STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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BATMAN vs DARTH VADER - Super Power Beat Down

"I underestimate... nothing"

A new episode of Machinima's Super Power Beat Down has been released, and this one pits Batman against Darth Vader! This is an exciting episode that I think fans are really going to love. The quality of this web-series is always impressive, but this is definitely one of the best ones that they've unleashed.

The 14th episode of Super Power Beat Down is also far and away the best-looking and most epic episode ever - Batman vs. Darth Vader. This will be Batman's third appearance and Darth Vadar's second appearance in the beloved live-action series that pits two super powered legends in a winner-take-all battle - with the victor determined by more than a 1/4 million fans who cast their votes on the SPBD home page. The Caped Crusader is currently 1-1 on SPBD, with a decisive victory over Deadpool and a crushing defeat at the hands of Wolverine. Vader, meanwhile won his only death match as he took down Gandalf in 2012.

Today, fans gave chosen between the power of the Dark Side and the Dark Knight in the most anticipated SPBD ever. Batman races to the Death Star to save an ally, but Vader stands in his way. It's the biggest battle yet of SPBD, featuring the Batplane, lightsabers, Stormtroopers, and of course, the Force.

This episode was directed by filmmaker Aaron Shoenke, who is best known for his independent Batman-genre fan films, and it stars Kevin Porter (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, The Chronicles of Curtis Tucker) as Batman.

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Rare Footage Of Massive Waterspouts Connecting The Ocean To The Sky

Tornadoes terrify me. Being sucked into the sky never to return again was a recurring childhood nightmare of mine, one that felt extremely realistic. Which is why I shiver at the sight of these massive waterspouts. I imagine myself on a boat, being lifted up by some massive force, surrounded by sharks trying to bite me.

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AUSSIES: JB Hi-Fi Is Selling The Microsoft Surface 2 For Cheap

Love a bargain? You’d better move quickly on this one, then. JB Hi-Fi is dropping the prices on its range of Microsoft Surface 2 convertibles, down from over $500 at launch to just $298 now.

JB Hi-Fi is flogging its remaining 32GB and 64GB Surface 2 units for $298 and $398 respectively. Other than the storage available, both have exactly the same spec: a 10.6-inch tablet, built by Microsoft and running Windows RT 8.1. It’s packing a brand-spanking new quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor clocked at 1.7GHz, complete with 2GB of RAM, either 32GB or 64GB storage options and an expandable MicroSD card slot. There’s also a USB 3.0 port on the side to supercharge your peripheral experience.

We loved the Surface 2 when it came out, from a hardware perspective. Unfortunately, from a software perspective it’s running Windows RT, which means you can’t install legacy apps, only apps available from the Windows Store. Thankfully, there are more than ever available these days, but it’s still leaves a bit to be desired.

Regardless, it’s still one of the better large tablets you can get for your money considering its spec versus the current price. Just don’t be disappointed when you can’t load it up with all the apps your Windows laptop can use.

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Glacier National Park Is On Track To Be Glacier-Free By 2030

When Glacier National Park was dedicated in 1910, this stunning span of the Rocky Mountains on the Montana-Canadian border counted over 150 thick, morphing ice sheets that gave the park its name. One very warm century later, there are only 26 glaciers here. And by 2030, scientists warn, that number could be zero.

One computer-based climate model by USGS scientists predicts that many of the park’s largest glaciers will be gone by 2030. It may even be sooner, as many of the glaciers are retreating much faster than first anticipated.

This ongoing report by the USGS has been studying the dramatic retreat of the glaciers in Glacier National Park as a notable way to examine the larger changing climate. Due to the extremely sensitive nature of the glacier itself, which is more like a living, moving organism than most other natural features, glaciers act as a kind of visual indicator for long-term weather patterns.

Glaciers require a certain number of below-freezing days and inches of snowfall annually in order to stay healthy. Over the last few decades, the mean temperature in the Glacier National Park area has risen about 1.33C and the predominant form of precipitation has been rain, causing the dramatic melt-offs without any chance to for the glaciers to reform.

Although scientists have been examining the park using satellite information and other scientific data, it turns out the the retreat of the glaciers has been well-documented with another more low-tech method. The USGS’s Repeat Photography Project has been working since 1997 to restage historic photos taken of glaciers a century ago as a way to compare ice levels.

You can scroll through dozens of then-and-now images of what were once massive ice fields, originally captured by photographers who were working to publicize the park’s beauty. In almost every instance, the after photos — which were taken at the same time of year, after the surrounding snow had melted — feature barren fields of vegetation where glaciers once existed.

Losing Glacier’s glaciers is not just sad for the park. It’s likely a larger indicator of what’s happening in alpine areas around the world. Glaciers also play an especially important role in the ecosystem because they act as both water reservoirs and temperature regulators for large regions, which can cause drought or wipe out certain species at lower elevations. Glacier National Park might be a misnomer in a few decades, but the impact will be felt on a much larger scale.

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Cape Watch: Wonder Woman Gets a Director and Jared Leto Gets Coy About the Joker

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … Oh, it is a plane, actually. It’s carrying everyone off to their Thanksgiving destinations. With the holidays just around the corner, Cape Watch has arrived on the scene just a little earlier than usual to ensure that you have something to distract you while you try and sit and patiently wait for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer (yes, we know that’s what you’re all really thinking about).

Whether it’s turkey, tofurky, or Millennium Falcons on your mind, there are still some superhero stories you ought to read, though. I’ve got a couple of announcements about movies you won’t see for at least a couple of years, tales of a female director for Wonder Woman, and Jared Leto’s best attempt at distraction from the topic at hand. Here are the highlights of the week’s superhero news.

SUPER IDEA: Michelle MacLaren Is the Woman Behind Wonder Woman

After having been rumored for a while, news broke earlier this week that Breaking Bad and Walking Dead director Michelle MacLaren had signed on to develop and direct 2017’s Wonder Woman movie for Warner Bros. Gal Gadot, of course, will play the lead following her debut as the character in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Why this is super: As we said back when MacLaren was first linked to the gig, she’s a great director and it’s good to see Warners make choices for its superhero movies that are both unexpected and smart. Plus, you know, it’s not uncool that a woman is responsible for bringing the first female-led superhero movie in over a decade to the screen.

