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 46 4939

Articles from Beam Me Up

New Antimatter element created 2007-09-13 15:03:00 Scientist has suceeded in combining normal matter with their mirror equivalent in anti-matter to create - for the first time - Di-positronium. The new molecule was predicted to exist in 1946 but has remained elusive to science. Now, a US team has created thousands of the molecules by merging electrons with their antimatter equivalent: positrons. The discovery is a key step in the creation of ultra-powerful lasers known as gamma-ray annihilation lasers. Researchers in the field describe the difference in the power available from a gamma-ray laser compared to a normal laser is the same as the difference between a nuclear explosion and a chemical explosion. As a result, there is a huge interest in the technology from the military as well as energy researchers who believe the lasers could be used to kick-start nuclear fusion in a reactor. ...

Pictures from the future past 2007-09-11 21:32:00 Shaun sent me a link of what I first thought were curiously quaint pictures depicting possible futures from the year 1910. These paintings, though grounded in the preconceptions of the era are eerily prophetic. Though these early prognosticators didn't know it, they were predicting e-mail, electronic news, ipods, drive-thru, Segways, various self propelled war machinery and many more. Take a look....its called paleo-future. ...

Cassini Delivers Up-Close Images of Saturn Moon 2007-09-11 17:12:00 NASA's Cassini probe performed its closest pass to Saturn's odd little Iapetus moon on September 10th , and the first, unprocessed pictures have begun showing up online.There are many more stunning pictures online, click the article title or this link for more of the story and more pics!Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post ...

Do you know the way to.....GLIESE? 2007-09-11 16:49:00 GLIESE 581c has got to be the ultimate tourist destination. It is the first rocky planet beyond our solar system with anything like a pleasant climate. Imagine How mind-blowing would it be just to stroll along its beaches - surely it must have beaches - or watch the planet's red-dwarf sun setting in a scarlet blaze over the alien landscape. There's just one little problem - Gliese 581c is 20 light years away - over a million times the distance from Earth to the sun. Even at half the speed of light you'd spend the best part of 50 years cooped up in a smelly space capsule. Shaun Saunders has sent in an article from New Scientist online magazine that explores some of the most interesting and practical methods that could make a trip to the stars closer. ...

Rendezvous with Rama student project faux movie trailer! 2007-09-11 15:07:00 directed and animated by Aaron Ross of the Tisch School of the Arts, we are treated to an absolute awe inspiring faux Rendezvous with Rama trailer. This CGI-and-live-action hybrid trailer as a degree project will entertain even the most sceptical sci-fi buff.As Tech Republic put it "Sweet hard-SF goodness". ...

REVIEW: Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell 2007-09-10 14:04:00 Ragamuffin Tobias S. Buckell pb n 316 pp Tor Descended from the islanders of lost Earth The Ragamuffins are pirates and smugglers. Plying the lonely space ways around a dead wormhole. For years the Satraps have tolerated the Raga But no longer. Now the Satraps are bent on extermination. Over all, this latest from Buckell moves along fairly well. I get the feeling though that Ragamuffins is in reality two separate books. The two never really blend until close to the end and from there all hell breaks loose. It is almost like Tobias had one novel in mind or more ideas than could be integrated into the first novel, but placed in the same universe as Crystal Rain but not enough to fill out a complete novel. So in truth, I felt a bit lost until I read Crystal Rain. Then I was introduced to the primary characters in the second half of Ragamuffin. My recommendation for this second novel by Buckell is to read Crystal Rain first and then Ragamuffin. Not that R ...

Movie brings moonshot memories up to date 2007-09-10 00:41:00 Shaun sends in a article from NBC:"In the Shadow of the Moon" is a blending unedited footage from America's moonshots with present-day tales from the astronauts who made those trips. We've heard some of the tales before, in dramatic re-creations as well as vintage documentaries. But as you watch those young men of the 1960s — and as you see those same men in 2007, now with white hair and tanned, lined faces — you get a sense that "In the Shadow of the Moon" could be one of the last great testaments from the greatest generation of spaceflight. ...

Techies ponder computers smarter than us..... 2007-09-09 17:15:00 According to futurists gathered at a recent weekend conference, information technology is hurtling toward a point where machines will become smarter than their makers. If that happens, it will alter what it means to be human in ways almost impossible to conceive. There techies and scientists to imagine a future of self-programming computers and brain implants that would allow humans to think at speeds nearing today's microprocessors. Artificial intelligence researchers at the summit warned that now is the time to develop ethical guidelines for ensuring these advances help rather than harm. Some critics have mocked singularists for their obsession with "techno-salvation" and "techno-holocaust" — or what some have called the coming "nerdocalypse." Their predictions are grounded as much in science fiction as science, the detractors claim, and may never come to pass. But advocates argue it would be irresponsible to ignore the possibility. ...

Chip Implants Linked to Animal Tumors 2007-09-09 17:06:00 When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients' medical records almost instantly. The FDA found "reasonable assurance" the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005's top "innovative technologies." But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.The transponders were the cause of the tumors," said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining in a phone interview the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich. Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said th ...

