Author name: Michael Ricciardi

Michael Ricciardi is a well-published writer of science/nature/technology articles as well as essays, poetry and short fiction. Michael has interviewed dozen of scientists from many scientific fields, including Brain Greene, Paul Steinhardt, Arthur Shapiro, and Nobel Laureate Ilya Progogine (deceased). Michael was trained as a naturalist and taught natural science on Cape Cod, Mass. from 1986-1991. His first arts grant was for production of the environmental (video) documentary 'The Jones River - A Natural History', 1987-88 (Kingston, Mass.). Michael is an award winning, internationally screened video artist. Two of his more recent short videos; 'A Time of Water Bountiful' and 'My Name is HAM' (an "imagined memoir" about the first chimp in space), and several other short videos, can be viewed on his website (http://www.chaosmosis.net). He is also the author of the ebook 'Zombies, E.T's, and The Super Entity - A Selection of Most Stimulating Articles' and for Kindle: Artful Survival ~ Creative Options for Chaotic Times

Federal Court Decision Rules In First Lawsuit To Involve A Planet

Juliana v. U.S. Government And the winners are … today’s children (the plaintiffs) … and future generations (the ultimate winners). According to legal observers, it’s the first lawsuit to “involve a planet” …. But faithful readers of Planetsave will likely see that this legal case and argument is/was inevitable (and perhaps the ulterior reason that

Beyond SETI – Time to Start Calling The Cosmos?

Most every one has heard of SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — and most also know that, so far, the scientists that operate the powerful telescopes and computers that analyze potential signals from civilizations beyond Earth have come up empty-handed — with the possible exception of the so-called ‘Wow! signal’ (detected only once,

'Super Cells – Building With Biology' – The Hope (And Hype) of Bio-Design [Book Review]

Part ‘history of’, part ‘how to’, and a good portion hype, Super Cells ~ Building With Biology, by Nina Tandon and Mitchell Joachim, is a fascinating, inspiring, and not-infrequently self-promoting/congratulating celebration of the “collision of Biology, Design and Digital Fabrication.” The book heralds a new movement referred to as bio-design (or biodesign) in which diverse designers appropriate the

Quantum Entanglement Experiment Proves 'Non-Locality' For First Time, Will Permit Multi-Party Quantum Communication

Quantum entanglement — what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” — involves a peculiarly strong correlation between two particles (typically, polarized photons) such that measuring a property of one particle simultaneously determines the property of the second particle — even when those two particles are separated by great distances (theoretically, even when the particles are at

Apocalypse News Roundup: Corn Declines, A Killer New Virus, NASA Forecasts 'Irreversible Collapse' & Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse [VIDEO]

Greetings faithful readers… Well, March is turning out to be a fine month for apocalyptica of seemingly every sort…So, as your faithful reporter of all things cataclysmic and eschatological (well, I try), I give you this friendly round-up of end-full news items for your reading pleasure, with brief commentary. To wit: Maize Can’t Take the Blaze

A Gem Of A Find – Oldest 'Piece of Earth' Discovered

  Measuring just 200 by 400 microns (about 10 times the width of a human hair on its widest dimension), one would think finding an ancient zircon to be harder than finding a needle in the proverbial haystack…Or, in this case, like finding a nearly microscopic gemstone on a sheep farm in Western Australia. But geologists treasure

Predicting Climate Change Impacts – Quotes From The Experts

  Yesterday at the annual Science (AAAS) meeting here in Chicago, a panel of climate experts convened for a symposium to present their research and discuss the risks and challenges facing the science as it seeks to model and predict climate changes — such as the probability of “extreme events” — due to global warming

See 63 Years of Climate Change In 15 Seconds [NASA Animation]

Despite what some in the “mainstream” media assert, there is no “debate about global warming” — not amongst informed scientists, anyways. Scientists knowledgeable about climate change debate only the finer details, such as: how much CO2 increase will double surface temperature (known as the Climate Sensitivity Equilibrium), or, the role of aerosols in slowing or

