tagged w/ Science Fiction
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remanns
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A pirate ship slices through space in concept art from the lost Dune movie of the 1970s. Artist Chris Foss crafted covers for some of science fiction's greatest books, reshaping how we see spaceships and robots. Check out our gallery.
Artist Chris Foss is known for his visionary presentation of future technology and weird vistas. He illustrated many book covers in the 70s, 80s and 90s including the Lensman series, Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, and Jack Vance's Demon Princes novels. His covers frequently feature spaceships that are sturdier and chunkier than the usual sleek space rockets you see on many other book covers of the time.
His cool vision of the future led him to be asked to work on production designs for Alejandro Jodorowsky's uncompleted Dune movie, in the mid 1970s, and later on Ridley Scott's Alien and Superman: The Movie.
As Alejandro Jodorowsky said in 1977:
And thus were born the mimetic spaceships, the leather and dagger-studded machines of the fascist Sardaukers;- the pachydermatous geometry of Emperor Padishah's golden planet; the delicate butterfly plane and so many other incredible machines, which I am sure will one day populate interstellar space. Chris Foss knows that today's technical reality is tomorrow's falsehood. Chris also knows that today's pure art is tomorrow's reality. Man will conquer space mounted on Foss' spaceships, never in NASA's concentration camps of the spirit. I was grateful for the existence of my friend. He brought the colours of the apocalypse to the sad machines of a future without imagination.
He has a website, ChrisFossArt.com, where you can see more of his work and buy signed prints of all of these images. And he has a group on Facebook, where you can keep up with his projects.
http://io9.com/5408960/rare-dune-concept-art-from-one-of-space-operas-greatest-visionaries/gallery/
http://cache-foo-02.gawkerassets.com/gawker/assets/images/8/2009/11/dune5-2.jpgA pirate ship slices through space in concept art from the lost Dune movie of the... more
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What would Earth look like if it had rings like Saturn?
This animation was done by Roy Prol, and it shows not only how the rings would look from space, but also the view Earthlings would have of the rings. Prol says the ring views from Earth's surface were created according to the location's latitude and the viewer's orientation, and that the size of the rings was calculated respecting the Roche limit for the Earth. A very intriguing concept, and the video is very well done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT2sQ7KIQ-E&feature=player_embedded#What would Earth look like if it had rings like Saturn?
This animation was done by... more
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Quick restart of Big Bang machine stuns scientists
---ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 25 mins ago
GENEVA – Scientists moved Saturday to prepare the world's largest atom smasher for exploring the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.
The nuclear physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider were surprised that they could so quickly get beams of protons whizzing near the speed of light during the restart late Friday, said James Gillies, spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The machine was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault in September last year.
Some scientists had gone home early Friday and had to be called back as the project jumped ahead, Gillies said.
At a meeting early Saturday "they basically had to tear up the first few pages of their PowerPoint presentation which had outlined the procedures that they were planning to follow," he said. "That was all wrapped up by midnight. They are going through the paces really very fast."
The European Organization for Nuclear Research has taken the restart of the collider step by step to avoid further setbacks as it moves toward new scientific experiments — probably starting in January — regarding the makeup of matter and the universe.
CERN, as it is known, had hoped by 7 a.m. (0600 GMT) Saturday to get the beams to travel the 27-kilometer (17-mile) circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border, but things went so well Friday evening that they had achieved the operation seven hours earlier.
Praise from scientists around the world was quick. "First beam through the Atlas!" whooped an Internet message from Adam Yurkewicz, an American scientist working on the massive Atlas detector on the machine.
"I congratulate the scientists and engineers that have worked to get the LHC back up and running," said Dennis Kovar of the U.S. Department of Energy, which participates in the project.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091121/ap_on_sc/eu_sci_big_bang_machine
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/io9/2009/11/lhccrazytunnel.jpgQuick restart of Big Bang machine stuns scientists
---ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS,... more
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The starry sky is regular subject, spiritual circumstance or actual setting of Philip Glass’ work. His latest opera, “Kepler,” given its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Wednesday night, is about the German astronomer who identified the elliptical orbits of our solar system. The composer couldn’t have been more at home.
