According to a recent federal report, the US seafood industry has never been more sustainable, with the fewest overharvested fish stocks ever recorded. The report, ‘Status of the Stocks’ was published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it also shows the strength of an industry that’s worth $8 billion a year. 94% of […] The post The Number of Fish on US Overfishing List Reaches an All-Time Low Led by Mackerel and Snapper appeared first on Good News Network.

A team of Canadian and US researchers are using X-rays to revive the images that were captured in the 18th century on the earliest form of photography—Daguerreotypes. Their breakthrough demonstrations have taken artifacts tarnished beyond all recognition and turned out stunningly clear images of the individuals whose portraits were captured all those years ago. Tson-Kong […] The post Lost Faces Found: New Tech Reveals Hidden Images in Earliest Photographs appeared first on Good News Network.

Books Science Fiction Five SF Novels About Rediscovering Ancient Tech Forget planned obsolescence—the creators of these enduring technological marvels built them to last (for better or worse). By James Davis Nicoll | Published on May 9, 2024 Image by Vertex Designs [via Unsplash] Comment 1 Share New Share Image by Vertex Designs [via Unsplash] Good news from deep space: NASA has reestablished contact with the ailing Voyager 1 spacecraft, even though the Voyager is 24 billion kilometers and 22 light-hours away from its terrestrial programmers. The nearly half-century old space probe survives… at least for the moment. Young people may be astonished to discover that it was at one time possible to build devices that continued functioning for decades. In fact, cunning design, high quality materials, and luck can enable human creations to survive not just decades but long after their creators have died. In some cases, such as Roman roads1, they have outlived the civilizations that created them. Unsurprisingly, SF authors are quite fond of the idea of durable artifacts. No need to explain how their setting’s civilizations created such; those precursors are now conveniently vanished. As long as one understands what something does, it’s not necessary to understand how it works if one just wants to use it2. Consider these five vintage works of SF that involve technological relics. Galactic Derelict by Andre Norton (1959) Fifteen thousand years ago many alien starships visited Earth. Many never left. The passage of millennia has reduced the starships to enigmatic fragments. However, both Americans and their Soviet rivals have developed time machines that can retrieve alien artifacts from the distant past. A series of mishaps traps four Americans (Travis, Ross, Ashe, and Renfry) on what turns out to be a fully functional derelict. Slave to its programming, the craft bears the four men along an ancient trade route. The reluctant passengers find that the aliens who built the ship are long gone, but many of the dead aliens’ artifacts remain perfectly functional. Often SF authors imagine that working alien relics will turn out to be doomsday devices. Norton’s imagination is kinder: the quartet survive because the alien refueling infrastructure is surprisingly durable. Hiero’s Journey by Sterling E. Lanier (1973) Long after atomic doom scoured western civilization from the face of the planet, the Metz Republic and the Otwah League prevail under the benevolent guidance of the Church Universal. The Church is reaching the limits of its clerk-and-filing-cabinet-based information technology. Pre-apocalyptic technology might solve their problems. Accompanied by an intelligent bear and a telepathic war-moose, Secondary Priest-Exorcist, Primary Rover, and Senior Killman Hiero Desteen is dispatched to the radioactive wastelands once known as the United States of America. Desteen’s goal? A legendary artifact known as a “computer.” Lanier demonstrates considerable faith in the durability of modern-day technology. The travelers need only hit an on-switch for pre-war machines to activate. Impressive, considering that the novel is set in the year 7476 AD. Strata by Terry Pratchett (1981) Enigmatic Jago Jalo returns from a thousand-year relativistic journey bearing a potentially valuable secret. Jago recruits planetary engineer Kin Arad to further explore Jago’s discovery, with an eye to exploitation. The discovery? A clearly artificial flat Earth. Ancient alien relics are not novel. Kin’s profession depends in part on reverse engineering the technology left behind by the alien “Spindle Kings.” Nevertheless, this discworld is an audacious achievement… one whose service life will soon end, and whose inhabitants have need of a person like Kin. A note to Pratchett fans who have not read Strata: while this novel is by Pratchett and does feature a discworld, this Pratchett discworld is not the Discworld for which Pratchett is famous. Skeen’s Leap by Jo Clayton (1986) Skeen makes her living facilitating the repurposing of durable relics left by vanished civilizations. Authorities call this “grave robbing,” and would happily imprison Skeen if they could only get their hands on her. Heretofore, Skeen has been able to flee arrest. Now she is marooned on the backwater planet Kildun Aalda. Capture seems only a matter of time. Fortuitously, the alien Ykx left in their wake some interdimensional gates. Skeen need only step through one to escape Kildun Aalda’s police. There is a catch. This gate turns out to be one way and while the gates are durable, the same cannot be said of the advanced technology previous gate users carried with them. Skeen escaped a backwater world to arrive on a barbarian planet devoid of even the most primitive starship. Skeen’s new home does, however, enjoy a proliferation of cutthroat politics. I suspect any setting where functioning alien relics are a thing has developed protocols for testing mysterious gates. Given her profession, Skeen is no doubt familiar with such protocols. I’m guessing she eschewed proper procedure because she was more afraid of the cops than of whatever was on the other side of the gate. The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook (1988) Having stumbled across Canon Space, humans wasted no time using its superluminal networks to conquer every alien civilization within reach. In the millennia since the conquest, vast Guardships have kept the human boot firmly on alien throats. However, humans are not immune to entropy. Despite their best efforts to enforce stasis, change is coming. Humans could not have established their empire had not an alien race first built what humans assumed was an interstellar portal network. Interestingly, although the alien creation can be used that way, that’s not what it was made for. Misusing it degrades the network…with unexpected consequences. There are so many works I could have mentioned—Pohl’s Gateway, George O. Smith’s “Lost Art,” Simak’s Way Station—but didn’t. No doubt I missed some of your favourite works about tech relics. If so, please regale us with titles and authors in comments below.[end-mark] There is of course a considerable survivorship bias. We’re impressed by the craftmanship of a functioning 2000-year-old Roman road. We do not even think about all the shoddy Roman roads that vanished soon after they were built. ︎When it comes to stupendously durable cursed items, you don’t need to know how ancient Egyptian magic worked to know that waking up an angry, immortal, nigh-godlike monster bent on global destruction is probably a bad idea. ︎The post Five SF Novels About Rediscovering Ancient Tech appeared first on Reactor.

