Since most of your Sci-Fi movie and television news makers are busy sacrificing virgins or puppies or practicing whatever religion allows them the supernatural powers to get rich and famous, mostly producing crap, Sunday can be a desert planet of news, barren and lifeless.
But all is not lost. Remember, it’s called Science-Fiction for a reason. And so, since our readers have neural networks with a few more connections than are necessarily needed for prepping for Steelers-Bengals or finally putting that load of laundry in the dryer that you put in the washing machine on Tuesday, I bring you your Sunday Sci-Fi Science Fix, a column chocked full of nerd with hopefully cinematic themes of aliens, exploration or mass destruction.
Exoplanetary Hunters Find Easy Way To Seek Out Alien Worlds
Up until now, astronomers have been using the (maybe) slightly uncertain technique of detecting planets around other stars by measuring a planets mass effect on the movement of the parent star. Since stars are rather far away from us and our ability to measure a stars movement therefore extremely difficult, we’ve come up with a way to at least reduce the number of stars we examines in the effort of finally finding that bright new home within the happy zone where water is liquid on the surface of the planet.
The key it seems is lithium. Of the stars out there that we believe have planets zipping around them (often at curiously close orbits), it seems that those stars also have a weird absence of lithium. Despite what I may think of the math involved in determining if a planet is present based on it’s wobbling effect on it’s parent, it seems that those stars all contain much less lithium in them then do stars where we have not noticed a wobble. Lithium is really easy to detect just by analysing the light coming from the star, with no complicated wobble math required. Now, if we can someday soon get a telescope array in gear, either on Earth or in orbit, that can directly image these planets, we’ll really be in for some real fun. Thanks to The Daily Galaxy for this story.
The Mars Rover Spirit Is Stuck But There Is Hope
For months now, the intrepid little Mars Rover Spirit has been in trouble. Earlier it had broken a front wheel and in it’s attempt to get to a place called Columbia Hills (backwards) it got stuck in the super soft and powdery sand near a rock called Home Plate. This was back in April. Since then the really thorough nerds at NASA have been modeling (including building a slanting sandbox to simulate the approximate conditions) ways to get Spirit out of the mess it’s gotten itself into. Starting this week, Spirit has been sent some instructions to help it wiggle out of trouble. If this doesn’t work though, Spirit may finally have found the place where someday, human explorers to the Red Planet will build a memorial in it’s honor. Follow the drama on Spirits twitter page.
Implantable Device Grows Your Real Breasts Back
Coming very soon to a plastic surgeon near you is this technique to replace or to obviously augment or return a woman’s breasts back to a healthy appearance. An internal scafold or bra is implanted and then a woman’s own fat is used within the cavity where blood vessels attached to the fat soon grow breasts. Later, out goes the internal bra. It’s being tested in pigs right now but will soon begin testing in humans who have had their breasts removed due to cancer. I’ve heard that private plastic surgeons have already used this surgery on humans in the U.S. Just a matter of time before this will replace those damn implants if the resulting breast tissue is cosmetically appealing. Thanks Popsci.
Blitzer Rail Gun Gets A Test Fire
As any accomplished Sci-Fi fan knows, the rail gun is a totally wicked weapon where centuries old lame technology like exploding and expanding gases is tossed aside for the ridiculously more efficient technique of accelerating a projectile along two magnetized rails using the handy properties of electrical conductivity. General Atomics (cool name), makers of the fan favorite Predator drones is behind the project. Test fires will begin soon that will simulate what the military will eventually use the rail-gun for, firing heavy metal at ridiculous speeds at unsuspecting bad guys. Popsci again brings us the scoop and also has a highly illustrative video of a similar rail-gun that accelerates a payload using electromagnetic fields along the rail. This particular gun is aimed to accelerate an object to 8,000 feet per second and to cover 200 miles (quickly). A note, the fireball is being created when pieces of the projectile are shearing off due to the acceleration and igniting. Only electricity is used as the propellant
