Okay, this time it wasn't a docking issue. A malfunction with the new Russian science module caused its thrusters to fire...
...knocking the ISS out of position for 45 minutes while the astronauts scrambled to stabilize it. There's multiple plot bunnies in there.
(What happens if a huge docked starship fires its engines? I'm going to have to use that somewhere...)
...yeah, don't they eat all the light?
Yes, but they also create a gravitational lens, and it's possible to see the light from behind the black hole, that has been warped by it and bent. Einstein predicted this, but now we know.
To understand this, think about a lunar eclipse. During an eclipse, the moon turns blood red, which used to be considered a bad omen.
The reason is that the Earth is blocking direct light, but red light that is refracted by the atmosphere can still get there and reflect. Our atmosphere is filtering out every color but red. (This is why the sky is blue).
While it's not the same effect, it can help understand what might happen to light on the other side of a black hole.
It's called the Galileo Project, and it's designed to look for technosignatures. Unfortunately, the entire thing is based on the flimsy hypothesis that 'Oumuamua was a technological object.
This has mostly been debunked, but a few scientists still like the idea.
I have a feeling the project will find something interesting, but it probably won't be aliens.
So, science lost another great. Steven Weinberg shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for contributing to the Standard Model (with Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam).
He was a scientist and a science educator, who wrote books that helped explain the most esoteric aspects of particle physics. He received numerous prizes and awards.
"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts a human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy"-Steven Weinberg in The First Three Minutes.
He inspired many, many people to go into science and is a great loss to the field.
We can actually confidently say:
We don't actually know!
That might seem unbelievable, but an amateur astronomer just found one more. It's not that exciting, it's in a moon cluster called the Carme group.
But it does show that we haven't found all of them yet, and that's kind of neat.
Eventually...long after we've likely become extinct or evolved into something else, the sun will turn into a red giant and then shrink into a white dwarf.
This will destroy Earth. But it might not be the end of the solar system's story. The math allows for the possibility that planets in the outer system might be pulled inwards as the sun collapses...into the habitable zone.
And then the sun will stay that way for billions of years. There's a plotbunny to tease out here...
Okay, so the billionaire space race is rather dick comparing (and esp. Bezos because, all offense, that rocket ship looks like a giant dildo).
Ahem.
But the little trip into space did, in fact, go well. While I think SpaceShip Two is more immediately useful than New Shepard, I'm very intrigued by the technology they're using to make the capsule touchdown no more of a bump than a hot air balloon landing. It involves compressed air, so I don't know how well it would work in a vacuum, but it might end up being very useful for landing people and fragile things on Mars.
Also, the spaceport looks like it belongs on Tatooine or some other backwater planet, just saying. I think they should lean into that and make it all rugged and frontier-y.
...but don't worry, all they assimilate is DNA from other organisms. While studying environmental DNA, scientists found long strands of DNA that contained genes from microbes and other stuff. They were looking for viruses.
The borg are about a million base pairs long and exist outside cells. They might tell us something about viral evolution.
But they're also associated with microbes that oxidize methane, and could be involved in that process...and we really need microbes that oxidize methane.
Unfortunately, they can't be studied in the lab because without other organisms they can't do their thing. Which means, are they real or just some kind of bizarre contamination?
For that matter, does it matter what they are. If we can work out how to grow their hosts, then maybe we'll find out...and it might help us come up with ways to get methane out of the atmosphere. Like, say, introducing these bacteria to the manure heaps at dairy farms...
And...this has been a really quiet week. I do have plenty of stuff in the works, but nothing ready to announce just yet.
Give it time...
Okay, definitely monkey, but imagine a lemur that weighs as much as you do!
Koala lemurs were five feet long, averaged 187 pounds, and ate mostly leaves. And yes, they still lived in trees. (Un)fortunately these giants have been extinct for at least 500 years. Possibly our fault, possibly not. There are no longer any giant lemurs on Madagascar.
They were apparently a close relative of the red-fronted lemur. And it's kind of a shame they aren't around any more. (They're called koala lemurs because they had hands similar to koalas).
