ExoMed-3, the "Google Glass" Mission, Set for Sat. Launch

If all goes according to the current schedule, on Saturday at 4:47a EST, the Kentucky Space "ExoMed-3" mission will go to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket.

The micro-gravity work in regenerative medicine is being carried out in partnership with Tufts University.

Following the SpaceX capsule Dragon's berthing with the station, flatworms will be brought out of cold stasis for roughly 17 days on orbit. From the press release (PDF) of the experiment posted to the Kentucky Space site, the mission

will analyze the regeneration mechanisms of planarian flatworms in the microgravity environment (and absence of a geomagnetic field) of space. This experiment is a critical step in a specific regenerative medicine research and commercial pathway being pursued by the parties. Once returned (alive) to Earth mid-January, the flatworms’ regeneration patterns will be analyzed via morphological molecular genetic methods.

The mission will also feature the use of Google Glass to record astronaut interaction with Kentucky Space payloads. Transportation will be handled by FedEx Space Solutions.

Few people know that the nation's newest national laboratory is 240 miles overhead, continuously falling around the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour. When controlling for gravity (read that again), the science done in recent years shows that cells and genes behave and express themselves differently. As you might image, understanding exactly why that happens has attracted the attention of life sciences researchers, and may, if the ongoing work systematized and iterated for a reasonable cost, lead to a better understanding of regenerative dynamics and disease pathologies. The inhabitants living at the bottom of the gravity well on Earth would be the happy beneficiaries. 

SpaceX, in another first, will attempt to autonomously return the launch vehicle's 14-story first stage to a barge in the Atlantic ocean for an upright landing. It's part of the company's ongoing work to develop fully reusable rockets. It's important because rocket developers have always built new rockets for each mission, often discarding the husks on orbit as debris. SpaceX, if successful, could eventually return, refit and refly the same launch vehicles, exponentially lowering the cost for space access for themselves and, of course, their customers.

If flying towers and mastering gravity don't necessarily interest you, there is an altogether different and compelling reason why space exploration, among other highly technical and science based businesses, of course, is important.

Virtually all job growth in the past 20 years has come from companies less than five years old.

Is innovation important? The IdeaFestival thinks so.

Questions about the ExoMed-3 mission may be directed to the mission managers identified in the linked press release. Kentucky Space space systems engineer Twyman Clements is shown here working with the payload at Kennedy Space Center.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Big Idea: Do Physical Laws Evolve?

In Scientific American, John Horgan has published a fascinating interview with Lee Smolin, author and theoretical physicist, who describes why he was initially attracted to the field, as well as his work today on a theory that would finally unite quantum physics, or the world of the vanishingly small, with Einstein's relativity, or the physics of time and gravity and colossal, universe-sized matter.

Quantum mechanics and relativity are well tested theories supported by empirical evidence. Sadly, the project to harmonize both descriptions of nature is no closer to completion than it was 60 years ago.

In his exchange with Horgan, Smolin makes an intriguing argument for why this is so: the laws of physics themselves may evolve, a process he refers to as "cosmological natural selection." Scientific American:

Horgan: Why hasn’t the acceleration of universe—arguably the most important discovery in physics of the past 30 years–led to more theoretical advancement?

Smolin: At one level there is no problem, in that the acceleration of the universe’s expansion is easily described by adding a cosmological constant to Einstein’s equations, just as Einstein proposed in 1917.  The problem is just with the value of that constant—it’s ridiculously tiny. This is an extreme example of the basic problem that plagues the standard model of particle physics, which is that we don’t understand the reason for the value of any of the roughly 30 parameterize we need to write the laws of physics.

I am convinced that the answer to all these puzzles must be that these constants evolve, so the explanation for their values must be historical. Indeed cosmological natural selection gives a plausible explanation for the observed value of the cosmological constant.

Horgan is a skeptic about whether a unified theory can be had.

He briefly pursues this line of thinking. Does saying that laws evolve, he asks Smolin, also mean throwing out notions of falsifiability? Smolin counters by noting that the time scales involved should increase the chances that any theory could also make falsifiable predictions. It is after all what natural selection does. Smolin:

As Roberto Mangabeira Unger and I argue in our new book The Singular Universe, the most important discovery cosmologists have made is that the universe has a history. We argue this has to be extended to the laws themselves. Biology became science when the question switched from listing the species to the dynamical question of how species evolve. Fundamental physics and cosmology have to transform themselves from a search for timeless laws and symmetries to the investigation of hypotheses about how laws evolve (emphasis supplied).

The physicist, however, acknowledges "bedeviling metaphysical baggage" haunts these kinds of questions. We are, after all, metaphorical machines. Interested in things as they are, we live as creaturely poets in a beglamored space between, describing ever-always what things are like. Our analogies hold us back.

For fans of popular physics and the humanities majors among us, the lengthy email exchange between science journalist and scientist will reward.

While reading it, I was reminded of a favorite video of mine, in which Mars scientist Nathalie Cabrol argues passionately that we must "explore or die." The parallel is certainly far from exact, but change, whether in the inanimate or animate worlds, is inescapable. I've posted it here for you to watch.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Thank You, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

To all of our supporters, thanks for being a part of the IdeaFestival! Your sponsorship and purchases of festival passes make the non-profit nerdocalypse possible.

