Category Archives: Transhuman News

Getting humans back to the moon "this time to stay" will require the exploitation of lunar resources, NASA officials and exploration advocates say.

The most important resource, at least in the short term, is water ice, which is abundant on the floors of permanently shadowed polar craters. The ice found in these "cold traps" is thought to be stable and accessible.

But there may be other spots on the moon that could yield a mother lode of scientific data as well as the resources needed to sustain human occupation of Earth's celestial next door neighbor.

Related: Home on the Moon: How to Build a Lunar Colony (Infographic)

Researchers have identified "pits" on the moon, which are likely lava-tube "skylights" geological doorways to underground tunnels that were once filled with lava.

If they do indeed provide access to lava tubes, skylights could be a game-changer for human lunar exploration, said NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green. Lava tubes are protected from the harsh environment of the lunar surface, which is bombarded by radiation and experiences temperature extremes. One lunar day lasts about 29 Earth days, meaning surface locations endure about two straight weeks of daylight followed by two weeks of darkness.

"There are a number of things on the moon that are going to be surprises," Green said.

"We need to get in there," he added, referring to lunar skylights. "We need to verify. Maybe there's a lot of water in these skylights? We don't know. We're finding them all over the moon."

A lava-tube network would suggest protected corridors, free of temperature swings, bombarding radiation and menacing meteoroids. They also might offer a much larger habitat capability for future moon explorers.

"We could actually build connective roads in them," Green told Space.com. "It could be a whole new world for us. That's another absolute game-changer."

We don't have enough information yet to ascertain if skylights on the moon represent an interconnected underground roadway, said Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute. He is also chairman of the Mars Institute and director of the NASA Haughton Mars Project at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

"For starters, not all pits on the moon are necessarily lava tube skylights," Lee told Space.com. He said that some might be associated with isolated underground cavities.

"Secondly, not all lava tubes in a given region should be expected to be interconnected," he added. "Indeed, some might have formed at different times, and might run at different levels or depths underground."

Lee also said that while some lava tubes on Earth have smooth walls and floors, most have very rough surfaces and debris piles on their floors.

"We don't know how rough lava tubes on the moon might be, but the term underground roadway seems optimistic," Lee said. "In any case, in my view, it's not that pits on the moon would lead to a maze of underground corridors that makes them most interesting although that is fascinating but the fact that they give access to an environment that's radically different from the surface, whatever shape that underground environment might have."

Any underground cavity on the moon, after all, would provide shielding from temperature swings, space radiation, micrometeoritic bombardment and sandblasting from the rocket engines of landing or departing spacecraft.

Most intriguing to Lee are candidate pits recently identified inside Philolaus Crater near the north pole of the moon.

"They might be skylights associated with a network of lava tubes formed not in volcanic lava flows, but in an impact melt sheet, the temporary pool of molten rock that ponded inside Philolaus Crater following the large impact that created the crater," he said.

Interestingly enough, Lee said, the candidate pits inside Philolaus are located at such a high latitude that sunlight would never enter the underlying caves.

"These would be in perpetual darkness and so cold that ice could be cold-trapped in them, much like it is in the permanently shadowed regions at the actual poles of the moon," Lee said.

Exploring high-latitude pits on the moon might therefore offer an additional opportunity to harvest water on our lunar neighbor, Lee said.

Meanwhile, researchers have begun assessing the viability of underground lunar habitats.

Anahita Modiriasari, a postdoctoral researcher in Purdue University's Lyles School of Civil Engineering, and her colleagues have been appraising lunar imagery, reconstructed into a 3D model to evaluate lava tubes as a potential habitat for humans on the moon. This is a task that a rover or drone could potentially accomplish on the lunar surface.

The work is part of Purdue's Resilient ExtraTerrestrial Habitats (RETH), a project that investigates the value of future human habitats on the moon or Mars.

"All of this collected data is vital," Modiriasari said. "We are using it to build an advanced model of the size, strength and structural stability of the lava tube," she said. For example, what happens during seismic activity? What would happen if a meteorite strikes?

Related: Photos: The Search for Water on the Moon

In another development, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program recently awarded a Phase 3 contract to researchers developing robotic technologies to enable the exploration of lunar pits.

The "Skylight" concept mission is led by William Whittaker of Carnegie Mellon University. The NIAC award will help Whittaker and his team flesh out ways to explore and model a lunar pit. Doing so will require fast, autonomous micro-roving, which achieves significant exploration in a single lunar daylight period.