So, you've probably heard the story.
The island of Rapa Nui (which we inaccurately call Easter Island) had a large population, but they cut down all the trees, introduced rats, spent all their time building giant heads and ended up with massive famine.
Wrong.
It turns out Rapa Nui never had that many people (no doubt the white people thought more people were needed to walk the statues than were) and that when white colonists got there, the population was, in fact, increasing. The island was well-managed land with productive gardens and they had drought-resilient water sources.
We just assume they wrecked the environment because we're so good at it.
It's called Denisova Cave, and it's where we found the first evidence of an Asian human subspecies, the Denisovans.
But it actually has more of a history than that. Based off of "environmental DNA" studies (where we get DNA fragments from the soil), Denisova Cave was used (possibly occupied) by humans for 300,000 years.
And it held three different subspecies.
Oh, and we also found a fossil there of a kid who had one Denisovan parent and one Neanderthal.
The Denisovans found the place first, lived there for a long time then left or disappeared. A different ethnic group of Denisovans then took over. Neanderthals showed up in different groups, and appear to have been cheerfully making babies with the Denisovans.
And then 45,000 years ago, "modern" humans also reached the cave...and there were both Neanderthals and Denisovans there.
We can't be sure, but Denisova Cave appears to have ended up with three different human subspecies at once.
So...what was so special about this site? That part we don't know.
We don't even know, yet, if it was special or if this kind of thing was going on all over the place.
What we do know is that our ancestors weren't necessarily particularly fussy about...ya know. Mating.
I was so excited about tobacco vaccines that I forgot to give my updates!
First of all, my story Cavesong was published in Daily Science Fiction on Friday. If you're not a subscriber, follow the link to read! (Although it's labeled as Modern Fantasy, be aware that one reader did regret reading this story at 2am...which is a high compliment!)
Second, Parsec Ink has an Indiegogo for the Triangulation: Habitats anthology, which contains my asteroid colonization story "Homestead." Please preorder your copy and help them afford to pay us ;). They also have a couple of interesting looking book packages containing other Triangulation books. Well worth checking out.
Additionally, I've signed a contract to publish "Honor the Midwife" in the Land Beyond the World magazine. It will be in the October 2021 issue.
Just found this article. It's behind a free account wall, unfortunately.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/your-next-vaccine-could-be-grown-in-a-tobacco-plant
It's about using plants as bioreactors to create vaccines. Medicago, a Canadian company, has one in trials for flu (advantage: No eggs) and is working on one for COVID-19. They're using tobacco plants to create the vaccine (advantage: Something to do with tobacco now fewer people smoke it).
Even more intriguing, though, is the experiments on growing vaccines in common...lettuce. The advantage of this approach is that they are hoping to just be able to grind up the vaccine-infused lettuce and make pills out of it.
I can hear the hopeful sighs from everyone afraid of needles from here.
Oral vaccines also have another advantage...they can be used to vaccinate wild animals. Oral bait vaccine for rabies has all but eliminated it from swathes of Europe. With COVID-19, there's a very real risk of it reservoiring in mustelids, and being able to vaccinate wild mink, otters, and ferrets (especially black-footed ferrets, I'm quite worried about the species if it gets into their surviving wild population) would help us get it further under control.
Plant-based vaccines would also probably make quite a few vegetarians happy AND they're guaranteed to be kosher and halal...
This category finally got me to watch The Old Guard, which is so far up my alley that I have been talking about it all week.
Netflix actually provided the entire movie to WorldCon members. I believe this is a first for long form. (Of course, anyone who was going to get a membership just to see it already has at this point). It's not a great movie, but it's a fun movie.
The other contenders are all movies I haven't seen. The creators of Palm Springs provided a shooting script and a trailer that told me everything I need to know. (I do not like American romantic comedies where the male lead is a total jerk...and stays a total jerk and gets the girl anyway. Bleh).
Soul did look intriguing from the trailer. I hear it's very cute (in a good way).
I haven't beeb able to see the other nominated movies and the studios provided nothing. I do wonder how many people will vote for Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga just because so many people were screaming that it shouldn't be eligible...
