Derren Brown's Blog, page 68

Moon Not Only Has Water, but Lots of It

"There is a lot more water on the moon than previously believed, according to an analysis of NASA data being published Friday, a finding that may bolster the case for a manned base on the lunar surface.

The discovery grew out of an audacious experiment last year, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration slammed a spent-fuel rocket into a lunar crater at 5,600 miles an hour, and then used a pair of orbiting satellites to analyze the debris thrown off by the impact. They discovered that the crater contained water in the form of ice, plus a host of other resources, including hydrogen, ammonia, methane, mercury, sodium and silver.

NASA announced its groundbreaking discovery of lunar water last November. Now, a more detailed analysis of the data—the subject of six research papers being published in the journal Science—concludes that there is a lot more water on the moon than anyone expected, about twice the concentrations seen in the Sahara Desert.

"It's really wet," said Anthony Colaprete, co-author of one of the Science papers and a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. He and his colleagues estimate that 5.6% of the total mass of the targeted lunar crater's soil consists of water ice. In other words, 2,200 pounds of moon dirt would yield a dozen gallons of water.

The presence of water doesn't make it more likely that there ever was life on the moon, as the location studied is among the coldest in the solar system. But the large quantity boosts the case for a manned lunar base from which to launch other interplanetary adventures. Water is crucial because its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are key ingredients for rocket fuel. Oxygen can also be extracted from water to make breathable air.

Finding a water source on the moon has long been a dream, because it could save on the expense of transporting it from earth. A bottle of water on the moon would run about $50,000, according to NASA, because that is what it costs, per pound, to launch anything to earth's nearest neighbor."

Read more at The Wall Street Journal (Thanks Mark)

Derren Brown – Confessions of a Conjuror Extract

[image error]

"I loathed myself again. My heart pounded beneath my stupid blousy gay shirt, and as ever, I found it absurd that I had done this a thousand times yet still battled with the same weary desire to be veiled in the shadows of a corner, to keep out of everyone's way and let them enjoy themselves in peace.

I was conscious that the grey eyes of the French barman, who had now seen me emerge from the disabled toilet three times in the last fifteen minutes, were resting on me with an appropriately mixed signal of curiosity, admonishment and condescension.

This glance, on reflection, may have simply been the natural look of a Frenchman abroad, but it struck me at the time as a recognition of my ludicrously transparent capacity for procrastination, and my self-hatred ratcheted up another notch, making it even more difficult to shake myself from the immobilising stupor.

For all he knows, I have to prepare mentally and take time to choose my spectators with care and precision. So with a serious expression I surveyed the restaurant for the hundredth time and flipped over the deck of cards in my hand.



The new deck of red-backed Bicycle-brand poker cards had that afternoon been worn in for the gig through bending and riffling and springing until the deck's spirit had been broken; in the way that a puppy, made to walk to heel, piss on the newspaper and not eat the roast, loses its bungling vigour and learns to behave.

A brand-new Bike deck is, for a short while, wanton and precarious. For those first few minutes it may simply spread effortlessly in the hands, the cards riding the frictionless slivers of oily space that lie between each virgin surface and gliding on their own advertised 'air-cushioned finish'; absorbing and re-directing the pressure of the fingers into a beautiful, even spread at the slightest touch; each pasteboard fluidly moving along with its one-higher/one-lower neighbour.

But as marvellous as this evenness of movement is, and as satisfying as it feels to see a ribbon of fifty-four perfectly spaced and ordered indices appear almost instantaneously between the hands with an apparent mastery of controlled pressure that could not likely be wielded upon grubbier cards after a career of practice, the new deck is at other times reckless and prone to belching itself without warning from the hand, leaving usually just two cards held: a circumstance caused by the natural moisture from the thumb and forefinger pads adhering to the back of the top card and face of the bottom respectively and holding them back while the others issue defiantly from one's grip towards the floor.

Idiot. In my velvet frock suit and ruffled cuffs, like some ludicrous hybrid of J. S. Bach and Martin Kemp back in the day. Around the bottom of my face a goatee like a seventies pubic bush, untouched by clippers since its first appearance as a student years before and which would remain so for another year still, reaching madly in all directions, until one morning, standing at the mirror in my freezing mezzanine bathroom just down the stairs from my flat, I would eventually cut into its sides with the bacon scissors with a view to divesting myself of it completely, and a pleasing Mephistophelean point would emerge.