SUPER IDEA: The X-Men’s New Bad Guy Looks A Little Familiar

Oscar Isaac is going to be a busy man over the next few years. In addition to being part of next year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Variety broke the news this week that he’s also signed on to play the villainous Apocalypse in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Just think: We all knew him back when he was a nameless bad guy inThe Bourne Legacy. (No, really, he was.)

Why this is super: Isaac’s star has been on the rise for awhile—definitely since his appearance in Inside Llewyn Davis—and the fact that he’s now juggling a couple of franchises is proof of that. Of course, this means we also have to start wondering if his signing on to this movie means that he won’t be making an appearance in Star Wars: Episode VIII, or whether there’s simply no schedule conflict between the two projects. Wait, was this story an unintentional, unknowing and accidental spoiler?

SUPER IDEA: Nebula as the Boba Fett of the Marvel Universe

For those who felt that Karen Gillan’s blue-skinned cyborg assassin got a little bit lost in this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy, it looks like director James Gunn might agree with you. Talking to Yahoo! Movies, Gunn said that he has “so many plans” for the character, adding that “she’s the Boba Fett of the movie, she’s the one that you really dig, she’s the cool one that we need to get more of.”

Why this is super: First of all, let’s be honest: Nebula was kind of wasted inGuardians (with the arguable exception of her fight with Gamora), so actually managing to do something with her in future movies is definitely a good thing. But comparing her to Boba Fett, James? Really? Are you telling us that she’s going to end up getting hit in the back and flying into a hole in the ground, making all her fans wonder what in the name of hell just happened? Because that wouldn’t be a good idea. (Yes, we are still bitter about what happened to Boba Fett in Return of the Jedi, why do you ask?)

SUPER IDEA: Jared Leto Playing Coy About Those Joker Rumors

What happens when you ask Jared Leto about the persistent rumors that he’s going to play the Joker in David Ayer’s 2016 movie Suicide Squad? Apparently, the answer is: “He tries to distract you by making you think of movies from the last century.”

Why this is super: Is this super? Is it villainy? We honestly don’t even know. But suddenly we’ve got this unexpected desire to see Brad Pitt play the Joker instead, and we’re pretty sure that’s not what anyone intended.

SUPER IDEA: Captain America: Civil War Might Get Another Bad Guy

It feels like it was just last week that we learned that Daniel Bruhl had signed on to the third Captain America movie to play a mysterious villain. Now Frank Grillo is hinting that he’s going to reprise his Captain America: The Winter Soldier heavy in the movie as well, teasing Entertainment Weekly by saying “it sounds like this Civil War is going to be pretty interesting.”

Why this is super: For fans of Cap’s comic book mythology, the combination of the Civil War storyline and a return for Grillo’s “Crossbones” adds up to one clear outcome: the death of Steve Rogers. It was, after all, Crossbones who did the deed in the comics immediately after the end of the Civil War series—but does Marvel Studios really want to get rid of Chris Evans so quickly?

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Thanksgiving Used to Look a Lot Like Halloween, Except More Racist

Before trick-or-treating came along, there was "Thanksgiving masking" and "Ragamuffin Day."

Thanksgiving used to look a lot more like Halloween. The practice of dressing up in costumes and asking for candy didn't become common in the U.S. until the 1940s and 1950s; before then, people trick-or-treated—or, well, did something that resembled trick-or-treating—on the national day of gratitude.

They called it "Thanksgiving Masking."

The masking started, it seems, in the mid-19th century—an outgrowth of "mumming," the centuries-old tradition in which costumed men went from door to door, asking for food and/or money. (Sometimes, but not always, the men would play music in exchange for the stuff.)

By the end of the 19th century, the process had evolved to look downright Halloween-y. People would don masks—especially popular: parrots and other birds and animals—and parade around town. Boys would wear girls' clothing, "tog[ging] themselves out in worn-out finery of their sisters" and spending the day "gamboling in awkward mimicry of their sisters to the casual street piano."

People also got more, um, creative with their costumes. "Masks of prominent men and the foremost political leaders are made by some manufacturers, and large-sized false hands, feet, noses, ears, etc., are also new and amusing," the Los Angeles Times noted in 1897. "There were Fausts, Filipinos, Mephistos, Boers, Uncle Sams, John Bulls, Harlequins, bandits, sailors, soldiers in khaki suits," The New York Times reported in 1899. Some people wore masks that made fun of people of other nations "with greatly exaggerated facial peculiarities."

The mood, during these festivities, was light. And most everyone involved, according to the Times, "was generous with pennies and nickels, and the candy stores did a land-office business."

Though especially popular in New York, other cities took part in Thanksgiving masking, too. Newspapers of the time described elaborate masquerade balls held in places like Cape Girardeau, Missouri and Montesano, Washington. As one syndicated column, tracked down by NPR's Linton Weeks, put it: "Thousands of folks ran rampant. Horns and rattles are worked overtime. The throwing of confetti and even flour on pedestrians is an allowable pastime."

A brief description of Thanksgiving masking from December 1, 1899

Thanksgiving masking was also, for some, good business. Candy stores, vertically integrating, began to sell costumes next to their spiced jelly gums and crystallized ginger—thus helping to turn a practice into a tradition. ("All toy shops," Appleton's Magazine reported in 1909, "carry a line of hideous and terrifying false faces or 'dough faces' as they are termed on the East Side.")According to a widely distributed item from the Los Angeles Times in 1897,Weeks notes, Thanksgiving was "the busiest time of the year for the manufacturers of and dealers in masks and false faces. The fantastical costume parades and the old custom of making and dressing up for amusement on Thanksgiving day keep up from year to year in many parts of the country, so that the quantity of false faces sold at this season is enormous."

One of the most popular costumes for children: the beggar. Kids dressed up in old clothes or rags, playing the part of "ragamuffins"—a practice that became so widespread that Thanksgiving came to be nicknamed "Ragamuffin Day." Parades of faux-poor children dated back at least to 1891, the New York Public Library historian Carmen ***** told Weeks. Indeed, as the New York Tribune reported in 1901, "every street had its band of children, dressed as ragamuffins, who kept in the open air for hours."

Thanksgiving maskers, circa 1910-1915

The practice, however, wasn't popular with everyone. By the 1920s, the public at large was growing weary of the parades—and with the rowdiness and pranks that often came with them. William J. O'Shea, Superintendent of schools at the time, sent a circular to New York's superintendents and principals arguing that "modernity is incompatible with the custom of children to masquerade and annoy adults on Thanksgiving day."

