Welcome to the thoughts that wash up on the sandy beaches on my mind. Paddling is encouraged.. but watch out for the sharks.
About Me
- CyberKitten
- I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Being Challenged
When I started my voracious reading habits over 35 years ago
I had no plan, no strategy for what I was reading. Accidently I had been
introduced to SF at an impressionable age and dived into the genre head-first.
My first love after all those years is still SF but, as you will have noticed,
I read many other things besides Science Fiction these days. Indeed I’d have to
say that an almost equal passion of mine presently is Historical Fiction. Like
SF it has a huge range and will probably take me decades to exhaust all of the
possibilities.
Recently – well about a year or so ago – I was becoming a
bit fed up, even bored, with my reading habits. I was generally reading books I
had bought recently or those that looked on the face of it like a fun read. I
was in other words coasting along and my reading was suffering because of that.
In effect I had become a lazy reader. What I needed was more of a challenge –
so I created some. It appears to have worked. My reading has become more
coherent and I’ve read many really good books that I might have overlooked if I
had not had the various challenges I had set for myself. Now that I have
completed several, of which more in a moment, I feel the need to push myself a
bit more to see what I can do. In that case my self-imposed challenges will
become more difficult and, hopefully, more interesting. The over-all strategy
was to read 10 themed books initially followed by 5 non-themed to let off some
steam and to enable me to read books that don’t readily fit into any theme. I
have since extended this theme ‘break’ into 10 books to allow me some more
flexibility in what I read.
So far my challenges haven’t been all that challenging. In
order of those already completed these have been:
Single Word Titles
A Colour in the Title
Fantasy Books
Off-World Tales
Historical Novels
As I said – overall not that much of a challenge, but I’m
only really warming up. Presently I’m coming to the end of my non-themed 10
(with the usual review lag presently running at 6 books) and the next theme
will be Future Earth – so lots of SF coming up. After another non-themed 10 it
will be a series of Books made into Movies which should throw up some
interesting volumes. That little lot should take me up to Christmas, after
which I’ll decide what themes to go with next. I have a few in mind already
which should be fun. It does all sound a little crazy (if not actually bat-shit
crazy) but it does seem to be producing a better class of reading material than
picking each book on the spare of the moment impulse. I’ll see how it goes.
Girls
Along with the other pictures I post here on a regular basis
you will have noticed, no doubt, that from time to time I post pictures of
women I find attractive. Rather shallow of me I know but then no one is
perfect. Anyway, as I have reached 12 such postings in the last 3 years I have
decided to give them their own label for ease of viewing and have called it:
Girls. I hope that my female readership will not find such a label patronising.
It’s certainly not meant to be. As always there will be more to come.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
'Smart' CCTV could track rioters
From The BBC
23 August 2011
CCTV that can automatically monitor criminal behaviour and
track suspects is being developed by UK scientists. Researchers at Kingston University have created a system that
uses artificial intelligence to recognise specific types of behaviour, such as
someone holding a gun. The technology is capable of following a person across
multiple cameras. Privacy campaigners warned that it might be used to target
groups such as political protesters.
However, the developers insisted that their invention would
allow police to focus on law breakers and erase images of innocent civilians. The
technology works by teaching a computer to recognise specific types of public
behaviour, known as ‘trigger events’. "In riot situations, it could be
people running - a crowd might converge in a certain place," said Dr James
Orwell of Kingston
University "If
somebody pulls out a gun, people tend to run in all sorts of directions. These
movements can be detected."
When an event is triggered, the software collates video
footage from before and after the incident to record a full history of the
suspect's movements. "If a window was smashed and shop looted in a town
centre street, the technology would trace back to see who smashed the window
and then retrace his steps to see when and where he entered the town centre. "The
technology would also trace where the man had gone after leaving the
scene," said Dr Orwell. The study is part of the ADDPRIV project - a
European collaboration to build a surveillance solution that acknowledges wider
privacy concerns. A key element of the system is the automatic deletion of
surplus video data. "There is a mainland European resistance to CCTV -
tight controls on how long you can keep data," explained Dr Orwell. "This
project addresses it by saying 'This is the event - let's wrap up everything
that's relevant, then delete everything else.' "We're seeking to use surveillance to help control
society, while avoiding the Big Brother nightmare of everybody being seen all
the time," he added.
