The Little Magnet That Could!

Check out the super-conducting magnet in the pic.   This golf ball sized magnet has a secret.  It is how much magnetic force this little wonder can generate.  It can develop a force greater than that of an MRI machine or say 3 thousand time greater than a fridge magnet.  In the science world it produces a magnetic field of 17.6 Tesla or in terms easier to understand....3.3 TONS!   Needless to say, this monster set a new worlds record by annihilating the previous holder by 0.4 Tesla.

Now if your mind wasn't already blown....check out how the magnet was formed, from the Gizmodo article:

• This new magnet was created by growing gadolinium barium copper oxide  very carefully and slowly, into a single grain that measured an inch in diameter. Then, the sample was reinforced before being pumped with current to generate the magnetic field; without that reinforcement, the sample could have torn itself apart.

Unbelievable or what?!  The really remarkable discovery is in the manufacturing of a single crystal, one inch in diameter.  The process is called "melt processing" and as the article points out...it is a fairly simple process.  The implications are astounding.  From super efficient energy recovery systems, to efficient and inexpensive mass transit systems.

 Gizmodo article HERE

BMU Episode 412 now online

After my opening observations I play the closing theme for the anime series called Red Data girl. 
I then play a short story by CrystalWizard called Best Laid Plans. 

I ran this story back in April of 09, its' every bit as good today.

From the blog - Musk of SpaceX and Tesla motors has some concerns on AI  Deep Mind and Vicarious are two businesses that Musk uses to keep an eye on the emerging artificial inteligence field.

A grea Fall by Phil Temples is a story that takes a well known tale and retells it as a mystery....Enjoy

How Pillars of Creation May Have Formed Using Computer Animation

In 1995, the Hubble space telescope trained its' optics on a cloud of gas and dust inside the Eagle Nebula some 7 thousand light years from Earth. The resulting image became as iconic as the Apollo "Earth Rise" or Sagen's "Pale Blue Dot". That image became known as "The Pillars of Creation"

From the Space.Com article:

• Scientists think the "pillars" in the image ... formed as cooler interstellar gas was worn away by intense radiation and powerful winds from nearby massive stars......

The massive stars in question that may have formed the "Pillars" were O-type stars, more than 16 times more massive than the sun.  O-type also have surface temperatures over 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit.







Scott Balfour, an astronomer at Cardiff University, wanted to see if type O stars, forming inside such a cloud of gas and dust, could indeed form structures like the pillars.   Condensed 1.6 million years of cosmic history into several weeks of computing time:

• "The model neatly produces exactly the same kind of structures seen by astronomers in the classic 1995 image....." Balfour said in a recent statement.

Space.Com article HERE

Soccer in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace....

Ok here we go.  Less than a minute of soccer weirdness aboard the ISS between US and Germany astronauts.





From the ARTICLE :
NASA's Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, who hails from Germany, showed off their moves in a soccer exhibition aboard the orbiting lab recently.

Elon Musk of Space X Says to be Wary of Artificial Intelgence

Elon Musk is easily one of the most forward looking people today. The driving force behind Tesla Motors and Space X, Musk has his feet firmly planted in the future. Even so, in recent interviews Elon has reveled concerns for the future of technological advancement.

Musk's concerns center around artificial intelligence that has made great improvements and advancements over the past decade. He feels without proper stop gaps there is a very real possibility of a "Terminator" class breakdown.

During a recent CNBC interview, Musk said "There are some scary outcomes...." Elon intimated that vigilance will go a long way towards making sure that the outcomes are good....

Musk has made substantial investments in A.I. companies like DeepMind and another called Vicarious - From the Article:

• "It's not from the standpoint of actually trying to make any investment return," Musk explained. ".... I like to just keep an eye on what's going on with artificial intelligence. I think there is a potentially dangerous outcome there." 

Here is the CNBC video where Musk speaks at length about a variety of subjects such as advancements in electric cars and batteries as well as solar generation:

complete NBC News article link HERE

BMU - 411 Now Online

Welcome to episode 411 of Beam Me Up. After my opening comments, I once again play the opening music to the rather calm anime series called Kashima's Kiss.

I follow this straight up with this month's Dark Inspectre series, by Jason Kahn.  This month - episode 26. Jack has been flat on his back for two episodes so far. He is still recovering from the ambush. The

down time does have it's good side so far as it gives him time to put names to faces, so to speak.

