INTERSTELLAR: The Stars and Our Selves

Went to see Interstellar last night, in glorious 70mm IMAX (2-D!) format.


Huge. Still digesting...


This film paints on a VAST canvas. It involves some PROFOUND reflections on high astrophysics, consciousness, ethics and Love. Right away, you can see the potential conflict here: How do you tell a story on such a scale, and not lose the humanity that must comprise its narrative core.


Answer: Like this.


The great achievement of Interstellar is that it folds the humanity of its characters (and its characters as avatars of Humanity) into the very quantum foam of its storytelling.

They are one and the same.

There is an intimacy to the thing that resounds in even the most sweeping of establishing shots, the most mind-bending of theoretical constructs. This is accomplished in subtle ways, like the POV, "rocket-cam" nature of most of the spacecraft sequences (this is happening to You, not to Them). There are really very few of the standard distant, 3rd-person-observer tableaux which are so ubiquitous in spaceborne cinematic SF (though the few that do appear are simply breathtaking!).

The objective here is not to point out how puny we are compared to All Of It. It is to establish that, puny as we surely are, we are still the heroes (and villains) of ANY story that involves us. Our hope and dread and resolve and Connection and Love are what propel us into the Big Black (or what SHOULD, so long as we 'do not go gentle into that good night,' so long as we do not succumb to complacency and despair, so long as we preserve and nurture our Explorer's Heart, our Will to survive). We bring the good and evil and valor and cowardice and nobility and cravenness with us, no matter how immense the journey.


"No matter where you go.....there you are."


And, in the end, in the funny things that happen to spacetime when its physics are pushed to their breaking point, we find that the nature of our consciousness, the purity (or putridity) of our intentions and motivations become (or, rather, reveal themselves to have always been) PART of the equation.


The most important part, really.


For the particles that form us still swarm in their entangled dance, indifferent to distance, be it a micron or a mile. Or a million-million light years.

We are, each of us, a world unto ourselves, and yet our trajectories through the N-Dimensional topographies we traverse are perturbed (and --if we are VERY lucky-- defined) by the gravitational forces that bind us to the Other(s) who travel with us.....even if they are separated by blood-freezing distances and durations.

It is LOVE --variously defined-- that sculpts space and makes a tinker-toy of time.

I suppose I could quibble about such unsplit hairs as coriolis forces in spin-simulated gravity if too short a moment-arm is utilized, I could bellyache about the VICIOUS radiation environment around a black hole with a luminous accretion disk, about the orbital dynamics that would have to pertain, in order for certain time-dilation ratios to apply, could grouse about a few overly-chatty scenes and a smattering of instances of strained dialog.....but all of that would miss the point by such a wide margin that the point would not be a naked-eye visible object from such a course.

And that Point is embodied in the gentle Hope that permeates even the darkest moments of despair in this film. It lives in the bitter tears that fall from the eyes of frustrated Love, in the serene but steely resolve that shines from those eyes at the chance to be of Service to that Love....even if the fruits of that Service might never be seen.

For if each of us is a world.....then our world is each of us.

And so long as the Blights that might afflict its soil are allowed to settle, uncontested, on the surfaces of our souls...that world begins to die, and inexorably to bury us in that very soil, while we watch in numb helplessness.

But so long as we rage against the dying of the light, remember who we are and to whom we are bound in Love, then that light may yet coalesce into luminous spherical portals, which resolve into the eyes of those whom we carry with  us.....wherever we go.


And that is a very encouraging thought.

My Path From Port To Starboard: It's Complicated

So, what business does an agnostic, non-affluent, socially-liberal, post-graduate-educated, Northeast city-born, suburban-dwelling bloke (technically a Minority, to boot) like myself have in calling himself any kind of "Conservative?"

This is a question to which regular readers of these pages (all three of them!) know I have bent my thoughts for a number of years now. After all, in the Summer of 2004, I still defined myself as someone who believed that it was the government's responsibility to engineer society such that the needs of its citizens could never go unmet. Further, I believed that the national nature of that project was a mere stepping-stone toward the time when Westphalian nation-state borders would all-but vanish, and a new World Government would create a seamless, just, and intelligently-designed global community. Even now, the ideas still have appeal.

It is understandable that some might perceive a deep irony in the fact that, having undergone such profound change, I should now subscribe to a domain of thought which is often dismissed as being merely the resistance to change. Further, it is just as understandable that a similar irony could be found in a non-theist aligning himself with a political philosophy which has become so enmeshed with hard theism. Finally, some may see a contradiction in the fact that, as someone who works in a helping profession (Clinical Psychology), I should have thrown in with those who are perceived as being all-too ready to throw the weak to the wolves.

As ever, the reconciliation of apparent paradoxes lies beyond the edges of the screens onto which they're projected.

Uncharacteristically cutting to the chase: I am a conservative because I am a Complex Systems thinker (link, by the way, is to a SPECTACULARLY useful site for the layman to get up to speed on these theories).

As a student of complex, non-linear, edge-of-chaos phenomena, I have learned to look with deep humility on our capacity to characterize --let alone control-- complex, open, evolving systems. From ecosystems to economies (but I repeat myself), nature finds a way to flow like water into spaces that are un-dreamed-of in our philosophies. Flocks of birds self-organize into fantastically elaborate patterns as they swirl through the sky. There is profound meaning to be found in the the fact that they do so without the aid of any rules more complicated than "keep a certain distance from adjoining birds, steer around obstacles, and travel along basically the same path as your fellow-flockers." The pattern is an emergent property of these simple, strictly local rule-sets.

This quality of emergence is apparent throughout nature. Traffic patterns arise from local interactions on the level of individual cars...yet they can achieve complex forms which span miles of roads, reacting to (and anticipating) assorted perturbations as though they were subject to some superordinate intelligence. But they're not. Molecules of oil in a shallow dish can align themselves into a regular lattice of hexagonal columns of fluid  (Bénard cells) when heated. It almost looks like these molecules are executing a pregiven program. But they're not.  Populations of cells act in concert to form and maintain the function of an organism, and those organisms arrange themselves into cooperating and competing biomes and ecosystems, all as though they were cogs in a fantastically-designed clockwork. But they're not.

These collective behaviors arise from the interactions of local agents, whose activities are regulated at a dynamic cascade of system levels...but with nary a Central Planning Authority to be found. Indeed, I have come to see that the most brittle, least adaptive systems are those which are organized around a strictly "top-down," hierarchical architecture of energy and information. A brain (a self-organizing system) can suffer grievous damage, and yet still  regain substantial portions of its previous function by routing around the damage...whereas a computer can grind to a catastrophic crash, owing to a misplaced comma in thousands of lines of code (usually the night before an important presentation is due!).