Charles Farrier from anti-surveillance campaign group No
CCTV believes that excessive security powers would leave the system open to
abuse. "Merely saying 'We promise we won't track innocent people' isn't
good enough," said Mr Farrier. "If you've got a state-run camera
system and the state wants it triggered on, say, peace activists, then they
won't be bound by the same rules as everyone else.
[Of course no one seems to have picked up on the delicious
irony about an intelligent surveillance system being developed by Dr Orwell and
his team….. Anyway – I too doubt if any in-built safeguards will be enough to
prevent the detailed tracking of anyone doing anything the authorities don’t
like. It may indeed help in riot situations (which we have had twice in
my lifetime) but I seriously doubt if that’s all they’ll be used for. We are
awash in CCTV cameras in this country already. Will making the software behind
them make us safer or more easily controlled in the future? It’s all rather…
Orwellian don’t you think?]
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Just Finished Reading :
Dune and Philosophy – The Weirding Way of the Mentat edited by Jeffery Nicholas
Well, I just had to really……
I have been enjoying these Popular Culture and Philosophy
books. They’re a great way to get into some of the philosophical ideas and
concepts as well as delve a bit deeper into some of your favourite bits of pop
culture. Of course few come closer than Dune which produced 6 original novels
by Frank Herbert as well as many more expansions by his son and others. Then
there was the ‘interesting’ movie and two made-for-TV mini-series. All in all
that’s quite a bit of material to mine into for philosophical subject matter.
Those who know of the Dune universe will not be in the least bit surprised that
there is a great deal of fine philosophical material to mine! Indeed several
authors in this outstanding collection call Herbert a philosopher in his own
right rather than a SF author who just peppered his work with bits of
philosophy. I would probably agree with them.
I read the first Dune trilogy back in my teens. Again for
those who have experienced the books you can imagine the effect they had on an
adolescent mind. Tales of Galaxy spanning empires, super beings, genetic
manipulation on a species wide scale, cloning and much else besides made my
head spin. Something of that effect, still with me after all those years, was
present in this book. Some of the articles were very well written indeed, the
majority were interesting at worst and often fascinating. A mere two were, in
my opinion, largely unworthy to have been included – which out of sixteen
articles actually wasn’t that bad. Discussions moved from the differences in
politics between the worlds of Dune, the problems and dilemmas associated with
planning to improve the species, the possibility of being enslaved by
technology of our own creation, issues created by the idea of seeing the future
– does it destroy free will or give us an amazing power to shape our own
destinies and is it even possible to shape our own destiny never mind that of
an entire species.
One of my favourite sections was a series of discussions on
ideas of personal identity using one of my favourite Dune characters – the Ghola
Duncan Idaho – as an example. If a clone of someone long dead can have his
memories activated so that he is mentally the ‘same’ as his deceased
counterpart is he the same person? What if two such clones exist at the same
time? If you had multiple copies of yourself from previous lives and had access
to their memories are you still you or are you them or someone completely new?
It’s fascinating stuff. The last section – discussions about Paul Muad’Dib from
a Nietzschean perspective – rocked my world. They were excellent. Inevitably I
watched the movie, deeply flawed though it is, soon after reading this and am
seriously toying with the idea of reading the Herbert novels again. Maybe I
will – when I have an extra few weeks to rub together.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Just Finished Reading :
Emma by Jane Austen
Emma is young, rich, spoilt and of the opinion, after
apparently engineering the marriage of her governess, that it is her mission in
life to assist those around her into the state of matrimony – a state she herself
has declined to pursue. When the orphan Harriet enters her sphere she decides
on Mr Elton – the curate – as the ideal partner for her new friend and begins
her campaign to put them together. Almost from the outset things start to go
wrong as Mr Elton is clearly more interested in Emma herself (as she shockingly
finds out one Christmas). In her attempt to make things right for Harriet, Emma
spins more and more fantastic plots and causes more chaos in her small select
community until she realises the many errors of her ways. As she matures she
realises that she too is looking for love and finds it where she least expects.
