Mars or Bust!

Yo, yo, yo people! We are going to Mars! Yes, we are leaving this tired old, used-up hulk of a planet to the trash heap. Soon enough global warming will bake this ball of space dust into a shriveled-up cinder incapable of supporting even a cockroach. Time to get out of town! 

Yes, NASA is working on plans to develop a one-way manned mission to the great beyond. OK, no jokes about who you might like to reserve a seat for, because this is some serious stuff. NASA and DARPA (the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) have embarked on a mission to build a Hundred Year Starship, a vessel intended to voyage to distant stars and drop off passengers, permanently, along the way. First stop? Maybe Mars.



"Reluctant Astronaut" Universal City Studios photo



Hard to say just how serious they are about the plan. So far the two mega agencies have coughed up $1.1 million in start-up fiunds, an amount dwarfed, no doubt, the by the Pentagon's budget for donuts. Still, those in the know say they might be blasting off the first ship in as soon as 20 years. Since we've let the home planet go to pieces, the plan is to get to Mars, carve out a foothold, then terraform the place and start all over again. (Note to self: This is why those fat-cat, greed-monger CEOs and banking execs need to make obscene amounts of cash and don't care about trashing the planet and its people in the process--They're saving up for tickets!) 



 Here are a couple quotes from a Popsci story about the effort. (Illo above is "Atomic Avenue #1" by Glen Orbik. Hat Tip: DRB)

“The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds,” Worden said, according to a Singularity University blog that covered the event.

Incidentally, thats exactly the proposal in a new paper in press in the Journal of Cosmology, a relatively new, peer-reviewed open access journal. Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies suggest sending astronauts to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers for a permanent Mars colony.

They would get periodic supply missions, but they would be expected to fend for themselves for water, shelter, nutrients and mineral/chemical processing. They would be expected to develop some kind of homegrown Martian industry, which could ultimately serve as a hub for an expanded colonization program. Plus, leaving some people on another planet would probably ensure that we’d want to go back, to visit them and see what they created.

Thinking about enlisting? Sign up for a tour to see future real estate hotspots such as the Tharsis Volcanic Region or the Utopian Plains. If you like what you see, become a Martian citizen

On Mars, new settlers can revive the great traditions of our earthly past. They can slaughter the hapless natives (as in the Donald Newton illustration above), raze the landscape, build soaring cities (like the one envisioned by Frank Paul), and get busy extracting and plunder anything and everything of possible value--like maybe whatever shimmering blue liquid lies lakelike in the crater below (in a scene actually photographed by NASA on the red planet). Then after another couple years, they'll have to head off for the next stop.

Sorry to rain on this particular parade, er, launch, but a change of address isn't going to solve our problems. No, relocating humanity, even seeding it throughout the universe, is not the answer. We don't need to change our location, we need to change our values. We have to try to live in harmony with--rather than in domination of--the place we call home. Our species managed just that for tens of thousands of years, until fairly recently. How hard can it be? 

The New Amazonians

I don't intend to chronicle the discovery of every new species, but they are always worth noting. In an era with more than 25,000 annual extinctions, it seems as if we're hurtling toward another mass die-off, an evolutionary gateway that has swung shut--killing off 50-90% of the species calling earth home-at least five times in our planet's past. The last mass extinction, the Triassic-Jurassic die-off 65 million years ago, killed off the dinosaurs and made possible the rise of mammals. Some scientists believe global warming, with an assist from other human-driven catastrophes--pollution, land clearing and overfishing--could lead to another mass extinction as early as 2100.

So when a new species is discovered, it's as if there is a new star in the sky, a new reason for hope. It suggests we are not killing things off faster than we can discover them. I hope. Anyways, the latest discoveries come from the imperiled Amazon basin, the vast, green lungs of our planet, which are being ravaged by settlers, loggers and miners for short term gain. World Wildlife Fund researchers and others have discovered 1200 new species--a rate of one every three days during the last decade, a feat detailed in Amazon Alive..

Among them are the electric-looking fish at top, Apistogramma baenschi (photo by Kris Weinhold), one of 257 species discoved in the mother of rivers and its tributaries. How about the stylish spider with the pink slippers, Avicularia braunshauseni, a tarantula with a sharpshooting talent for blasting pesky intruders with perfectly aimed jet of excrement--accurate to 3 feet (photo by Karl Csaba). Then there's the Rio Acari marmoset (lensed by Georges Neron) and the last of this little sampler, a boon for all you flower lovers, is this handsome bromeliaceous Bromelia araujoi photographed by E. Esteves Pereira. Long may they shine!

New Guinea's Newbies

It's always good news to hear about the discovery of new species, rather than the disappearance of those already known. Happening upon unknown life forms reveals magic and mystery in the world we inhabit, and offers proof positive that one need not journey to the bottom of a deep ocean trench or distant star system to encounter terra incognita.

