A wonderful quote about Earth by the English humorist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels Terry Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015). Pratchett thinks life on Earth is the biggest fantasy and even he was a fantasy writer, he finds it hard to believe.
The future isn’t what it used to be, at least according to the Canadian science-fiction novelist William Gibson. In an interview with the BBC, Gibson said people seemed to be losing interest in the future. “All through the 20th century we constantly saw the 21st century invoked,” he said. “How often do you hear anyone invoke the 22nd century? Even saying it is unfamiliar to us. We’ve come to not have a future”.
Garrett Reisman, former NASA astronaut rates 10 space movies in the video published by the Movie Insider. How realistic they are? Space movies vs science.
Dune, the epic series of sci-fi books by Frank Herbert, now turned into a movie of the same name, is set in the far future on the desert planet of Arrakis. Herbert outlined a richly-detailed world that, at first glance, seems so real we could imagine ourselves within it.
Alex Farnsworth, University of Bristol; Michael Farnsworth, University of Sheffield, and Sebastian Steinig, University of Bristol
Here are the top 10 Isaac Asimov quotes on science. Asimov was a prolific writer who wrote or edited more than 500 books (mostly science fiction and popular science).
In the video published on March 24, 2020, by the Vanity Fair magazine below, Canadian retired astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station (ISS), Chris Hadfield reviews space movies, including “Gravity” and “Interstellar”.
A good rule of thumb: if you see a headline saying something “breaks the laws of physics” (i.e. the “Impossible Engine”) the headline is flat-out wrong.
The exoplanet J1407b is simply “Super Saturn”. If you read Isaac Asimov‘s 1986 novel “Foundation and Earth”, you’ll remember how the main characters of the book (Councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Pelorat, and Gaian Bliss) were amazed by Saturn’s rings. They were thinking the gas giant with preeminent rings in old stories was just a myth. But after seeing Saturn, they made sure that they found the solar system which contains the Earth, the original home of humanity.
For eons, skywatchers have been fascinated by the pale red dot that not only unpredictably moves backward in the night sky but also shines a compelling blood-red. Its color, indeed, is one of the first features we notice about Mars. It seizes our attention, and its compelling ambiguity has evoked a deep visceral reaction from the nomad in ancient savannas to modern astronomers.
The ancient astronomer may be satisfied to know that, in fact, Mars is literally blood-red: the same chemical reaction that occurs in the iron in Mars’ soil is the same as the same chemical reaction that occurs in the hemoglobin molecule. Mars, is, quite literally, blood red. Even with our cutting-edge technology and science, Mars still bewitches and amazes us as seen with these five surprising facts about Mars.
Will we ever visit other stars? Maybe, in the distant future, if humans won’t become extinct, our grand grand grand … (insert a hundred or a thousand “grand” here) children can stand on an exoplanet’s surface someday. But, we don’t have to wait. NASA has opened a new web page, an “Exoplanet Travel Bureau”, and we can, at least, see the artists’ imaginations of what an exoplanet surface looks like, based on available data. NASA warns, there are no actual images of the exoplanets, obviously. With interactive 3D images, it is still an exciting experience.