I am becoming quite a fan of Miss Austen now having read
three of her six novels and watched TV and movie adaptations of her works as well
as some of the many ‘spin-offs’ on offer. I actually watched the movie
adaptation of Emma (starring Gwyneth Paltrow) just yesterday. I’m glad I
insisted on reading the book first though, it was much better. This might,
however, at least partially explain why I initially struggled with the book – I
had no idea what it was about apart from the brief blurb on the back of my
Vintage Press edition. For at least the first quarter of the novel I slogged
through the text with little overall enjoyment. In my earlier days, and
certainly before I had read any other Austen novels, I would have abandoned it
at that point. I found very little to recommend it. Not very much was
happening, though to be honest not very much of note actually happens in
Austen’s novels, and very few of the characters were in the least likable. Emma
herself was awful. She had no idea just how lucky she was. She had led a
sheltered and privileged life which had produced a character so wrapped up in
herself and her own schemes that she was often completely oblivious to the
damage her words and actions caused around her. She had talent but little
application never having had to do anything she didn’t want to. She was in a
word obnoxious and on more than one occasion I could have happily slapped her
for her unthinking behaviours but that is the genius of the work. Over the
length of the book – about 12-18 months in ‘real-time’ the character of Emma is
transformed from someone you would have little to do with beyond the first
encounter to someone you could happily spend time with. As her schemes and
behaviour bumps up against unforgiving reality Emma is forced time and again to
think about what she is doing and the results of her meddling. The strength of
her character is that she realises what a fool she has been and does whatever
she can to rectify matters – not for some kind of acclaim from society but
because of her empathy for those around her. Once out of her sheltered
environment she grows from a spoilt brat into a considerate, kind and thoughtful
young woman. The genius of Austen, and genius is not a word I use lightly, is
to portray this metamorphosis in such a way as to make the reader move from
loathing Emma to loving her. As layers of her character are exposed, examined,
found faulty and rectified Emma grows before your eyes into the kind of person
she was always capable of being. The story itself, with its other minor
players, is almost superfluous other than as a mechanism to chip away at Emma’s
persona to reveal, finally after much effort, a work of art in human form.
Whilst she is far from my favourite Austen character as I still have issues
getting over her initial significant character flaws I can’t help but admire
her ability to grow as a person.
If you do attempt this book I can only recommend that you
persevere with it. To begin with you may find yourself, like me, expending more
effort than usual in working your way through the first third of the book. But
take my word for it the effort will pay off handsomely in the end. One more
thing: I read quite a bit of this during my lunch breaks at work. Rather
inevitably it caused a modicum of surprise as most people see me reading SF or
other ‘weird’ books. It also caused more than a little discussion as I found
five other people who had actually read it or, in one case, was reading it at
the same time as I was. I found it a lot of fun exchanging ideas about the book
with the other people. It actually felt a little like the movie ‘The Jane
Austen Book Club’ as, just like the movie, I was the only male in the
group.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Galactic Dust Bunnies Found to Contain Carbon After All
From JPL @ NASA
March 12, 2009
Astronomers have long been baffled by a strange phenomenon: Why have their telescopes never detected carbon-rich stars at the center of our galaxy even though they have found these stars in other places? Now, by using Spitzer's powerful infrared detectors, a research team has found the elusive carbon stars in the galactic center. "The dust surrounding the stars emits very strongly at infrared wavelengths," says Pedro GarcÃa-Lario, a research team member who is on the faculty of the
This combination is unusual. In the Milky Way, dust that combines both oxygen and carbon is rare and is usually only found surrounding a binary system of stars. The research team, however, found that the presence of the carbon-oxygen dust in the Galactic Bulge seems to be suggestive of a recent change of chemistry experienced by the star. The scientists hypothesize that as the central star of a planetary nebula ages and dies, its heavier elements do not make their way to the star's outer layers, as they do in other stars. Only in the last moments of the central star's life, when it expands and then violently expels almost all of its remaining outer gasses, does the carbon become detectable. That's when astronomers see it in the nebula surrounding the star.