He was right, it turned out; what he didn't anticipate was that the practice of costumed revelry would simply be transferred to another holiday. As a Times Square policeman told a New York Times reporter in 1930, with a hint of longing in his voice, "All I've seen is just about six kids dressed up like we used to dress in the old days. Things ain't the way they used to be."

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New Information On The Invisible Belt That Saves Earth From Radiation

A NASA-led study of the Van Allen radiation belts has uncovered new information about the invisible “shield” that keeps harmful ultrarelativistic electrons from the Earth. Just last year, the probes reported the existence of a new, previously-unknown third belt thousands of kilometres above the Earth.

In a study published in Nature, scientists from MIT and the University of Colorado at Boulder detail their analysis of data from NASA’s Van Allen Probes, which are studying the radiation belts around Earth. In short, these craft are sending back vital information about the space around our planet. And in Nature this week, we found out even more.

In the study, we learn about the existence of a hard barrier at the bottom of the outermost belt, about 11,265km above Earth, and something called “plasmaspheric hiss”. This layer of electromagnetic waves stop the high-energy electrons zinging around the Earth from actually getting close to it. MIT Newsexplains that the “hiss” in the phenomenon’s name is actually due to the sound the waves make over the radio, and that they keep us safe from otherwise quite dangerous radiation:

Based on their data and calculations, the researchers believe that plasmaspheric hiss essentially deflects incoming electrons, causing them to collide with neutral gas atoms in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and ultimately disappear. This natural, impenetrable barrier appears to be extremely rigid, keeping high-energy electrons from coming no closer than about 2.8 Earth radii — or 11,000 kilometres from the Earth’s surface.

In the MIT report, John Foster, associate director of MIT’s Haystack Observatory, described the discovery of this shield as “a very unusual, extraordinary and pronounced phenomenon”, since it’s rare to find such a sharp stop in the atmosphere. He added that the discovery tells us more about what spacecraft and humans can endure many kilometres above the Earth.

Plenty of news outlets compare the phenomenon to Star Trek, but in this particular case, the reality is even cooler than the pop culture equivalent. We’ll stick with the “hiss”.

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The Most Amazing And Inspiring Vision Of The Future I've Ever Seen

None of the countless science fiction movies and documentaries about the future of humanity I’ve ever seen were as inspiring, beautiful, and realistic as this extraordinary short film by Erik Wernquist, narrated by Carl Sagan. Watch it and get ready for goosebumps.

For maximum effect, I highly recommend that you use headphones, and make sure the video is playing back in HD:

Here’s the original text narrated by Sagan, from his book The Pale Blue Dot — a book that, if you haven’t yet, you must read.

For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game — none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few — drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.

Herman Melville, in Moby ****, spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians: “I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas…”

Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds — promising untold opportunities — beckon.

Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.

After I saw it on my phone, I couldn’t resist opening my computer at 2:40AM — when Gawker’s J.K. Trotter sent it to me in the middle of the night — to share it with you as soon as possible.

This is our solar system, not fantasy worlds

As Wernquist says at the beginning, these are all real places from our solar system, recreated using NASA’s photographs and data. Here is a list of all the locations you can see in his film, with descriptions by Wernquist:

Earth, 10,000BC

The opening shot is a montage showing a band of nomads walking westward across a valley somewhere in the north Middle East, just after sunset and around 10000 BC. In the emerging night sky, the planets are shining clearly. From the horizon in the lower right to the top left they are as follows: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Earth, near future

Sometime in the future, a large spacecraft is taking off from Earths orbit, filled with passengers on a long journey to somewhere else in the Solar System. This may be the first large colony to permanently settle another world.

The background is a classic photo of the Earth from space, with the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean, taken from the International Space Station on July 21, 2003. I mapped the photo on a curved plane and replaced the optical flare from the sun with a digital flare to be able to create some motion.

Great Red Spot, Jupiter

This is the view from a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter, looking down at the huge anticyclonic storm known as the Great Red Spot.

The texture of the planet comes from a mosaic of photos from NASAs Voyager 1 flyby in 1979, assembled and processed by Björn Jonsson (as seen here).

Enceladus, moon of Saturn

Shown here is a spacecraft floating through the amazing cryo geysers on the south pole of Saturn´s moon Enceladus.

These geysers (discovered by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005) are formed along cracks in the moons icy surface and shoot powerful jets of – amongst other stuff – water vapor and ice particles into space. Some of the plumes reach heights of several hundreds of kilometers, and while most of it falls back as “snow” on the surface, some particles are shot into space and become part of the famous Rings of the parent planet of Saturn. The geysers are one of many hints that there are large bodies of liquid water under the surface of the moon, making Enceladus a prime target for the search for extraterrestrial life in the Solar System.

The photo I used for the background was taken by NASA with the Cassini spacecraft in 2005 and can be seen in its original form here. For the texture of the moon I took some liberties and tweaked parts of this beautiful composite of the full body of the moon, also by NASAs Cassini spacecraft.

Saturn’s rings

This shot shows a person floating just above the plane of the famous Rings of Saturn. The Rings themselves are seen here only as a mess of tumbling blocks of ice, as the camera is in the middle of them, but their full shape is hinted in the shadow they cast on the northern hemisphere of Saturn, far in the distance.

The Rings of Saturn are immense! They main ring system have a radial width of about 65000 kilometers, from the edge of the inner D Ring to the outer F Ring. That means you could line up 5 Earths next to each other, starting from the edge of the inner ring and still have room to spare before you reach the outer edge. Yet they are remarkably thin. Observations vary from about a kilometer down to only ten meters or so. From a far distance they appear as an opaque disc, but from closer observation they are clearly a system of thousands upon thousands of stripes and gaps of varying widths. On an even closer look, it is revealed that all those stripes are made up of countless individual particles, ranging in size from smaller than a grain of sand to something like a basket ball. Some are large as a small bus. All of them made from clear water ice, constantly shattering and rebounding with each other, making the rings highly reflective in sunlight and so clearly visible to us.

There are, as of yet, no real photos from within the Rings, so this is my best guess of what it may look like. This shot is created from scratch (as in no photos used), but I was very inspired by this photo by NASAs Cassini Spacecraft from 2004.

