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Science Fiction Tropes That Should be Scrapped
This blogger has put together a list of science fiction themes that have been done waaaaay to death. If you read or watch a lot of science fiction, you may begin to notice certain themes that constantly crop up. Some of these, like the ridiculously sexy female scientist/alien/robot/whatever, detract from the realism — but no…
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Books In Spaaace
NASA scientist David McKay suggests that the Moon might be a good place for a massive storehouse of digital information, sort of a (less-flammable) Lunar Library of Alexandria. McKay says the lunar library could be stored on computers buried in the ground, placed inside craters, or located in hollow lava tubes. The benefits of lunar…
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Space Hotel Could Launch by 2010
If the planned Jan. 30 launch of Bigelow Aerospace’s Genesis 2 space module on a Russian Dnepr rocket is successful, Las Vegas entrepreneur Robert Bigelow plans to send a human-rated habitat into orbit in either the second half of 2009 or the first half of 2010.Link
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Get it while it lasts…
From the NRO Corner blog: This is going around the math-sci listservs: The Royal Society has digitized & online all of its publications. For the first time the Archive provides online access to all journal content, from Volume One, Issue One in March 1665 until the latest modern research published today ahead of print. And…
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Technology Tackles Real-Life Problems
Never forget another anniversary. The Remember Ring is programmed to briefly heat up every hour on a specific date. It powers itself with a “micro thermopile” that turns heat from your hand into stored electricity that runs its internal clock and the heater. Link (via BoingBoing)
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Alien “ID Chart” to Aid Search for Extraterrestrial Life
The search for planets with extraterrestrial life has gotten a new tool: an “ID chart” that scientists will use to compare alien worlds with Earth as it has appeared over the eons. As technology improves to the point where Earthlike planets can be detected, astronomers have created an historical model of the Earth throughout its…
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Study Urges U.S. Return to the Moon
NASA needs to get ready as soon as possible to return to the moon, if for no other reason than to understand how life evolved here on Earth, the National Research Council has urged. Link
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Lensmen Sequels Now Available
Red Jacket Press is pleased to announce new editions of three fully-authorized sequels to E.E. “Doc” Smith’s LENSMEN series: The Dragon Lensman, Lensman From Rigel and Z-Lensman, written by David A. Kyle. Originally published in paperback by Bantam Books in the early 1980s and long since out of print, each book is a complete and…
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World’s First Female Space Tourist Blasts Off
A Russian-made Soyuz rocket left the Russian base in Kazakhstan Monday at 0408 GMT carrying a Soyuz TMA-9 capsule and its three passengers: Iranian-born US citizen and millionaire tourist Anousheh Ansari, NASA’s Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.Link
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Cephalo(i)Pod
Flickr user queenrobot made this wonderful squid costume for her iPod. And that’s not the half of it: Neatorama, where I found this picture, themselves found it at…:::drum rolll:::..Squid Blog, a wonderfully narrow-niched and hitherto-entirely-unsuspected blog about, well, squid. (I’m not sure why it should have been unsuspected; considering some of the stuff you find…