"The carbon produced through these recurrent 'thermal pulses' is very inefficiently dredged up to the surface of the star, contrary to what is observed in low-metallicity, galactic disk stars," said GarcÃa-Lario. "It only becomes visible when the star is about to die." This study supports a hypothesis about why the carbon in some stars does not make its way to the stars' surfaces. Scientists believe that small stars -- those with masses up to one-and-a-half times that of our sun -- that contain lots of metal do not bring carbon to their surfaces as they age. Stars in the Galactic Bulge tend to have more metals than other stars, so the Spitzer data support this commonly held hypothesis. Before the Spitzer study, this hypothesis had never been supported by observation. This aging and expelling process is typical of all stars. As stars age and die, they burn progressively heavier and heavier elements, beginning with hydrogen and ending with iron. Towards the end of their lives, some stars become what are called "red giants." These dying stars swell so large that if one of them were placed in our solar system, where the sun is now, its outermost border would touch Earth's orbit. As these stars pulsate – losing mass in the process – and then contract, they spew out almost all of their heavier elements. These elements are the building blocks of all planets, including our own Earth (as well as of human beings and any other life forms that may exist in the universe).
The paper is co-authored by José Vicente Perea-Calderón of the European Space Astronomy Center in Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain; Domingo Anibal GarcÃa-Hernández of the Instituto de AstrofÃsica de Canarias, on Spain's Tenerife island; Ryszard Szczerba of the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center in Torun, Poland; and Matt Bobrowsky of the University of Maryland, College Park.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Just Finished Reading :
Tragedy – A Very Short Introduction by Adrian Poole
I am the first to admit that this book was more than a
little out of my comfort zone – probably because it wasn’t really what I
expected it to be. Of course I expected it to be about tragedy, but I didn’t
expect it (though maybe I should have) to be largely about the treatment of
tragedy in the theatre. As I said – more than a little outside my comfort zone!
Naturally I understood that the literary tradition of tragedy came from the
Ancient Greeks (actually its difficult to think of much that didn’t originate
with them). However, my knowledge of particular Greek plays is minimal. I was
on more sure ground (but only just) when the discussion moved onto
Shakespearian tragedy. At least at this point I had some reference points
having seen one of the Bards plays on stage and several of the movie versions.
In consequence those areas in the book were more understandable and more
interesting. Not so later discussions of plays and poems of which my knowledge
stops at recognition of the title alone.
I did actually find parts of this short volume interesting
(and informative) particularly the discussion of tragedy in its wider and both
its historical and cultural context. I agreed with the author that we use the
word far too freely these days when everything it seems is on the tragic scale
(likewise we seem to live in an age where no one is simply angry but feel the
need to be outraged by what in past times would have generated little comment.
It is if we live in an emotional arms race where those who can show they feel
the most win – but I digress). I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed reading this
book as far too much of it was outside of my normal experience. If however you
are a doyen of the stage I’m sure that it would mean much more to you and you
would derive much more from it!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
My Favourite TV: Lost in Austen
Amanda Price (played by Jemima Rooper) is a typical 21st
century city girl who loves to read Jane Austen to escape into a world of
romance so unlike her own. Her particular favourite is Pride and Prejudice
which she knows virtually word for word. When her boyfriend unexpectedly
proposes to her Amanda’s world is thrown into turmoil so, with a wine glass in
one hand and Austen in the other she escapes – until she hears a noise coming
from her bathroom. Expecting a burglar she is astonished to find Miss Elizabeth
Bennet standing in her bathtub. Seemingly the longing for Austen’s world to be
real has created a doorway between the two realms. Intrigued by the 21st
century Lizzie offers a Jemima a deal - for a short time they will swop places.
After some agonising Amanda agrees and steps through the doorway. Things are
exactly as she has imagined them until, with Lizzie away, things begin to
spiral out of control. Knowing the story well Amanda tries ever harder to put
things back on track but the more she tries the more things slip from her
grasp. Can she put things back together the way they should before lives are
ruined and what is she to do about Mr Darcy?
