Syfy to Host Sarah Connor Reruns

According to Mark at Mark's SF & Fantasy Blog on About:

• Syfy will start airing (The Sarah Connor Chronicles) on April 7; after the two-hour premiere, they'll air four episodes a week on Thursdays starting at 7 p.m.

SyFy will play all of the series 31 episodes starring Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, and Summer Glau...

Space Shuttle launch, shot by a camera phone

Now this is what I call a great amateur photo! Here we have a shuttle launch captured by a cell phone of all things. Whats better though is that the camera wasn't on a plane but much much higher - in the equipment pod of a helium weather balloon!

Here is the info from the IO9 article:

• Quest for Stars, a non-profit educational organization co-sponsored by Challenger Center for Space Science Education has launched weather-balloon-hoisted cameras into space before, but this time around, the group of students and educators wanted to capture the actual Shuttle launch from space. So they put together Robonaut-1..... and sent it up 100,000 feet.

As you can see, they were spectacularly successful!

Check out the complete IO9 article here

Did Earth Share Its' Orbit? Data Points to Yes

In the distant past, did Earth share the same orbital path with a Mars sized Planet? New data from the Kepler telescope seems to point in that direction.

Kepler has uncovered a planetary system with two planets that orbit their primary at exactly the same distance. This discovery would support support the theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a Mars-sized body, that later collided with it, creating the moon.

What makes this seem plausible is the dynamics of the system uncovered by Kepler. Each planet's orbit contains two orbital "safe zones" that are gravitationally balanced. At 60 degrees ahead and 60 degrees behind a planet in orbit are Lagrange points (I know, yes there ARE two more, one between the planet and the sun and one that exists an equal distance further distance from the sun) Kepler's discovery has the planets in each other's Lagrangian points 60 degrees forward or behind, depending on your frame of reference.

Read the complete Daily Galaxy article here

For Sale: vehicle w/ extremely high mileage, serious damage

Hey, got a few million bucks available? Have I got a deal for you! Very unique vehicle, Very high mileage, showing serious wear and damage. Are you saying, Hey! Where can I get more info? Or was it...what? Are you serious?! Well actually you would be right on both counts. The auction house Sotheby's in New York will auction the spherical Vostok 3KA-2 Space Capsule. The well used space craft has great historical significance. It is the model used for the final dummy run before Uri Gagarin made his historical flight. ( oh and yes, the article spelled his name Yury...)

Read more in the complete Yahoo article here

Apollo 18 movie trailer

According to this article I just read in Gizmodo - 4/22/11 is the release date for , Apollo 18. From what I can see there are several conspiracy theories being addressed in this film. This faux documentary sets out to explain why we never returned to the moon and as an added bonus why we never heard of Apollo 18....hummmm
Also here is more info from Underwire

Captain Awsome

For those of use that have suffered recently from the the "pandemic" of stomach flu that seems to be going around, this short video will be especially poignant! Otherwise I can well imagine that all of us, one in all, can recall an incident where relief is but a step away, but that step seems to be all but insurmountable! Here, even our erstwhile super-hero feels the call of nature from an ill conceived luncheon choice. Bad taste abounds in this wildly funny animated short. From the very fertile imaginations of Ercan Bozdogan, Mikkel Aabenhuus Sørensen, Andreas Husballe, Jonas Mølgaard Jensen, Ninni Munch Pettersson, Lars Kramhøft - Enjoy!

Captain Awesome from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

SpongeBob Sqaurepants uncovered!

Beneath the mild mannered sponge covering lies an unstoppable killing machine. Sponge Bob Terminator! From a recent article in Dvice, comes the creation from Flickr user, rack911 and his Lego creation. We will never look upon our obnoxious sponge the same again. Check out some of the other photos of this twisted creation here.