If you're young and don't remember, Richard Donner directed the Lethal Weapon series, The Goonies, and the Christopher Reeve Superman movies...well, he directed the first two, but was removed from the second halfway through.
(There's a Donner cut available to see what he actually did with it, which was released in 2006).
This appeared to have been over a fight between Donner and the Salkinds that left nobody on speaking terms.
Oh, and they fired him by telegram. Wow. Drama. I never heard about it at the time because I was too young.
The good news was that this gave Reeve more creative control, a condition for continuing without Donner.
Donner was also responsible for Ladyhawke, and we won't even go there. Ahem. Although he did marry a producer...
But I'll be honest. Reeve will always be my Superman and Donner has to be in part responsible for that.
It's a bad year not to be Hades.
The temporary (but hopefully to be permanent) addition of a Best Video Game Hugo came in a year when there are two games everyone's been playing: Animal Crossing and Hades.
And Animal Crossing has the significant disadvantage in a popular choice contest of being console specific, while Hades is multi platform.
Everyone has been playing Hades, the "rogue-like" (I personally argue real time combat makes it a rogue-lite) about breaking out of the Greek underworld, which has an intriguing plot demonstrating a lot of knowledge of Greek mythology. And Cerberus. Don't forget to pet Cerberus.
There has been significantly more buzz about it than other nominees: Final Fantasy VII Remake, The Last of Us, and Spritfarer.
Honestly, the last of those is my actual favorite, a delightfully melancholy time management-ish platformer about dying. It's cute, it's cozy, it's adorable.
But the biggest competition for Hades is undoubtedly the bizarre free browser game Blaseball. Which I just can't get into at all.
I'm still thinking it's a bad year not to be Hades.
A little disappointed Galactic Journey, which is always fun, didn't make the cut this year.
Our nominees were Journey Planet (As esoteric as ever, including an entire issue about the history of the British war anthology comic Battle). Lady Business was also up to their quality, as was Nerds of a Feather.
Charles Payseur will no longer be doing Quick Sip Reviews after this year, which is a shame, although he plans on continuing to write.
The Full Lid was also pretty impressive. I felt the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog was weaker, but still worthy.
Still impressed by the weird stuff Journey Planet finds to write about. They aren't afraid to go very niche (although the winner is still the time they did the history of the trains in the Disney parks).
The fan awards tend to be a bit of a "usual suspects" round up, so I was pleased to see Elsa Sjunneson (If you need to find out information about writing disabled characters, she's one of your girls) in the mix.
Alasdair Stuart needs to test his files...unfortunately his package was difficult to read...but was up to his usual standard.
I was particularly impressed with Cora Buhlert's very insightful analysis of Rogue One.
All of the finalists more than deserved to be there and it was a very difficult choice. Don't forget to vote in the fan categories if you have the time; they often get lower turnout.
So, I have been in North Carolina...and was able to get quite a bit of Hugo reading done.
This year, I started with the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and here are my thoughts.
Jenn Lyons, in her second year of eligibility, appears to be determined to be the spiritual successor of Brandon Sanderson. This is not a criticism - Jenn is a brilliant writer - but she writes tomes, not books, as it were.
A.K. Larkwood provided only an excerpt of The Unspoken Name, and I sadly found it kind of forgettable.
Emily Tesh's Silver In The Wood was a story I was already familiar with, and should appeal to anyone who is interested in stories based off of British folklore.
Lindsay Ellis provided her science fiction/first contact novel Axioms End. I have to admit that I struggled with it, and the authors note revealed some clues as to why. (Anything else would be spoilery)
Micaiah Johnson is a definite talent. I didn't read the full book of The Space Between Worlds, but it's a fascinating exploration of a similar concept to Connie Willis' time traveling historian books applied to the multiverse. With more Black people.
Finally, Simon Jimenez offered an excerpt of The Vanished Birds, which I also found a bit forgettable. Maybe it's just that I did too much reading this week?
I do still think they all deserved to be there, though.
