Greg Roelofs
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Resistance is V/I. (Also futile.)
Resistance is V/I. (Also futile.)
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Some truly fascinating insights into the American psyche. (It's not very pretty.)
"I am now convinced that Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche."
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A more-than-worthy Kickstarter with an above-and-beyond special offer by an outstanding author. (Read The Long Run if you haven't already, full stop. Just do it. Seriously.)
The fiction bonus for the BuyBlue Kickstarter? This is about midway through "Trinity: Kozmic Blues," by Steve Perry and Daniel Keys Moran. You'll get the first third of this novel, if you back us and we fund:
~~
"I've never seen anything like this before," Chauki November said.
Erin hadn't expected she had.
"I will return to the Continuing Time. What will you do next?"
On no timeline, anywhere in history, anywhere in space, in the near twenty millennia since his birth, had Erin encountered telepaths as powerful as those born into the House of November: possibly a Zaradin God was more powerful, but Erin had only met two of those, in all his long life. Camber Tremodian hadn't been a telepath at all, and the other – Camber's grandson – had also been a lord of the House of November.
Erin shook his head. "No. If you can't read him, no one convenient to me can. But I can seek out the Library World."
She regarded him with respect, and wariness; he was powerful enough to rouse her caution, for all they were friends. "A long journey. Will you be yourself when you return?"
He nodded. "I'll hold myself tightly, and then sleep."
"Good luck," Chauki November said. "Sometime again."
Erin knew of three different ways to travel faster than light, which was fortunate, for reaching the Library Erin wished to consult would require using two of them.
The Spacething Library World was five billion lights years away, more or less.
It was two and a half billion years in the past ...
... and it was halfway around the Great Wheel of Existence.
He was not prone to hesitation, Erin Rose, but this time he signed out at the gate, walked off base, turned the corner from Meyer Drive onto 4th Street, and took a long Step as soon as he was sure he wasn't being watched. Twenty miles away he came out of the darkness at the Silver Dollar Pancake House, a low stone-walled building, square on two sides, with a gently curved entrance that was, Erin suspected, supposed to look a bit like a pancake. He'd never asked.
He went inside. A place of its time; pale green walls, pale green tables, a brighter lime green, horseshoe shaped counter. He'd hit the dinner rush but the counter was open. Erin sat at it and the waitress, a fat cheerful lady whose name tag said she was Peg, brought him a serving of pecan pancakes with whipped butter and maple syrup, and then half a fried chicken, and a vanilla milkshake, and two cups of coffee, and two pieces of lemon pie. She didn't comment on how much he ate, didn't even seem to notice. Put the slip of the check down on the counter when he was done, smiled at him again.
Erin wasn't full when he got done; he wasn't human, and he didn't really require food. But he liked the taste. Erin paid the bill and walked out into the night.
He set a counter running in the background, snapshotted his current mental state, caught his logs up to the current moment and stored them in a pocket universe – very much as the Zaradin had protected themselves during the Time Wars, and for similar reasons. He sent a message sprite seeking for Mahliya Kutura, to let her know the location of his last moment in Time, of his last Archive: between her and Chauki November, someone would resurrect him if he failed to return.
He wandered off down Sixth Street a ways, feeling the cool summer breeze upon his face, and when no attention laid upon him, let the world dissolve around him.
Erin Rose fell into the past, like one drowning.
At a little over eight years per minute, he headed back toward the Beginning.
It was fortunate that he was immortal. In his first day he traveled twelve thousand years into the past: it would take him some three thousand years to approach the birth of the universe, another three thousand to climb most of the way back up to something like the Now. Erin did not know what six thousand years of unfiltered cognition would do to him, and he had no interest in finding out; he had responsibilities, and could not permit himself to change into a being that would fail them.
He began putting parts of himself to sleep. Most of his memories quieted into a background thread. He retained knowledge of his purpose, his destination, of what he needed to do to get there, and of the necessity of waking himself to full awareness on arrival. He quieted none of his senses, but slowed his cognition by a factor of half a million, aside from the triggers that would rouse him.