New Guinea continues to provide new finds for the most special of treasure hunter-those seeking life hitherto unknown to science. The latest discoveries come from the Muller mountains of Papua New Guinea and the Nakanai mountains of nearby New Britain, off New Guinea's coast.Some 200 new species of plant and animal were observed by Conservation International researchers.Their finds included the freaky looking tube nose fruit bat (previously seen but still little known, though scientists have verified that he is not related to Yoda) and the spooky pink-eyed katydid (both photographed by Piotr Naskrecki). The cute tiny frog, a member of the genus Litoria, also hails from the Muller mountains and was lensed by Stephen Richards.

Discussing the new finds, Richards, the team's leader, told AP, "They tell us how little we still know about the world. There's a lot of concern, quite rightly, about biodiversity loss and climate change and the impacts on biodiversity and what biodiversity means to us. ... Then we do projects like this and we discover, 'Hey - we don't even know what biodiversity is out there.'"

Instead of Chopping a Tree Down, Chop One Up

If only it was this easy...


Maya Lin - Unchopping a Tree from What is Missing? Foundation on Vimeo.

In the Galapagos: Change We Can Believe In

Just about everybody knows the strange Pacific Ocean islands of the Galapagos were the jumping off point for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.Those isolated bits of land seemingly adrift in the vastness of the Pacific offer a glimspe into the crucible of life and, literally, a textbook study of the concept of natural selection. The island birds, esp the finches (such as this cactus finch on Genovesa, aka Tower Island) and the mockingbirds, have evolved distinct species on different islands.

So, when we think of evolution, we tend to think of the animal kingdom, but the Galapagos also reveal a slower kind of evolution, the gradual transformation of barren volcanic rock to rich rainforest. Look how it all starts in these islands, which, like Hawaii, are the result of a hotspot, a leaky hole in the Earth's crust far below the surface of the sea. Lava oozes out of the hole and over the millennia forms massive mountains The tips gradually emerge from the sea to become islands, the Galapagos Islands.

Soon, the lava cools. Colonies of aptly named lava cactus appear. This rugged pioneer plant is one of the very first to grab a toehold on the forbidding, sun-baked lava flats. Gradually it spreads its roots into the lava, cracking it apart, and beginning the torturously long, slow process of turning stone into soil.

As eons pass, sea life washes up onto the lava shelfs to die and decompose, adding nutrients to the soil.

As the lava slowly breaks down to a sandy substance, the little, silvery whiskbrooms of tiquilia arrive.

Color arrives as soil is enriched by the decay of pioneer plants, animal matter and the like. The era of grasses dawns, along with thorny shrublets and mats of sesuvium, a succulent that turns fiery colors in the dry season. Land iguanas love to prowl through this stuff.

These amazing creatures look utterly prehistoric and exhibit amazing diversity, lumbering past in a paintbox set of hues comprised of yellows, reds, and oranges.

Trees rise. The Galapagos are parched during the dry season, when trees such as palo santo, the holy stick, drop their leaves. It leafs out and blooms around Christmas, with the return of the rains, Palo santo is related to frankincense, and its sap contains an aromatic resin burned in mainland Ecuador's churches as incense.

Along with the trees, a variety of cacti begin to reach for the sky.

Among them are various prickly pears, which here rise to exceptional heights. Their towering stature is due to another freakish characteristic of life forms that have evolved in island isolation over many thousands of years, gigantism. Think of Komodo dragons, the famed Galapagos tortoise (similarly sized tortoises can also be found in the Aldabra islands, an isolated archipelago in the Indian Ocean), or, heck, even King Kong. In the Galapagos there's a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg question that goes with gigantism--did the prickly pear get big to keep its fruits from being consumed by giant tortoises, or did tortoises grow big to reach more prickly pear fruit? Maybe it's an exotic example of symbiotic co-evolution.

Life begets life. At some point, the diversity of plant and animal species increases and, as if through some synergistic magic, increases yet again. The older islands are actually quite green and diverse, while newer bits of land are still baked lava crust supporting a paucity of species. For most of the birds for which the Galapagos are so famed, and for many of the other critters, the islands aren't much more than a place to nest and take a rest--all their food comes from the surrounding seas. At any rate some day, as here in the highlands of Santa Cruz, the islands support a rich, almost rainforest abundance of life. Thus, a new Eden is born.

Soaking It Up

Our trip to Ecuador included a visit to Termas de Papallacta, a hot springs high in the Andes. We never did get a glimpse of glacier draped Antisana, a huge mountain that towers over all, but during a couple days in a cabana , we spent plenty of time soaking. The place has more than 20 pools--all different temperatures--and many are artfully configured with stone edgings and mosaics. The Artiste once spent all night soaking, gazing up at a spectacular skyscape. and Birdboy was in the water every chance he got.

