Category Archives: Mars Colony

A NEW candidate is emerging as the next host world for human life.

A Nasa scientist has developed a theoretically possible plan to make Venus habitable.

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Alex Howe, an astrophysicist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, drafted a paper detailing how humans could construct 'cloud cities' and terraform Venus.

The plan starts with blanketing Venus with "72 trillion" massive, connected patches about 30 miles above the surface - this shell will vacuum seal what is below it and work to alter the chemistry of air above it to make it breathable.

Supplying the planet with water comes with an innovation that sounds like the plot of a Rick & Morty episode - ice would be mined from nearby moons and glided toward Venus.

With the full concentration of Earth's resources, the paper says Venus could support human life in 200 years.

Howe addressed the widespread lean towards Mars over Venus as a potential human outpost.

"Venus also provides some advantages over Mars for colonization with its near-Earth-like surface gravity, an atmosphere thick enough to provide robust protection from cosmic rays," he wrote.

The Daily Beast reported that Howe's paper is not peer-reviewed but considered "very much a possibility, by experts.

Howe addressed the outlandishness of the topic and wrote that he simply hopes to show that altering Venus' landscape is more achievable than one might think.

Venus has been a hot planet in more ways than just its scorching surface.

Nasa announced they will send two probes across space to measure test long-held theories about the planet next door.

Shortly after Nasa went public with DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, Chinese officials said they were musing exploring Venus.

The recent discovery of phosphine gas - a chemical signature of life - in Venusian clouds could be a clue in a cosmic mystery about life on other planets.

But today's planned missions to Venus are a far cry from terraforming the planet and moving society there.

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Mind-blowing plan to build floating cloud cities on Venus revealed by Nasa scientist... - The US Sun

Title: Settler Science, Alien Contact, and Searches for Intelligence

Editors: David Delgado Shorter, Kim TallBear

Authors: David Delgado Shorter, Kim TallBear, Sonya Atalay, William Lempert, Rebecca Charbonneau, David Uahikeaikaleiohu Maile, Fantasia Painter, Suzanne Kite

Status: Published in the AICRJ (closed access)

Astronomers have long sought to answer the question, are we alone? But, how can we effectively and ethically search for extraterrestrial life, when contact among intelligent groups and species on Earth has such a disastrous history? The American Indian Culture and Research Journal (AICRJ) released a special volume in December 2021 focused on astronomy and space sciences, especially the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Many of the authors also took part in a Zoom webinar in February 2022 to discuss their work. The volume was inspired by four of the authors experiences as the Indigenous Studies Working Group reporting to Breakthrough Listen (BL), a major SETI collaboration. BL posed the question, What would you most want SETI scientists to know about potentially making contact [with extraterrestrial life]?

In May of 2018, Sonya Atalay, William Lempert, David Shorter, and Kim TallBear shared their response to this question. All four are involved in academic work involving indigenous studies, while only Atalay and TallBear are themselves members of indigenous communities. Focusing on BLs self-description and website, the working group analyzed the ethics of ongoing SETI research. They expressed concern regarding BLs lack of discussion of the ethics and protocols for contact. They also note the complexity of terms often used in SETI, like advanced civilizations and intelligence, which are both very contextual and subjective concepts. Ultimately, the working group recommended the creation of a statement of goals and best practices for SETI/contact. Such a statement would include:

Atalay also emphasized that intent does not equal impact, and avoiding harm must be a priority, and Lempert discussed the history of violence in contact scenarios on Earth which resulted in violence and colonialism.

Most of what can be developed in the name of science can also be used in the name of militarization. David Shorter

Shorters piece On the Frontier of Redefining Intelligent Life in Settler Science discussed the language of SETI, in the context of the terms histories in colonialist endeavors. NASAs High Resolution Microwave Survey, a major SETI observing program which was canceled only a year after its start, launched intentionally on the 500th anniversary of Columbus arrival in America in 1592, signifying the colonialist motivations behind space exploration. The constant use of terms like frontier, pioneer, and even manifest destiny in these fields harkens back to a violent past. By using these terms in the context of positive progress, SETI implies that this colonialism is a good thing and a goal to aspire to in space. Ultimately, SETI scientists must look beyond our anthropocentric and Eurocentric notions of intelligence, advancement, and even life in order to realistically and ethically search for extraterrestrial life. Intelligence can be measured in many different ways, none of which are objective, and advancement on one axis does not mean advancement in all aspects of society.

By directly addressing the history of colonialism, and by making good relations with the original communities and nations of our planet, we can ethically explore space and perhaps contact life on other planets. David Shorter

Lemperts From Interstellar Imperialism to Celestial Wayfinding: Prime Directives and Colonial Time-Knots in SETI drew from the historical HMS Endeavour journey to measure Venus transit in 1769, as a striking example of how imperialism is often intertwined with science. The journey was praised for its scientific success, but the captain, James Cook, was under covert orders from the British monarchy to annex as much land as possible in the Pacific. This article emphasizes that scientific missions, whether intentionally or not, often contribute to imperialist conquest. Referencing Star Treks prime directive and the many times the crew broke that rule, Lempert explores SETIs prime directive of just listening. For now, we are only listening, but if/when ET life is discovered, we cannot control how humanity might react/respond.

