11.10.2009
Google unveils protocol for an interplanetary internet
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-11/06/google-unveils-protocol-for-an-interplanetary-internet.aspx
The Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol emerged from work first started in 1998 in partnership with Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The initial goal was to modify the ubiquitous Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to facilitate robust communications between celestial bodies and satellites.
Cerf and his team were eventually forced to acknowledge (ACK?) that TCP simply couldn't cut the mustard, with massive delay and data loss caused by celestial motion rendering TCP useless.
"There was a little problem called the speed of light," joked a typically playful Cerf, as he outlined the idea to the OpenMobileSummit conference in San Francisco. "When Earth and Mars are closest, we're 35 million miles apart, and it's a three and a half minute trip one way, seven minutes for a round trip. Then when we're farthest apart, we're 235 million miles – 20 minutes one way, 40 minutes round trip."
Those pesky planets. But surely Google, having dominated Earth, could do something about that? "The planets rotate, and we haven't figured out how to stop that," Cerf admitted.
The core issue is that TCP assumes a continuous (and fairly reliable) connection. DTN makes no such assumptions, requiring each node to buffer all of its packets until a stable connection can be established. Whereas TCP will repeatedly attempt to send packets until they are successfully acknowledged, DTN will automatically find a destination node with a reliable connection, and then send its payload just once. Given the latency of space communications and the minimal power restrictions placed upon satellites, DTNs approach seems prudent.
However most people don't have a need for regular satellite communication (well, our columnist Warren Ellis has that death ray of his), but Cerf sees his robust protocol having more down-to-Earth applications. Mobile networks, for example, must regularly cope with long periods of delay or loss – a train tunnel rudely interrupting a YouTube stream, for example. Perhaps looking to gain an edge on its competitors, Google has already integrated DTN into Android's networking stack.
Using Android from an asteroid? It's only a matter of time.
[Source: www.wired.co.uk]Cerf and his team were eventually forced to acknowledge (ACK?) that TCP simply couldn't cut the mustard, with massive delay and data loss caused by celestial motion rendering TCP useless.
"There was a little problem called the speed of light," joked a typically playful Cerf, as he outlined the idea to the OpenMobileSummit conference in San Francisco. "When Earth and Mars are closest, we're 35 million miles apart, and it's a three and a half minute trip one way, seven minutes for a round trip. Then when we're farthest apart, we're 235 million miles – 20 minutes one way, 40 minutes round trip."
Those pesky planets. But surely Google, having dominated Earth, could do something about that? "The planets rotate, and we haven't figured out how to stop that," Cerf admitted.
The core issue is that TCP assumes a continuous (and fairly reliable) connection. DTN makes no such assumptions, requiring each node to buffer all of its packets until a stable connection can be established. Whereas TCP will repeatedly attempt to send packets until they are successfully acknowledged, DTN will automatically find a destination node with a reliable connection, and then send its payload just once. Given the latency of space communications and the minimal power restrictions placed upon satellites, DTNs approach seems prudent.
However most people don't have a need for regular satellite communication (well, our columnist Warren Ellis has that death ray of his), but Cerf sees his robust protocol having more down-to-Earth applications. Mobile networks, for example, must regularly cope with long periods of delay or loss – a train tunnel rudely interrupting a YouTube stream, for example. Perhaps looking to gain an edge on its competitors, Google has already integrated DTN into Android's networking stack.
Using Android from an asteroid? It's only a matter of time.
When E.T. phones the pope
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/06/AR2009110601899.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
A little more than a half-mile from the Vatican, in a square called Campo de' Fiori, stands a large statue of a brooding monk. Few of the shoppers and tourists wandering through the fruit-and-vegetable market below may know his story; he is Giordano Bruno, a Renaissance philosopher, writer and free-thinker who was burned at the stake by the Inquisition in 1600. Among his many heresies was his belief in a "plurality of worlds" -- in extraterrestrial life, in aliens.
Though it's a bit late for Bruno, he might take satisfaction in knowing that this week the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first major conference on astrobiology, the new science that seeks to find life elsewhere in the cosmos and to understand how it began on Earth. Convened on private Vatican grounds in the elegant Casina Pio IV, formerly the pope's villa, the unlikely gathering of prominent scientists and religious leaders shows that some of the most tradition-bound faiths are seriously contemplating the possibility that life exists in myriad forms beyond this planet. Astrobiology has arrived, and religious and social institutions -- even the Vatican -- are taking note.
Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer, director of the centuries-old Vatican Observatory and a driving force behind the conference, suggested in an interview last year that the possibility of "brother extraterrestrials" poses no problem for Catholic theology. "As a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God," Funes explained. "This does not conflict with our faith because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God."
Yet, as Bruno might attest, the notion of life beyond Earth does not easily coexist with the "truths" that many people hold dear. Just as the Copernican revolution forced us to understand that Earth is not the center of the universe, the logic of astrobiologists points in a similarly unsettling direction: to the likelihood that we are not alone, and perhaps that we are not even the most advanced creatures in the universe. This may not "conflict with our faith," but it may conflict with the stories we tell about who and what we are.
