Monthly Archives: September 2007

Blog

Mysterious Peruvian meteor illness solved

1 Comment

meteor_peru.jpg
Photograph by Miguel Carrasco/La Razon/Reuters

Exactly one week ago I wrote a post about the meteor strike in Peru that made the local residents near the impact crater sick. Being the science fiction fan that I am, I immediately began coming up with worst case scenarios: galactic plague; interstellar biological first strike; zombie inducing spores; etc. Well, it turns out that there is a perfectly benign explanation:

The illness was the result of inhaling arsenic fumes, according to Luisa Macedo, a researcher for Peru’s Mining, Metallurgy, and Geology Institute (INGEMMET), who visited the crash site. The meteorite created the gases when the object’s hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic, the scientists said. Numerous arsenic deposits have been found in the subsoils of southern Peru, explained Modesto Montoya, a nuclear physicist who collaborated with the team.

Blog

One man’s take on why we don’t have our moon bases yet

3 Comments

Here’s a good article by Nader Elhefnawy at The Space Review about the difficulties with getting a commercial space program up and running.  He questions why no country has made a commercial venture outside satellites, and comes up with some pretty good reasons.

The positive forces the author notes are mercantilism and national pride, whereas the negatives are long and hard to argue against.

While there may be good reasons, as of now they aren’t economical ones, and money is what makes the world go ’round.  Elhefnawy points out that businesses aren’t typically the adventurers they’re portrayed as (risk is not a good thing if you want to make money), and there’s also that pesky matter of space being REALLY big and hard to get to.

In sum, I’d like to be optimistic, but without a drastic change in the way the world works, I’m not getting off this rock.  Hopefully my children will.

(image courtesy of galaxygrrl)

Blog

Did the aliens all run out of gas?

4 Comments

is there no one out there?

{image from the Hubble Heritage Project}

It’s amazing just how interlinking life can be when you think about it. As well as the fact that when oil, gas and coal run out we’ll have no choice but to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, this great article links peak oil and global warming to another large-scale problem – The Fermi Paradox.

It’s an interesting article to ponder, particularly in relation to mankind’s future. Is the reason we can’t see any evidence of alien life out there because they all ran out of resources before they could get off their own planet?

[Edit – another good article on the subject here – thanks to Tom James and Sentient Developments for that link! The original article seems to be having server trouble but this alternative is just as interesting.]

Blog

Charlie Stross on signing tour of the US

charlesstross_cthulhu Futurismic readers based in the US should be pleased to hear that hyper-prolific British science fiction writer Charlie Stross is being whisked off for a promotional tour of the States by Ace Books. The dates:

Tuesday, October 9th

12am – Amazon.com Fishbowl session at Amazon’s Union Station Offices in Seattle.

7pm – a public reading (and signing) at University Bookstore at the Science Fiction Museum (325 5th Avenue North, Seattle).

Wednesday, October 10th

2pm – reading and signing at Google in Kirkland. (NB: Google staff only, sadly.)

Thursday, October 11th

7:30pm – reading and signing at Powell’s City of Books (1005 W. Burnside Street, Portland).

Friday, October 12th

1pm – reading and signing at Google in Mountain View.

7pm – another reading and signing at Borders at 400 Post Street, San Francisco.

There are also plenty of radio and magazine interviews in between, apparently, so you should be able to catch the man in action somehow, wherever you may live. And I recommend you do so – I’ve had the privilege of seeing Stross speak a number of times, and in addition to being a fine writer he’s as sharp as a tack, and a very funny man indeed. [Image ganked from the (now sadly defunct) Table of Malcontents blog]

[tags]science fiction, authors, Charlie Stross, tour[/tags]
Blog

SteamPunk Magazine #3 is released!

issue3.gif

SteamPunk Magazine is a publication that is dedicated to promoting steampunk as a culture, as more than a sub-category of fiction. It is a journal of fashion, music, misapplied technology and chaos. And fiction.

In this issue there are interviews with Alan Moore and Doctor Steel, two excellent and unique sewing projects, excerpts from the upcoming SteamPunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse, and fiction from Olga Izakson, Will Strop and Rachel E. Pollock.

And it is free.