Topics pertaining to science fiction and/or fantasy, in book, TV show, or movie formats.
We space/science/SF geeks have always hoped that something like this would be the case, but we didn’t know what to expect. It looks like a second of the variables in the calculation of the odds of intelligent civilizations in the universe that we could communicate with (the Drake Equation) has been solved… only four more …
Continue reading ‘“Alien Earthlike worlds ‘like grains of sand’, say ‘wobble’ boffins”’ »
Un-freakin-believable. What’s the saying, that people always underestimate technological progress in the short term, and overestimate it in the long term? It’s true… ten years ago I’d have said this couldn’t happen in less than twenty years. (Oddly enough, I’ve never read any SF stories that incorporated credit cards at all, even technologically advanced ones …
I’d like to take this opportunity to remind children — and their parents — that Harry Potter and Hedwig are fictional characters, living in a fictional world, and that in the real world, owls do not make good pets. And if you want to sacrifice something, how about your tobacco habit? That would be good …
Continue reading ‘“Declining Indian owl population blamed on Harry Potter fans”’ »
The title has a question mark in it, but the article makes it pretty clear that there’s no question about it. It sounds like the science is pretty well established, and we’re just nerving ourselves up to take the next step. And once medical cryogenics is in common use on Earth, there’s little stopping us …
Continue reading ‘“Freezing Ourselves: Medicine of the Future?”’ »
Stranger in a Strange Land was published 49 years ago, and it included robo-cabs. Flying robo-cabs, no less. And I’m sure it wasn’t the first. Come on, science — if I can’t have a flying car yet, at least hurry up with the self-driving one! 😉
I wish I could believe this sort of thing. I have no doubt that extraterrestrial life exists — merely from a mathematical perspective, it seems all but certain, just from what we know about life and the universe already. But that technologically advanced beings have visited Earth? I know far too well how easily humans …
Continue reading ‘“Sci-fi wars? Pilots say UFOs knocked out nukes”’ »
Excellent news for space enthusiasts! I heard an interview with one of the lead scientists on the LCROSS mission, who said you can get almost a gallon of water out of a wheelbarrow-full of lunar dirt, at least where LCROSS struck. That’s ridiculously rich, especially compared to what we expected to find, and it will …
Continue reading ‘“Our Moon is wet and welcoming, says excited NASA”’ »
How long do you think it will take for this to be adopted by intelligence services worldwide? 😉 So much for hiding conversations from electronic eavesdroppers by holding them near running water. (My guess: they’ve already got it. I could be wrong, but it’s an obvious idea to any science guy — or hard science …
Continue reading ‘“Zoom for audio enables you to hear a single conversation in huge crowd”’ »
You’ve got to wonder what your average comic book super-villain was like as a child… (I think picture number six is my favorite. But ask me on another day and you may get a different answer.)
I really don’t know what to make of this, except to bet that there were far more geeks in the audience than opera fans: Schonfeld said he has invited the people of Klingon to see the show during its three day run in the 100-seat Zeebelt theatre in The Hague or a later run in …
Continue reading ‘“Earth’s first all Klingon opera debuts”’ »