Elevator over Terra Cimmeria, Mars

This shot follows the cabin of a space elevator descending on a cable towards the northern parts of the Terra Cimmeria highlands on Mars. A large settlement, hinted as glowing lights in the dark, can be seen far below on the ground. One of Mars’ two moons – Phobos – is seen above the cabin to the left of the cable in the beginning of the shot.

The space elevator is an idea that has been around for a long time, not only as science fiction but a serious suggestion of how to efficiently transfer large amounts of mass on and off a planet. The idea in short consists of a very long cable, along which cabins can climb up and down like an elevator. One end of the cable is attached to the ground at the planets equator, and the other to a counterweight beyond geostationary orbit. Geostationary orbit is an altitude where an object can stay stable in orbit over the exact same place above the ground and follow along as the planet revolves. In the case of the Earth that is at an altitude of about 36 thousand kilometers, so we are talking about a very long cable.

The texture for Mars in the shot comes from a tremendously high resolution assembly of NASA (and ESA?) orbital photographs made by John Van Vliet for the virtual space simulator Celestia.

A small side note: As far as I have understood it, the ideal place to attach a space elevator on Mars would not be where I have done it in this shot, but on the top of the volcano Pavonis Mons. With a peak reaching 14 kilometers above Mars’s mean surface level, and location almost exactly at the equator it would be the perfect spot – as it would cut a few kilometers from the length of the cable. However, the area around that mountain did not look as neat, so for purely artistic reasons I chose the Terra Cimmeria highlands instead.

Victoria Crater, Mars

A group of people await the arrival of a few dirigibles at the edge of the Victoria Crater on Mars.

There is nothing really amazing about this landscape in itself, other than it being on Mars, but it is one of many high resolution panoramas photographed by the exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity during their fantastic journeys across the red planet since 2003. With this picture, taken by Opportunity in 2006, I could map the landscape onto a 3D-model I built to match the terrain and create a very accurate tracking shot of the place, and then add a few human elements to make the scene alive.

The name “Cape Verde” refer to the vantage point from where the picture was taken. The cliff on which the people are standing is called “Cape St. Mary”. As it turns out it seems I may have exaggerated the height of that cliff somewhat as I recently read it is about 15 meters tall. It’s tricky getting these things right when there is no point of reference!

Mars sunset

This shot shows a group of hikers on top of the eastern rim of “Gusey Crater”, looking at the fantastic and truly unearthly spectacle of a sunset on Mars.

During the day, the Martian sky is a mixture of a grayish yellow and green (like in the previous shot). But when the sun sets, fine dust particles in the atmosphere gives it a rusty reddish shade, and around the sun – where we on Earth are used to see a fiery red – the Martian sky glows blue.

For the background environment of this shot I used this amazing photo taken by NASAs exploration rover Spirit in 2005. Due to the not so high resolution I had to rebuild the rocks in the foreground in CG, which in turn made me able to do the tracking movement towards the rim.

Iapetus ridge, Iapetus, moon of Saturn

This scene simulates a shot taken in low orbit over Saturn’s moon Iapetus, looking down at a string of domed settlements built along the mighty equatorial ridge that runs along a large part of the moon’s circumference.

This mysterious feature was only discovered as late as 2004 by the Cassini spacecraft, taking photos of the moon from orbit, and it is as of yet unknown how it came to be. It is about 1,3 thousand kilometers long, 20 kilometers wide and at places has peaks rising more than 20 kilometers above the surrounding plains. The area shown in this shot is however, not one of the tallest parts of the ridge, as I wanted to show the moon from a place from where Saturn is visible. As is the case with most moons, Iapetus is tidally locked to its parent planet, resulting in Saturn always being in the same place in the sky.

This was the first shot I made for the film, inspired by Kim Stanley Robinssons novel “2312″ in which he describes a large urban area built along the ridge of Iapetus. The shot is almost built entirely in CG using various maps and photos from the NASA JPL photojournal as reference. Saturn in the background is a photo from the Cassini spacecraft but I don’t know exactly when it was taken.

Again, I may have taken some artistic liberties here in making the city domes nearly unbelievably huge. The dome on the large city in the distance would be over 1 kilometer tall compared to the scale of the landscape. Now, the gravity on Iapetus is only a fraction of the Earths, so such structures like these would indeed be possible. It’s just that there might take some time before we see such interest in living on Iapetus that there is need to build cities for millions and millions of people.

However, as a final note, Iapetus is one of very few moons around Saturn that has an orbit not entirely aligned to the plane of the rings, so, while on most other moons you would only see the rings as a mere stripe, from Iapetus you would see them in their full glory. So when it comes to amazing views, Iapetus would make for some highly valuable real estate.

I recommend turning to the wikipedia site for more reading on Iapetus, for example about its unique “yin/yang” colouring , being almost entirely white on one side, and dark brown on the other…

Asteroid in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt

These shots show one of the many asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. A small fleet of spacecrafts are lined up and approaching a docking area seen as glowing lights in the “center” of the large rock. The dust surrounding the asteroid is the remains of an extensive excavation of its interior.

This, along with the next scene, is by far the most speculative part of this short film. For one thing, this particular asteroid is fictional and although I suspect there are many like it out there, it is built from scratch without any specific object as reference. But also, these scenes, rather than showing the nature of an actual place, are there to visualise the possibilities of human engineering and construction.

The concept is that this asteroid has been hollowed out on the inside, pressurised and filled with a breathable atmosphere. Then it has been put into a revolving spin, creating artificial gravity on the inside by centripetal force. It works sort of like inside a spinning washing machine, only much larger.

A famous construction like this is presented in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “Rendezvous with Rama” but again, I have Kim Stanley Robinson to thank for inspiration here. His novel “2312″ takes place in many of these inverted worlds which he calls “terraria”. In the next scene, I show what a “terrarium” might look like from the inside.

This whole scene is built in CG, with no particular reference used.

Inside asteroid in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt

This shot shows the inside of the asteroid from the previous scene. Just as I wrote about that scene, this is a highly speculative vision of an impressive piece of human engineering – a concept that science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson calls a “terraruim” in his novel “2312″. It is also not unlike what Arthur C. Clarke described in his novel “Rendezvous with Rama”.

What we see here is the inside of a hollowed out asteroid, pressurised and filled with a breathable atmosphere. Like I described in the previous scene, the whole structure is put into a revolving rotation, simulating the effect of gravity toward the inside “walls” of the cylinder shape we see. The structure in this scene has a diameter of about 7 kilometers and revolves with a speed of 1 rotation every 2 minutes, simulating the effect of 1g (the gravity pull we feel on Earth) at the surface of the inside.

