The flying snake Chrysopelea ornata has attracted the attention of DARPA. (Photo Credit: CC BY-SA/LA Dawson/Wikipedia)

For many people, like Indiana Jones, snakes are crawling creatures of nightmare. But what about flying snakes? Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to get up close and personal with a particular breed found in southeast Asia, India and southern China. It’s Chrysopelea ornata, or the ornate flying snake. The tree-dwelling serpent typically grows two to three feet long and can glide long distances. The Department of Defense is backing a Virginia Tech study to discover how the flying snakes accomplish this, reports the Washington Post.

Flying snakes break the fixed-wing mold

Scientists have observed that most animals with the ability to glide in air accomplish this with fixed wings or body parts that resemble wings, but these flying snakes do something entirely different. Snakes of the Chrysopelea genus undulate from side to side in what looks like a mid-air slither. This creates an aerodynamic system that allows them to move quickly from the tops of 200-foot-tall trees to areas nearly 800 feet away from the trunk of the tree. As Virginia Tech researcher John Socha puts it, “They become one long wing.”

Flying snakes can turn in the air

One aspect of Chrysopelea ornata’s flight still baffles scientists. After taking a flying leap then falling for a while to pick up speed before undulating, the flying snakes are actually able to turn in the air. At the point that this ability was discovered, Socha’s previous sponsor – the National Geographic Society – was supplanted by DARPA, an organization interested in advanced military technology. DARPA says the “physical dynamics of snake flight” are of great interest, but it has yet to reveal more about its research. It is known that the venom of the flying snakes won’t hurt a human, but it is potent enough to kill a small lizard.

The origin of the winged serpent

Scientists believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs – which were reptiles – so the concept of flying snakes may not be outlandish. In terms of human culture, flying snakes may have made an impact on the minds of ancient humanity. The flying feathered snake deity Quetzalcoatl of Aztec mythology created humankind. That’s not so evil, is it, Indiana Jones?

Sources

Washington Post

Wikipedia entry for Quetzalcoatl

Chrysopelea ornata takes flight

This photo of the surface of Mars shows what astronauts will be living in should the NASA and DARPA project succeed. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

A recent joint project between NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been uncovered. The idea is to create a spaceship able to ferry not only personnel but sufficient supplies for a visit to Mars. It’s called the Hundred Year Starship, but the journey would be a bit different from the moon landings. These astronauts wouldn’t be coming back.

DARPA and NASA to colonize Mars

At the Long Conversation conference in San Francisco, Pete Worden of the NASA Ames Research Center announced a new project between NASA and DARPA. The project, according to The Telegraph, is so far called the Hundred Year Starship program, and the two government agencies are looking to enlist help. The world’s billionaires are being solicited for donations, including Larry Page, co-founder of Google. An initial design could be available next year. This project is far more ambitious than the DARPA Challenge, an endurance race for self-driving cars. The goal of this project is to come up with a spacecraft that can ferry a crew of astronauts and a large amount of cargo to Mars. However, unlike Apollo 11 or the International Space Station missions, these astronauts aren’t coming back.

One way ticket

The distances between Earth and other planets doesn’t lend itself easily to a ferry service. A journey to Mars would take nine months to complete. Anyone who lands there will have to be self sufficient. NASA has $1 million to spend, but it is anticipated the project would cost at least $10 billion to pull off. To move one pound of equipment in space, according to Fox News, four pounds of fuel are required to do it. Getting to Mars in the first place is difficult enough, and a return journey that much closer to impossible.

Colonization and the final frontier

Mars is the next great undertaking in space exploration, and colonizing other planets is perhaps next on the list. The mission would be ferrying astronauts to Mars to establish a permanent colony. They would need to adjust to living on the Red Planet. This planet, at some point, will die. Mankind, if it is to survive, must find a way to live somewhere else.

Sources

The Telegraph

Fox News

Ready to serve! (Photo: www.instructables.com)

You’ve heard of those remedies that supposedly improve your memory, focus and thinking ability, right? Sometimes they’re natural substances like berries and roots, other times they’re not so natural (pharmaceutical would be the operative word). Whatever the case, these brain-boosting supplements are frequently expensive, so much so that using them long-term could eventually put you in a situation where one little emergency could put your budget in territory where no fax payday loans and cash advances are necessary to keep you on your feet.

However, if you’ve already given your life to the military by enlisting, I suppose they would consider that ample payment for them to experiment on you with the very latest DARPA technology that fosters brain optimization and synchronizes brain function. In a way, it’s mind control on the part of the military leaders enlisted men and women are programmed to trust. Once the sanctity of the mind is breached, however, you trust no one.

Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy

Katie Drummond reports for Wired that the U.S. military is determined to crack the mysteries of the human mind open like an egg. In 2008, your tax dollars funded Pentagon research into replicating the function of a cat’s brain. Why? So they could move on to higher levels, such as reproducing a monkey mind! Ostensibly, it was so that they could further understand how brain damage works, or so that the connection between thermodynamic energy and brain function could become more understood.

But what are they REALLY after?

Here’s what the Pentagon wants to do with DARPA’s help: they want to turn soldiers’ brains into hard drives. No, not exactly like Johnny Mnemonic; the military wants to “optimize human memory storage and recall by synchronizing neural brain waves.” Not only would syncing they up possibly bring about better retention, but it may also make troops EASIER TO CONTROL. Yes, I’m talking mind control, people. As if troops don’t give their country enough.

Looking at the scientific details

Forming memories and recalling them from long-term memory storage in our brains are both functions that depend upon how brain waves work together. First of all, Gamma waves facilitate help us make memories, while Theta waves write the immediate short-term memories into lasting information in our long-term memory. If they were to simply throw in some Alpha waves synchronization, we could be looking at the rudiments of mind control.

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Where DARPA wants to mess around with this system is as follows: they want to use technology to burn orders directly into brains via taking control of the Gamma and Theta waves. Their stated theory is that this would “optimize” brains and give troops the ability to absorb larger bits of information during stressful situations. DARPA, according to Drummond, wants to  “increase the total quantity of information reliably recalled from a given learning session over a minimum of three durations – 24 hours, one week, and one month, post exposure.”

What will this do to jobs?

DARPA is doing this to improve the efficiency of military forces. If fewer people are required to process large blocks of information, that means staff will be let go. If the technology were to reach beyond military sectors, a similar problem would occur in the commercial workforce. Better brains mean fewer employees.

But here’s one of my biggest problems… how much money is being spent on all this research? It isn’t entirely clear, as some of the applications would be rather black ops classified.  It’s a large amount, I believe it’s safe to say. This reminds me of what Barney Frank had to say recently about the F-22 jet fighter on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” President Obama recently discontinued production of it, largely because it was designed for Cold War combat. We no longer live in that era, and warfare has changed. Discontinuing the F-22 will likely save America a great deal in its defense budget, which prompted Frank to tell Maddow that if we were to cut out all of the extraneous projects from our defense budget, the money left over would be more than enough to ensure that every person in this country has good health insurance.

What do you say, Pentagon and DARPA? Drop the thinly-veiled brain optimization/mind control experiments and give back all that money? I’m sure you won’t need payday loans and cash advances afterward; you’ll still be sitting pretty.

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