You see where this is going.

As I said (and meant), the ideas from my Transnational Progressive days still have much appeal. I like the idea that society can be designed in such a way that it can remain viable, yet responsive to the needs of all its citizens. I like the idea that smart people can apply those smarts to engineering a setting in which all people can be positioned --well-fed and educated and healthy-- to thrive and create and live well. What kind of person wouldn't?

The trouble is that those smart people would have to have access to the kind of comprehensive information which the universe simply does not provide, when it comes to the structure and function of complex systems. There is a hard complexity barrier between the unfolding of such systems, and the algorithms we might devise to describe and predict (again, let alone control) that unfolding. As such, all attempts at planning and administering a system as complex as a society and an economy will result in a GARGANTUAN bureaucracy, cobbling together policy after policy, growing and accruing more and more system energy (or, if you prefer, power) to manage the cascade of unintended consequences which it will spawn like metastases as it frantically strives to put even the very noblest of intentions into practice. It happened in the Soviet Union. It's happening in the Euro Zone. I have come (reluctantly!) to the position that it will happen wherever Central Planning is tried.

F. A.  Hayek --pre-dating Complexity Theory by decades-- wrote that it is the Smithian, "Invisible Hand" of myriad individual choice-making agents which enables an economy flexibly to assign value to goods and services, and to enable the most efficient flow of energy/capital through that economy. He wrote (during the days leading up to and closely following WW2, when many of these ideas stood in VERY high relief) that efforts to plan and manage the operation of an economy were subject to insuperable obstacles, owing to the invariably imperfect knowledge to which the Planners would have access. (and, since it seems I can't go a full month without linking to this bit of brilliance, here's another way to discuss this). It was his thesis that a mechanism which would assume such a level of control over what is essentially an evolving system will lead it to steal more and more energy from that system, till it becomes self-perpetuating and parasitical. He posited (again, not in a vacuum) that both economic dynamism and liberty would erode under such conditions.

Now, of course a "purely" non-interventionist government (if such a beast could ever be said to have existed on this planet) would not be a tolerable scenario. There are aspects of human welfare which simply must be placed behind a judiciously-applied set of firewalls, if a society is to be a just one. However, the Social-Darwinist view of free-market capitalism which is so often set up as a straw man by advocates of Planning is by no means a necessary correlate of the thing. The difference, if you will, is in viewing government as the control rod or the reactor core.

Thus, I choose to align myself, to as great a degree as is practicable within the Real World, with those who work to create an open, fair marketplace, within whose raucous, generative, evolving, and frequently messy parameters prosperity will arise. Since no pure form of such an approach can be found in our political landscape, in anything like a configuration which is tolerable to me (and which stands a snowball's chance on Venus of achieving the White House), I'm stuck with the GOP (and only then, because I live in a State with closed primaries, in which Independents cannot vote).

I recognize that this puts me in the company of folks who hardly see eye-to-eye with me on the position that, say, homosexuality is merely a normal (if relatively rare) variation in natural human pair-bonding (and that, thus, it is absurd to deny people access to a central human pair-bonding ritual and status, just because they so vary). I know that there is a (deeply paradoxical!) thread within the party of insinuating uncomfortably high levels of Christian theology into the laws of the land...which flies in the face of the ostensibly liberty-oriented approach to government's footprint in people's lives which is proper to the party's orientation. What can I tell you? We live in a universe where the Perfect is inevitably and irreducibly the enemy of the good, if we choose to hold out for it.

But the Democratic party has seemingly irretrievably aligned itself with the tradition of Progressives and other Planners. And, for whatever tactical gains it (admirably!) strives to bring about for its constituents, it does so at the price of strategic losses to our society's ability to sustain the benefits it promises. It simply does not fit within my frame of reference that this is a good idea (nor, in the end, particularly humane). So, I ride herd as much as possible on the more pernicious aspects of the GOP's posture (if, the gods forbid, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum had gotten the nomination, I would have had a Very Difficult choice to make...see why I want to be able to vote in the primaries?), while advocating for those parts which move our society in what I judge to be the direction in which it remains most vibrant and viable (which, to paraphrase JFK [who all-but-certainly would have been Liebermanned into obscurity within today's Democratic party] would create the rising tide which lifts all boats).

Yes, conservatives would find a great many of my positions positively heretical (and, of course, the feeling would be mutual). But no complex system is without internal contradictions, even as its overall organization is coherent. Nature is not kind to Purists. So we choose among imperfect options, in as-educated-as-possible hope that the highest-viable good will emerge.

It's the worst possible system you could imagine....except for all the others.

Fracking Unbelievable

Presented for your cringe-worthy reading...well..."pleasure" just doesn't seem to fit, as you will see. 

Recently, a not-very-close relative (by marriage) whom I will refer to as "Moderate," (as she risibly refers to herself in her Facebook profile...though between pretty much her every position and that of the DNC there's not enough daylight to support the photosynthesis of a forest-floor fern) posted this NYT (Natch) story about hydraulic fracturing (and, the gods help me, I fear the day will never come when my BSG-loving soul will cease to chortle like Beavis when I hear the word, "Fracking," [huh-huh...see?!]). She commented thus:

"Moderate": Drill baby drill....our EPA Chief says there's no evidence of fracking threats to water. Anyway, who cares? It's Texas and no amount of scientific evidence will prevent them from drilling for black gold. Florida will even send over the Sweet Tea...just stay away from our Coasts. :-)  [Gee, I wonder how she feels about Texans...and why...]

NOOCYTE: Billions of dollars of domestic revenues, thousands of American jobs, more supply on the global markets (and so less gelt for glorified Bedouins and socialist nut-jobs), and thus far no convincing evidence of environmental damage. What's the down-side? Am I missing something?

“Moderate”: It's in Texas and, acknowledging all the upsides, as you've enumerated, I'm all for it. Where we differ is I don't believe for one minute that fracking is not a hazard, regardless of Lisa Jackson's testimony. It took Medical gurus decades to determine Eggs are GOOD for us. Seemed a no brainer to me, which is why we've always eaten them. Have the opposite, no brainer instinct on fracking, where scientific analysis is in its infancy. As long as it's not happening off the Florida Coasts, and my drinking water isn't being piped in from Houston, I'm happy to support it. ;-) [heart-warmingly altruistic, innit?]

Occam's Stubble (“Moderate's” husband [Note: English is not his first language, so no fair judging on writing skills...no fair, and hardly necessary, as you will see...]): There are 1000 "secret" chemicals used in Fracking.

