-
Titan May Have an Underground Ocean
Researchers have looked at the amount of torque that Titan’s winds exert on its surface, and have concluded that things move around too much for the moon to have a solid core. They suspect a water ocean deep below surface ice. Link
-
More Pratchett
Charity auction for research for the treatment and cure of Alzheimer’s disease. Or look here
-
Gary Gygax, RIP
Must have missed his saving throw. Link
-
Janet Kagan, RIP
Via Locus and SFWA … SF writer Janet Kagan, born 1946, died Friday, 29 February 2008, of C.O.P.D. (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), at the age of 63. She was author of popular “Mama Jason” stories published in Asimov’s and collected in Mirabile (1991), and of two novels, Star Trek tie Uhura’s Song (1985), and Hellspark…
-
Earth-On-Moon Violence
NASA scientists are planning to whack a couple of spacecraft into the Moon’s south pole to see if they find water. We’ve never been to the Moon’s poles, and since some craters at the south pole are deep enough that sunlight never reaches the bottom there might be unsublimated ice lurking there. Researchers have already…
-
2007 Nebula Award Final Ballot
Brook West, Nebula Award Report editor, announces the final Ballot for the Nebula Awards® for 2007. The ballot will be mailed on March 1st, and Active Members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America must return them by March 31. The Awards will be announced at the Nebula Awards® Banquet to be held at…
-
Scalzi-mania
On eBay: Item number:120222826271 John Scalzi: Zoe’s Tale — Special edition for charity! Ending Feb-25-08 09:10:29 PST Wish I was rich :-/
-
This Sounds Much Kinkier Than it Actually is
British scientists have created an embryo containing genetic material from two women and a man. They aren’t at the “designer baby” stage just yet, and are hastening to stress that the embryo doesn’t actually have three parents, but it’s still pretty cool. The procedure was done by placing a normal one-man-one-woman embryo into an egg…
-
io9: New SF Blog
The Gawker Media juggernaut has seen fit to visit a new blog upon our little niche. io9 has the drink-from-the-firehose posting frequency seen on many of the other blogs in their stable, and the staff is well-versed in the subject matter. Here’s part of their manifesto: Earth is full of people who want to sell…
-
Goodbye Holocene, Hello Anthropocene
A movement to declare the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch as finished is gaining steam amongst scientists. Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen suggested in 2000 that human activity was altering the planet sufficiently to rate a new epoch, and a couple of recent papers are giving the idea momentum. Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made…