NEIGHBOR IN OPHIUCHUS

NOMAD PLANETS

Galaxy May Swarm with 'Nomad Planets'

Our galaxy may be awash in homeless planets, wandering through space instead of orbiting a star. In fact, there may be 100,000 times more "nomad planets" in the Milky Way than stars, according to a new study by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. 

If observations confirm the estimate, this new class of celestial objects will affect current theories of planet formation and could change our understanding of the origin and abundance of life.

"If any of these nomad planets are big enough to have a thick atmosphere, they could have trapped enough heat for bacterial life to exist," said Louis Strigari, leader of the team that reported the result in a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Although nomad planets don't bask in the warmth of a star, they may generate heat through internal radioactive decay and tectonic activity.

Searches over the past two decades have identified more than 500 planets outside our solar system, almost all of which orbit stars. Last year, researchers detected about a dozen nomad planets, using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which looks for stars whose light is momentarily refocused by the gravity of passing planets.

The research produced evidence that roughly two nomads exist for every typical, so-called main-sequence star in our galaxy. The new study estimates that nomads may be up to 50,000 times more common than that.

To arrive at what Strigari himself called "an astronomical number," the KIPAC team took into account the known gravitational pull of the Milky Way galaxy, the amount of matter available to make such objects and how that matter might divvy itself up into objects ranging from the size of Pluto to larger than Jupiter. Not an easy task, considering no one is quite sure how these bodies form. According to Strigari, some were probably ejected from solar systems, but research indicates that not all of them could have formed in that fashion.

"To paraphrase Dorothy from 'The Wizard of Oz,' if correct, this extrapolation implies that we are not in Kansas anymore, and in fact we never were in Kansas," said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science, author of "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets," who was not involved in the research. "The universe is riddled with unseen planetary-mass objects that we are just now able to detect."

A good count, especially of the smaller objects, will have to wait for the next generation of big survey telescopes, especially the space-based Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope and the ground-based Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, both set to begin operation in the early 2020s.

A confirmation of the estimate could lend credence to another possibility mentioned in the paper -- that as nomad planets roam their starry pastures, collisions could scatter their microbial flocks to seed life elsewhere.

"Few areas of science have excited as much popular and professional interest in recent times as the prevalence of life in the universe," said co-author and KIPAC Director Roger Blandford. "What is wonderful is that we can now start to address this question quantitatively by seeking more of these erstwhile planets and asteroids wandering through interstellar space, and then speculate about hitchhiking bugs."

THE UN IVERSE ACCORDING TO PHIILIP K DICK

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This may expose the total sci-fi nerd in us (or maybe that ship has sailed), but we were overcome with pleasant nostalgia when we saw these Philip K. Dick covers from the early 1990s over at artist Gavin Rotherty’s blog. Illustrator Chris Moore’s intense images glow with weird, shiny tension, and his colorful worlds are a perfect match for Dick’s intricate, metaphysical prose — not to mention that he’s a serious master of the epic sandscape. Looking at these illustrations makes us want to fill our bookshelves with nothing but Dick novels — so long as they can have these covers. Click through to see a few of our favorites, and then head on over here to see what must be close to the full collection.

AVATAR II

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• I was one of the first compositors on Avatar, leading the compositing efforts for three major environments - the vine tower / bridge, the banshee rookery and the floating mountains. I worked with the VFX supervisor developing the look of the environment, optical effects and cloud densities, all with the goal of making the most realistic and aesthetically pleasuring result.
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• Being one of the early compositors on the film, I helped develop and test the artist facing technology developed for Weta Digital's deep composting and volumetric cloud system. Unique challenges on this project were the new and frequently changing deep compositing process, the new world of stereoscopic VFX, and a huge number of shots on the go a the same time. Initial assumptions that compositing work on the project would be lite, (due to the majority of the shots Weta created being all CG) proved not to be the case, so I was supervising a number of 2D and 3D artists by the end of the project.
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• Work continued after the theatrical release of Avatar, with a number of extra shots and sequences finished and extended for the Special and extended editions of the film. I took on the compositing supervisor role for the completion of the last few months of this extra work.
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• Always challenging, constantly educational, frequently described as "my favourite sequence" by director James Cameron, I was honored to receive a VES award nomination for my contribution to the project.
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• All images © 20th Century Fox

RIGEL III

wormhole

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A hypothetical "tunnel" connecting two different points in spacetime in such a way that a trip through the wormhole could take much less time than a journey between the same starting and ending points in normal space. The ends of a wormhole could, in theory, be intra-universe (i.e. both exist in the same universe) or inter-universe (exist in different universes, and thus serve as a connecting passage between the two). 

