Beam Me Up Science Fiction in the news,on tv,at the movies or in print. Whatever is of interest to you and to me is fair game. I also discuss cutting edge science that just might influence new sci-fi Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 50 5020

Articles from Beam Me Up

Mirrors 'could deflect' asteroids 2007-10-07 00:43:00 From BBC NewsOrbital mirrors could save earth from a catastrophic asteroid collision, researchers have claimed. Up to 5,000 mirrors would be used to focus a beam of sunlight on to the asteroid, melting the rock and altering its orbital path away from earth. Orbiting mirrors would be used to focus sunlight on an area of the asteroid - heating the rock to around 2,100 degrees Celsius. This would create a thrust which would nudge the asteroid off course. An asteroid 150m across could be sufficiently modified by a swarm of 100 mirrors in a few days. Thanks to Shaun Saunders for the post ...

I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer 2007-10-07 00:32:00 Shaun sends in this from the Guardian Unlimited science websiteCraig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth. This will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming. A team assembled by Venter, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code. It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and in effect become a new life form. ... Pioneer

Nanothreads spun to create living tissue 2007-10-06 00:05:00 From the online issue of Scientific American - Shaun Saunders sends in this story with this note:"reminds me of the scene near the end of 'The empire strikes back' when skywalker is being repaired in a tank..."Scientists using an electrically charged needle have electrospun nanosize threads of cells encased in plastic polymers to create living microfibers that promote tissue regrowth. Unfortunately, the electrical charge can hurt both the spun cells and the scientists doing the spinning. But now mechanical engineers at the University College in London have invented a way to spin nanothreads using only pressure and, with the help of medical colleagues, shown that they can create such nanothreads of living heart tissue, potentially revealing the way to weave an entirely new, healthy heart or even fresh, new skin. The researchers successfully used this method to spin tissue from smooth muscle cells from rabbit aortas with a special device comprising three concentri ...

Computer to Read Minds 2007-10-05 14:32:00 Our correspondent Shaun Saunders was perusing the LiveScience.com page and came across this little gem. As odd and funny as it sounds, these people are dead serious!They're already predicting, mathematically, what you'll want to watch, what you'll want to wear, and who you'll want to vote for. Obviously, the next step is for computers to read your mind. Your computer won't be picking up details about your plans for the evening anytime soon. But researchers with the Human Computer Interaction group at Tufts have, thanks to a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, come up with a straightforward way for your computer to tell if you are overworked, under-worked or not working at all. The mind reading actually involves measuring the volume and oxygen level of the blood around the subject's brain, using technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The user wears a sort of futuristic headband that sends light in that spectrum into the tissues ...

Is a 'naked singularity' lurking in our galaxy? 2007-10-03 00:25:00 NewScientist.com news service Could a naked singularity, the bare core of a black hole, be sitting at the centre of our galaxy - an object so dense it would shred the known laws of physics? Singularities exist in the heart of every black hole, according to Einstein's general theory of relativity. When matter collapses under its own gravity, it forms either a point of infinite density. But each of these singularities is cloaked by a so-called event horizon – where light and everything else is inexorably sucked inwards. So we could never see one. Unless, that is, there are black holes that spin at extreme speeds. A spinning black hole drags nearby space around with it, and if it spins fast enough, then light and matter could escape from right by the singularity, (the Kerr Newman area. If you recall the story I read a couple of weeks ago, Stephen Baxter's Pilot. The story describes an encounter with a black hole and this area, check it out! pac) because t ...

Secrets of 1957 Sputnik Launch Revealed 2007-10-01 13:04:00 From Wired.comWhen Sputnik took off 50 years ago, to the world it seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph. But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West. Instead, the first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, slapped together a satellite and persuaded a dubious Kremlin to open the space age. And that winking light that crowds around the globe gathered to watch in the night sky? Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket, according to Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space program. Chertok couldn't whisper a word about the project through much of his lifetime. His name, and that of Sergei Korolyov, the chief scientist, were a state secret. Now, at ag ...

Taking a trip with Journeyman 2007-09-30 19:41:00 While others seem prepared to dance on Journeyman's grave, I finally got a chance to see the first episode and I will have to say, that I am if not impressed, willing to watch a few more. The time travel, if somewhat derivative is such a minor point that it would do you well to over look it. What we have is the main character finding himself oddly jumping back into the past and to the present at odd times. It seems to make no sense until he meets with his first love whom he thought was dead but seems to be a jumper much like himself. He finally figures that he is suppose to save a child's life and does so in a most unexpected way. If you have watched the show, you will remember the tool box, which I thought was a brilliant idea. What will kill this show will be the same thing that made it's very similar predecessor almost unwatchable. Inane writing and static theme. Both started off with an inventive idea and it could wind up sinking the newest. I think the fact that he con ...

