Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
The Beresheet lunar lander scattered tardigrades all over the moon when it crashed: https://www.wired.com/story/a-crashed-israeli-lunar-lander-spilled-tardigrades-on-the-moon/
As Shannon Stirone said on Twitter, "And thus began the story of how the tardigrades took over the moon."
If you don't know about the incredible creatures that are tardigrades, you can start your rabbit hole adventure here: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/tardigrades
Originally posted on Facebook.
Email I received from Pyper Down today.😎 I'm sharing it here for 2 reasons:
(1) ⭐️Audiobook listeners⭐️: this means she only has 7 more chapters to record. ALMOST DONE! [UPDATE: 2 more chapters to go ;).]
(2) If you've read TSLG, you may instinctively know to what chapter she's referring. I'll just say that it's from "Nika's" POV and takes place on a certain space platform.
I'm not trying to humble-brag (though I probably am anyway, aren't I?), but I'm more proud of this chapter than I am of just about anything I've written - and it makes me giddy with happiness whenever anyone suggests that pride might be well placed.☺️
Originally posted on Facebook.
"The galaxy is not flat, researchers show in new 3D model of the Milky Way": https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/01/the-galaxy-is-not-flat-researchers-show-in-new-3d-model-of-the-milky-way/
Yay for sensationalistic headlines. 😏 No, no one was asserting the Milky Way is "flat" flat; there's no "Flat Galaxy Society" out there posting YouTube videos where they make their case (at least, I don't THINK there is).
The question, rather, was whether the Milky Way was essentially a pancake. Unfortunately, we can't "see" the Milky Way the way we can other galaxies, because we're IN it, and it's going to be a little while before wen can send a probe out at superluminal speeds to snap a pic from beyond the galaxy's edge.
So scientists used Cepheid variable stars to map out a fairly direct series of measurements of the shape of the galaxy. And it turns out, it's shaped like a sombrero that got warped. Possibly because someone sat on it, or stuffed it in the overhead bin of a plane, or left it out in the blazing summer heat for several days.
Originally posted on Facebook. (The comments to this post have been fantastic.)
Whenever I see an image like this ("Cyberpunk Chick" by Mike Paolilli: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QX043), my writer brain instantly goes into New Character Overdrive. Oh, the tales she and I will weave!
...except as we've covered, the LAST thing I need is new characters.🙄 So what to do?
Appearance-wise, this could almost be Perrin. But why is she sneaking around in a hood? What sort of trouble has she gotten into?
Of course, characters change their appearance all the time, and attitude/behavior-wise, this could also be another character who isn't *new* exactly...and that's all I'll say about that.
#storybunnies
Originally posted on Facebook.
Star Forming Region Without Stars: By digitally removing the stars, this image showcases dense knots of dark interstellar dust, fields of glowing hydrogen gas ionized by these stars, and great loops of gas expelled by dying stars.
Allegedly some people think this region resembles a weeping angle, but…no. Just no. #shudder
Via APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190730.html
Originally posted on Twitter.
NASA Unveils Amazing Cosmic Views as Chandra X-Ray Observatory Turns 20: https://www.space.com/chandra-xray-telescope-turns-20.html.
Originally posted on Twitter.
LightSail 2 Unfurls, Takes Next Step Toward Space Travel by Solar Sail: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/science/lightsail-solar-sail.html. The Planetary Society crowd-funded and deployed LightSail 2 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, aiming to further demonstrate the potential of the technology for space propulsion.
“The ability to sail across the cosmos, powered by the energy of the sun, is finally becoming a reality.
Engineers in California pressed a button on Tuesday that unfurled the sails on a satellite that can be steered around Earth, advancing long held hopes for an inexhaustible form of spaceflight and expanding the possibilities for navigating the voids between worlds.”
Originally posted on Twitter.
Set expectations to Ludicrously High! With an all-star cast and a director in Denis Villeneuve who's demonstrated his finesse with both Big Ideas and Big Settings, what could possibly go wrong this time?
https://movieweb.com/dune-remake-2020-production-wrap-denis-villeneuve/
Originally posted on Facebook.
