When does a disaster go from ‘natural’ to ‘the mother of all’ disasters’? When it’s the next eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. That’s according to a leading volcano expert from Poland who wants the United States to start thinking ‘when’ not ‘if’ and developing an evacuation plan for an eruption that he predicts could kill five billion people.

“The only thing you can do is evacuate people to another continent.”

In a recent interview with Poland’s WP Media, Dr. Jerzy Żaba,professor of geological sciences and head of the Department of General Geology at the University of Silesia in Katowice, explains why a Yellowstone “Superwulk” eruption would be far more destructive and deadly to life on Earth than most other experts are willing to consider. He starts by comparing it to a recent supervolcano event — the Toba supereruption about 75,000 years ago in Sumatra, Indonesia, which was one of the largest known eruptions.

“As a result of the Toby eruption in Sumatra, according to various estimates, 70 to 90 percent died. the then human population on our planet. More optimistic researchers believe that the outbreak was survived by tens of thousands of people, moderately optimistic that they survived 15,000, and the least – from three to five thousand. The population of a small village survived all over the world!” (Google translation)

Up to 90 percent of the Earth’s albeit small population at that time may have died. If you’re into odds, Żaba points out that there have been 42 similar supervolcano eruptions — on average once in less than a million years. So, as far as Yellowstone is concerned, we’re good for at least a few hundred-thousand years, right?

“Yellowstone is a powerful superwulkan whose explosions took place, to our knowledge, three times. The first took place over two million years ago, the second million 300,000. years ago, and the third, about which we know the most, took place 640 thousand. years ago.”

Żaba says volcanoes are erupting in different locations than in the past (Poland has one that was active 800,000 years ago) and geologists have learned that nearby volcanoes are often linked and can cascade into multiple eruption events. However, none have the destructive potential – both on the ground and in the air – of Yellowstone.

“It would destroy most of the United States. Discarded materials would cover everything with a meter layer within a radius of 500 km. And due to the emission of a huge amount of dust, gases or sulfur oxide to the atmosphere, there would be a temporary cooling of the climate. Sulfur oxide would create a thin veil of sulfuric acid around the planet reflecting sunlight. He would persist for many years. It is estimated that due to climate change about five billion people would starve to death.”

Żaba doesn’t think programs like NASA’s plan to drill a hole and cool Yellowstone’s magma will work due to the sheer size and volume of the magma tank. Besides, it’s not the lava that will kill us – it’s the dust and debris that will be thrown into the atmosphere. Żaba says the only way to escape falling chunks of rock and debris is to evacuate, but the space for holding the millions of people who need to move in a short period of time will require another continent and a monumental effort. And, once they get to their new home, they’ll have to deal with the death of all flora and fauna that will result in Żaba’s prediction that five billion people would starve to death.

Is there any good news, Dr. Żaba?

“There are forces over which people have no influence and have to observe with incredible humility.”

Humility? We’re doomed!

“I experienced a series of ‘eureka’ moments whilst deciphering the code, followed by a sense of disbelief and excitement when I realised the magnitude of the achievement, both in terms of its linguistic importance and the revelations about the origin and content of the manuscript.”

That was Dr. Gerard Cheshire announcing this week that it took him just two weeks to crack the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript – a Medieval illustrated codex written in an indecipherable language that has baffled cryptographers (the legendary Alan Turing tried unsuccessfully to decode it) since its discovery, including Wilfrid Voynich, who obtained the codex in 1912 and popularized it enough to have it tagged with his name. in “The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained,” Cheshire claims it is written in proto-Romance, an extinct ancestor of the Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, etc.) and he was able to translate enough of the document to determine that it was “compiled by Dominican nuns as a source of reference for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon.”

“Sorry, folks, “proto-Romance language” is not a thing. This is just more aspirational, circular, self-fulfilling nonsense.”

“Ooooh, tough crowd” as comedians like to say when the audience boos rather than laughs. In Cheshire’s case, that crowd includes Lisa Fagin Davis, executive director of the Medieval Academy of America (an organization promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies), who immediatelytweeted her analysis of the announcement. Davis comes by her expertship legitimately – she received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University where the Voynich manuscript is held, and has handily debunked previous announcements of Voynich code-breaking.