From the blog this week:

NASA is still hoping for favorable weather conditions to launch a huge helium balloon into the stratosphere

Hubble data shows that dwarf galaxies were very important in the early universe.

I close with a great story from Dean Ing called Linger.  I asked Dean several years ago if I could read this one but as you know this went to hell in a hand basket there for a while with my health.  I already
had it recorded so I mixed some tracks and I like the outcome.  I hope you do as well.
to test the supersonic parachutes it would like to use on some of the heavy Mars missions


  Thanks for listening.

What You Need To Know About 3D Printed Organs....

The first thing to consider is "why is the idea of 3d printed objects" is so popular.

Well from a straight numbers perspective, over 78 thousand new requests for transplant organs were made while only 34 hundred donations were made.   The idea of a printer that could print the failing organ would be a significant windfall.

Printers that can print material that is suitable for residence in the human body are really not all that new.   It was the Wake Forest Institute, who 3D-printed the synthetic building blocks they needed to grow human bladders.  Not the bladders but the "building blocks" that one day could become a bladder.  Or, more recently, the company Organovo founded in  2007, can now print out liver tissue samples that can be used for drug testing and research. The company's hoping to develop a functional liver in the near future.

Read how the printers work and how they deposit material Here

The real question now is, that with all this fantastic progress, how is it that we don't HAVE printed hearts and livers on demand.   Again it comes back to sophistication and complexity.    The first problem is finding material that can be used that can go through the printing process and then be robust enough to grow outside the human body.   You just can't take freshly printed cells and place them in a human body and hope then work.

Cornell engineer Hod Lipson:

    "You can put the cells of a heart tissue in the right place together, but where's the start button? The magic happens after printing has taken place."

 Lipson also notes that there's still no software powerful enough to make very detailed organ models that researchers can consult before printing.

Surgeon Anthony Atala notes that roughly 90% of the people on the waiting list are waiting for kidneys.  Atala is looking for ways to create a kidney using 3d printing, and even showed off a non-working model during his recent TEDs talk. 



Complete Endgadget article HERE

Dwarf Starburst Galaxies Played Important Role In Early Universe

Scientists using data from the Hubble Space Telescope,studying early dwarf galaxies have observed the brilliant flashes of star formation.

Even though all galaxies produce stars, these young dwarf galaxies were producing new stars at a prodigious rate. So fast was this formation, that they could double the number of stars they hold in just 150 million years. By comparison, regular galaxies only master this feat in 1 to 3 billion years!


Read the rest of this really good article from Space.com


 

NASA Waiting For Calm Skies to Launch Martian Lander Test Vehicle

NASA is still hoping to  launch a "flying saucer" into Earth's atmosphere. The intent is to test Mars mission tech.  In part NASA wants to test areo breaking and super sonic parachutes to slow down future probes and rovers.  Bad weather at the initial launch facility is preventing the system from launching the test vehicles. 

The test bed for now is a helium balloon to carry the disc-shaped vehicle over the Pacific. 

The mission is designed to test a new supersonic vehicle and giant parachute in Earth's stratosphere where conditions are similar to the red planet.

From the article HERE:

• For decades, NASA relied on the same parachute design to slow spacecraft streaking through the thin Martian atmosphere. The 1-ton Curiosity rover that landed in 2012 used the same basic parachute as the twin Viking landers in 1976.

Complete NASA article on ABC news is HERE

BMU #410 Now Online!!!

I start the program with comments on the Russians intent to ban transport of astronauts to the ISS.

Author Jay Lake finally lost his five year battle with cancer.  I speak at length about his work.

I do Game On which is the theme song for the Felicia Day vehicle on Youtube called The Guild.

And more from the blog Whacked thing happening at the Turing Tests…. I read Kallimus’ review this week. Again he is in full form!

Crossing over by Mr. Phil Temple is the story this week.

I really hope you enjoy this week’s rather strange selection See you next week.

Paul

The Possible Look of a Warp Speed Star Ship

Check out this picture that was created by Mark Rademaker.  Rademaker  based his picture  on NASA's Harold White's designs.  White is part of NASA's Advanced Propulsion Team and has been working since 2010 to develop a warp drive that will allow spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light.