The universe shrank, and hardened, and brightened around him. He stored the energy as it poured into him: he would need it later. He was buffeted by something like winds, every time his timeline merged into another: as he traveled back in time, not only the physical universe, but the Great Wheel itself, contracted. Space shrank, timelines merged back into the timelines they had branched out of: physical and temporal energy increased around Erin as he traveled --
He broke the boundary of the inflation era and it got hotter yet. Erin retreated further into the core of his ego: the sensation was unpleasant, not very different from what a human would have experienced from being burned. He had stored what energy he needed and was not constructed to endure even higher energies for very long. His ability to subdivide time was stressed to its limits: he had to hit a target between 10-33 and 10-32 seconds and then --
The instant came. He leapt with all the energy he had gathered on his way back through history. There were fewer and stronger timelines, at this moment, only a few dozens of the 10-26th power timelines that would exist by the time Jack Burnside was born: he had to cross energy boundaries separating the timelines that were a hundred trillion trillion times larger than those that separated the Pages of Time in Jack's era.
He made the window. He crossed the boundaries that would have destroyed anything not a Zaradin God, or himself, or a very few others, found himself in the timeline he wanted, at the edge of the inflationary period, and rode the explosion of the universe forward through time like a surfer catching a tsunami.
Really: it was nothing like that. But it's the only metaphor you're going to understand.
He stepped sideways as the timelines split, shifted inches to ride the expansion of space itself.
Eons passed. Around him the universe splintered into life. Starclouds, and then crystalline creatures, the Spacethings, across all the Great Wheel – and then came biological life – not Zaradin, not on the unfortunate little bundle of timelines Erin rode, unfortunate for those timelines and the creatures who lived there because the Zaradin did come, from the timelines of their creation, and fought the Spacethings, and drove them into hiding. And in the process, wiped whole timelines from existence, in the furious tumult of the Time Wars, and almost accidentally – for the Zaradin were not unkind – destroyed and usurped the biological life that had briefly taken hold, before their arrival, before their Time War.
The routines Erin Rose had left in place kept quiet. It was nothing to do with him, and he knew that if he were noticed, one of the universe's great Powers might undo his patterns without even anything as personal as malice.
He strove not to be noticed, as three thousand years of his personal time passed, aging into the future.
He came to rest, five billion years from Earth, two and half billion years before Jack Burnside's birth, deep in the Southern Arc of the Great Wheel, a few thousand light years from the Spacething Library World. Close enough: he dropped into tachyon space, drifted briefly, and then returned to sublight.
He'd arrived.
In another part of his life – a much simpler, much earlier part of his life – Erin Rose had helped Camber Tremodian and Chauki November rescue the Library World from Zaradin Gods intent upon destroying it.
He appeared on the surface of the world, a planet in the darkness, without a star within light years, its surface frozen to near absolute zero. The Library World did not want to be found: it knew things that Powers across trillions of timelines would kill to acquire; would torture it for, across the entire lifetime of the universe.
Erin Rose awoke from a long journey, a dream of boredom and then fire and crushing pressure, and stood motionless in the frozen vacuum, on the surface of the Spacething Library World.
The world looked like any other lost place. No ice to speak of, nor metals. Rock. Craters. Very little gravity; Erin would have floated away if he'd allowed himself. The only light that of distant stars.
The voice was barely a whisper, in his sensorium. "Why have you returned?"
"I've run into something new," Erin said. "I don't know what it is. Those of whom it is safe to ask, do not know what it is."
"Tell us."
Erin described Jack Burnside, described Chauki November's attempts to read his mind.
"Chauki November lives?"
The query surprised Erin about as much as anything could. "She does."
"Camber Tremodian?"
"Vanished into the Time of Legend. Never returned."
"That does not surprise me. Every Zaradin God except himself, wanted him dead."
"Jack Burnside" -- Erin hesitated -- "please?"
The Spacething Library World, which knew more about the history and ultimate destination of the universe than any other being that had ever or would ever exist, likewise hesitated. Nothing had surprised Erin more in thousands of years.
"We have heard of something similar. We have never seen one."
Erin said, "Yes?"
"The Unbound."
"You are a made thing," the Library said.
"I am."
Erin felt its attention upon him. "You are an interesting pattern. You were not like this when we last saw you."
"Certain changes were introduced into me," Erin said.
"Can you show them to us?"
"Not without lowering defenses I would rather not lower," Erin said.
"We can lower them for you."
"Perhaps, but that would destroy me."
"We can rescue your patterns from any damage caused by lowering and subsequent analysis," the Library said.
Erin found that interesting, though irrelevant. "Could you reconstruct me as I am?" he asked out of curiosity.
"Perhaps. We would know once we had examined the patterns."