According to Whittaker, descent into and exploration of the lunar subsurface will come, but "pit-specific" questions must first be answered from the surface: How navigable are the rims? Are there caves? Are there rappel routes? What is the morphology?

Specifically, a mission of this type would create and downlink the first high-resolution, science-quality, 3D model of a vast planetary pit, Whittaker said.

"This [Skylight] initiative matures and transitions that technology. The technology innovations are exploration autonomy, in-situ 3D modeling, fast, far micro-roving and the aggregate means to achieve mission-in-a-week," Whittaker said.

The unanswered questions of lava-tube exploration aren't just technological. Also looming large, as with all aspects of lunar resource use and settlement, are space-law issues.

"Potentially exciting research areas cannot be claimed by sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means," said Joanne Gabrynowicz, professor emerita of space law at the University of Mississippi and editor-in-chief emerita at the Journal of Space Law.

"Doing things like digging corridors and building roads could easily be interpreted as making a claim by use or other means. This is prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty," Gabrynowicz said. "The U.S. and all spacefaring nations are party to it. A location with high scientific value will require an international agreement regarding its use and who can access it."

Leonard David is author of the recently released book, "Moon Rush: The New Space Race" published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Read the original:
Living Underground on the Moon: How Lava Tubes Could Aid Lunar Colonization

Settling on locations in the Solar System

The Solar System have been considered for colonization and terraforming. The main candidates for colonization in the inner Solar System are Mars[1] and Venus.[2] Other possible candidates for colonization include the Moon[3] and even Mercury.[4]

Many parts of the outer Solar System have been considered for possible future colonization. Most of the larger moons of the outer planets contain water ice, liquid water, and organic compounds that might be useful for sustaining human life.[5][6]

There have also been proposals to place robotic aerostats in the upper atmospheres of the Solar System's gas giant planets for exploration and possibly mining of helium-3, which could have a very high value per unit mass as a thermonuclear fuel.[7][8]

A number of government space agencies have periodically floated lunar plans such as Russia (2014),[citation needed] China (2012)[9][needs update] and[when?] the US[10] have made plans in constructing the first lunar outpost.

The European Space Agency (ESA) head Jan Woerner has proposed[when?] cooperation among countries and companies on lunar capabilities, a concept referred to as Moon Village.[11]

In a December 2017 directive, the Trump Administration steered NASA to include a lunar mission on the pathway to other beyond Earth orbit (BEO) destinations.[12][11]

In a May 2018 interview, Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos indicated Blue Origin would build and fly the Blue Moon lunar lander on its own, with private funding, but that they would build it a lot faster, and accomplish more, if it were done in a partnership with existing government space agencies. Bezos specifically mentioned the December 2017 NASA direction and the ESA Moon Village concepts.[11]

The hypothetical colonization of Mars has received interest from public space agencies and private corporations, and has received extensive treatment in science fiction writing, film, and art.

The most recent[when?] commitments to researching permanent settlement include those by public space agenciesNASA, ESA, Roscosmos, ISRO and the CNSAand private organizationsSpaceX, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.[citation needed]

The colonization of Venus has been a subject of many works of science fiction since before the dawn of spaceflight, and is still discussed from both a fictional and a scientific standpoint. Proposals for Venus are focused on colonies floating in the upper-middle atmosphere[13] and on terraforming.

In addition to the aerostats that can be used on Earth, of all known planets and moons in the Solar system, only the Venusian atmosphere has a Lana Coefficient[clarification needed] that allows for the use of vacuum airships made of some composites (that will work up to an altitude of 15 km) and graphene (up to an altitude of 40 km). This could mean that Venus is safer to colonize than Mars.

With discoveries as of 2020 traces of possibly indigenous life in the atmosphere of Venus, attempts of any humanization of Venus have become an increased issue of planetary protection, since uncontrolled effects of human presence might endanger such life.[14]

Once thought to be a volatile depleted body like our Moon, Mercury is now known to be richer in minerals than any other terrestrial body in the inner solar system.[15] The planet also receives almost seven times the solar flux as the Earth/Moon system and also has a magnetosphere, the safest for colonisation are Mars and Venus.

