Not a huge amount of news except Happy Halloween! (and check out the Twitter hashtag #SFWAHalloween tomorrow at 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern to see a whole bunch of science fiction writers in costume, and maybe some other creepy stuff too).
Also, please, please wear a mask so we can actually see each other sooner rather than later. Things are going to be tough this month and next.
I love how NASA uses art for outreach (although not so much how they don't always credit the artists). In fact I'm advocating for a panel on it for next year's WorldCon.
And it being Halloween, I thought I'd link to their Galaxy of Horrors page, which has nine free-to-download posters, three new for this year.
This stuff is just plain awesome. I particularly like Gamma Ray Ghouls.
...the phosphine thing on Venus turned out to be an artifact of the experiment. Which doesn't completely remove the possibility, but...
However, we have now discovered a molecule called cyclopropenylidene in Titan's atmosphere. This is a complex carbon and hydrogen molecule that may be a precursor to organic compounds. Titan has long been considered a possible home for simple life.
Oh, and Perseverance is halfway to Mars.
The major announcement about the moon that NASA has been teasing is, indeed, a big one.
SOFIA, a telescope attached to a modified Boeing 747, has confirmed that not only is there water on the moon but yes, it is water, H2O, not any related molecule.
By flying at 43,000 feet it eliminates false positives created by water vapor in the atmosphere...going above the clouds removes most of this. Water has a very distinct molecular signature.
The weird thing is this water is sitting around on the lunar surface (there's not a lot of it), where we thought water wouldn't stay stable.
The moon is still a desert, but it's a bit wetter than we thought.
I was laughing at the video of my trainer's barn cat, Oliver, basically getting his butt handed to him by a young snake. Specifically, a juvenile black racer. It ended with him nonchalantly walking away from the snake (no doubt with multiple puncture holes) and pretending he had given up of his own accord.
He's not related to Olive, no r, the cat who presented her owners with a live juvenile black racer...
...with two heads. Presumably the heads didn't get on well enough for this snake to win the battle.
The snake is now at a wildlife rehab center and will probably live out its days as a zoo oddity (two headed snakes tend not to survive in the wild).
Because 2020 had to have two headed snakes as well as murder hornets.
All's quiet on this front. I honestly don't have any updates except that I wish it would make up its mind whether it's summer or fall already.
Working on some short fiction stuff right now, but I'm not going into details. Yet *grin*.
I've been to the desert southwest. There are a surprising number of trees, shrubs, and bushes there.
Now AI has been taking a look at a different desert, the Sahara. They found hundreds of million trees in the study area of 1.3 million km2. And they were only counting the ones more than 3m2 in crown size.
Trees in dryland areas have never been extensively studied and their role in climate is unknown. But there appear to be a lot of them.
Deserts are not empty, people.
We have a new DNA editing tool, which allows for larger changes than CRISPR.
This might allow us to do some very interesting things with bacteria, and allow us to insert entire genes into GMO animals and plants (and even, eventually, humans).
The tool is called CRISPR-Cas3, officially...
...but some people are calling it Pac-Man, because of course they are.
...like where the leak is on the ISS.
Yes, they found it.
And they found it by releasing tea leaves into the affected chamber.
The leak has now been patched.
And what did they use to patch it?
Kapton tape, which is a brand of electrical tape designed for extreme environments.
Not quite duct tape, but...
...the Earth won't be destroyed by an asteroid on election day. Yes, there's an asteroid with a tiny chance of hitting us the day before.
It's the size of a refrigerator and won't even make a decent fireball.
(I would have liked a decent election day fireball, dangit).
The Friar's Tale is officially released and now also available in paperback!
Normally I'd have signed copies for sale, but the logistics of doing so out of my apartment are prohibitive (mostly because of sales tax issues with some states). Hopefully there will be cons again some time next year.
That's pretty much all the news I have right now. I'm going to be hanging out at virtual Capclave this weekend, but really wish I was heading for the hotel right now. Wear masks, please, so we can get this thing under control!
I stumbled across a conspiracy theory that went, amongst other directions, to this:
We're living in a simulation, and in 2012, it crashed, and we got moved to another instance. And that's why everything has been worse.
Another variant has that the universe was destroyed in 2012 and we were rescued...to live in a simulation. (I'm reminded of a book I read in which a simulated universe was crashing and because of legal rules the only way to get all the users out and into the real world was to kill everyone...)