I held the deck level in my hands and played at tilting and squeezing the slippery pile, almost but not quite enough to discharge it on to the flagstone tiles in the manner I found myself considering.

I pictured them tumbling to the floor, myself bending over to gather them up, and the embarrassed derision of the silent diners as they watched me carry out the apologetic, uncomfortable process.

I caught myself being distracted again, and tried to heave my attention back towards these covers I was being paid to entertain. Tried, but within seconds my focus returned obsessively to the shifting fifty-two pasteboards in my hands and the further preoccupation they offered.

Following the unstoppable spillage caused by the combination of pinching pressure and the merest accidental misalignment, the finger and thumb will instinctively continue their trajectory towards each other following the sudden disappearance of the remainder of the deck, and the top and bottom cards (in the case of a newly opened and unshuffled set of Bikes, these will always be the Joker and an advertising card offering a discount of fifty cents against further purchases from the US Playing Card Company) will be brought together in an action not unlike that of a belly-dancer's finger-cymbals, while the balance of the cards lie scattered on the floor in a face-up/face-down slop.

Here you are faced with two sources of annoyance, the greater being the anticipation of having to kneel down and begrudgingly assemble the cards into a disordered pile of single orientation, which involves not only upturning all the downturned cards (or vice versa, whichever set is smaller), but also the trickier task of neatly squaring up a near-deck of chaotically strewn playing cards into a single satisfying block.

This is easier said than done, and is most easily achieved through a manoeuvre known to experienced card-players and magicians: grabbing the entire set of misaligned cards into one cluster and holding them perpendicular to the floor (or table), then rolling the messy stack back and forth along its side until all the corners have been brought into alliance.

The secondary, lesser source of displeasure is the niggling sense that the deck has been soiled: it may never again be seen in manufacturer's order, and the patented air-cushion finish has most likely been forever lost following the intrusion of hairs, skin-flakes and other carpet debris into the spaces between the cards.

The barman was now busy dealing uninterestedly with a fat man wearing a thin, loose tie who was peering at the whiskies over the counter. The bar was pushing into the man's stomach as he heaved himself high enough to read the labels on the Glenmorangies, Laphroaigs and Macallans that authoritatively lined the raised shelf behind the brandies and cognacs.

He was pushing up on to the balls of his feet and grasping with both hands a brass rail that ran along the front of the bar perhaps a foot below its edge. I wondered what he was feeling at that moment: the tension in his hamstrings, the cool brass, the push of the counter into his middle section, the straining of his eyes and jutting forward of his slack neck to recognise the labels on the bottles.

I tried to recreate these sensations mentally, and considered, as I tensed and shifted in microcosm, that that was what he was feeling right now; that for him the experience of all life revolved in this instant around those sensations, and that I was (with my annoyance and self-hatred and reluctance to work) at most a blur in the corner of his vision.

As he pointed to a bottle and then, a beat later, happy that the barman knew which he required, hauled himself back to standing straight, I tried to lose myself in what I imagined his world to be.

I tried to picture the bar and barman straight-on, to hear the buzz of the restaurant behind me rather than to one side, to imagine the feel of his meal inside me, his weight on my bones, the faint sensation of comfort following the loosening of shoe leather from across the bridge of my toes as he lowered himself back to the floor.

I wondered whether he had picked a whisky he knew well – I imagined so, as the range was not especially adventurous and he seemed to care about which one he was given – and whether, in that case, he was at that moment imagining the walloping peaty taste he knew he was soon to enjoy.

There was something in the showy ease of the barman and the assured way in which he set the glass upon the counter that had about it a hint of performance, a suggestion of the 'flair' that sometimes flamboyantly attends the preparation of cocktails; I presumed that the man was noticing this affectation too, with mild irritation at its pointlessness, and making quiet judgements accordingly.

I did the same, following my own references: a blurry memory of a poster for the film Cocktail, and a repeated film-loop of a chess player planting a knight upon a square and firmly twisting it into place with that same defiance.

A woman passed by, having emerged from the ladies' toilet behind me, and the game ended. The sound of the refilling cistern within was bright and loud, and then abruptly muted as the door bumped closed. The fat man wobbled away from the bar and from me, a little inebriated, and my empathy with his thoughts and sensations was lost under the high ceilings of the wide, noisy lounge.

The restaurant was again before me, and my hand again noted its grasp of the cards. I resented the severing of the connection, and wondered whether being privy to a person's meandering thoughts and gently tracing their dreamy associations was to really know them, at a level far deeper than answers provided by personality tests, school reports or the selective, retrospective narratives of traditional biography."