Mercury is an ideal place (according to Geologist Stephen Gillett, suggested in 1996) to build and launch solar sail spacecraft, which could theoretically launch as folded up, by a mass driver from Mercury's surface.[clarification needed] This could also make Mercury an ideal place to acquire materials useful in building hardware to send to (and terraform) Venus.[16]

As Mercury has essentially no axial tilt, crater floors near its poles lie in eternal darkness, never seeing the Sun. They function as cold traps, trapping volatiles for geological periods. It is estimated that the poles of Mercury contain 10141015kg of water, likely covered by about 5.65109 m3 of hydrocarbons. This would make agriculture possible. It has been suggested that plant varieties could be developed to take advantage of the high light intensity and the long day of Mercury. The poles do not experience the significant day-night variations the rest of Mercury do, making them the best place on the planet to begin a colony.[17]

Asteroids, including those in the asteroid belt have been suggested as a possible site of human colonization.

The Jovian system in general has particular disadvantages for colonization, including its severe radiation environment[20] and its particularly deep gravity well. Its radiation would deliver about 36 Sv per day to unshielded colonists on Io and about 5.40 Sv per day to unshielded colonists on Europa. Exposure to about 0.75 Sv over a few days is enough to cause radiation poisoning, and about 5Sv over a few days is fatal.[21]

Jupiter itself, like the other gas giants, is not generally considered a good candidate for colonization.[citation needed] There is no accessible surface on which to land, and the light hydrogen atmosphere would not provide good buoyancy for some kind of aerial habitat as has been proposed for Venus.

Io is not ideal for colonization, due to its hostile environment. The moon is under influence of high tidal forces, causing high volcanic activity. Jupiter's strong radiation belt overshadows Io, delivering 36 Sv a day to the moon. The moon is also extremely dry. Io is the least ideal place for colonization of the four Galilean moons.Despite this, its volcanoes could be energy resources for the other moons, which are better suited to colonization.

The Artemis Project proposed a plan to colonize Europa.[22][23] Scientists would inhabit igloos and drill down into the Europan ice crust, exploring any subsurface ocean. The report also discusses use of air pockets for human habitation.

Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System. Ganymede is the only moon with a magnetosphere, albeit overshadowed by Jupiter's magnetic field. Because of this magnetic field, Ganymede is one of only two Jovian moons where surface settlements would be feasible because it receives about 0.08 Sv of radiation per day. Ganymede could be terraformed. [19]

Due to its distance from Jupiter's powerful radiation belt, Callisto is subject to only 0.0001Sv a day.[19] When NASA carried out a study called HOPE (Revolutionary Concepts for Human Outer Planet Exploration) regarding the future exploration of the Solar System, the target chosen was Callisto.[24] It might be possible to build a surface base that would produce fuel for further exploration of the Solar System.

The Keck Observatory announced in 2006 that the binary Jupiter trojan 617 Patroclus, and possibly many other Jupiter trojans, are likely composed of water ice, with a layer of dust. This suggests that mining water and other volatiles in this region and transporting them elsewhere in the Solar System, perhaps via the proposed Interplanetary Transport Network, may be feasible in the not-so-distant future. This could make colonization of the Moon, Mercury and main-belt asteroids more practical.

Robert Zubrin identified Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as "the Persian Gulf of the Solar System", as the largest sources of deuterium and helium-3 to drive a fusion economy, with Saturn the most important and most valuable of the three, because of its relative proximity, low radiation, and large system of moons.[25] On the other hand, planetary scientist John Lewis in his 1997 book Mining the Sky, insists that Uranus is the likeliest place to mine helium-3 because of its significantly shallower gravity well, which makes it easier for a laden tanker spacecraft to thrust itself out. Furthermore, Uranus is an Ice giant, which would likely make it easier to separate the helium out of the atmosphere.

Zubrin identified Titan as possessing an abundance of all the elements necessary to support life, making Titan perhaps the most advantageous locale in the outer Solar System for colonization. He said, "In certain ways, Titan is the most hospitable extraterrestrial world within the Solar System for human colonization."[26] A widely published expert on terraforming, Christopher McKay, is also a co-investigator on the Huygens probe that landed on Titan in January 2005.

The surface of Titan is mostly uncratered and thus inferred to be very young and active, and probably composed of mostly water ice, and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons (methane/ethane) in its polar regions. While the temperature is cryogenic (95 K) it should be able to support a base, but more information regarding Titan's surface and the activities on it is necessary. The thick atmosphere and the weather, such as potential flash floods, are also factors to consider.

