Beam Me up blog is the sister/support site For the Beam Me Up podcast. It contains links, discussion and material that might be or have been discussed on the show. Also links to new show listings and material. Be sure to check out the live stream every Saturday at 4pm eastern at http://www.wrfr.org/links.html and select stream
Thursday, March 31, 2011
FTL Possible With Negative Energy?
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Brand New Mercury Photos
According to the article:
- The picture, shows Mercury’s southern hemisphere. The bright crater at the top of the image is called Debussy, and a smaller crater called Matabei lies to Debussy’s west
Most Massive Black Hole Discovered
The black hole at the center of the super massive M87 galaxy tops out at 6.6 billion solar masses, yes BILLION. To put that into perspective, the central black hole in our Milky Way is a very respectable 4 million solar masses. Also what makes M87's singularity so frightening is the diameter of it's event horizon, which is aproximatly 20 billion km across!
Astronomers from the University of Texas :
- theorizes that the M87 black hole grew to its massive size by merging with several other black holes.... of 100 or so smaller galaxies.
Check out the rest of the Daily Galaxy article here
Guess Who Was 80 Saturday!
- Began acting at the age of 8.
- His wife Susan Bay is Transformers director Michael Bay’s cousin
- Has authored seven books of poetry
- Born only four days after William Shatner
- Is a very competent photographer. Studied photography in UCLA in early 1970s and considered changing careers to photography full time
- Has a master’s degree in education
- Only actor to appear in every episode of original Star Trek
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Lockheed Martin's A New Era of Space Exploration
Friday, March 25, 2011
A Look at the new Wonder Woman
Palicki is no stranger to the tv sci-fi scene. Click here for a photo gallery of her other posi.....(damn it...tell me to stop!) sci-fi / fantasy television jobs.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
2010 Aurealis Award Nominees
From SFScope blog
- The nominees for this year's Aurealis Awards have been announced. The Aurealis Awards were established in 1995 to "recognize the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers
Science Fiction Short Story:
"The Heart of a Mouse" by K.J. Bishop (Subterranean Online)
"The Angaelian Apocalypse" by Matthew Chrulew (The Company Articles of Edward Teach/The Angaelian Apocalypse)
"Border Crossing" by Penelope Love (Belong)
"Interloper" by Ian McHugh (Asimov's Science Fiction)
"Relentless Adaptations" by Tansy Rayner Roberts (Sprawl)
Science Fiction Novel:
Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy (Eos)
Mirror Space by Marianne de Pierres (Orbit/Hachette)
Transformation Space by Marianne de Pierres (Orbit/Hachette)
The complete list is available at SFScope here
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Ode to the Brain - Symphony of Science
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
DAWN readying for July arrival at Vesta
According to the Science Daily article:
- In the months to come, the camera system will provide images needed to navigate the spacecraft to its rendezvous with Vesta, and will begin to image the asteroid's surface. These early images on approach will be the start of a campaign to systematically map Vesta's surface in detail and will provide tantalizing clues as to its mineralogical composition.
The Incident at Tower 37 - a short clever cg film
First look at L-M's Orion capsule
Read more here in the Dvice article
Review: Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh
Night Shade Books (www.nightshadebooks.com)
Just about every post apocalyptic work I have ever read, treats the event as an instant or all but instantaneous event. Even movies for that matter, ie oh lets see...the first Mad Max, The Postman (book and movie) oh there are many movie examples, you don't want to drag out a movie I guess, but a book..... but even then its hard to put a finger to any that slowly let the world come apart. Granted, I may be nit picking here, but it does lend itself well to describing Will McIntosh's Soft Apocalypse. It could almost be called slow apocalypse but I bet NSB would have called him on that.
Anyway, Soft Apocalypse instead of taking place fairly quickly, evolves over a decade. The main character Jasper meanders through basically can be called southern United States for the most part. McIntosh has created something of an everyman with Jasper. Not your average post apocalyptic type. Not someone you would consider as a survivor, not overly successful in relationships, lots of self doubt and fear, just not the person you have come to expect when looking at a main character. But many times more realistic I suspect. Just because he seems to feel and react much as the average person would. At one point flat out wonders why thing just can't continue to get worse instead of one last gasp collapse. A frightening but I suspect all together normal.
