Calling Citizen Scientists!

 NASA is looking for more volunteers for a project studying planet formation.

It's called Disk Detectives, and all you have to do is watch videos and help determine whether they show planetary disks. It just went to 2.0, so they have more images...but in the first version, people discovered brown dwarfs and a new kind of protoplanetary disks.

Oh, and it's a perfect project to involve kids with if you're homeschooling; the videos are only about ten seconds long so an attention span is not needed ;).

Friday Updates

 First, a kickstarter!

New Bristol is a classic superhero setting for Savage Worlds.

We're working up an entire city for GMs who want to be able to run a superhero campaign in a unique, well-fleshed-out urban area that's intended to be a character in its own right. Aliens! Weirdness!

The project lead is Andrew J. Lucas, who I worked with on Dark Hold and some other projects. It's going to be an amazing book!

Second, the paperback for Triangulation: Extinction is in the works, but you can get the Kindle copy here.

Third, I have an update on "Excalibur 2020: Warriors of Olympia." This was supposed to tie in to the Tokyo Olympics (oops. Curse you, COVID!), but will now be released to coincide with the anthology of the first Tokyo Olympics, which took place in October of 1964.

The book is, to my knowledge, coming together well, and I'm going to be doing an author interview with the publisher some time around publication.

What a "Body Swapping" Experiment Says About Us

 Scientists used virtual reality to trick people into thinking they had swapped bodies with a friend.

They demonstrated that people have memory issues unless they can adapt to the new body...which included acting like the person who's body they were in.

Weird, huh?

Or rather, they acted and adjusted their personality to match how they saw their friend.

The experiment has implications for therapy for depersonalization disorder.

It might also say something about how VR avatars might affect us. Could we use "body swapping" to help us learn skills? What is the impact on our personality if we perceive ourselves as an elf or a dwarf? Or a different gender? Would VR therapy help trans people? Would it help cis people better understand trans people? Could we use VR 'body swapping' to help architects see the world from a child's eye view and thus produce better design that's more friendly to children, which is an issue?

And would it be good for all of us to step into the shoes of our friends for a while?

Starliner-I Slated for 2020

 If all goes well, the first crewed voyage of Boeing's Starliner (which has been developed under a veil of secrecy) to the ISS will happen some time in 2021, and the third astronaut has now been named.

Unless something changes, the three astronauts who will take the trip are Josh Cassada, Sunita Williams, and Jeanette Epps.

Assuming this lineup doesn't change, mission commander will almost certainly be Williams as her two companions will be taking their first flights. Sunita Williams has spent 322 days on the ISS, some of them in command.

I wish I knew more about the setup and how it differs from the Dragon. I'm particularly interested in the cockpit design...

Kaiju Fight!

 Apparently, a 5-meter Triassic ichthyosaur tried to eat a 4-meter Triassic thalattosaur.

This did not end well for either. The unique fossil was found in 2010 in southwestern China. The prey's tail was found a short distance away.

And yeah, all I can think is kaiju fight.

Somebody bit off far more than he could chew...

So, I'm Going to Say it

 I was watching this year's Indianapolis 500, and there were several incidents, including one car's wheel spontaneously catching fire (presumably a bizarre brake malfunction).

And four laps from the end, Spencer Pigot slammed into the wall, spun all the way cross the track and hit the pit road in barrier. Hard.

I've seen more spectacular crashes; he didn't go airborne. But I haven't seen many harder hits.

Ten years ago, even five years ago, we'd probably be holding a funeral.

Spencer Pigot got out of the car with minimal assistance and while he spent the evening in the hospital, he was discharged within a few hours.

Motor racing has gotten safer. It's still dangerous, but it's gotten so much safer. Not just for drivers, either (injuries and even deaths of spectators were known before catch fences were introduced in 1973, the year I was born).

But this crash gave me flashbacks to the loss of Ayrton Senna. If we had had SAFER barriers and tire attenuators in 1994...

Friday Updates

 Not much going on this week. (Other than D&D craziness. Dragons! Lots of dragons!)

I'm still working on various projects, but have nothing in the direct pipeline until I get through the edits on Wolfshead.

Did Earth Nearly Have a Second Sun?

 It's...possible.

Scientists have been performing models to explain the Oort Cloud for years with no success.

A new model comes closest...and that model indicates that the solar system was once a binary system, with a second sun about the same size as Sol, about 1,000 AUs away.

If so, what happened to it?

Simple: It wasn't held tightly enough gravitationally (or vice versa) and wandered off to hang out somewhere else in the galaxy. This is called dissociation, and it's not uncommon for "wide" binary systems, where the stars are more than 800 AUs apart.

It may even have left something behind; if Planet Nine is real, then planetary formation theories don't explain a gas giant that far out. Capture does...and it's possible that our sun stole the planet as Sol Two left.