Schizofredric a short film from Andy Poyiadgi

Here here one of the best, and most likely the strangest short films of 2010. Schizofrederic from director Andy Poyiadgi, winner of an audience favorite award at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival in Seattle this year. The movie's plot is simple if a bit twisted. Frederic's life is going nowhere fast. Until he signs up for a little "trans dimensional" therapy that he finds online. Like Frederic, your impression of online self help programs will be forever changed. lol


SCHIZOFREDRIC - Dir: Andy Poyiadgi
Uploaded by SFLTV. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

SFWA announces the 2010 Nebula Award Nominees

Here are the nominations for the 2110 Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA)

The awards will be announced at the Nebula Awards Banquet on Saturday evening, May 21, 2011 in the Washington Hilton, in Washington, D.C..

Short Story

* Arvies, Adam-Troy Castro
* How Interesting: A Tiny Man, Harlan Ellison
* I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno, Vylar Kaftan
* The Green Book, Amal El-Mohtar
* Ghosts of New York, Jennifer Pelland
* Conditional Love, Felicity Shoulders

Novelette

* Map of Seventeen, Christopher Barzak
* The Jaguar House, in Shadow, Aliette de Bodard
* The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara, Christopher Kastensmidt
* Plus or Minus, James Patrick Kelly
* Pishaach, Shweta Narayan
* That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made, Eric James Stone
* Stone Wall Truth, Caroline M. Yoachim

Novella

* The Alchemist, Paolo Bacigalupi
* Iron Shoes, J. Kathleen Cheney
* The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang
* The Sultan of the Clouds, Geoffrey A. Landis
* Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance, Paul Park
* The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window, Rachel Swirsky

Novel

* The Native Star, M.K. Hobson
* The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin
* Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
* Echo, Jack McDevitt
* Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor
* Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis

Star Wars PSA?!

With tongue firmly ensconced in cheek, this PSA instructional asks the question "when should you talk to your children about......Star Wars!?

Thank you SF Signal for bringing this wildly funny piece to my attention.

Trailer for new X-Men animated Series

Xmen fans? Anime fans? ok, from Anime News Network via IO9 is news that Madhouse Animation will release an anime version of the X-Men. The article states that "The show debuts on Animax in Japan on April 1 and will air on G4 later this year." Now I am not throwing stones here or trying to start a flame war, but this certainly is not for your average nine year old. Neither is it a cartoon. Being animated doesn't immediately equate it to children's entertainment exclusively.

Here is a trailer for the program...sorry no dub, no sub...straight up.

Firefly back on TV

From an article in IO9 I read where the still very popular Science fiction series Firefly will once again grace the "small" screen.

The Science channel has purchased the rights to the series and will begin showing episodes March 6th at 8pm. The episodes then will be shown in proper sequence that was intended, each Sunday there after. The Science Channel is adding HD to the mix to spice things up a bit.

Star Trek Tricorder Scanner a Reality?

From the Daily Mail online comes word of a device that puts the Star Trek tricorder scanner a very real possibility! Professor Jürgen Lademann, of the Charité medical school in Berlin has developed a computer mouse sized device that measures a person’s antioxidant level between one and 10. Why you might ask? Well it seems that these levels change dramatically and measuring these changes, in as little as 30 seconds, one can assess the damage to the body from smoking or from junk food.

The device works by measure levels of antioxidants. This is done by shining a beam of light at a patience's body, collecting the reflected light and analyzing it for information on which wavelengths have been absorbed. This is far less intrusive than present methods which requires the skin to be cut and a sample taken. ( Biopsied )

Star Trek Girl by Meekakitty

Here is one of the presently hottest viral videos from Meekakitty we get a healthy dose of autotune goodness with her Star Trek Girl

Images of Human-Made Crater on Comet

Remember Deep Impact? This was a mission to deliberately put a piece of spacecraft smack dab in from of comet Tempel 1 in 2005. Where upon it was studied and recorded. Deep Impact was in such great shape that it was re-purposed and re-missioned with the name Stardust NExT. The spacecraft was tasked to return once again to Tempel 1 and document the man made crater that was created on the previous visit. The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14 2011 at a distance of approximately 111 miles. Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. The photos showed the crater with a central cone, which was a bit unexpected.

One of the real pay days for this series of missions is the low cost. Instead of sending out several robotic craft, by re-purposing Deep Impact saved NASA some serious money!

