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As Dreams Are Made On...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 21, 2012 at 6:53am

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

HowStuffWorks - Warp Speed

You can blame it on my reading material.

Though "real Sci-Fi fans" would differ with me, I had to take a "Star Trek" break from my usual (and quite depressing) dystopian literary diet and read two from Old School Trek: "The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh," part 1 and part 2 by Greg Cox. Khan as a four-year-old was written just as arrogantly as Ricardo Montaban portrayed him in the original series. If you're familiar with the "Space Seed" episode, it fleshes out a probable history of the genetically engineered race of supermen juxtaposed in real-world events of the 70s and 90s quite well.

Hence, the posts this week have been somewhat targeted.

So, I was probably primed to find these items:

"Perhaps a Star Trek experience within our lifetime is not such a remote possibility." These are the words of Dr. Harold "Sonny" White, the Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead for the NASA Engineering Directorate. Dr. White and his colleagues don't just believe a real life warp drive is theoretically possible; they've already started the work to create one.

Yes. A real warp drive, Scotty.

Gizmodo: NASA Starts Work on Real Life Star Trek Warp Drive


Abstract Excerpt: NASA/JSC is implementing an advanced propulsion physics laboratory, informally known as "Eagleworks", to pursue propulsion technologies necessary to enable human exploration of the solar system over the next 50 years, and enabling interstellar spaceflight by the end of the century.

 

NASA Technical Reports Service:
Eagleworks Laboratories: Advanced Propulsion Physics Research (PDF embed)

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Thin Crust...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 20, 2012 at 6:55am
The GRAIL mission so far has found little evidence for some hypothetical ancient impact basins.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT

A sneak peek at the first results from a NASA mission to measure the Moon’s gravitational field hints at a lunar crust that is only half as thick as once thought.


There were a few gasps among scientists in the audience at a 13 September seminar at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they took in the data revealed by Maria Zuber, principal investigator for NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. Zuber, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, showed a crisp, high-resolution gravitational map made with data collected by GRAIL’s twin spacecraft between March and June of this year.

 

Nature: Tandem satellites probe the Moon's interior

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Martian Snowflakes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 18, 2012 at 8:30am
Space.com

A spacecraft orbiting Mars has detected carbon dioxide snow falling on the Red Planet, making Mars the only body in the solar system known to host this weird weather phenomenon.

 

The snow on Mars fell from clouds around the planet's south pole during the Martian winter spanning 2006 and 2007, with scientists discovering it only after sifting through observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The Martian south pole hosts a frozen carbon dioxide — or "dry ice" — cap year-round, and the new discovery may help explain how it formed and persists, researchers said.

 

Snow fall - at least on Earth - is not wierd at all. However, I'd caution against trying to make a snowball with dry ice. Remember those roses shattered in high school chemistry class? Yeah, it'd be kind of like that. Smiley

 

Space.com: Snow on Mars: 'Dry Ice Snowflakes Discovered by NASA Probe

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Martian Blueberries...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 17, 2012 at 11:30am

This mosaic image shows spherules, or 'blueberries,' partly embedded and spread over the soil on Mars. (Image courtesy NASA/JPL/Cornell University.)

...never count Rover out.

It’s unlikely anything lives on Mars today, but it may well have done so millions or billions of years past. And it may have left traces of its existence in the geology of the red planet.

 

One such tantalising hint was discovered by the NASA Opportunity Rover, which found small spherical hematite balls, dubbed ‘blueberries,’ in the Martian soil.

 

These were originally thought to have provided the first evidence of liquid water on Mars, but their existence may hold an even more profound implication.

 

Now researchers from the University of Western Australia and University of Nebraska have found that such iron-oxide spheroids, when they appear on Earth, are formed by microbes.

 

Jet Propulsion Lab: Mars Rover
Life Scientist: Iron 'blueberries' may be a sign of microbial life on Mars
Phsy.org: Mars 'blueberries' could be clues to presense of life

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Immortal IV: Collision of Worlds (excerpt)

Posted by Valjeanne Jeffers on September 17, 2012 at 1:10am
 
 
The werewolf leaped into the air, thrust his hand inside the robot's chest and pulled a mass of wires and bolts out. It screeched and bucked, hissing static. ****** heard running footfalls behind him and did a backward flip.
 