On 9 March 2006, NASA's Cassini space probe found possible evidence of liquid water on Enceladus.[27] According to that article, "pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface." These findings were confirmed in 2014 by NASA. This means liquid water could be collected much more easily and safely on Enceladus than, for instance, on Europa (see above). Discovery of water, especially liquid water, generally makes a celestial body a much more likely candidate for colonization. An alternative model of Enceladus's activity is the decomposition of methane/water clathrates a process requiring lower temperatures than liquid water eruptions. The higher density of Enceladus indicates a larger than Saturnian average silicate core that could provide materials for base operations.

Because Uranus has the lowest escape velocity of the four gas giants, it has been proposed as a mining site for helium-3.[8] If human supervision of the robotic activity proved necessary, one of Uranus's natural satellites might serve as a base.

It is hypothesized that one of Neptune's satellites could be used for colonization. Triton's surface shows signs of extensive geological activity that implies a subsurface ocean, perhaps composed of ammonia/water.[28] If technology advanced to the point that tapping such geothermal energy was possible, it could make colonizing a cryogenic world like Triton feasible, supplemented by nuclear fusion power.

The noted physicist Freeman Dyson identified comets, rather than planets, as the major potential habitat of life in space.[29]

There would be many problems in colonizing the outer Solar System. These include:

Read more from the original source:
Colonization of the Solar System - Wikipedia

In February 2022, the Adam Smith Institute published a report claiming that the Moon should be privatized to help wipe out poverty on Earth. According to the report, the Moon should be divided into parcels of land and assigned to various countries to rent out to businesses, which would boost space tourism, exploration, and discovery.

For now, thankfully, there is a treaty that stands in the way of such plans. The Outer Space Treaty was drawn up by the United Nations in 1967 with the idea to ban countries and individuals from owning property in space. It also forbids the militarization of outer space and bans weapons testing and military bases there.

The Adam Smith Institute maintains, however, that with more countries and companies competing in the space race than ever before its vital for us to move past the outdated thinking of the 1960s and tackle the question of extraterrestrial property rights sooner than later.

To some extent, this view is already a reality. In 2020, NASA launched an effort to allow companies to mine resources, announcing it would support private extraction of resources from the Moon.

That is one small step for space resources, but a giant leap for policy and precedent, said Mike Gold, NASAs former chief of international relations, summing up the new frontier of capitalism. In the meantime, similar legislation allowing privatization of extraterrestrial resources is being introduced in Luxembourg, India, China, Japan, and Russia.

Also in 2020, NASA changed its policy to allow private astronauts to go on the International Space Station. In April 2022, the first all-private team of astronauts began a weeklong mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight. Similarly, Elon Musks SpaceX and Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin have been launching their own private flights to space.

In short, the commercialization and privatization of space is accelerating. Space tourism, asteroid mining, and internet from satellites space are no longer science fiction. They have become a potential source for future growth and progress.

If there was one philosopher of the twentieth century who has turned his critical gaze to human space exploration, it is Gnther Anders.

Born as Gnther Stern in 1902 in Breslau, Poland (now Wrocaw), he was a student of Ernst Cassirer, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, and first worked as a journalist (it was during this period that he started to sign his articles Anders meaning different in German instead of Stern). With his wife Hannah Arendt he came to realize the coming reality of Hitlerism. In 193132, he penned his prophetic dystopian and anti-fascist novel, The Molossian Catacomb (Die molussische Katakombe), which he completed while in exile in Paris in 1933 when Hitler came to power. (Yet it would only be published in 1992, the year of his death). Throughout his career, he wrote extensively on technology, the atomic age, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima and also the Moon.

In 1969, Anders was among the six hundred fifty million people who watched the moon landing the first truly global TV event of the twentieth century. While most were mesmerized by Neil Armstrongs famous declaration Thats one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind he took a different view. In his book The View from the Moon: Philosophical Reflections on Space Travel, he commented that it was a giant leap for mankind only in so far as it leapt away from the road that leads to its better future.

Although it seems a new Cold War is being born, our future in the stars is today less defined by the race between countries (United States vs. USSR) than by private companies (SpaceX vs. Blue Origin, etc.).

It was Anders who warned us with his prophylactic catastrophism about the prospects of the appropriation of space. In the second volume of his The Obsolescence of Man:On the Destruction of Life in the Epoch of the Third Industrial Revolution, he made a claim about the shifting role of science. He argued that the mission of modern science is no longer to hunt down the secret that is, the secret or hidden essence of something but to discover the secret treasures that can be appropriated.

