January 2010
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List of fictional elements, materials, isotopes... →
Dilithium: A fictional crystalline mineral in the universe of Star Trek that is used to regulate the anti-matter-powered warp drives that allow starships to travel faster than light. Dilithium’s chemical symbol is Dt, its atomic weight is 87 and it is a member of the hypersonic series of elements.
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10 Most Impressive Photos of our Universe →
(via fuckyeahtheuniverse)
November 2009
3 posts
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One Day, This Will Be Remembered as the First Real... →
“The low-cost, low-power system can detect minimal concentrations of ammonia, chlorine gas, and methane, showing the values in an iPhone application. It can automatically communicate the results with other cellphones or the Enterprise’s computer using Wi-Fi or 3G, and order massive teleportation evacuations if needed. OK, not true. No teleportation yet, but we are getting...
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“The mathematical technique of decomposing wiggling wave forms into sine waves which can then be summed again to make the original wiggly line is called Fourier analysis, after the nineteenth-century French mathematician Joseph Fourier. It works not just for sound waves (indeed, Fourier himself developed the technique for a quite different purpose) but for any process that varies...
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“But I think the thing that appealed to me most [about SF and Fantasy] was the...”
– John Darnielle, in a guest post at the PowellsBooks.BLOG
October 2009
8 posts
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Ron Moore calls Star Trek's tech "meaningless" |... →
[Former Star Trek writer] Moore then went on to describe how a typical script might read before the science consultants did their thing:
La Forge: “Captain, the tech is overteching.”
Picard: “Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge.”
La Forge: “No, Captain. Captain, I’ve tried to tech the tech, and it won’t work.”
Picard:...
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The Infinite Matrix | Ursula K. Le Guin | "The... →
People are always telling you that “we have always done thus,” and then you find that their “always” means a generation or two, or a century or two, at most a millennium or two. Cultural ways and habits are blips, compared to the ways and habits of the body, of the race. There really is very little that human beings on our plane have “always” done, except find...
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You just made that up, dude.
The Scene:
After The Final Battle, the Enterprise gets too close to the black hole! They’re getting drawn in, and Scotty says that if they eject the warp core and blow it up, the explosion might propel them to safety.
The Science:
Simply put, that won’t work. Sorry Scotty!
On Earth, detonating a bomb creates a shock wave, an expanding wave of pressure as the force from the explosion...
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“(14) CLEANING UP THE HOUSE. (TWO.)
Washing the baby’s diapers. Sarah...”
– from “The Heat Death of The Universe”, by Pamela Zoline (helpful commentary)
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September 2009
27 posts
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Rubber Forehead Aliens (Television Tropes &... →
The tendency for all sci-fi alien species to be one facial feature away from humanity.
…
Gene Roddenberry gave more reasons for this in an interview once. Budget constraints aside, if you try to make aliens look completely alien, you’ll firstly make them look ridiculous (cf. Doctor Who), and secondly make it doubly hard for the actor playing the alien to do anything mildly...
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“He claims to be a human from a planet called Erp.”
– Oh, Aeryn Sun. ♥ (I started watching Farscape. It has muppet aliens. And colorful language. I am in love.)
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“In the early 1930s, readers of science fiction magazines such as Wonder Stories,...”
– from “The Conquest of Gernsback: Leslie F. Stone and the Subversion of Science Fiction Tropes” by Brian Attebery, taken from Daughters of Earth by Justine Larbalestier (ed.)
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Or look at it this way:
Billy Collins Man in Space
All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,
and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth...
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TREK TECH / 40 years since the Enterprise's... →
To appreciate how far ahead of its time “Star Trek” was, consider that in 1964:
— The main consumer communications device was a telephone tethered to the wall by a cord that could not be unplugged except by a trained technician from Ma Bell. Modular jacks and cordless phones were years from being average household items, so the idea of a personal wireless communications device...
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Could Exotic Matter Provide an Infinite Source of... →
fuckyeahphysics:
Generally, scientists prefer to avoid the concept of perpetual motion. The idea of a machine that could produce movement that goes on forever, and using that movement to generate an endless stream of energy, is usually considered more science fiction than science. But recently, physicist Pavel Ivanov has investigated previous speculation that an exotic fluid with unusual...
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Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang →
If you’re interested in language, don’t mind some physics, would like to explore the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in a deeply human context, and enjoy having your mind blown every now and then, you want to read this story.
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“It was fashionable at that time (we made it fashionable: one of our covert...”
– from Kairos (What the Apocalypse Means to Me), by Gwyneth Jones
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“We invented “Stardate” to avoid continually mentioning Star...”
– Stardate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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“Don’t you realize how important your presence, your character is? Don’t you...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. to Nichelle Nichols (as quoted in her autobiography), taken from: Where No Woman Has Gone Before: An Actress Spotlight on Nichelle Nichols | Bitch Magazine
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“At that moment,” Iran said, “when I had the TV sound off, I was in a...”
– from “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick, which served as the inspiration for Blade Runner (and has nothing in common with the movie except the name of the main protagonist and the general wretchedness of humanity)
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MAP: 68 must-see sci-fi sights around the U.S. |... →
Star Trek (2009)
Surface of planet Vulcan
Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park
10700 West Escondido Canyon Road
Starfleet Academy in “San Francisco”
Oviatt Library at Cal State University
Kirk and Spock face off over the Kobayashi Maru exercise …
Long Beach City Hall
333 West Ocean Boulevard
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“Barrett was the only performer to have had a role on all of the Star Trek series...”
– Majel Barrett-Roddenberry - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki
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Science-Fiction Novel Posits Future Where... →
“I wanted to capture the sense of adventure, lust, and peril that these characters would feel, along with their utter lack of social context or emotional complexity.”
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"In Which Robots Are Your Homies" - Science Corner... →
Later [in 1738], [Jacques de Vaucanson] created two additional automatons, The Tambourine Player and The Digesting Duck, which is considered his masterpiece. The duck had over 400 moving parts, and could flap its wings, drink water, digest grain, and defecate. Although the duck supposedly demonstrated digestion accurately, it actually contained a hidden compartment of “digested food,”...
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