Whatever you may think of Branson, Virgin Galactic, Burt Rutan and space tourism in general, you have to admit that there’s something deliciously skiffy about the look of SpaceShipTwo.
I don’t care about practicalities when I see images like that – I just want to take a ride on the thing. Like, today. [Image from linked article – click through for a few more, including construction shots.]
Us Brits have a set of science fiction awards too, y’know. Maybe the BSFA Awards are not as big and high-profile as the Nebulas, but we’re pretty proud of them nonetheless.
The shortlists for this year’s BSFA Awards were announced last night. Here are the ones to do with fiction:
Best Novel:
Best Short Fiction:
I think the Best Novel category will be closely fought – I’ll have to think carefully about my vote for that one.
As Niall Harrison points out, Ted Chiang probably has the Short Fiction in the bag. Personally, I thought that to be one of his weakest pieces – not bad by any stretch of the definition, but nowhere near as good as some of the material preceding it. Selah.
Your thoughts?
A group of scientists have managed to extend the lifespan of baker’s yeast by ten times, using genetic tweaks and a special diet. They believe that they will be able transfer the same processes into small mammals like mice, and that ultimately this may be a viable pathway for longevity treatments in humans:
Longo’s group next plans to further investigate life span extension in mice and also is studying a human population in Ecuador with mutations analogous to those described in yeast.
“People with two copies of the mutations have very small stature and other defects,” he said. “We are now identifying the relatives with only one copy of the mutation, who are apparently normal. We hope that they will show a reduced incidence of diseases and an extended life span.”
Longo cautioned that, as in the Ecuador case, longevity mutations tend to come with severe growth deficits and other health problems. Finding drugs to extend the human life span without side effects will not be easy, he said.
An easier goal, Longo added, would be to use the knowledge gained about life span “in a fairly limited way, to reprogram disease prevention.”
It’s interesting to see that there inevitable consequences to longevity – everything comes at a price, even in biology. But what about the social consequences?
Sure, if I could even double my lifespan, think of how many more books I’d be able to read, or stories I’d be able to write. But I’d need to work for twice as many years to support myself … and if the majority of people were living twice as long, there’d be some rather serious logistical issues with basic resources.
But then again, maybe that would provide the impetus for us to think more efficiently, and/or escape the gravity well and colonise local space? [Image from Image*After]
One thing’s for certain – if my longevity was increased significantly, I’d have a lot more time for sitting around and speculating wildly on the consequences of things … 😉
No, it’s not the title of some best-forgotten B-movie, but some high-brow astrophysics that – in all honesty – I can’t say I fully understand. But it’s something to do with quantum physics, entropy and super-massive black holes:
“Although Hawking radiation implies that black holes contain all this disorder, scientists have been puzzled as to where it all comes from. The collapsing stars that turn into black holes do not start out with nearly enough. How does the matter become so scrambled?
Frampton’s team argues that the extra entropy is generated by the random nature of quantum physics. This should sometimes allow a collapsing ball of matter to spontaneously transform into something called a “monster” – an arrangement of matter that has maximum disorder, with particles travelling at high speed in random directions.”
These “monsters” could help explain our way to a quantum theory of gravity, apparently. It’s times like this I wish I’d stuck with science instead of engineering. [Image courtesy NASA]
Hello, boys and girls. You may or may not have noticed that Futurismic had a bit of downtime today.
Our hosting company informs us that this is due to the site hogging CPU resources – which means there’s either a lot more of you reading than we thought, that something’s broken, or that someone somewhere is playing a game we Brits refer to as “silly buggers”.
However, until we can accurately determine the source of the problem, we need to take measures to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So if you notice anything odd or untoward here in the next week or so, please bear with us.
It may be that we’re forced to deactivate the comments at some point, but this will not be a permanent change by any means.
And please also rest assured we’re working hard on a long term solution to the problems, which we hope to be able to make an announcement about very soon.
Thanks for reading!