I only saw part of this (the last 2 of 4 episodes) when it
was first shown on TV back in 2008. So when it came out on DVD I jumped at the
chance of owning it. As a huge fan of P&P I did have some misgivings about
the whole thing. I certainly didn’t think that they could improve on things and
they had many opportunities to ruin the whole thing! Fortunately the director
is a great Austen fan so it seemed to be in safe hands. There were many funny
moments as Amanda Price attempted to fit in with early 19th century
society – failing completely of course! She was just too modern and had
problems controlling her use of modern idiom and a modicum of swearing. She was
inevitably far too independently minded to stand for the way women were treated
back then and, again inevitably, caused a degree of scandal – especially in Mrs
Bennet’s eyes. Mr Bennet, after the initial shock, quite took to her which I
thought was rather cool. I loved the way Amanda caused confusion by referring
to Darcy as “OK, but no Colin Firth” and, much later on convincing him to walk
out of the lake in riding boots and a flowing white shirt described it as a
“wonderfully post-modern moment”. Briefly back in the present she asks her best
friend to join her back in the 19th century. Being black, and being
aware that such a thing would not no unremarked back then, she turns Amanda’s
offer down. “Anyway”, she said “I can’t live without my phone, toilet paper or
chocolate” to which Amanda replies “Oh, but they have chocolate!” Finally there
was my favourite comment of the show – spoken by the much changed Mr Wickham.
Whilst dressing Amanda in Paris finery she
remarks “But aren’t we at war with France ?”
to which he replies “We are always at war with France ,
but never at war with Paris ”.
OK, it does sound a little corny but in context it was very funny.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Buyers of Che Guevara
T-shirts to undergo basic education in irony
From NewsBiscuit.Com
The Government announced today that people who wear T-shirts
adorned with the image of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara will be
compelled by law to undergo a re-education programme in a bid to help them
understand the irony of their choice of apparel.
‘Many of the people buying these T-shirts simply don’t know
any better and it’s right that we try to help them,’ said a government
spokesman. ‘Focusing on basic history and the concept of irony, the course will
address the key thinking deficits that inspired this inexplicable purchase.’ Those
buying Guevara T-shirts will be required to attend a course where participants
will be streamed according to their level of ignorance. ‘Sadly there are some
who assume that Guevara was an ethnic-looking rock singer from before their
time,’ continued the spokesman. ‘They have the furthest to travel, and we’ll
ease them in gently with introductory modules such as ‘Communism for beginners’ and ‘Who was that beardy guy anyway?’’
For the marginally more informed who bought the garment to
show solidarity with socialist causes, the course will principally focus on
developing a proper sense of irony. Exercises will include group discussions on
topics such as ‘If Guevara was still alive, what would he think about his image
being commodified on a sweat-shop produced T-shirt?’ and ‘The importance of
dressing well while planning for collectivist agrarian reform’.
‘Finally,’ added the spokesman, ‘those who claim to wear a
Guevara T-shirt as apostmodernist statement will be spared the training course
and will instead be set upon by a group of hunger-crazed militant Marxists
before being ordered to sign the Pretentious Smartarse Register for the next
ten years.’ But the government accepts that even after extensive training some
buyers of Guevara T-shirts may still not get it. ‘Irony is a difficult thing to
grasp. So those still none-the-wiser will be subject to the same fate as befell
Cuban political dissidents at the hands of Guevara, and will be summarily
executed by firing squad. That should help them understand.’
[As someone who, from time to time, wears one of these
T-shirts I thought this was frankly hilarious. Thanks to CQ for pointing it out
to me.]
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Just Finished Reading :
Steampunk’d edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H Greenberg
It’s rare – you may have noticed – for me to read short
stories. I’ve read quite a few over the years and some of them have been very
good indeed. However, the short story is an art form that is difficult to
master. In a novel the author has the space and the time to develop character,
plot and a whole lot else. Of course the danger with a novel is that the author
gets too relaxed and flabby or tries to put everything including the kitchen
sink into the narrative. The short story in contrast is very restrictive and
demands tight plotting, succinct characterisation or a well presented
immediately enticing idea.
This slim volume contained 14 short stories of Steampunk.