This is not to say that science is inherently harmful, but rather that it has and remains deeply intertwined with imperial power. William Lempert

Rebecca Charbonneaus Imaginative Cosmos: The Impact of Colonial Heritage in Radio Astronomy and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence addressed SETIs complicated history and relationship with colonialism. Along with SETIs colonialist language, the history of radio astronomy is riddled with telescopes built with military ties and on stolen land (e.g. Arecibo Observatory). Some SETI scientists, such as Carl Sagan, have made efforts to incorporate interdisciplinary viewpoints, but much more work must be done in this area. Charbonneau also studies SETI as a reflection of humanity, and how practitioners perceive themselves and their species.

Astronomers simultaneous embrace of this historical projection and unease with its implications illustrates the unsettled nature of the physical, social, and disciplinary grounding always implicit in their search Rebecca Charbonneau

Figure 2: The 100-m Green Bank Telescope (image by Macy Huston)

David Mailes piece On Being Late: Cruising Mauna Kea and Unsettling Technoscientific Conquest in Hawaii comes from personal experience, as a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) scholar and activist. Maile is a proponent of writing the land back, or using scholarly work to support direct action. The construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope has been planned for Mauna Kea, the mountain most sacred to Indigenous Hawaiians, since 2009. See this Astrobite and the follow-up Astrobite for more information on this conflict. Maile explores the colonialist history of astronomy in Hawaii and the Kanaka Maoli resistance against settler science, focusing on lateness. Protests on Mauna Kea have been considered late as some telescopes already exist on the mountain, in contrast with the way native Hawaiians have successfully forced additional delays and costs on TMT construction.

Its okay to be late to the struggle. David Maile

Fantasia Painter explored the governments role in ET contact and jurisdictional considerations in G-Men, Green Men, and Red Land: Extraterrestrial Miscreants, Federal Jurisdiction, and Exceptional Space. Who decides how to proceed if ET life arrives on Earth? The FBIs records of cow mutilations (which many attributed to aliens/UFOs) occurring across the country in the 1970s show the struggle over federal jurisdiction, as the FBI initially avoided the issue, and local police forces did most of the investigation. The bureau ultimately decided that they would only investigate the occurrences on reservation lands. This leads to interesting considerations regarding jurisdiction in the case of ET life landing on Earth. Colonial conquests in America have been highly bureaucratic and legal, while imaginations of ETs paint a very different picture of a rapid and chaotic colonial takeover. Painter emphasizes that contact and colonization are both long-term processes, not instantaneous events.

What happens the day after the apocalypse? Fantasia Painter

In the volumes commentary section, Suzanne Kite contributed Whats on the earth is in the stars; and whats in the stars is on the earth: Lakota Relationships with the Stars and American Relationships with the Apocalypse. Kite explores how the fear of the unknown, which many American settlers hold, leads to conspiracy theories, highlighting the ties between nuclear warfare and UFOlogy. Leveraging these fears of aliens and supernatural beings, colonizers are able to idealize themselves as instead the colonized, in a move toward innocence. These attitudes are in sharp contrast with the Lakotas respect for the unknown. Respect rather than fear of the unknown is instrumental in ethically interacting with potential ET life.

A new alien invasion will not absolve settler colonists and it will not render irrelevant the fact that the continent remains occupied Fantasia Painter

Kim TallBear concluded the volume with a creative nonfiction piece, Close Encounters of the Colonial Kind, which depicted the tenuous relationships between indigenous scholarship and settler-based fields.

He believes two things simultaneously, that a civilization that sends signals is advanced, yet not fully alive. ETs too are his noble savages. Kim TallBear

The AICRJ issue introduces some very important ideas regarding contact with potential ET life, and SETI researchers and other space scientists must consider indigenous perspectives deeply in order to move forward in our fields. Ultimately, answering the question are we alone? ethically and accurately requires a deeper look into who we even are.

Edited by Pratik Gandhi, Briley Lewis, Huei Sears

Cover image source: AIRCJ Volume 45 Cover, Joanne Barker

About Macy HustonI am a fourth year graduate student at Penn State University studying Astronomy & Astrophysics. My current work focuses on technosignatures, also referred to as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). I am generally interested in exoplanet and exoplanet-adjacent research. In the past, I have performed research on planetary microlensing and low-mass star and brown dwarf formation.

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The Need for Indigenous and Interdisciplinary Perspectives in SETI and Space Sciences - Astrobites

Developer Stitch Heads and publisher Raw Fury launched a trailer for a new action RPG called Superfuse on Wednesday. Superfuse is an action RPG similar to Blizzards Diablo series, but with a superhero flair. Problem is, these heroes dont seem particularly heroic they use their powers to destroy their enemies with reckless abandon.

Players will join the Enforcers, who are essentially superpowered space cops working for corporate gods. (In this context, were basically talking about superpowered Jeff Bezoses with eternal life and even more money.) While the poor languish on, Enforcers will battle the Corruption, the space monsters that have become a problem for humanity ever since it moved off the planet and into space colonies. The trailer makes it clear that Superfuse will offer a much darker twist on the typical superhero fantasy.