Noocyte: It's a fairly straightforward matter to test groundwater on an on-going basis. The proprietary nature of the chemicals involved in the activities of companies engaged in highly competitive extraction procedures does not change that. If impurities are found, then investigations will ensue, and countermeasures implemented. It's not like there is any shortage of watchful environmentalist eyes on this (informed by the aesthetic, "instinctive" aversion to industrial development which is their stock in trade). Given the lack of evidence of harm thus far, and the immense benefits of the technology, it seems only sensible and sane to proceed. And, for once, that sense and sanity appears to be winning the day.

Occam's Stubble: Lack of evidence? So why all the secrets? Its not a competitive issue that IP ["Intellectual Property] can not cover. As a Chemical Engineer, I understand the process and there is much harm. There is marketable value and benefits, but there is much harm to the extent the industry was made exempt legal action. See the documentary GasLand on HBO. [BWAAAA-hahahaha!!!]

Noocyte: Thousands of wells, years of data, sworn testimony of numerous experts (from across the whole political spectrum), and the lack of ONE case of demonstrable harm tied to the process itself (as opposed to localized mishandlings of safety procedures).....versus one widely-discredited piece of cinematic agitprop. I'll take Door #1, thanx.

Not all secrets are conspiracies; industrial espionage is a real threat viz an emerging technology where any slim advantage can score a company (which is investing $tens of billions) critical market share.

Random Drone: gasland explains it all. It is devestating [sic{k}]

“Moderate”: If a substantial number of GOP members on the Hill had their way, there would be no investigations of anything and the EPA wouldn't exist, so who/what would be conducting investigations? We should trust the gas industry to police itself? <...lol>

To reiterate, Texas is welcome to Frack away and let's give them massive tax subsidies to carry out their environmental hazards. I'll be happy to reap the benefits and none of the health risks. ;-) [After all, they're only Texans!]

Occam's Stubble: [NOOCYTE], you surprise me. Pulverizing, liquefying the underground with water, mud and tons of "secret" chemicals, poisoning aqueducts [citation?], gas leaking all over the place [ibid], into the water wells, the air, etc, etc, [ibid, ibid]  there is harm [because I say so] . To say this is safe for the areas people around it, it is ludicrous. You probably also believe the Golf spill caused no harm as well [based on...]. No sea mammals dead. No pollution for years to come. Yes, when a secret group of oil, gas executive met with Cheney [I was WONDERING when he'd show up!] , hide their agenda, created new laws exclusive to them, bending existing laws, effectively making them exempt to the Clean Water Act and many other EPA mandates, then its corporate conspiracy to weigh the risk of benefits vs harm [HORRORS!]. To say, there is no harm is ludicrous [not necessarily...but then, I never did say that, did I?]. There is no corporate conspiracy, beside the fact IP is good enough, the land was divvy up even before they had the land deeds. And when it couldn't be taken for the cheap, they went in sideways underground to quicksand the earth [that is, there are fewer drill points, and a smaller above-ground footprint...and this is a BAD thing...]. There are clusters of environmental and health issues, and many close settlements. Hey, we live in the society and we all need the energy. But so suggest it is clean, no harm, you surprise me. Thought you were more smarter than that.

Noocyte: So, by way of arguing your point, you simply repeat your assertion, but include more adjectives, in order to make hydrofracturing sound more like rape (since everyone knows that the best way to make a scientific argument is to evoke an emotional/aesthetic reaction), and to throw in the perception of consensus/authority (technically known as the "C'mon! *EVERYBODY* knows this; whatsamaddawitchoo?!" mode of argumentation). And in a final flourish to make a logician leap with glee, you throw in the venerable "I thought you were smarter than this" variant of the "No smart people would disagree with me" argument. Real tour-de-force, there.

Let me try: These companies are engaged in a contest with each other to find the best formula for most effectively flushing the goopy black (and potentially explosive...can you *PROVE* that it's not a mortal danger down there?...) tarry stuff from between the layers of Mother Earth's otherwise pristine crystals, infusing these ingredients in such a way that spider-web-like filigrees of delicate fissures spread and grow to allow the toxins to flow out. What sensible and sensitive person would want to stand in the way of this cleansing ritual? It's perfectly *OBVIOUS* that this is so, regardless of what anyone (with questionable motives and uncertain moral fibre) might say to the contrary.

Better yet: Point me to a SINGLE conclusive bit of evidence that Fraccing has contaminated drinking water (hint: you won't find one), released levels of methane into the air and water that exceed what happens naturally (ditto), or had any other higher-than-error-variance effect on any natural system whatsoever (trifecta!). Talk to me about the results of the EPA study, when they come out in 3 months or so.

And please try to do better than "Gasbags" or whatever by way of supporting documents. If I had $100 for every documented falsehood and distortion in that sad waste of videotape, I could drill my own damn well.

Possibly Sensible Skeptic: [Noocyte].. ?: to what do you refer to to prove your point: an article, TV documentary, personal work experience or all of these? JA [Ed: “JA” = Just Asking”]

Noocyte: [Potentially Sensible Skeptic]: multiple sources. Can provide sample links later, but I'm on mobile at the pool, and wee keyboard is a PITA for such things. Suffice to say, I don't single-source anything, not even/especially not the things with which I agree. Multiple sources and layered vetting insulates me against...well...against things like Gasland.

Potentially Sensible Skeptic: [Noocyte]...Thx

“Moderate”: Science is not my strong suit [clearly] and I won't pretend to know this technology. That's why I married a chemical engineer. :-)) [Well, then....nah, I'll be good...] I'm convinced fracking is detrimental [what was that part about not pretending...?] but Texas is a state with a mindset that doesn't care about environmental hazards as evidenced by history. Let them frack away, and I'll be happy to be a recipient of more plentiful US Oil.

Noocyte: [Potentially Sensible Skeptic]: As promised, here is a slice of the sourcing I've done so far on this subject:

Scientific American article raises legitimate questions, debunks assorted “Gasland” myths, and indicates no evidence of groundwater contamination:

http://...www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-investigates-safety-of-natural

And here's a report from the Geological Society of London, drawing on both US and UK data, again showing no evidence of environmental harm from hydrofracturing:

http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/pid/9936;jsessionid=BB88DCFA6E9CB1D16C42E5438165C91C

Here's a link to an EPA study from 2004, which actually deemed fracking to be sufficiently low-risk as to merit no further study (which it's subsequently getting anyway, which is a GOOD thing...but which paints a picture of the history of the subject's treatment):

http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/uic/pdfs/cbmstudy_attach_uic_resp_to_comments.pdf

Finally this article from Popular Mechanics discusses a fracking-related accident in PA, showing that the contamination which resulted from that accident was related to specific hardware problems at the site, and NOT to the process itself:

http://m.popularmechanics.com/science/8521/full/

That should do for now, as I have no wish to SPAM this thread. But it's a fair sample of the sorts of vetting which needs to be done on...well, ANY subject, but especially on one which partakes of such strong emotions and connects with so many fundamental (and generally unspoken/unacknowledged)
assumptions.

