BMU #290 Thief of Futures pt1 D. Thomas Minton

While I start this week's program by playing Karma by Kokia which I have not played for a while. This song was of course one of the opening titles used in the anime series Gunslinger Girls.

My first story this week is a flash fiction piece from down under. From the pages of Antipodean is Jason Butterfied’s excellent flash fiction story called “Out of Time” . At the bottom of the hour is part one of Thomas Minton ‘Thief of Futures’. Where in the not so distant future a person’s “Future” becomes a commodity, if it proves to be of exceptional quality. And a X futures thief trying hard to protect what is most important to him, his daughter.

From the Blog: Russia’s failed Mars exploratory rover mission failure mean that scientists and engineers behind the Phobos-Grunt mission could face criminal prosecution. In an update however: The European Space Agency (ESA) announced that they will attempt to contact the stranded Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft that became stuck at a low-Earth orbit due to engine failure that followed its launch on November 9. Back in 2010, an out-of-character Stephen Colbert sat down with astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberly Academy to talk for 90 minutes about science, society and the universe. I have the video embedded on the blog. Comic book character Booster Gold is heading towards a meeting with the SyFy channel with a live action series in the offing. The Navy is phasing out its steam based catapult aircraft launching system and will be replacing it with an electromagnetic catapult launching system. Plans are to install the new system on the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier now in production. Intel is hard at work in hopes of bringing augmented reality technology into its’ chips. The Terminator tech of the future….today huh? NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft is hoping for a third extension of it’s mission. Controllers fired the spacecrafts engines to keep all mission possibilities open. From the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a short over-flight of the proto planet Vesta. This 3-D video incorporates images from the framing camera instrument aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft from July to August 2011. There is a lot more on the blog, I just didn’t get a chance to get to it all.

Betelgeuse Could go Supernova at any time!

Red super-giant Betelgeuse is set to explode into a supernova at any time withing the next 100k years. When that even occurs, it's brightness would possibly outshine the moon and last for up to a year!

Betelgeuse was at one point so huge that it would reach out to Jupiter's orbit. Over the past 15 years the giant has begun a massive contraction. It's size has dropped by 15% although the brightness has not diminished perceptibly.

Red giants often have very short lifespans, mostly only a few million years. They go off main sequence and start their helium, carbon and on to more massive elements until they reach iron where fusion stops. But between the first contraction and the end of fusion, series of contractions often take place which re-energizes and restarts the fusion process. Though scientists do not know why Betelgeuse is contracting, it could be one of these contractions that happens as the massive stars switch fuels for fusing.

A supernova happening in Earth's vicinity is scientifically interesting but too close could prove to be a disaster to Earth, as a gama-ray pulse could end life on Earth. Betelgeuse however is 600 light years distant and so is too distant to do any harm.

Check out the full Daily Galaxy article

Hubble Finds The Oldest Galaxy So Far

Tim Sayell send in a great article concerning a recent discovery by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Studying a NASA photograph, released earlier this year, European astronomers have uncovered a galaxy 13.1 billion years old. That makes the universe just shy of 600 million years old when it was a separate entity. It is quite literally the earliest and most distant galaxy seen so far. It is so old in fact that the astronomers do not even think it exists in it observed form any longer. It was most likely swept up by younger and much larger galaxies.

What makes this discovery equally important is the age of the galaxy in the image. Astronomers put it at apx. 100 million years. They can say that with a fair amount of certainty because of the lack of heavy metals and an abundance of massive blue giant stars. The age is important in that at the time this old galaxy was first formed, the universe was itself only 100 million or so years old. Astronomers feel that they are very close to discovering objects from the creation of the universe.

complete article in Yahoo News

Gene Roddenberry Inducted into TV Hall of Fame

On January 21st the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences inducted Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences TV Hall of Fame.

In the video Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane gives a loving tribute to Roddenberry.