The image shown above (and others on this web-site) is a technologically detailed spacecraft that  Rademaker says  took more than 1,600 hours to create them.

The graphic shows the ship supporting two huge rings.  These are space compressors that both expand and compress space/time.  The space inside the rings is normal space but the compressors themselves have no limit to how fast they  compress or expand space.

More on the ship and the drive HERE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Where's the bleeping manuals

The Wil Wheaton Project

            Yeah, that Wil Wheaton, (Wesley Crusher) has a new series on the former sci-fi channel. He actually isn’t doing too bad of a job either. The first episode he was kind of stiff, but loosened up in the second, and in the third tonight he seems to have hit his stride. The show itself isn’t half bad either. I read a description somewhere (on IMDb maybe in the comment section or something), that describes it as a Tosh.O for nerds. Couldn’t describe it better myself really. Maybe to say that it doesn’t get as sick as Tosh.O does and is a bit more light hearted over all. It’s a decent show, and well worth the watch. Below is a link to the Hulu page where they post the episodes online. If you haven’t seen it, catch up. Felicia Day that was the star of the hit web series “The Guild” was on the second episode. And he did give a warning. Watch the show or the ones in charge will replace him with hillbilly ghost hunters. That is reason enough in my book to tune in every week at every showing.

http://www.hulu.com/the-wil-wheaton-project

 ANIME STUFF

            Well, where to start. Let’s start with what looks like bad news coming in 2015. The Intruder is back. For those that don’t remember, and you had better or hang your head in shame, or for those that don’t know, I wanted to slap the living you know what out of people at Cartoon Network. This was back in the time of the original Toonami, and the original Tom (Toonami Operations Module). Tom was the host then as he is now, but a different Tom. The first Tom was killed by The Intruder, and the second Tom was born.  We are now up to Tom 5.0, and the best since Tom 1.0. Tom 4.0 is not discussed by me, as I think they were all on acid at that time. I’ll give you two links here for this. The first leads to you tube and the original Intruder story. The second leads to the toonami wiki site and tells the history of Tom.  And you know what. If they feel such a need to wipe out TOM again, then why not just get a live host for toonami. Animation is expensive anyway. So I vote for Elvira to be hired as host. Seriously, with Attack On Titan and people being torn in half and eaten by much bigger naked people, she’d fit right in now. In other words, STOP KILLING OFF TOMS YOU SMEGGERS. They’ll probably blow up the Absolution, (the ship), again too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gct92iFX08Q

http://toonami.wikia.com/wiki/TOM

            And now for what is definitely much better news.  On Sunday, June 15^th, you’ll want to stay tuned in to cartoon Network after the new Robot Chicken episode. Rick and Morty won’t be returning till the end of the year or early next year, so if you were hoping for that, not happening yet, unfortunately. But another great show is returning for a fourth season of  6 episodes. And it looks to be another wild ride. I am of course talking about what has to be the most pleasant to be in prison in the universe, SUPERJAIL. It’ll wake up all your senses, right before shutting them down. It looks to be more back toward the first two season’s fun of flesh stripping, run amok mayhem and gore we all came to love it for. 10.5 minutes of desensitizing violence and gore and death and a self-hating love for people that 98% of should have been wiped from the universe long ago. If you haven’t seen Superjail, you have to see it. You either love it or hate it basically. I love it. There is a reason it is done in only short episodes.  The links will take you to the page with new season info and preview, and the second will take you to the Adult Swim site, where they have finally returned all the episodes of everything where they should be. I believe them. I think they all went on a freaking acid trip there for a few years. Yeah, taking down episodes really helps your web site. What a bunch of gits.

http://www.awn.com/news/adult-swim-premiere-season-4-superjail-june-15

http://video.adultswim.com/superjail/index.html

            And two more things. The first is short and to the point. An artist in South Korea needs an ass kicking. He used our Super Hero, Spidey yet of all people, for a piece of art on a side of a building with spidey bent backwards with a hard….. Well you get it. Seriously, people, I am telling you. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe the time for running amok is already past, and it’s just hopeless now. Here’s the link to the perversity.

http://lockerdome.com/happygilmore/6170048381332289/6686406428992017

And last of course is what I titled this one. Where in the blue blazing 9 million hells of (insert whatever myth suits you here), are the bleeding manuals for things now days. Some of us aren’t born with a freaking chip in our heads, yet.