Aurora Award nominations are out 2007-09-07 17:06:00 Aurora award nomination are out! These are the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association awards and a couple of my favorite authors Peter Watts and Robert Sawyer are in the running with Blindsight from TOR books.2007 Finalists (book links) Best Long-Form Work in EnglishRegeneration : Species Imperative 3, Julie E. Czerneda (DAW Books) Children of Chaos, Dave Duncan (Tor Books) Smoke and Ashes, Tanya Huff (DAW Books) Sun of Suns : Book One of Virga, Karl Schroeder (Tor Books) Blindsight, Peter Watts (Tor Books) Righteous Anger : Part Two of the Okal Rel Saga, Lynda Williams (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing)Best Short-Form Work in English "All the Cool Monsters at Once", James Alan Gardner (Mythspring, Red Deer Press) "This Ink Feels Like Sorrow", Karin Lowachee (Mythspring, Red Deer Press) "Marked Men", John Mierau (Slipstreams, DAW) "Biding Time", Robert J. Sawyer (Slipstreams, DAW) "Lumen Essence", Hayden Trenholm (Neo-opsis SF Magazine 9)The Aurora ...

science is distorted to promote political and corporate agendas 2007-09-07 16:53:00 Shaun Saunders sends in a link from Newstarget.com that purports that the reporting of science today is more closely akin to political motivations than it is to the advancement of scientific knowledge.Writer Mike Adams points out that science primarily publicized today is science that supports the interest of business, most notably in medical and environmental science.Under the Bush Administration, government-employed scientists are routinely told they cannot report results indicating the progression of global warming.The clinical trials used by the Food and Drug Administration to make drug approval decisions are conducted almost entirely by the drug companies themselves. These companies go out of their way to hire scientists willing to design and run these studies to produces precisely the result that the drug companies want.And there is so much more. Click the article title or this link for the comlete article. ...

Large Asteroid Breakup May Have Caused Mass Extinction On Earth 65 Million Years Ago 2007-09-07 16:30:00 from sciencedaily.com:The impactor believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other life forms on Earth some 65 million years ago has been traced back to a breakup event in the main asteroid belt. A joint team of researchers suggests that the parent object of asteroid (298) Baptistina (was) disrupted when it was hit by another large asteroid, creating numerous large fragments that would later create the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula as well as the prominent Tycho crater found on the Moon. At approximately 170 kilometers in diameter and having characteristics similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, the Baptistina parent body resided in the innermost region of the asteroid belt when it was hit by another asteroid estimated to be 60 kilometers in diameter. This catastrophic impact produced what is now known as the Baptistina asteroid family, a cluster of asteroid fragments with similar orbits. The team investigated the origins of the 180 kilometer diameter Chicxu ...

Physicists establish 'spooky' quantum communication 2007-09-06 21:51:00 Shaun Saunders sends us an article from the Physorg.com website that says:Physicists at the University of Michigan have coaxed two separate atoms to communicate with a sort of quantum intuition that Albert Einstein called "spooky." Scientists used light to establish what's called "entanglement" between two atoms, which were trapped a meter apart in separate enclosures (think of entangling like controlling the outcome of one coin flip with the outcome of a separate coin flip). "This linkage between remote atoms could be the fundamental piece of a radically new quantum computer architecture," said Professor Christopher Monroe, the principal investigator. "Now that the technique has been demonstrated, it should be possible to scale it up to networks of many interconnected components that will eventually be necessary for quantum information processing." In their experiment, the researchers used two atoms storing a piece of information in their electron configuration. T ...

SFFAudio mentions BMU archives 2007-09-06 16:13:00 Did I tell anyone that Beam Me Up has a story archive? No? Oh I am sure I did.....damnok, well I have been trying to get my stuff together and get some of the stories that I read last year somewhere on the web so they could be listened to. Well my friend and part time host Ron Huber over at PenBayWatch kindly lent me a bucketload of space on his server and I returned the favor by filling it up!Jesse Willis of SFFAudio blog fame just ran an article about it. (Click here for the SFFAudio article) and to be quite honest, Jesse was the one that broke out the whips to get me to get this done, so major kudos tot he folks over at SFF Audio for their continued support!Story Archive Link ...

Are Books Passe? Web Giants Envision the Next Chapter 2007-09-06 13:31:00 Nelson sent me an article in the New York Times that reports on Amazon's newest e-book device. One that connects directly to an e-book seller (Amazon mayhaps? hummm.....?) The writer wonders if this might might be the start of a trend that would ultimately end the printed book's dominance. *here is a link to the article*Here are my thoughts on E-books as a replacement for printed material in general.hummm, electronic books are nothing new. Even the question itself is disingenuous. Look at the sales of just the Potter books to make my point. People take books for granted. You get a small faction that will tout that it saves trees. But books save trees. Think about it. Once you have a book, you never need that book again. You always have it. But every time you want to read an electronic page you must use energy. Some where there is something burning or turning to make that possible. Not so with the book. The book is not the lowest rung on the technology ladder, it is th ...