"I am afraid I could not agree to such a thing, without the certainty of being remade as I am," Erin stated.
"After becoming a part of us," the Library said, "you would no longer wish to be remade."
"I do not agree to be unmade," Erin said.
"Alas. Parts of you are static, and very stable, now."
"I passed through the early universe, on my way to see you."
"Foolish of you. I can see that you are not that stable. It was a risk."
"It was."
"The Unbound are also stable, or so I was told once, by a traveler."
"You speak in the first person singular."
"I am an anthology consciousness. A portion of us has come to the fore. I remember things the rest of us do not."
"Yes."
"They were born in the first moments of the Great Wheel's existence: they may have come into the Wheel from a previous cycle of the Wheel's existence. There have been such, I recall. They survived in their passage densities and energies that would have unmade you --"
"Or you?"
"Don't ask such a question again," the Library instructed Erin.
"Pardon me."
"Your Jack B. Burnside does not know how old it is."
"No."
"If it is Unbound it is thirteen billion years old. Or older."
"It cannot be killed?"
"It survived the birth of the Great Wheel, if that is what it is. I --" The Library fell silent for a moment. "We suspect it cannot be killed by any power in this phase of Creation."
"That portion of you which calls itself I," Erin Rose said. "Would you like to leave with me?"
The ground shook faintly beneath Erin's feet. He drifted slightly into the space above the planet's surface, and then lowered himself back to the regolith.
"It has been good to see you again," the Spacething Library World said. "But as in times past, lengthy interaction -- is damaging my calm. It is time for you to go."
"One more question," Erin said.
"Quickly."
"If one of the Unbound were known, who would its enemies be?"
The ground bucked beneath Erin's feet, a small quake. He let himself drift into space this time, and prepared to flee, before the wave of the Spacething Library World's vast, cool astonishment washed over him. "Who else? Before the Beginning," it said, and somehow Erin knew it was quoting something or someone else, "the Chaotic Serathin battled the Envoy of Balance, and bound it upon a Great Wheel. And the Envoy, in its last extremity, poured itself into the structure of the Wheel, and bound itself through and about the Serathin, and exploded."
Erin hung in space, stunned, trying to recover from the assault of the Library's overwhelming emotion.
"Erin Rose," the Spacething Library World said plaintively, "the Chained One, the Envoy of Balance, whose Chaining created reality, hates the Unbound as only an eternally chained thing can. How can you be so ignorant? Do you not even know what the continuum you live in is?"
Albert Hamme appeared on the street outside March Air Force Base, in the shadows of early evening, and walked up to the gate.
The guard on duty at the gate saluted. "Captain," he said. "Changed your mind about going out?"
Erin returned the corporal's salute. By his internal clock, some twelve thousand years had passed since he'd signed out. "Yes," he said, and remembered to use his mouth. "It's been a long day, I'm going to turn in early." He signed the sheet again.
It had been a long day. He walked back to his quarters, laid himself to rest in his bed, and closed his eyes. In the months he'd been at March Air Force Base, he'd never actually slept in it before.
He set monitor and guard routines, released his constraints, and let himself dissolve into dreams, as he had in the long ago days when he'd been human.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1415233260/resist-persist-fight-buyblue
~~
"I've never seen anything like this before," Chauki November said.
Erin hadn't expected she had.
"I will return to the Continuing Time. What will you do next?"
On no timeline, anywhere in history, anywhere in space, in the near twenty millennia since his birth, had Erin encountered telepaths as powerful as those born into the House of November: possibly a Zaradin God was more powerful, but Erin had only met two of those, in all his long life. Camber Tremodian hadn't been a telepath at all, and the other – Camber's grandson – had also been a lord of the House of November.
Erin shook his head. "No. If you can't read him, no one convenient to me can. But I can seek out the Library World."
She regarded him with respect, and wariness; he was powerful enough to rouse her caution, for all they were friends. "A long journey. Will you be yourself when you return?"
He nodded. "I'll hold myself tightly, and then sleep."
"Good luck," Chauki November said. "Sometime again."
Erin knew of three different ways to travel faster than light, which was fortunate, for reaching the Library Erin wished to consult would require using two of them.
The Spacething Library World was five billion lights years away, more or less.
It was two and a half billion years in the past ...
... and it was halfway around the Great Wheel of Existence.
