Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
The “Astronomy Photographer of the Year” competition never fails to impress, and this year is definitely no exception. Check out these 12 jaw-droppingly beautiful photographs of space wonders near and far: https://www.universetoday.com/168457/and-the-winner-is-astronomy-photographers-of-the-year-2024-announced/
SuperMassive Black Holes will be taking a brief break for the next few weeks. I’m moving next week (!), and the week after that, I’ll be at Dragon Con in Atlanta. Musings will resume in early September!
Is consciousness a quantum phenomenon?
"A silent symphony is playing inside your brain right now as neurological pathways synchronize in an electromagnetic chorus that's thought to give rise to consciousness." Not going to lie, the musical terminology caught my fancy straightaway.
Consciousness - defining it, measuring it, even proving it exists - has continued to stymie researches. It's a "whole is greater than the sum of its parts," je ne sais quo, "I know it when I see (feel) it" phenomenon. And pinning down its nature would revolutionize how we think about nearly everything.
The possibility that quantum mechanisms may be involved has always been rejected because quantum activity is very delicate and fragile, and our brains are hot and messy. But what if biology has figured out how to do something we haven't? It wouldn't be the first time....
https://www.sciencealert.com/quantum-entanglement-in-neurons-may-actually-explain-consciousness
And the first draft of THE UNIVERSE WITHIN is complete!!
It clocks in at 64,451 words, which is a hefty chunk considering all the [skipped scenes] and [vague notes and instructions] and [half finished chapters], lol. *motions at Alex and Caleb and all those rich, fully formed worlds and stories that burst to life wherever they go*
I don't think a story has come together this quickly since Abysm, which is really saying something. But boy, do I have a ton of work ahead of me. I was flinging brackets left and right as fast as I could type them, just to get the plot out of my head and onto the page.
So, yeah. Time to grab the fire extinguisher..
The latest from the Webb Telescope:
“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. Webb’s powerful infrared gaze produced this detailed image of the Cartwheel and two smaller companion galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies. This image provides a new view of how the Cartwheel Galaxy has changed over billions of years.”
https://www.nasa.gov/universe/webb-captures-stellar-gymnastics-in-the-cartwheel-galaxy/
Note: There are 3 versions of the image. The composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the MIRI-only image are shown in the article, and the NIRI-only image is shown below and in this NASA tweet.
Well OF COURSE brain chips are going to replace phones. One of my safest "predictions," to be honest. And I love that the future is going to be weird!
““The Future is Going to Be Weird.” Elon Musk Predicts Brain Chips Will Eventually Replace Phones”: https://thedebrief.org/the-future-is-going-to-be-weird-elon-musk-predicts-brain-chips-will-eventually-replace-phones/
Faster, please! None of us here are getting any younger....
Important finding: the mice didn't just live 25% longer - they were healthier in virtually every respect for that extended lifespan.
Still partially in mouse trials, but the drug is already being tested in humans for other purposes. This one may be more real than most?
Slightly click-baity headline: “Experts create anti-aging holy grail drug that extends life 25% and prevents cancer and gray hair” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13644081/Experts-anti-aging-extends-life.html
“In just 25 weeks following the therapy, the animals had a lower risk of cancer, no gray hair, improved vision and better muscle functionality. The treated mice had fewer cancers, and were free from the usual signs of ageing and frailty, but we also saw reduced muscle wasting and improvement in muscle strength.”
“Anti-IL-11 treatments are currently in human clinical trials for other conditions, potentially providing exciting opportunities to study its effects in ageing humans in the future.”
Professor Cook told the BBC that while the trial is not yet completed, the data has suggested that the drug is safe for humans.”
Not too shabby for 6 weeks after The Thief came out! This story is fire. Or on fleek, or lit, or whatever it is the kids are saying this week.
(It's probably not any of those things. 😂)
It’s your periodic Cassini Appreciation Post (no, Cassi, it’s not about you!).
From Jason Major: “Here's a view of Saturn's rings made from images captured with Cassini on July 4, 2008. Prometheus is visible inside the F ring at the bottom; the even smaller Atlas is on the left along the outer edge of the A ring. Saturn's shadow falls across the rings at upper right.”