Players can play the campaign alone offline, or in multiplayer groups. Theyll also be able to build their heroes with different skillsets using the games dynamic skill trees. While Superfuse does have classes, players will be able to alter their skills as they go, tailoring their abilities to specific encounters. And as is typical for action games like this, theres plenty of loot for players to grab and equip. For added variety, all of the games maps are procedurally generated as well, so the layout is never the same a feature Diablo fans are already familiar with.

Superfuse doesnt have a release date yet, but the developer revealed it will come to Steam via early access sometime in 2022.

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Superfuse has a new action RPG trailer, combining Diablo with The Boys - Polygon

ASTRA team members are, from left: Front Thomas Bennett, Shelby Tull, Victoria Tarpley, Michaela Tarpley, Michael Sorrell and Arnav Maroju. Back Aiden St. Hilaire, Areeb Mohammed, Andrew Adams, Tristan Carter, Jacob Keese, Peter Bowers and Alex DiBenio.

Space Hardware Club

After two years of work, a four-function robotic rover developed for use on Mars by a 21-person Space Hardware Club (SHC) team at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, will be in summer competition at the University Rover Challenge (URC) finals in the desert of southern Utah.

The Adaptable Service Transport Research Apparatus (ASTRA) team recently earned a perfect score in the science category for its URC System Acceptance Review to advance to Utah. This is one of the most impressive SAR submissions by a novice team I have ever seen, a reviewer wrote. Kudos to you all.

Outfitted with a very dexterous main arm, ASTRA is equipped with cameras, a microscope, a spectrometer and the hardware and chemicals needed to conduct tests to detect life.

The URC, a project of The Mars Society, is the world's premier robotics competition for college students. It challenges student teams to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside astronauts exploring the red planet.

Under URC rules, the rover has to fit inside a cube-shaped space that is 1.2 meters on all sides, or almost 4 feet. Once deployed, the rover can get bigger.

Our rover has a footprint that is 1.19 x 0.9 meters and is 1.19 meters tall when stowed, says team lead Shelby Tull, a senior in aerospace engineering from Nashville, Tenn., who founded the project. It gets taller when we deploy its antenna. At its heaviest, the rover weighs 46.9 kg, or 103.4 pounds.

The rover is designed to accomplish four unique missions, Tull says.

One of those missions is life detection. More specifically, it has to look at rocks and soil and tell whether there is extant life, extinct life or no life, she says. The other missions are extreme retrieval and delivery involving picking up heavy objects and carrying them across difficult terrain, equipment servicing involving dexterous tasks like using a keyboard, and autonomous navigation.

Using a vacuum and cyclonic separator, the rover can pick up either Earthly dirt or Martian regolith and perform a bicinchoninic acid (BCA) test by adding a mixture of copper sulfate and BCA to the sample. If the chemicals turn purple, that indicates protein, which can only exist if there is extant life.

We use our onboard spectrometer to look for pigments that are also only found with life, such as chlorophyll and carotenoids, Tull says.

For rock samples, the rover has a rudimentary arm with a camera and a microscope to take a closer look at samples.

On rocks, we are really looking for endoliths and hypoliths those are colonies of organisms that grow on, inside and underneath the rock, Tull says. We might see streaks of green or gray, which indicate plant or bacterial life.

For extinct life, the rovers cameras allow the team to search out two types of fossils: cast fossils and trace fossils.

Cast fossils are what you usually think of when you think about a fossil, the actual shape of the organism petrified into rock, Tull says. Trace fossils are other things that organisms leave behind, such as footprints or nests.

Primarily manually operated, ASTRA is also able to autonomously drive to Global Positioning System (GPS) waypoints over flat terrain using an on-board GPS sensor and magnetometer to drive to coordinates.

Advised by Dr. Gang Wang, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Dr. Richard Tantaris, a mechanical and aerospace engineering lecturer, the SHC team is working to enable the rover to detect obstacles in its path so it can operate autonomously on rougher terrain.

The main arm is remarkably precise in operation, and thats the result of a lot of design work upfront, says electrical lead Thomas Bennett, a graduate student in aerospace systems from Charleston, S.C.

Getting it to be so dexterous didn't really take much fine tuning at all, it was basically that good from when we first turned it all on! Bennett says. That's not to say we just got lucky though. We really did our homework when designing it. We selected components and designed it from the beginning to have the best balance of strength and dexterity.

Weight is always a consideration in long-distance spaceflight and so the arm went through several design revisions to implement the same mechanical structure using lighter and lighter components, Bennett says.As for the software that controls it, I have to thank UAH's Dr. Farbod Fahimi, he says. Dr. Fahimi is an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Taking his MAE 664 class taught me everything I needed to know, Bennett says. I even used one of my old assignments as a basis for the control software."

Tull says that for her, the most challenging part of developing the device was designing the biosensor module used to detect life.

We have no biology or chemistry majors on the team at this time, so we had to do a lot of homework to get it right. It was very difficult to sort through scholarly research without being familiar with all the vocabulary used in biochemistry! she says.

We were also in uncharted territory when designing the spectrometer, which involved a lot of research in optics. Thomas actually wrote an optical simulation program in MATLAB, which simulated the path that rays of light follow in our spectrometer. He got it right to within 60 microns!