For those unfamiliar with this SF sub-genre you can think of it as the
Victorian version of Cyberpunk. Of course if you’re unfamiliar with Cyberpunk
that whole allusion would have been lost on you. Suffice it to say that
Steampunk stories take place in a world where there was an explosion of
technology in the mid-19th century and where future generations
depend on variations of steam, clockwork and airships. I’ve read a few
Steampunk novels in the past and thought that they had some interesting ideas
but usually failed to deliver. It was about time, I thought, to get back in the
dirigible and give it another try. Despite several of the stories in this
volume being good I found myself generally disappointed. The attraction to me
of Cyberpunk was that the majority of the plot takes place at street level.
Gibson himself said something about the genre being about technology used by
‘punks’ in ways that had never been thought of by its designers. I was much
less interested in the lives of the rich and shameless using their tech to
control the world. My heart, and sympathies, was always with the hackers and
bandits living and fighting in the cracks between the mega-corporations.
Unfortunately this volume was far too much top-down looking rather than my
preferred bottom-up. Basically there was plenty of steam but very few punks.
Even as an introduction to the genre I’d feel disappointed. It didn’t have the
down and dirty earthiness I was expecting. Maybe the stories were just too new,
written by present day authors climbing onto the Steampunk bandwagon. Whatever
the reason I didn’t find what I wanted from this collection. Maybe I’ll have
better luck with some of the other collections I’ve subsequently picked up or,
possibly more likely, in the longer novels. Not really recommended.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Monday, August 08, 2011
Just Finished Reading :
A Brief History of The Samurai – The Way of Japan’s Elite Warriors by Jonathan
Clements
I have been fascinated with stories of the Samurai for as
long back as I can remember. These tales of amazing courage, skill and
dedication couldn’t fail to move me and move me they did. The philosophy of
Bushido – the Way of the Sword or the Way of the Warrior – was something almost
mystical to aspire to. Over the years I’ve read a few books about certain
aspects of the Samurai and their code so it came as no surprise that I
instantly picked up this book on our recent visit to the Hay Book Festival and
it’s no surprise that I read it so quickly afterwards. [As an aside it also
alerted me to a whole series of Brief History books that I’ve started acquiring.]
I think what surprised me so much about this book is that
the reality of the centuries of internecine warfare was so different to the
legendary stories. In the seemingly interminable squabbles, feuds, uprisings
and reprisals that characterised Medieval Japan I saw precious little sign of
the Samurai virtues I had expected. Even their highest ideal of loyalty to
their leader or Emperor was apparently open to interpretation and often, it
seems, interpreted in a way that those seeking power acted in the way they
needed to in order to take it. Although they often rushed directly at their
enemies on the open battlefield calling out their names and ancestry to find a
suitable opponent, they were not above killing their enemies by stealth,
deception and the breaking of oaths. They certainly saw themselves as a cut
above the ordinary soldier so, not unsurprisingly, hated the introduction of
firearms which enabled a poorly trained peasant to kill a Samurai who had spent
his whole life training with sword and bow. Such was the power of the Samurai
in Japanese society that, after some years of being on the receiving end of
matchlocks and later flintlocks, firearms of all types where first highly
restricted and eventually banned from use.
Such halting of technological development and use became
much easier when the ports were closed to foreigners and the country entered
into a strange period of stasis. Despite efforts by the major European powers
to open trade with Japan it
was not until the advent of steam ships and the consequent need for coaling
stations throughout the Pacific Rim that
prompted the American Navy to force open negotiations with the Japanese at gun
point. Of course after that everything changed though by this point the Samurai
themselves had been in serious decline for some considerable time.
I did struggle a little bit with this generally readable
history of an interesting but rather strange military elite. Above all else, I
think, I just couldn’t keep track of the people’s names – especially when they
intermarried, adopted and took on different family names. It was all rather
confusing despite the author’s best efforts. Also, despite the fact that this
was, inevitably, a book filled with battles I did find it a bit tedious to read
about so many! Apart from that I did enjoy having my rather naïve
preconceptions put right and being made aware of what really happened during a
fascinating period in the history of, at least in my opinion, one of the
strangest places on Earth.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Lord Acton in The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
Cold, Lonely Planets More Common Than Sun-Like Stars
By Christopher Dombrowski for Wired News
May 19, 2011
Seems like every week astronomers find a new exoplanet, one
that’s the biggest or the smallest or the hottest or most habitable. However,
this week astronomers are announcing a truly unique and new class of
exoplanets: Jupiter sized planets that are in extremely large orbits or
completely unbound from a host star altogether. And there appear to be a lot of
them, as these planets seem to be more common than main sequence stars.