What's that giant blue blob in the bottom left quadrant? It's an exoplanet. I haven't done the digging to confirm, but it feels like this is the highest quality direct imaging of an exoplanet we have achieved so far.
The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, launching in 2027, is going to bring another huge leap forward in finding and imaging exoplanets, but this is already really impressive. Being able to see these planets is going to change everything.
"This image from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the newly discovered planet HD95086 b, next to its parent star. The observations were made using NACO, the adaptative optics instrument for the VLT in infrared light, and using a technique called differential imaging, which improves the contrast between the planet and its dazzling host star. The star itself has been removed from the picture during processing to enhance the view of the faint exoplanet and its position is marked. The exoplanet appears at the lower left.
The blue circle is the size of the orbit of Neptune in the Solar System."
New hobby: collecting coffee mugs. In order to make the cut, a mug must meet two criteria: (1) it must be quirky or geeky, and (2) it must be giant - I am not sipping espresso over here.
My first acquisition was this awesome mug of one of my most favorite movies since I was a child! (I also have Jaws socks....) The size isn't conveyed very well by these pics, but it just might hold the big man himself.
A week short of her first birthday, Cassi says she's a grown-up girl now. (She’s not, but she is pretty wonderful.)
You guys rock (of course, I already knew this ). Despite only being out for 3 weeks, THE THIEF won 2nd place in Discover Scifi's Best Sci-Fi Books of 2024 (So Far)! I could not be more thrilled. I adore this book so much, and it makes me happy to know you all do, too.
You can see the Top 10 here: https://discoverscifi.com/the-best-sci-fi-releases-of-2024-so-far/
The next epic-sized Amaranthe trilogy is LITERALLY about the void physically manifesting - of course it's ok!
...
...
Right?
Wow. This book. (Forgive the ratty, beat-up mass-market paperback, but used bookstores are awesome.) Yes, it took me until now to read it, and I regret that delay.
Haunting, at times grim and depressing (so be warned - this is not high action/adventure), but also an achingly beautiful love letter to our precious blue marble and the equally precious humans who inhabit it.
My readers are the absolute best. THE THIEF has only been out for 2 weeks, but you've spoken up so much that it's now in the running for The Best Sci-Fi Book of 2024 (So Far) over at Discover Sci-Fi. And hey, Eren deserves every bit of recognition he gets (he would agree, I think).
If you're so inclined, head over and vote! https://discoverscifi.com/time-to-vote-first-half-of-2024-best-scifi/
It’s time for the occasionally annual celebration of the unofficial theme of the Amaranthe series:
This year, it struck me that this excerpt from INVERSION between Alex and Nika is rather on point.
Miriam wasn't on scene to exclaim "what have you done?" when Alex did this on Portal Prime in VERTIGO, but I'm pretty sure Caleb *thought* it, lol.
Of course, the answer to the question, "what have you done?" was "save everyone, obviously."
I wonder what utterly audacious stunt she's going to pull off in THE UNIVERSE WITHIN?
Starship's fourth test flight went so beautifully! As before, it cruised around the planet for around 40 minutes. This time, the SuperHeavy booster not only survived re-entry, but completed its landing burn and a soft splashdown in the ocean, intact.
And the big news: the ship survived re-entry through the atmosphere, completed its flip and landing burn and splashed down as well. Now, the trip down was spicy AF, and it landed beat up, with the landing flaps hanging on by a thread. But it made it, which is *more* than SpaceX was expecting today (the focus was on making it through the atmosphere without, well, exploding).
Every test has achieved so much more than the last; the iteration SpaceX is able to achieve is incredible.
That's a wrap on another amazing MISCON (https://www.miscon.org/)! A huge thanks to Katie J Cross, the best friend and booth collaborator I could ask for, to Justin Barba for pulling off the herculean task of organizing a crazy, entertaining celebration, and to Robert Olson for keeping us all endlessly caffeinated and entertained. It was awesome to spend the weekend meeting readers, writers and fans of all things geeky, and hanging out with Kristine Endsley, Thomas Gondolfi, Hunter Cowles Wallace, Sanan Kolva, C E Chester, Grant Theron, and Peter Jones (I'm definitely forgetting some lovely people).
NOW, how about we do a "The Thief" launch this week?
(FYI: links are to Facebook profiles)
