I have to say that I think that Hulu has really hit its stride in the last year or so, first with 11/22/63 then The Path and now with the captivating re-imagining of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.  You might think that a physics and astronomy guy like me wouldn’t have much to say about this sort […]

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I was recently watching this classic 50’s sci-fi/monster flick about a group of astronauts crash-landing on Earth after visiting Venus and retrieving a form of pupal-staged life.  This life form is accidentally released in Italy (it was interesting that they picked a foreign location. Usually its an American city such as Washington, D. C. that […]

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Have you noticed that in alien visitation films or similar television episodes the typical reaction is that people start looting (Arrival), committing acts of terrorism (Contact) or just generally acting unruly? This is often treated as “of course everyone will act that way!,” but I remain unconvinced.  For instance, in Arrival the presumed aliens don’t even […]

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I recently saw the Sci fi film Arrival. I won’t give away then main twists and turns of the film, though I should warn that some of what I say might still be a spoiler. The film features an intelligent alien species that’s similar to a  (possibly semi intelligent) water born species on Earth. Is […]

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To answer the trivia question from “Skin in the Game”, the answer is that they all had green skin (an, in fact, two in particular were supposed to be “Orion” slaves).

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So, by now you’ve probably heard about the discovery of 7 new Earth-like planets around the star, TRAPPIST-1. First, what’s with the name? Usually stars either have a commonly known  Arabic name (such as Betelguese or Kochab) or Greek name that go back to at least medieval, if not ancient, times, or they have some […]

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As Charles Adler discusses in his excellent book,Aliens, Wizards and Starships,  a planet residing in Earths orbit, but directly opposite from Earh on the other side of the Sun would not be possible.It turns out that such an orbit doesn’t remain stable for very long, due to the destabilizing tugs from other planets. Historically, science fiction […]

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The science fiction characters played by Susan Oliver, Yyvone Craig (both guests for Star Trek) and Vitina Marcus (Lost in Space) had what physical trait in common?

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For nearly two decades astrophysicists have been converging on what is now referred to as the concordance model. In this model based on solid observations and theory, we live in an expanding Universe with expansion initiated in the Big Bang. However, there’s more to it. There is not only the normal matter that makes up […]

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Punditry has taken a hit this election season, so it might be foolish  to speculate as to how space science might flourish (or not) with a new Trump administration, but I figured that with all the time I spend thinking about speculative fiction, I might as well think about some speculative non-fiction. The Republican congress […]

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