New & Extremely Rare Species of River Dolphin Discovered in Brazil

Imagine: You are a zoologist on a research expedition, exploring the remote riverine ecosystems in some of the remotest parts of the Brazilian Amazon river basin…You have heard rumors from the local tribes people of a large, strange, long-nosed creature that inhabits the waters here (it’s bad luck to kill a such a creature)…You know

Astronomers Capture First Image of 'Cosmic Web' That Holds Galaxies Together

Just a few years ago, indirect evidence, or “signatures”, of gigantic cosmic “tendrils”, or filaments, was discovered lurking around distant multi-galactic formations. Vast in scale but invisible, such filamentous structures apparently account for much of the missing matter required to keep galaxies intact (and prevent them from dispersing randomly throughout the cosmos). These intricately branching

In First, Physicists Demonstrate Complex Quantum Phenomenon On The Macro-Scale Using Plastic Film [VIDEO]

In a first for Physics, scientists working at IBM Research have successfully demonstrated Bose-Einstein condensation — a complex quantum phenomenon in which multiple particles suddenly begin acting in unison — using a photo-luminescent polymer. What’s more, the phenomenon was demonstrated on the macroscale, and, at room temperature. The Bose-Einstein Condensate – When Many Act As

New 'Extreme' Form of Bacteria Found In NASA, ESA Clean Rooms

A completely new bacterial life form that appears to inhabit only space agency ‘clean rooms’ has been classified after more than three years of investigation and analysis. Microbial lifeforms that can survive and even thrive in extreme environments — known as extremophiles — have become the focus of much research in recent years. Such extreme-adapted

MIT Group Creates Amazing Interactive 'Touch' Display Technology [VIDEO]

Making Data ‘Tangible’: It’s called inFORM and it comes from MIT’s Tangible Media Group…and it’s got to be one of the coolest and most amazing interactive display technologies I’ve seen in, well, almost forever… According to the group’s website, ‘The Tangible Media Group, led by Professor Hiroshi Ishii, explores the Tangible Bits vision to seamlessly

The Private Mission To Save Planet Earth (From Asteroids)

Our Solar system is a potentially world-altering place when it comes to asteroid impacts; planetary scientists continue to find plentiful evidence of multiple and massive asteroid impacts on other planets and the various moons that orbit them…And, of course, there is evidence of “extinction level” impacts occurring in the distant past here on Earth. Such

How Poverty Impairs Mental Functioning And Promotes Risky Decision-Making

Researchers who study poverty have long-recognized that those who live in poverty frequently behave in less capable ways and engage in risky behaviors that both produce additional problems and also exacerbate their poverty status. Previous research on people living in long-term poverty (Shah et al, 2012, others) have shown fairly conclusively that lack of financial

Magnetic Stimulation of The Brain Used To 'Define Consciousness'

While our best brain theorists and cognitive philosophers still debate the exact nature of (and “threshold” for) consciousness, this same disagreement drives the need to define consciousness by doctors and neuroscientists treating or studying brain-damaged patients.  New research out of the University of Milan using a brain stimulation technique has derived an ‘index’ for measuring

Cosmic 'Cold Spot' Challenges Inflation Model Of The Early Universe

This past spring, the most detailed mapping of the early universe was released to the public. Certain anomalous features of this map have attracted the intense scrutiny of astrophysicist and cosmologists. In particular, there appears to be a massive “cold spot” in the data distribution whereas the current Inflationary Model of the universe says there

Researchers Develop 'Early Warning' Probe for Alzheimer's Disease – Advance May Lead To A Cure

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a hybrid nanoparticle-antibody probe that functions as an “early warning system” for detecting Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Neuroscientist William Klein and nanotechnologist Vinayak Dravid combined an engineered  antibody (an immune molecule that binds strongly with an antigen or pathogenic molecule) with iron-oxide nanoparticles to create a probe that — in

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