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Life has been around on Earth for at least 3.7 billion years, during which time it has evolved into "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful”, in the words of Charles Darwin. Someday, however, it’s possible that planet Earth will be reduced to just one animal. It isn’t cockroaches, nor scorpions, and it certainly isn’t Homo sapiens – the last animal standing is likely to be the humble tardigrade. Look around the universe and you’ll get the impression that it’s very difficult for life to emerge. Once established though, life is surprisingly hard to get rid of. We know of five major mass extinction events in Earth’s history that have wiped out at least 75 percent of species, but life has always managed to bounce back. The most severe episode struck around 250 million years ago – the Permian extinction event – and eradicated an estimated 90 percent of all species following a series of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions. After a few million years of recovery, life returned in abundance and reached a healthier equilibrium. Some argue we’re currently in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, primarily due to human meddling, like habitat destruction, pollution, and climate change. While this is undoubtedly a pressing issue that urgently needs addressing, it’s extremely unlikely to spell the death of all life on Earth. A more serious existential threat is nuclear weapons. Following the event of an atomic war, radioactive fallout would spread across much of the globe. Simultaneously, soot from the bombs will blow into Earth’s atmosphere and spark a “nuclear winter”, bringing prolonged periods of darkness and freezing temperatures. This would cause the foundation of ecosystems to collapse by halting photosynthesis, leading to the starvation of many animals.However, research suggests that life in parts of the planet could survive an all-out nuclear war for a while at least – even though humans may not. This might include a gaggle of hardy invertebrates, such as cockroaches and scorpions, which can endure surprising doses of radiation, as well as many forms of microscopic life.On a more astronomical scale, there is the ferocious threat of astrophysical events, such as gamma-ray bursts, large asteroid impacts, and a supernova explosion. Extreme astrophysical events like this have the potential to effectively sterilize the globe of all life. A supernova, the explosive death throes of an aged star, would shower Earth with intense amounts of cosmic radiation, damaging the ozone layer that protects us from harmful ultraviolet light in the Sun's rays.Fortunately, the chances of these forces striking within the lifetime of our Solar System is low. If a star goes supernova 40 to 50 light-years away, we should be safe. However, there are uncertainties around this and many forms of life on Earth could potentially be annihilated by a supernova under a worst-case scenario.Tardigrades are sometimes called water bears. Can you see why?Image credit: Oleh Liubimtsev/Shutterstock.comOne species might be okay, though. In 2017, scientists at the University of Oxford and Harvard University studied the resilience of life to astrophysical events, concluding that the only animal likely to survive the risk of extinction from all astrophysical catastrophes is the tardigrade.“To our surprise we found that although nearby supernovae or large asteroid impacts would be catastrophic for people, tardigrades could be unaffected. Therefore it seems that life, once it gets going, is hard to wipe out entirely. Huge numbers of species, or even entire genera may become extinct, but life as a whole will go on,” Dr David Sloan, co-author of the 2017 study and then a post-doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Physics at Oxford University, said in a statement. Tardigrades are an eight-legged, near-microscopic animal that’s notorious for being extremely hard to kill. On the taxonomic tree, they are part of the animal kingdom; they are not bacteria, amoebas, archaea, or fungi. To endure intense environments, the tiny creatures will enter a state of deep hibernation called cryptobiosis, expelling more than 95 percent of the water from their bodies and curling into a dehydrated nugget. They can survive low temperatures of -272.95°C (-460°F) and high temperatures of 150°C (302°F), as well as extreme pressure and strong radiation. They can even live in the vacuum of space with little bother. As such, it’s likely they could be able to weather the storm of a supernova. Ultimately, life on Earth does have a hard expiration date: the death of the Sun. The Sun will begin to die in about 5 billion years when it runs out of hydrogen. As it edges towards its next phase as a red giant star the Sun will expand, becoming so large that it will consume its two closest planets, Mercury and Venus. Eventually, the Earth is likely to be engulfed too.During this deathly journey, Earth will heat up and become doused in intense radiation. The oceans will literally evaporate and the atmosphere will be stripped away, leaving behind a barren, scorched landscape. Even tardigrades won’t survive this scenario. Perhaps some extremophile bacteria used to intense heat would cling on for a while, but this will be game over for life – at least as we know it.