This place is also filled with water, creating lakes and seas wrapped along with the landscape. An artificial sun is running along a rail in the middle of the space, simulating a daylight cycle.

This scene is of course built from scratch, but I used countless satellite photos of the Earth to texture the landscape. I actually used a slightly warped world map to create the outlines between land and water, as some may notice a couple of familiar shorelines.

Europa, moon of Jupiter

This scene shows a group of people hiking across the icy plains of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Jupiter itself as well as another moon – Io – is seen beyond the horizon. The scene takes place on the night side of Europa so the landscape is lit entirely by reflected sunlight off Jupiter (and to a small extent off Io). The shot is designed to look as if it would have been filmed from a moving vehicle and with a very long lens so that the bulk of Jupiter fills the entire field of view, like a huge wall in the background.

The inspiration for this shot comes from this amazing photo from January 1, 2001, taken by the Cassini spacecraft as it flew by Jupiter on its way to Saturn. It shows the moon Io passing in front of Jupiter and ever since I first saw it, I have tried to imagine what it would feel like to be standing on the night side of that moon, looking up at huge Jupiter, glowing in the sky. Now, this photo is also taken with a very long lens, so Jupiter, although huge, would not appear anything like this to a human standing on the moon.

For a person standing on Io, Jupiter would take up about 20 degrees of the sky, that is 38 times the size in the sky of our Moon as seen from Earth. That must still be an impressive sight. And from Europa, which is in an orbit further out from Io, and where this particular shot takes place, Jupiter would take up nearly 12 degrees of the sky, about 24 times larger than our Moon appears to us from Earth.

The ground in this shot is all CG with a mapping of different ice textures merged with colours from satellite photos of Europa, like this, presumably taken by NASAs Galileo spacecraft. For Jupiter I used the highest resolution texture I could find, an assembly (of what I presume is photos from NASAs Cassini or Galileo spacecrafts) made by John Van Vliet for the virtual space simulatorCelestia. For Io, I used a tweaked version of this photo taken by NASAs Galileo spacecraft.

Ligeia Mare, Titan, moon of Saturn

In orbit around Saturn is the giant moon Titan. It is the second largest moon in the Solar System (after Jupiter’s Ganymede), even larger than the planet Mercury, and is the only known moon with a dense atmosphere. There are countless of fantastic features to be amazed at in this place, but I have chosen two to illustrate in this scene.

With an average temperature of -180 C all water here is frozen hard as rock. In fact, the surface landscape of Titan is indeed mostly mad of frozen water ice. But Titan’s atmosphere is rich in hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, and the low temperature is perfect for these elements to occur naturally in three states; frozen, liquid and gas. So, just as on Earth where we have a water cycle (ice melts, becomes water, water evaporates into clouds, turning into liquid and becomes rain and so forth), Titan has a methane cycle. Methane evaporates and rises to form clouds, eventually turning into rain, falling over the surface. And this is the most amazing part; the rain in some places is enough to fill entire lakes. Lakes of methane!

Titan is the only place in the Solar System, other than Earth, known to have large bodies of liquid on its surface. And they are really there, huge lakes, with shorelines, islands and small archipelagos. This scene takes place over a lake know as Ligeia Mare, the second largest on Titan, about 500 kilometers in diameter, located in the north polar region of the moon.

The second fantastic feature I wanted to illustrate is the combination of Titan’s very dense atmosphere and its relatively low gravity. As a human on Titan you would weigh about 14% of what you do on Earth, and in the dense atmosphere it would be enough to strap wings on your arms to make you able to fly like a bird. On Titan you could fly like a bird, over lakes of methane! (If you wore some really warm clothes of course.)

This scene is built entirely in CG, but I used this radar map mosaic of the lake as reference for the shape of the landscape. And I also got a lot of inspiration for the colouring from this mindblowing video. It shows real video footage from ESAs Huygens Probe as it descends through Titans atmosphere in a parachute and lands on the surface. There are no lakes in this particular region, but if you allow some speculation, the rounded rocks on the ground, seen at the end are similar to the ones you’d find at the bottom of a dried out river bed.

There is plenty of information about Titan and its lakes available online (Wikipedia is a good place to start), and as the Cassini spacecraft is still operational in the Saturn system, news are currently being updated.

Verona Rupes, Miranda, moon of Uranus

Base jumping off the tallest cliff in the Solar System, located on Uranus’ moon Miranda. Uranus itself, along with a few other moons (from the top left to bottom right: Ariel (here on the far side of Uranus), Belinda, Puck and Portia) are seen in the background of the last shot.

On Uranus´small moon Miranda lies a monumental cliff wall believed to be the tallest in the Solar System. It is called Verona Rupes. Observations are limited but it is certain that the cliffs rise at least 5 kilometers above the ground below. Maybe even twice as much. This extreme height combined with Miranda´s low gravity (0,018g) would make for a spectacular base-jump. After taking the leap from the top edge you could fall for at least 12 minutes and, with the help of a small rocket to brake your fall toward the bottom, end up landing safely on your feet. Miranda´s close orbit around giant Uranus also makes a magnificent huge cyan ball in the sky.

The scene is built mostly in CG, except for the people who are shot live action and composited into the environment, and the foreground cliffs in the first shot which are made from several photos of a place in Norway known as “The Pulpit Rock“. For building the landscape I used (amongst others)this satellite photo of Verona Rupes, taken by NASAs Voyager 2 during the flyby of Uranus in 1986. For the colour and texture of Uranus I used this photo as reference. Also by Voyager 2, NASA.

Saturn rings, view from Saturn’s top clouds

This is one of the most awesome views I can imagine experiencing in the Solar System; floating in a light breeze above Saturn’s cloud tops at night, looking up at the glorious swaths of the Rings in the sky, and witness how they wash the cloudscape with the light they reflect from the Sun. The ringshine.

Saturn is a huge ball of gas with no surface to stand on (apart from a small rocky core that may hide in its very center), so any human visit there would have to be suspended in balloons or dirigibles, like seen here. The atmospheric pressure at the upper layers of clouds ranges between 0,5 and 2 times the pressure at sea level on Earth, so in theory you could “hang around” under the open sky there without the need of pressurised a space suit. You would, however, need to bring along oxygen to breathe and it would be very cold – temperatures at this altitude range between -170 and -110 C.