Occam's Stubble: [Noocyte], you're wrong and there is plenty of evidence [which I will now proceed to NOT provide], but more importantly, for any scientist, its common sense [Funny, here I was thinking that science was one of the ways we protected ourselves from the "Common Sense" of "Authorities..." What a silly peon I've been. To the Camps with me, then!]. I think my credentials as a chemical engineering [Hey, I wonder if this guy might be a Chemical Engineer or something...]  suggest I do know more about "pollution" than you do, so I won't bother wasting my time with such nonsense.[QED, GIGO]

Otherwise Smart Person: I have no comment on fracking; I simply don't know enough about the technology to say. *But* as for the downside, 4 words: burning more fossil fuels! In the short run, and for my lifetime...I'll be selfish and say let's do it and get off the Saudi, er, tit, as it were, and lower the fuel prices. However...in the (not so) long run, and I mean in another 50 years - after I'm gone hopefully - God help those on this planet who will be dealing with all the fallout from our ever worsening global warming scenario!...If we can plow $$$ into this, we can also plow money into alternative energies! The technology is there. ....and please don't ask me to provide sources for global warming due to burning of fossil fuels. That shipped sailed long ago. Basically 98% of the world climate scientists say so - that's good enough for me....!

[...]

Noocyte: [Otherwise Smart Person]: The fossil fuels are going to be burned anyway, within any reasonable time frame. The alternatives lack the reliability, energy density, and scalability to change that to any meaningful degree in the near term. The question, then, becomes: "who profits from them?" As you note, the Saudi udder leads back to a metabolism which adds nothing to the world but cultural and geopolitical flatulence. If instead that voluminous lucre were to flow into American coffers, it would serve to enrich a society which is unmatched for innovation and inventiveness. If *any* society stands a chance to take the increase in economic dynamism which such profits would provide, and leverage it toward the development of such things as core taps, tidal power, on-orbit solar generation, evolved fission (thorium and pebble-bed systems, as well as reprocessing+), and eventual fusion power, it's certainly NOT the Clown Princes of the dune states. And it's sure as shootin' not that basket-case Chavez and his sulfurous sludge (not to mention his oil).

+...and, alas, as I noted on another thread, we can scratch Germany from that pursuit!

Occam's Stubble: [Noocyte], Go visit a Petroleum Plant, geez, don't you smell that crap when you on 95 or near the airport [because everyone knows that nothing in nature smells bad, and everything that smells bad is a hazard]. This stuff is BAD and weighing it against the society gains/risk is a DIFFERENT matter altogether, but quit the bullshit that this stuff isn't harmful [ummm...No?]. You are talking to a Chemical Engineer and I've worked on Coal, Oil and Nuclear and the waste factor is the common problem and there is simply a long history of the cluster side effects. Pleezzzzz.

Occam's Stubble: And for the layman, Gas was also part of my work, including extractions from all known sources including COW MANURE! [Seriously, what could I possibly add at this juncture?!]



[Ah hell: So I threw in one more comment. What can I say: I'm a tinkerer...] 


Noocyte: Final note: I'm dismayed to have to point out that, were one to re-read my posts on this thread, nowhere would one find me making the definitive assertion that hydraulic fracturing is *harmless.* The reason for that is that.... I. Don't. Know.  What I *have* said is that scientific analysis had thus far quite failed to demonstrate harmfulness (that is, failed to disprove the null hypothesis), and, given this, it is sensible to proceed, with continued study and oversight, in light of the ENORMOUS benefits to our society of exploiting these PRODIGIOUS indigenous energy reserves.

But, if subsequent analysis were to show statistically significant evidence that fracking is as harmful as gargling plutonium at an outdoor Cher concert...without sunscreen, then I'd be first in line to demand substantial modification --or outright dumping-- of the procedure.

Funny thing about science: one of its chief benefits to our civilization is the degree to which it *protects* us against the "Common Sense" of those who cloak themselves in the mantle of one sort of Authority or another, and demand that we acquiesce to the "no-brainer" assertions which they deem themselves to be above having to support with such dreary minutiae as..you know...*evidence*.

At the Shores of the Sea of Stars

From The Australian comes this update on the whereabouts of the Voyager spacecraft, at the very edge of the region in which the influence of the Sun is waning, the solar wind beginning to blow sideways, rather than outward from the primary.

I am awed to silence at the notion that an artifact of a certain species of naked ape is about to go interstellar.

Wow. Just wow.

Per Libertas Ad Astra

In the course of my journey from Big Government Liberal to libertarian-esque Conservative, one of the hardest things for me to let go of has been my hitherto-unquestioned belief that it is the business of the Federal Government to shepherd humanity into space.

It had always been an article of faith for me that only an Apollo-like Project could midwife the hatching of our species, at long last, from its primordial creche at the bottom of the Earth's gravity well, and out into the cosmos, where it belongs. The maddeningly slow progress of that momentous trek, of course, had to be due to an infuriating lack of vision at the top: If only Nixon had not killed the versatile and muscular Apollo in favor of the nifty but limited and cash-hungry (and ultimately lethal) Shuttle (and if only that program had not itself become freighted with the 'all-things-to-all-constituencies' bloat which subverted its initial purpose as a cheap, fully re-usable space truck), we could have expanded Skylab into a proper orbital village. If only Vietnam had not squandered so much of this Nation's wealth on a vain and pointless struggle against somethingorother, we could at least have had a fracking Moon Base. If only the Luddite fetishes of the 70s-era environmentalists hadn't refocused NASA into an operation bent on going around in circles, gazing at its own navel, we would have made it to Mars (and, having been an Environmentalist myself, this last came with no small quantum of cognitive dissonance!). On and on, I gritted my teeth at the absence of a Mission for the agency in charge of our Government's sacred trust to lift us to the stars.