Anders poses the question, What use is the Moon? His answer is simple but terrifying: raw material. He goes further still, saying that being raw material is the criterium existendi today. It is a fundamental metaphysical thesis.

Anders argues that the lunar journey was not the destination, but the starting point. What was being presented as the human discovery of the Moon, was in fact a self-encounter with the Earth.

It was the recently invented James Webb telescopes images of the universe that sparked enthusiasm across the world. For Anders, the more sublime the universe appeared, the more tragic the contemporary destruction of our planet. The more technology advanced, the bigger the chances for destruction and self-destruction.

For Anders, the view from the telescope doesnt allow us as humans to look bigger. On the contrary, he writes, it is as if the universe were looking back at us through a tube as a punishment, shrinking us as much as it expanded with our telescopic view.

If we accept Anderss formulation about the self-encounter with the Earth, what do we see in the mirror today? What does our contemporary New Space Age represent?

Fifty years ago, Anders described the phenomenon of provincialism: men who fly to space in order to become famous or powerful on Earth. Its hard not to think of a figure like Jeff Bezos sending William Shatner (Star Treks Captain Kirk) in this context.

Through the exploration of space, man has become more provincial than himself, wrote Anders, because the space travels that were supposed to widen our world had exactly the opposite effect namely, even more fixation on Earth. In the near future, the occupied planets will most likely first serve as bases for the extraction of valuable resources that will make the richest on Earth even richer. The future has already begun, wrote Anders. But in the service of the past.

He claimed that he had considered giving Der Blick vom Mond (The View From the Moon) the alternative title of The Obsolescence of the Earth. He ultimately decided against it, however, because it would have implied that our planet is obsolete and that we would have to leave it and find other habitable planets. This was far from Anderss intention.

For figures like Musk and Bezos the new occupiers of space it is precisely this notion of the Earths obsolescence that has become the criterium existendi. In need of new resources for extraction, accumulation, and profit, they seek to colonize space, even if the price is the destruction of Earth.

The Apollo astronauts view from the Moon was simultaneously watched by millions of television viewers (approximately a fifth of the world population at the time), but Anders saw it as more than just a media spectacle. He recognized it as a globalizing and metaphysical event:

Not only did they encounter it, we experienced it as well. And since we remained back on the earth, and as earthly creatures are the earth, we may say in all fairness: for the first time and this is a historical event of a completely new kind the earth, standing before a mirror, became reflective, aroused to self-consciousness for the first time, or at least to self-perception.

After command module pilot Michael Collins returned to Earth after the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, he famously said that future flights should include a poet, a priest and a philosopher, so we might get a much better idea of what we saw.

The perfect candidate for the philosopher on board would have been Gnther Anders. While most of his work (including The View From the Moon) still remains rather unknown and unpublished in English, it is precisely his work on technology, apocalypses, and space exploration that can guide us today.

Today, with high-resolution imagery of the origins of the universe, his pertinent question, What use is the Moon? is as important as ever, though it may be extended to ask: What use is the universe? Whats the use of discovering the magic of our universe, if we continue destroying planet Earth? What is the use of Mars if you plan to colonize it with the same capitalist logic of extraction and expansion?

Besides discovering the universe, we need to rediscover Earth again and protect it from the fatal logic of the new space explorers or self-proclaimed occupiers.

Although Gnther Anders would have been the perfect candidate for any mission to space, he didnt have to travel to the Moon in order to see Earth better. But he also saw the Moon.

Excerpt from:
Under Capitalism, the Colonization of Space Means the ... - Jacobin

Divine art in the Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 15001800 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Oh heavens above! In a circular painting by 18th-century Mexican artist Antonio de Torres, aglorious Virgin hovers in heaven among a swirl of pastel clouds.As the Virgin looks up to God, she emanates divine light. A 12-starred halo crowns her head as she stands on a crescent moon, with a jolly sun peeking out from behind her; each of these motifs refers to Revelations 12:1 in the Bible. Saints surround her, with some gazing adoringly up at her, and others gazing out of the painting to encourage our faith.

De Torress jubilant painting is packed full of devout meaning, exquisite details, and a big surprise: Its only seven inches in diameter and is a Mexican nuns badge that Conceptionist and Hieronymite nuns pinned to their habits, at their throats. (Friars pinned similar badges to their capes.)