Read more...Though it's a bit late for Bruno, he might take satisfaction in knowing that this week the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first major conference on astrobiology, the new science that seeks to find life elsewhere in the cosmos and to understand how it began on Earth. Convened on private Vatican grounds in the elegant Casina Pio IV, formerly the pope's villa, the unlikely gathering of prominent scientists and religious leaders shows that some of the most tradition-bound faiths are seriously contemplating the possibility that life exists in myriad forms beyond this planet. Astrobiology has arrived, and religious and social institutions -- even the Vatican -- are taking note.
Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer, director of the centuries-old Vatican Observatory and a driving force behind the conference, suggested in an interview last year that the possibility of "brother extraterrestrials" poses no problem for Catholic theology. "As a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God," Funes explained. "This does not conflict with our faith because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God."
Yet, as Bruno might attest, the notion of life beyond Earth does not easily coexist with the "truths" that many people hold dear. Just as the Copernican revolution forced us to understand that Earth is not the center of the universe, the logic of astrobiologists points in a similarly unsettling direction: to the likelihood that we are not alone, and perhaps that we are not even the most advanced creatures in the universe. This may not "conflict with our faith," but it may conflict with the stories we tell about who and what we are.
"The real threat would come from the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, because if there are beings elsewhere in the universe, then Christians, they're in this horrible bind. They believe that God became incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ in order to save humankind, not dolphins or chimpanzees or little green men on other planets."
Erks
http://erks.org/
En Capilla del Monte (Argentina), debajo del cerro Uritorco, según la ciencia hermética -cuando no la leyenda de los comechingones, existe la ciudad intraterrena de Erks, el lugar donde se dará la regeneración de la especie humana. En su interior se encuentra el Templo de la Esfera y los Tres Espejos mediante los cuales se produce un intercambio cósmico de datos con todas las galaxias y desde donde se puede seguir al detalle la vida de cada ser humano que habita este planeta, sobre todo la de aquellos que están en vías de desarrollar un intelecto armonizado con las leyes cósmica.
Es la Ciudad de la Llama Azul y se la llama la ciudad femenina, ya que está constituida principalmente por sacerdotisas. Existen Tres Espejos que son purificadores de energía que van al Cosmos.
Según dice la leyenda metafísica, en el s XII, el Caballero Parsifal llevó el Santo Grial y la Cruz de los Templarios, para dejarlos juntos al Bastón de Mando en las cercanías del Sagrado Cerro Uritorco con el fin de regenerar y trasmutar al hombre hacia el hombre de intelecto superior, para así completar una obra espiritual y metafísica de hermandad entre los hombres.
Se habla de la ciudad de Erks como una ciudad metafísica, pero ¿y los ruidos bajo la tierra del Uritorco? Miles de personas en la zona han escuchado de diferentes maneras, a lo largo de todos estos años, ruidos y movimientos de tierra. ¿Qué explicación tienen esas estruendosas y fuertes explosiones de sonido grave? ¿De dónde vienen los ruidos que se asemejan a martillos neumáticos, como si hubiese una maquinaria fabril funcionando debajo? ¿Cómo entender esos ruidos de engranajes, como si hubieran unas inmensas compuertas que se abren y se cierran? Creo que aún nos queda mucho por saber y conocer de este lugar mágico e inquietante. Lugar que dará que hablar seguramente mas de una vez en momentos venideros.
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Es la Ciudad de la Llama Azul y se la llama la ciudad femenina, ya que está constituida principalmente por sacerdotisas. Existen Tres Espejos que son purificadores de energía que van al Cosmos.
Según dice la leyenda metafísica, en el s XII, el Caballero Parsifal llevó el Santo Grial y la Cruz de los Templarios, para dejarlos juntos al Bastón de Mando en las cercanías del Sagrado Cerro Uritorco con el fin de regenerar y trasmutar al hombre hacia el hombre de intelecto superior, para así completar una obra espiritual y metafísica de hermandad entre los hombres.
Se habla de la ciudad de Erks como una ciudad metafísica, pero ¿y los ruidos bajo la tierra del Uritorco? Miles de personas en la zona han escuchado de diferentes maneras, a lo largo de todos estos años, ruidos y movimientos de tierra. ¿Qué explicación tienen esas estruendosas y fuertes explosiones de sonido grave? ¿De dónde vienen los ruidos que se asemejan a martillos neumáticos, como si hubiese una maquinaria fabril funcionando debajo? ¿Cómo entender esos ruidos de engranajes, como si hubieran unas inmensas compuertas que se abren y se cierran? Creo que aún nos queda mucho por saber y conocer de este lugar mágico e inquietante. Lugar que dará que hablar seguramente mas de una vez en momentos venideros.
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