Check out the Science Digest article here

The Planet that Wouldn't Go Away: The Search For Planet X

Boy talk about an idea that just refuses to go away is this strange fascination with a dark companion, if you would, to the solar system. Be it a brown dwarf, black hole or gas giant, people continue to hold dear the idea that something large and mysterious lives out past the Ort cloud. In a recent IO9 article I was reading about data from the Wise space telescope that is suggesting that NASA supposedly having proof of a giant, Jupiter-sized planet orbiting the Sun way beyond Pluto.

Two astronomers, John Matese and Dan Whitmire have theorized that a planet, one they call Tyche, does indeed exist and they base this on observations of long duration comets. The strange thing about these comets is that each one's orbits have perturbations that can be accounted for if one accepts a gas giant constantly adding little variations.

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy would like nothing more than for there to be a planet out there but instead of being reactionary, Phil takes a some what more critical stance in his Discovery article here

Review: Green Lantern First Flight (animation)

Green Lantern First Flight

Directed by Lauren Montgomery

Written by Alan Burnett & Michael Allen

Starring Christopher Meloni, Victor Garber, Tricia Helfer, Michael Madsen

Running time 75 minutes

To bring us (and by us I mean those of us that do not move in the comic book universe. Honestly, not to belittle the format, but I stopped reading them in the late 60s. Not saying good bad or indifferent, books lasted longer and at that time I had a LOT of time on my hands) up to speed - from the Wikipedia: Green Lantern: First Flight is a 2009 direct-to-video animated film adaptation of the DC Comics Green Lantern mythology. Centering on the first mission of Hal Jordan (Christopher Meloni), the first human inducted into the Green Lantern Corps.

There that wasn’t so bad was it? I rented the blu-ray to see what might be going on in the GL universe. I wasn’t sure if I had seen the film before, so I wanted to see how DC treated fans. Come to find out, Cartoon Network showed a large portion if not the complete movie late last year. So that was a bit of a let down. However the blu-ray graphics were much much better that what I got off cable and without commercials, it was a pretty fair trade. The movie plot-line is straight up DC JLA larger than life kind of thing. There is something about American animation that often seems to cater to a less sophisticated audience. That is a bit of an over simplification but you have to admit you take any character from an anime feature and it will almost always be a richer character. It’s not the “style” of the animation either. Each has its own look and feel. Nothing wrong with that. But where Anime seems to point at the young adult audience more often than not, American animation often aims at the pre-pubescent male. I know this isn’t always the case. The larger publishing houses seem to reward formalistic treatment of the subject matter. Where as you look at in house animation produced for Cartoon Network say and even though they are still clearly aiming at the same audience, many seem to relish making the characters more complex, maybe as a nod to older audience members who are often watching with their children.

So that’s my rant. The movie isn’t horrible, but if anything played safe and aimed low at the JLA/GL and the younger portion of that group.

What is nice about the blu-ray however is the extras! Extra JLA episodes, plenty of making of material. movie ideas, writers, directors, producers comments and so forth. There seems to be easily twice as much extra material than movie! That’s a nice extra.

So rating? Well the extras are pretty much and more of what I like if I am looking for additional material so that is a clear 10 the movie...ehhhh 5 or overall 7.5. If you are into GL go for it. But more than likely even though its straight to DVD, it has played on CN. My suggestion would be rent it for the extras.

A Look At What Could be NASA's First Manned Planetary Explorer

From Dvice we get a look at NASA's Nautilus-X. The Non-Atmospheric Universal Transport Intended for Lengthy United States X-ploration is really NASA's first shot at what the future of deep space planetary exploration just may take the shape of.

Maybe not the prettiest thing going but does have some good ideas integrated into the structure. From the article:

• The craft is designed to support a crew of six in deep space for anywhere between one month and two years at a stretch. It's got an integrated centrifuge to provide artificial gravity for its occupants, and the habitation modules are mostly inflatable.

complete article

Phantom of the Floppera

Found on Youtube via Boing Boing is this wonderful piece play by a computer disk drive organ. The composition was assembled by Funtothehead and here is what he had to say about the device and production. Test run of my (d)iskette (O)rgan doing Toccata & Fugue. People have made floppy drives sing before, but this is my personal take on it. Features two 3 1/2" drives and two 5 1/4" drives connected to a PIC18f14k50 microcontroller. As it can produce only four simultaneous notes, and each drive has a different range and tonal characteristics, best results are obtained by arranging compositions by hand....