Other team members think the arms design and fabrication were the most challenging parts, she says. Most mechanical components were fabricated in the UAH Research Machine Shop under the guidance of Jim Buckley, prototype development specialist. Final assembly and all electronics work was done in the Space Hardware Club's lab in UAHs Optics Building.

It was pretty challenging finding enough room to work, but I'd say we've managed it pretty nicely, Tull says. Space Hardware Club's cage in the shop is full, and we have to share lab space with other Space Hardware Club projects, but working under difficult constraints is what engineers do.

The design and refinement process hasnt stopped as the team advances through the layers of URC review needed first before ASTRA can actually perform on the desert sand. Testing has revealed opportunities for improvement in the suspension, wheels and drivetrain.

We're hoping to end up with a suspension structure that's trapezoidal instead of the triangle we have now, with larger wheels and more of a speed reduction between our motors and wheels, Tull says.

The team is also working to enclose exposed electronics, fine tune the camera placement and smooth operation through upgraded software.

Our current biosensor is also only a prototype, and we're going to be going back and remaking that from scratch in order to make it much more refined, she says. Lastly, we also need to finish our autonomous navigation system by adding obstacle avoidance.

The 21-member ASTRA team is large, Tull says, but other URC teams have as many as 90 members.

We are actually on the smaller side for a URC team, she says. I founded this project in February, 2020, with about five or six other people, so we have definitely grown.

When she founded ASTRA, Tull had a completely different goal in mind.

At the time, I was obsessed with the prospect of interstellar exploration and specifically studying exoplanets, she says. In the future, space probes will have to autonomously identify their own science targets, simply because they are too far away for researchers at Earth to make decisions in real time.

ASTRA started out as an autonomous science target identification rover project.

However, just a couple weeks after I got some friends together for my idea, we discovered the University Rover Challenge, which combined several of my interests with several of theirs.

While the experience has taught her a lot, from technical information and design work to project management, Tull says the most important lesson is the value of surrounding herself with people who know a lot more than she does about their own unique fields.

There's an old adage, If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, which I have found to be very true through this project, she says. I have learned so much over the course of two years, but it all boils down to the amazing peers who I have worked with along the way.

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Space Hardware Club team's robotic rover on its way to summertime competition in Utah - UAH News

By Express News Service

With no relief from the rising mercury levels any time soon, interior designers, architects and others, share ways to keep our humble abodes cool this summer

Declutter: Declutter unnecessary items in your room to make the space airy and free-flowing

Water elements: Add elements like a small zen fountain in the corner of the room or near a window that would cool down the air blowing in. Consider adding water table centrepieces to add moisture to the air inside

Block out the sun: Change to light coloured, gauzy curtains that allow air circulation but dont let in too much light. Sun protective films can also be added to glass windows to reduce heat

Ditch warm lights: Change into cooler-toned lighting instead of warm yellow lights and candles that were cosy for winters

Cooler tones: Cooler hues for painting the walls like icy mint, pale blues and lilacs would do great in summers

Window seating: Create a nice seating where the windows are open and the nice breeze comes in

Merlyn Maladicta, principal architect, Sycamore Design Studio, Secunderabad

High SRI paint: Those living right under the roof in apartments and independent house can use high SRI (solar reflective index) paint on their roofs to keep their homes cool

China mosaic tiles: These High SRI tiles ensure the interiors of the topmost floors are kept cool

Shade: Chajjas or temporary shading devices give you the power to block and allow just enough sunlight into your rooms

Greenery: Get some houseplants for the interior spaces. The soils help in humidifying the air and tall plants near windows block sunlight and keep the room comfortable

Water features: Water pots, wetted blinds, etc. help with evaporative cooling that takes advantage of the cool breeze

Cross ventilation: Keep your windows open, in the evening, use meshes to keep flies and mosquitoes at bay

Snehitha Sharon, sustainable architect

Houseplants: Baby aloe vera, baby rubber plant, Boston plant, Chinese evergreen, etc., are great at bringing the temperatures down

Exhaust: Use exhaust fans in your bathrooms and kitchens to keep hot air out

Fragrance: Refreshing home fragrances are also a great way to give a cool makeover to your home this summer. Aromas such as Kaffir lime, lemongrass, and eucalyptus are apt for the season Apart from traditional sprays and sacks, there are also a host of products such as diffusers, burners, potpourri, etc to give a constant supply of fresh aroma

Ridhima Kansal, director, Rosemoore

Space: Use as minimal furniture as possible. Use multifunctional furniture items to create space inside. Examples can be sofa-cum bed. Opt for small-sized coffee tables to substitute for large tables

Blinds: Bring in bamboo blinds and don them over your windows. This will help in filtering out the sunlight and keeping your place comparatively cooler

Raghunandan Saraf,founder-CEO, Saraf Furniture, Cyberhills Colony

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A cooler home - The New Indian Express

Roberts grew up on the moon in the late 24th century. When the story turns, finally, to him, its the dawn of the 25th, and our mystery man is at loose ends, working as a house detective at the Grand Luna Hotel. Though relocated to the high-functioning Colony One, the nostalgia-prone Roberts is haunted by his upbringing in the relatively derelict Colony Two, a.k.a. the Night City, the place where the sky was always black, because the failure of the protective domes artificial lighting system was judged too expensive to fix. His work at the hotel, where he is paid just to be present and pay attention to what happens around him, would seem like dubious preparation for any other job, but he soon takes up a new position in his brilliant sister Zoeys shop, a most curious entity called the Time Institute. At this point, there have already been hints about where and when his unusual new job will take him, but the why of his journey an investigation into the anomalous vision, which may have alarming implications about the nature of reality has yet to be unfurled.