It was only long after I had transitioned from Liberalism to a succession of species of Conservative that I had what, in retrospect, was a rather embarrassingly-belated realization: Why the blazes should mere Government be expected to oversee --let alone monopolize-- the greatest adventure on which humanity would ever embark? Why should it be the (IRS-enforced) obligation of a grain farmer in Iowa, or a Burger King manager in Virginia...or a clinical psychologist in Philadelphia to bankroll our evolution into a spacefaring species? If humans are going to hoist themselves into free space and forge a destiny in its airless reaches, why on earth (pun intentional) must it be left to the grinding Rube-Goldberg mechanism of pork-laden appropriations to make it so?

In an editorial by Iain Murphy and Rand Simberg at The American Spectator, the authors tackle this very question, and articulate the answer in devastatingly clear terms: It shouldn't:

There's something about space policy that makes conservatives forget their principles. Just one mention of NASA, and conservatives are quite happy to check their small-government instincts at the door and vote in favor of massive government programs and harsh regulations that stifle private enterprise. It's time to abort that mission. [...]

It is time for conservatives to recognize that Apollo is over. We must recognize that Apollo was a centrally planned monopolistic government program for a few government employees, in the service of Cold War propaganda and was therefore itself an affront to American values. If we want to seriously explore, and potentially exploit space, we need to harness private enterprise, and push the technologies really needed to do so.

One of the few things that the Obama Administration has gotten resoundingly and unambiguously right was the shift of NASA's priorities from old-school, Manhattan Project thinking on space access, in favor of a less-centralized, free-market approach. I know...right? Here is one area in which the Administration's singular (and in so many other ways extraordinarily dangerous and misguided) focus on a domestic policy of Transforming America ^tm  has happened to strike precisely the right note. Now, if this is simply a case of doing the correct things for the wrong reasons, then I'll take it just the same.

For, so long as this Administration shows its indifference and disdain for human spaceflight by refusing to bestow upon it a Big Government Project (which, in Obama's world, is the ultimate marker of value, after all), then that endeavor stands a chance of actually getting off the ground. On the one hand you have a set of fixed-funded, results-based benchmark incentives for competing private industries' achievements in developing a viable, human-rated commercial launch and orbital operations system (from which NASA can then purchase flights, while shouldering a relatively paltry share of the R&D costs). On the other, you have the usual cost-plus shenanigans of the usual suspects drawing the usual (voluminous) booty into the usual districts. The pace of the process might not be as gratifyingly brisk as you get when you unleash the jury-rigged juggernaut of State-Sponsored Will on a problem. At least not at first. But as markets are created and exploited through a ratcheting series of entrepreneurial beach-heads, the gains are apt to be more durable (as their funding streams will not be pegged to the American election cycle), and to ramp up more steeply once established (same reason).

So, it took Bigelow and Branson and Musk to make manifest what had previously only been obvious...so that, in the end, even I got it. I've been able to redirect my geek sensibilities in a direction more in keeping with my larger politico-economic explanatory system (and thus to discover that, even at my advanced age, I am still capable of changing my mind on important matters. Again.). And all this just in time for some most unexpectedly sensible legislation from the last Administration from which I would've seen it coming. Epic win!

And, in the end, once Bigelow builds his station, and clients (including NASA) start lining up, you start to introduce modest economies of scale, which bring down costs to orbit, which opens up new markets...and suddenly the landscape seems a mite more amenable than it ever would have been under NASA to the prospect of my not shuffling off before having seen the blue-white, gracefully-curved limb of the Earth, brightly sunlit under a black sky...

There But Not Back Again

Over at MSNBC.com, the intriguing (though hardly new) idea of one-way Mars colonization is discussed. The idea does have a certain appeal, once you get past the vicarious dread at the notion of leaving behind the Good Earth for ever. Once you remove the reaction mass and logistical complications of a return trip, you could find yourself in the position to derive far bang per buck of mission cost. There is plenty on Mars for the establishment of a self-sustaining colony, if only the seed materials could be included in the outward-bound leg of the journey. Fuel and shielding and provisions alone would probably be a fair approximation of the mission mass for a greenhouse enclosure, where Mars' CO2-rich environment and roughly 24-hour days would make local food production (and air/waste recycling loops) eminently doable.

The main question in all this is: Who would do such a thing?

Let me go on record here and say, "No exclusively NASA (or any other government agency)-only colonization missions!" If government wants to lend a judiciously-limited hand (say, by results-based matching programs with industry, or by a prize structure, or somesuch), then that's shiny. But we can't afford some sort of Mayflower Project.

Besides, as many others have noted, NASA has proven conclusively that it is capable of rendering sterile and prosaic even the single greatest adventure on which the human species will ever embark. That such a dessicated, risk-averse bureaucratic entity should ever muster the testicular fortitude to send people on a one-way trip is simply incomprehensible. Which is a good thing! The aridity of a Government-controlled mission would rival that of the Martian atmosphere itself. The chances of true social evolution would run constantly afoul of the culture of meticulous regimentation which so characterizes NASA. Any such colony would have woven into its DNA an ethic of control which would put the most grandiose fantasies of Progressive Social Engineers to shame!

Much better would be a colony ship festooned with corporate logos, with ad revenues, reality show and documentary film rights (can you say "Planet Mars," in IMAX?), and the promise of hermetically contractually-protected mining claims (Mars has had some very significant vulcanism in its past, offering the promise of rich veins of precious and "rare earth" metals...to say nothing of the downstream value of helium-3 for fusion energy tech). Protocols would, of course, be in place, but they would stand a much better chance of being malleable in the face of local conditions than a military-style State-controlled regime. A society and an economy would arise from the exigencies of the survival situation.

In The Case For Mars, Bob Zubrin said that "the chief export of a Mars colony will be ideas." Now, you'd think that a die-hard Mars colony advocate like Zubrin would be some kind of social-engineering Utopian. In point of fact, he is refreshingly Conservative/libertarian in his thinking, and has some uncommonly intelligent things to say about our energy conundrum. He truly believes that Mars colonists will have to make hard choices with scarce resources, in ways that maximize the value of even more scarce human capital. The result will be a crucible of bold, fast-paced social and technical evolution of the sort which would make Thomas Paine weep with joy.

The kinds of people who would want to go on such a trip stand a very good chance of being precisely the sorts that we'd want on it: intrepid but not reckless, independent but aware of the importance of a chain of command...actually, now that I think of it, I'm not sure we can particularly spare them right now! But they would constitute the ultimate laboratory of what free people can do when their lives depend on it.

The ideas would shoot sunward at a pace which even the editors of high school textbooks would have a hard time buffering for censorship!

H/T to Hot Air for the headline.