He landed facing six enforcers. They aimed their muskets at his head...
 
“WAIT!”
 
The enforcers lowered their weapons. They moved to the left and right, opening a path, their faces respectful. And filled with terror. Again ****** heard footfalls, but these were measured, unhurried. A dark man walked though the path, a man with piercing onyx eyes and high cheekbones. His face, his bearing the very image of power. ****** fell to his knees.
 
Tehotep looked down at him. “I did not create you!” he hissed. “What kind of creature are you?”
 
****** looked up at him. “One who wants to serve you!”
 
The daemon smiled. “And so you shall.”
 
Collision of Worlds
 
Copyright Valjeanne Jeffers 2012 all rights reserved
 
http://www.vjeffersandqveal.com/
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Immortal IV: Collision of Worlds (excerpt)

Posted by Valjeanne Jeffers on September 17, 2012 at 1:02am
The enforcer on Joseph's far left, a big, sandy-haired man with red jowls grinned. “Curfew is at nine. Looks like we got us some violators.” Beside him his partner, a tall, dark Indigo enforcer chuckled. “Dumpster diving is illegal too.” He looked Kathy and Joan up and down: slowly, insolently then cut his eyes at Joseph. “Well, what you got to say for yourself?”
 
The other enforcers, one Fuchsia...the other Bronze grinned unpleasantly. The three gazed stonily ahead. The Fuchsia man across from Joseph pulled his taser, “You're tough, huh?” he pushed the point under Joseph's chin. “What if I blow your brains out right now?”
 
“We're hungry!” Kathy blurted.
 
Joan cut her eyes at her lover, her face working with emotion.
 
 
“We got nothing to eat! Cut us a break!”
 
“Is that so?” the heavy enforcer drawled. He snatched Joan's bag of food, threw it to the pavement and ground his foot in it. Kathy wailed in anguish. “When your hunger means breaking the law,” he bellowed, emphasizing his words with his boot, stomping the bag, “you stay home and starve!” He snatched Kathy's bag from her, spilling the meat and pastries on the street shook the contents out on the street.
 
Tears ran down Kathy's face. “Please...!”
 
He grabbed her by the throat. “You might be able to talk me outta locking you and your friends up.” He ran his hand down her body. “Start talking. What'll you give me, huh?”
 
Joan growled low in her throat, the feral warning of a wolf whose territory has been violated. Hair now streaming rapidly over her body.
 
“What the—?!” the Indigo officer exclaimed. “Bitch you got something in your throat?” Joseph roared, thrust his hand in the enforcer's chest... and snatched his still beating heart from his body.
 
The man looked down, an almost comical look of disbelief on his face, and fell heavily to the pavement. The stocky officer drew his weapon, aiming at Joseph. Joan blurred forward, clamping her powerful jaws onto his arm. In the next instant, his severed arm was between her jaws...
 
Copyright 2012 Valjeanne Jeffers all rights reserved.
 
Drop by my site for more previews and purchase options :)
http://www.vjeffersandqveal.com
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Hot Jupiters...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 16, 2012 at 10:14am
Credit: NASA

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet that planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments. Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be starrier than what we see from Earth.

 

The starry-skied planets are two so-called hot Jupiters, which are massive, gaseous orbs that are boiling hot because they orbit tightly around their parent stars. Each hot Jupiter circles a different sun-like star in the Beehive Cluster, also called the Praesepe, a collection of roughly 1,000 stars that appear to be swarming around a common center.

 

NASA: First Planets Found Around Sun-Like Stars in a Cluster

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Mindful of Matters...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 15, 2012 at 6:30am

This would have been my mother's 87th birthday. I am thinking of her, mindful of matters near and far, great and small.