Mandel has worked adroitly with multiple timelines in her previous books, leaping back and forth between the past, present and future to explore killer viruses and Madoff-inspired Ponzi schemes. Her characters, too, have frequently felt temporally discombobulated. In The Glass Hotel, for example, a key player, the above-mentioned Vincent, says, I am aware of a border but I cant tell which side Im on, and it seems I can move between memories like walking from one room to the next. She also says, more plainly, I am out of time.

In Sea of Tranquility, Mandell makes that metaphor feeling out of sync quite literal and uses a machine to send Roberts and others out on missions across time. The 20th, 21st, 23rd and 25th centuries are all visited here with plenty of now-familiar, pop-culture concern about temporal health expressed along the way.

If this were a different sort of novel, it might be reasonable to fret that stories like Ray Bradburys classic A Sound of Thunder, novels like Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five, television shows like Dr. Who, certain episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation or even Disneys recent madcap Loki, had done time travel stories better, or at least earlier, and in most cases with more elaborately imagined tech. But Mandel is interested in something other than limning the highs and lows of timeline trotting and figuring out what to do its never good, is it? when someone like Roberts steps off the path, as he eventually does, to try to help someone in the past. Indeed, though the speculative elements in Sea of Tranquility (which was written during the Covid-19 pandemic and discusses the crushing impact of pandemics more broadly) are set in service of an attempt to make some sense of huge societal and existential crises and pose good old questions like what does it mean to be alive, Mandels novel has more in common with tech-minimized sci-fi outings like Kazuo Ishiguros Never Let Me Go.

In Sea of Tranquility, Mandel offers one of her finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet, but it is her ability to convincingly inhabit the ordinary, and her ability to project a sustaining acknowledgment of beauty, that sets the novel apart. As in Ishiguro, this is not born of some cheap, made-for-television, faux-emotional gimmick or mechanism, but of empathy and hard-won understanding, beautifully built into language, for all of us who inhabit this green-and-blue world and who one day might live well beyond.

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Review: Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel - The New York Times

A blind psychic who predicted the Russia's invasion of Ukraine said President Vladimir Putin would become 'Lord of the World'.

Baba Vanga warned of several global conflicts and natural disasters before they came to be, including the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami and Twin Tower attacks.

The Eastern European mystic, who became known as 'Nostradamus of the Balkans', died aged 85 in 1996 but made several predictions about the fate of the world before she passed.

It has now been suggested that she foresaw the Russian leader rising to global domination, the Mirror reports.

According to BirminghamLive, in a 1979 meeting with writer Valentin Sidorov the clairvoyant said: All will thaw, as if ice, only one remain untouched - Vladimirs glory, glory of Russia.

"Too much it is brought in a victim. Nobody can stop Russia.

"All will be removed by her from the way and not only will be kept, but also becomes the lord of the world.

Before her death, Vanga predicted glorious future for Russia once more, the Daily Post reported.

According to the clairvoyant, Russia will be the worlds only superpower.

She also made a chilling prophecy about the use of nuclear weapons and World War 3.

Blinded after being picked up by a freak tornado as a child, Baba Vanga - born Vangelia Gushterova - believed she had the ability to foresee the future. She reportedly made hundreds of predictions in her 50-year career.

She shot to prominence after accurately predicting the sinking of the Kursk in 2000.

Her millions of followers believe she had paranormal abilities including telepathy and being able to communicate with aliens.

Her numerous predictions about world events and the state of humanity have become infamous, including claims she predicted the rise of ISIS and the fall of the Twin Towers.

The Irish Mirror also told of her chilling predictions today and how some of them have come true.

Specialists have since calculated that 68 per cent of her prophecies had happened - slightly less than the 85 per cent claimed by her followers.

These are some of her other previous predictions:

In 1980 the blind prophetess predicted that in August of 1999, Kursk will be covered with water and the whole world will weep over it.

Kursk was a Russian sub that Sank in the Barents Sea on August 12, 2000, killing all aboard.

In 1989 Baba Vanga said: Horror, horror! The American brethren will fall after being attacked by the steel birds. The wolves will be howling in a bush, and innocent blood will be gushing.

On September 11, 2001, planes hijacked by Islamic extremists hit the World Trade Center in New York, killing thousands of people.

According to Baba Vanga, the continent will cease to exist by 2016, and all that would remain will be empty spaces and wasteland, nearly devoid of any form of life.

Clearly not exactly right, but the UK did vote to leave the EU on June 23, 2016, creating a lot of turmoil.

