NASA’s Cassini probe just sent back some amazing photos of Enceladus, Saturn’s sixth-largest, ice-covered moon. Enceladus was recently confirmed to have a global underground ocean under its icy crust. The moon is 500 km in diameter. It also has geysers that erupt from holes in its crust. The new photos offer closer views than ever before. Full Story at Towleroad.com
China is constructing what will be the world’s largest radio telescope. The Independent reports: Assembly of the five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, began in July and is expected to be completed in 2016. Once finished, the reflector dish of the telescope will be 500 metres in diameter, replacing Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, only 300 meters in diameter, as the world’s largest. The wider the dish, the more effective the telescope becomes at picking up weak messages from outer space. Nan Rendong, the chief scientist of the FAST project, told the Xinhua news agency: “A radio telescope is like a … Read more
ASTRONOMERS BELIEVE THAT a series of objects sighted in deep space bear all the hallmarks of alien construction. A star, which sits above the milky way in the sky and is invisible to the human eye, was stared at for more than four years by the Kepler Space Telescope up until 2014, and now scientists think that objects surrounding the star could be a “swarm of megastructures”. The Kepler telescope is manned by a team of citizen scientists, known as the ‘Planet Hunters’, who sift through the data on the 150,000 stars that the telescope monitors. “We’d never seen anything … Read more
Scientists may have found genetic indicators of whether someone has same or opposite-sex attraction. The link was discovered when scientists compared the DNA of 47 sets of male twins. The pairs included some where the two twins had a different sexual orientation. Looking at the molecular data from nine genome sites, researchers could guess whether a twin pair was straight or gay with up to 70% accuracy. Lead researcher Dr Tuck Ngun, from the University of California at Los Angeles, said: “To our knowledge, this is the first example of a predictive model for sexual orientation based on molecular markers.” … Read more
QSFer Perie Wolford has a new sci fi book out: In the dead darkness of the underwater there were lights. Coming home for summer break, two film school students, Bradley and Tag, decide to shoot a staged UFO encounter video, one that could potentially generate a lot of attention and a lot of clicks on YouTube. Unexpectedly for both of them, during the filming they accidentally discover a real alien presence in the dark waters near their coastal home town. A novel inspired by 1989’s ABYSS and Stephen King’s TOMMYKNOCKERS! Book-trailer: https://youtu.be/X00sPZPgN-k Buy Links Amazon: Click Here Goodreads: Click Here … Read more
Ana has a special topic for us this month: Spaceships. Aliens. Androids, alternative timelines, and answers to problems no one has solved yet. Speculative fiction offers authors a playground to try any number of scenarios impossible in the world as we currently know it. At the same time, this unfamiliar landscape allows freedom to make political statements that might not be permitted in realistic contemporary fiction. Why is it, then, that so much of speculative fiction presents the same dominant power structures of our current society, only dressed up as exciting and new? In past QSF discussions, I’ve asked what … Read more
Today’s topic comes from QSFer Erica Pike: I’d like to talk about the apocalypse/post-apocalypse. It’s a major interest of mine. What kind of post-apoc stories are your favorite? What is your favorite aspect of the stories? The survival? The bad guys? The new society? Do you ever feel guilty for writing it because you’re killing kids off-page? What’s your favorite post-apoc LGBT book? For my part, I’d like to see some happy post apocalyptic books, where things are better after the meltdown. We don’t all have to be Mad Max, do we? Come join the discussion
Pluto has a blue sky, NASA announced today, offering up more information revealed by the New Horizons probe’s visit to the planet last month: Pluto’s haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan. The source of both hazes likely involves sunlight-initiated chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane, leading to relatively small, soot-like particles (called tholins) that grow as they settle toward the surface. This image was generated by software that combines information … Read more
Real estate prices in most of the major cities in the US are skyrocketing. One article this week noted that 63% of all San Francisco residential properties – townhouses and condos included – are now worth more than $1 million. So those of us who aren’t millionaires may soon need to move somewhere else. It got me thinking. Who owns the moon? How will people lay claim to real estate in outer space? And should we start an LGBT country/colony on an asteroid?
QSFer Matt Jakens has a new GENRE book out: Jake is happy with his life aboard the Edgeward Hub space station. That is until his father, a nefarious smuggler, sends him an urgent message. His father has stolen an artifact that will reveal a plot to unearth a super-weapon capable of destroying a planet or even a star, and Jake learns some shocking truths about his heritage too. Thrust into a conspiracy that threatens another galactic war, Jake must race to discover where this super- weapon is. All the while evading a potent and deadly enemy hell-bent on finding the … Read more