FOR WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Kethric Wilcox: In SciFi we’re often met with different forms of starship drives from warp drive to improbability drive as a way to cross vast distances at faster than light speed. What is your favorite drive system to use when moving your protagonist from planet A to planet Z? Join the chat
The ancient moon may have had a gooey interior: A new study suggests that some 4 billion years ago, Earth’s beloved satellite harbored a secret subsurface ocean of magma. The churning of this molten ocean may have created a magnetic field similar to the one that protects Earth from charged space particles today. Measurements of moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s prove that the moon once had a strong magnetic field above its surface, but how the satellite managed to sustain this field is a complete mystery. “We’re trying to understand what could … Read more
QSFer Dorian Dawes has a new trans/gay sci fi book out: Famous bounty hunter Talisha Artul is not having a good day. A hostile alien planet full of bandits and refugees, an entire group of mercenaries all told to kill her and take her armor, and it’s barely even noon. All she wanted was to earn a paycheck and make her mother proud. They’ve barely shared a kind word since she came out of the closet as trans and took her mother’s name. Now she’s travelling with an android cowboy with split-personality issues and an eight-foot-tall warrior woman to beat … Read more
Alien civilizations with technology on a par with humanity’s could be detectable using today’s instruments. A new study suggests that if geostationary satellites are thick enough around an alien world, they could be spotted with telescopes already hunting for undiscovered planets. Both governments and private corporations on our own world use geostationary satellites — which orbit such that they hover over the same spot on Earth — for science, communications, espionage and military applications. If advanced alien civilizations loft enough satellites into their own geostationary belts, these spacecraft could create a dense, ring-like structure visible from Earth, according to the … Read more
There’s a planet the size of Jupiter whipping around a star 466 light-years away from Earth, and it might be the color of plums, or dying embers or, well … just about anything else. Researchers don’t know for sure, because the massive, gassy world is one of the darkest planets astronomers have ever detected. According to a new paper posted April 17 in the preprint journal arXiv, the planet known as WASP-104b is “darker than charcoal” and may swallow up to 99 percent of the light its local star sheds upon it. “From all the dark planets I could find … Read more
Uranus smells like rotten eggs, and that is not a joke. A new study finds that the seventh planet from the sun has an upper atmosphere flush with hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is a gas best known for its repulsive smell; the gas emanates from sewers and volcanoes on Earth, explaining why some hot springs, which are fed by geothermally heated water, smell like breakfast gone bad. Astronomers have now discovered that the gas is common in the cloud tops of Uranus. That hydrogen sulfide composition is different than what is found in the upper atmospheres of Uranus’ fellow giant … Read more
A bunch of very big corporations and rich men are hoping to start watching the whole Earth at all times with video cameras in outer space. EarthNow LLC, a company that counts among its investors Bill Gates, Airbus, SoftBank and the “colorful” tech tycoon Greg Wyler, announced plans Wednesday (April 18) to “deploy a large constellation of advanced imaging satellites that will deliver real-time, continuous video of almost anywhere on Earth.” The goal, the company said, is to offer customers the ability to watch events unfold on the planet in real time. EarthNow’s website lists the far-ranging events the satellite … Read more
An asteroid that slammed into the Sudan desert on Oct. 7, 2008, shot out lots of little space rocks holding a precious secret: diamonds that likely formed billions of years ago inside the embryo of a now-decimated planet. That lost planet was the size of Mercury or perhaps Mars, researchers now say. In the space rocks, which are also called meteorites, researchers found compounds common to diamonds on Earth, such as chromite, phosphate and iron-nickel sulfides. It’s the first time these diamond components have been found in an extraterrestrial body, the researchers said in a new study describing the findings. … Read more
Using data from NASA’s Juno mission, researchers created a 3D flyover of the gas giant’s north pole in infrared. It shows the turbulent dynamics of the pole, which is topped by a huge cyclone about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) across. Ringing this monster atmospheric storm are eight other cyclones with diameters ranging from 2,500 to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,700 km). The Juno spacecraft launched on Aug. 5, 2011, and entered Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016, flying as low as 2,200 miles (3,500 km) over the highest cloud tops of the planet, according to NASA. The goal of the … Read more
The far reaches of the outer solar system may be home to an icy giant — a hypothetical planet scientists have dubbed “Planet Nine.” Meanwhile, archives back on Earth are home to dozens of medieval records documenting the passage of comets through the heavens. Now, two researchers from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland are hoping to use these old scrolls and tapestries to solve the modern astronomical mystery of Planet Nine. “We have a wealth of historical records of comets in Old English, Old Irish, Latin and Russian which have been overlooked for a long time,” said university medievalist … Read more