We simply couldn't do it without you!

For 2015, we're planning the most IdeaFestival IdeaFestival ever. So mark your calendars now and plan to be at the Kentucky Center in Louisville, Sept. 30 - Oct. 2, 2015. Follow us on Twitter, like our Facebook page and check out our YouTube channel, IFTV, to stay in touch.

From all of us at the IdeaFestival, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. We'll see you next year!

Stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by OakleyOriginals

This Holiday Season, Give Someone the IdeaFestival

During this special season, give someone the gift of the IdeaFestival.

The IF Team invites you to give a 2015 IdeaFestival Pass to yourself, a friend or colleague this holiday season at our lowest rate of only $325!

IdeaFestival 2015 will once again be held in Louisville from September 30th - October 2nd, 2015. Your Festival Pass provides admission to all sessions during the Festival, as well as invitations to other IF - related activities. You will also have the opportunity to meet and interact with world class speakers and some of the smartest and most accomplished people around. 

If you need a reminder of the value and mission of IdeaFestival, please take a moment to watch this video from our Founder, Kris Kimel. This limited time offer will end on December 19th!

Please take a moment to give the perfect holiday gift now.

Stay curious!

Lessons from the IdeaFestival

Having met and been exposed to some of the most innovative and creative people around during my time with the IdeaFestival, I like occasionally to reflect on what I've learned. A couple years ago I put it this way in a post, "The IdeaFestival Is about "This Too.'"

I've learned from many people at the IdeaFestival. From Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I learned history will occasionally deliver overwhelming news from the clear blue. It just happens. I learned from Jane McGonigal that games can be used to make a better reality rather than as a means of escape. I learned from Teller that knowing secrets behind the curtain didn't diminish the joy of staring slack jawed at dancing golden spheres. I learned from Burt Rutan that with supreme imagination and determination, we can trip to space in safety and return in comfort. Someday, I'll do that. The elfin and poised Daniel Tammet argued during the most recent IdeaFestival that when we think in similes and puns, we're thinking not unlike a savant. I learned that his prodigious mathematical and language abilities are not so far removed from yours or mine.

I learned that there isn't a mind to waste....

So in the spirit of the holiday, today I wanted to pass along some of the things I've learned while working with the IdeaFestival.

Whether one is an entrepreneur or artist, productivity comes from habits and routines. Work matters. Creative productivity, however, often comes from changing up the routine. Creativity Post:

The best ideas come from living life. From talking to others, reading, and watching and trying and testing and traveling and experimenting. Even an interaction at the grocery store or an observation at school can be the seed for an article or research inquiry or character background, if I’m paying attention.

It reminded me that discomfort will often let you in on a secret, if you're paying attention.

Breakthroughs are not about process, but changing a mindset, about looking at the same problem from a different angle, as Kris Kimel talked about in this video. For any business, an over-reliance on process can leave it vulnerable to the change it didn't see coming. Yes, you get more of what you measure. But not everything of value can be measured.

From entrepreneurs, I've learned that an abilty to concisely and memorably explain an idea is the difference between having it remembered in the future and having it forgotten. As an introvert, I'm still working on speaking up - as well as unapologetically spending the time alone that will let me be my best.

From Stephen Cave and other philosophers who have appeared at the IdeaFestival, I've learned that reason can take one anywhere, that uncertainty is a friend, doubt a friendly antagonist and that a radical skepticism should be avoided. Belief is indispensable.

It's just about putting one foot in front of the other.

From IdeaFestival 2013 speaker Maria Konnikova, I learned that observation is still the most useful and accessible of tools, if we can but manage to live in the moment. In an age of endless distraction, it's not as easy as it sounds.

Daunting challenges are conquered one step a time. From Philippe Petit I learned that it's the first - and last - steps that matter most.

Watching the fantastic Creative Capital artist Robert Karimi (pictured here) in October, I realized that enthusiasm flowing from a love for what you are enthusiastic about can win over an audience.

Thinking about thinking, I know now that our conscious, sentient selves, the mysterious part of us that can hold out possible worlds and slowly turn them over and around for examination is a feature, not a bug. Consciousness for computer, as Nicholas Carr pithily put it, would be a bug-as-bug. Humans can find deep meaning and value in a reading of Shakespeare's Henry IV as well as in spreadsheets and big data. We are the wiser to remember that. 

In the midst of dire statistics about growing economic inequality, I learned from Tyler Cowen that because information is so widely available, the humanities (and some technical expertise), may be more important than ever. For this humanities major, that observation was comforting.

From Oliver Burkeman, I learned that at the summit of human kind is not happiness, but meaning, which can be had in nearly any circumstance. And from interative artist Raphael Lozano-Hemmer I learned that the pleasure of great art isn't isn't about information. It's about communion, about a set shared experiences. What we know depends in part on how long we can sit quietly with each other.

I've learned that poets are systems thinkers and that One Big Idea can be all consuming, if not an outright danger, because creativity and new beginnings can mean, and so often do mean, letting go of ideas.

Have a great weekend!

Stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Geoff Oliver Bugbee