On the Limits of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Limits

Via Hot Air (where a quite lively discussion did ensue!), comes this perfectly lovely article from The New Scientist. It is an eloquent essay on the approach of an honest, open-minded scientist to the needlessly limiting categories of "theism" and "atheism" with respect to the mind's on-going dialog with nature.

 So while there are plenty of good books by scientist-atheists, they sometimes under-emphasise the main lesson from science: that our knowledge is vastly outstripped by our ignorance. For me, a life in science prompts awe and exploration over dogmatism.

 Given these considerations, I do not call myself an atheist. I don't feel that I have enough data to firmly rule out other interesting possibilities. On the other hand, I do not subscribe to any religion. Traditional religious stories can be beautiful and often crystallise hard-won wisdom - but it is hardly a challenge to poke holes in them. Religious structures are built by humans and brim with all manner of strange human claims - they often reflect cults of personality, xenophobia or mental illness. The holy books of these religions were written millennia ago by people who never had the opportunity to know about DNA, other galaxies, information theory, electricity, the big bang, the big crunch, or even other cultures, literatures or landscapes. 

So it seems we know too little to commit to strict atheism, and too much to commit to any religion. Given this, I am often surprised by the number of people who seem to possess total certainty about their position. I know a lot of atheists who seethe at the idea of religion, and religious followers who seethe at the idea of atheism - but neither group is bothering with more interesting ideas. They make their impassioned arguments as though the God versus no-God dichotomy were enough for a modern discussion.

Indeed! Over the years, I have developed a feeling for militant atheism which is akin to that which I feel about dogmatic theism. They both make me a bit sad.

I consider myself a functional atheist, but a technical agnostic. I simply cannot rule out that there is an Intelligence orchestrating the unfolding of the Great Cosmic Simulation (scale = 1:1). But nor can I reconcile my observations and studies with the premise that there must be such an Intelligence. I have absorbed enough from Chaos/Complexity theory to find highly satisfying comprehensiveness in the explanatory power of the concepts of self-organization in complex systems under far-from-equilibrium conditions. I simply do not see the need for a Cosmic Controller, any more than I need to posit a "Brain Bird," guiding and controlling the dynamics of a flock in flight.

But, when you come right down to it, what the hell do I know?

To make the leap from "What" questions to "Why" questions is to commit the fundamental(ist) error of both believers and non-believers. "What" questions are the proper domain of science: they deal with that which can be tested and observed (what are the proportions of ordinary matter to dark matter in the observable universe?). "Why" questions deal with ultimate issues (Why is there something instead of nothing?). Any effort to transplant one from the other is bound to bump against a hard metaphysical stop, and require what, for all intents and purposes must be considered a leap of faith. One of the most lovely treatments of this matter was the brilliant 1996 film, "Contact," in which a woman of science and a man of faith must find a way to reconcile their ostensibly antithetical world-views to questions of cosmic import. It is one of my very favorite films for the sheer poetry with which it addresses this matter which has so dominated the landscape of my thinking since childhood. The limits of knowledge need not represent the foreclosure of possibilities, but that we conjure they do.

This is why I call myself a "possibilian". Possibilianism emphasises the active exploration of new, unconsidered notions. A possibilian is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind and is not driven by the idea of fighting for a single, particular story. The key emphasis of possibilianism is to shine a flashlight around the possibility space. It is a plea not simply for open-mindedness, but for an active exploration of new ideas.

Is possibilianism compatible with a scientific career? Indeed, it represents the heart of science. Real science operates by holding limitless possibilities in mind and working to see which one is most supported by the data. Sometimes it is difficult or impossible to gather data that weighs in - and in those cases we simply retain the possibilities. We don't commit to a particular version of the story when there is no reason to.

Again, big bang-on. Now, he term “Possibilian” seems too precious by…well, a frack of a lot more than half. But the term “agnostic” has always rankled me something fierce. To live by the dictum that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence seems a mite…reduced by simply calling it “No-Knowledge.”

Sure, sure, saying you don’t know is supposed to be the beginning of wisdom and all that. But it feels a little like calling an American boy “Leslie.” It’s a fine name, but don’t expect him to thank you for it in middle school.

Nomenclature aside, though, it's a big 'Verse, with room for Grand Unifying Narratives aplenty. It seems to me that digging in our heels and shouting names at each other is a less than optimal use of the finite quanta of energy available to us before we flame out. This is one of the (many) reasons I find Bill Maher no less a nauseating homunculus of a man than Pat Robertson. Both pull for a zero-sum, annihilationist exclusivity which offers absolutely no quarter for the "other side."

To quote from another one of my favorite movies, "You have to see with better eyes than that."

Meteorites on Mars

Sounds like a good pulp science fiction title. And the lifelong Fan in me bounces around a bit at the thought we live in times in which it refers not to a fanciful film but to a mere press release.

Via the NASA site, comes this announcement that the Opportunity rover has happened across yet another large nickel-iron meteorite on the plains of Terra Meridiani. Study of an earlier such find has yielded some really fascinating insights into the Martian environment into which it careened, apparently a very long time ago:

Opportunity found a smaller iron-nickel meteorite, called "Heat Shield Rock," in late 2004. At about a half ton or more, Block Island is roughly 10 times as massive as Heat Shield Rock and several times too big to have landed intact without more braking than today's Martian atmosphere could provide.

"Consideration of existing model results indicates a meteorite this size requires a thicker atmosphere," said rover team member Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Either Mars has hidden reserves of carbon-dioxide ice that can supply large amounts of carbon-dioxide gas into the atmosphere during warm periods of more recent climate cycles, or Block Island fell billions of years ago."

First of all, let me just say that I looked at these images of this pitted rock, sitting on the sands of Mars, and paused a moment to say, yet again: "Good gods! That's the surface of freakin' MARS!!"

In my office, I have a couple of framed images from Opportunity and Spirit. Every now and then, a client asks me if I took them. And I have to chuckle, for the obvious reasons, and also because the pictures look so lovely, but so commonplace. "Planet" is such an abstract concept. Tickles the intellect, but leaves the glands largely untouched. Now, it's those moments when the reality of a "World" jumps out of these pictures that I just get grabbed but hard. Never gets old.

Anyway, back to the meteorites: I was struck by the above-quoted passage. The very existence of these large, space-borne rocks on the surface speaks to a time when there was enough of an atmosphere to slow them down to the point that they would not get pulverized by the impact. That. plus the numerous finds of near-surface water ice (including some pretty spectacular recent ones) lend further support to models for an earlier Mars which possessed a much thicker atmosphere and probably a very significant amount of surface water. Much of that atmosphere is locked up as dry ice at the poles, a whole lot more adsorbed into the regolith and rocks. Much of the water, it seems, is sitting close to the surface in permafrost (though the possibility of subterranean liquid aquifers can't be ruled out).

