writing | M Thomas Apple Author Page

Onward and upward, Excelsior!

September 19, 2022
MThomas

Just passed 200 followers on WordPress. Thank you, everyone!

I know I should be posting a whole lot more often than I have. There are LOADS of new science articles and events happening recently, so I’ll see if I can get caught up over the next couple of weeks.

Plus a new chapter of Bringer of Light by the end of the week! I promise!

(And it would be VERY helpful if WordPress didn’t “refresh” while I was adding tags and categories to posts, and then hiding those tags and categories afterward so that I couldn’t update them…Sigh…what was wrong with the older version that worked just fine?)

We could live together / crystals on the Moon…

September 18, 2022
MThomas

*Half of a dilithium crystal? (It’s a new type of crystal called “Chang’esite” (after the ancient Chinese moon goddess).*

I should be posting another chapter from Bringer of Light, but I don’t feel like writing that right now, what with a humongoid typhoon slowing churning its way here.

So here’s an article about what Chinese scientists found in Moon dirt.

Also H3. Yay. Let’s make fusion reactors and walk on the Moon together…

Now accepting…uh, what?

September 17, 2022
MThomas

This is how good our local hospital reception used to be.

(Pre-pandemic photo, 2015 or 2016. I think it’s been fixed since then. Shortly after I took this photo we started going to another hospital instead…)

South Korea goes to the Moon

August 11, 2022
MThomas

If successful, it will join spacecraft from the U.S. and India already operating around the moon, and a Chinese rover exploring the moon’s far side.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/south-korean-spacecraft-launched-moon-countrys-1st-rcna41778

Looks like Lunar Base is going to be a crowded place soon…

#RIP Nichelle Nichols

August 1, 2022
MThomas

Shining brightly in the stars…

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/nichelle-nichols-groundbreaking-star-trek-actor-dead-89-rcna40857

PS. MSNBC announcer, her character’s name was “Uhura,” not “Ura.” Come on…

Another month, another missed Bringer of Light post…

July 18, 2022
MThomas

Yeah. So I missed another installment in my series.

Shoot.

Things are just ridiculously spiraling out of control at work. I hope to start posting more regularly again in a week or so.

In the meantime, check out more images from the Webb space telescope compared to Hubble. They’re pretty awe-inspiring.

Carl Sagan at the Illinois ACLU: A lost 1987 lecture on civil liberties

July 1, 2022
MThomas

…there has been a serious erosion of the tradition of skeptical inquiry, of vigorous challenging of government leaders, of public exposure of what the government is actually doing, rather than mere pomp and rhetoric. And it is in this area—skeptical scrutiny, public exposure—where the largest strides, in my opinion, are needed.
https://quillette.com/2022/07/01/science-and-civil-liberties-the-lost-lecture-of-carl-sagan/

Thank you, Stephen Pinker and Harvey Silverglate, for transcribing this. And Ann Druyan, for permitting it.

International asteroid day!

June 30, 2022
MThomas

Today is “International Asteroid Day”!

Who knew?

Asteroids hold large amounts of valuable minerals and metals. That is what International Asteroid Day is raising awareness about on 30 June.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-61985813

Amino acids found in material brought back by Hayabusa-2

June 6, 2022
MThomas

More than 20 types of amino acids have been detected in samples Japan’s Hayabusa2 space probe brought to Earth from an asteroid in late 2020, a government official said Monday, showing for the first time the organic compounds exist on asteroids in space.
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/06/9a7dbced6c3a-amino-acids-found-in-asteroid-samples-collected-by-hayabusa2-probe.html

This lends support to the hypothesis that life on Earth was brought to it during the Late Heavy Bombardment period – in which meteors brought not just water but the building blocks of life…

Now imagine if someone were to find an asteroid with addition proteins NOT found on Earth… (i.e., my novel’s scientific premise…)

Madam, I’m ADAM

June 3, 2022
MThomas

This used to be a gif, but apparently I’m not allowed to download it as such, and even as a “webp” (whatever the hell that is) I had to convert it to a jpg just to upload it.

More than 100 previously unknown asteroids have been detected using a new tool that can comb through huge existing archives of data to search for potentially dangerous space rocks.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/asteroids-detected-new-tool-uses-existing-data-rcna31245

The above is *supposed* to be a “quotation” format from WordPress, which increasingly seems to want me to do all my posting from a smartphone *which ain’t gonna happen.*

Math to the rescue. No need for more scenes like this… (come on, you cried, admit it…)

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