Chaosbutterfly

Pope’s astronomer: “There are too many people who are afraid of science.” | SciGuy | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.

It is great to read an interview showing that yes, science and religion can co-exist and do co-exist.  This is an interview with the Vatican Astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno on how nuns taught him about Evolution amongst other things and how the Catholic Church studies science to learn about God.

The planet Saturn is enjoying its own equinox today and if you are into that sort of thing, look through a telescope tonight and for the next few days you will not be able to see its rings.  They are perfectly aligned with the Sun right now and completely invisible from Earth.  However, the Cassini Spacecraft is taking some rather cool pictures of these on edge rings as the little bits that make them are now casting shadows as long as planets are wide.

I just found out that the admin for my old website www.chaosbutterfly.com has died. Ron will be missed very much. I’ve worked with him on Chaosbutterfly for the past 10 years or so if not longer.

I was trying to figure out what had been wrong with my email for the past week or so when I finally tried to find Ron. The problem is that the hosting service he used at The.Planet here in Houston won’t release any data and has shut down all the servers that Ron used. This includes mine. I don’t know if I will be able to get it back up and running anytime soon. I’ll need to find a new host and admin for it.

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I lead too busy of a life. I keep trying to cut back, but alas, I am still driven to do more crazy stuff. All my Saturdays for the next few weeks will be taken up by Elissa Sail Training and preparation for Harvest Moon. This leaves little time for other stuff like Relic Quest coming up at the end of the month on Sunday the 30th. However, I’ve been writing up stuff like crazy for it.
This Saturday, I was at the ship all day pulling on lines. It was an off day for the regular class, I would call it the ‘advanced’ class day in that it was all us 2nd year and longer people out there reviewing. And we all need review. Really. The weather was great and we got a lot done. However, we had a few things like some rigging problems we had to work out but all in all, I think we are going to be ready for the regatta. Afterwards we all got a free trip on the Seagull harbor tour boat and I took a few pictures I may post later when I get a chance.
Sunday it was laundry day and gawdz, I didn’t think I could cram that much clothing on a little sailboat. Got about half done and went out to Amtgard to hopefully talk to Elora about getting my dues paid up. Wound up shooting a few rounds with my new arrows I bought from back at PSIII and tried to work out why I keep shooting off to the right. Thanks to Hobbibobbit, I think I made a lot of progress there.
Anyway, I’ve got a lot of crazy stuff written for Relic Quest and I have more rolling around in my head just begging to be put down on paper. I was originally doing a group of Intergalatic Hitchhikers ala Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but Luke kept putting us down as Time Lords. So after the last time I said screw it, we are apparenlty going to be Time Lords so I started writing.

And here it is! Stuff for Relic Quest written so far (Amtgard Rules of Play 7.0):

Time Lord

Humanoid

Time Lords appear as regular humans in all ways but internally. They are smug, highly intelligent beings that have conquered space and time long before most planets formed in the Universe. They often think of themselves as above the local law and that all other beings are barbaric savages.

Garb: Time Lords are notoriously bad dressers. Think ostentatious and gaudy, with a fondness for pockets, long coats and large rings and odd hats and other outrageous accessories.

May use any weapon (Time Lords are very quick learners)

May wear up to 3 points of armor but usually doesn’t bother being over confident

One life
Serial Immortality as per Darklord but limited to only 12 times
Immunity control
Immune to poison
Death Magic works as Stun on Time Lords
+1 point natural armor on the chest only (two hearts!)

Additional Magic like abilities (choose two)

Charm 2 per life
Telepathy (as per messenger spell)
Confidence 1/L
Tinker*
Fear/Awe 1/L

* Tinker: May mend any object, disarm traps, operate any device after 150 count of studying said object.

And don’t forget to chose your Time Lord Name: http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/5678/

Sonic Screwdriver
(relic)
The Sonic Screwdriver is a most versatile device. No intergalatic time traveler should ever leave Gallifrey without one.

The sonic screwdriver is non-magical and will work in an anti-magic zone.
Must have a set of two 6 sided dice to operate the sonic screwdriver

Open doors – will open doors on a roll of 9 or higher.

Destroy object
- will destroy a magical device on a roll of 11 or higher
- will destroy a non magical device on a roll of 8 or higher.

Will unscrew something on any roll.

A Time Lord with the Tinker ability can perform it in half count (75 sec instead of 150) if he also has a Sonic Screwdriver

For all you evil Time Lords out there…

Tissue Compression Eliminator

(relic)

Appears as a small black wand with a rounded end and one black spell ball.

As per the Sphere of Annihilation spell. 3 charges per game.
(Optional: May only be used by characters with a tech level of 10 or higher as per GURPS rules.)

This is going to be fun.

We’ve went and broke the planet.

This thought has been poking around in my mind since a little rant I had heard about Russel T. Davies not having many Doctor Who stories on alien planets because he didn’t want to go to that overly used and clichéd quarry somewhere in Wales. You can’t really blame him for wanting to keep the show flashy and wanting to escape the cheesy stigma of the old classic series of Doctor Who. But if you really think about it, that quarry wasn’t far off from what we know of the real thing. In fact, I think the Doctor Who quarry of the old days probably had a better rendition of an alien landscape than Star Trek or even today’s new Battlestar Galactica and Stargate SG1. Even SG1 goes to an alien planet every week and what does it look like? It looks like Southern California, just like old Star Trek. Today’s Fans, the glitzy CG heavy TV low attention span generation, love it.

