Richard Leis

Category: Frontier Channel

  • Interview: CBS Sunday Morning Primetime Special “Forever Young: Searching for the Fountain of Youth”

    Screenshot of CBS Sunday Morning Forever Young: Searching for the Fountain of Youth title screen with stylized fountain of youth graphics (online video)

    I was interviewed for a segment on cryonics that aired in a CBS Sunday Morning primetime special titled “Forever Young: Searching for the Fountain of Youth” in November 2021.

  • My Statement About Transhumanism, Life Extension, and Related Organizations and Movements

    I am no longer involved with most transhumanist, life extension, singularity, and other futurist and emerging technology organizations and movements.

  • Second Dose of Vaccine & I’m Thankful

    A lot of my friends and family were concerned when I reported side effects from my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. I appreciate your love and concern and I’m so sorry that I scared you! You make me feel cared for and loved!

    I want to be clearer about this than I was last time: a sore arm, mild fever, headaches, body aches, and/or other side effects over a period of 24-48 hours are all healthy signs that your immune system is doing its job, without killing you in the process! Your immune system is reacting to something that is, fortunately, practically harmless, and this will prime your immune system to recognize and respond safely to something far more dangerous than a vaccine: the deadly coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

  • h+

    h+ logo with falling leaves in header 2020

    Richard designed, developed, and maintained the original h+ Tucson website as well as the expanded h+ website for multiple chapters and new transhumanist-related content, including a gallery of transhumanist art, links, and other resources.

  • RADIO Frontier Channel

    RADIO Frontier Channel Header 2020 with silhouette of radio telescope

    RADIO Frontier Channel was a podcast from Frontier Channel hosted by Richard Leis in 2005 that included science and technology news and interviews with scientists at the University of Arizona.

  • Frontier Channel

    Image courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center from The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth - This view of Earth's horizon as the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean was taken by an Expedition 7 crew member onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Anvil tops of thunderclouds are also visible." [Credit from Wikipedia]

    The Frontier Channel website edited by Richard Leis provided news and commentary about the “Great Frontiers of cyberspace, outer space, the ocean, and destinations in between.”

  • Space as Solace During a Government Shutdown

    Frontier Channel Mars Header 2020 with website text next to image of Mars

    The recent space activities I’m writing and posting about provide solace during this government shutdown that has furloughed most NASA and related departments employees and contractors.

  • “Meet Ultima Thule”


    And Ultima and Thule, according to New Horizons’ principal investigator Alan Stern at today’s NASA press briefing, the informal names the team have given the two lobes of the red object out in the Kuiper Belt New Horizons spent New Year’s encountering. The contact binary connected by a neck of material indicates two objects that came together and stuck sometime in the distant past when these kinds of interactions were leading elsewhere in the solar system to accretions that would eventually form the planets and their moons.

  • New Year, New Day, New Image of Ultima Thule

    01 January 2019 image of Ultima Thule by New Horizons spacecraft and sketch of object and rotation courtesy James Tuttle Keane
    During a morning press briefing aired on NASA TV on New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons mission team leaders revealed the latest best image of Ultima Thule. Still a blur, the Kuiper Belt body’s shape is more apparent in this latest image. Still unclear: are the two lobes connected or are they in fact two separate objects orbiting each other? The pole of the object was pointed toward the spacecraft, meaning Ultima Thule rotates from that perspective like a propellor. Artist and planetary scientist James Tuttle Keane has helped visualize this geometry in his illustration included next to the image.

  • New Horizons at Ultima Thule

    Image of Ultima Thule taken by the LORRI onboard the New Horizons spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt
    6.5 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away from where some Earthlings are celebrating New Year’s Eve, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is beginning its close flyby of a tiny world in the Kuiper Belt known as Ultima Thule (2014 MU69.)

  • InSight Lander on Mars

    Frontier Channel Mars Header 2020 with website text next to image of Mars

    As we do, the HiRISE team took a high resolution image of the InSight lander safe on the surface of Mars.

  • “Getting some air, Atlas?”

    Boston Dynamics occasionally uploads these short videos demonstrating their latest robotics technology and capabilities. I’m always amazed by the leap forward in movement smoothness and efficiency. 🤖

  • The Economic Singularity by Calum Chace

    The Economic Singularity by Calum Chace book cover from Goodreads

    Much of The Economic Singularity by Calum Chace is devoted to supporting the argument that machines will take over many and eventually most jobs from humans.

  • Now Humanity Feels the Tug of Proxima b, Too

    Proxima Centauri header on Frontier Channel, background image by ESA/Hubble

    It’s good to be skeptical, but it’s also nice to see rumors confirmed by real and exciting  announcements: the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced today the detection of an exoplanet orbiting the nearby star Proxima Centauri. At a minimum mass 1.3 times that of the Earth’s, Proxima b might be a rocky world. With an orbit of 11.2 […]

  • Frontier Channel 16 Years Later

    I started posting online news and commentary about science and technology on January 18, 2000, and I eventually named that effort Frontier Channel. After a few weeks of short posts, I didn’t get back to posting again until January 2002. Two years after that, I finally started posting in earnest, and Frontier Channel enjoyed a nice run with frequent articles through […]

  • Regarding Rumors of Earth-Like Planet Orbiting Proxima Centauri

    Proxima Centauri header on Frontier Channel, background image by ESA/Hubble

    We’ve been here before: the media gets wind of a possible discovery made by a long-running science project and before there is a peer-reviewed scientific paper published and a press conference, speculation runs wild. In the age of social media, gossip spreads at the speed of the share, and in this digital game of telephone, the […]

  • Recent Article about Kim Suozzi, Cryonics, and Alcor in The New York Times

    Three years ago this October, Kim Suozzi spoke at the Alcor 2012 Conference about her impending death due to brain cancer and her hopes in cryonics and technology for a second future. I remember it was a remarkable, difficult, and emotional talk and I also remember the applause when she finished speaking. She passed away a […]

  • Pluto Before New Horizons

    Consider what those of us can see in the night sky with healthy eyes, without any tools, far from city lights. Away from the dazzle of Sun’s day the Moon at night is, of course, the brightest above all. The visible stars make an obvious and fixed, so it seems, pattern that fills the celestial hemisphere. […]

  • Pluto and Charon in Color and in Tantalizing Detail

     [Post edited on Monday, June 22, 2015 to correct my misunderstanding about the provenance of the remarkable color image below.] Tonight I was browsing the latest raw images of Pluto and Charon taken by New Horizons today from only 27.7 million kilometers away and I realized that when you zoom in, Charon is just beginning […]

  • New Horizons at Pluto

    This is it! Pluto is the last of the classical nine planets to be visited by a spacecraft from Earth. The New Horizons spacecraft will take close-up images and capture other useful data as it speeds by Pluto and its moons on July 14, 2015. This will complete the imaging grand tour of our solar system […]