Space

Playing Catchup

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

There was no blogging yesterday because I was busy. I spent a whopping 12 hours on the day job, which was a disaster in every way except that the clients seem happy and I can bill for it. Today I need to get on with Salon Futura #2 in half the time I had hoped to spend on it. But so that you don’t have to be bored for another day, here are a few things to keep you busy.

A BBC survey finds that 18% of British people are “uncomfortable” about having LGB characters on television. That’s depressing, but a good excuse to mention that The Salon this month features Nicola Griffith, Hal Duncan and Cat Valente (and me) talking about writing LGBT characters.

That report doesn’t address portrayal of trans people at all because, as you should be aware by now, the purpose of trans people on British television is to provide the audience with someone who won’t be protected by the Press Complaints Commission that can be the butt of any cruel jokes going. However, the Liberal Democrat part of our coalition government wants to have an “action plan” on transgender equality. It remains to be seen whether the Tories will allow Ms. Featherstone to actually act on the plan.

Talking of gender issues, Kyle Cassidy had a bizarre encounter in a bar last night with someone who is obviously well on the way to becoming a Republican senator. Who would have thought that Hello Kitty could arouse such ire.

Everyone has been blogging about the potentially habitable planet that has been discovered, but in case you missed it, here’s the story.

More worryingly (and because I haven’t given Kendall a “we’re all going to die” story for ages), here are some cosmologists worrying that the amount of time in our universe may be finite. Apparently we only have about 5 billion years left. Warning: even Hannu Rajaniemi might need to work a bit to follow the argument.

And finally on the science beat, the news that dinosaurs might have been a bit taller than previously thought, because they had a lot more cartilage in their joints than we do. It would have been a great article if it wasn’t for this:

Using a “cartilage correction factor,” Holliday determined that many theropod dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus, were only modestly taller whereas ornthischian and sauropod dinosaurs, such as Triceratops and Brachiosaurus, may have been 10 percent taller or more. For example, Brachiosaurus, previously thought to be 42 feet tall, may actually have been more than a foot taller with the additional joint cartilages.

I’m guessing what they mean is that a Brachiosaurus’s legs would have been 10% longer. Much of its height is, of course, in the neck, which perhaps doesn’t have as much cartilage. But really, someone should have raised a red flag before that article saw print.

Trouble With Ra’s Acne

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

It is a long time since we had one of those “we are all going to die” posts, and I’m worried you might be missing them (hi Kendall!), so here’s a doozy.

Via Damien G. Walter I discover this article in New Scientist that suggests there’s something wrong with the sun. It is a very interesting survey of our knowledge of sunspot cycles, which appears to be somewhat lacking because there are currently nowhere near as many spots on Lord Ra’s face as predicted.

Of course this is hardy surprising. The sun is billions of years old, and we have only been observing it seriously for a a couple of hundred of them. Our data is incomplete. But there’s a prevailing view that sunspot activity is a bit like earthquakes or volcanoes: if you don’t get a lot of action for a long time, something big is probably on the way.

That something big is unlikely to be death rays, but it could play havoc with our technology. NASA, who have more interest in what happens in space than most organizations, is understandably worried. Cue the Daily Telegraph warning of “devastation”. Sadly they forget to mention Mayan prophecies or movies based thereon.

Catch-Up Linkage

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Because I have been busy for the past three days…

– One of the reasons I love cosmology is the timescales over which things happen. This story, about a star eating a planet, explains that the poor planet may only have 10 millions years left to live.

– Over at Deep Sea News Dr. M discusses what the effects of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might be.

– Oliver Morton has a round-up of interesting discussion about the “artificial life” story, including Ken MacLeod’s article for The Guardian.

– Rose Fox has a fun new book out.

– That “gay couple” prosecuted in Malawi? Apparently not a gay couple at all. Natacha Kennedy explains.

– There will be a Tolkien Art Exhibition in Gloucestershire in August.

– Tero explains why Åcon is so much fun (hint: chocolate!)

– There’s a new issue of Yipe! out.

The Immortal Jellyfish

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

It has been known for some time that some species are able to regenerate entire limbs if they lose them. However, one species of jellyfish, turritopsis nutricula, goes much further; it uses the same cell re-purposing technique to turn itself back into a polyp (its immature form), thereby re-starting its life-cycle. Apparently the jellyfish use this cunning technique when they need to travel in hostile environments, such as when hitching a ride on cargo ships. This has led some people to speculate that a similar process might be used to allow human beings to travel to the stars.

Celestial Archaeology

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Yes, really, there is such a thing, and it is important to science fiction. Here’s why.

Whenever we discuss the possibility of life on other planets, or even the likelihood of finding other, albeit empty, Earth-like planets in other solar systems, we are very short of actual data. Telescopes are now doing a wonderful job of discovering Jupiter-like planets orbiting other stars, but small, rocky planets like ours are much harder to see.