She is reported to have said that chemical weapons would be used by extremists against Europe (or perhaps a nerve agent).

Baba Vanga had predicted that the 44th US president would be an African American, but she had also added that he would be the last one.

She claimed he would leave office at a time when the country would be in economic ruins, and there would be a huge divide between the northern and southern states as was the case during the American Civil War.

Baba also appeared to predict that the 45th president of the United States - who we now know to be Donald Trump - would be faced with a crisis which would bring the country down.

Her chilling prediction states: Everyone will put their hopes in him to end it, but the opposite will happen; he will bring the country down and conflicts between north and south states will escalate.

Some speculate the references to north and south could mean North and South Korea.

Babas predictions have been revisited after another mystic, who apparently foretold Donald Trumps presidency, claims to know the exact date World War 3 will start.

Self-proclaimed messenger of God Horacio Villegas believes nuclear war will break out on the 100th anniversary of the visitation of Our Lady of Fatima.

The clairvoyant claims to have envisioned Trump would win the US election as far back as 2015.

He reportedly predicted the billionaire businessman would become the illuminati king who will bring the world into WW3 .

Cold regions will become warm ... and volcanoes will awaken.

A huge wave will cover a big coast covered with people and towns, and everything will disappear beneath the water. Everything will melt, just like ice.

According to the prophetess, China will become a world power in 2018.

Shes probably out a few years here as China is already an economic and military powerhouse.

Weve also apparently got a change in the Earths orbit to look forward to some time before 2023.

A new energy source will be created and global hunger will start to be eradicated between 2025 and 2028. A manned spacecraft to Venus will be launched.

From 2033 to 2045 the polar ice caps will melt, causing ocean levels to rise.

Baba Vangas predicted that body organs will be cloned by 2046, and that would be the easiest method of treatment.

Between 2072 and 2086 a classless, Communist society will thrive hand in hand with newly-restored nature.

A LOT happens from 2170 to 2256, including a Mars colony becoming a nuclear power and demanding independence from the earth, the establishment of an underwater city and the discovery of something terrible during the search for alien life.

Some time between 2262 and 2304 well crack time travel. Meanwhile, French guerrillas fight the Muslim authorities in France.

The secrets of the moon will be unveiled.

By 3797, everything on Earth will cease to exist. However, humans will be advanced enough to move to a new star system.

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Blind psychic Baba Vanga who foresaw 9/11 said Putin will be 'Lord of the World' - Daily Record

When people would ask me, What do you shoot? I used to say everything, artist Adam Davis says. But now, I just tell them: Black people. I mostly photograph Black people. And they get tense.

A production coordinator for the Black-owned L.A. bookstore Reparations Club, Davis, an artist and educator, employs the bygone medium of tintype portraiture in his work. For his second solo exhibition, Black Magic, Davis pinned 54 of these tintype images to white walls. The portraits captured the faces of Davis community, alongside custom card decks and skateboards. The weathered emulsion from the mediums unique development process creates a distinctive vignette halo around Davis' subjects.

Like photographer James VanDerZee, who once chronicled the people of Harlem, Davis takes a considered approach to documenting his contemporaries, posing individuals for portraits that celebrate their intrinsic beauty. My first show [People Of Paradise] was me asking Where are the Black people?, he says, Black Magic celebrates the Black people.

After showing his portraits in November at Byrd Museum, a new art space in Mid-City, Davis hosted a tintype photography workshop at Photodom, a Black-owned camera store in Brooklyn. Davis is now embarking on a tour of historically Black cities around the United States, with stops in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Tulsa. He will host pop-up tintype portrait sessions in his pursuit to make 20,000 tintype portraits of Black Americans one of the largest contemporary archives of Black American portraits to date.

In the week leading up to the Byrd Museum opening, Davis meets me at the Mid-City bungalow he shares with his partner, Kai Daniels, an artist and activist. A pond babbles outside the window, and a garden of succulents climbs up to claim the wooden exterior walls. The pair moved into their home at St. Elmo Village, a 55-year-old Black-owned-and-operated community arts colony, just two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic.

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In the uncertain months that followed, Davis retreated to the darkroom that sits just outside his front door. The darkroom and the colony grounds were the vision of photographer and muralist Roderick Sykes, who, in 1969 at the age of 18, moved in with the mission to create a thriving creative enclave within the urban sprawl. By 2020 Sykes was in the twilight of his life, quietly living with Alzheimers a few cottages over from Davis and Daniels. Daniels had grown up adjacent to the St. Elmo community Sykes and his wife, artist and administrator Jacqueline Alexander-Sykes, were a sort of extended family for her, she says.

When Davis moved to the neighborhood, Sykes was no longer able to communicate; Davis says he came to understand the gravity of Sykes' legacy through the work he left behind prints and sketches tucked into the darkrooms desk drawers. In my head I thought, when I die, this is the bar,'" Davis recalls. If I don't have this amount of work and have impacted this amount of people... He trails off for a moment, shaking his head lightly, Yeah, like I'm sitting in this guy's greatest art piece. Its gonna make me f cry.

Davis, who was born in 1994, split his time between his family home on Long Island and his fathers parish in Brooklyn growing up. Davis father, a preacher, took up photography as a hobby, and snapped photos of Davis and their church family. His mother was a teacher. Davis attributes his career in art and education to his early access to creativity.