So, would Earth still be habitable if it had stuck around?

The answer is most likely, and perhaps surprisingly, yes. Unless the other star was much brighter than Sol (which seems unlikely at the same mass), Sol's habitable zone would be more or less the same.

But, life's evolution...and certainly the culture of any sentient species on this alternate Earth...would likely have been altered by having a second sun.

I'm now speculating. This could be quite the rabbit hole...

Solar Weather

 Watch out - there's a solar storm on the way!

Specifically, there's a CME which will strike Earth a glancing blow some time on Thursday night, triggering a G 1 geomagnetic storm. It might cause fluctuations in the power grid or a brief interruption in satellite communications.

(No, it won't cause any huge problems).

Solar weather is something that a high tech civilization has to worry about. NOAA has various categories. G 1 is the lowest of geomagnetic storm. The highest, G 5, might cause blackouts, damage power grid components, degrade satellite navigation for a few days and block high frequency radio. It might also damage satellites or cause them to temporarily go out of communication. We don't want a G 5...although we've been designing systems to take it for years.

Oh, and geomagnetic storms can confuse animals that use the magnetic field for navigation.

The upside is that we might see auroras as far south as Maine!

(And yes, this is all normal. We're coming out of a solar minimum, so we haven't had one in a while, but it's just, ya know. Weather)

What is the First Piece of Technology Invented by Humans

Possibly:

Beds.

In Border Cave, which was occupied over 200,000 years ago, we've found that they were making beds from a mixture of grass and ash. And the ash was clearly intentional (perhaps a deterrent for fleas or bed bugs?). Oh, and they also added camphor to it, which also repels insects.

Obviously, we couldn't use ash in our beds until we invented fire, but were we making simpler beds before then? Realizing camphor scared off bugs can't have been overnight.

But yeah.

Beds.

Possibly we were making them when we were still apes...

Man In The Moon

 We talk a lot about putting men on the moon. But if we actually colonize Earth's airless satellite, we won't have men on the moon.

We'll have men (and all other genders) in the moon. It turns out that the moon likely has huge lava tubes...large enough to build entire cities in them.

Building underground is a no brainer when you are trying to colonize a world with no atmosphere or magnetosphere. These lava tubes, some of which are 3,000 feet in diameter and longer than 40k would contain settlements that ran along the tube, likely with some kind of transit system (possibly maglev) in the center. Cities would spread entirely longitudinally.

Visitors from Earth would probably find the geometry as difficult to start with as the gravity.

But if we colonize the moon, that's how we'll almost certainly do it.

Triangulation: Extinction Released!

 The latest Triangulation anthology, "Extinction" is now available in ebook format! It contains my story "As Much As The Crows."

You can get a Kindle copy here. As always, if you buy and read it please write a review!

Wolfshead is back from my editor, I'm going to tackle it when I'm a little more caught up on short fiction books. The Secret History of Victor Prince is in beta.

I'm behind, but catching up.

Arecibo Under Repair

 There are quite a few upset scientists right now. What was probably delayed damage from Isaiah caused a cable to snap at Arecibo, significantly damaging the big dish.

Thankfully, it happened in the middle of the night and there were no staff anywhere in the area. The telescope is down for at least two weeks...but likely quite a lot longer.

And it might not even come back...the NSF has been wanting to divert funding as newer and better equipment comes online. That would truly be the end of an era.

Step Aside, Sharknado...

 ...okay, so this is from 2015, but it's too cool anyway.

Not Sharknado, but...

Sharkcano.

Sharks are pretty tough fishes and apparently don't mind hanging out in active volcanoes. Are they enjoying some kind of weird shark spa day?

We still don't know. What we do know is the following:

• Sharks are very sensitive to magnetic fields. Likely they can sense an actual eruption in time to swim out of there.
• Fishermen avoid the area, so maybe there's less competition for food.

But I still like shark spa day. After all, humans jump into hot springs for the fun of it, as long as they aren't too hot. Why not sharks?

The Expanse Got It Wrong

 Sorry, James S.A. Corey...science just overtook you.

A key plot point is hauling ice to the rocky world of Ceres...

...except we just found sea salt on Ceres. Specifically, hydrohalite, which forms in seawater under low temperatures. This indicates the likely presence of a subsurface ocean, highly salty, on the dwarf planet.

If this is true, then Ceres would be a source of water and its biggest industry might well be desalination.

I am now envisioning some guy on the docks at Ceres selling tourists from earth little bottles of Ceres salt as a trashy souvenir.

(Is hydrohalite edible? Could Ceres also be the source of culinary salt in the belt? I need to do research!)

Greenhouse to Plastic - Can we Use that Carbon Dioxide?

