Back in 1980, Michael Crichton published a novel called Congo. In it, a computer whiz uses satellite imagery to find specific types of secondary growth jungle to find the lost African city of Zinj.
Something very similar has just happened in Guatemala. Scanning the jungle with lasers from airplanes (Light Detection and Ranging, or lidar) scientists have found an incredibly huge city in the jungles of Guatemala. Here's the ancient city of Tikal seen from the air:
and here's an image using Light Detection and Ranging:
LIDAR technology holds the promise of uncovering lost Civilizations.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
Crichton had a true love/hate relationship with science. The promise and peril of science loomed large in his mind. But his view of science seemed to sour over his life. Where a lot of his early books were about science that could arguably serve society that had gone wrong, many of his later books were more concerned with how science, the media, and corporations can manipulate the public perception of science.
But he really had a knack as a writer for selecting really juicy subjects for 'near' science fiction. Jurassic Park was based upon mosquitoes sucking the blood of dinosaurs and preserving their DNA, when the insects were trapped in sap that became amber. Here's a recent photo of a piece of amber with a dinosaur feather with a tick embedded in it:
After proofreading this, I wondered if it was necessary to use the word 'recent' with regard to the photo. The photo is of an object over 90 million years old. Upon further reflection, it probably doesn't matter how recent the photo is.
Last edited by Guest on Sun Feb 04, 2018 7:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
I really enjoyed his earlier books, starting with the Andromeda Strain. I thought he really went off he rails with Airframe, and didn’t bother with him after that. It was like he evolved from a guy who told creative cautionary tales into a cranky polemicist.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:I really enjoyed his earlier books, starting with the Andromeda Strain. I thought he really went off he rails with Airframe, and didn’t bother with him after that. It was like he evolved from a guy who told creative cautionary tales into a cranky polemicist.
Agreed. After Airframe a lot of his books had a strong political or social agenda and a little misogyny.
It's funny, but I recently did a post on letting go of books. One of them is my original hardcover copy of Andromeda Strain, which was a 3rd printing.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
Res Ipsa wrote:I really enjoyed his earlier books, starting with the Andromeda Strain. I thought he really went off he rails with Airframe, and didn’t bother with him after that. It was like he evolved from a guy who told creative cautionary tales into a cranky polemicist.
Agreed. After Airframe a lot of his books had a strong political or social agenda and a little misogyny.
It's funny, but I recently did a post on letting go of books. One of them is my original hardcover copy of Andromeda Strain, which was a 3rd printing.
Yeah, I need to do that, too. Same with my board game collection. Sigh.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
MeDotOrg wrote:Back in 1980, Michael Crichton published a novel called...
Interesting OP but an inept thread title. Lidar began in 1960s, so once again we see that art imitates life and exploits it for whatever end. Point being, your thread title should be "science fiction BASED ON science fact".
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
Maksutov wrote:One of my favorite popular fiction writers, gone too soon.
Oh, man. How did I miss that? I read JP, Lost World, Sphere, Prey, Congo, Timeline, and Disclosure. Prey is especially unsettling considering our forays into nanotech and A.I.. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.
Anyway. I can't wait for the LDS church to use LIDAR on the Hill Cumorah. We're gonna see SO MANY THINGS! Things like HIDDEN CAVES WITH MOUNTAINS OF METAL PLATES. SWORDS EVERYWHERE. BATTLE RAMPARTS.
CAN'T WAIT.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Oh, man. How did I miss that?
- Doc
Because this tech actually predates that novel by decades?
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
Use of LIDAR has really grown in the fields with which I associate for developing everything from topo surveys, restoration establishment monitoring over time, to truck driven LIDAR not so different from that used in self-driving cars which capture every detail in a linear corridor at what is claimed to be subcentimeter accuracy. Companies are equipping drones with LIDAR to perform work that they would previously have had to hire others to do. The combination of LIDAR with drone/automated vehicles has the potential to change our society in ways unimagined by science fiction.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