Here it is! It certainly is entertaining if not strictly speaking "classical" lol. Have fun.

NASA underestimated shuttle dangers

In a recent USA Today article I read where NASA's Shuttle Program Safety and Mission Assurance Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston did a risk assessment of the dangers of shuttle missions.

As much as I hate to NASA bash, the initial results are disturbing to say the least.

When NASA start flying the shuttles in 1981, NASA managers thought there was only a 1-in-100,000 chance of losing a shuttle and its crew. Engineers thought the probability was closer to 1 in 100. The frightening fact is that those early missions had odds of less than 1 in 10!

From the article:

• Consider this: There was only a 6% chance that NASA would fly its first 25 shuttle missions without losing an astronaut crew, the assessment shows.
• Moreover, on the 88 shuttle missions flown between the Challenger and Columbia accidents, there was only a 7% chance disaster would be averted.

NASA realizes that to be more successful they need a " very robust test program" and collect as much data as possible.

In fact after two major accidents and many near misses shuttle now is 10 times safer than it was during the first flight in April 1981. The odds of a catastrophic failure now are 1 in 90.

Computer processors made with nano-wire?

Everyone here knows that a computer's cpu is made up of millions of discrete components called transistors. Each processor unit is etched out of a larger block of semi-conductive material. All integrated circuit components are manufactured in this same method. The theoretical limit to how small these components can be is close at hand and any smaller then the failure rate for the components becomes too great.

Now Harvard University engineers have devised a process that makes the process of manufacture much more error free and ICs / CPUs very very small. Instead of etching the new process builds up the components with nano sized wire.

These wires are not wires in the traditional sense at all but are made of a core of the element germanium and sheathed in a silicon shell, thousands of times thinner than a human hair. Each one of these "wires" can contain a logic state by applying a small electric potential.

Nano wire circuits are nothing new. However this is the first time that one of this density has been assembled or shown to be completely programmable. Electrical leakage has shown to be less than conventional components and as such the nano components may be as much as 10X more efficient.

Because of their efficiency and size these components are most likely leading towards an entirely new class of much smaller, lighter-weight electronic sensors and consumer electronics, but in reality the proponents of the new tech do not foresee it supplanting computer processors as the nano processors are substantially slower than silicone ones.

Read the complete BBC News article

JAXA is going fishin!

From an article in Inhabitat is a rather unique proposal among many. It seems the Japanese space agency JAXA is teaming up with net manufacturer Nitto Seimo to go fishing in a most unusual fishing hole, for an even stranger catch. Nitto Seimo will build a kilometers-wide net made of ultra-thin triple layered metal threads. This net will be cast in Earth orbit where it will scoop up space junk.

From the article:

• The net will gradually be drawn into Earth’s magnetic field and burned up along with the abandoned satellites, engine parts and other litter it’s collected.

The USA has proposed something on a bit grander scale. From the article:

• The U.S., is proposing a satellite rigged with hundreds of butterfly-style nets that would hurl their catch toward the South Pacific, where it wouldn’t cause any damage. The satellite and nets could be reused.

Whoever shoulders the task, it will prove to be herculean. The junk in orbit consist of everything from spent rocket stages and defunct satellites. Debris includes slag and dust from solid rocket motors, paint flakes, coolant released by RORSAT nuclear powered satellites to even clusters of small needles!

In mid-2009 NASA updated the debris estimate. NASA places the number of large debris items over 4 inches at 19,000, up to approximately 4 inches at about 500,000, and estimates that debris items smaller than 1/2 inch probably exceeds tens of millions.

