iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Ask Ethan: Can a Kevlar tether create artificial gravity in space? The cheapest way to create artificial gravity in space is to rotate two massive, tethered capsules together. But how to control for both angular momentum and Coriolis forces? bigthink.com/starts-with-... #space #astro #physics

bigthink.com

Ask Ethan: Can a Kevlar tether create artificial gravity in space?

A huge obstacle for human bodies in space is that we fare poorly in zero/reduced gravity. Can two rotating, tethered capsules overcome that?

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

#Google just launched #ProjectSuncatcher: four #AI processors in orbit testing the building blocks of a space-based data center. #Space offers abundant solar power, but vacuum makes it hard to dump heat. The chips can currently run only ~15 minutes before cooling.

scientificamerican.com

Google tests its plan for AI data centers in space with Project Suncatcher

Today Project Suncatcher is sending four AI processors into orbit on a SpaceX rocket to see whether the building blocks of a data center can survive space

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Erika DeBenedictis at @PioneerLabs describes a novel, biogenic #Mars terraforming architecture: successive microbes under domes make structural + transparent bioplastics, detoxify perchlorates, enrich the regolith, then produce food + oxygen through photosynthesis. #SpaceExploration

youtube.com

How to Terraform Mars – Erika DeBenedictis

YouTube video by The New Biology

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Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Paul Voosen @voosen.me · 28/09/2026

New Horizons is now *three days away* from shutting off its two heliophysics instruments, simply because NASA has not provided the $2M in funding it had promised to the mission last year or this year. There is no science basis for shutting these off. Our earlier coverage:

science.org

NASA’s New Horizons mission may shut down two instruments over lack of funding

Decision risks “incalculable loss” of data from the edge of the Sun’s influence, scientists say

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Memory Orb used by Dr. Ana Stelline’s character in Blade Runner 2049 to design/shape replicant memories. Inspired by vintage analog cameras, the prop actually worked and drove 5 motors spinning anodized concentric rings. Beautiful #artifact.

youtube.com

Blade Runner 2049's Most Complex Practical Prop

YouTube video by Adam Savage’s Tested

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Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Aaron Becker @aaronjbecker.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The tide turns under the Golden Gate Bridge about four times a day, and at its strongest this week the surface water ran through at nearly 4 knots. San Francisco Bay, 19 to 26 September 2026. Data: NOAA SFBOFS model #SanFrancisco #SFBay #dataviz

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Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Aaron Becker @aaronjbecker.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Tomorrow, one of the year's biggest tides reaches Ireland. Tuesday is an equinox spring tide: Dublin's high water at 01:18, then the sea drains almost four metres below it by mid-morning. Every shore going dry is real seabed, one lunar day in 20 seconds. #Ireland #tides #dataviz #maps

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

‘…March 1847 incident involving “spontaneous electrical currents” disrupting the telegraph systems on the Midland Railway, as a “brilliant aurora” glowed in the British Isles.’ #spaceweather #uk

arstechnica.com

Scientists solve 1840s space weather mystery

19th century Nature account of 1841 train delayed by geomagnetic storm got year wrong—due to a typo.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Sunset from Seattle as we approach the autumnal #equinox. Fine streamers, filaments of clouds forming over the Olympic range. Orographic cloud formation from moist Pacific air flowing toward the mountains, being forced upward.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Old data for @planetarysociety.bsky.social's LightSail 2 mission The sail angled face-on to catch sunlight & maximize thrust when moving away from the Sun in LEO, and then rotated edge-on, or "feathered," to minimize opposing solar pressure and atmospheric drag when moving toward it.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Project Moonwatch made a human “meridian fence”: observers aimed small telescopes at different slices of a precisely known north–south line & timed satellite crossings. The crossing time fixed right ascension, the telescope angle gave declination, and later sightings yielded an orbit.

youtu.be

Stellafane 2022 - Operation Moonwatch: Citizen Science at the Dawn of the Space Age

YouTube video by Stellafane, the official STM YouTube Channel

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

…So, in roughly 4¾ hours of simultaneous observing, they could collect approximately as many photons as one Seestar operating for 246 hours. The combined image has about 7.2 times better signal-to-noise than one telescope observing for the same 4¾-hour period.

youtu.be

52 Seestars Shooting at Once: 246 Hours of Exposure, and the Results Are Insane

YouTube video by Rooftop Astronomy

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

“…Some of these elements are, unsurprisingly, rounding errors compared to the amount we mine each year. But that’s around 1 percent of global annual palladium and thallium—a remarkable amount to eject into space.”

arstechnica.com

SpaceX’s orbital data centers would create a new category of e-waste

The yeetcycling math resembles asteroid mining in reverse.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Along the way, this Skagit Valley-rooted project collected data on kelp, ocean temperatures, waves and whales, with a commitment to make the research openly downloadable. Not billionaire-scale science, a small boat stitching together an open portrait of two continents’ oceans.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

2/3 From there, One Ocean sailed down the Atlantic coast of the Americas, through the Caribbean, around Cape Horn, and back north via the Galápagos and Hawaii, a 27,000-mile loop from the high Arctic to the southern tip of the continent.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

1/3 The Around the Americas expedition is nearly home. It left Anacortes, Washington, US, in May 2025 aboard a 48-foot sailboat, then headed north through Alaska and slipped through the Northwest Passage during the brief Arctic opening.

oneislandoneocean.com

One Island, One Ocean | One Island, One Ocean

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Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Ask Ethan: Should we stop worrying about vacuum decay? Vacuum decay is one of the most frightening, and undetectable-until-it-happens, possibilities for how this will all end. But if we learn enough, there could be a way to stop it. bigthink.com/starts-with-... #space #physics #cosmology

bigthink.com

Ask Ethan: Should we stop worrying about vacuum decay?