In 2016, Davis left New York for Los Angeles, a new city with little familiar community. I was wondering, Where are the Black people? I didnt know any Black people, I didnt know anybody that looked like me, he recalls. Davis later began crafting a photo series of Black individuals holding birds of paradise, eventually comprising his first exhibition, People of Paradise.

During the pandemic, Davis taught himself how to develop film. He grew interested in the 1820s-era method of image making called wet plate collodion photography, or tintype. He tested and executed concepts for what would become his next exhibition inviting friends and community members over to the complex to capture their portraits on tintype. Ultimately, 100 people would end up sitting for portraits.

The darkroom evolved into a sanctuary for Davis, particularly during the upheaval of COVID-19. During the pandemic, Davis lost several loved ones. That room means a lot, he says of the darkroom. I would go in there and just peak depression, peak suicidal thoughts, like screaming top of my lungs and no one could hear me. I could just go in there and disappear, he says.

While processing their grief, Davis and Daniels decided to decamp to Oaxaca, Mexico, in December 2020. Locked down in Oaxaca, Daniels virtually attended her masters classes at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. She took a course by Kahlil Joseph centered around the concept of Black town ownership and what that can look like from an architectural and anthropological perspective. You cant talk about art and culture in Los Angeles without mentioning Kahlil Joseph, Davis explains. He taught [the class] how to make my favorite piece of art [BLKNWS, a video installation] and I was like, Babe, I got to know how he does this. Daniels began forwarding Davis recordings of her class sessions.

When Davis returned to Los Angeles, he looked at the tintype portraits he had taken throughout the pandemic with a renewed interest. Davis began imagining a future world, one where the tintypes resembled futuristic ID cards. He selected 54 portraits: the number of cards in a deck (jokers included). In the exhibition catalog of Black Magic, Davis writes: What was once just an exercise in curiosity and discipline, blossomed into this extraordinary celebration of all the people and places I hold dear.

In tandem with the exhibition and the book, he created a series of promotional videos, paying homage to Josephs signature two-channel video format. Some of the prompts from the class were just about imagining the future and documenting movement capturing places through Blackness, he says. It really forced my thinking outside of the box I've been in. I put myself in the shoes of someone who makes films.

In April 2021, Sykes succumbed to his years-long battle with Alzheimers. Davis channeled Sykes resolve as he set out to find a venue for his vision, recalling how Sykes once described his approach to art-making: Dont wait for validation from them and they This is what you can do with what you have, today is the best day. Yesterdays gone and tomorrow aint got here yet."

When plans to exhibit Black Magic at a dream space fell through, Davis contacted Brittany Byrd, a young artist, stylist, influencer and the owner of Byrd Museum. Byrd is a recent graduate of Parsons and, like Davis, had experienced setbacks over the years while pursuing her artistic vision. When I was told, Youre not Black enough to do the things you want to do in art, thats when I stopped looking for validation, she says. When Davis approached her with the deck for Black Magic, she knew his work felt right for the space.

With Black Magic, Davis imagines a future which centers and celebrates Black individuals and culture. To do so, he says, he had to unravel his own experiences and critique areas he perceives as regressive within the community. You can't mention Afrofuturism without talking about queerness, he explains. Davis began contemplating his own relationship to queerness while making the portraits for Black Magic and also realized a majority of his subjects in the series identified as LGBTQ. It'd be a disservice [not to talk about it] and realistically it'd be a lie.

This spring, Davis will spend two weeks in each city he visits on his tintype tour. Its not a pop-up," he says. Its a show up and hang out. Davis will make two portraits of each person who sits for a portrait, keeping one for his archive (and future exhibition) and giving the other to the subject; an artifact of their existence, he calls it.

Davis hopes to complete 500 portraits on this tour, which will put a dent in his ambitious 20,000 portrait pursuit. If you show up and youre Black," he says. "you get a portrait."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Read the original post:

L.A. artist Adam Davis is building one of the largest troves of contemporary Black American portraits - Yahoo News

More than two years after nationwide shutdowns led to many companies implementing long-term work-from-home policies, as masking mandates ease and major office tenants finally set permanent return to office dates, the big question many landlords are facing iswhat will draw them back?

In todays office market, its not enough to have garden-variety features. Every amenity, offering and upgrade should have real thought behind it and should give tenants a reason to come into the office.

Recent market data illustrates the challenge facing vintage office buildings in the competition with newer properties that offer more upscale amenities, especially those that focus on health and wellness. According to a recent JLL report, New York Citys office market has about 68 million square feet of vacant space, more than two-thirds of which was built before 1970.

Fortunately, a wide variety of options are availablefrom low-cost to big-ticket itemsfor owners looking to upgrade their offerings, add more value and fill empty spaces.

First, owners should make a thorough assessment to see what they currently have, what they dont have, and what the path forward should be, said COO of JLL Property Management Kristin Mueller.

Its taking a hard and critical look at a property and thinking about whether its offering all the services and amenities today appealing to users of the building or who could become tenants, she said.