He was not prone to hesitation, Erin Rose, but this time he signed out at the gate, walked off base, turned the corner from Meyer Drive onto 4th Street, and took a long Step as soon as he was sure he wasn't being watched. Twenty miles away he came out of the darkness at the Silver Dollar Pancake House, a low stone-walled building, square on two sides, with a gently curved entrance that was, Erin suspected, supposed to look a bit like a pancake. He'd never asked.
He went inside. A place of its time; pale green walls, pale green tables, a brighter lime green, horseshoe shaped counter. He'd hit the dinner rush but the counter was open. Erin sat at it and the waitress, a fat cheerful lady whose name tag said she was Peg, brought him a serving of pecan pancakes with whipped butter and maple syrup, and then half a fried chicken, and a vanilla milkshake, and two cups of coffee, and two pieces of lemon pie. She didn't comment on how much he ate, didn't even seem to notice. Put the slip of the check down on the counter when he was done, smiled at him again.
Erin wasn't full when he got done; he wasn't human, and he didn't really require food. But he liked the taste. Erin paid the bill and walked out into the night.
He set a counter running in the background, snapshotted his current mental state, caught his logs up to the current moment and stored them in a pocket universe – very much as the Zaradin had protected themselves during the Time Wars, and for similar reasons. He sent a message sprite seeking for Mahliya Kutura, to let her know the location of his last moment in Time, of his last Archive: between her and Chauki November, someone would resurrect him if he failed to return.
He wandered off down Sixth Street a ways, feeling the cool summer breeze upon his face, and when no attention laid upon him, let the world dissolve around him.
Erin Rose fell into the past, like one drowning.
At a little over eight years per minute, he headed back toward the Beginning.
It was fortunate that he was immortal. In his first day he traveled twelve thousand years into the past: it would take him some three thousand years to approach the birth of the universe, another three thousand to climb most of the way back up to something like the Now. Erin did not know what six thousand years of unfiltered cognition would do to him, and he had no interest in finding out; he had responsibilities, and could not permit himself to change into a being that would fail them.
He began putting parts of himself to sleep. Most of his memories quieted into a background thread. He retained knowledge of his purpose, his destination, of what he needed to do to get there, and of the necessity of waking himself to full awareness on arrival. He quieted none of his senses, but slowed his cognition by a factor of half a million, aside from the triggers that would rouse him.
The universe shrank, and hardened, and brightened around him. He stored the energy as it poured into him: he would need it later. He was buffeted by something like winds, every time his timeline merged into another: as he traveled back in time, not only the physical universe, but the Great Wheel itself, contracted. Space shrank, timelines merged back into the timelines they had branched out of: physical and temporal energy increased around Erin as he traveled --
He broke the boundary of the inflation era and it got hotter yet. Erin retreated further into the core of his ego: the sensation was unpleasant, not very different from what a human would have experienced from being burned. He had stored what energy he needed and was not constructed to endure even higher energies for very long. His ability to subdivide time was stressed to its limits: he had to hit a target between 10-33 and 10-32 seconds and then --
The instant came. He leapt with all the energy he had gathered on his way back through history. There were fewer and stronger timelines, at this moment, only a few dozens of the 10-26th power timelines that would exist by the time Jack Burnside was born: he had to cross energy boundaries separating the timelines that were a hundred trillion trillion times larger than those that separated the Pages of Time in Jack's era.
He made the window. He crossed the boundaries that would have destroyed anything not a Zaradin God, or himself, or a very few others, found himself in the timeline he wanted, at the edge of the inflationary period, and rode the explosion of the universe forward through time like a surfer catching a tsunami.
Really: it was nothing like that. But it's the only metaphor you're going to understand.
He stepped sideways as the timelines split, shifted inches to ride the expansion of space itself.
Eons passed. Around him the universe splintered into life. Starclouds, and then crystalline creatures, the Spacethings, across all the Great Wheel – and then came biological life – not Zaradin, not on the unfortunate little bundle of timelines Erin rode, unfortunate for those timelines and the creatures who lived there because the Zaradin did come, from the timelines of their creation, and fought the Spacethings, and drove them into hiding. And in the process, wiped whole timelines from existence, in the furious tumult of the Time Wars, and almost accidentally – for the Zaradin were not unkind – destroyed and usurped the biological life that had briefly taken hold, before their arrival, before their Time War.
The routines Erin Rose had left in place kept quiet. It was nothing to do with him, and he knew that if he were noticed, one of the universe's great Powers might undo his patterns without even anything as personal as malice.