Wormholes arise as solutions to the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity. In fact, they crop up so readily in this context that some theorists are encouraged to think that real counterparts may eventually be found or fabricated and, perhaps, used for high-speed space travel and/or time travel. However, a known property of wormholes is that they are highly unstable and would probably collapse instantly if even the tiniest amount of matter, such as a single photon, attempted to pass through them. A possible way around this problem is the use of exotic matter to prevent the wormhole from pinching off. 

A brief history of wormholes

The theory of wormholes goes back to 1916, shortly after Einstein published his general theory, when Ludwig Flamm, an obscure Austrian physicist, looked at the simplest possible solution of Einstein's field equations, known as the Schwarzschild solution (or Schwarzschild metric). This describes the gravitational field around a spherically-symmetric non-rotating mass. If the mass is sufficiently compact, the solution describes a particular form of the phenomenon now called a black hole – the Schwarzschild black hole. Flamm realized that Einstein's equations allowed a second solution, now known as a white hole, and that the two solutions, describing two different regions of (flat) spacetime were connected (mathematically) by a spacetime conduit.¹ Because the theory has nothing to say about where these regions of spacetime might be in the real world, the black hole "entrance" and white hole "exit" could be in different parts of the same universe or in entirely different universes. 

In 1935, Einstein and Nathan Rosen further explored, it can be appreciated with hindsight, the theory of intra- or inter-universe connections in a paper² whose actual purpose was to try to explain fundamental particles, such as electrons, in terms of spacetime tunnels threaded by electric lines of force. Their work gave rise to the formal name Einstein-Rosen bridge for what the physicist John Wheeler would later call a "wormhole." (Wheeler also coined the terms "black hole" and "quantum foam".) Wheeler's 1955 paper³ discusses wormholes in terms of topological entities called geons and, incidentally, provides the first (now familiar) diagram of a wormhole as a tunnel connecting two openings in different regions of spacetime. 

Traversable wormholes

Interest in so-called traversable wormholes gathered pace following the publication of a 1987 paper by Michael Morris, Kip Thorne, and Uri Yertsever (MTY) at the California Institute of Technology.^{4, 5} This paper stemmed from an inquiry to Thorne by Carl Sagan who was mulling over a way of conveying the heroine in his novel Contact across interstellar distances at trans-light speed. Thorne gave the problem to his Ph.D. students, Michael Morris and Uri Yertsever, who realized that such a journey might be possible if a wormhole could be held open long enough for a spacecraft (or any other object) to pass through. MTY concluded that to keep a wormhole open would require matter with a negative energy density and a large negative pressure – larger in magnitude than the energy density. Such hypothetical matter is called exotic matter.

Although the existence of exotic matter is speculative, a way is known of producing negative energy density: theCasimir effect. As a source for their wormhole, MTY turned to the quantum vacuum. "Empty space" at the smallest scale, it turns out, is not empty at all but seething with violent fluctuations in the very geometry of spacetime. At this level of nature, ultra-small wormholes are believed to continuously wink into and out of existence. MTY suggested that a sufficiently advanced civilization could expand one of these tiny wormholes to macroscopic size by adding energy. Then the wormhole could be stabilized using the Casimir effect by placing two charged superconducting spheres in the wormhole mouths. Finally, the mouths could be transported to widely-separated regions of space to provide a means of FTL communication and travel. For example, a mouth placed aboard a spaceship might be carried to some location many light-years away. Because this initial trip would be through normal spacetime, it would have to take place at sublight speeds. But during the trip and afterwards instantaneous communication and transport through the wormhole would be possible. The ship could even be supplied with fuel and provisions through the mouth it was carrying. Also, thanks to relativistic time-dilation, the journey need not take long, even as measured by Earth-based observers. For example, if a fast starship carrying a wormhole mouth were to travel to Vega, 25 light-years away, at 99.995% of the speed of light (giving a time-dilation factor of 100), shipboard clocks would measure the journey as taking just three months. But the wormhole stretching from the ship to Earth directly links the space and time between both mouths – the one on the ship and the one left behind on (or near) Earth. Therefore, as measured by Earthbound clocks too, the trip would have taken only three months – three months to establish a more-or-less instantaneous transport and communications link between here and Vega. 

Star Trek's Deep Space 9 is located alongside a natural wormhole that leads to the other side of the Galaxy

Of course, the MTY scheme is not without technical difficulties, one of which is that the incredibly powerful forces needed to hold the wormhole mouths open might tear apart anything or anyone that tried to pass through. In an effort to design a more benign environment for travelers using a wormhole, Matt Visser of Washington University in St. Louis conceived an arrangement in which the spacetime region of a wormhole mouth is flat (and thus force-free) but framed by struts of exotic matter that contain a region of very sharp curvature.⁶ Visser envisages a cubic design, with flat-space wormhole connections on the square sides and cosmic strings as the edges. Each cube-face may connect to the face of another wormhole-mouth cube, or the six cube faces may connect to six different cube faces in six separated locations. 