The idea that the universe is a computer simulation circulates every so often. But do we? How would we know?
And would it make any difference?
Scientists now say the odds are even. There is literally a 50/50 chance we're living in a simulation. One argument is that if it's possible to simulate the universe, it's more likely we're in the simulation, not the original.
And one way we might know is that if we ever create our own simulated universe with conscious beings inside, we're probably the original.
I'd argue it doesn't make much difference. Well, except it might be an argument in favor of polytheism. Of a sort.
Maybe 2020 is the year the professor took a sabbatical and left their research assistants in charge...
Toughest creatures on Earth, it seems. They can survive in a vacuum, they are essentially immune to radiation, and for their new trick?
They can handle levels of UV that are generally used to kill things. Ya know, like certain annoying viruses that just won't go away.
Researchers hit specimens with a germicidal UV, and discovered that while most tardigrades did die, one species seemed highly resistant.
And the way they do it might be useful to humans. They have fluorescent pigment under their skin that transforms UV into harmless blue light. Could this be used to make a new sunscreen for humans? Or maybe UV resistant clothing? Maybe!
(It's so not going to be cockroaches that are the last living beings on Earth before it's swallowed by the sun...)
There's probably an entire litter of plotbunnies in here somewhere.
Apep is a Wolf-Rayet binary system, which means it's about to go supernova. Any time now. It produces beautiful dust plumes that, bizarrely, move slower than the stellar wind than they're pushing out.
It's rapidly rotating.
When it does go it's going to produce a long gamma ray burst. Thankfully, not pointed in our direction (a gamma ray burst of that strength could destroy the Earth's ozone layer and essentially render Earth uninhabitable).
But we might be able to observe it.
I don't trust that thing, though...
So, Mars is in opposition tomorrow.
This means it's easier to see than ever (this happens about every two years). It was at its closest last week, but opposition is a great time to get some photos if you have the right equipment.
Or just wave to the rovers.
Don't forget to preorder your copy of The Friar's Tale
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KHRXW6Z
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1046581
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-friars-tale-jennifer-r-povey/1137838574
Also, don't forget to preorder your copy of The Phantom Games
The release date is October 10, anniversary of the first Tokyo Games. In addition to 16 stories which either feature the Olympics or which are set in or based around characters from Japan, it also contains personal essays on how to handle these difficult times. I am very glad this anthology has still been released and give a lot of kudos to the publisher.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Games-Dimensions-2020-ebook/dp/B08KDMLFRL
The JWST, now scheduled to launch next October (thank you, coronavirus, not) appears to have passed the key environmental launch test.
This means that the observatory was put through a simulation of the exact conditions that it will face when launched on an Ariane 5 rocket.
Given how much money and work has gone into this thing, NASA and ESA are taking every precaution to ensure that the launch will be a success.
(I'm pretty sure the mirrors work too...)
...is CRISPR, the gene editing tool biology or is it chemistry.
The Nobel committee, decided it was, in fact, the latter, awarding this year's Chemistry prize to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for developing the tool. (This is the first time the prize has been jointly awarded to two women).
My dad once said that chemistry as a discipline would slowly be eroded away (we were talking about careers, before I got pushed out of science for having dyspraxia...yes, I'm still mad about it) with parts going to biology and parts to physics.
What I think this really means is that we need to start viewing science holistically. Understanding that it overlaps.
And we're in the age of biotech...
This year, the prize was split.
One half went to Sir Roger Penrose for doing the math that demonstrates that black holes should exist and how stars collapse into them.
The other half went to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, for essentially proving that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy really does exist.
Because apparently the committee this year thinks (rightly) that black holes are indeed really cool.
Okay, so it's now available for preorder. The release date is October 16 (paperbacks will be available then).
Here's your links:
Barnes & Noble to come.
If you are a book blogger or regular reviewer and would like to request an eARC, please drop me an email at poveyjennifer (at) gmail.com.
A new theory says that a nearby supernova may have been responsible for the Ice Age during the Pleistocene.
The theory is that the elevated cosmic rays caused by the supernova increased cloud coverage on Earth and cooled the planet.
Maybe we should hope for Betelgeuse to toss us a global warming lifeline?
No, it's not a new Saturday morning cartoon. It's a citizen scientist project NASA is putting together to help analyze TESS data.
If you're bored at home, check it out. If you're homeschooling, older kids will probably enjoy it too! And that name...that name...
Somebody is bored at home ;).