So, I have taken some liberties with realism here but I wanted to show a person without a space suit for this final shot, and just hope the future might bring along some incredibly insulating material to make it possible to take a stroll on a balcony beneath the sky of Saturn wearing just a jacket and a face mask.

The winds on Saturn also blow pretty hard. The highest speeds are around the equator, where they can reach 500 meters per second, and slow down towards the poles. However, when suspended in a balloon or dirigible like here, you would be floating along with the wind, hardly feeling anything more than a light breeze.

There is obviously no photographic reference for a shot like this and I have used my imagination to guess what a spectacle like this would look like. I did have a lot of inspiration from Björn Jonsson’s renderings of what Saturn’s skies may look like.

For the shape of the Rings I used a texture created by John Van Vliet for the virtual space simulator Celestia and for the clouds I used a wide range of photos I found online to create this 3-dimensional composite. Unfortunately I don’t know the names of the photographers for these images.

Someone at some big studio or Netflix or whoever the hell, someone must hire Erik Wernquist to turn all of The Pale Blue Dot into full-length animation film with Carl Sagan narrating it. I would watch it on repeat forever.

[MIKA27]

Polish Vampires Might Have Been Saved With Clean Water

They were found buried with sharp farm sickles across their necks so their heads would be cut off if they tried to rise from the dead. Some had heavy rocks placed under their chins so they couldn’t open their mouths to bite a living person and pass on to them whatever it was that turned them into strange, frightening creatures and caused their quick, horrible and mysterious deaths in 17th century Poland. Were they truly vampires? New research suggests these poor souls were instead the first victims of a cholera epidemic.

The six vampire graves were found in a cemetery in Drawsko Pomorskie, a town in northwest Poland. The skeletons were among over 300 found at the site between 2008 and 2012. There was one male, four females and a child buried like vampires and it’s possible people at the time may have believed the man infected the others. Legends also suggest that vampires were outsiders to the community. According to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers led by Dr. Lesley Gregoricka, from University of South Alabama, were brought in to analyze the suspected vampires.

This skeleton was found with a rock holding the jaw shut to keep it from biting another victim.

The team studied strontium isotopes in the molars of the suspected vampires and found the ratios were the same as those of other skeletons and animal bones, proving they ate the same foods and drank the same water, making them local residents. They determined that burials took place in the early 17th century, coinciding with the early stages of the first of many cholera epidemics in Europe. We know now that cholera, caused by fecal contamination from poor sanitation, kills quickly by rapid dehydration from diarrhea and vomiting. Any unusual deaths or illnesses at that time were looked at with suspicion and considered to be vampire-related, according to Gregoricka

Individuals ostracized during life for their strange physical features, those born out of wedlock or who remained unbaptized, and anyone whose death was unusual in some way – untimely, violent, the result of suicide, or even as the first to die in an infectious disease outbreak – all were considered vulnerable to reanimation after death.

While the researchers can’t prove conclusively that the so-called vampires died from cholera, the isotopes and historical data point to it.

Vampires fear holy water. These could have been saved by it, provided it was clean.

[MIKA27]

Heed the Warnings: Why We’re on the Brink of Mass Extinction

Evolutionary biologist Sean B. Carroll, executive producer of the doc Mass Extinction: Life At the Brink, on why mankind’s days are numbered.

“How strange it is that the past is so little understood and so quickly forgotten… I have tried to drag history up a little nearer to our own times in case it should be helpful as a guide in present difficulties.” Winston Churchill, 1929

About 9:30 p.m. on Palm Sunday in 1965, a tornado struck Toledo, Ohio. I was just four years old and asleep when my Dad felt the pressure drop and called the family to the basement.

I didn’t know what a tornado was, I just knew that it was terrifying. All I could hear as we huddled in the dark basement were fire trucks and ambulances racing nearby. The F4 twister cut a long swath of destruction that crossed just four blocks from my house. Fifteen people were killed, more than 200 were injured, and more than 300 families lost their homes.

We had no warning. At the time, sirens were not yet standard in tornado country.

After what remains the largest disaster in Toledo history, the city installed sirens. But so many years later, I still get a tense feeling in my stomach when I see a strong storm approaching.

Fifty years ago, we were just beginning to learn some important lessons from natural disasters, epidemics, and manmade tragedies. As we gather this holiday season to take stock of all that we have to be grateful for, at the top of our list should be those who have had the foresight and resolve to make our world safer.

From 1962-1965, there was a worldwide epidemic of rubella, the so-called “German measles.” During that time, an estimated 12.5 million cases occurred in the U.S., resulting in 2,100 neonatal deaths, more than 11,000 fetal deaths, 2000 cases of encephalitis, and more than 20,000 infants born with congenital blindness, deafness, and heart defects.

Thanks to the development of a vaccine in 1969, fewer than 25 cases now occur per year.

And in 1965, after more than 7,000 studies from 1920-1960 that linked smoking and health problems, Congress adopted the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act which required the placement of health warnings on cigarette packs. Thanks to these and other anti-smoking measures, the fraction of adult Americans who smoke has dropped steadily from 42 percent in 1965 to about 18 percent today, saving an estimated 8 million lives from smoking-related deaths.

And thanks to countless experts on car accidents, plane crashes, train wrecks, earthquakes, and hurricanes, a lot more people have enjoyed a lot more Thanksgivings. Seat belt use alone is credited with saving 300,000 lives over the past forty years.

But now, to that list of calamities to learn from, we need to add “mass extinctions.”

Mass extinctions?

Yes, because nature’s warning lights are flashing. In the past forty years, Earth has lost half of its wild animal populations. Africa’s lions are one telling example. Thought the King of the Beasts was protected?

Think again. Fifty years ago, about 400,000 lions roamed Africa. Today, there are only about 30,000 remaining, as they have disappeared from twenty-six countries.

The fraction of species now at risk of extinction in the near future includes over one quarter of all species being monitored including mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish.

The potential losses of species are on a scale that is rivaled by only a few events in the last 500 million years of Earth’s history. Five times during that span, the majority of species on the planet vanished in a short interval of time. Scientists have now identified the triggers of two of those events: an asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago and wiped out dinosaurs and much more, and massive eruptions of volcanoes underneath Siberia that decimated the world 252 million years ago.