In 2011, Panagiota Kanti (University of Ioannina) and Burkhard Kleihaus (Universität Oldenburg) showed how it might be possible to construct traversable wormholes without using exotic matter by resorting to a form of string theory.¹⁰ 

Given that our technology is not yet up to the task of building a wormhole subway, the question arises of whether they might already exist. One possibility is that advanced races elsewhere in the Galaxy or beyond have already set up a network of wormholes that we could learn to use. Another is that wormholes might occur naturally. David Hochberg and Thomas Kephart of Vandebilt University have discovered that, in the earliest moments of the Universe, gravity itself may have given rise to regions of negative energy in which natural, self-stabilizing wormholes may have formed. Such wormholes, created in the Big Bang, might be around today, spanning small or vast distances in space. 

BLUE MARBLE

OTHER SUNS SF JOURNAL14

A planetary system around the nearby M dwarf GJ 667C with at least one super-Earth in its habitable zone

We re-analyze 4 years of HARPS spectra of the nearby M1.5 dwarf GJ 667C available through the ESO public archive. The new radial velocity (RV) measurements were obtained using a new data analysis technique that derives the Doppler measurement and other instrumental effects using a least-squares approach. Combining these new 143 measurements with 41 additional RVs from the Magellan/PFS and Keck/HIRES spectrometers, reveals 3 additional signals beyond the previously reported 7.2-day candidate, with periods of 28 days, 75 days, and a secular trend consistent with the presence of a gas giant (Period sim 10 years). The 28-day signal implies a planet candidate with a minimum mass of 4.5 Mearth orbiting well within the canonical definition of the star's liquid water habitable zone, this is, the region around the star at which an Earth-like planet could sustain liquid water on its surface. Still, the ultimate water supporting capability of this candidate depends on properties that are unknown such as its albedo, atmospheric composition and interior dynamics. The 75-day signal is less certain, being significantly affected by aliasing interactions among a potential 91-day signal, and the likely rotation period of the star at 105 days detected in two activity indices. GJ 667C is the common proper motion companion to the GJ 667AB binary, which is metal poor compared to the Sun. The presence of a super-Earth in the habitable zone of a metal poor M dwarf in a triple star system, supports the evidence that such worlds should be ubiquitous in the Galaxy

OTHER SUNS SF JOURNAL15

10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About the Original Star Trek

Space may be the final frontier, but Star Trek is a well-explored universe by now. Captain Kirk, the Enterprise, transporters, phasers, tricorders and Klingons are part of our common language. But there's still tons of insane stuff you've never heard aboutTrek.

We dug deep into the secret history of Star Trek, the half-forgotten details and weird happenstance that went into creating a cultural phenomenon that has lasted almost five decades. Here, in no particular order, are 10 things you probably didn't know about Star Trek: The Original Series.

1. The original pilot, "The Cage," was partly killed for being too sexy
Why did NBC choose not to air the first Star Trek pilot, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike? People usually blame it on a too-cerebral script, with too much deep philosophizing and introspection. But in fact, a major reason had to do with NBC's Broadcast Standards Office, being concerned about the "eroticism" of the pilot, with the green dancing girls and the kissing and all that raw sexuality. (To be sure, the network was also worried that it was "too smart," a female first officer was going too far, and Mr. Spock looked too demonic.) Later, after Trek was on the air, the producers used the network's concerns about sexuality to their advantage — they would deliberately put sexy stuff into episodes for the network to freak out about, so the censors wouldn't notice other things. For example, in the episode "A Private Little War," the producers deliberately put in a scene of Kirk having an open-mouth kiss with a half-naked woman, so the network could throw a fit about that — and not notice the blatant Vietnam allegory.
Source: Inside Star Trek by Herb Solow and Robert Justman, pp. 60 and 356.

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2. Mr. Spock's skin color was originally different.
Originally, Gene Roddenberry and friends wanted Spock's skin to be a dark red, or at least to have a red tint. This was abandoned when they realized that on black-and-white TVs, Spock's skin would look black, possibly as if Spock was in blackface. Plus Leonard Nimoy would have needed hours more in makeup every morning. (See early Spock concept art, with a very different uniform design and a skullcap, at left, via Star Trek History.) Eventually, it was decided to make Spock's skin yellow-tinged instead — but when the network converted the film for the first episode for electronic broadcasting, the network's color specialist, Alex Quroga, "corrected" Spock's face to make it look pinker. (Watch "The Man Trap," and you can still see a more pink-faced Spock.)
Sources: Star Trek 365, NBC: America's Network by Michelle Hilmes, ed., TrekBBS, Star Trek History — that last site is full of insane details.