Among Glass’ 23 operas are “Galileo Galilei” and two others based on Nobel laureate Doris Lessing's “Canopus in Argos” series of science-fiction novels. “The Voyage” opens with Stephen Hawking meditating on space-time and an alien spaceship crashing onto Earth; it ends with Columbus taking his final journey on his deathbed into outer space.
Astronauts in space ships, nebbishes having out-of-body experiences, pensive mystics pondering unknown realms, an ancient Egyptian king becoming one with the sun -- these are situations enhanced by Glass’ repetitive melodies, moody harmonies and propulsive rhythms.
But in “Kepler,” Glass’ yin-yang style gains new advances. More than ever before, the same kind of music can express going somewhere or nowhere, a physical or spiritual state, a secular and sacred condition.The starry sky is regular subject, spiritual circumstance or actual setting of Philip... more
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Pretty much everyone is psyched to see 'New Moon.' But not Ben Hoffman.
infoMania is a half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV. The show puts a comedic spin on the 24-hour chaos and information overload brought about by the constant bombardment of the media. Hosted by Conor Knighton and co-starring Brett Erlich, Sarah Haskins, Ben Hoffman, Bryan Safi and Sergio Cilli, the show airs on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern and Pacific Times and can be found online at http://current.com/infomania/ or on Current TV. And make sure to check out our facebook profile for special features at http://infomaniafacebook.com.Pretty much everyone is psyched to see 'New Moon.' But not Ben Hoffman.
infoMania... more
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Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart return to the big screen in Twilight: New Moon this Friday. The first installment shied away from vampire myths and offered a modern take on the subject. Last year, Christopher Beam pointed out that Twilight and other recent movies were quick to discredit old vampire legends. The original article is reprinted below.
There's a scene midway through Twilight, the new 'tween vampire flick, in which the heroine, Bella, arrives at the vampire Edward's house—a bright, spare, Modernist home that seems stocked with Calphalon pans and furniture from Design Within Reach. She looks around wonderingly. "What did you expect?" he says. "Coffins and dungeons and moats?" It's a familiar scene to anyone who knows vampire movies: the part where the vampire (or vampire expert) turns myth-buster and explains what vampires are really like.
A perfect example is this exchange from HBO's True Blood. "I thought you were supposed to be invisible in a mirror," marvels Anna Paquin's Sookie, reclining in a bathtub. Sorry, says her vampiric love interest, Bill. "What about Holy water?" she asks. "It's just water." "Crucifixes?" "Geometry." "Garlic?" "It's irritating, but that's pretty much it." Irritating, indeed.
Vampire myth-busters are a cocky lot. Take this scene from Blade, when vampire hunter Wesley Snipes explains "vampire anatomy 101" to his new protégée. "Crosses and holy water don't do dick, so forget what you've seen in the movies," he says. "You use a stake, silver, or sunlight. You know how to use one of these?" He shows her a gun. "Silver hollow point filled with garlic. Aim for head or the heart. Anything else is your ass."
http://www.slate.com/id/2236182/pagenum/all/#p2Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart return to the big screen in Twilight: New Moon... more
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http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2009/11/dinkytown_dad_s.php
Is this taking the whole Star Trek thing a teensie weensie bit too far? d'Armond Speers spoke only Klingon to his child for the first three years of its life.
Klingon? Not Spanish, French, Mandarin? Not some gutteral genuflecting concoction from the deepest recesses of Borneo? Klingon? You heard it right. (And if you don't know about the Klingon Empire, look it up.)
"I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language," Speers told the Minnesota Daily. "He was definitely starting to learn it."
And get this, Speers says he isn't really a huge Star Trek fan.
We'll take his word for it.
More...http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2009/11/dinkytown_dad_s.php
Is this taking the... more
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New evidence has come to light that the vast, ice-encrusted oceans of Europa may be harboring Earth-like life that lives on the oxygen-rich waters. Time to plan your extraterrestrial fishing trip? Maybe.
Apparently, the oceans of Europa are fed with more than 100 times more oxygen than previous models suggested. According to National Geographic:
That amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms: At least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, said study author Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
"There's nothing saying there is life there now," said Greenberg, who presented his work last month at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. "But we do know there are the physical conditions to support it."