Lets take a look at a real alien landscape. Here’s a picture of Mars from the Opportunity Rover taken on the edge of Victoria crater:

Now, does that look like Southern California? Or suspiciously like a quarry in Wales? You could say it looks a little bit like both actually.

There is a reason for this. You see, both Earth and Mars are largely made of the same stuff, Silicates. Nice hard sandy rocks. The only real difference between a Martian landscape and a desert on Earth is the fact that you don’t see on Mars the occasional lizard crawling around or tuft of weeds growing somewhere out of the rocks. But, never the less, they are rocks just like the rocks here at home.

Now here’s a few rocks that are not much like the ones we have at home. You want an alien landscape, it’s hard to get much more alien than Titan. However, I will say that Titan still has what we would fundamentally call rocks.

Rocks on Titan:

Now the main difference between these rocks and Earth or Mars rocks is what they are made of. These rocks are not made of silicates like they are on the Earth or Mars or even Venus or Mercury, they are made of ice. In our star system, we only have rocky that is planets made of silicates out to Mars, all the worlds outside of the asteroid belt are made of gas and their moons, the only things we could stand on, are not really made of all that much silicate like this far in, they are made of ice. Ice at the temperatures around Saturn is as hard as any hard silicate rock here on Earth and due to the fact that methane is liquid there on Titan just like water is here on Earth, Titan has weather and so this scene is not Brighton Beach, but sure could pass for it.

Other alien landscapes: One of my favorites is the Jovian moon, Callisto. Of the alien worlds we know of, it is one of the most alien. It is considered a “half baked” moon that hasn’t changed much since it was formed some 4 billion years ago. The surface in fact was discovered by the Galileo space probe to be the oldest in the Solar System. It is heavily cratered and hasn’t changed much since. What do you bet we find down there? Rocks.

Looks a bit like the moon, I bet it would look just like a quarry down there. What do you think?

One more planet that is totally alien. Venus. It is so hot on Venus that even at the highest of mountains theres isn’t any chance for water in any form. In fact, it is thought through the various probes we have sent there that it may snow lead. Yes, imagine lead snowballs. However, even under such amazingly hostile and alien conditions, you still find what we find here on Earth. Rocks.
I bet Venus looks just like a quarry too.

So far, we have yet to find a planet that is remotely like Earth. We are getting close to being able to see rocky planets like ours with our telescopes but we have yet to do so. We simply don’t have the capability, yet. However, space telescopes are being designed and more exosolar planets are being discovered all the time. Currently, we have discovered well over a hundred planets outside the Solar system. Here’s a list on Space.com of planets for further scrutiny.

What a real habitable planet with real alien life forms would look like is up to our imaginations. However, I would think that given the fossil record of Earth, and the fact that most alien planets probably are going to be rocky, like ours and with weather, just like ours to some extent, it probably will not look to different than life has over the eons here on Earth. Oh, they may have a different leg count, maybe they will have plant like forms that come in different colors than green. But I bet they have tree like forms, animal like forms and probably rocks, just like Earth. I would say that yea, we as Sci-fi fans are hard to please, but in truth, Doctor Who and other Sci-Fi shows are probably not as far off as we seem to be afraid they could be. Relax and enjoy the show. It may look like Southern California or a quarry, but so does just about every other planet. Really.

Sci-Fi shows could however still, in my opinion, really benefit from just on occasion talking to a real astronomer. Just call the local science museum. I am sure they would be thrilled to give Russel T. Davies advice on what a black hole would look like. You would be surprised that most have spectacular jets that don’t show up well in Hubble shots. You don’t know how much it really bothers fans who happen to be Astronomy geeks like me who know that M87 is actually in the Virgo Cluster and 67 Million light years away, a bit far for the people of Earth to build a new civilization when there are probably plenty of habitable planets within our own Milky Way less than 10,000 light years from us.

Heychronarchy, UB313, that new “dwarf planet” everyone lately has been calling “Xena,” has officially been named Eris, and she’s got a moon now named Dysnomia.   Of all the people I know, you would appreciate that little bit of news the most.

In other news, I just got my light bill in and it’s $100 less than I expected for, oddly, 30 more kwhrs than my last bill and about $75 less.  They are changing the system they use to calculate the power usage here.  Looks like with good results.  Good thing too, the apartment next door looks like it was abandoned because my neighbor couldn’t afford her bill.  Nothing like outrageous power bills to scare off tenants.

“It’s not like you have poofed out of existence because the evil IAU has downgraded your status.” mentioned Sailor Moon as she tried to console her sister.
“But I’ve lost all my powers! How can I go and fight bad guys without my planet powers?” cried Sailor Pluto. “I was so looking forward to having new sisters like Charon and Ceres, maybe even Xena. That would have just rocked! Now I feel exiled and all alone”
“Don’t feel all that bad, you will get your own class of objects, your own realm to rule in the outer solar system…”
Sailor Pluto lifted her head, “It’s not the same!” And continued sobbing.

Pluto is no longer officially a planet.  The drama is over.  Sorry all you third graders out there.  Yes, I too put together a model of the known Solar System when I was in Third grade with of course, Pluto in the very end.  I have fond memories of painting styrofoam balls and putting them on little metal stands and stringing them across the entire classroom to represent a scaled distance from the sun.  I feel your pain.

From the BBC website
The Actual IAU Resolution