            There was a time when a computer manual was too thick, and covered stuff no normal operator would ever even attempt to try. Okay, maybe not so big a deal with a computer, as the new ones now usually almost self-set up. But let’s go on.

            Anyone out there see a real manual for your smart phone? And I am not talking looking the freaking thing up on the internet.

            And what about tablets, etc.

            Here is my point on this. Manuals should be a part of everything for a simple reason. If you are trying to fix a problem on your tablet, phone, wtf ever, and you have no net access for whatever reason. So, what now? No manual. No answers except by experimenting, which can lead to some very unwanted results at times. Not to mention it becomes a real fun situation when you are trying to repair something on your comp, etc, and using an online manual jumping back and forth trying to follow a set of instructions that are written that long and drawn out I am convinced just to make life difficult. I can come up with multiple situations where a manual is needed. Here’s an idea.

            Get these people to realize that no one is going to keep up with tech now. Seriously. We were great at video games when they came out. But then the next line of tech came out. And it moves faster and stronger all the time. Kids are born into tech now that is changing as fast as each new micro generation is born. In 20 years, the kids that are born now, will be saying the same things. And by then a manual will be unheard of.

            So when you think about it, we are headed for a time when manuals will truly be obsolete, as the advent of tech will enable a direct connection to the net for instant information, and that is not far away.

            So now I make my biggest point. In 20 years, all of us that grew up watching Giant robot, Marine boy, Speed Racer, etc, are going to need a manual. A manual to figure out how to communicate with what we are creating now. Pretty soon text stuff will become actual words, such as LOL being not spelled but spoken as an actual word, and the same with other words and phrases as we butcher the language into something incoherent.  There is advancement of language, and then there is the de-evolvement of language. We are not advancing it. We are not stagnating it. Guess what that leaves?

            So, if someone out there has the time. I would really appreciate that manual of how to communicate with the rest of the country in 20 years.

            You know what. Go ahead and write the manual up, and get it printed for all my fellows out there. I think I’ll just pass. When we get to where I can’t understand the idiots anymore at all, then I won’t have to deal with them either. So you know what. You’ve already thrown out all the other manuals we need for stuff we buy, including any and all video game manuals you cheap %*%$#%*^%%^&^%^…, so just forget this one too. Damn thing would probably be illegible by the time it got written anyway. 

R.I.P. Jay Lake

 

Writer Jay Lake passed June 1 2014.  He lost his six year battle with colon cancer just five days short of his fiftieth birthday.

Jay was born  June 6, 1964 in Taipei, Taiwan China.  He grew up living and traveling in Asia, Africa and Europe. Jay graduating in high-school 1982 and graduated from the  University of Texas Austin in 1986. After college, Jay started a professional career in advertising and marketing in the high tech industry, which gave him exposure to technology  and trends.

In 2001 Jay made his publishing debut on the science fiction and fantasy scene. As he said, after 11 years of effort, he was an overnight success.  One of the most prolific writers in the genre, he has seen more than 300 short stories and 10 novels published. 

No More American Astronauts on the ISS?!!!

Yep you read that correctly.  I first started hearing about this from my science guy.  He stated that he had heard that the Russians were threatening to ban American astronauts from the International Space Station due to our reaction to their annexation of the Ukraine’s Crimea. 

This sounded so very bizarre that I had to Google it to see what the skinny was and there it was on Extreme Tech's web site:

• Russia is threatening to ban the US from using the International Space Station. Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly in the short term, Russia will ban the US from buying the Russian RD-180 rocket engines that are currently used by the ULA’s Atlas V launcher to put the US military’s satellites into space.   

Now here is where it gets a bit confusing for me.  Sure they can stop the U.S. from getting RD-180s and certainly refuse passengers after 2020, but how can they physically or legally prevent U.S. astronauts from entering the ISS?

Right now, since the retirement of the Shuttle fleet,  we do no have the ability to ferry personnel to the station.  However, after 2020, I can not imagine that the man rated version of Space X's Dragon capsule will not be be in service, by that time.  

To that end, Elton Musk of Space X presented Dragon V2 that will be able to carry seven astronauts for several days, visit the ISS and land where-ever needs to under its own power.   Check it out HERE

Computer Passes Turing Test for the First Time!