First of all, this makes it even more probable that the conditions for the emergence of life were present on Mars for periods of time which compare most favorably with the interval on early Earth in which abiogenesis is theorized to have occurred. Mars, it seems, had what it takes to get itself populated.

Second, it makes it clear that a little bit of site selection research could drop a crewed mission on a patch of Martian land which could provide a rich source of water, and so save a whole lot of mission mass which would have been devoted to consumables. That means a lot more payload, even if you factor in the additional gear for extraction  (long-distance pressurized rover, anyone?).

I actually hope that substantial fossilized but no extant life is found. Changes the whole ethical calculus of colonization-focused missions if there's something alive down there. It gets harder to argue for terraforming when it might obliterate an extra-terrestrial biosphere (imagine the emails from Robert Redford!). It would probably be a show-stopper for intrusive habitation (and I can't say that's a bad thing, mind you, but it would be almost as much of a bummer as a boon). The science would be outrageous, but the promise of a Martian branch of human civilization would be a bust for a very long time...if not forever.

This is not to say that coexistence with Martian life might not be possible. After all, it probably thrived under conditions on Mars which would also be favorable to us (thicker atmo, more water). Indeed, the arrival of Humanity on Mars could be the best thing that's ever happened to the natives.

And wouldn't that be an interesting Bizarro version of colonizations past!

Farewell, Phoenix

I'm a few days late on this, but I wanted to mark what appears to be the end of the NASA Phoenix Mars lander's successful mission.

Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft to land on the Martian surface. The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Red Planet's soil. Among early results, it verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, which NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter first detected remotely in 2002. Phoenix's cameras also returned more than 25,000 pictures from sweeping vistas to near the atomic level using the first atomic force microscope ever used outside Earth.

The Martian Winter has descended on the vast northern plains of Mars, with its bitterly cold temperatures and dwindling supply of power-generating sunshine. Phoenix recently sent what will likely be its final transmission before going quietly into that good night. It now sits as one more lonely monument to the inventiveness and curiosity of the human species, as we cast our senses skyward in search of our origins and our destiny.

Next up is the terribly exciting Mars Science Laboratory, a relatively gargantuan rover, which will use its plutonium power cell to range farther and dig deeper than any of its predecessors. Launch is scheduled for Fall of 2009, with arrival in 2010. This beast will be empowered to do some serious science, and woe betide any stubborn stones which get in its way. This fairly large video captures some of the promise and poetry which awaits us on this mission.

For now, though, I for one have raised a glass to the short but productive life of a Phoenix which is highly unlikely to rise from its own ashes. It may have gone silent forever, but its voice has added to a trove of data which may one day help to rescue Humanity itself from ultimate stagnation and death at the bottom of our ancestral gravity well.

Sleep now, Phoenix. You have amply earned your rest and our gratitude.

Asteroid Hunting Satellite Readies for Launch

The Canadian Space Agency is preparing a tiny satellite for a mission of potentially huge significance. The Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite, or NEOSSat, is described as a suitcase-sized satellite, equipped with a six-inch telescope and sun-shade, which will be launched into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit in 2010. It will scan the skies (including those in the perilous sunward blind spot) for near earth asteroids and comets which could pose a threat to the surface of the Earth.

While it would be an exaggeration to say that I lose any sleep over this, it only takes me a few moments' thought to get up a decent head of nervous steam about the issue of how woefully underfunded the search for potential Earth impactors has been to date. Recently, we marked the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska blast, which occurred when an object approximately 500 feet in diameter (with a wide margin of error) slammed into the atmosphere over a remote region of Siberia, and exploded before striking the ground, flattening millions of trees and creating atmospheric effects on a global scale, but outrageously fortunately causing no confirmed human fatalities. Had this event taken place a bit under 5 hours later, it would have completely obliterated St. Petersburg. The Chicxulub impact around 65 million years ago precipitated a global catastrophe which has been implicated in the extinction of a great many species, notably the dinosaurs. While rare, such impacts do happen. And with the wide distribution and population density of the human species at the present time, it is unlikely that we will get off as easy as we did in 1908. Indeed, it really is only a matter of time.

Costing a mere $11.5 million (chump change in satellite world), the NEOSSat will be unfettered by weather, and when not hunting for ravening rocks will monitor human-made space debris which could pose a threat to orbiting assets. It's a win-win, really, and I would love to see a small flotilla of such devices both in near-Earth orbit, and possibly even at one or more of the Lagrange points, which could be undertaken at relatively modest cost (compared to the immense cost of letting even one of these objects strike us unawares). Such a project would supplement the yeoman's work already being done worldwide by amateur astronomers who dutifully scan the skies for humanity's sword of Damocles, many of them under the auspices of organizations like the Spaceguard Foundation. Funding for this sort of work is chronically light (and therein lies one of my more esoteric lottery fantasies), which is a crying shame considering how powerfully silly the mass of humanity will feel if there is in fact an afterlife and we all show up at around the same time.

Phoenix Has Landed

Following its long cruise and harrowing Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL), NASA's Phoenix lander has touched down on the vast northern plains of Mars. It is equipped to search for water ice in the shallow subsurface of what may in the distant past have been a Martian seabed, and to test for the constituents of life itself.

As is usually the case when these missions achieve their objectives, the chief feelings I experience (after I'm done bouncing up and down in my chair in a child-like geekgasm of glee) are awe and pride. The sheer complexity involved in getting a spacecraft from the surface of the Earth, across millions of miles of space, and nailing a precise entry into the atmosphere of another planet --itself hurtling through space at very high speed-- then shedding the tremendous kinetic energy of its launch and cruise phases, and bringing it to rest in a usable condition on that planet's surface...it is simply breathtaking.

The ingenuity of the human species, the spirit of inquiry and exploration has once again enabled us to place a robotic avatar of our consciousness on the surface of another world. This is not a concept that ever gets old for me. Light-minutes away from where we sit right now, a machine sits in the thin whispery winds of the Martian atmosphere, bathed in the glow of a visibly-smaller sun, its three broad footpads sunken into the sand and gravel of a world on which no human has ever (yet!) walked. It is both a humbling and an exalting thought.