Nuns and friars badges are a unique Mexican tradition that began in the 17th century.Yet the badgespaintings connect to age-old European traditions. De Torress circular painting harks back to the popular Florentine Renaissance tradition of tondo (circular) painting, which was itself inspired by ancient medals. An artist needed to be a skilled draftsman to conquer the circular composition.

Mexicos eminent artists created badges that echoed the grandeur of their paintings. On each badge, the artist painted a central biblical scene, with popular choices being the Annunciation (where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would have a son, Jesus)or the Immaculate Conception (the Catholic belief that Jesuss mother was born without sin). The artists then filled the edges with flowers, cherubs, angels, and saints according to the badge owners preference and religious order. For instance, Mexican painter Jos de Pez created a delightful rectangular friars badge of the Nativity, with God watching over the Holy Family.

These badges were one of the new arts born from the Spanish colonization of the New World,and both examples above are in The Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 15001800 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The exhibition explores this complex yet fascinating period of art history through over 90 paintings, sculptures, textiles, and decorative arts from LACMAs collection.

In the late 15th century, Spain began colonizing the New World; subsequently, the art of the Americas altered. Local artists, while staying true to their traditions, were influenced by European, Asian, and African imports and styles, thus creating new styles and types of art.

The development of Catholic art in the Americas is one fascinating aspect of the exhibition.When the Spanish came to the New World, religious paintings and sculptures were important in converting the indigenous population to Catholicism. Wherever possible, Spanish artists passed on their Western techniques to local artists, resulting in Latin American devotional works acquiring a Spanish style.

Other European styles were also passed on. For instance, in the 1530s, after the Spanish colonized Cuzco, high in the Andean mountains of Peru, European artists shared their skills with locals. Indigenous and European artists working in the town from the 16th to the 18th century became known as the Cuzco School, which spread across the Andes and to Bolivia and Ecuador.

Often in early Spanish American paintings, theres a naivet to the artists techniques, but the divine message conveyed in those paintings is just as potent as any of the more technically accomplished High Renaissance religious works. Its an important reminder that the artists intent behind a painting is powerful.

A small icon titled The Holy Family by Mexican artist Nicols Rodrguez Jurez illustrates this point well. Jurez depicted Mary and the Christ child gazing directly at us, while Joseph gazes at Christ who raises his hand and blesses us. All three figures emanate divine light, and the call to connect to our faith shines so bright. We forget that these figures arent quite anatomically correct, with their wide eyes, chubby cheeks, and plump hands.

Hispanic artists took their inspiration fromEuropean compositions while staying true to their own artistic traditions. For instance, one member of Mexicos newly established (1722) academy of painters, the artist Nicols Enrquez, looked to the Jesuit book of engravings titled Evangelicae Historiae Imagines (Images of Evangelical History)by JernimoNadal for inspiration when he paintedThe Adoration of the Kings With Viceroy Pedro de Castro y Figueroa, Duke of La Conquista.In the same painting, Enrquezalso referenced a work in Mexico Citys cathedral by Mexican painter Juan Rodrguez Jurez.

A prime example of Spanish style converging with local sensibilities is de Torress painting Sacred Conversation With the Immaculate Conception and the Divine Shepherd. In the painting, a Conceptionistnun converses with the Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross. She wears a sacred badge on her habit, and bows as she passes her divinely awakenedheart to the saint.

On the left side of the painting, the Virgin stands atop a white lily, a symbol of purity. Christ appears as the good shepherd standing on the middle of the bridge, in the center of the painting. According to the LACMA website, the bridge links all four figures in the painting and symbolizes that the nuns sacred communion with the saint could take place due only to the divine intervention of the Virgin and Christ.

De Torres painted the bridge from a birds-eye perspective, a view popular in Flemish paintings by the likes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

The familiar Our Lady of Guadalupe motif surrounded by four vignettes has been reproduced many times. Many of these paintings appear similar but their styles differ. This was due to the artists copying the paintings of famed artists. For instance, Mexican artist|Juan Correamade a wax template for painters to copy his works.

