As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; yet we're still steadily destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), using the acronym HIPPO, and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.
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Biosphere 2, that famous research boondoggle, has entered a new stage in its lifecycle: condo and ranchette proliferation.
Several years ago, I was at a going away party for Bruno. Bruno was a hard core scientist who was being brought into the Biosphere project down in Arizona to get it straightened out after a long period of bad press.
So far, my favorite response to the annual Brockman challenge - this year, the question was "What will change everything?" - comes from the physicist Stuart Kauffman:
Astrobiology Future
The NASA online discussion session on the Astrobiology Roadmap continues this week.