Finding a planet that
is not associated with a star is no easy task. In the new search, a team of
researchers used a technique called gravitational microlensing. As you look at
a background field of stars, if an object passes between you and one of the
stars, there will be a temporary brightening of that star. This occurs as the
gravity of the object bends light around itself, which acts as a lens for light
from the background star, hence “gravitational lensing.” Microlensing occurs
when the foreground object is too small to create measurable distortion of the
background star and only a brightening is observed. This makes it an ideal
detector for small, dim objects. The mass of the lensing object determines the
duration of the brightening event—the longer the duration, the more massive. A
Jupiter-sized object would produce lensing event with a duration of around one
day. The odds of a microlensing event occurring are exceedingly small, as the
lensing object has to line up exactly between you and the background star. To
compensate, astronomers looked at 50 millions of stars over several years,
which yielded 474 microlensing events. Out of those 474, 10 had durations of
less than two days, consistent with a Jupiter mass object.
No host stars were observed within 10 astronomical units of
the lensing object. Previous work from The Gemini Planet Imager had set limits
of the population of Jupiter-sized planets in extended orbits. From that data,
the astronomers were able to estimate that 75 percent of their observed planets
were most likely not bound to a host star at all, and are instead loose within
the Galaxy. By creating a galactic mass density model that takes into account
this new class of object, astronomers were able to predict how many of these
unbound planets there might be. They found that there are ~1.8 times as many
unbound Jupiter-sized object as there are main sequence stars in our Galaxy.
This raises a number of questions. Did these planets from near a star only to
be ejected from the system? And if they truly have never been bound to any
stars, do these planets represent a new planetary formation process? In any
case, these observations have discovered a whole new population of
Jupiter-sized planets in the Milky Way, and there are a lot of them.
I wonder if these new planets are like our Jupiter and, like
our Jupiter, have moons which are geologically active and warm. If so, these
new planets may have significantly increased the number of places that life may
exist.
[So the possible number of environments where life may exist
has just increased again. I’m confident that it’s just a matter of when we find
it rather than if…..]
Friday, August 05, 2011
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Just Finished Reading :
Witchling by Yasmine Galenorn
Three sisters, all half-elf, one half-witch, one
half-shapeshifter and one half-vampire are employed by the Otherworld
Intelligence Agency (I kid you not) to keep an eye on things Earthside.
Humanity is still getting used to having real, live supernatural creatures walk
amongst them and things could get all too easily out of hand. Already several
anti-otherworld organisations have sprung up and are causing trouble. But deep
in the Under-realm things are stirring. There’s a new demon in town who is fast
becoming top dog in that most deadly of environments. He’s out for ultimate
power and intends to join all three realms together as his personal playground.
To do this he needs nine keys to open the portals between the worlds letting
the army he has amassed wreak havoc – unless the sisters can stop him.
So, is anyone else channelling ‘Charmed’ here? Apart from
the author that is. For a while I was definitely cutting her some slack. It’s
her first novel I thought (it wasn’t) or she’s writing it for a young teen
audience (presumably not from the several fairly explicit sex scenes). By about
the half way mark I’d pretty much given up hope that things would improve – and
hopefully not get any worse. They didn’t – either way. This was cliché piled on
cliché, poor characterisation, terrible dialogue and a barely rational plot.
Just about the only reason I finished it at all was that it was so vacuous that
it required almost no effort to read. Unfortunately I already have the next two
books in the series (I think they were a birthday present from my Amazon Wish
List – that’ll teach me!). I have doubts that I’ll get around to the next two
but never say never and all that. If you want a fun, light and fast urban fantasy
read I’d really pick something else. Avoid.
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
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