[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: Superstorms, solar power, superhumans, space colonies, panspermia

[rfmcdonald]

• Vice's Motherboard reports on how we do not understand the storms of the Anthropocene era, fueled by climate change.


• Vice suggests that the very sharp and continuing fall in the price of solar power might well allow the Earth to escape ecological ruin, by providing energy alternatives.


• The Guardian reports on the prediction of Stephen Hawking that technological advances will lead to the emergence of a race of superhumans that might well destroy--at least, outcompete--traditional humanity.


• Over at Tor, James Nicoll recently contributed an essay arguing that technological challenges and the lack of incentive mean that the human colonization of space is not going to happen for a good while yet.


• Universe Today highlights a new paper suggesting that panspermia unaided by intelligence can work on a galactic scale, even across potentially intergalactic distances.