I have avidly followed the progress of the twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, since they bounced to the surface of Mars, over four years ago. Two images from those rovers (here and here) occupy a place on my office wall. I pore over the true-color images and often imagine what it would be like to be standing behind the rovers as they capture them (usually editing out the part about the cramped, smelly, terrifyingly necessary pressure suit I would perforce be wearing at the time). Indeed, I think I've been spoiled by the ever-changing landscapes those mobile probes have afforded, and it's going to be hard to adjust to a fixed platform again. Small price to pay for the wealth of data which Phoenix stands to provide.

I live in hope that I will last long enough to see humans live and work off-planet. Mars is about as good as it gets in the neighborhood of old Sol for such protracted excursions, and ultimately for colonization. With all of the other topics to which these pages are usually devoted, it should scarcely surprise that I would be very enthusiastically in favor of not having all of humanity's eggs in one basket. If nothing else, the wealth of ideas which would at first be the chief export of any off-world colony would enrich the species immeasurably (can you imagine a fresher perspective?). But the prospect of some natural or human-made calamity erasing all that there ever had been or would be of humanity is simply too appalling to contemplate. Larry Niven once said that "the dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right." Bit harsh, but basically says it.

So, when I hear of another successful mission to deepen our understanding of the Red Planet, my hope-meter twitches ever so slightly in the right direction. With many more missions in the offing, these promise to be "days of miracles and wonder" indeed.

Well-met, Phoenix. May you have a pleasant and productive stay.

Memristors: Rewriting Electronics Theory

[by Mr.Hengist]

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard’s Information and Quantum Systems Lab have created the memristor, the last to be created of the four fundamental circuit elements, joining resistors, capacitors, and inductors. It’s big news in the Electrical Engineering community as it completes the set and, with development and refinement, should lead to significant new capabilities in the field of electronics, not the least of which is a reduction in the leakage current which plagues modern computer chips.

Leakage current in chips is akin to the problem of a leaky aqueduct: more leakage means inefficiency in water transport – and a lot of soggy ground around the leaks. Leakage current is why chips get hot when they run; in personal computers, modern CPUs leak so much electricity that they need at a minimum fan-assisted heatsinks to keep from self-destructing when under load, and motherboards now use cross-connected heatpipes and heatsinks on support chips to keep them from burning themselves out. It’s a problem that’s gotten bad and is getting worse; the main driver of increased chip speed for the last two decades has been feature shrink – smaller circuitry – which in turn has the natural side effect of making the circuitry faster, but feature shrink also results in an increase in leakage current. The writing on the walls has been clear for years: if this problem is not mitigated it will be the limiting factor to what has been the most effective means of making computers faster and cheaper.

Memristors may or may not be a big part of the solution to the leakage current problem in semiconductors, but this discovery is not just adding another class of widget to the toolbox of electrical engineers: it’s going to rewrite their textbooks on electronics. As this article in EETimes explains:

The hold-up over the last 37 years, according to professor Chua, has been a misconception that has pervaded electronic circuit theory. That misconception is that the fundamental relationship in passive circuitry is between voltage and charge. What the researchers contend is that the fundamental relationship is actually between changes-in-voltage, or flux, and charge. Such is the insight that enabled HP to invent the memristor, according to Chua and Williams.

What astonishes me is that such changes are possible even today. Just as the discoveries of dark energy and dark matter have turned upside-down our understanding of the composition of the universe, so too are there discoveries being made which render our understanding of basic principals in well-studied fields moot. How did we get so far while still not knowing this? The tragedy of scientific understanding that it is usually wrong, but it is only through self-correction that we know that to be so, and in that self-correction we see the strength of science.

So long, and thanks for the all the bits!

[by Mr.Hengist]

Two hundred and seventy million miles of vast dark emptiness from here and high above the ecliptic plane slowly spins the high science of two decades past. At fifty million miles an hour Ulysses has been marking the monotony with only a gradual shift in the positions of the stars, including our own, at which it has stared relentlessly for these many years. The heat of her radioisotope generator has been largely depleted and can no longer power all her instruments; her hydrazine fuel has dwindled down to a pittance of only seven months’ supply. The end is near and approaching fast; come November, one year into its third trip around the sun, Ulysses’ low whisper of data will finally fall silent as she succumbs to the cold sleep in deep space.

Yet, just as the forever lost vessels of our early seafaring past are only now being recovered from the floors of the seas, perhaps it will be the children of your children who will one day return her home to Earth, but home she will be brought as a prized artifact of exploration from our time.

I figure it’s either that, or the Klingons will use it for target practice, but twenty quatloos says we get to it first.

Edward Lorenz: Rest in Equilibrium

Meteorologist Edward Lorenz has died at the age of 90. The theories of deterministic chaos/dynamic systems and their associated applications in complexity theory have been pretty seminal in my thinking (as anyone who's endured me droning on about attractors and emergent phenomena can testify), and I've always admired Lorenz as one of the first to see into the tangled relationships between chaos and deep order in the universe.

Lorenz was one of that rare breed of researchers who could look at anomalous findings and not simply write them off to faulty experimental design or human error. Better still, he could detect the presence of those factors and still have the presence of mind to discern that something deeper was afoot anyway:

As recounted in the book “Chaos” by James Gleick, Dr. Lorenz’s accidental discovery of chaos came in the winter of 1961. Dr. Lorenz was running simulations of weather using a simple computer model. One day, he wanted to repeat one of the simulations for a longer time, but instead of repeating the whole simulation, he started the second run in the middle, typing in numbers from the first run for the initial conditions.

The computer program was the same, so the weather patterns of the second run should have exactly followed those of the first. Instead, the two weather trajectories quickly diverged on completely separate paths.

At first, he thought the computer was malfunctioning. Then he realized that he had not entered the initial conditions exactly. The computer stored numbers to an accuracy of six decimal places, like 0.506127, while, to save space, the printout of results shortened the numbers to three decimal places, 0.506. When typing in the new conditions, Dr. Lorenz had entered the rounded-off numbers, and even this small discrepancy, of less than 0.1 percent, completely changed the end result.

Even though his model was vastly simplified, Dr. Lorenz realized that this meant perfect weather prediction was a fantasy.

A perfect forecast would require not only a perfect model, but also perfect knowledge of wind, temperature, humidity and other conditions everywhere around the world at one moment of time. Even a small discrepancy could lead to completely different weather.

It was Lorenz who coined the term "butterfly effect" to refer to this phenomenon of "sensitive dependency on initial conditions." With the advent of more powerful computers and their ability to perform intensive iterations and so reveal the complexity which could emerge from relatively simple parameters, the storm of profound insights into nature which arose from his elegant formulations has enriched our lives in ways even he could not have foreseen.

His was a life well and fully lived, and we owe him much.