Starseed

The "starseed" theory has been around for a while. It postulates that life on Earth actually had some kind of origin in outer space.

The more "cinematic" version blames aliens - we were put here on purpose and then left to evolve either deliberately or because something happened to the aliens right after they sent the first terraforming ships.

However, there's a more prosaic version - that life, or its building blocks, was carried to Earth on asteroids or comets.

And it just got a major boost. It turns out that the interstellar medium is the perfect place to turn phosphine, which is poisonous, into oxoacids of phosphorus, which are a required building block for life as we know it.

There's no equivalent situation on Earth, although we might of course be having problems simulating that early environment, so cataclysmically different from Earth today.

But it looks like those building blocks are out there - and we have one more piece in the puzzle. If we do find life based on DNA on another planet, then those oxoacids of phosphorus are why.

See you at Capclave!

Skeeters

We all hate them, and they can carry dangerous diseases. Now scientists have discovered a way to crash mosquito populations using CRISPR. They're using the technique to introduce a gene that makes all the females into hermaphrodites.

Now, this is a weird story idea, but it's also chilling. I mean, if this ends up working on mammals, it could cause all kinds of apocalypses.

Or, you know, what if this gene somehow hooks itself over into bees or ants and creates something bizarre?

Fortunately, they're not rushing to try this in the wild, mostly because we don't actually want to wipe out all of the skeeters...but...

I'm not normally one to say "Hey, put the brakes on," but if we can introduce a single gene into a population and have it become dominant (17 generations)...then that could allow us to adapt ourselves to a colony.

Or, I don't know, eliminate certain racial characteristics. Or we could get some fanatic who decides crashing our population is a good idea...

Bee Problems

If you're using weedkillers containing glyphosate - stop. It seems that the common herbicide also kills off the good bacteria in bees feeding in the area, making them vulnerable to infection.

Use natural methods of weed control as much as possible and don't forget to plant things the little buzzers like (native species, please).

Capclave

So, I'll be at Capclave this weekend.

You can find me, and my books, in the dealer room at the Rantings of a Wandering Mind booth.

I'll also be reading during the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading at 3pm on Saturday.

Going to fall cons?

Please, please get your flu shot...and your other shots (A vendor at DragonCon turned out to be patient zero this year...for chicken pox).

Remember that the flu shot takes two weeks to be effective. But it will protect you and other people (including that elderly writer who would never dream of retiring or another con-goer's infant) from getting something even worse than regular con crud.

Oh, and don't forget to take your immune boosters, get enough sleep and drink lots of water...

We've found Vulcan...

...not. But there is a potentially habitable planet orbiting 40 Eridani. It's a bit close to the star and might be tidally locked, but the dark side could be hospitable to our kind of life.

Now there is a very different image of the Vulcans, right? Of course, if it's not tidally locked it might well be a hot dry world...about twice the size of Earth.

Arachnophobes Beware...

...or at least avoid the Greek town of Aitoliko, where there are currently so many spiders 300 meters of shoreline is nothing but webs on webs.

It's not quite Mirkwood, but...it makes me glad I'm not afraid of spiders.

2018 Emmys

Meant to post yesterday, got distracted by Doctor Who (and the Captain Marvel trailer, which looks sweet. Larson is growing on me).

So, Emmy winners. Most of them were non-genre. Best Comedy Series was won by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, an Amazon original.

The only genre shows honored were Game of Thrones (Best Drama and the wonderful Peter Dinklage took Best Supporting Actor) and Black Mirror. I'm behind on the one and haven't been watching the other. The Handmaid's Tale, Stranger Things and Westworld all got multiple nominations but did nothing on the day. My worst disappointment? Tatiana Maslany was nominated again for Orphan Black, but lost out to The Crown's Claire Foy.

And apparently it was the worst Emmy's telecast ever...

Uh...Doctor?

Apparently, Chris Chibnall may be a fan of a certain kids' cartoon.

This is the new poster. Which shows crystalline gem formations and Yasmin in something almost, AMOST a Stephen Universe shirt. Now I really want to track down an episode of that show to watch.