As for me, I had to spend some time admiring the plant life, which was celebrated in surrounding gardens with swaths of echeverrias, calla lillies, fucshia, Brugmansia sanguinea, and so many others, most, sadly, unknown to me.


Decades ago, I passed through Papallacta while I was on a 6-month hitchhiking trip through Latin America. As it happens, I got there by bus, a battered, smoke-belching vehicle crawling up out of the sweltering Amazon basin from the jungle town of Misahualli. Of course the bus was full, and I was riding on the rooftop luggage rack (the better for awesome views of the Andes). When I got to Papallacta, dusty and dry (me, not the village), those hotsprings--then totally undeveloped--were mighty inviting. So, it was nice to discover, even having been gentrified (or what passes for same in a remote hamlet), they are still an enticing spot for serious R&R.

Dude, Where's My Tornado?

Wish we got some of this rain. Could do without the wind though.

Back From the Equator

We've just returned from a few weeks south of, or more precisly, along, the Equator. We were in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, and it was a trip full of energizing ideas, incredible sights and a feeling of what the the earth might have been like had humans never trod upon it. The Galapagos are an amazing destination about which I can offer only one word of suggestion: GO!



While our trip is likely to generate a number of future posts, I still need to intellectually digest All the stimuli it provided. In the meantime, please enjoy this gallery of faces-such as the blue-footed booby above-from the Galapagos Islands, latitude zero.


Giant tortoise from Santa Cruz. Each island has its own variant of the tortoise. Supposedly Steven Spielberg visited the Galapagos years ago, and the tortoises provided him the inspiration for creating the face of the most famous alien of all--E.T.


Land iguana


Albatross chick

Fanged Frogs and More

An international team of researchers descending a kilometer deep into the crater of Mount Bosavi, an extinct volcano in Papua New Guinea, founds all kinds hitherto unseen life: mammals, insects, birds, amphibians...fanged frogs, grunting fish and then some. It was like some biological jackpot. and it just goes to show how important it is to preserve bio-rich rainforests the world over. For more on the New Guinea crater, read this.

Follow The Burning Man

I've always wanted to attend Burning Man, the sci-fi/art/music/tribal event held each year around this time at Black Rock City in the Nevada desert. But I never have. This year though, I've happened onthe next best thing, the Burning Blog, which offers fine coverage of all the goings on. I guess it's just about the next best thing to being there. You might also check out Burning Man.

One Hail Of A Storm

Clatter Valley got hammered. Friday afternoon the sky got black as night, lightning flashed and driving rain and pounding hail, big as marbles, came crashing out of the sky. There was a tornado not far away. No electricity here for several days. What does all this mean for a garden that is comprised primarily of foliage, especially big bold foliage? Nothing good. Looks like Dick Cheney was hunting in the backyard. The leaves are blasted, the succulents are covered with divots--it's ugly. Clean-up, I'm afraid, will require little more than a machete and and a weed whacker. Much of what didn't get perforated got flattened, so either way its going to get cut down. Guess it will be interesting to see what bounces back, but at the moment it does not look promising.

Kew's Millennium Seed Bank Project

Ah, the splendor of a seed. This time of year, I'm thinking a lot about seeds, being as I'm planting them by the hundreds, or even thousands. I often regard them as little spaceships, launched out like interstellar explorers into the vastness of our atmosphere to find a new home, to settle and take root. And so the species survives for yet another generation.

That idea, writ large, is basically the notion behind seed banks, which intercept those little spaceships before their flight has begun and then preserve them for some future day, when the species may be endangered and will need all the reinforcements it can get.

Climate change, habitat destruction, exploding human populace-there are lots of reason to take dramatic steps--now--to preserve species that may be in danger of disappearing from our planet, and worse, from the treasury of its varied DNA. Seeds banks are perhaps the best way to do that for plants, since each little seed is a microcosm of the plant itself, a blueprint for life encapuslated in something that can be as large as a coconut or as small as a dust mote.

Kew Gardens has embarked on a mission to save seed of as many plant species as possible,

hastened by the recognition that perhaps as many as 100,000--100,000!!!--species are threatened. They estimate that EVERY DAY four new species are threatened. Since virtually all life on earth is dependent on plants, those statistics do not sound promising. So far, the seed-wranglers have rounded up about 30,000 species, so they have lots more to go. All I can say to the folks at Kew is "Godspeed!"

To learn more about Kew's efforts, visit their fine website. The Electron micrographs from this post were taken by Rob Kesseler and Madeline Harley--see more here--and their book "The Hidden Sexuality of Flowers."

For a more cogent explanation of Kew's efforts and some sense of why it matters, let the folks at Kew tell you what they're up to, they can do it far better than I.

Shout out: The Daily Dish