Our Universe has a positive, non-zero value to the energy within empty space. Can we potentially save ourselves by considering vacuum decay?

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Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Earth Topo Relief Bot @reliefbot.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

//\ Relief #207 Location: Siskiyou County, California, United States Coordinates: 41.5314, -123.2259 Elevation Range: 879m to 2021m Terrain type: high-mountainous #ReliefOfTheDay #DataViz #Geography

Relief visualization in perspective style showing elevation data from Siskiyou County at coordinates 41.5314, -123.2259 with elevation range from 879m to 2021m.

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Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

The very first image from the surface of Mars, transmitted to Earth from NASA's Viking 1 lander, 50 years ago today. 🧪🔭 www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

On the morning of July 20, 1976, roughly 40 minutes after mission controllers received word that the Viking 1 lander had successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, this photo gave us our first view from the surface of another planet.
NASA/JPL

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Interesting conservatory communication across time from curator to curator. Goal is to leave a trail for those who come after. Every treatment documented so future conservators can distinguish original material from later intervention, reverse today’s decisions if better techniques emerge.

youtube.com

Adam Savage Meets the 2001: A Space Odyssey Spacesuit Helmet!

YouTube video by Adam Savage’s Tested

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Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

99% of a core-collapse supernova’s energy is invisible Despite how luminous core-collapse supernovae are, 99% of the energy they carry away is invisible: in the form of neutrinos. Here's why that must be the case. bigthink.com/starts-with-... #supernova #astro #space #neutrinos #physics

bigthink.com

99% of a core-collapse supernova's energy is invisible

Despite the brilliance of these cosmic beacons, only 1% of a core-collapse supernova's energy is observable. The other 99% is in neutrinos.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

The Aries 1B lunar lander from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the spherical lunar lander shuttle that glides to The Blue Danube, has been painstakingly restored after decades in storage. Kubrick ordered most of the 2001 sets, props, costumes, and models destroyed. This escaped in a shed. #2001ASpaceOdyssey

youtube.com

The Last Surviving Spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey

YouTube video by Adam Savage’s Tested

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Likely more performance than a state of the Art orbit analysis. October 1957. Astronomers Fred Whipple and J. Allen Hynek trace Sputnik 1’s ground track across a giant relief globe, turning hundreds of visual observations into an understanding of humanity’s first artificial satellite.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

A 1-meter f/6 Corrected Dall-Kirkham (CDK) with a 6-meter focal length, the PlaneWave CDK1000 is built for more than deepsky imaging. Its direct-drive mount slews fast enough to acquire & precisely track satellites in orbit, and same optics can support optical (laser) comms with spacecraft.

wired.com

Building The Biggest Telescope You Can Buy

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Yearly tradition, #Seattle Greenwood classic car show. My favorite are vintage Volkswagen and Dotson #280Z.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Based on info I had about today's #spacex #starfall missions NOTAM and press announcement, I used #claude AI to create a simple spacecraft ground track explorer to see possible orbit and where/when re-entry burn would occur. I can adjust potential orbit & burn variables to see what fits. #dataviz

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

This reads like a Neal Stephenson novel. Thesis: Arrays of US-built industrial-grade robotic telescopes will be vital infrastructure for satellite tracking and a solar system spamming Internet driven by spacecraft laser communication.

arstechnica.com

This former hacker saw the light—and now wants to collect all of it

I don’t know of a bigger question we can answer as humans."

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

“…In terms of hardware, the rovers are actually very similar. Both use a RAD 750 processor and have the same amount of memory. However, Perseverance has an extra processor specifically for visual odometry, which allows it to drive autonomously.”

spectrum.ieee.org

Curiosity’s 13 Years of Software Hacks Keeps It Alive on Mars

It takes some special tricks to maintain a robot 200 million kilometers from home

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Technicians replacing tiles in the 1980s and SpaceX workers doing the same thing today is the emotional center of this piece. The hard problem is still material science, even though guidance and navigation get all the glory with chopsticks, landings on barges.

arenamag.com

The Heat Shield at the Edge of Space

Six decades of spaceflight, one unsolved materials problem.

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Reposted by Phil Naranjo

Andrea Luck @andrealuck.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Mars - Clouds over Terra Cimmeria - ESA Mars Express HRSC Full size 5k image: flic.kr/p/2sdpsHP 🔭🧪 Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY 2025-07-24 South is up HR211_0000 ND3+GR3+BL3

A close view of Mars from orbit, showing a dusty reddish surface covered in impact craters, with thin whitish high altitude clouds stretching along the upper limb of the planet against black space.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

My first look at a retired United 747-400 being suspended inside the Aero1200 development in Denny Triangle, #Seattle, turning Boeing jet-age hardware into a galleria/workspace above retail and near a Live Nation music venue.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

“…The rocket originally launched in January 2025 and carried other private space companies’ lunar landers… the booster was supposed to burn up following its reentry in Earth’s atmosphere. But that’s not what happened.”

scientificamerican.com

A SpaceX rocket booster is on track to hit the moon at several times the speed of sound

While there is no immediate danger, this crash highlights that space junk is increasingly expanding out of lower-Earth orbit

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

This is the personal computer circa 1983 used by the teen hacker in War Games. IMSAI 8080 in 1975, one of the first real hobbyist microcomputers, built around the S-100 bus.

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Phil Naranjo @philnaranjo.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

In the 1983 film WarGames, two very different computers were used for effects. HP 9845C used to render the war-room visuals as precomputed patterns, later projected onto screens like a living backdrop, while an Apple II inside the WOPR prop, driving its countdowns and lights in real

youtube.com

Behind the Scenes: WarGames (Badham, 1983) with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy

YouTube video by Serious Feather

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