In fact, based on what we know about the Jovian moon, parts of Europa's seafloor should greatly resemble the environments around Earth's deep-ocean hydrothermal vents, said deep-sea molecular ecologist Timothy Shank.
"I'd be shocked if no life existed on Europa," said Shank, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
So how does the oxygen get into the water? It's created when charged particles from Jupiter's magnetic field hit the ice. Because the icy surface of the moon is constantly shifting and cracking due to tides created by both the Sun and Jupiter's gravitational fields, the oxygenated ice would crumble down into the oceans. Eventually, this would result in oxygen-rich waters like those in our own oceans. And these could possibly support Earth-ish life.
As of yet, no space probes from Earth have penetrated Europa's ice crust to examine the seas below, but NASA has proposed another mission to place a satellite in orbit around the moon. (No, they would not be crashing the satellite into the moon itself.)
http://io9.com/5407716/scientists-say-jupiters-moon-europa-might-be-teeming-with-fishNew evidence has come to light that the vast, ice-encrusted oceans of Europa may be... more
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Beware: there are spoilers here for the Doctor Who Christmas specials, as we look ahead to David Tennant's last two episodes...
Okay, we should be clear on this from the off. If you like watching Doctor Who episodes and knowing nothing about them beforehand, this is not an article you want to read.
While chunks of what we're rounding up here has been mentioned before, but there are still spoilers ahead...
http://www.denofgeek.com/television/363976/what_we_know_about_doctor_who_the_end_of_time.htmlBeware: there are spoilers here for the Doctor Who Christmas specials, as we look... more
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"The past of human evolution is more and more coming to light as scientists uncover a trove of fossils and genetic knowledge. But where might the future of human evolution go?
An old cliché has the highly evolved humans of the future sporting large heads to hold their advanced enlarged brains, "but that's nonsense, whole nonsense," said paleontologist Peter Ward at the University of Washington at Seattle, author of "Future Evolution."
"If you've ever gone through a childbirth or witnessed one," Ward says, "we're already anatomically right on the edge of how big our heads can go — our big brains have already caused extreme problems in childbirth, and if we had bigger and bigger brains, that'd cause more mothers to die in childbirth, so evolution would select against that."
Another idea, suggested by evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics, seems like a retread of ideas from science fiction writer H.G. Well's classic "The Time Machine," with the human species split in two over time — an underclass of dim-witted, short goblins, and a genetic upper class of tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent and creative superhumans that eventually are spoiled by technology that will do everything for them, resembling domesticated animals.
"That's crap," Ward said. "Why would that happen? Are we like blind cavefish? After we get Google, do we get stupider? Intelligence is coded on too many genes to just lose a trait like intelligence. That's not going to happen."
Ward suggests that, if left untouched, humans might converge in appearance as populations mix. "I kind of view us all as eventually having chocolate-covered hair and medium stature, getting rid of all extremes," he speculated. "Of course, the big elephant in the room, the change from the past that you cannot ignore when talking about the future of human evolution, is genetic engineering."
Humanity now has an unparalleled means by which to direct our evolution — genetic engineering. By using viruses and other techniques, we can in theory modify our genomes, and over time, scientists may uncover genes underlying intelligence, health, athletic prowess, longevity and other desirable traits, engineering what might seem like superhuman progeny. Genetic engineering is how Ward speculated new species of humans might emerge.
"I think taboos would arise which would prevent mating between populations — 'I don't want them anymore' or 'We want natural people,'" he said. "Of course this is all pure speculation, but this is the only way I can see new human species emerging — unless we get off the planet."
Much more at link!
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/091116-human-evolution-future.html
So much to think about...where do you think evolution will go? What does the future hold for humans?"The past of human evolution is more and more coming to light as scientists uncover a... more
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At last, here's the droid we were all looking for. In this frame you can clearly see R2-D2's cameo in JJ Abrams' Star Trek. This time there's absolutely no doubt about it: It's been confirmed by ILM.
Click on the image at the link to see the high resolution version
Can you see him floating there, on the left, right below the huge arrow that I also missed when I saw the movie? That's obviously him, a fact that has been confirmed to me by one of the movie's sequence supervisors at Industrial Light & Magic—the same guy who said this previous sighting was just the shuttle.