That one get your attention?!  Thank Crystal-Wizard for this little dandy!   The computer, posing as a 13 year old boy named Eugene Goostman managed to fool a group of researchers.

The test, named after computer pioneer Alan Turing, is fairly straight forward.  To say that a computer program has passed the Turing Test, it needs to fool  30 percent of human judges in five-minute, text-based chats,  something until now has never happened.

It should be noted though that a chat bot has now also passed by posing as a 13 year old boy with whom English is not a primary language. 

So it is not AI going on here but some very clever library scripts and the like but still, there are huge implications. 

Read the whole article here

BMU #409 Is Now Online

 

For an opening to this week's program I start with Mushi - shi opening song "The Sore Feet Song" by Ally Kerr.  For fans, there is a follow on season now available.

This week from the blog, the canceled boost glide tech used in the Boeing X20 Dyna Soar that originated in the 50s and canceled by the end of the decade.  The weird thing? Maybe it wasn't all that canceled?

Next I review the movie "On The Beach" based on the Nevil Shute novel of the same name.

There may be more proof that the Moon WAS created by a giant impactor.

Again the Hubble Space Telescope has taken ground breaking deep field photos that will change a lot of what we know about the formation of the early universe.

Finally Phil Temple sends in "The Little Thief" by Phil Temple

Was the Moon Created by a Giant Collision? German Scientists Say Most Deff

 

Most theories about the formation of the Moon use a "Huge Impact" a a probable cause for the Moon's creation.  Problem? Oh yes, analysis of samples from the moon show that they are identical with those of Earth's.  No third planet material is detected in either samples, which is a major setback to proving said theory.  

Now a German team has re-examined the moon rock samples and discovered a measurable difference in the ratio of Oxygen isotopes with the samples having a slightly higher concentration of Oxygen 17 than Earth rock does, which the researchers claim is evidence that a rogue planet played a part in the formation of the moon.

Of course not everyone is sold.  Critics of the updated huge impactor suggest that they would    expect a more radical difference in chemical compositions between Earth and the theoretical huge asteroid.  The German team also had only a small sample set to work with, but the lead researcher is pretty convinced: "This confirms the giant impact hypothesis."

Review: On the Beach 1959 movie

On The Beach  (wiki link)

Gregory Peck as Commander Dwight Lionel Towers, USS Sawfish
Ava Gardner as Moira Davidson

Fred Astaire as Julian Osborn, Australian scientist
Anthony Perkins as Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes, Royal Australian Navy
Donna Anderson as Mary Holmes

I can clearly recall when I really became interested in science fiction and the first few titles that I read, or movies that I watched, (which were often the self same thing) that cemented it all in place. 

One of the  major players for me was a book by Nevil Shute titled "On The Beach" which was part of my reading assignments for a class in "Social Comment & Criticism" as was another title I can recall which was "Fail Safe"

In the 70s, when I got to them, they were considered  social comment and criticism, but I could see the monikers of sci-fi, Technology gone astray which leads to society and possibly species break-down. As you can see both titles fall smack dab in the middle of field and would continue to even when a sub genre such as speculative fiction became popular.  

And so you can see how books like Shute's "On the Beach" would have had formative influences on the types of fiction that I would enjoy in the future. One the Beach tells the story of a world war with nuclear elements being exchanged.  Life in the northern hemisphere is now impossible, the only habitable land is Australia and that is fast becoming radioactive as well. 

The differences between the novel and the late 50s film are fairly minor.  I remember how I felt after my first reading of the novel  and my first viewing of the film.  The film was a bit heavy handed at the end, but hardly enough to preclude you watching, which is something I would suggest.  If you have not read classics like On The Beach or Fail Safe or watched the associated films then I am really going to have to strongly suggest that you take the time to watch and or read On the Beach.  You will not be disappointed. 

If you are looking for your own copy, I have seen them listed on Ebay and Amazon.

Hubble Being Used to Study Star Formation Using the Ultraviolet Ultra Deep Field Study.