While the triggers for these two calamities were different, detailed study of what unfolded in the past reveals a common mode of destruction that is relevant to understanding our predicament today: in each case, mass extinction resulted from large and rapid environmental change on a global scale. Indeed, the main weapons of mass destruction unleashed by the Siberian eruptions included enormous quantities of the very familiar climate-changing gas carbon dioxide. The great concern of scientists today is that the potential global temperature changes projected over the next century approach those that took place 252 million years ago.

But these concerns about climate-changing gases are hardly new. In February 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson told Congress: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . . a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

There are now a lot of scientists with tense stomachs.

Let’s hope that fifty years from now, future generations might be thanking us for heeding the warnings.

About the author: Sean B. Carroll, Ph.D., is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is an executive producer of a new film, Mass Extinction: Life at the Brink, which premièred on Smithsonian Channel Nov. 30 at 8 PM ET/PT.

[MIKA27]

US boy missing for four years found alive hidden behind fake wall

Unnamed 13-year-old in Atlanta was able to phone his mother and tell her he was behind a false wall at his father's house

A 13-year-old boy reported missing by his mother four years ago was found hidden behind a false wall in his father's home.

After a tip-off police raided a detached suburban house with an immaculately kept garden in Jonesboro near Atlanta, Georgia.

They discovered the fake wall behind some towels and it disguised a passage to a space above the garage

The boy's father Gregory Jean, 37, and stepmother Samantha Joy Davis, 42, and three other people in the house, were charged with obstruction, false imprisonment and cruelty to children.

A police spokesman said: "From all indications it appears the child was being hidden."

The boy was seen crying as he was reunited with his tearful mother who traveled to Jonesboro from another state to be reunited with him.

She had reported him missing to child welfare authorities in 2010 after he was not returned from a visit with his father who was at the time in Florida.

Last Friday the boy was able to get access to a mobile phone in the house in Jonesboro and contact his sister online. His mother then called police with his whereabouts.

Police went to the house and the occupants denied any knowledge of the boy and a search by officers found nothing.

During a second search a few hours later the boy was able to call his mother using the mobile phone and she directed officers to the false wall.

Police Sergeant K.T. Hughes said: "While at the location during the second call the victim was able to establish phone contact with his mother and she in turn passed on additional information to the officers on the scene. The victim was found behind a false wall within the residence."

Neighbours said the family had moved into the house in Jonesboro six months ago.

They had seen the boy working in the garden and assumed he was home-schooled.

Julie Pizarro, 37, a neighbour, said: "We just thought that they liked to keep to themselves. You can see the yard is immaculate. The boy kept it that way."

Neighbor Akono Ekundayo said: "Gosh, it was right under our nose. We could have done something. But he was never in distress it didn't seem like."

The boy was in good physical health and police did not say who had legal custody of him.

[MIKA27]

Comedian Does Hilarious Impressions Of Celebrities Stuck In Traffic

Nobody enjoys being stuck in traffic, but if you were a passenger in the car of comedian and YouTuber Lauren O’Brien you'd be enjoying it more than most.

That's because she's nailed all manner of celebrity impersonations, mimicking the likes of Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Sofia Vergara, Katie Holmes and even Lois Griffin from The Family Guy.

[MIKA27]

The American Diesel Plane That Could Bring Private Flight to China

If you’re the kind of person that tends to notice these things, a fair weather weekend stroll in any Chinese city or town lacks a distinct sound: the buzzing of light propeller aircraft in the sky. Outside the commercial and military realms, aviation is strictly limited, and private citizens who just want to take to the air have few options. That’s problematic, since booming growth in the country’s airline industry has generated a need for pilots, and it’s easier to recruit when you’ve got a population of men and women who already know how to fly.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that the majority of Chinese airspace is controlled by the military, and thus hard to access. Any fix on that front would come from the government (and rumor has it an overhaul is in the works), but a new plane from American-Chinese company Mooney could help address the other problems that are holding back Chinese aviation.

One problem is that airplane fuel is not only in limited supply, it’s extremely expensive—about double what it costs in the US. That makes training pilots costly and impractical (many learn to fly outside the country) in a place where flying even with a license is tricky. The Mooney M10, announced at China’s Zhuhai Airshow earlier this month, gets around that problem: It’s a diesel.

“Avgas is really hard to find in Asia” and it’s very expensive, says Peter Claeys, Mooney’s head of sales and marketing for China and a longtime champion of general aviation (the official term for civilian, non-commercial flight) in the region. Only one refinery in mainland China makes high octane low lead avgas, and delivery needs to be arranged ahead of time. It can cost more than $4 per kilogram (about $15 a gallon). Prices in the US—where fuel is also a cinch to find—fluctuate, but are often about half of what the Chinese pay.

Diesel engines have been around for more than a century but are a recent addition to the light airplane world. Traditionally, they’ve been heavy and offer short lifespans due to the higher compression rates in their cylinders, not good qualities for powering aircraft. Today’s diesels are marvels of engineering with low fuel consumption and emissions, and bulk and weight only marginally higher than those of conventional engines. And now those advances are finding their way to aviation.

In addition to costing less than avgas, diesel actually has advantages for aircraft: The extra weight is balanced out by a lower burn rate that allows pilots to fly farther. Using diesel also means letting go of many levers and dials usually needed to ensure smooth engine running: they use a single level throttle control and a constant speed propeller. So it was a logical choice when Mooney started putting together the M10.

The Texas-based Mooney Aviation Company was founded in 1929 and is known for making blazing fast metal propeller planes. In 2009, it stopped production due to financial difficulties, entering a sort of cryogenic survival mode until it was acquired by a Chinese real estate firm a year ago. Back in action, the company, still headquartered in the US, with some production of the M10 planned for China, got to work developing two versions of the M10: the M10T, a 135-hp trainer, and the M10J, a 155-hp long-range tourer.

The engines they run on were actually first designed by Mercedes-Benz, for use in cars. They were converted for aviation by a now defunct German company called Thielert. Through a series of bankruptcies and acquisitions, the design ended up with Continental Motors (itself recently acquired by Chinese state-owned aerospace conglomerate AVIC), which counts Mooney as a customer.

The company is famous for making blazing fast metal aircraft, capable of hitting 240 knots (276 mph), but with the price tag and convenience of a single engine piston. The two-seater M10 is expected to be a bit slower (160 knots for the T version, 180 in the more powerful J), and to offer 500 to 900 nautical miles of range.

