Fifty years ago, human beings first stepped on the Moon.
It’s past time we went back. And stayed for good.
One small step for (a) man…
July 20, 2019
12 Times SFF Characters Trained Their Own Duplicates
July 3, 2019
My award-winning SF novella Adam’s Stepsons featured clones, which as some reviewers noted came a little after the peak of clones (although I wonder if we have yet to hit the “peak,” given scientific progress).
So as I was scouring the net for summer reads, I came across a lot of books about clones and ethical dilemmas (or lack thereof).
The main article I’ve linked here is from Tor.com, which often posts great stuff about SF Continue Reading
No, the “golden asteroid” will NOT make you rich
June 27, 2019
I wrote about this a couple of days ago (based on an article from two weeks prior), but it’s interesting to see random websites suddenly jumping on the “we’ll all get rich!” asteroid mining band wagon. Hey, everybody, let’s copy-paste stuff and not use our brains!
A new article by rt.com even includes two click-bait links to “how gold was formed” that have nothing whatsoever to do with NASA’s probe to (16) Psyche. Of course, we shouldn’t expect any less from an obvious Russian “news” distributor. But in the interests of calling out the bad reporting in this and similar “news” articles spread online recently, let’s give this a hearty smack-down.
Full Metal Asteroid! Um. Maybe.
June 24, 2019
“Final planning stages” usually translates into “we have no idea when, if ever, this thing will work.”
Psyche!
Yes, actually.
Let’s hope NASA doesn’t resort to this:
Just Because You’re Not Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Tracking You…
June 15, 2019
Most people aren’t aware they are being watched with beacons, but the “beacosystem” tracks millions of people every day. Beacons are placed at airports, malls, subways, buses, taxis, sporting arenas, gyms, hotels, hospitals, music festivals, cinemas and museums, and even on billboards.
Big Brother is Watching…and Sending You Ads. And Ads. And Ads…
Vulcan does not exist — but 40 Eridani does
June 13, 2019
As a kid I remember reading about “Vulcan,” which people used to think existed between Mercury and the Sun but always orbited on the opposite side.
Completely fictional, of course.
But…
Vulcan made a comeback as the fictional home of Spock in Star Trek. It was said by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry to be orbiting around 40 Eridani (also called HD 26965), a triple star system in the constellation of Eridanus “the river” in the southern hemisphere just 16 light years distant. In September 2018, astronomers at the University of Florida in Gainesville found a “super-Earth” exoplanet orbiting exactly where Vulcan was said to be.
There is only one logical conclusion…
The Moon is a Shining Ball of…uh…Nickel?
June 11, 2019
“Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground…”
Uh. OK. That’s a LOT of metal. Nickel and iron? Ancient asteroid impact? 300 kilometers deep?
Sounds like a “golden” mining opportunity…
…even enough to totally justify “the Moon is a part of Mars“?
Interstellar Travel Tech — oh, Really?
April 27, 2019
“It is time to venture beyond the known planets, on toward the stars.”
Yes, I agree, but I don’t see how any of the ideas in this article will help us achieve that goal. I think the problem is the reliance on conventional means of propulsion. Clearly some sort of bending of space/time is needed to leave the solar system faster than, say, a decade, let alone reach other star systems.
Dawn already used an ion engine (way too slow). The solar gravitational lens is neat but it won’t take us there physically. The “space-based laser” idea is funky but impractical.
Getting off Earth should help (Moon Base, Mars, somewhere else like Triton). Escaping our own planet’s gravity well takes way too much effort. But after that, it’s time to forget about rockets and start thinking of truly “wacked out” ideas.
For starters, Discover, how about dumping your absolutely awful page design? Yeesh, this page is hard to read.
— http://discovermagazine.com/2019/apr/new-technologies-could-let-us-explore-beyond-the-solar-system
New Lifelike Biomaterial Self-Reproduces and Has a Metabolism
April 25, 2019
“Fundamentally, we may be able to change how we create and use the materials with lifelike characteristics. Typically materials and objects we create in general are basically static… one day, we may be able to ‘grow’ objects like houses and maintain their forms and functions autonomously.”
You mean like Iron Man from a decade ago (as seen in Infinity War)?
Or Venom back in 1984?
Honestly, scientists these days…can’t even keep up with comic books from the ’80s…
(That said, I’m not entirely thrilled with the idea of living in a living house that can maintain its own form and feed itself…on what?! you might ask…)
— Read on singularityhub.com/2019/04/24/new-lifelike-biomaterial-self-reproduces-and-has-a-metabolism/amp/
Quantum downloading the brain
April 16, 2019
The research is in early stages, but it invokes ideas like uploading brains to the cloud or hooking people up to a computer to track deep health metrics…
Hm. This sounds like an idea for a cool science fiction…
Ah.
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