“As with most would-be Voynich interpreters, the logic of this proposal is circular and aspirational: he starts with a theory about what a particular series of glyphs might mean, usually because of the word’s proximity to an image that he believes he can interpret. He then investigates any number of medieval Romance-language dictionaries until he finds a word that seems to suit his theory. Then he argues that because he has found a Romance-language word that fits his hypothesis, his hypothesis must be right. His “translations” from what is essentially gibberish, an amalgam of multiple languages, are themselves aspirational rather than being actual translations.”

Davis explains her doubts to Ars Technica and pointed out that the idea of a proto-Romance language “is completely unsubstantiated,” as are Cheshire links between certain glyphs and certain Latin letters.

“One of the reasons the Voynich manuscript is so appealing is because of languages like hieroglyphics and linear B, which were deciphered. But they didn’t come out of nowhere, they were decades in the making and drew on lots of different scholarly expertise. You can’t just have one person saying: ‘I’ve cracked it.’ You have got to have the field, on the whole, agreeing.”

Dr. Kate Wiles, a medievalist and linguist and senior editor at History Today, told The Guardian that such a discovery, if it were true, would need verification by a number of experts before being accepted.

“Regarding the decipherment of the individual symbols, a number of people have come up with a mapping to Latin letters, but those mappings rarely agree with each other, or with this proposal.”

Greg Kondrak, a computer science professor at the University of Alberta who as also tried to crack the Voynich code, also points out that the Romance origins of some of the words in the manuscript has been well known for some time.

Finally, J.K. Petersen, keeper of The Voynich Portal, summarizes his problems with the alleged code-cracking:

But I have trouble accepting the translation in its current form because:

there are a lot of nonsensical word combinations,there’s almost no grammar,
the letter distribution is quite different from Romance languages (it would take a whole blog to discuss this aspect of the text, but take 4 as an example, which almost exclusively is at the beginnings of tokens—Cheshire relates it to “d”, and “9” which is usually at the end and sometimes at the beginning, but almost never in the middle, which he designates as “a”),
the words still match the drawings if the drawings are interpreted differently (which means the relationship isn’t proven yet),
some of the transliterated “words” don’t show any relationship to Romance word-structures (and the author neglected to explain how specific non-Romance words were derived), and the same words (e.g., “na”) are sometimes interpreted differently.

A few things are certain at this point: there are a LOT of people interested in breaking the Voynich code, a large number working to verify the code-breakers and the attempts and debunkings are destined to continue.

It beats arguing about politics, doesn’t it?

Get ready to rumble, conspiracy theorists … this story has something for everyone to worry about, no matter which side of Reddit you reside on. Scientists at Cambridge University are studying various forms of geoengineering and weather control for ways to stop climate change, and one involves placing highly-reflective clouds over the North and South poles in an effort to force them to freeze over again. What could possibly go wrong?

“What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future of humanity for the next 10,000 years. There is no major centre in the world that would be focused on this one big issue.”

Sir David King, then UK’s long-serving and now retired chief science adviser to prime ministers Blair, Brown, Cameron and May, told the BBC this week that he wants the new Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge to be that center. It’s part of the Carbon Neutral Futures Initiative, whose mission, according to Dr. Emily Shuckburgh, is to “solve the climate problem.” Nothing like starting at the top, right?

Actually, for Sir King, it means starting at the bottom too. His most radical plan involves sending specially-modified unmanned ships with tall, hollow masts to the poles to suck in seawater and blast it into the atmosphere through extremely fine nozzles. Those nozzles will isolate the salt from the tiny water droplets, creating clouds of salt crystals that will supposedly reflect sunlight back into space, leaving the area underneath them to chill and eventually reform the ice that’s been melting for years —  calving monstrous icebergs, sending cracks through the Antarctic surface ice, melting glaciers and keeping the Arctic Ocean from freezing in the winter. Sounds like a good idea … as long as those clouds stay over the poles.

Sir King wants to sprinkle salt in other places as well. Another proposal involves fertilizing the ocean with more salt – iron or ferrous salts like ferrous fumarate, ferrous gluconate, ferrous succinate, and ferrous sulfate – to promote the growth of plankton, which will then absorb more CO2 – the main cause of climate change (unless you don’t believe it exists). Sounds like a good idea … as long as the plankton doesn’t get out of control and take over the oceans, or create monster whales and other sea creature that feed on it.

