“The eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding…. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.” John F. Kennedy, speech at Rice University, 1962

Image copyright HUMAN ORIGINS PROGRAM, SMITHSONIAN

Humans may have developed advanced social behaviours and trade 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.

This is according to a series of papers published today in Science. The results come from an archaeological site in Kenya’s rift valley. “Over one million years of time” is represented at the site, according to Rick Potts from the Smithsonian Institution, who was involved in the studies.

The energy market is undoubtedly in a state of flux. The current power play between the U.S., OPEC and Russia is symptomatic of the changing geopolitical and economic dynamics of the entire market, U.S. tight oil seems set to completely upset the apple cart, and rapid technological advances are putting hitherto unattainable reserves within our reach.

It is worth returning to that letter in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, criticising Booker’s global warming groupthink article:

SIR – I agree with Christopher Booker that people tend to adopt the views of their “group” without checking facts or using critical thinking.

Nevertheless, his article contains inaccuracies. A big one: that climate change theory was immediately hailed as a scientific consensus.

A group of U.S. scientists has had to be rescued by helicopter from Antarctica after being trapped by encroaching ice.

Good Morning America reports:

A group of American scientists was rescued from an island off Antarctica’s coast after ice prevented a U.S. Antarctic Program research vessel from reaching them.

What would happen if it were proven that “fossil fuels” weren’t the result of decaying plant and animal matter, were actually created within the Earth due to simple chemistry and you could not be scared into believing that we were “running out” of oil and natural gas?

Elon Musk’s audacious plans are usually met with acclaim, and sometimes even awe – but not this time. Fresh details of The Boring Company’s urban transport plans have been lambasted on social media.

The Tesla and SpaceX founder (pictured above) gushed about “1000s of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination & blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city, rather than a small number of big stations like a subway”.

A cycle has two extremes and two middles.  The motion of a pendulum has two high points and one low point, which it passes through twice.  The phases of the moon are a new moon, a full moon, and two quarter moons.

 Newton’s great feat, which maybe is not commonly acknowledged, is he explained how there were two diurnal ocean tidal cycles each day which were obviously influenced by the moon’s cycle as it revolved (orbited) about the earth once about every 25 hours as the earth rotated about its axis with a period of 24 hours.  Clearly these cycles have a period of time associated with them.

The alarms are sounding about lack of ice extent in the Bering Sea, studiously ignoring what else is happening in the Arctic.

For instance, the above image shows the last 10 days on the European side, with the Barents Sea on the right growing steadily to a new maximum. On the left, Gulf of St. Lawrence ice is retreating as usual while the Baffin Bay holds steady.

A huge solar storm is heading for Earth, and it’s likely to hit tomorrow. Nasa spotted the solar flare releasing a coronal mass ejection earlier this week. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a ‘G1’ storm watch. It coincides with the formation of ‘equinox cracks’ in the sun, which form around the equinoxes on March 20 and September 23 and weaken the magnetic field.

Learning can result in the increase of how much information our brains can hold, researchers have found.

Researchers at UT-Austin, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of Otago in New Zealand discovered that the capacity of a synapse, the junctions between brain cells, expand in response to learning.

“Our most recent finding found that the range of a synapse is not fixed,” said Kristen Harris, a UT neuroscience professor. “On the other hand, if you buy a flash drive, the factory determined how much info you could store; it’s at a fixed level. Our brains are not like that.”