So, coincidence, or is Chibnall a Stephen Universe fan?

We also now know the full names of the three companions: Ryan Sinclair (the young black man), Yasmin Khan, and Graham O'Brien. The last name Khan indicates that Yasmin is most likely of Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent rather than Indian, although knowing Doctor Who they won't have it matter too much.

End of an Era

The very last Delta II rocket has been launched. Its last mission was ICEsat II, which will monitor ice melt levels.

The Delta II has been a workhorse for both NASA and the military for decades, but has been obsolete for some time.

For most NASA missions it will likely be replaced by SpaceX's Falcon 9 (considerably cheaper even without the reusable options).

History marches on.

So, What IS Going On On The ISS?

Did somebody sabotage the ISS? Apparently not.

The idea that a crewmember drilled the hole in their Soyuz has been debunked because there are drill scratches on the outside of the hull...and they'd know if somebody tried to sneak an EVA.

Apparently, a groundside maintenance worker accidentally drilled the hole and, presumably out of fear of getting into trouble, patched it instead of reporting it. The patch has now been shored up so that they can get back to Earth on schedule.

The worker, of course, got into trouble. Whether he's looking for a new job or not is unclear...

Being Green...Maybe?

So, while researching yesterday's post, I glanced at the cast list for Spider-Man: Far From Home (Robert Downey, Jr.'s absence is part of the evidence that he is, indeed, leaving the MCU).

But I also found this:

This relatively young (he's 30, but looks younger in many shots) man is Remy Hii, whom some of you probably saw in Crazy Rich Asians (my rom-com hating self stayed away even while I cheered the movie on).

He's listed on the cast of Far From Home - but without a character name.

Which could mean he's just somebody Spidey bumps into in Asia. The villain appears to be Michael Keaton as the Vulture. Hii's fairly high on the listing, though, and is a talented up-and-coming actor that it seems somewhat unlikely Marvel would use in only one movie. He has a soap opera background (he was on the Australian soap Neighbours for two seasons), which is very solid training for an actor.

Going to stick my neck out here. A talented Asian actor being cast, with them hiding the character name, at this point in the MCU...when it's clear they're moving from established heroes to younger ones?

I'm going to make a guess, educated but perhaps out there, and say that this may be the MCU's face of Amadeus Cho. Ruffalo's contract is also coming up and if he decides to leave, then bringing in the younger Hulk makes sense. Cho is also a very popular character amongst younger fans, and would go a large step towards solving Marvel's Asian problem. The character showed up in one of the Hulk movies...horribly whitewashed...but most people have already forgotten that, and as the movie starred Norton, not Ruffalo, it's probably not in continuity anyway.

And, at one point in Cho's background, he was actually Spider-Man...so where else would he show up...

Is Tony Stark Going to Die in the MCU?

There are rampant rumors that Tony Stark is going to die, for real and good, in Avengers 4.

I'll be honest and say I'm leaning that way myself. There are some factors to consider:

1. Robert Downey, Jr. has said he doesn't want to play the character any more, He's been playing him for a while and the desire to move on to new creative challenges is quite understandable. His contract is coming up, so this is the perfect time for him to leave the franchise.
2. In the comics, Tony Stark is the one who wields the Infinity Gauntlet to stop Thanos. This could well result in Tony dying or, well, something happening.

However, I'd like to add to the prediction: Tony Stark will die in Avengers 4. Iron Man will not.

As in, we are going to see somebody else take on the mantle. There are two obvious possibilities:

1. A recovered Jim Rhodes. He's trained in the suits and has been Iron Man in the comics. This all, of course, depends on Don Cheadle's willingness to step up.
2. Riri Williams, as a contemporary of Spider-Man, which would fit with the vague feeling I have that they're going to start moving on to a new generation of heroes. Perhaps Yara Shahidi (she has the hair) or Amandla Stenberg.

Thoughts?

