell and John Day. Or maybe not.

“The bad thing about it is that nobody knows how bad it’s going to get,” said Terry Hansen, park host for Round Butte Overlook Park, just west of Madras.

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Elon Musk kicks off Tesla Model 3 deliveries

Model 3 deliveries
Elon Musk shows off one of the first Tesla Model 3 electric cars, plus a graph showing how he expects the production rate to rise. (Tesla via YouTube)

As thousands of employees and fans cheered, Tesla CEO Elon Musk drove a red Model 3 electric car onto the stage at the company’s factory in Fremont, Calif., tonight – and then handed over the first 30 cars to customers.

The glitzy ceremony marked a milestone in Tesla’s campaign to produce an electric car targeted at a mass market, with a base price as low as $35,000. It also marked the start of what Musk called “production hell … for at least six months, maybe longer.”

“As the saying goes, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going,’” he joked.

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Viome raises millions for wellness monitoring

Naveen Jain
Viome CEO Naveen Jain shows how a stool sample would be placed into a kit for an analysis of gut microbes. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Viome, the wellness monitoring service founded by Seattle-area tech entrepreneur Naveen Jain, has raised $15 million this month in an investment round, according to documents filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The equity sale boosts the first commercial venture brought to life by Jain’s BlueDot innovation factory.

Jain deferred comment on the details of the investment today, but in an April interview, he said Viome was just the kind of technological moonshot BlueDot was designed to foster.

“Our moonshot here is, can we create a world where chronic illness becomes a matter of choice?” he said at the time.

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Futurists gather in Seattle to see what’s ahead

Image: Glen Hiemstra, Futurist
Glen Hiemstra, the founder of Futurist.com, basks in the red glow of a corridor at the Seattle Public Library during the Association of Professional Futurists’ gathering. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Professional futurists are gathering in Seattle, for the second time in 15 years. But don’t expect to recognize them by their business cards.

Many modern-day futurists tend to call themselves something else – for example, foresight specialist, which is Jonelle Simunich’s title at Arup, an engineering and consulting firm based in San Francisco.

“I tell people I’m a futurist, and they say, ‘So, what, you’re like a psychic?’” Simunich told GeekWire today during the 15th-anniversary gathering of the Association of Professional Futurists.

The annual gathering is structured as a series of seminars for about 40 futurists, rather than your typical trade convention. The group that became APF had its first gathering in Seattle in 2002. “It didn’t even have a name yet,” Cindy Frewen, who chairs the association’s board.

This year marks “the first time we have ever been in the same place twice,” Frewen told attendees at the Seattle Central Library.

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Elon Musk: Falcon Heavy lifts off in November

SpaceX’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, says he’s aiming to launch the first test flight of his company’s Falcon Heavy rocket in November from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

He issued the latest schedule today in a six-word posting to Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXEkGKlgJDK/?taken-by=elonmusk&hl=en

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Got eclipse glasses? Here’s where to go

Eclipse glasses
GeekWire’s Cara Kuhlman, Clare McGrane and Chelsey Ballarte give their eclipse glasses a test drive. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

All of the continental United States and Canada will witness a solar eclipse on Aug. 21, but you’ll need eye protection to see the partial phase safely. This may be the event that turns solar-filter glasses into a mass-market fashion statement.

If you think regular sunglasses, compact discs or exposed photographic film will do the trick, think again. (Besides, who has film lying around anymore?) As long as even a sliver of the sun’s disk is uncovered, virtually the only safe way to see the spectacle directly is through special spectacles.

Fortunately, there should be plenty of solar-viewing glasses to go around. The Robert D. and Jessie L. Stinnett Trust is facilitating distribution of glasses from American Paper Optics through the 2017solar.com website: You can order four pairs of glasses online for $5, but the offer ends on Aug. 1.

Astronomers Without Borders and other nonprofit groups are shipping glasses as well. Plenty of other online outlets sell the glasses (as well as solar filters for cameras, binoculars and telescopes), but whatever you do, make sure your shipment arrives before Aug. 21.

Libraries across the country, including Seattle Public Library, are distributing free eclipse glasses to all comers.

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Oregon team edits genes in human embryos

Embryo and pipette
A pipette injects CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tools into a mouse embryo. Oregon researchers have reportedly conducted similar experiments using human embryos. (University of Utah Health Sciences Photo)

Chinese researchers crossed a threshold last year when they used CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tools to modify human embryos, and now Oregon researchers have reportedly crossed it as well.

A report in MIT Technology Review suggests that the team at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland improved upon the results from China by modifying embryos earlier in their development.

OHSU confirmed that a study was in the works, but said there was nothing more to share at this time.

“Results of the peer-reviewed study are expected to be published soon in a scientific journal,” OHSU spokesman Erik Robinson said in an email to GeekWire.

Genetic experiments with embryos are controversial because they could involve changing the human genetic code in ways that can be passed along to a person’s progeny. That raises the prospect of creating subspecies of genetically modified humans with enhanced traits.

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