He strove not to be noticed, as three thousand years of his personal time passed, aging into the future.
He came to rest, five billion years from Earth, two and half billion years before Jack Burnside's birth, deep in the Southern Arc of the Great Wheel, a few thousand light years from the Spacething Library World. Close enough: he dropped into tachyon space, drifted briefly, and then returned to sublight.
He'd arrived.
In another part of his life – a much simpler, much earlier part of his life – Erin Rose had helped Camber Tremodian and Chauki November rescue the Library World from Zaradin Gods intent upon destroying it.
He appeared on the surface of the world, a planet in the darkness, without a star within light years, its surface frozen to near absolute zero. The Library World did not want to be found: it knew things that Powers across trillions of timelines would kill to acquire; would torture it for, across the entire lifetime of the universe.
Erin Rose awoke from a long journey, a dream of boredom and then fire and crushing pressure, and stood motionless in the frozen vacuum, on the surface of the Spacething Library World.
The world looked like any other lost place. No ice to speak of, nor metals. Rock. Craters. Very little gravity; Erin would have floated away if he'd allowed himself. The only light that of distant stars.
The voice was barely a whisper, in his sensorium. "Why have you returned?"
"I've run into something new," Erin said. "I don't know what it is. Those of whom it is safe to ask, do not know what it is."
"Tell us."
Erin described Jack Burnside, described Chauki November's attempts to read his mind.
"Chauki November lives?"
The query surprised Erin about as much as anything could. "She does."
"Camber Tremodian?"
"Vanished into the Time of Legend. Never returned."
"That does not surprise me. Every Zaradin God except himself, wanted him dead."
"Jack Burnside" -- Erin hesitated -- "please?"
The Spacething Library World, which knew more about the history and ultimate destination of the universe than any other being that had ever or would ever exist, likewise hesitated. Nothing had surprised Erin more in thousands of years.
"We have heard of something similar. We have never seen one."
Erin said, "Yes?"
"The Unbound."
"You are a made thing," the Library said.
"I am."
Erin felt its attention upon him. "You are an interesting pattern. You were not like this when we last saw you."
"Certain changes were introduced into me," Erin said.
"Can you show them to us?"
"Not without lowering defenses I would rather not lower," Erin said.
"We can lower them for you."
"Perhaps, but that would destroy me."
"We can rescue your patterns from any damage caused by lowering and subsequent analysis," the Library said.
Erin found that interesting, though irrelevant. "Could you reconstruct me as I am?" he asked out of curiosity.
"Perhaps. We would know once we had examined the patterns."
"I am afraid I could not agree to such a thing, without the certainty of being remade as I am," Erin stated.
"After becoming a part of us," the Library said, "you would no longer wish to be remade."
"I do not agree to be unmade," Erin said.
"Alas. Parts of you are static, and very stable, now."
"I passed through the early universe, on my way to see you."
"Foolish of you. I can see that you are not that stable. It was a risk."
"It was."
"The Unbound are also stable, or so I was told once, by a traveler."
"You speak in the first person singular."
"I am an anthology consciousness. A portion of us has come to the fore. I remember things the rest of us do not."
"Yes."
"They were born in the first moments of the Great Wheel's existence: they may have come into the Wheel from a previous cycle of the Wheel's existence. There have been such, I recall. They survived in their passage densities and energies that would have unmade you --"
"Or you?"
"Don't ask such a question again," the Library instructed Erin.
"Pardon me."
"Your Jack B. Burnside does not know how old it is."
"No."
"If it is Unbound it is thirteen billion years old. Or older."
"It cannot be killed?"
"It survived the birth of the Great Wheel, if that is what it is. I --" The Library fell silent for a moment. "We suspect it cannot be killed by any power in this phase of Creation."
"That portion of you which calls itself I," Erin Rose said. "Would you like to leave with me?"
The ground shook faintly beneath Erin's feet. He drifted slightly into the space above the planet's surface, and then lowered himself back to the regolith.
"It has been good to see you again," the Spacething Library World said. "But as in times past, lengthy interaction -- is damaging my calm. It is time for you to go."
"One more question," Erin said.
"Quickly."
"If one of the Unbound were known, who would its enemies be?"