The current conflagration in the Near East at the US Embassies in Egypt and Libya that have spread to even more countries, my curiousity led me to this entry on PBS.org:

Muslims believe that God had previously revealed Himself to the earlier prophets of the Jews and Christians, such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims therefore accept the teachings of both the Jewish Torah and the Christian Gospels. They believe that Islam is the perfection of the religion revealed first to Abraham (who is considered the first Muslim) and later to other prophets. Muslims believe that Jews and Christians have strayed from God's true faith but hold them in higher esteem than pagans and unbelievers. They call Jews and Christians the "People of the Book" and allow them to practice their own religions. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the "seal of the prophecy," by which they mean that he is the last in the series of prophets God sent to mankind.

 

Poughkeepsie Journal: “Any way you dissect it, from a moral or religious standpoint, those protesters broke our commandments,” said Umar Ahmad, a longtime member of the Mid-Hudson Islamic Association located in the Town of Wappinger. “What happened in Libya is unforgivable.”

I am not a Muslim. I do have Muslim members of my family, as well as agnostic, Jehovah's Witness, nondenominational, etc. We respect one another. Proselytizing one another has never occurred in any conversations I've had with them. What counts most is the relationship; the familial bond.


Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow...one of the most famous soliloquies written by Shakespeare, spoken from the mouth of Macbeth, a fictional ruler grieving the loss of his wife, musing aloud the futility's of life, the emphasis on unimportant things with respect to the brevity of existence.

We have selective amnesia regarding John Donne's admonition and cautionary warning.

We are all involved in mankindby virtue of being a part of it. The oceans no longer separate us; our worldviews aren't dictated by our limited experiences where we immediately are.

 

I reject the notion any culture's sacred text - Buddhist, Christian, Hebrew, Hindu, Mormon, Muslim et al - is somehow in some bigoted comparison, worthy of desecration. I reject the notion of demonizing Agnostics or Atheists. I reject - as does the US Constitution - the idea of religious tests as a qualifier for elected office (though news pundits seem to count how many times the president uses the word "God" - and he does quite often - as if this is relevant). I reject the notion that an amateurish video of moribund, racist stereotypes falls under "free speech" and "our American values," unless those values now typify the classroom bully; the boot of empire stamped on the neck of the world. Freedom of speech does not give one the right to yell firein a building not ablaze!

I am as diminished by the loss of diplomats abroad as I am military service members deployed, as I am the senseless loss of life in inner cities across the United States.


I quote President Reagan, post the failed rescue attempt 1979 in Iran, Desert 1:

"This is the time for us as a nation and a people to stand united and to pray."

 

Simple, elegant, sober, reflective and quite presidential.

 

It is in times of triumph and tragedy our leaders are called upon to quell our fears; raise our hopes. Personal vendettas and assaults are the mark of petty minds, I am particularly diminished by candidates that would take death so lightly as to score political points.

 

Isaiah 11:6 ends: ...and a little child shall lead them.I end with this photo from Facebook, the future meek that will "inherit the earth." I wish mom could see it. I think it would make her smile, and speaks more volumes than the cleverest self-serving sound bite:

Facebook


Happy birthday, mom.

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Seeking Reviews for AA YA novel - The Adventures of De'Ante Johnson: The Obsidian Knight

Posted by Jefferson Jones on September 14, 2012 at 5:40pm

We welcome reviews of the book Here's a book description and thanks for your time!

De’Ante Johnson, a quiet 16 year old with a well-hidden double life, is shanghaied from his ‘hood to Illumina, an earthlike world, to battle a shape-shifting monstrous tyrant intent on destroying a millennia-old culture. The action intensifies when De’Ante must choose between saving his best friend, gang leader Revonne Williams, or the desperate people of Illumina. However, the heroic Johnson threatens the existence of both worlds when his temper becomes uncontrollable.

Jefferson

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A Plus B Equals C...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 14, 2012 at 6:30am
Scratch.MIT.edu

The usually quiet world of mathematics is abuzz with a claim that one of the most important problems in number theory has been solved.

 

Mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki of Kyoto University in Japan has released a 500-page proof of the abc conjecture, which proposes a relationship between whole numbers — a 'Diophantine' problem.

