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I'm a novelist and have an interest in space science and physics. I've been a programmer for more than 40 years and I like reviewing new and up-and-coming authors. I have become a committed member of the OpenSimulator community.
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Smart but Dumb Aliens
We all know the problem, especially from video games and movies, where the super-smart aliens turn out to be really dumb. This is usually because the creator hasn't put much thought into it.
So, you're creating a super-intelligent alien or species or civilisation for your short story or novel or whatever. How do you avoid the pitfalls of dumbing them down?
Mysterious Star
Back in 2016, Tabetha Boyajian gave a TED talk about a star with nifty little name KIC 8462852. The Kepler space telescope had studied it and lots of other stars over the course of four years, but this one stood out.
Also known as Tabby's Star, it is a main-sequence F-type star located in the constellation Cygnus, about 1,480 light-years from Earth. Its claim to fame of course, is that it was suggested that alien megastructures would explain the weird data that Kepler had recorded.
Mars Weather Reports
| This webpage will soon be converted to be the top level page for Mars Weather Reports. It will contain links to the sub-pages, the clocks, the current location of Mars graphic and other data not spcific to the weather readings. The sub-pages will display the weather data from Insight, Curiosity and Perseverance. |
These reports are provided by NASA's InSight lander in the south-west corner of Elysium Planitia. Daily readings are usually a couple of days behind reality.
This page is updated as new data is detected. InSight is no longer transmitting weather data. See InSight's Final Selfie
Last update: 14:02 Sun. Jul 17th, 2022 BST
Mars experiments are currently in send-only mode during the Mars solar conjunction. Follow this link to see daily updates during the conjunction.
A New Site
Yup, the old site was as ugly as sin and to find a blog entry you had to scroll through the feed or take your chances with the search option.
This new site is just as easy to maintain, has extensive search capabilities, and both orders and structures the entries. Not only does this make it easier for you to find stuff, it encourages you to browse around. It's not as ugly either.
