Greg Matloff – författare
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5 produkter
5 produkter
329 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Humans regularly visit the upper troposphere and ocean floor and technology has enabled a few to even reside above the atmosphere in space stations.For the next few millennia at least (barring breakthroughs), the human frontier will include the solar system and the nearest stars.
273 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
In terms of the scale of the galaxy, both in space and time, we humans are new comers. Though we are newly on the scene, we are already thinking about how to create large structures in space.Recently, analysis of data from one of the stars in the Kepler data set has led to speculation regarding huge artificial structures (called Stapledon/Dyson Spheres) constructed by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. The NASA Kepler space observatory has been observing light curves of about 100,000 stars in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyre.One star, popularly dubbed "Tabby's Star" after the first name of the astronomer leading one of the data reduction teams, shows intriguing periodic dips in its luminosity.Stellar Engineering starts by considering terrestrial organisms and early humans, who have constructed, on their scale, megastructures, and continues with a history of the development of the stellar engineering concept. Kepler data on Tabby's Star is reviewed as is observational data on other possible Stapledon/Dyson Sphere candidates.The possible applications of such enormous constructs are discussed, as well as the intriguing speculation that we might live in a Stapledon/Dyson swarm of alien space habitats within our Solar System's Kuiper Belt.
358 kr
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Space-based terrestrial power generation systems will work synergistically with Earth-based conservation. This book needs to be read urgently and widely, if we are to save ourselves from environmental disaster, reduce the risk of catastrophic cosmic impacts, and build a prosperous and sustainable future for all the creatures of Earth.
231 kr
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Human civilization has evolved to the point at which we can consider tapping space resources and expanding beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The Introduction surveys possible motivations for large-scale human emigration to space. Since our early ancestors began to move out of Africa, humans have constantly expanded their range. Today, the pattern of human settlement extends from pole to pole. Humans regularly visit the upper troposphere and ocean floor and technology has enabled a few to even reside above the atmosphere in space stations.For the next few millennia at least (barring breakthroughs), the human frontier will include the solar system and the nearest stars. Will it better to settle the Moon, Mars, or a nearby asteroid and what environments can we expect to find in the vicinity of nearby stars are questions that need to be answered if mankind is to migrate into space.
273 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
The only thing we can be absolutely sure of is our own consciousness. But what is consciousness? Is it a property that is unique to humans or do we share it with other lifeforms?Or is the philosophical doctrine of panpsychism correct—are stars and the entire universe conscious in some sense?Early chapters in this book examine the prehistory, mythology, and history of this topic. Arguments are presented from the viewpoints of shamans, philosophers, poets, quantum physicists, and novelists.A simple “toy” model of panpsychism is then presented, in which a universal field of proto-consciousness interacts with molecular bonds via the vacuum fluctuation pressure of the Casimir Effect. It is shown how this model is in congruence with an anomaly in stellar motions called “Parenago’s Discontinuity.” Cool, redder less massive stars such as the Sun apparently circle the center of the galaxy faster than their hotter, bluer, more massive sisters. This discontinuity occurs at the point in the stellar distribution where molecules begin to appear in stellar spectra. As described in the first edition of this book, observations of main sequence stars out to ~260 light years and giant stars out to >1,000 light years using the ESA Hipparcos space observatory support the reality and non-locality of Parenago’s discontinuity. Local, more conventional explanations for this phenomenon are not supported by observations of other galaxies and the spiral arms of the Milky Way.Since 2014, the new ESA Gaia space observatory has been obtaining kinematics and position data for ~1 billion stars in our galaxy. The first Gaia data release in 2016 has been used in 2018 by a Russian team to demonstrate Parenago’s Discontinuity for a large stellar sample out to ~500 light years from the Sun. These observations support the hypothesis that anomalistic stellar motion is due to stellar volition, as described by philosopher/author Olaf Stapledon in his classic novel Star Maker, as previously discussed by the author in the peer-reviewed Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS).In light of the new Gaia observations and work by other researchers, it is not impossible that panpsychism is emerging from the realm of philosophy as a new subdivision of observational astronomy. Simple models of universal proto-consciousness may be subject to inductive tests using current and future space observatories.