King is not ruling out more conventional solutions. He supports carbon capture systems to collect and store greenhouse gases, developing viable nuclear fusion technology and improving renewable energy sources. But he obviously wants to think outside the box and ignore the consequences. Dr. Shuckburgh is open to considering everything Sir King proposes – no matter how wild or unconventional the ideas might be.

“In assessing such ideas we need to explore all aspects, including the technological advances required, the potential unintended consequences and side effects, the costs, the rules and regulations that would be needed, as well as the public acceptability.”

“Unintended consequences.” Isn’t that what got us climate change in the first place?

What could possibly go wrong … again?

The new nature of warfare in many parts of the world has made it increasingly difficult to identify who is a target and who is an innocent civilian. Terrorist groups, in particular, often have no reservations about placing their leadership among civilian populations or even schoolchildren in order to shield them from attacks. To combat this, the U.S. and its allies have been testing new methods of “reducing collateral damage,” or “blowing up innocent people” to use a non-sterilized term.

An MQ-1 Predator drone outfitted with a Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire Missile

While this has most often meant reducing the explosive payloads of traditional munitions, it turns out that the CIA has been using a terrifying and highly advanced new weapon which could radically change the nature of warfare as we know it. According to a Wall Street Journal report published today, it turns out the CIA has been using a high-precision kinetic warhead known as the RX9 packed with “a halo of six long blades that are stowed inside and then deploy through the skin of the missile seconds before impact, shredding anything in its tracks.” Yikes. Military news site Task and Purpose writes that “this is basically like dropping a rocket-assisted meteor full of swords on someone.”

Details about the RX9 are still scarce, and The Wall Street Journal has not disclosed its source for the existence of the RX9 but writes that it can confirm the CIA and Department of Defense are indeed using the weapon.

A typical Hellfire missile, believed to be the platform for this kinetic blade warhead.

There is some suspected evidence of its use, too. In 2017, Al-Qaeda second-in-command Abu Khayr al-Masri was killed in a precise drone strike by something which smashed right through the top of his car and yet caused very little other damage. Photos of the smashed car show 4 distinct ‘slice’ marks in the windshield and roof of the car; could they have been made by an RX9’s halo of six long blades as they shredded whatever was in its tracks in the car? Ouch.

Just wait until these things start being dropped from space. By soulless AIs. I don’t know of any deterrent more effective than the fear of a freakin’ sword falling from the heavens directly on one’s head after being dropped by an omniscient non-physical entity. It’s got a mythological ring to it. Still, while these secret missiles might prevent civilian casualties and sound objectively rad, they’re still instruments of death. How impersonal can we make killing from a distance until warfare loses all of its meaning?

A pair of strange discoveries this month shows that there is still plenty of mystery left at the bottom of the deepest parts of the world’s oceans – but not all of it is the good kind. First, scientists announced a grim but fascinating discovery when it was revealed that radioactive fallout was discovered at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest natural trench in the world. If nuclear fallout has managed to make it all the way down there, what does this mean for us surface dwellers?

The discovery of fallout in the Mariana Trench was made when marine biologists collected amphipods from the trench in order to analyze which, if any, radioactive isotopes might be present in the tiny creatures. Amphipods are diminutive crustaceans that feed on microscopic plankton, making them a perfect way to measure levels of ambient isotopes found in the world’s oceans. Prior to this most recent study, it was presumed that amphipods in the deepest parts of the world would be free from radioactive isotopes due to their isolation, yet scientists found high levels of carbon-14 anyway, similar in fact to levels of carbon-14 found on the ocean’s surface.

Most amphipods are only a few millimeters in length or less.

Above-ground nuclear tests conducted between 1955 and 1980 released dramatic levels of carbon-14 into the atmosphere and biosphere, making this isotope perfect for testing for radioactive fallout. This is the first time scientists have reported the presence of radioactive fallout in the Mariana Trench, and shows that radioactive material from nuclear tests can pass through the food chain to reach even the smallest, most remote creatures. It’s still unknown what effects this residual radiation could have on ecosystems in the long term. Can’t stop progress, though, am I right?