 

The abc conjecture, proposed independently by David Masser and Joseph Oesterle in 1985, might not be as familiar to the wider world as Fermat’s Last Theorem, but in some ways it is more significant. “The abc conjecture, if proved true, at one stroke solves many famous Diophantine problems, including Fermat's Last Theorem,” says Dorian Goldfeld, a mathematician at Columbia University in New York. “If Mochizuki’s proof is correct, it will be one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of the twenty-first century.”

 

Like Fermat’s theorem, the abc conjecture refers to equations of the form a+b=c. It involves the concept of a square-free number: one that cannot be divided by the square of any number. Fifteen and 17 are square free-numbers, but 16 and 18 — being divisible by 42 and 32, respectively — are not.

 

Scientific American: Proof Claimed for Deep Connection between Prime Numbers

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COPPER - BBC TV Series....

Posted by H. Wolfgang Porter on September 13, 2012 at 4:30am

For all you Steampunk or Historical Fiction writers, check out the BBC series "COPPER". Set during Civil War era New York City in the 'Five Points District', Copper deals with an Irish American Union Veteran turned detective. Copper delivers a surprisingly unflinching look at the time as Detective Kevin Corcoran takes extraordinary steps to find the real causes of murders in the '5 Points'.

Copper has a similarly gritty feel as 'Deadwood' with the depiction of the absolute squalor of the 5 Points coexists with the opulence of 5th Avenue. Among the characters are Corcoran's blood-thirsty henchmen, a conniving wealthy ally from his Civil War days and a surprising Black American Doctor named Matthew Freeman.

Woven amidst the main characters are whores, socialites, greedy politicians and crooked policemen. The show is well done and its characters drive the plot. Every action has a reaction and vice versa. There are plenty of surprises and the pacing of the show is well measured. It is intended for mature audiences due to graphic violence, some harsh language and sexual situations. If you're looking to get the feel for writing during this particular era, Copper is a very good reference.

Here's a link to 'Behind the Badge' a behind the scenes look at the show. It's about 24 minutes long, but worth the watch. Pick the 'Free User' button to watch. If using Firefox or Chrome and you want to get rid of the ads, download the 'AdPro' plug-in from either browser's website add-ons.

Copper - Behind the Badge

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GALATEA'S CROSS SERIES PREVIEW

Posted by Geoff Thorne on September 12, 2012 at 6:30pm

Starting today, a web preview of my new serial novel, GALATEA'S CROSS will be available to read and discuss.

It is absolutely free and introduces (to most of you) the character of Tim Cross, HCA.

Here's a little background:

]In the future the world is dominated by gigantic mega corporations that rule the markets like high tech feudal kingdoms. The only protection humanity has against the whims and machinations of the Megas is the Human/Corporate Advocacy, the HCA.

Of the HCA's many agents, Tim Cross is one of the best. Smart, shrewd, incisive, he's a man cut from a cloth woven in a bygone era- an old-school private dick forced to live in a pristine, almost antiseptic future.

When the teenaged murder suspect Cross has been assigned to protect turns out to be more than anybody expected, what follows is a high-speed, high casualty race to solve the mystery of the girl before the powerful forces out to kill her get their wish.

 

You can find out more and get access to the preview by checking in HERE.

After the preview begins there will be regular updates, including art, character breakdowns, quotes from the series and more.

What is a serial novel?

Well, in this case it's like a bi-weekly TV series with each chapter being like an episode. There's mystery, action, scifi, politics a TINY amount of sex and all for 99c a pop, beginning in October.

Come on down and tell a friend. It starts here.

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Moiré Is Better...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 12, 2012 at 6:16pm

Researchers in the US have invented a new nanofabrication technique that can generate 2D patterns with very high rotational symmetries over large areas. Until now, only spatially repeating structures – which have sixfold or less rotational symmetry – could be patterned over such large areas using industrial photolithography techniques.



Dubbed moiré nanolithography, the technique can produced patterns with rotational symmetries as high as 36-fold – something that has never been observed in nature. Such high rotational symmetries could prove useful for a huge range of applications, from making better photonic crystals to boosting the performance of photovoltaic devices.
Quasicrystal on a wafer - see link below

Physics World: Complex quasicrystals created using new nanofabrication technique

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