I don't know about you but, right now, I feel like what I imagine my dog Jones feels whenever I take his collar off and scratch him on the neck. Oh yesyeyeyeyes. YES. Harf. Woof.
http://gizmodo.com/5405276/confirmed-r2+d2-finally-discovered-in-star-trekAt last, here's the droid we were all looking for. In this frame you can clearly see... more
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Here is a fantastic little chart we came across today which gives us a run down of the history of films that time travel is used in. This chart points out where and when the characters in each film traveled to and from. The movies are arranged clockwise in chronological order of release date.
http://geektyrant.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/3d863a08d8ab4651_94cbbc9affc3af24_o.jpgHere is a fantastic little chart we came across today which gives us a run down of the... more
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Here’s a visualisation of time travel plots in various films and TV programs. I had a lot of fun doing this!
It was particularly cool to highlight potential plotlines for “meta movies” where time travellers from different plots could meet and paradox it out. Charlie Kauffman are you reading this??
(By the way, I allowed myself a +1 / -1 year fuzz around the paradoxes. So knives away nerds!)
This is a straight data visualisation, rather than information design. That is, it’s not particularly useful, nor useable, nor meaningful. The inspiration was the coolness of the idea, really. I was excited to see what shape all the plots would make, and whether it could be shaped into something beautiful.
What I really love about this image, though, is the idea that this information has never been seen before. Despite the fact that it exists, in some way,somewhere, wrapped in various plots, it’s never been given form. I have to say, it was a joy to untangle it all :)
Big thanks to talented designers Alice Cho and Dominic Busby for their invaulable contributions. And Jeremy MacLynn for essential art direction.
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There is more at the link.
Also there is this picture of his timeline: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/timelines/
What do you think?
Who can help him with Doctor Who?Here’s a visualisation of time travel plots in various films and TV programs. I had... more
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“Everything about it would be bad,” says Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at Adler Planetarium in Chicago, beginning with your attempt to scoop it up. Despite the fact that white dwarfs are fairly common throughout the universe, the nearest is 8.6 light-years away. Let’s assume, though, that you’ve spent 8.6 years in your light-speed car and that the radiation and heat emanating from the star didn’t kill you on your approach. White dwarfs are extremely dense stars, and their surface gravity is about 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s. “You’d have to get your sample—which would be very hard to carve out—without falling onto the star and getting flattened into a plasma,” Hammergren says. “And even then, the high pressure would cause the hydrogen atoms in your body to fuse into helium.”
(This type of reaction, by the way, is what triggers a hydrogen bomb.)
Then you’d have to worry about confinement. Freeing the sample from its superdense, high-pressure home and bringing it to Earth’s relatively low-pressure environment would cause it to expand explosively without proper containment. But if it didn’t blow up in your face—or vaporize your face, since the stuff’s temperature ranges between 10,000˚ and 100,000˚F—and you somehow got it to your kitchen table, you’d be hard-pressed to feed yourself: A single teaspoon would weigh in excess of five tons. “You’d pop it into your mouth and it would fall unimpeded through your body, carve a channel through your gut, come out through your nether regions, and burrow a hole toward the center of the Earth,” Hammergren says. “The good news is that it’s not quite dense enough to have a strong enough gravitational field to rip you apart from the inside out.”
It probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble anyway, Hammergren laments. White dwarfs are mostly helium or carbon, so your teaspoonful would taste like a whiff of flavorless helium gas or a lick of coal. But if you’re desperate for a taste of star, you don’t really need to travel 8.6 light-years—your fridge is full of the stuff. Most of the elements that make up our bodies and everything around us were formed in the cores of stars and then belched out into the universe over billions of years. Basically everything you eat was once part of a star. Might we recommend some star fruit?
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-10/what-would-happen-if-i-ate-teaspoonful-white-dwarf-star“Everything about it would be bad,” says Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at Adler... more
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![PLANETS [data and graphics]; Know Your Neighborhood Pantheon](http://i2.crtcdn.net/images/asset/901/252/76/l30970_60x45.jpg)