It's the return of the word count meter! Sorry it was a bit delayed in appearing - I've had a lot going on.🙄
Where you can follow the book's progress? On the main page of my website, right-hand column, below the "New Releases" section. https://www.gsjennsen.com/
Originally posted on Facebook.
Crowdfunded spacecraft LightSail 2 snaps amazing photos ahead of solar sail deployment: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/17/crowdfunded-spacecraft-lightsail-2-snaps-amazing-photos-ahead-of-solar-sail-deployment/.
LightSail 2’s development was funded in part via a successful crowdfunding campaign run by the Bill Nye-led Planetary Society. Its goal is to test a spacecraft’s ability to fly powered only by the force of photons from the Sun striking a solar sail constructed of Mylar. This method of space-based transportation is extremely slow to get started, but thanks to the inertia-free medium of outer space, it could be an extremely energy-efficient way for research craft to travel long distances.
It launched on June 25 as part of the shared payload of SpaceX’s most recent Falcon Heavy launch.
Originally posted on Twitter.
The Space Station Crosses a Spotless Sun (by Rainee Colacurcio): https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190715.html
I saw this image yesterday morning, and I continue to be transfixed by it. Obviously, there is one heck of a visual illusion going on here, as the ISS is in low Earth orbit and the sun is 93 million miles away, but it's powerful nonetheless.😯
NASA has dropped an insane map of 4,000 planets outside our solar system: https://www.cnet.com/…/nasa-drops-insane-map-of-4000-plane…/
The video is absolutely worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=aiFD_LBx2nM. It's only a minute long and is a great visualization of how exoplanet discovery just exploded in the last decade (go Kepler!📡✨).
Voyagers 1 and 2 have the distinction of being in space for 42 years and still operating. And even though they’re 18 billion km (11 billion miles) from the Sun, they’re still valuable scientifically. But they’re running out of energy, and NASA has been working on how to stretch their remaining power for as long as possible.
Originally posted on Twitter.
Stunning visual of the center of the Milky Way in the radio band, courtesy of MeerKAT radio telescope array.
Originally posted on Twitter.
4th of July fireworks courtesy of Hubble and the future supernova Eta Carinae: https://www.universetoday.com/142734/hubble-has-a-brand-new-picture-of-the-massive-star-eta-carinae-it-could-detonate-as-a-supernova-any-day-now/
Originally posted on Facebook.
I missed it here in the Northern Hemisphere, but perhaps you caught a glimpse, or a shadow. Photographer Joaquin Baldwin certainly did: “Here is one shot from today’s total solar eclipse in Chile! Amazing spectacle, we picked a risky location using lots of planning and scouting, and it paid off.”
Originally posted on Twitter.
One of the fun(?) aspects of spinning up a new series is giving new names to things. I have found myself in need of an acronym this morning. Without disclosing the purpose of the entity behind the acronym, so far I have such candidates as:
- HUG
- HARD
- CHUMP
- MUSE (I actually like this one 😉)
- CHUG
- LEAP
- LAME
- HUMID
- HALP
...I'm not sure I remember how to do this right.🤔
*
Originally posted on Facebook.
The website got a minor (visual) and fairly major (structural) redesign this week. If poking around webpages, menus and links is your idea of fun - or if you just want to check it out 😁 - feel free to look around and let me know if anything is broken or wonky: https://www.gsjennsen.com.
Visually, the redesign is not as dramatic as the one I did 2 years ago. But it should be (a) easier to navigate, with clear pointers to important information, (b) less overwhelming for newcomers, and (c) perhaps most importantly, look great on mobile devices. Hopefully, all those things are true. 😋
Originally posted on Facebook.
The good kind ;). From the hugely difficult - and - hugely successful - SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch this week, an incredible image by astrophotographer Erik Kuna. In the photographer’s own words: “Cannot believe this happened just above the earth on the edge of the Mesosphere and Thermosphere around 85-120km in altitude yet it looks like something from a deep space Hubble telescope image.”
Initially posted on Twitter.