This is where the archaeology comes in. The evolution of stars is a well-studied part of cosmology. We know that one day our own sun will probably end up as a white dwarf. For us that’s far in the future, but many white dwarf stars already exist in our galaxy. If they were once surrounded by a collection of rocky planets like Earth then some evidence of the existence of those planets should still be visible.

That is the theory behind a study by a team of astronomers headed by Dr Jay Farihi of Leicester University. Their fascinating conclusion is that at least 3%, and possibly as many as 20%, of all white dwarf stars studied once had rocky planets circling them. Obviously those planets may have been more like Mars than Earth, but it is still a very promising sign.

Yet More Linkage

~ Cheryl

Because I have spent most of today on Day Jobbery.

– Joe Gordon reports on a BBC story about a supposed real-life Glasgow vampire that caused massive moral panic and led to censoring of comics.

– Justine Larbalestier has a tribute to the brilliant and sadly missed Alexander McQueen. (Go on, click through, just look at those fabulous dresses!)

– Space Ship Two has successfully completed its maiden flight. (And Virgin Galactic reports that they have sold over 330 tickets for flights.)

– And finally, a horrific tale of a mother of five from Durban whose life has been destroyed because prison authorities mistook her for a transsexual.

Lazy Sunday Linkage

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Because I’d much rather be watching the Sharks take on Team USA in the Olympic final.

– A.S. Byatt has some long thoughts about Alice that seem to me to prove that everyone brings their own biases to reading a book.

– The Finnish government continues to subsidize important cultural activities such as science fiction fanzines.

– This year the UK will be celebrating the 50th birthday of Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Report in The Guardian here, and official web site here.

– Some folks at NASA think a new propulsion system could mean a trip to Mars would take just 39 days.

Link Salad for Second Breakfast

~ Cheryl

Kevin and I are both very tired this morning. We have no idea why. However, breakfast and caffeine should fix that. In the meantime, in the great hobbit tradition of Second Breakfast, I offer up a big plate of link salad.

New Convention Venue Taking Bookings

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Well, maybe not, because the price of a 3-night stay in this particular hotel is US$4.4 million. Why? Because the Galactic Suite Space Resort is, well, in space. Or at least it will be once they have built it and got it into orbit. It will take a while before we can actually afford to run Worldcon somewhere like that. But one day…

Here’s a Reuters news story about the project.

New Ring Discovered Around Saturn

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The science columns of today’s newspapers are buzz with the news that NASA has discovered a huge new ring around Saturn, extending up to 8 million miles from the planet. The ring is believed to have a complex interaction with the moons Phoebe and Iapetus, with ring material originating from Phoebe and being deposited on the “dark side” of Iapetus, where Sir Arthur C Clarke once placed a giant monolith. For further details see the BBC, and Paul McAuley’s excellent recent article for Clarkesworld.

Update: The article in Nature has just appeared in my feeds.

Clarkesworld #36

~ Cheryl

The new issue of Clarkesworld Magazine is now online, and we have a bunch of great material for you.

There is fiction from Sarah Monette and N.K. Jemisin. The Monette story is also available as a podcast.

Jeff VanderMeer has a mass interview going with a whole pile of young writers, including Ms. Jemisin. They are a very interesting bunch.

And my contribution (which I actually commissioned rather than just bought) is an article by Paul McAuley about the possibilities for living on the moons of Saturn. It forms an excellent introduction to the world of his fabulous novel, The Quiet War (due out soon from Pyr). The article is accompanied by a bunch of fabulous photos of the locations in question taken by the Cassini probe (huge thanks to Carolyn Porco and her team at CICLOPS).

Also, you have a chance to win a copy of the novel. All you have to do to get into the draw is blog or tweet a link to this month’s and then go to the contest page and tell us about it.

So, you folks get over there and read, I have to start working on the next issue.

The Impossible Planet

~ Cheryl

Astronomers at St. Andrews University have a puzzle. They have discovered a planet that shouldn’t exist. WASP-18b, as the mysterious object is known, is 10 times the size of Jupiter, yet it orbits just 1.4 million miles from its local star. (For comparison, Mercury’s orbit is an average of 36 million miles from the sun – NASA.) At that distance tidal forces should be dragging the unfortunate planet to its doom very swiftly. Have the astronomers been lucky enough to notice it just at the right time to witness its demise? Or is there something more complicated going on? The Independent is a bit breathless about the whole thing, but Sky & Telescope is very informative.

Naturally there are all sorts of plausible explanations for this. I’m sure that Al Reynolds could come up with a dozen without breaking sweat. But why? What are those darned aliens up to out there?

The Seas of Enceladus

~ Cheryl

Today’s Independent has a fascinating article about the probable presence of underground caverns filled with sea water on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. All it needs now is squid…

And that’s as good a reason as any to remind that that if you haven’t yet read The Quiet War by Paul McAuley then you should. It will be out from Pyr in September, I believe, so US readers should be able to find it easily soon, though Amazon US does sometimes have the Gollancz edition available.