So, apparently the ISS astronauts got bourbon balls. In space. Now I want some.
(Actually with the day I'm having I'll just take the bourbon, thanks).
So, here's a question:
How does alcohol affect people in microgravity? It's not an experiment we can really do as drunkenness on the ISS would be dangerous. But if we start building space hotels...
I get launch windows.
But did you have to schedule a crewed launch for Halloween, when Halloween is also a blue moon? In 2020?
I know, I should be past superstition, but I can't quite turn it off, ya know.
(In all seriousness, I hope the flight goes well, or at least better than the launch attempts this week...weather has not been cooperative).
Fictional time travel has all kind of rules, but in the majority of cases the conflict comes from the travelers seeking to avoid (or cause, or stop somebody else from causing) a paradox.
There's another set of rules, though, and those say that the timeline will repair itself. There's two approaches to this.
One says that if you try to shoot Hitler, your gun will jam. That is to say, the universe won't "let" you commit the act which would cause the paradox.
The other says that if you shoot Hitler he will simply be replaced.
And the latter may have support in science based on math done by an Australian student named Germain Tobar.
Tobar's theory is that time travelers can do whatever they want...but it will also be futile. If somebody from 2100 travels back in time and tries to stop the spread of COVID-19, all they will do is change how it spreads.
Which doesn't make for nearly as much conflict in fiction unless you make your characters ignorant of the real rules.
But if time travel is ever invented, this would explain why nothing ever changes, wouldn't it.
So...oops! I should have known such a perfect title for a Robin Hood book as Wolfshead would, in fact, be taken...but I looked.
My wonderful cover artist is just better at looking. So, the new title is The Friar's Tale. And we have a cover!
We don't have a release date because I'm wary of committing to anything when the postal service is the way it is and I don't release without checking the print proof, which is on its way to me right now!
But watch this space for an announcement when I can commit!
We invented stainless steel in the early 19th century...
...right?
Wrong!
In Persia, somebody managed to make it in the 11th century.
Because people in the past were so much smarter and more knowledgable than we think.
...kind of.
Building materials are kind of tough to find on Mars. We can't use concrete or bricks because, well, there's not going to be enough water. We can't just transport stuff, because it's too expensive.
Urea might be usable to make concrete, but scientists have a better idea.
Insect shells.
Chitin! A mixture of chitin and Martian soil, combined with 3D printing, makes a substance that's concrete-like but doesn't need much water to make.
It's also a primary component of fish scales, crustacean shells, etc.
Insects could be a viable protein source for Martian colonists, which would produce chitin for building as a byproduct. (Ugh? Most human cultures do eat bugs and locusts are kosher, people...)
So now I have to think about the fact that this substance, as best as we can simulate it, is kind of...reddish-pink. That's the color of unpainted buildings on Mars.
Confession: I still haven't seen the Watchmen series, which apparently did a better job of catching the spirit of the classic graphic novel than the movie.
But a lot of people have been...and that's presumably part of why it did so well at the Emmys.
It was nominated in 5 categories and presented three of six nominees for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
It won:
Outstanding Limited Series
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II)
Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series or Movie (Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson)
It didn't do the best, though, Canadian comedy series Schitt's Creek just completely swept the comedy awards. That title alone...
Just for fun.
Astronomers just discovered a nice little planet, about the same size as Earth...
...and it's orbit is 3.14 days. It's called K2-315b, but it's the Pi Planet.
Oh, and it's surface temperature?
About 350 degrees Fahrenheit. A temperature that should be familiar to all cooks.
I figured we all needed some pi(e) today!
Not much to report. Talking to my cover artist about Wolfshead. I'm not setting a release date just yet, but I'm hoping to get it out sooner rather than later so I can then focus on edits on The Secret History of Victor Prince.
Hoping to have more news soon!
...but it turns out potatoes don't grow too too well in simulated Martian soil. They grow, but they don't exactly produce a great crop.
What does?
Kale, which actually preferred it to Earth soil. And tomatoes, which came out very sweet.
Potatoes, though, are kind of a vital crop to colonization plans. Personally, I'd be going on a trip to Peru to see if any of their amazing variety of heritage taters do any better.
They're also looking at soybeans, but can we absolutely be sure nobody on Mars will develop a soy allergy?
I've kinda seen this movie.
Scientists have come up with a way to create infertile male animals that then can be convinced to produce...somebody else's sperm.
This could be used to, for example, duplicate a prize bull in another country. It could also be used to breed endangered species.
But is it ethical? My worry is a simple one:
If a sire is carrying an unknown defective gene that shows up three generations out, do we want to breed him that much. To understand what I mean, look up the Quarter Horse stallion Impressive.
I'm iffy about anything that greatly expands the reproductive capability of a single animal.
If you find an ancient clay pot or bowl, scientists at UC Berkeley have a simple request:
Don't clean it.
Scientists want these pots intact. Based off of an experiment done with modern cookware made in ancient style, an old cooking pot holds the record of not just the last meal cooked in it, but past meals too. Cooks call the way unglazed pots and cast iron hold the "memory" of previous meals "seasoning."
We now know you can get some pretty accurate information about how people in the past cooked and ate and just how old grandma's recipe might actually be...
We may even be able to use this to reconstruct recipes that have been lost.
Yum.
Oh, good. It's lunch time.