Soft Apocalypse is a slow but steady decline but at the same time a morphing of the norm as well. Society doesn't just become a more violent version of itself, even though there is that aspect, but it is almost like there is this ultra slow quest for some sort of equilibrium.
McIntosh has put some effort into fleshing this mileu out. The type of breakdown societies are there but real early on and as things continue the paradigm shifts.
Soft Apocalypse is an edgy construct that I honestly think will be popular.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Left & Right SRB Recovery Mission
Check out NASA's youtube video site
Does the M in M-Theory Stand for Mental?
Hummmm kinda sounds like a time machine don't it now?
Believe me, there is more in this article that will fry a few synapses. Check out the complete Dvice Article here
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Refueling Geosync Sats?
Also at this point is still isn't clear who is libel should the MDA vehicle damage a satellite which would leave a catastrophic amount of debris in orbit.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
No Ordinary Family may be on the very ordinary chopping block!
Airlock Alpha article
Corning's " A Day Made of Glass
Monday, March 14, 2011
Messenger spacecraft set for Mercury Orbit Insertion
It has taken MESSENGER a convoluted trip through the solar system and six years to become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury and only the second to send back data since the Mariner 10 mission over 30 years ago. Here is a NASA video of the orbital insertion maneuver Messenger will take March 18th.
Thanks to Dan for the update
Earth Shifted on it's Axis?
Review: Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (special edition blu-ray)
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Starring
William Baldwin - Bruce Wayne / Batman
Mark Harmon - Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman
Chris Noth - Lex Luthor
Gina Torres - Superwoman
James Woods - Owlman
Bruce Davison - President Slade Wilson
Josh Keaton - Wally West / The Flash, Aquaman (uncredited)
Vanessa Marshall - Princess Diana / Wonder Woman
Nolan North as Hal Jordan / Green Lantern, Power Ring (uncredited)
Anyone a fan of the Justice League animated series? I can’t say that I am a big fan (as far as the characters are concerned, I was somewhat a fan in the 60s & 70s) but I did want to see what all the smoke and noise was all about on the Cartoon Network. I never did get around to taking a look, so when I saw this movie being promoted on Batman: Under the Red Hood, I put it on my “to watch later” list. Well the picking became slim so I took a chance and watched the blu-ray of Crisis on Two Earths. As with Under the Red Hood, it is a fan movie. Ostensibly a bridge between the Justice League animated television series and a series that was supposed to be called Justice League Unlimited, which I never heard of. According to the Wiki the story line was based somewhat on much earlier Justice League called Crisis on Earth Three and a story from Grant Morrison called Justice League America: Earth 2 but was not directly taken from either.
The premise is a bit convoluted: a heroic Lex Luthor from an alternate universe coming to the Justice League's universe for help against the Crime Syndicate which in fact is an evil or better a negative or reversed version of the Justice League. It seems everyone in the Crime Syndicate is double dealing in some fashion. the Syndicate is supposedly constructing a weapon to counteract the nuclear threat by the parallel Earth’s government. However Batman’s analogue Owlman is in truth building a device to wipe out all reality. The climax is of course Batman on Owlman with the Universe at stake.
The additional features on the blu-ray are quite numerous. The disk includes an animated short called “The Specter” and a couple of two-episode tales from the Justice League television series which featured the Justice Lords. There are some behind the scene extras and some live action sneak peeks.
This is not anime and shouldn’t be held to that comparison. For the most part it’s standard American animation, though the film itself is a bit better rendered than usual, but not so much that it would look much different from the fare already present on the Cartoon network. If you’re not a fan you won’t get much out of the disk. The rendering is marginally better and the plot is little more than comic book grade. But it’s not terrible, maybe just monochromatic.
Movie (plot & rendering) 6 Extra 8 (plenty of them, lots to choose from) for a movie rating of 7.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
A Star Cooler than Boiling Water?
