M Thomas Apple Author Page

Science fiction, actual science, history, and personal ranting about life, the universe, and everything

A Happy Somber Saint Patrick’s Day to You, Terrans

March 17, 2020
MThomas

StPatricksSpock

The pub may be closed, but there’s always Trek…

I Only Wanted to See You Under the Iron Rain…

March 14, 2020
MThomas

IronRain

Wasp-76b, as it’s known, orbits so close in to its host star, its dayside temperatures exceed 2,400C – hot enough to vaporise metals.

Hmm….this reminds me of…let me think for a minute…wait, I got it…

Anakin-TooHot

Yeah, that’s the one. I think.

(Seriously, check it out. Not even the Jedi could possibly handle an actual “inferno” planet.)

Nasa’s 2020 rover: Can we finally answer the big question about Mars?

March 8, 2020
MThomas

“So, let’s bring the samples back. So if those extraordinary claims are made, they can be verified.”

One likely extraterrestrial form of life might resemble a terrestrial form: the stromatolite.

They basically look like big rocks. I visited one site in Western Australia in 2003 with a group of Japanese students who were told by a local guide that the stromatolites were “3.5 billion years old.” (They’re not, but they do look like what life might have looked like at that point.”

So NASA is sending another rover to see if they can find evidence of a similar life form.

Sorry. No Slurm (yet?).

— Read on www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/science-environment-51544476

Forget Mars, Head to Europa?

February 7, 2020
MThomas

960x0

“I think we’ve got a better chance of having slightly higher forms of life on Europa, perhaps similar to the intelligence of an octopus.”

Hmm. Maybe. It seems more like that any life would be of the microscopic or worm-like variety. But we still have to get out there first to find out…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2020/02/06/alien-life-on-jupiter-moon-europa-a-sure-bet-space-scientist-says/?fbclid=IwAR0E86oW8Gi37WJluYC4O-DwjinzuNyuMZp96YYQY-eGfuapTZhyZYksxGU#250f65893cb3

Super Bowl 2020: All the space-themed commercials

February 2, 2020
MThomas

“Being able to get humans on Mars and actually collecting one of these samples would be such an incredible moment, I would kind of hope it would almost bring us back to the moon days of everyone being glued to the TV.”

Um. Well. OK. TV is dead so we’ll all be watching it streamed on our smartphones, but the point is taken.

And how much did they pay for this? 💰 👽 📺

— Read on http://www.livescience.com/amp/super-bowl-space-commercials.html

Boldly going where we already went fifty years ago

January 24, 2020
MThomas

SpaceForce

🖖

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51245262

New “habitable” Earth? 🌍

January 10, 2020
MThomas

The newly discovered exoplanet, called TOI 700 d, is located about 100 light-years away from us and is roughly 20% larger than Earth.

Okay, not exactly close, but looking good…

A year on TOI 700 d takes 37 days.

Um. Wait. What?

One thing astronomers have discovered though is that TOI 700 d is tidally locked to its star, which means that one half bathes in eternal sunlight, and the other half always exists in darkness.

Oy.

And even better…

One of the burning questions is whether the planet has an atmosphere or not.

Is this really the best way to phrase this? 😂

I vote we pass on this one

https://www.universal-sci.com/headlines/2020/1/8/nasa-discovered-a-potentially-habitable-earth-sized-exoplanet

PS I’ve been trying futilely to get WordPress not to screw up the formatting. To no avail.

No, it’s not actually an iPhone. Yes, please stop the sloppy reporting, thanks

January 9, 2020
MThomas

AncientIPhone

This is already a few months old, but I thought I’d finally get around to blogging about it: The “ancient iPhone” of “Russia’s Atlantis.”

Spoiler alert: it’s not one, and there was no such place. But that didn’t stop the “news” from spreading. Continue Reading

Your Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker Reviews All Miss The Point

January 7, 2020
MThomas

Rey

Okay, so I figured that I would never do this.

I mean, write a Star Wars movie review? When so many have already been there, done that, loved it/hated on it/debated it? When I already did it (ah, twenty years ago, but still…)

But, then again, why not?

Especially when so many have gotten it so wrong… Continue Reading

What’s more valuable than gold? This rock

December 27, 2019
MThomas

If you find a big rock in your backyard, and you can’t break it open with normal tools, guess what?

The researchers argue that the Maryborough meteorite is much rarer than gold. It’s one of only 17 meteorites ever recorded in the Australian state of Victoria, and it’s the second largest chondritic mass, after a huge 55-kilogram specimen identified in 2003.

This next bit is more interesting to me:

“Other rare meteorites contain organic molecules such as amino acids; the building blocks of life.”

Hmmm… 🤔 Sounds like a storyline…

flip.it/PjaS-D

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