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3. Spock originally didn't eat or drink
Not only would he have been red-faced, but Spock also wasn't originally planned to eat or drink anything — instead, he had a plate in the middle of his stomach, and he fed off any energy that struck this special plate.
Source: Star Trek: A History in Pictures by J.M. Dillard

4. Paramount was so desperate to get rid of Star Trek, they tried to cash out to Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek was originally produced by Desilu, the studio owned by I Love Lucy star Lucille Ball — who personally approved the show and played a big role in keeping it alive after the first pilot was rejected. But in July 1967, Desilu was bought by Gulf+Western, which had just purchased Paramount Pictures in 1966. That put Paramount in charge of Star Trek. According to producer Herb Solow, "Paramount didn't want Star Trek because it was losing too much money each week and didn't have enough episodes to syndicate." So Paramount offered to sell all of its equity in Trek to Gene Roddenberry for $150,000 — or about a million dollars today. But Roddenberry couldn't afford to pay that much money, so the rights stayed with Paramount. (In his original deal, Roddenberry had agreed his own Norway production studio would share net profits with Desilu, NBC, and William Shatner himself.)
Source: Interview with Solow in NBC: America's Network by Michelle Hilmes

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5. The U.S.S. Enterprise had a six-lane bowling alley on board.
According to Star Trek Blueprints, an authentic set of blueprints for the Constitution-class Starships released in booklet form in 1975, there's a pretty giant bowling alley on Deck 21, right next to the "Refreshments Area" and the "Food and Beverages Preparation Facility."
Source: Memory Alpha, Lucky Puppy Odd Facts (image).

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6. Gene Roddenberry told Isaac Asimov to shush
When Gene Roddenberry brought the secondStar Trek pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," to the World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland, he shushed a loud man at the start — who turned out to be Asimov. (Roddenberry was nervous about how the show would be received, but it wound up getting a standing ovation.) Later, in 1967, Asimov wrote an essay for TV Guidecalled "Mr. Spock is Dreamy!", all about the baffling phenomenon of women and girls finding the cerebral Spock sexually appealing — including Asimov's own twelve-year-old daughter. Wrote Asimov, Through the agency of Mr. Spock, Star Trek has been capitalizing upon a fact not generally known among the male half of the population. Women think being smart is sexy!" (Read the whole essay here.)
Source: Star Trek: A History in Pictures, Facebook

7. The Federation uniforms were made by a sweatshop
The Federation may be a Socialist utopia of sorts, but Starfleet's uniforms didn't exactly come out of a Replicator. According to producers Robert Justman and Herb Solow, the show's budget was so tiny, they couldn't afford to have costumes made by union costume-makers — instead, they had them made overnight by a "sweatshop," and sneaked the finished costumes in through a back window at the studio.
Source: Inside Star Trek by Solow and Justman.

8. William Shatner has never watched Star Trek.
The James Kirk actor told his daughter, Lizbeth Shatner, that he'd never seen the television show or any of the movies, in a video blog they did together. Said Shatner:

I never watched Star Trek. I have not even seen any of the Star Trek movies. I don't watch myself.

He added that he hated watching himself, because he feels as though "I suck." When he was directing himself and had to watch the footage afterwards — for example in Star Trek V — he found it really uncomfortable.
Source: The Telegraph.

9. That famous interracial kiss was originally between Spock and Uhura
Star Trek is well-known for featuring the first interracial kiss on television, between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura. But in the episode's actual script, that kiss would have transpired between Uhura and Spock, instead. According to Uhura actor Nichelle Nichols:

My understanding is Bill Shatner took one look at the scene and said, ‘No you will not! If anyone's going to be part of the first interracial kiss in television history, it's going to be me!' So they rewrote it.

Perhaps that original scene was one inspiration for the Spock/Uhura romance in the most recent Trek film?
Source: Star Trek: A History in Pictures page 44.

10. Star Trek visited Mayberry... twice.
The show was so broke, it reused tons of outdoor sets from The Andy Griffith Show, particularly in the episodes "Miri" and "City on the Edge of Forever." You can actually see Floyd's Barber Shop, where Andy regularly got his hair cut, in the background of scenes where Captain Kirk is walking along with Edith Keeler. You can also see the Mayberry Courthouse, Walkers Drugstore and several other major landmarks quite prominently in both episodes. There are tons and tons of pics, including set pics, at the link below