Confessions of a Conjuror is out now and available on Amazon (click here)

100-million-year-old mistake provides snapshot of evolution

"Research by University of Leeds plant scientists has uncovered a snapshot of evolution in progress, by tracing how a gene mutation over 100 million years ago led flowers to make male and female parts in different ways.

The findings – published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Online Early Edition – provide a perfect example of how diversity stems from such genetic 'mistakes'. The research also opens the door to further investigation into how plants make flowers – the origins of the seeds and fruits that we eat.

In a number of plants, the gene involved in making male and female organs has duplicated to create two, very similar, copies. In rockcress (Arabidopsis), one copy still makes male and female parts, but the other copy has taken on a completely new role: it makes seed pods shatter open. In snapdragons (Antirrhinum), both genes are still linked to sex organs, but one copy makes mainly female parts, while still retaining a small role in male organs – but the other copy can only make male.

"Snapdragons are on the cusp of splitting the job of making male and female organs between these two genes, a key moment in the evolutionary process," says lead researcher Professor of Plant Development, Brendan Davies, from Leeds' Faculty of Biological Sciences. "More genes with different roles gives an organism added complexity and opens the door to diversification and the creation of new species."

By tracing back through the evolutionary 'tree' for flowering plants, the researchers calculate the gene duplication took place around 120 million years ago. But the mutation which separates how snapdragons and rock cress use this extra gene happened around 20 million years later.""

Read more at Physorg (Thanks Mark)

New industrial application for revolutionary forensic metal fingerprinting technique

"Groundbreaking research into fingerprint detection developed at the University of Leicester now has an industrial application, thanks to a new invention by the scientist who developed the technique.

Dr John Bond's method of identifying fingerprints on brass bullet-casings, even after they have been wiped clean, was based on the minuscule amounts of corrosion which can be caused by sweat. First announced in 2008, this breakthrough was cited as one of the technologies 'most likely to change the world' by a panel of experts for BBC Focus magazine and was included in Time magazine's list of '50 best inventions of the year'.

Now, working with scientists in the University of Leicester Department of Chemistry, Dr Bond has applied the same technique to industry by developing a simple, handheld device which can measure corrosion on machine parts. Corrosion leads to wear and tear and needs to be carefully monitored so that worn parts are replaced at the appropriate time so this invention should prove a boon to the manufacturing sector.

"This is a new, quick, cheap and easy way of measuring the extent of corrosion on copper and copper based alloys, such as brass," explains Dr Bond, who is an Honorary Research Fellow in the University's Forensic Research Centre and Scientific Support Manager at Northamptonshire Police.

"It works by exploiting the discovery we made during the fingerprint research – that the corrosion on brass forms something called a 'Schottky barrier' – and we use this to see how much the metal has corroded.

"Such measurements can already be made but this is quick, cheap and easy and can be performed 'in the field' as it works off a nine-volt battery.""

Read more at Lab Spaces (Thanks Mark)

Are DARPA and NASA planning interplanetary travel?

A SENIOR NASA official has promised to deliver a spaceship that will travel between alien worlds "within a few years". Speaking at a conference in San Francisco on Saturday, NASA Ames director Simon Worden said his division had started a project with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency called the "Hundred Year Starship".

The project was kicked off recently with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA and hopes to utilise new propulsion ideas being explored by NASA. Star Trek fans, prepare to get excited – electric propulsion is here, according to Mr Worden.

"Anybody that watches the (Star Trek) Enterprise, you know you don't see huge plumes of fire," he said. "Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds."

Full story at News.au

Time Dilation – a short introduction

Take your brain for a run with this one.

Via Science & Reason.

Vintage Posters Discovered in Abandoned London Tube Station

"The London Underground is an incredible maze of subterranean railways, stations and ticket halls – and that doesn't account for the myriad abandoned passageways that are strictly off limits to the public, let alone the ageing relics that linger on in this dark underworld.

But a 2010 upgrade to Notting Hill Gate "tube" station revealed a series of vintage posters dating to between 1956 and 1959. The posters, which will be left intact once the modernisation work is completed, include advertising for Pepsodent Toothpaste and the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, as well as films like Around the World in 80 Days and The Horse's Mouth, starring Alec Guinness.