Artificial intelligence looks for alien intelligence

SETI has leveraged machine learning to find 72 new fast radio bursts. FRBs are an astronomical phenomenon we don't know the cause of. They are hard to spot because they are transient (with one notable exception).

We have absolutely no idea what causes them, hence SETI's interest, but the real key here is the heavy use of artificial intelligence to make observations humans are simply too slow to handle...and the more FRBs we find, the faster we will work out what they actually are.

Imitating Plants

Artificial photosynthesis is a science fiction trope...and also something scientists have been trying to crack for a while.

Apparently, the answer may be...hybrid photosynthesis. By using natural enzymes produced by certain algae, a team from the University of Cambridge and Ruhr University Buchem have managed to create artificial photosynthesis without hazardous synthetic catalysts.

The line of research could also be used to create plants that don't need as much light to grow - useful on, say, space stations or Mars.

Jurassic...Horse?

Well, not quite, but scientists are hoping to clone a 40,000 year old foal, member of an extinct species of horse.

They're hoping this will work out the technology to clone mammoths, but the chances of finding intact enough DNA are somewhat slim.

If they succeed, they will likely have something akin to a Tarpan or Przewalski's horse...similar to but not quite the same as modern "primitive" breeds.

MCU Next Generation?

The MCU shows no sign of slowing down (Guardians of the Galaxy scandals aside).

And Captain Marvel shows another clue that they are committing to a next generation of heroes at some point. It's already been revealed that Kamala Khan will show up, most likely in Captain Marvel 2 as Carol's sidekick.

But they just sideways introduced another character, an obscure one, but one which may well have Captain Marvel fans squeeing.

Specifically, Carol's "close friend" - Maria "Photon" Rambeau.

Monica Rambeau, also known as Photon, briefly took up the Captain Marvel mantle in the comics. Maria Rambeau is her mother...and why include her if there are not plans to introduce Photon herself at some point?

The actor cast in the role is Lashana Lynch, a British actor with a fairly light series of past credits.

I suddenly got quite a bit more excited...I adore what I've seen of Photon in the comics. It also addresses the fact that some of her fans would have liked to see Rambeau, not Danvers, as the MCU Captain Marvel. Will we see Maria exposed to something which will then grant powers to her daughter? And will we see, in the future, said daughter fighting alongside Kamala Khan and Peter Parker? I for one would love that teamup. Captain Marvel is set in the 80s, so it would make perfect sense for her to be the right age...

It's the Markovians

...okay, only those familiar with Jack L. Chalker will get the reference. But I can't help but keep thinking it when we keep finding hexagonal storms on Saturn.

Storms are just not supposed to be hexagonal! On any planet! And we have no idea why, either. It's clearly a wave structure created by similar forces that make the jet stream (and those infamous polar vortices) on Earth...but hexagonal?

Sorry.

It's not actually aliens, obviously, but...dang it.

Losing the Past

The archaeologist part of me has been fighting tears since yesterday.

For those who live in a US news bubble - the National Museum of Brazil was reduced to a gutted hulk by fire yesterday.

The "official" extent of the damage has yet to be released, but pictures of the aftermath make it seem likely that little survived. The current guess is that about 10% of the collection survived, including some artifacts that are not flammable (such as their meteorites) and the library which was, thankfully, in another building.

The fire hydrants closest to the building failed, and the museum was already in disrepair. Money for a new fire control system had just been found...but no work had started.

The building itself, a former palace, is probably salvageable, but the collection is irreplaceable, including the oldest human remains found in America.

I can't even imagine what the curators and researchers are going through right now. Or perhaps I can.

We have to guard our past. And this tragedy may be an argument towards virtualizing/scanning collections (especially archives) so that at least some of the knowledge can be preserved. Maybe.

But you can't bring back what was lost here. Literally 200 years of careful collecting - numerous fossils and, perhaps, worst of all, the last remaining recordings of languages no longer spoken.

Sorry...I can't say any more about this. (And before you say people are more important, they are, and the best possible news of this tragedy was that nobody was hurt. But...this is still a great loss for Brazil and the world).