Wikipedia article

Feb. 6th Apollo 14 moon mission anniversary

This week in NASA Apollo history? forty years ago (forty people! you feel old yet? ) the Apollo 14 mission visited the moon for only the third time in human history. This mission was notable in that if followed the disastrous mission 13. Alan Shepard of the 1961 Freedom 7 was the first person to hit a golf ball on the moon. This was Shepard's last mission. Not a bad way to go out in my book. Edgar Mitchell not to be up staged took a modified scoop handle and proceeded to javelin throw it. Mitchell an excellent photographer in his own right took some spectacular photographs during the mission. The photo here from the ascent module of the landing module of the L.E.M. is a fine example. The mission collected 93 lb of Moon rock during 9½ hours of E.V.A.

From the Wikipedia As of 2011, Mitchell is the only surviving member of the crew; Roosa died in 1994 and Shepard in 1998 .

Neutron Stars can create impossible matter

Hey, want ta get ya mind twisted sideways? Lets talk about "super-fluids". One of the strangest things I have ever read about. A super-fluid really isn't....a fluid that is, not in the traditional sense. Super-fluids are theoretical matter that does things normal matter could not. A super-fluid happens when viscosity drops to zero and thermal conductivity becomes infinite. That means that it would be totally frictionless and could flow in ANY direction and while flowing it would have the exact same temperature throughout the "fluid". First weird thing? I could not be held in any kind of traditional container as we know them. Because it could flow up as easily as flowing across.

It goes without saying that the creations of these exotic materials takes an inordinate amount of pressure and energy. Lot of energy. One place that could support a form of super-fluid would be a neutron star (the remnants of a collapsed super giant star) and luckily there wold be indications this was taking place. Losing energy (brightness) and emitting neutrinos is a dead giveaway.

From the IO9 article:

• Cassiopeia A supernova fits this bill perfectly - since its discovery in 1999, the neutron star has lost 20% of its brightness and about 4% of its temperature. That's incredibly rapid temperature loss, and the best explanation for it is the creation of neutron super-fluids inside the star.

We are not likely to see super-fluids created anytime soon in the lab. The fantastic pressures and relatively low temperatures are still beyond our technical expertise.

Read the IO9 article for more info

Shuttles to continue to fly?!

In a recent article on Dvice I read something very interesting concerning the remaining NASA Shuttles. As you know NASA has promised shuttles to museums and the like, but an interesting alternative seems to have snuck in. There may be life left in the program for two of the remaining shuttles.

From the article:

• Most of the people involved in the space shuttle program aren't actually working for NASA. Instead, they're contractors, working for a company called United Space Alliance, which is a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
  
• USA is asking NASA to let it take things over and launch Atlantis and Endeavour twice a year carrying commercial cargo starting in 2013. It would be called the Commercial Shuttle Transportation Service.

Now before your skivvies get too wet, everyone involved so far is calling it a long shot and NASA hasn't even commented...

Are the first stars in the universe still around?

It has been a long standing prevailing view that the very first stars that lit the early universe had all burned out due in part to their immense size. A new study seems to contradict this position.

It now seems quite possible that some of the universe’s first stars may still be shining in the Milky Way 13 billion years after being formed.

A new series of simulations at the University of Heidelberg in Germany seem to indicate that gases in the early universe could have produced many small stars instead of a few very large ones. It is also speculated that in these tightly packed collection of small stars, a few would have been ejected due in part to gravity dynamics. If this happened then the smaller cooler stars could have miserly with their fuel and instead of burning up in a few million years, still be going to the present day.

These results are far from being widely accepted in the astrophysical community. Many researchers say they have several qualms about those conclusions.

From the ScienceNews article

• If any of the first stars did survive until today, their brightness wouldn’t require an exceptionally large telescope to image them, says Simon White of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics,... But making a positive ID won’t be easy, he adds. Only high-resolution spectra could distinguish primordial stars, which would contain only hydrogen and helium, from slightly younger stars containing trace amounts of heavier elements, he notes.

read complete ScienceNews article here

'I Wanna Be a Billionaire' parody called I want to be an engineer.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeah, here we go here we go.... From Only Won here he performs his awesome parody of the hit song 'I Wanna Be a Billionaire' called I want to be an engineer.


http://www.jokeroo.com

Antipodean issue 152 now online!