Jami, my how you've grown! 2007-09-30 18:12:00 Well, no big surprise here, I am terrible with schedules on tv. So I just got around to watching NBC's Bionic Woman remake. NBC may accually have a winner here. Gone are the stupid slow-mo bad hair, bouncing body parts and bad music. Replace that with an MTV cut Blade Runner and you get an impression of what the first episode of the Bionic Woman brought to the table. Why do I mention an icon like R.Scott's Blade? Well, we have a present that is way out of control, rain, android ummm bionic heavy weights beating the crap out of one another, creepy music, dark lighting....No, I am not describing Blade Runner. No, the new Bionic Woman is unrelentingly depressing to the point of putting your teeth on edge. But you find yourself leaning toward the screen waiting for the next scene.....I think we can safely say that Wednesday's on NBC has a slot worth watching.... Oh and if you can believe it....Sakhoff was wasted on BSG. They let her run on this show and she is BAAAAAAAAAAAAA ...

Robot insurance! 2007-09-30 17:00:00 I am sure that many of you have already seen this before. However, I hadn't and so I must share! So what do you do when robots attack? Why get insurance! ...

Mysterious energy burst stuns astronomers 2007-09-28 18:43:00 Astronomers studying archival data from an Australian radio telescope have discovered a powerful, short-lived burst of radio waves that they say indicates an entirely new type of astronomical phenomenon. This burst appears to have originated from the distant Universe and may have been produced by an exotic event such as the collision of two neutron stars or the death throes of an evaporating black hole. The startling discovery came as WVU undergraduate student David Narkevic re-analyzed data from observations of the Small Magellanic Cloud made by the 210-foot Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The burst was so bright that at the time it was first recorded it was dismissed as man-made radio interference. It put out a huge amount of power - equivalent to a large (2000MW) power station running for two billion billion years. ...

Gone in 12 seconds: your rest break 2007-09-26 11:47:00 Shaun just sent me this, and I can not believe that they are serious! Some things in science fiction are just so amazing that you can't imagine them ever becoming fact....then there are the strange little things that you hope you never see. Just because the world gets a bit bleaker if they do.Now I have done telemarketing and I want to tell you I thought 30 seconds between calls was too little time. Here is an article that describes a scenario much much worse.Shaun writes: You read it in my story 79.9 (in 2005, and now included in 'Navigating in The New World'), now read the actual occurrence in the 'real world'.....Click here for the article ...

Chuck n Heroes premiers 2007-09-25 15:33:00 NBC trotted out something new and something....weird for their premiers and redos of science fiction shows...well mostly science fiction. Chuck downloaded. ehhhh..... All I could think of was Jake 2.0. I mean the guy even looked like him. And Geek Squad....Nerd Herd? And are the shows drastically different? Lets see... One guy gets hurt during a breakdown of security and there is an accidental transfer of material that gives the hero a special power. Which show am I talking about? My point exactly. Nanos are out and embedded computer information is in. The only diff is the guy wants to be the manager of a big box store instead of being nsa/cia whatever. Lame....Nope, Chuck didn't work all that well for me. Although seeing Adam Baldwin doing that creepy Gman character is kind of a treat.Heroes was a bit of a mixed bag....Don't get me wrong, it really is the 800 pound guerrilla of sci-fi shows this season. Heiro has gone back in time to find out that his childhood her ...

3-D Printers coming soon! 2007-09-25 12:56:00 Do you remember Cory Doctorow's short story called Print Crime? I played it on the program a few weeks ago. The story set in the near future, told of tech that allowed anyone to "print" items that they wanted. Chemical, pharmacological and technological were all within the realm of possible. However on the flip side were insanely strict copyright laws. Which lead as you can imagine to a popular and violent gray and black market. As outrageous and futuristic as the story sounded, the tech itself is right around the corner. Such technology already exists and is maturing rapidly so that high-tech designers and others can share solid designs almost as quickly as sending a fax. The systems available are based on bath of liquid plastic which is solidified by laser light. The movements of the laser are controlled by a computer that reads a digitized 3D map of the solid object or design. Eventually this will allow the mainstream consumer to 3-D print equipment, whether that is plast ...

Germs Taken Into Space May Come Back Deadlier 2007-09-25 12:12:00 from USNews.comDoes this sound like the Andromeda Strain or what? "Deadly germs come back on a research space craft" Perfect B-movie plot , huh? What's even scarier is , it really happened. In a medical experiment, salmonella carried about the space shuttle in the fall of 2006 proved far more lethal to lab mice than the exact same microbe here on Earth. Just how much more deadly? 90% dead vs. 60% dead in twenty-six days. And that was with far less of the microbe in the oral dose. Apparently 167 genes in the space-evolved strain had changed. The likely cause: In zero G the force of fluids passing over the cells is low, similar to conditions in the gastrointestinal tract, and the cells adapted quickly to the new environment.thanks to slashdot.com for the original article ...

Family Guy does Star Wars 2007-09-24 14:55:00 I know that I souldn't - but this is just so damn funny. Ok, the Family Guy does....Star Wars 4This is the first part, but I suspect the complete episode can be found on youtube. ...