Our universe at home within a larger universe? So suggests wormhole research. Nikodem Poplawski, a physicist at Indiana University, has recently had this paper, Radial motion into the Einstein-Rosen bridge, published by Physics Letters B. The news bite elaborates on some of its implications, that a black hole may well form an Einstein-Rosen bridge into
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Our Solar System has changed dramatically over the aeons since the planets accreted/collapsed out of the initial nebula. The Sun both got brighter in overall output, but has dimmed in its extreme UV brightness (EUV) and solar-wind levels, with dramatic consequences for the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets & giant planet-sized moons. A good review
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Two new interesting news items, both discovered via Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) scanning by orbital space-vehicles. First target is the Moon… Water Ice Found on Moon’s North Pole …some 600 million tons of the stuff, found as ice a couple of metres thick lining the floors of 40 or so small craters around the Moon’s
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Marc Buie, Pluto guru, has spent several years of computer time – or scrapings of time over several years – to process observations of Pluto done with the HST… Unusually Rapid Changes on Pluto …reported with panache, by Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams and all over the web. Pluto has rather dramatic seasons it seems.
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Brian Wang, at “Next Big Future”, reports on the conceptual ancestor of the ISV “Venturestar” from Giga-Movie “Avatar”. As he notes, the designer is Charles Pellegrino, long-time friend and colleague of James Cameron, and inventor, with Jim Powell, of the antimatter-propelled “Valkyrie” starship. Brian’s Post Valkyrie Starship at Pellegrino’s website Valkyrie at the BBC Archive
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“Project Daedalus” now has a sequel, “Project Icarus”, which promises a smarter, better design… http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/ …look for the Terms of Reference and see what’s planned to be discussed and thrashed out over the next 5 years. Some very cool “Project Daedalus” artwork can be found on the “Icarus” website – plus some superb animations by
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Friedwardt Winterberg’s fusion pulse driven space vehicles initiate fusion by injecting a rapid jolt of energy into the fusion target causing an implosion to high density fast enough that the fuel fuses before being blown apart and loses energy to brehmstrahlung. Vital to successful ignition is to rapidly compress the fuel to extremely high densities
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Friedwardt Winterberg’s fusion pulse driven space vehicles initiate fusion by injecting a rapid jolt of energy into the fusion target causing an implosion to high density fast enough that the fuel fuses before being blown apart. A mere 10 MJ is enough for the D-T triggered D-D pulse units to implode, but it has to
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Harry Stubbs aka ‘Hal Clement’ was the Grand Master of alien planet building with such classic creations as Mesklin, Dhrawn and Tenebra. His last creation, prior to his passing in 2003, was Kainui in his novel “Noise”, which I finished reading yesterday. Kainui, as the name implies, was settled by Polynesians and the protagonist is
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