The ground bucked beneath Erin's feet, a small quake. He let himself drift into space this time, and prepared to flee, before the wave of the Spacething Library World's vast, cool astonishment washed over him. "Who else? Before the Beginning," it said, and somehow Erin knew it was quoting something or someone else, "the Chaotic Serathin battled the Envoy of Balance, and bound it upon a Great Wheel. And the Envoy, in its last extremity, poured itself into the structure of the Wheel, and bound itself through and about the Serathin, and exploded."
Erin hung in space, stunned, trying to recover from the assault of the Library's overwhelming emotion.
"Erin Rose," the Spacething Library World said plaintively, "the Chained One, the Envoy of Balance, whose Chaining created reality, hates the Unbound as only an eternally chained thing can. How can you be so ignorant? Do you not even know what the continuum you live in is?"
Albert Hamme appeared on the street outside March Air Force Base, in the shadows of early evening, and walked up to the gate.
The guard on duty at the gate saluted. "Captain," he said. "Changed your mind about going out?"
Erin returned the corporal's salute. By his internal clock, some twelve thousand years had passed since he'd signed out. "Yes," he said, and remembered to use his mouth. "It's been a long day, I'm going to turn in early." He signed the sheet again.
It had been a long day. He walked back to his quarters, laid himself to rest in his bed, and closed his eyes. In the months he'd been at March Air Force Base, he'd never actually slept in it before.
He set monitor and guard routines, released his constraints, and let himself dissolve into dreams, as he had in the long ago days when he'd been human.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1415233260/resist-persist-fight-buyblue
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As Bender would say, we are so boned...
Sobering animation.
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I always thought the phrase "laughed so hard I cried" was hyperbole...
Okay this bit of coarse hilarity is worth a scan. What lovely, high-tech times we live in!
https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/1052864324748970
https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/1052864324748970
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"This is a national treasure in more ways than one. Let's treat it like one."
This is a very well-written and eye-opening description of the Arecibo radio telescope, both the physical site and the scientific discoveries it continues to make. Even if you choose not to comment on the federalregister.gov form to request continued funding, it's well worth reading. (The quote above is the closing line of my own comment on the form.)
This is a very well-written and eye-opening description of the Arecibo radio telescope, both the physical site and the scientific discoveries it continues to make. Even if you choose not to comment on the federalregister.gov form to request continued funding, it's well worth reading. (The quote above is the closing line of my own comment on the form.)
Tropic Thunder
A more personal account on Arecibo (warts and all, to some extent), how you can help ensure its continued funding and why you should do so.
TLDR version :
Arecibo is very far from being outdated, nor is it likely to be surpassed in the next decade or two. Arecibo is an extremely mature facility - rather than being obsolete, it's more capable now than it ever was before. It's had many upgrades since its construction in 1963; new discoveries are still resulting from the last one in 2004, and more upgrades could improve it still further. There is no other facility planned that could fully supersede Arecibo save perhaps the Square Kilometre Array, which is unlikely to be operational for the next 15 years (and if you're American and worry about these things, the US isn't playing much of a role in that). Even that will not necessarily reproduce, let alone exceed, all of Arecibo's capabilities. Arecibo requires a relatively modest amount of funding for a unique and diverse range of scientific outputs : from asteroids to aliens, to pulsars and planets, galaxies and... err... Goldenye....
The NSF are preparing to asses the long-term funding model of Arecibo; options range from sustaining the existing funding model right down to site closure. Although the decision isn't expected until sometime next year, the official public consultation period extends on June 23rd this year. So get your comments to them ASAP. A suggested generic "I love Arecibo !" message is included. Additionally or alternatively you can sign a poll (deadline June 26th) if you just want to make your support known but don't wish to commit to a specific funding plan.
While few people really expect Arecibo to close, this isn't an option that should be dismissed entirely. It's all too easy for funding agencies to conclude that Arecibo is a technological dinosaur that can't compete with new telescopes like the Chinese FAST or the SKA pathfinder telescopes. It's actually none of these things - it's capable of science which is simply impossible anywhere else. There's really no reason to think that its greatest days don't lie ahead of it.
Also featuring why coquis are vile little creatures that deserve extermination, lack of herpes among the students, the real reason we don't let monkeys observe, a cute little puppy and a hurricane.
A more personal account on Arecibo (warts and all, to some extent), how you can help ensure its continued funding and why you should do so.
