The Premature Future: Space Hotel Ready for 2012

FU’s occassional step away from the future and into the crazy present.

Galactic Suite has revealed that plans to open the first hotel in space are on schedule and The Galactic Suite Space Resort will be open for business and accepting tourists by 2012.

 But it’s not a bargain stay. The Barcelona-based architects of space resort say it will cost 3 million euro ($4.4 million) for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island before the trip.   They could make a reality show out of the training camp alone. Read more…

The Premature Future: Scientists Make Desktop Black Hole

FU’s occassional return from the future to examine our crazy present.

From Wired.com: Two Chinese scientists have successfully made an artificial black hole. Since you’re still reading this, it’s safe to say that Earth hasn’t been sucked into its vortex.

But if only they could find a way to push Jon and Kate Gosselin through it.

People Incompatible With Earth, Study Finds

September 29, 2029–A new National Academy of Sciences study concludes that humans are hopelessly incompatible with Earth and should no longer occupy the planet.  

The study by an international team of environmental and behavioral scientists shows that humankind’s destruction of the planet over the last millennium is now irreversible, and that even well-meaning efforts to halt global warming and protect nature have backfired.

For instance, humans have dramatically reduced their reliance on fossil fuels for energy over the last two decades. But in the process, vast swatches of forest and wetlands have been destroyed to make way for power-producing solar panel fields and wind farms, the study noted.

“With fewer trees to absorb carbon, we have offset any benefits we may have derived from the increase in clean energy development,” the report states.

Westerners have also cut down on their consumption of beef, which has led to a reduction in the number of cows spewing methane into the atmosphere through their flatulence. (Beef cattle were once the planet’s largest source of methane, one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases heating up the planet.) But in the process, humans have increased their consumption of high-fiber foods, resulting in increased flatulence that has kept methane levels high and perpetuated global warming.

“Man just keeps trading one environmentally destructive habit for another,” a report on the study states. “The science is irrefutable,” a report on the study states. “The Earth would simply be better off without people.”

The study is somewhat timely, and at the same time moot, since humans are already evacuating the planet before it is destroyed by an incoming asteroid or the aliens that recently entered the solar system. But the researchers say they hope that the findings will confirm that humans should not occupy any world lest it destroy that planet’s environmental integrity.