Hey, check out this pic.  As nice as it looks just looking at it, becomes amazing when you know just what it is.   First off, there is no doubt about it being a Hubble shot.  Or that it is an extremely narrow shot.  But the Caltech in Pasadena astronomers who took the photo used one of Hubble's greatest abilities of being able to see very deep into the universe.  This shot covers less real-estate than a full moon but peers back into the universe to within just a few hundred million years after the big bang.

As noteworthy as the photo is, it is ground breaking for another reason.  For most of its operational life, Hubble has explored the visible and near infra-red spectrum.  Recently astronomer   Harry Teplitz has had Hubble look deep into space using using its ability to photograph in the ultraviolet wavelengths.   From the article:

• "Ultraviolet is where we see the hottest light from the youngest stars," said Teplitz, who led a new study called "Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field." "It is a direct measure of star formation."

The ability to photograph in the  ultraviolet means that now scientists will be able to study star formation  from 5 to 10 billion years ago when the bulk of star formation to place. 

  You can see a much better detailed pic at the LA Science Now page HERE as well as read the complete article.

Why the Interest in a Canceled 50 Year Old Tech. Boost Glide.... The Bell x-20 Dyna-Soar

How many of you have ever heard of  the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar?  How about "boost-glide"? Not ringing to many bells or prompting too many memories huh?

Well this is a subject that was put to me today which was look up boost glide and as close as I could come was a long canceled project that involved Boeing and a some what shuttle looking lifting body called the  X-20 Dyna-Soar. (Check it out HERE)  Though it never flew, it did however have some impressive  performance goals, one of which was the ability to be anywhere on the Earth's surface in an hour.  The X-20 could attain these hyper velocities by being boosted by a rocket and then gliding at many times the speed of sound to its target.  As you can see  Boost  Glide. 

But this project was canceled more than 50 years ago after sucking up 660 million (that's about 5 billion in today's dollars) Why get excited about that?   According to this 2011 Space News Article

• Currently, the Department of Defense has no plans to replace nuclear weapons on ICBMs or submarine-launched ballistic missiles with conventional weapons that fly ballistic trajectories,

Now consider that in 2011 there seemed to be no interest in boost glide weapons and technology when in fact the former Bush administration seems to have been VERY interested.   Check out this NPR audio file HERE

Kepler - 56 Prepairing For a Great Meal

In 2012  Kepler-56 was discovered. Planets Kepler-56b and Kepler-56c were subsequently confirmed.  The Kepler 56 planetary system is a bit odd however.  First, it was discovered that the orbits of its two planets are about 45° misaligned to the host star's equator. Even weirder is the possibility of a "ghost" planet in the mix.  The scientists though are calling it a gravitational perturbator.   Mainly because it is not clear if it is a nearby star or a third planet.

That would be enough strangeness for several star systems, but Kepler 56 has been exciting the
astrophysicists.   Kepler 56, roughly 1 Sol mass, is going off main sequence and becoming a red giant.  In doing so, it will engulf its two closest in planets Kepler-56b and Kepler-56c.  But wait...there's more!

From the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysic, the lead author on the paper of this discovery, Gongjie Li said:

• "As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,"

The prediction is for the event to happen soon, by astronomical standards. Their ends will come in 130 million and 155 million years, respectively.

Since Kepler 56 is so much like our sun that these observations  provides a glimpse into the future of our solar system.

Wikipedia link HERE       Phys.org link HERE

"As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,'" says lead author Gongjie Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-star-swallow-planets.html#jCp

"As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,'" says lead author Gongjie Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-star-swallow-planets.html#jCp

"As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,'" says lead author Gongjie Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-star-swallow-planets.html#jCp

BMU # 408 Is Now Online What Everyone Wanted - Evans + In the Corps - Barbour

After my opening comments which I have to tell you were a bit on the WTF! is he talking about side, I settle down to play my first story, "what everyone wanted" by Robert Mitchel Evans.

Directly after, a tune by John anealio, "Angels and vampires.

Then we jaunt over to a few articles from the Beam Me Up blog: I spend a moment speaking about Harlan Ellison and some on his really transporting works.

Canada this week demonstrated its Dextre hand, by replacing a camera on the Canada 2 arm.

Skype plans to institute a real time translator in the very near future.  Some Skype users will have the ability to use the software by the end of 2014.  At this time it is only German to English and back.  By 2016 the translator will be fully functional.  

And the final story of the show. "In the Corps" by Matthew J. Barbour