Science, History, and Fiction in Everyday Life
2014 will be a year to remember for space missions. No matter what achievements are awaiting us in the future (hopefully plenty), the last 12 months have seen something that will remain in history. I’m going to mention here only few…
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If you were dreaming about the day we are going to leave and explore the Solar System, take space elevators down to Mars and sky-diving over the Ligeia Mare on Titan, look no further. Wanderers, by Erik Wernquist, is a…
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When thinking about VR (Virtual Reality) a lot of things come to mind – to me, videogames are the first, followed by other, more scientific, applications. What I have recently discovered, instead, is that NASA has been quite active in…
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Post number five in the exoplanet series, covering this time the important aspect of size. (In case you are interested to other variables examined so far, here they are: habitability, age, distance, temperature). After that in April 2014 a Earth-size planet…
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This November week brings us an exciting space event to follow, unique in kind. ESA’s spacecraft Rosetta, that has successfully reached Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last August, will try, for the first time ever, to land its Philae probe on the comet surface….
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The usual update about my latest published articles on other blogs/magazines – these ones on from Serious Wonder. This time I have only included the ones on space and physics, leaving science and SF for another post. WILL WE EVER WALK…
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That SF has anticipated and/or even come out in first instance with some of the most creative ideas now seriously considered for scientific research is nothing new. Just think about the Ringworld concept, or hypersleep (with or without cryogenic components). Or the amazing Dyson sphere, which is one…
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If there is a space object I have always found incredibly beautiful is the star cluster of the Pleiades – alternatively called M45, or “The Seven Sisters”- immediately recognisable for the hot blue, luminous stars immersed in a nebula and visible…
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If there is something difficult to realise is how vast space is. No matter how hard we try, as humans we lack mental categories to figure it out. Another difficult thing is obviously to map it – and we do…
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This Sunday Earthians will witness something truly unique, estimated to happen maybe once every million years: a comet the size of a small mountain will fly by Mars, becoming the first comet to have ever come so close to Earth in recorded history….
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