For those who are now accustomed to working remotely, office comforts that replicate the comforts of home can be a big draw. As a result, many office buildings are now offering amenities typically only seen in residential buildings.

People are asking us what the residential amenities that we are providing in residential buildings and how they can be adapted to office buildings, said Nancy Ruddy, founding principal at CetraRuddy, a New York City-based architecture firm.

One amenity thats getting plenty of buzz is the sleeping pod, typically a small room that workers can reserve to take a power nap. So far, the feature is mostly found on the West Coast and overseas, but CetraRuddy is researching it for inclusion in an upcoming New York City project. People are looking for things that other buildings might not have, said Ruddy.

Circadian lighting, which Ruddys firm has incorporated into residential designs, is now being considered for public spaces and corridors in office buildings. The system subtly modifies lighting throughout the day to replicate the natural light changes and circadian rhythms that humans are wired for. The goal is to help office workers stay more energized.

No matter what is chosen for an upgrade, putting real thought behind it goes a long way. And when it comes to health and wellness, owners should show a sensitivity to design, and consider going above and beyond, said JLLs Bice Wilson, senior vice president, project and development services.

To do anything speaks to the aspirations of the people you want to attract back to the office, Wilson said. The design of a recent headquarters project in downtown Stamford, Conn., needed more bike racks to earn Fitwel certificationbut the landlord said that tenants werent using the racks that were already in place. So why put in more?

Even if they dont use it, its an aspirational thing that they could if they wanted to, said Hrisa Gatzoulis, senior project manager, energy & sustainability at JLL. With recycling, even if the base building doesnt do it yet, if they ask about it, it starts making them think of things.

Creating an an air of exclusivity is an effective way to distinguish a property, and private clubs are a hot trend in Manhattans hyper-competitive market. Such owners as the Durst Organization and Silverstein Properties have recently rolled out upscale offerings at their trophy properties.

At Dursts Midtown office tower One Five One, the firm has launched its Well& concept. Tenants have access to a food hall from famed chef Charlie Palmer and sleek, modern event spaces and conference rooms. Also available is monthly programming with events like cooking demos, viewing parties and yoga.

And concierge services, typically associated with hotels and, more recently, with luxury residential buildings, are also getting new life as an upscale office amenity.

First impressions are also good places to start planning upgrades. Repositioning the lobby is a perennial favorite for owners, but it can be more even more important to a buildings overall identity than it seems at first glance.

Ben Shapiro, vice chairman in Newmarks New York City office, talks often about first impressions with his partners and their clients. They tick items off a listdoes the building have a fragrance? If so, is it a good or bad odor? What do the elevators look like? Is the security guard standing or sitting?

Things like that are a lot of low-hanging fruit that people miss, Shapiro said. People think of office space as disconnected from residential space. But when you walk into a residential building, you have an emotion. I think people need to be more prescriptive about how people should feel about walking into an office lobby.

Wilson cited an office property he recently toured in downtown White Plains, N.Y. The owner revamped the buildings lobby and turned it into an art gallery. While the upgrade wasnt dramatically different from the makeover of the buildings office spaces, it was enough to make a big difference to clients.

It shows that theres culture, a vibe of excitement and not just a tired old marble lobby, Wilson said.

Perhaps the most popular and, at this point, most necessary amenities and features to focus on are health- and wellness-related. Higher-quality HVAC systems, fitness offerings, and green space have all become top priorities.

Were introducing gardens all over the place, Mueller said. Any potential for outdoor space can be a big draw for tenants. But rooftops can have other uses toolike housing a bee colony. After a recent visit to a JLL-managed building in Chicago, Mueller walked away with a jar of fresh honey. Its a fun feature and its also good for the environment, she said.

For buildings on a budget, a little can go a long way. We spend something like 90 percent of our time indoorseven a small little thing like adding plants can improve our quality of life, said Gatzoulis.

And owners looking to provide outdoor space can outfit even the smallest square footage with a bench or a table where workers can take a break and get some fresh air.

When we can find the right balance between inconvenience and convenience, and collaboration without compromising health and safety, thats when people will be willing to return to the office, Mueller said.

Read the April 2022 issue of CPE.

Originally posted here:

Designs, Amenities and Upgrades for the New Office - Commercial Property Executive

We are excited to share our popular Stage 3 STEM project: designing a colony on Mars! Students learn about Mars, brainstorm and research design solutions for food, water, energy, and other critical systems, and build a colony model from recycled materials. This is the perfect way to take your STEM or STEAM program to the next level with a project-based STEM challenge! Now updated for distance learning!

Designing a Mars Colony is a real multidisciplinary project as students consider both keeping humans alive and happy. How will colonists get food? What is the Martian environment like? What happens during a dust storm? How will colonists stay entertained?

The Mars Colony is the capstone project for my STEM program, and I have been tweaking and improving it over the last five years. Our curriculum is the basis for a city-wide STEM competition in San Antonio, Texas, but you can easily use this guide for your own classroom or program showcase. And Vivify has a big announcement coming soon on a national level space colony competition open to all schools!

Click the video for a preview of this project, or better yet, here is feedback from a teacher who used this project in her classroom:

Link:

Design a Mars Colony: STEM Project Vivify STEM