Editor Ion of the flash fiction online magazine Antipodean issue 152 is now online at Antisf.com

Here is a table of contents for this month's magazine.

Welcome Home, Johnny Ace By Onil Lad

Drinking Stories By Marie Hodgkinson

Episode 4.5 By Michael Frissore

Ninja Nemesis By Crisetta Macleod

The Storms By Steve Duffy

An Accident Going Somewhere To Happen By Shaun A. Saunders

Damned Humanists By Wes Parish

Sweet Dreams By Nicole Rendall

Synaesthesia By Kevin J. Phyland

Blame Games By Gitte Christensen


I have read this month's stories and this is certainly a keeper. I hope you enjoy it!

NASA Mission Finds Earth Candidates in Habitable Zone

NASA Kepler Mission continues to pay dividends. NASA reports that Kepler has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could exist on a planet's surface in liquid form. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun. More investigation will be needed to determine if the bodies are indeed planets as well as more data on size and orbit.

Read the complete NASA article HERE

NASA's Kepler Telescope Discovers New Planetary System

Scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope, have discovered a six planet system, designated Kepler 11, who's planets are made up of a mix of rock and gases. Kepler 11 is a yellow dwarf star, much like our own sun, located about 2,000 light years from Earth. According to the team at NASA's Ames Research Center, Kepler 11 is amazingly compact, amazingly flat and there's an amazingly large number of big planets orbiting close to their star. In other words, Kepler-11 has the fullest, most compact planetary system yet discovered beyond our own!

As much as the Kepler 11 system resembles our own, there are many startling differences. First all the planets are at least twice as large as Earth and stranger still ALL the planets orbit their primary at least twice as close to their primary with the inner most orbiting ten times closer to its star than Earth. Five of the planets of Kepler 11 orbit closer than any planet in our system. Think about that for a second....between Mercury and Sol, squeeze in 5 more planets! Now THAT is compact!

Oh and lets take a look at the science that is going on to detect these planets. First off, unless you have been in a cave for a few years, you understand that Kepler is not resolving the planets directly. Kepler measures the luminosity of a star. When the star's brightness fades, Kepler infers that a planet has passed between it and the star. The more a star fades, the larger the star. So, we are looking at a dwarf yellow star like our own. So it's a fairly dim star and small, plus it 2000 freakin light-years away! You do the math.... So 2000 ly distance away, a speck travels in front of the star, dimming it ever so infinitesimally! Imagine the calibration it takes to do that level of science!

Check out the complete story at Science daily

A Most Unusual Rocket Launch

From the IO9 article:

• This music video by the Portland Cello Project showed last weekend at the Seattle Science Fiction Short Film Festival, and it's a weird, moving story of a crustacean who just wants to escape the bounds of Earth.

Portland Cello Project - 'Denmark' from Two Penguins Productions on Vimeo.

10 Greatest Star-ships of all Time!

Charlie Jane Anders, writing for the IO9 blog has put together a list of the 10 greatest starships of all time. The list doesn't contain just the prettiest or the biggest but, as she writes,

• ...."for the purposes of this list, we're going by the definition of "starship" from the venerable "Starship Smackdown" event. Which means, a starship has to travel between star systems, and ideally ought to have a crew and a mission. So no Serenity, sorry."

But under that criteria I say, as she did also, feel free to write in and disagree.

10) The Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)

9) Space Battleship Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato)

8) SDF-1 Macross (Macross/Robotech)

7) NSEA Protector (Galaxy Quest)

6) Moya (Farscape)

5) SSV Normandy (Mass Effect)

4) Rama (Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke)

3) Battlestar Galactica (new version)

2) U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D

1) Millenium Falcon

Now I KNOW there is going to be dissension here. First us old TOS guys are bound to say Falcon better that Enterprise?!!! NFL! And a D class? well, a D would kick major ass. But all that aside, read the original IO9 article HERE to get a jist of the complete idea of how the choices were made. I have a couple of ideas but I will let you people take a run at it first. So, ideas? Suggestions? Death threats?