The vintage collection was uncovered in an abandoned lift passageway closed to the public after Notting Hill Gate was last upgraded in the late 1950s. The '50s facelift saw the "two" Notting Hill Gate stations of the District and Circle lines linked by a sub-surface ticket hall beneath the road. Escalators down to the deeper Central Line platforms replaced the ageing elevators, which were sealed off by the time the station reopened on March 1, 1959.

When the latest upgrades are complete, the posters will once again be hidden from prying eyes in the disused area of the tube station. Mikey Ashworth, who discovered and photographed the collection, wrote: "We will be leaving these intact – and please do not pester the station staff as the posters are wholly inaccessible – which is why they've probably survived 50 odd years!"

Notting Hill Gate station opened in 1868 as part of the Metropolitan Railway's extension from Paddington to Gloucester Road. The deep-level Central Line platforms, accessed by the lift passageways where the posters were found, opened in 1900. The vintage artifacts may not be viewable, but it's fun to think there's a place deep within the bowels of London that still advertises the "latest work" of David Niven, Rita Hayworth et al. "

See more photos at Urban Ghosts Media

Facebook Admits Advertising ID Breaches

"Facebook has become embroiled in another privacy controversy after confirming that millions of items of personal information were being shared without users' consent. The social networking site blamed popular third-party applications for violating its rules and transmitting identifying information to advertising and internet tracking companies. "In most cases, developers did not intend to pass this information, but did so because of the technical details of how browsers work," Facebook engineer Mike Vernal said in a blog post. "We are talking with our key partners and the broader web community about possible solutions."

Mr Vernal said press reports had exaggerated the implications of the situation and that getting user identification (UID) information did not provide access to private data without express permission. "Nevertheless, we are committed to ensuring that even the inadvertent passing of UIDs is prevented and all applications are in compliance with our policy," he added. "We take strong measures to enforce this policy, including suspending and disabling applications that violate it."

His comments came after a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation which found that the issue affects tens of millions of Facebook application users – including people who set their profiles to be completely private. The practice breaks Facebook's rules and renews questions about its ability to keep secure identifiable information about the activities of its members. "Our policy is very clear about protecting user data, ensuring that no one can access private user information without explicit user consent," Mr Vernal said. "Further, developers cannot disclose user information to ad networks and data brokers."

The WSJ said applications were providing access to Facebook members' names and, in some cases, their friends' names, to companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online. All of the 10 most popular applications on Facebook were transmitting unique user ID numbers to outside companies, it said. They include Zynga's FarmVille, with 59 million users, Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. The WSJ said several applications became unavailable to Facebook users after the newspaper informed the California-based social network that they were transmitting personal information. Facebook is the world's most popular social network with around 500 million users but has faced persistent complaints about privacy protection."

Read more at Yahoo News

Lamp That Can Read Your Mind – It Turns The Colour You're Thinking About

"Is today's idea brilliant or a bomb?

The Idea: The Mind Lamp is a $189 electric lamp with a random-event generator (REG) built in. When plugged in, the lamp gives off a white light before cycling through eight other colors. It then stays on the one that you're thinking about.

How does this mind-matter interaction occur? Scientists aren't sure, but they claim that products that use REG behave "very differently" when subjected to human consciousness.

The inventors attempt to explain the phenomenon: "The REG uses a quantum phenomenon called electron tunneling, which is measured as a randomly fluctuating current across a potential barrier in an electric circuit. Surprisingly, and in a way that violates conventional theories in science, the PEAR researchers found statistically significant correlations between the output of the device and human intention in a variety of well-controlled experiments. The mechanism by which this occurs is unknown, and is the subject of ongoing research."

Whose Idea: Princeton, NJ-based Psyleron, a for-profit company and a non-profit research cooperative, based on the findings of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory.

Why we like it: The concept of a mind lamp is fascinating because it draws a direct connection between the mind and physical objects. It's almost like the lamp is a living being – you stare at it and it knows what vibe you're giving off. Maybe this all sounds a little hard to believe (or even scary), but according to John Valentine, CEO and co-founder of Psyleron, "We are taking something that science says should be totally random, and we have evidence that suggests it's not actually random, that people's thoughts influence it." The Mind Lamp can be used to represent the human mind and, if anything, certainly helps us understand it."

Read more at Business Insider (Thanks Mark)

Svengali 2011/2012 Tour Artwork

We have received the new Svengali tour poster through! [image error]

(Tour dates and links to tickets can be found at http://derrenbrown.co.uk/tour-dates/svengali/)

[image error]