Water on the moon/Stargate Universe/We are all made of germs
September 28, 2009
Ok first of all I have to get out my excitement about Stargate Universe, the third show in the Stargate TV franchise. The 2-hour series debut will hit your screen this Friday at 9pm (8pm Central) on SyFy. io9 posted a fairly revealing clip from it today. Don’t get me wrong, no real spoilers there, just a good idea of the vibe and overall tone of the show. This series will be a much more serious take on the Stargate saga. I’m thinking it’s going to end up taking on a similar mood to Battlestar Galactica.
Ok now that’s out of my system….
I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines about how water was discovered on the moon recently by NASA’s mineral mapper instrument aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 probe launched in 2008. First of all, this does NOT mean that water is swirling around on the surface of the moon. The moon has no atmosphere and therefore water can’t even exist in a liquid state at all. What’s happening is that the incoming solar rays are reacting with the material on the surface to create a thin layer of hydroxyl (OH) and normal water (H2O) in the very top milimeter or so of regolith. This layer is so thin that it would amount to 1 liter of water per ton of surface soil. That’s a VERY small amount, but it’s a lot more than we ever thought would be there. What does this all mean for the future of human exploration on the moon? Read this Universe Today article to find out.
Here is a great Daily Galaxy article about something that I had honestly never even heard or known before. I hadn’t the slightest clue that there are more bacteria/microbes in our bodies than there are actual human cells. That’s to say that if you counted the number of human cells and the number of microbial/bacterial cells in your body, there would be more bacteria/microbes. In fact it’s utterly awe-inspiring (and slightly terrifying) to think that some of the species if bacteria actually don’t exist anywhere else outside our bodies, and that we could NOT survive without them. Essentially they’re as important as any organ. We’re literally more germ than we are human, and it couldn’t exist any other way. Of course, we look more like us because human cells are MUCH bigger than bacteria cells. The crazy thing, as the article points out, is that doctors still don’t know anything about most of these bugs that live inside us. But they’re trying to change that.
Dogwood Winter/Paul and Ringo reunite/Warp drives
April 6, 2009
Tennessee, meet Dogwood Winter. Let’s face it, people, every year we get 1 or 2 cold snaps in April, and southerners usually name these “winters” based on whatever is in bloom at the time. Usually Dogwoods are in bloom when it happens so I usually call it Dogwood Winter. But seriously… SNOW tonight?
A somewhat surprise reunion happened at Radio City Music Hall over the weekend- Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr came together on stage for the first time since 2002. I don’t know how I missed hearing about this lineup until now… but it was a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation called “Change Begins Within.” Brooklyn Vegan has several video clips posted.
In other reunion-related news, Simon & Garfunkel are going to reunite for a tour of Australia and New Zealand, Billboard.com reports.
Nerd alert!
io9 reports that Richard Dean Anderson (aka MacGyver) will make a few appearances in the opening episodes of the latest installment of the Stargate franchise, Stargate: Universe. Not only will RDA make an appearance, but several other veterans of the older series SG-1 and Atlantis are supposedly making appearances. This makes me very happy because I’ll miss those older characters. The Stargate series has easily challenged Star Trek as the most successful science-fiction television franchise in history. SG-1 alone outlasted any of the Star Trek series by reaching an impressive 10 seasons. I guess it depends on who you ask, but that figure alone is unheard of for a sci-fi series.
Speaking of Star Trek, physicist Michael Alcubierre from the University of New Mexico is known for coming up with the idea of a real-life warp drive. Yes, you heard me, a warp drive, as in the thing that allows the Enterprise to go faster than light. But unfortunately quantum physics has put a serious damper on this theory. Universe Today reports on a new set of research that concludes that Hawking Radiation would be present within the space-time “bubble,” and this radiation would literally fry anything inside the bubble. Of course, this whole thing was pretty impossible to begin with because according to U.T., the energy such a device would require is equivalent to the entire mass of Jupiter if it were converted to energy. Whoa…
I read today on Clusterflock that the Xerox Corporation is working on a special type of paper that erases itself, making it reusable. This is truly revolutionary, and I hope it gets off the ground sooner rather than later, though the article warns that it could be many years before this technology could be made commercially viable.
The “a-ha” moment came from developing compounds that change color when they absorb a certain wavelength of light but then will gradually disappear. In its present version, the paper self-erases in about 16-24 hours and can be used multiple times.
Stargate Universe coming in 2009/Kerry Collins the songwriter
November 19, 2008
Wow. I’ve only been doing this for about a month and I’m already getting requests from a promotions company to review an album. Look for some mp3’s and my take on the new local band Blue Eyed Blacks, and their first album “Black Eyed Soul” soon.
If you know me at all, you know that I’m a huge sci fi nerd, and that I’ve been an avid fan of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis for many years now. SG-1 was the longest running sci fi television series ever, lasting a whopping 10 years. They started Atlantis as a spinoff in 2005, and even had some interesting interplay between the two series while they overlapped. While I was sad to see SG-1 come to an end in 2007, I knew it was time, and quite frankly, the new SG-1 team just wasn’t quite the same without Richard Dean Anderson’s character, Colonel Jack O’Neil. I was heartbroken initially upon hearing that this current season of Atlantis will be its last, which prompted me to do a little research as to the reasoning for this, and in the process I discovered that executive producers Brad Wright and Robert Cooper are up to something new: another spinoff series called Stargate Universe. There’s not much info about it yet, but according to the press release, it will be set on a ship rather than earth or a remote base, and the crew will be a group of earth explorers who get stuck on this ship and have to fend for themselves as the ship carries out its unalterable mission of exploring the entire universe. Yes, not just one galaxy… the whole universe. I’m cautiously excited about this new direction for the franchise. I really hope the writers keep the same level of character development of the other two and keep using the layers and layers of mythology developed in the SG-1 series. Read the full press release to get the details if you’re interested.
I’m not a sports fanatic by any means, but I have been following my hometown team, the Tennessee Titans, for several years now, and of course I’m quite happy to see them leading the NFL at 10-0. Their veteran quarterback Kerry Collins apparently has an unlikely side-hobby: songwriting. Only in Nashville.
And now for some debunking. I came across this video on Oddee.com and couldn’t resist posting it because of the astonishing absurdity.
Because the show on which this guy Ramana is performing is in Dutch I really don’t know how seriously they’re taking him, but how can anyone not see that big wooden post (and base) to which he’s attached? Are people completely blind?!?!? I have much respect for the needle and thread trick he does, and for any tricks that require real skill and years of practice. I also think his performance art installations of hanging on the sides of buildings are interesting in a purely artistic sense, but this particular levitation stunt is just silly. “Illusions” that are obviously the result of specialized props just piss me off.
Random interesting tidbit: Scientists have created microscopic Obamas out of carbon nanotubes.