TLDR version :
Arecibo is very far from being outdated, nor is it likely to be surpassed in the next decade or two. Arecibo is an extremely mature facility - rather than being obsolete, it's more capable now than it ever was before. It's had many upgrades since its construction in 1963; new discoveries are still resulting from the last one in 2004, and more upgrades could improve it still further. There is no other facility planned that could fully supersede Arecibo save perhaps the Square Kilometre Array, which is unlikely to be operational for the next 15 years (and if you're American and worry about these things, the US isn't playing much of a role in that). Even that will not necessarily reproduce, let alone exceed, all of Arecibo's capabilities. Arecibo requires a relatively modest amount of funding for a unique and diverse range of scientific outputs : from asteroids to aliens, to pulsars and planets, galaxies and... err... Goldenye....
The NSF are preparing to asses the long-term funding model of Arecibo; options range from sustaining the existing funding model right down to site closure. Although the decision isn't expected until sometime next year, the official public consultation period extends on June 23rd this year. So get your comments to them ASAP. A suggested generic "I love Arecibo !" message is included. Additionally or alternatively you can sign a poll (deadline June 26th) if you just want to make your support known but don't wish to commit to a specific funding plan.
While few people really expect Arecibo to close, this isn't an option that should be dismissed entirely. It's all too easy for funding agencies to conclude that Arecibo is a technological dinosaur that can't compete with new telescopes like the Chinese FAST or the SKA pathfinder telescopes. It's actually none of these things - it's capable of science which is simply impossible anywhere else. There's really no reason to think that its greatest days don't lie ahead of it.
Also featuring why coquis are vile little creatures that deserve extermination, lack of herpes among the students, the real reason we don't let monkeys observe, a cute little puppy and a hurricane.
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3 billion light-years away this time...oooOOOOoooo. (Looking forward to VIRGO's "first light" later this year, too, after which we'll have much better localization of these events.)
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Author of Acts of the Apostles and other awesomeness...'nuff said, I hope.
Please grab a free copy of my little illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria -- of which I'm quite proud -- and while you're at it, click on the link on the first page to join my email list, and thereby get yourself a second free ebook, Biodigital, also by yours truly. And please share this link far and wide. Thanks.
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Local universe, three.js version
Long-time readers know that I've been sporadically futzing with a 3D model of the "local" universe (out to, say, 400 megaparsecs) for quite a while...more than four years, in fact. It was inspired and still is anchored by the release of the "2MASS Redshift Survey" of galaxies, some 43 thousand of them. (Unlike other surveys, this one is basically spherically symmetric, so it makes a very nice model, even if my simple redshift-to-distance conversion is a fairly crude approximation.)
The old version was in VRML, however, and very few people were ever able to view it properly. I did post some ginormous GIF animations of it at one point, but those were a pale shadow of the full-resolution version. Ergo, I've spent the last few months teaching myself +three.js and converting the VRML model to it. The conversion is nowhere near complete, but there's enough there to be interesting (at least to folks like +Yonatan Zunger), so I thought it was time to share.
What we've got so far:
(1) the 43487 2MRS galaxies as a three.js "point" cloud (actually little squares, though there are shaders that can do fuzzy spheroids, and I'll switch to those when I figure out how);
(2) the five dozen or so Local Group galaxies marked with color-coded cross-hairs way down in the center: orange for Milky Way satellites; pink for Andromeda (M31) satellites; purple for Triangulum (M33) satellites; and green for non-satellite members of the group;
(3) a handful of other relatively nearby but non-Local Group galaxies, marked by white cross-hairs: M101 (Pinwheel Galaxy), M51a and b (Whirlpool Galaxy and tidally disrupted companion), M81, and M82;
(4) a gigundous constellation-sphere for reference; and
(5) a simple rotation plus in-and-out-oscillation animation.
What's missing? Constellation-labels, for one; I've been beating my head against them for a good chunk of the weekend, but I seem to have screwed up the translation of my VRML "SphericalText" proto somehow. (Nested transformations, sigh...) Also, in no particular order:
(a) texture maps for the Milky Way, Andromeda, Triangulum, Pinwheel, and Whirlpool galaxies;
(b) viewpoints for all 89 constellations, plus some other points of interest;
(c) some basic controls to enable/disable the animation, constellation-sphere, etc.;
(d) auto-detection of non-WebGL-capable browsers, with some kind of fallback;
(e) a coordinate sphere with one-degree pixel-points for scale;
(f) some indication of the ecliptic (Earth's orbit projected onto the sky);
(g) pixel-points or fuzzy-sphere points for the main set of galaxies;
(h) other extra-galactic 3D data sets (e.g., the SDSS sample of 1.37M galaxies and 265000 quasars from late 2012, and the much newer BOSS results);
(i) the six warped galaxies I studied for my dissertation.
