All posts by Edward Willett

I'm a freelance writer in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. I've written more than 30 books (I've lost count) on a variety of topics. My nonfiction titles include books on computers, diseases, genetics, and the Iran-Iraq War, some for children and some for adults. I've also written several biographies for children, on individuals as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, Orson Scott Card, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. I've loved science fiction and fantasy since I was a kid (thanks, Andre Norton, Madeleine L'Engle and Robert A. Heinlein!) and have also written young adult fantasy and science fiction. More recently I've turned to adult science fiction. My first adult SF novel, Lost in Translation, was published by Five Star in hardcover in 2005 and reprinted in paperback by DAW Books in 2006. My new SF novel for DAW, Marseguro, will be out in February, 2008. I write a weekly newspaper science column, I love good wine and good food, I'm married and have a daughter, and I'm a professional actor and singer when the opportunity presents itself, and act and sing just for fun when I can't find anyone to pay me for it. My website is at www.edwardwillett.com, and my blog is at edwardwillett.blogspot. com. And that is probably more about me than anyone could possibly want to know...
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In space, no one can hear you hiss

Astronaut on board the International Space Station It’s a staple of SF: something punctures the hull of a spacecraft and crew members, alerted by the hiss of escaping air, scramble to plug up the leak.

Just one problem: in real space, no one can hear the hiss of escaping air, because it’s venting out into vacuum. And real spacecraft, unlike their fictional counterparts, seldom have nice smooth unblemished hulls where holes can be easily located: instead, every square inch is jammed with equipment. Which is why a research team from Iowa has developed a square sensor just an inch across that provides a computer with enough information to locate a leak in about a minute–as opposed to weeks with NASA’s current handheld devices. (Via ScienceDaily.)

Just the thing for long trips to Mars–and space junk-filled near-Earth orbits, too. (Photo from NASA via Science Daily.)

[tags]space travel, NASA, space junk, technology[/tags]

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"The brightest illumination source ever created by man"

Diagram of Orion Helium Ion Microscope That’s the claim for the Orion Helium Ion Microscope from ALIS (Atomic Level Imaging Source), a Peabody, Massachusetts-based unit of Carl Zeiss SMT AG. It’s a next-generation microsocope that will enable us to see things we’ve never been able to see before, even with the most sophisticated scanning electron microsocope. The company has already sold one unit and has five more under construction. (Via MedGadget.)

I haven’t been this excited since I got my first microscope the Christmas I turned seven…although I don’t suppose I can expect one of these under the tree. Pity. (Illustration from ALIS.)

[tags]microscopy, technology, optics[/tags]

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One step closer to the return of the woolly mammoth?

Woolly MammothAn international research team has discovered that they can obtain good DNA samples from the shafts of mammoth hair. Apparently keratin, the protein out of which hair is made, acts as a kind of plastic, preserving the DNA from contamination by marauding bacteria. The research could help scientists figure out why the mammoths went extinct at the end of the last ice age, and the technique could be applied to samples from other species that went extinct in relatively recent times, even samples that have been tucked away in museum drawers for decades. (Via National Geographic News; tip from The Walrus Said.)

Of course, what everyone really wants to know is, can we use this DNA to bring woolly mammoths back?

Short answer: maybe, but you won’t see them in Siberia’s nascent Pleistocene Park any time soon. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

[tags]genetics, DNA, cloning, extinction[/tags]

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Why not use satellites to search for Bigfoot and Nessie?

800px-Nessie Even though analyzing high-resolution satellite imagery (with the help of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk) hasn’t turned up the missing adventurer Steve Fossett, it did discover several previously unknown small crashed planes, some dating back to the 1950s. So why not put it to even more productive use, asks columnist Benjamin Radford, and use it to find Bigfoot or one of the various lake monsters said to inhabit Scotland’s Loch Ness, Canada’s Lake Okanagan or the U.S.’s Lake Champlain, among others? [Via LiveScience.]

Success would convince the skeptics, while failure would do nothing to dissuade the True Believers. So it’s win-win all around! [Image: Wikimedia Commons.]

[tags]cryptozoology, satellite imagery, monsters[/tags]

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Scientists help out SF writers, create list of possible planet types

Chart of exoplanet types

Doing SF writers’ work for them, a U.S. research team has worked out the properties of a variety of weird planet types that could exist in alien solar systems, including graphite planets and carbon monoxide spheres. Of course, they didn’t do it to help writers (though that would be a fine reason do do such a thing): instead, they hope the models will help astronomers identify the properties of exoplanets they discover in the future.

And yes, say the scientists, weird as these worlds are, some of them could harbour life…though not necessarily Life As We Know It.

(Via New Scientist Space.)

(Illustration: Marc Kuchner/NASA-GSFC via New Scientist Space)

[tags]exoplanets, astronomy, science fiction, space[/tags]