Jack Mangan responds to Unsolvable Deathtrap broadcast

As you might recall, I ran Jack Mangan's excellent short story "The Unsolvable Deathtrap"
in episode 73. Jack was kind enough to write back, and I thought I would share his comments with you.



Paul,

Hey, I realize that the show ran about a month ago --- but I wanted to write and say thanks for the wonderful treatment you showed "The Unsolvable Deathtrap". Greatly appreciated! And you did an excellent job. ............ keep up the good work!

-
Jack Mangan


Thanks Jack!

What To Do Before the Asteroid Strikes

From Discover Magazine online

In 2004, a dozen or so scientists quietly confronted an impending disaster. They had inside intelligence that a chunk of rock and metal, roughly 1,300 feet wide, was hurtling toward a possible collision with the most populated swath of Earth—Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. Furiously crunching numbers on their computers, the researchers put the odds of impact in the year 2029 at exactly those of hitting the number in a game of roulette: 1 in 37. Researching back data proved that conclusion wrong, however in 2029 the asteroid, dubbed Apophis—derived from the Egyptian god Apep, the destroyer who dwells in eternal darkness—will zoom closer to Earth than the world’s communications satellites do. And April 13, 2036, it will return—this time with a 1-in-45,000 chance of hitting somewhere on a line stretching from the Pacific Ocean near California to Central America. What causes even more concern is that this is far from an unusual situation. There are literally hundreds of thousands of small to medium object that are now being tracked that are no where near the size to end civilization like the one that killed off the dinosaurs, but still could pack a vicious wallop in the arena of a good sized nuclear or multiple nuclear weapon! Slamming into the ocean, Apophis could create a tsunami dwarfing the one that killed more than 200,000 people around Indonesia. NASA is trying to pinpoint 90% of the NEOs that could be extremely dangerous to life on Earth and ESA is in the experimentation phase of plans to deflect smaller objects before they hit Earth. Click here to read more about their concerns and first serious attempt at developing a planetary defense.

Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post

Comet draws scientific, amateur interest

A comet that has unexpectedly brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest. The comet in question and of interest is Comet 17P/Holmes which can be seen in the northern sky, in the constellation Perseus, as a fuzzy spot of light about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper. The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies. Until Oct. 23, the comet had been visible to modern astronomers only with a telescope when it suddenly increased in brightness which indicated that the comet nucleus had disintegrated. Scientists speculate the comet has exploded because there are sinkholes in its nucleus, giving it a honeycomb-like structure. The collapse exposed comet ice to the sun, which transformed the ice into gas. Paul Lewis, director of astronomy outreach at the University of Tennessee, says that "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event to witness, along the lines of when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter back in 1994,"

Thanks to listener Cathy for the post

BMU 77 podcast is up- we look at a galactic slugfest, the moonrush, gravity-free evolution,, talk with Shaun Saunders, listen to Doctorow and more!

BMU's latest podcast lets you: take sides on the wager on who won the great galactic barroom brawl three billion years ago, and who got the dark matter kicked out of them; find out why moon mining is suddenly where the smart money is rushing, how the Chinese may have effectively preempted other nations in gaining exclusive economic use of the moon and beyond--all the way to the limits of 'the heavens'!; why NASA must open its secret UFO files to a journalist; what organism is proven to evolve in nongravity environments; Australian novelist/psychologist Shaun Anthony Saunders on the making of Mallcity 14 (the book), and his and BMU's thoughts on the social challenges likely to crop up on longterm space voyages, when the stress of competing for expensive, continually updating material status symbols -- something endemic to Terran human socio-economics today -- is suddenly removed. And Cory Doctorow on wikipedia and other e-resources for today's internetia.

Moonrush is on, as wannabe exploiters and luna-huggers square off.

'Harvest Moon' takes on another meaning, as Terran "Moonrushers" point to fortunes to be made exploiting the vast deposits of madly valuable lunar ores containing helium-3 (He-3) that are now asserted to exist in easily mineable and transportable commercial quantities of the material.

Others, noting an increased propensity by the planet's nation-states to extraterritorially lay claim to the hitherto sacrosanct polar regions of Antarctica and Arctica, warn that Chinese planning for lunar colonization is well underway,

But do they have a claim? The host of mining interests and rocketeers that hope to stripmine Helium-3 rich moondust from the lunar "seas" have no more claim than any other earthlings. The Chinese nation however, could invoke their historic claim to already possessing the entire moon as their exclusive economic zone under the Shang Dynasty Son of Heaven declaration asserting China's extraplanetary hegemony as the ruler of "All under heaven".

With even a conservative definition of the outer rim of "heaven" encompassing the entire suite of planets and suns perceptible from Terra, Chinese claims to the moon could be seen as a small expression of the ancient claim.

In recent centuries competing groups of Terrans have used such ancient ownership claims as the aforenoted Chinese one to justify struggle for control over regions of their planet from which they may have departed millenia earlier.

(It is of course doubtful in the extreme that the People's Republic would ever advance the Shang Dynasty's space claims. But China has sent historic exploratory voyages before; Zheng He's explorations of the Indian Ocean are renowned.)

Moon-struck fight back.
Luna-huggers have also appeared, demanding protection of their planet's sole moon from the visible-from-earth scarring that would be the outcome of the application of industrial mining operations on a profitable scale to the nearly entirely pristine lunar surface environment.

Concerned about presently unforeseeable consequences, such opponents of lunar commercial exploitation may call for development and of a precautionary Lunar Impact Study Protocol requiring consideration of likely extralunar impacts of such mining, including degradation of the Moon's aesthetic resources.

Is is widely believed that large quantities of He-3 brought to Terra could power suffient fusion energy to allow for significant reduction in the use of carboniferous fossil fuels useful in s0lve the planet's global warming/energy source challenges

For the record, the Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest to Terra's autumnal equinox.