Venus is not exactly the place one might think to look for extraterrestrial life, given how hostile it is not only to terrestrial lifeforms, but to our technology. We haven't explored Venus as much as Mars because it eats robots.
Yet, scientists have found an unexpectedly high level of phosphine at levels in the hellworld's atmosphere that might be habitable...with a lot of work. (Derek Kunsken's novel The House of Styx goes into what life on Venus might be like in fascinating detail).
This level of phosphine only has one explanation that we know of: Life.
However, given how crazy Venus is, there may be an explanation that we don't know of. Even that, though, would tell us things about the universe we don't yet understand.
Oh, and you don't want to get close to this stuff. It's lethally toxic, not to mention vile smelling.
Venus probably hates us.
Don't forget the New Bristol kickstarter. We need your pledges to make this thing happen!
I'm anticipating Wolfshead will be released by the end of the month, but don't want to commit to a date given the pandemic and everything else. I then have to deal with edits on The Secret History of Victor Prince.
The next big project after that is Kyx, which has grown multiple...sequels is the wrong word, but I don't have a right word for it. Fun with aliens!
We don't generally think of woodpeckers as being particularly, well, sophisticated creatures.
But acorn woodpeckers, I tell you.
These birds create "granaries" that then house multiple breeding pairs. Needless to say, these become valuable.
Valuable enough to throw battle royales over. No kidding.
The war can last several days and involves same sex coalitions of related birds who may have been building their strength for years.
Oh, and even better? All the birds in the area that aren't competing come watch. It's like bird territory football. With occasional fatalities. Maybe they're looking for strong birds to ask to join their own mating groups?
Woodpeckers. Seriously.
Hummingbirds are adorable.
They also have such a fast metabolism that they can't ever stop eating. Because of this, the only way they can survive is to literally hibernate every night! They lower their body temperature and enter torpor.
In fact, some of them drop their temperature by as much as 33 degrees celsius. Only true hibernators go lower.
And then they wake up and start raiding everyone's nectar. They're just plain amazing little things.
The moon is...rusting. Very slowly, but it's starting to turn slightly red.
What's going on is that hematite is forming on the moon's surface, especially at the poles. Here's the thing?
For rust, you have to have iron, water, and oxygen. The moon has iron, but very little water and no oxygen.
So, how the heck is the moon rusting?
The answer lies in the Earth's magnetosphere, which has a long tail that allows traces of oxygen, just tiny amounts, to reach the Earth. To prove this theory, we need to take a look at the far side of the moon; there should not be any rust there.
(And no, the moon won't turn all the way red, at least not any time soon...)
We know how a solar system looks, vaguely. When a star is young, a protoplanetary disk forms around it that eventually clumps into planets. The disk is flat because of how momentum works, and it spins in the same direction, which is why all of our planets orbit the same way....the same direction their host star happens to spin.
We have found planets in retrograde orbits, in fact they're fairly common. The theory is that they're caused by near collisions between large planets that causes the planet's orbit to flip. Another thing which could cause this would be the capture of a "rogue" or nomad planet.
But the protoplanetary disk around GW Orionis is kind of weird...and it's weird because there are three stars.
GW Orionis has three disks, and one of them is, well, tilted. This could result in the eventual formation of planets that aren't level with the normal solar system, but orbit at an angle to it. In our system the largest tilt is Pluto, at 17 degrees, but that could be an Oort Cloud thing. Of the large planets, the largest orbital tilt is seven degrees...and that, perhaps interestingly, is Earth.
But we've also found large planets in highly tilted orbits close in (which GW Orionis' disks appear to be leading to), in orbits that more closely resemble those of comets...
Worldbuilders take note.
Not sure what I'd do with it, but some scientists managed to get small boats to float upside down in levitating liquid.
It's all done with vertical vibration. It's a bit of a party trick, but it could have some industrial applications in the first place.
But of course I'm now thinking of upside-down skyships and my mind goes straight to aether pirates because it's me.
So, it turns out that the "highland wild dogs" in part of Papua New Guinea are...
...a population of the New Guinea Singing Dog, which was thought to be extinct in the wild. The population seems to be healthy and genetically diverse.
This is absolutely awesome news and also they're, well...
...adorable.
Adorable little yellow foxy-dogs!
There's a galactic collision in our future. We've known for a while that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is going to collide with Andromeda.
The guess is that this will take place in about 4.5 billion years, and the prediction is that the two galaxies will merge into one hyper galaxy.
Earth won't be habitable by that point, but the solar system will survive...individual stars are not going to hit each other, just move around each other into a new configuration.
So, 4.5 billion years.
Or...tomorrow. See, it turns out galaxies are a lot larger than we thought. Specifically, galaxies have halos. Think of them as the galaxy's equivalent of the solar system's Oort cloud, except instead of being lots of small objects, they're shells of plasma.
And the halos of the two galaxies are already starting to touch. What this means for us? Pretty much nothing, it's just some cool science.
We'll eventually be able to see the halos of other galaxies. Except one...
...we have no technology current or in the works that will allow us to see our own galactic halo.
Okay, confession time: I love and adore maps.
I just love maps.
And this is too much fun not to play with.
You can enter a city name then click on various times in the past to see how that point on the Earth's surface has moved.
Got bored kids you're homeschooling? This bored adult thinks they might well enjoy this...