 Possibly! Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have taken carbon dioxide and water and used it to make...ethanol.

We use ethanol in a lot of things. Not just fuel.

Essentially, think of this as a kind of catalytic converter for factories, which takes the waste carbon dioxide and turns it into ethanol. It uses a bit of electricity, but not that much, and the system can be designed to run off peak.

Ethanol can then be used to fuel things which don't run well on electricity and in plastic production.

This could actually be awesome if it scales up.

Friday Updates

 First of all, the first draft of Kyx is done. This week I've been dealing with beta responses on Wolfshead and will be talking to my editor.

I'm looking for a beta reader (ideally another author I can trade with as I haven't done a beta in a while ;)) for The Secret History of Victor Prince. I'm specifically looking for somebody who lives in, or used to live in/around New York City.

Other than that, life is going on right now, much as it usually does.

More Weird Stuff on Venus

As a side note, I'm currently reading Derek Kunsken's The House of Styx, which is serialized in Analog but also available for purchase. Which also has some very strange things happening on Venus...which has been settled by French Canadians!

But the actual weird thing on Venus now is weather. Observers have found an atmospheric wave deep in the atmosphere that's just...circling the planet. And has been for years. It's like a front going around and around the Earth.

And we have no idea what's causing it. Venus' thick atmosphere may be acting almost more like a fluid than a gas. It could be a so-called Kelvin wave, which is a gravity wave trapped at the equator. We get those on Earth, but they don't last for decades.

It might have something to do with how Venus' atmosphere rotates so much faster than the planet.

Because Venus is just plain weird.

(Or maybe Earth is...)

What in Space is a Blanet?

No, there shouldn't be a k in there.

"Blanet" is a proposed term for...a planet orbiting a black hole. It turns out that if we understand planetary formation correctly, planets could form out of the accretion disk of a black hole if it is large enough.

Like, say, the ones at the center of the galaxy.

The planets would form not in the radioactive "main" accretion disk, but in a second disk further out. Because of the scale, they would be rather larger than the planets we're familiar with, ranging from about the size of Neptune all the way up, for larger black holes, into brown dwarf territory.

They wouldn't exactly be prime real estate, though...they would probably be about as likely to host life as "rogue" planets.

But they would be interesting to study. Or, well...science fiction can find some interesting ways here.

A Sad Day for SF Fandom

Yesterday was a sad day for SF Fandom.

We lost both Harlan Ellison's widow, Susan, and Jerry Pournelle's widow, Roberta. I didn't know either woman at all, but there are older fans who are feeling it right now.

Unfortunately, time does indeed march on.

Hugo Results!

So, I didn't watch the livestream. Apparently, this was a good decision.

I'm not going to go into anything about that, but just go through my thoughts on the winners.

Novel: A Memory Called Empire. I am amazed after all the hype that Gideon the Ninth didn't win, but perhaps it was too subjective. Either way, A Memory Called Empire WAS my personal favorite of 2019, so I'm happy.

Novella: This Is How You Lose The Time War. No surprise here.

Novelette: Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin. This was a very strong category, but the winner was...uncomfortable and deep and beautiful.

Best Short Story: As The Last I May Know by S.L. Huang. I still preferred the Wilde.

Best Series; The Expanse. No argument here.

Best Related Work: 2019 John W. Campbell Acceptance Speech. I'm still not convinced speeches should be eligible. Sorry.

Best Graphic Story or Comic: LaGuardia. I wanted Wic+Div to win in its last chance, but I can't complain about this beautiful story about immigration, prejudice, and community. Okorafor is a better comic writer than she is a prose writer.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Good Omens. Apparently the only person surprised by this was Gaiman.

Best Dramatic Presentaion, Short Form: The Good Place: The Answer. Yeah, I never got into that show.

Best Editor, Short Form: Ellen Datlow

Best Editor, Long Form: Navah Wolfe

Best Professional Artist: John Picacio. Did he win for his art or his activism? (His art is quite deserving).

Best Semiprozine: Uncanny Magazine. Really hard to call here.

Best Fanzine: The Book Smugglers. I still prefer fanzines that aren't just reviews, but can't argue with the quality.

Best Fancast: Our Opinions Are Correct. Yes. Absolutely. Chicon 8 made a great choice hiring these lovely ladies as the 2022 Toastmaster for the Hugos.

Best Fan Writer: Bogi Takacs. They deserve it.

Best Fan Artist: Elise Matthesen.

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book: Catfishing on CatNet. I disagree, but my choice didn't even get nominated so what do I know? ;)

Astounding Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer: R.F. Kuang. Not really a surprise, with the second year boost.

Congratulations to all the winners. Especially Arkady Martine...if we congratulate her enough she turns interesting colors!