In less depressing ocean trench news, scientists with the Five Deeps Expedition may have discovered an entirely new species living in the deepest known part of the Indian Ocean. Five Deeps is the world’s first manned expedition to the deepest point in each of the five oceans and was exploring the Java Trench off the coast of Indonesia when it caught a strange creature on one of its submersible’s cameras. The team called the unidentified creature an “extraordinary gelatinous animal” which “does not resemble anything seen before.” See the footage of the creature for yourself.

A gold-mouth sea squirt

Preliminary analysis suggests the animal may be an unknown type of sea squirt, but it’s difficult to tell from just photographic evidence, not to mention the fact that sea squirts are usually anchored to the sea floor. While it was initially believed the creature was a new jellyfish, Five Deeps chief scientist Alan Jamieson now believes it may be a specially-adapted sea squirt which is able to relocate itself in the event of seismic activity. “Trenches are quite seismic — and normally tunicates would be attached to the sea floor. And, now, if it’s quite a seismic environment, you run the risk of being buried,” Jamieson says, “so an adaptation to destructive environments is to raise yourself off the seafloor and in this case using this big long tentacle.”

We’ve only begun to peer into the world’s deepest oceans, and NOAA estimates only around 20% of the world’s oceans have been explored to date. Who knows what may lie in the darkness of the unfathomable depths below miles and miles of water?

Things much bigger and scarier than sea squirts and radioactive shrimp, I know that much.

The original Star Wars Death Star (for any of you just emerging from 35 years in a cave) was a massive moon-like space station armed with a superlaser capable of vaporizing a planet. Could there possibly be a more useful purpose for such a powerful tool? We may find out soon, as engineers in Romania announced the successful test of a 10-Petawatt laser. That’s 10 million billion watts or 1/10th the energy produced by the sun on Earth. We’re still here, so it’s not capable of destroying a planet … yet. But China (uh-oh) is already working on a 100-Petawatt laser. Is life (or death) about to imitate sci-fi again?

“After demonstration of a beam delivering pulses of 7 PW for more than 4 hours continuously, the Thales system generated its first pulses with a record power level of 10 PW on 7 March 2019. Thales has thus achieved an unprecedented level of performance, which means that the Romanian National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH) and ELI-NP now have the most powerful laser in the world.”

In a press release that is mysteriously just now getting attention, Thales – a French multinational company that designs and builds electrical systems for the aerospace, defense, transportation and security markets – announced the successful test of the Extreme Light Infrastructure for Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) at a facility in Măgurele near Bucharest. The 10 PW pulse was the most concentrated power ever generated.

“This laser will support research in nuclear physics and help advance human understanding of the physics of matter.”

Not to mention the physics of vaporizing matter. The ELI project was started in the mid-2000s by French scientist and Gérard Mourou, the 2018 Nobel prize winner for his work on high-energy laser pulses, and was initially funded by the European Commission to build the world’s largest lasers in Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

“It may help investigating and controlling aging processes in materials under extreme conditions, such as in nuclear reactors, and help protecting the environment by offering new ways to treat nuclear waste.”

Vaporizing nuclear waste sounds like a good thing, until one thinks about what else a power of that magnitude could vaporize. In fact, how did it not vaporize its own lab – or at least the wall it was pointed in the direction of? The answer is somewhat vague. ExtremeTech quotes Dr. Nicolae Zamfir, project director at ELI-NP, saying that “The beam is focused on mm2 only in the interaction [chamber].” We’re still here and there’s no hole in the wall because the pulse was infinitesimally brief.

That will change soon by an order of magnitude. While the ELI project has plans for a fourth lab with a 100 PW laser, is hasn’t even chosen a location for it. Meanwhile, Chinese physicists are said to already be building a 100 PW laser at the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). Using a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about 12 inches wide, the researchers believe it will be long enough (possibly a minute) and powerful enough to break a vacuum and create antimatter. Testing is estimated to begin in 2023.

That’s not all. Laser testing is going on around the world in quests to harness its tremendous power. Are the goals noble or just paths to a real Death Star? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, The Titanium-Doped Sapphires would make a great name for a band.