Check out the rest of this weird article on the IO9 blog HERE
New Dark Tower novel next year?
- Stephen King has written another installment in the Dark Tower books
- The new book, The Wind Through the Keyhole, will fill in some of the action between the fourth and fifth books
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
To Boldly Go Where No Craft Has Gone Before!
From the Dvice article:
- NASA is planning to start having Voyager roll on a regular basis to better detect changes in the solar wind, which is petering out as the spacecraft approaches the boundary with interstellar space. Five of these rolls are planned for the next seven days, with more rolls every week for the next three months..
Check out the Dvice article here And the excellent Wikipedia reference here
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Cape Has Been Cleaned, Folded and Put Away...
NBC has been hosting the series staring David Lyons, Keith David, Summer Glau among others was scheduled for 13 episodes but rather quickly, NBC, reduced the order to 10 and then outright canceled the series. In an odd twist, NBC will not even air the final episode will only be available as an online exclusive.
The weirdest thing to come out of this latest cancellation are fans speculating that Summer Glau has a curse on her! lol I am serious! Glau fans unhappily point out that every show she has been a part of has been canceled! OH MY! lmao!
Read complete Airlock Alpha article
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Good bye Discovery
From Space.com:
- Discovery landed for the final time here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at 11:57 a.m. EST
And just so Space.com can nail it home for Discovery one last time:
- after 27 years and 39 flights, Discovery's wheels rolled to a stop for the very last time under the warm sun at the Florida spaceport's Shuttle Landing Facility.
Space.com article
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Outside In - Saturn flyby
STS - 133 Wake up Call!
Come on....just for a second...fess up... you had that feeling just for a split second...thought so...softie!
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Ancient Geological Formations Were Working Reactors
Scientific American via Dvice blog
Airforce Lalunches another spy plane
The latest mission is scheduled to last about 270 days, but the Air Force said that might be extended. The first craft stayed in orbit 224 days.
Read more
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Blade Runner prequel?
But according to IO9, Alcon Entertainment Warner Bros-based financing and production company ) and Bud Yorkin are in "final negotiations" to secure the rights to the film.
But the weird thing is that the rights would be all inclusive EXCEPT to remake the film, so no reboot....prequel or sequel is what seems to be on the table.
Read the press release that IO9 posted to see the convolutions...or C...F... if you would
Whacked Cyborg!
The old "Lassie? Timmy is where?" certainly take on a new life of their own now. Let the speculations begin!
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Like grains of sand...these are the red dwarfs in our skies...
Who doesn't remember Carl Sagan's Cosmos? Sagan would often make a pronouncement of scale that was totally astounding. I can clearly remember Sagan in the early 80s proclaiming that there are more stars than grains of sand on the beaches of Earth. Now one astronomer trying to put a number to Sagan's pronouncement estimated that there are about 2000 billion billion grains of sand on Earth. That's a serious haul of stars by anyone's estimate.
In amongst the visible class of stars are, for lack of a better label, ghost stars. Stars so small, dim and cool as to be all but invisible under most detection methods. Red Dwarf stars and no one could come up with a reasonable amount of these "ghost stars'. Recently Yale astronomers determined that there are many more of red Dwarf stars than anyone thought possible. Yale astronomers detected the light from red dwarf stars in the spectra of large elliptical galaxies and from this determined that red dwarfs account for around 60% of the mass (star mass) of those galaxies. That is triple what was previously thought to exist!
What is even wilder about red dwarfs is just how slow they age. Because they are relatively cool and very small these stars burn their fuel very slowly. So slowly in fact that the present universe is not old enough for red dwarf stars to grow "old". Which when you come to think about it means that virtually every red dwarf that present at creation of the universe, is still burning 13+ billion years later!
Bangor Daily News article
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Huge Luna Cave Discovered
Discovered by the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft the structure is more than one mile long and 393 feet wide.
The ISRO is speculating on good uses for the huge cave. It is sufficiently well protected to block harmful radiation from damaging long term occupants as well as constant temperatures of around -4 Fahrenheit where the surface experiences huge variations in temperature.