Kryptonite

So some geologist dudes found this strange mineral/rock that had apparently never been discovered.

It's powdery and white, not crystally and green (soooo...it's what, then? Chalk?). And it doesn't weaken Superman, because it probably didn't really come from Krypton--also, Superman is not real...he's a comic-book character...you idiots.

But at any rate...the mineralist/geologist dudes said this:

'Towards the end of my research,' says Dr Stanley, 'I searched the web using the mineral's chemical formula, sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide , and was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns'.

'The new mineral does not contain fluorine and is white rather than green, but in all other respects the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite. We will have to be careful with it - we wouldn't want to deprive Earth of its most famous superhero!'

So...apparently this rock has the exact same geological make up as Kryptonite. Which is kind of cool, actually. The Superman writers must have had some serious premonitions here...or they know more than they are letting on. Maybe Superman is more of an accurate history than we know? Could it be that comic books are really stylized re-tellings of real events?

Of course not, you big nerd. But it's fun to talk about anyway.

I also think it's cute that the scientists used "the web" to find out what rock they'd found...and settled on something they read about a movie. There's science at work, folks!



(also covered over at Spulch)

"Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy! "

Wooo-hooo! Hyperspace--or "light-speed" or "hyper-drive" or "warp speed" or any other sci-fi name you want to throw on it--is here at last!!!

Okay, well, not exactly. But it's here in theory! A theory so good that it won the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' "Paper of the Year" award.

According to the paper, this hyperdrive motor would propel a craft through another dimension at enormous speeds. It could leave Earth at lunchtime and get to the moon in time for dinner. There's just one catch: the idea relies on an obscure and largely unrecognised kind of physics.

So...it's a theory in a paper based on an obscure and little-known type of physics...but still...HYPERDRIVE!!

Man, I wish I could get warp drive on my car. It'd be like the "Ford POS" from Men in Black...and all my guest passengers would be all screaming and panicking and stuff. And I'd be laughing and very calm because, well, obviously it's not my first trip through hyperspace.

Any kid who's ever enjoyed a space movie wants to see hyperdrive exist. I don't know why it's not a Presidential mandate...like Kennedy's famous declaration that we'd send a man to the moon. Bush could give a speech and say "Within the next 10 years, we will perfect technology that will allow our spaceships to make the jump to hyperspace." And the crowd would go wild and cheer and rave. Everyone would be all excited and the country would unite.

Until then...we have to settle for movie-based hyperdrives and warp drives. Thankfully, such movies abound (heck, there are nine of them alone just in the Star Trek series). But this paper is surely a step in the right direction. Nevermind that you've never heard of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics before today. Nevermind that the paper was probably written by some guy in a Rebel Hoth uniform or a 10-year-old. Just shut your eyes and allow your world to be a bit sunnier today, knowing that we are that much closer to Hyperspace!!

Aliens Under the Sea!

Okay, so think about movies with aliens. Any movie with aliens. You could even consider the movie "Aliens," but there are hundreds of extraterrestrial movies. How about this...think of any movie you've seen with a fictional monster or alien creature.

Got one?

Good. Because here's a brief series of photographs of some science-fiction-type aliens that are found right here in the real world...miles below the surface of the ocean:









See, the deep, deep sea is so pressurized, dark, and not-intended-for-humans...that we never get to see half the crap that's down there. There are hundreds of species we haven't even discovered yet...many more still "unidentified." If the deep sea wouldn't so easily implode us humans...we should seriously think about moving down there and checking out all the crazy alien fishes.

There are a total of 26 images like this over at this very cool blog. I hope you enjoy them.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!"

Popular Mechanics has a fun piece up called "Flying Cars, Your So-Called Sci-Fi Life." It's really written by Daniel H. Wilson, a humorist who wrote the tongue-in-cheek How To Survive A Robot Uprising.

It's sort of an excerpt from his new book Where's My Jetpack? The book playfully questions where some of Sci-Fi's most frequent predictions are...such as jet packs and flying cars.

However, there are several companies and private parties actually working on flying cars. Some have prototypes even.

Here's what I never understood about flying cars: roads are 2-dimensional. Sky...is 3-dimensional. How on Earth do we keep any sort of order once cars are able to fly? In Back to the Future 2, there are these little floating lights that are sort of the future's version of highway reflectors...marking the path of the road. But I think that's highly impractical and not the way to solve the problem.

Personally, I would love to have a flying car. I would not, however, love the monthly payment that buying a flying car would bring.

I also want to point out that a flying car...really, if we're honest...is just an airplane. I mean...a flying car is a vehicle that has wheels and can drive on a flat surface but also take off and fly. Sounds a lot like every airplane I've ever seen.

Some of these prototypes even resemble small kit-planes. I mean, why try so hard and spend so much money inventing what already exists? Why don't we just give every citizen a pilot's license and let them start flying planes wherever they want?

The Chinese Control The Weather!! (X-Men, The Avengers)

Don't look now, folks, but China has just leapfrogged over Iran in the race for world domination by inventing a way to control the weather--so they say.

Scientists in China claim to have caused it to snow in the village of Nagqu. This is part of what appears to be several years worth of efforts to control the weather.

They actually have 37,000 employees working on this rain-seeding project, which sounds like a lot at first, until you remember that there are, like, 99 Billion people in China. So by their standards, 37,000 employees actually translates to something of a well-kept state secret.

Hey, maybe their ulterior motive on the weather-control thing is a means to help thin out the herd a bit over there. Or maybe it's because they are a backward and odd people. No...I'm pretty sure it's the first...some sort of genocide is at the heart of this. Why else would anyone want to control the weather?

Sure, Storm from The X-Men could do it, but I thought everyone realized that she was the wussiest X-man. I mean..."There's the bad guy! Take him out with....well...your ability to make it rain, I guess." When they were handing out powers she must have thrown a fit! "Weather control?! Are you freaking kidding me? Why don't you just give me the power to make people smile or the power of positive thinking?!" She totally got the least powerful power, no doubt. Wuss.

And experiments in weather control don't always end well. Just ask Sean Connery. Better yet, ask his character from The Avengers. I can't remember how that movie ended because I never saw it (I know a stinker when I see one, and I try and avoid them), but I have to imagine it ended poorly for the bad guy Connery played...who was trying to control the weather.

There are probably other movies I'm forgetting that feature a plot about weather-control, but these movies are all moot now that the Chinese have figured it out. In fact, I think Al Gore needs to hop over to the People's Republic and see what evidence he can dig up to prove a connection between these experiments and Global Warming. After all...if they can make it snow in Nagqu, they can probably make the whole damn planet hotter, don't you think?

At any rate, it sounds like a really cool project. A waste of time and money and man-power and even possibly delusional and misguided...sure. But still really cool.

Also, those of you who follow sports may note that making it rain didn't exactly do anything good for PacMan Jones.

So...what have we learned? Chinese control weather. No one else wants to. Still cool. Any questions?