In the exhibition, Manuel de Arellanos and Antonio de Arellanos 1691 Virgin of Guadalupe painting is signed touched to the original to acknowledge the master copy. In the painting,four vignettes show how the Virgin appeared to Indian Juan Diego in 1531 asking him to request that the bishop build a church on the hill in her honor. Legend has it that the bishop didnt believe him. The Virgin appeared to Diego three times with the same request, but the bishop didnt budge. On her fourth visit, the Virgin told Diego to go to the hill and pick Castille roses and give them to the bishop. Diego gathered the roses in his cloak and then presented them to the shocked bishopCastille roses dont grow in the region. When Diego emptied all the roses from his cloak, miraculously the Virgins image was imprinted on it. The final vignette in the painting shows the miracle.

Miguel Gonzlez also depictedthe legend in using enconchado, a new technique that peaked around 1680 to 1700, whereby mother-of-pearl inlays enhanced a painting. The iridescent nature of mother-of-pearl adds a further touch of transcendence tohis Virgin of Guadalupe painting.

In the Hispanic world, sacred sculptures are polychromaticcolorfully painted.

Oftentimes, pieces by the same sculptor could appear very different, due to the involvement of different artisans. Patrons often received their commissioned statues unpainted. It was up to them to arrange for a painter to embellish the works and make the pieces as lifelike as possible. For naturalistic appeal, artists often added glass eyes, ivory teeth, and real eyelashes to the sculptures. In some cases, the works were dressed in costumes.

A small, late-18th century, private devotional sculpture of the Virgin of the Rosary from Guatemala is on display in the exhibition. The painter of the devotional sculpture,Felipe de Estrada, signed the work, which artists rarely did. He decorated the Virgins robes with fine fabric; such works of art were called estofados.

Hispanic artists adapted some Spanish decorative techniques, and the sculptures took on a distinctly local flair. For instance, in Spain gold was commonly used as a ground, a base layer on the sculptures to which paint was applied. Artists would then scratch designs through parts of the painted surface to reveal the gold beneath. Some of the gold remained concealed under the paint, which further enhanced the paint pigments. Artists in Quito, Ecuador, used gold and silver grounds for their statues. This practice had existed in Spain, but the Ecuadorian sculptors used it to more dramatic effect, frequently juxtaposing it with gold.

The sacred paintings and sculptures of Spanish America acted as instruments of faith: to inspire devotion. Believers developed intimate relationships with these sublime, functional pieces. Artists repainting pieces to align with popular sensibilities was a common practice in sculpture and in painting. Hispanic artists infused each of their works with intense emotions, gestures, and vitalityall explicitly designed to teach Scripture and to inspire contemplation and devotion to God.

The Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 15001800 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is curated by the museums head of Latin American art, Ilona Katzew. The exhibition runs until Oct. 30. To find out more, visit LACMA.org

Read the rest here:
A New World of Heavenly Art - The Epoch Times

A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers

In this wickedly whimsical Gothic murder mystery brimming with romance, betrayals, and chills, a fake spiritualist is summoned to hold a sance for a bride who died on the eve before her wedding, but as nefarious secrets are revealed, the line between hoax and haunting blurs.

Be careful what you conjure

In Victorian London, Genevieve Timmons poses as a spiritualist to swindle wealthy mourners until one misstep lands her in a jail cell awaiting the noose. Then a stranger arrives to make her a peculiar offer. The lord he serves, Mr. Pemberton, has been inconsolable since the tragic death of his beautiful bride-to-be. If Genevieve can perform a sance persuasive enough to bring the young lord peace, she will win her freedom.

Soothing a grieving nobleman should be easy for someone of Genevieves skill, but when she arrives at the grand Somerset Park estate, Mr. Pemberton is not the heartbroken lover she expected. The surly yet exceedingly handsome gentleman is certain that his fiance was murdered, even though there is no evidence. Only a confession can bring justice now, and Mr. Pemberton decides Genevieve will help him get it. With his knowledge of the household and her talent for illusion, they can stage a haunting so convincing it will coax the killer into the light. However, when frightful incidents befall the manor, Genevieve realizes her tricks arent required after all. She may be a fake, but Somersets ghost could be all too real

A Dreadful Splendor is delicious brew of mystery, spooky thrills, and intoxicating romance that makes for a ghoulishly fun and page-turning read.

Reasons to read it: Remember Penny Dreadful with Eva Green? Me too, and this book promises to fill the Victorian-era-sance-shaped void the show left in my heart. Its also bound to satisfy fans of other amateur Victorian sleuths, like in A Curious Beginning, with the added bonus of Genevieves roguish ways which obviously only make the journey more fun.