We'll get there eventually.
[Credits: 2MRS team (http://tdc-www.cfa.harvard.edu/2mrs/) for the galaxy data behind the point cloud; John Walker's venerable Home Planet app (http://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet/homeplanet.html) for the constellation boundaries and the original version of the constellations themselves (subsequently corrected and tweaked to more closely match http://www.iau.org/public/constellations/); Wikipedia for the names and coordinates of Local Group galaxies and constellation stars; and various papers on arxiv.org for newly identified Local Group dwarf galaxies and other interesting tidbits.]
Long-time readers know that I've been sporadically futzing with a 3D model of the "local" universe (out to, say, 400 megaparsecs) for quite a while...more than four years, in fact. It was inspired and still is anchored by the release of the "2MASS Redshift Survey" of galaxies, some 43 thousand of them. (Unlike other surveys, this one is basically spherically symmetric, so it makes a very nice model, even if my simple redshift-to-distance conversion is a fairly crude approximation.)
The old version was in VRML, however, and very few people were ever able to view it properly. I did post some ginormous GIF animations of it at one point, but those were a pale shadow of the full-resolution version. Ergo, I've spent the last few months teaching myself +three.js and converting the VRML model to it. The conversion is nowhere near complete, but there's enough there to be interesting (at least to folks like +Yonatan Zunger), so I thought it was time to share.
What we've got so far:
(1) the 43487 2MRS galaxies as a three.js "point" cloud (actually little squares, though there are shaders that can do fuzzy spheroids, and I'll switch to those when I figure out how);
(2) the five dozen or so Local Group galaxies marked with color-coded cross-hairs way down in the center: orange for Milky Way satellites; pink for Andromeda (M31) satellites; purple for Triangulum (M33) satellites; and green for non-satellite members of the group;
(3) a handful of other relatively nearby but non-Local Group galaxies, marked by white cross-hairs: M101 (Pinwheel Galaxy), M51a and b (Whirlpool Galaxy and tidally disrupted companion), M81, and M82;
(4) a gigundous constellation-sphere for reference; and
(5) a simple rotation plus in-and-out-oscillation animation.
What's missing? Constellation-labels, for one; I've been beating my head against them for a good chunk of the weekend, but I seem to have screwed up the translation of my VRML "SphericalText" proto somehow. (Nested transformations, sigh...) Also, in no particular order:
(a) texture maps for the Milky Way, Andromeda, Triangulum, Pinwheel, and Whirlpool galaxies;
(b) viewpoints for all 89 constellations, plus some other points of interest;
(c) some basic controls to enable/disable the animation, constellation-sphere, etc.;
(d) auto-detection of non-WebGL-capable browsers, with some kind of fallback;
(e) a coordinate sphere with one-degree pixel-points for scale;
(f) some indication of the ecliptic (Earth's orbit projected onto the sky);
(g) pixel-points or fuzzy-sphere points for the main set of galaxies;
(h) other extra-galactic 3D data sets (e.g., the SDSS sample of 1.37M galaxies and 265000 quasars from late 2012, and the much newer BOSS results);
(i) the six warped galaxies I studied for my dissertation.
We'll get there eventually.
[Credits: 2MRS team (http://tdc-www.cfa.harvard.edu/2mrs/) for the galaxy data behind the point cloud; John Walker's venerable Home Planet app (http://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet/homeplanet.html) for the constellation boundaries and the original version of the constellations themselves (subsequently corrected and tweaked to more closely match http://www.iau.org/public/constellations/); Wikipedia for the names and coordinates of Local Group galaxies and constellation stars; and various papers on arxiv.org for newly identified Local Group dwarf galaxies and other interesting tidbits.]
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A modern, very pretty successor to gifascii, textmode Quake, etc. (24-bit color is kind of a cheat...)
Friday evening hack: an image viewer for terminals. Sounds silly, but I often wished there was such a thing. So I made it.
Can also play animated gifs. Enjoy.
Can also play animated gifs. Enjoy.
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A nice, digestible description of an awesome new instrument for galactic studies, one that produces per-pixel spectra, which in the case of NGC 3115 is on the order of a quarter million spectra. (Grad students of my era could only dream of such data... Even today it's almost unbelievable.)
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