The Future Is Here: Cyborgs Walk Among Us By Jeremy Hsu

When one-eyed filmmaker Robert Spence decided to sell a documentary film idea of becoming an "EyeBorg," he made a cheap LED light in his prosthetic eye. Adding this light in his eye made his cyborg idea a possibility to likely business partners. Meanwhile, he was close to a deal for his documentary. Beings that are part-human, part-machine might sound like something that still belongs to Science-Fiction."But experts say that cyborgs are already walking among us, and have been around for quite some time." Three examples of sci-fi cyborgs are General Grievous, and Darth Vader from Star Wars, and the Master Chief from the Halo video games (most would agree that Darth Vader fits the cyborg definition). "What a cyborg is, in big part, is a fictional character from the future," Spence said. The futuristic aspect of cyborgs weighs heavily on the popular definition, as Spence quickly realized. "His conceptual success with "EyeBorg's" cheap light comes despite the fact that the prosthetic acts as a separate camera and has no functional connection to his body." "Nobody calls people with a prosthetic eye cyborgs, but put in a $5 LED light and you look like the Terminator," Spence pointed out. Even through this, Warwick said that "some definitions would allow any human using any piece of technology – whether it's glasses, bicycles or pens – to count as a cyborg."

George Landow is a digital media scholar at Brown University. He said,"Many other experts agreed with the most basic technical definition of a cyborg as a being that combines technology with human biology." "Anyone who uses medication, contact lenses, is well into cyborgism, and people like myself who have metal stents in their hearts and artificial lenses inside their eyes (after cataract operations), is definitely a cyborg according to the most conservative, cautious definition."

Something as ordinary as a piano or a piece of clothing can count as a cyborg but also as an everyday object. A cyborg is a human being who has extended themselves by using technology. "I'd say it's the most useful, super-technical definition, but it's the least fun. A lot of the point of defining a cyborg is to have fun," Spence said.

It is very cool that we are all counted as cyborgs. anyone who wears something to help them are cyborgs. Also, even if you are wearing even one piece of clothing, you are a cyborg. Some people are more cyborg than others because of what they wear. Other things that might be considered cyborg include hearing aids. Over time you can become more or less cyborg. One day you can be riding a bike (more cyborg) , and the next day, you can be wearing just clothes and not riding a bike (less cyborg).

http://www.livescience.com/technology/cyborg-future-human-halo-101207.html

Massive Mega-Star Challenges Black Hole Theories by Clara Moskowitz

Astronomers have recently discovered a massive star that most likely dwarfed our sun and is now challenging theories of how stars form, die and form black holes.The star is a specific object called a magnetar. "Magnetars are extremely dense super-magnetic stars that can form from supernova explosions." The newly discovered magnetar has been calculated to likely weigh at least 40 times as much as the sun. Large stars in this mass category were thought to become black holes, not magnetars, when they exploded in supernovas."This therefore raises the thorny question of just how massive a star has to be to collapse to form a black hole if stars over 40 times as heavy as our sun cannot manage this feat," said researcher Norbert Langer of the Universität Bonn in Germany and the Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands."' When massive stars come to the end of their lives and die in supernovas, they leave behind remains. If the star is very massive, those remains are a black hole (a black hole is "an extremely dense collection of mass with such a strong gravitational pull, not even light can escape"). If the original star was slightly less massive, the supernova remains will become a neutron star (these objects are made mostly of neutrons, and are more dense than regular stars and less dense than black holes). Magnetars are a specific type of neutron star with colossal magnetic fields and are about a "million billion" times than that of Earth. Massive stars must get rid of more than nine-tenths of their mass before they explode as a supernova, because otherwise, they would create a black hole instead.

It is good that we discovered this huge magnetar. This is because now we know what might have been the reason that our sun was dwarfed and also because we now know how black holes form. We also now know that magnetars can be huge and that they can form from the remains of other stars that have exploded in supernovas just like black holes.

http://www.livescience.com/space/massive-mega-star-challenges-black-hole-theory-100818.html