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SEA Fellows students and symposium hosts pose outside the Downeast Institute in Beals, Maine. Photo by Hannah Greene

Beals, Maine Twenty-five students from 15 universities nationwide presented their summer marine research at the sixth annual Science for Economic Impact and Application (SEA) Fellows Symposium, held this year at the Downeast Institute (DEI) in Beals, Maine. More than 50 people, including students and their family members; researchers; local municipal leaders and other community members; and marine professionals, attended the Aug. 9 symposium.

The SEA Fellows program encourages students in marine research to collaborate on climate-relevant science; network with other undergraduates; and develop science communication and presentation skills. The SEA Fellows posters from the symposium are online.

This is a celebration of marine science and young scientists. The reason we have SEA Fellows and this symposium is to connect these young scientists with one another and allow them to hear from like-minded individuals about the projects theyre developing, noted Heather Leslie, director of the University of Maine Darling Marine Center and professor of marine conservation science in the UMaine School of Marine Sciences.

Students from across the University of Maine System participated in the symposium. Their research related to a wide range of applied marine science themes. Lindsey Karwacki, a rising senior at the University of Maine at Machias, focused on the reproduction and culture of the moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita). While observing the jellyfish larvae in an aquaculture setting over many months, Karwacki set a goal to understand the life history and culture of such invertebrates to create displays for public and private aquaria. With her project, Karwacki hopes that jellyfish aquaculture may be one possible solution to diversify coastal economies in Down East Maine.

SEA Fellow Brady Kaelin, a rising junior at UMaine, is interested in how different types of fungal spores respond to saltwater immersion. He plans to conduct research on campus this fall to investigate how species of fungi fare in response to seawater. Kaelin hopes that his experiments will advance understanding of colonization and persistence dynamics of fungal populations on terrestrial islands.

Students from institutions beyond Maine also shared their work, all of which was conducted with researchers based in the state. Among them was Florida State University rising senior Lena Kury, who worked with UMaine professor Damian Brady at the UMaine Darling Marine Center this summer. Her independent research focused on Atlantic cod and one of the most important habitats for juveniles of the species: eelgrass beds. Using baited remote underwater video (BRUV), Kury investigated how well this technology can help researchers identify juvenile cod in eelgrass habitats.

University of New Hampshire 2021 graduate Owen Hamel worked in professor Robert Stenecks laboratory, also at the Darling Marine Center. Hamel investigated how American lobsters respond to low oxygen environments.

Understanding lobster behavior in response to hypoxic environments could help fisheries minimize lobster mortality in traps by changing fishery policies on trap placement in areas with higher oxygen levels, Hamel explained.

The symposium was hosted by the Downeast Institute, which serves as the marine science field station for UMaine Machias. DEI Director of Research Brian Beal welcomed the Fellows to the facility in Beals, noting that they had arrived at the easternmost marine laboratory in the U.S. The SEA Fellows then toured the lab, learning about the variety of research and education activities underway from the Fellows who were based at DEI all summer. Before lunch, Leslie and one of the Fellows, Meghan Nadzam, led a communication workshop, helping to prepare the students for the afternoon symposium.

During her poster presentations, Roger Williams University rising senior Emily Leonard reflected on her SEA Fellows experience: Meeting so many different people and how they go about their projects was amazing. Everyone had different ideas when it came to presenting their projects. Its fun to talk to people around your age about topics we are all passionate about, Leonard said.

For Evan Busch, a student at the University of Maine at Machias, SEA Fellows reinforced his interest in scientific research and his plans for the future.

I loved living here at DEI this summer. DEI was a place where I could conduct my own summer research, and as an undergraduate, that can be a very rare opportunity. I knew that research is something I want to pursue for a career, so I knew that working as a SEA Fellow was something that I wanted to jump on. I can now be more prepared for a job or graduate school, Busch said.

DEI Executive Director Dianne Tilton closed the student symposium, emphasizing how important it is that such solutions-oriented science is shared with members of the public. As a former state legislator, Tilton spoke from experience about the value of such research and its effective communication.

It is important that policy makers and leaders know how to use different types of research, and understand how to discern its quality. These undergraduates are helping to make that happen, Tilton says.

Contact: Matthew Norwood, matthew.norwood@maine.edu; Dianne Tilton, dtilton@downeastinstitute.org

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Diving into student research at the Summer 2022 SEA Fellows Symposium - UMaine News - University of Maine - University of Maine