While production of Mooney’s faster and pricier legacy models will remain in Texas, the M10 will be mostly made in China, closer to what’s poised to become the world’s largest basic training aircraft market. With certification and first deliveries due for 2017, Chinese future pilots have another fancy pair of wings to look forward to.

[MIKA27]

Spacecraft Bound for Pluto Prepares for Its Close Encounter

The first spacecraft to ever visit Pluto is set to wake up on Dec. 6 in preparation for its midsummer rendezvous with the solar system’s most famous dwarf planet.

The New Horizons spacecraft has been speeding toward Pluto for almost nine years, covering 2.9 billion miles. To conserve energy and general wear and tear, the spacecraft has gone into intermittent hibernation, often for months at a time, slumbering for a total of five years. When sleeping, it was almost completely shut down, maintaining only enough power to send a weekly beep home telling mission controllers that it’s doing fine.

But now it’s go time.

The spacecraft’s systems are programmed to start up again on Dec. 6 at 12:00 p.m. PST/3:00 p.m. EST. An hour and a half later, it will send a signal back to Earth confirming that it’s awake. But because it’s so far away, it will take more than four hours for the message to reach mission control—around 6:30 p.m. PST/9:30 p.m. EST. Mission controllers will then take six weeks to check all of the spacecraft’s systems and prepare its approach toward Pluto, which starts in earnest on January 15, 2015.

When New Horizons launched in January 2006, Pluto was still considered a full-fledged planet, the only one not to have been visited by any spacecraft. But later that year the International Astronomical Union vote to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet.

At the time of launch, Pluto was known to have three moons: Charon, discovered in 1978, and Nix and Hydra, spotted in 2005. Then in 2011 and 2012, scientists found two more, Kerberos and Styx, respectively, giving New Horizons even more places to explore. One of the mission’s goals is see whether Pluto has any more companions, and if it has a ring system. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope haven’t seen anything yet, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t moons and rings too small and faint to detect.

In 2007, New Horizons flew by Jupiter and snapped this photo of the giant planet and its moon Io.

More moons and a ring system would certainly be exciting. But they could also be bad news, says Simon Porter, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who’s on the New Horizons science team. If there are smaller, yet-to-be-detected moons, then they likely have been struck by all sorts of other tinier objects, like baseball-sized space rocks. Those collisions would have kicked up dust that could escape the gravity of its moon, but not the Pluto system. That means there could be a lot of dust floating around, posing a hazard to New Horizons.

From the spacecraft’s point of view, the millimeter-wide dust particles would be space bullets, zipping by at almost 30,000 miles per hour with enough force to do some major damage.

The New Horizons team is especially worried because the spacecraft itself will be chock full of exciting data. As it flies by Pluto, it will save all of its images and measurements onboard before sending them back to Earth (there will be so much data that it will take until late 2016 to finish transferring). If something happens to the spacecraft, all that information could be lost.

Fortunately, Porter and his colleagues have been scoping out the Pluto system. In addition to analyzing Hubble images, they’re running computer simulations to assess the potential dangers posed by hypothetical moons placed in various orbits. So far, they don’t see anything that could threaten New Horizons. But the worry is in the unexpected. “The concern is from dust from satellites that we don’t know about,” he said. New Horizons won’t be close enough to Pluto to really assess the threat until late April. But even if there are unknown moons, the spacecraft might still be safe because its current trajectory takes it through areas that shouldn’t be too dusty based on the physics of the system, Porter explains.

In the worst-case scenario, and New Horizons finds itself in perilous space, the team can position the piano-sized spacecraft so that its nearly 7-foot-wide dish antenna acts as a shield. The team can also change the trajectory of the craft so that it flies by Pluto at a greater distance, farther from any dangerously dusty regions. That would limit the resolution of the images, and if the spacecraft has to orient its dish antenna to act as a shield, then it can’t point some of its instruments at Pluto, which means it can’t collect as much data as scientists hope, Porter says. But at least the spacecraft would be safe.

Despite the risks, the mission is poised to return a glut of discoveries, continuing the legacy of the first planetary spacecraft: the Mariner missions that visited Mercury, Venus, and Mars in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Voyager missions that explored the outer planets in the 1980s. Those missions were pioneers, as nearly every image and measurement revealed fantastic worlds never seen before.

“Every time in the past we’ve had a first look at a new system, we’ve been surprised,” said Will Grundy, a planetary scientist at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and a member of the mission’s science team.

To date, the best image of Pluto (below), taken by Hubble, shows a blurry disk. Starting in the spring, New Horizons will reveal an icy world with a wispy atmosphere, possible polar ice caps, and maybe even mountains and cryogenic volcanoes and geysers that spew nitrogen or some ammonia-water blend, similar to the ones that might exist on Charon.

The most detailed view of Pluto, taken by Hubble from 2002 to 2003, hints at how the surface changes.

Telescopes reveal that Pluto’s surface has the chemical signatures of compounds such as methane, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide. It’s so cold there—an average of about -380 degrees Fahrenheit—that all those chemicals are frozen. But they are volatile substances and could be subject to all kinds of chemical and geological processes, meaning that Pluto’s surface could be fairly active, Grundy says.

Yes, Pluto is “merely” a dwarf planet now, but that doesn’t seem to matter to mission scientists. They all refer to Pluto as a planet, Grundy says, partly because that’s what they’ve always known it to be and partly because it’s “shorthand for a big round thing.” At a press conference on Nov. 13, New Horizons project scientist Hal Weaver pointed out that the term “dwarf planet” still has the name “planet” in it.

Pluto is one of the largest objects in the Kuiper belt, a collection of cold bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune and the last frontier of the solar system. The first Kuiper belt object wasn’t discovered until 1992. There are now more than 1,000 known Kuiper belt objects, and scientists estimate there are hundreds of thousands of them.

These objects have been around since the formation of the planets, so they serve as relics that help researchers understand the history and origin of the solar system. And Pluto contains clues about these ancient, icy bodies. For example, any craters on its surface will help scientists estimate how frequently Kuiper belt objects slammed into one another in the past, Grundy says.

This Hubble image from 2006 shows Pluto and three of its moons, Charon, Nix, and Hydra.

Today, New Horizons is still 175 million miles from Pluto, but by mid-April, it will be close enough that its images will surpass those taken by Hubble.

“Then it gets better and better and better,” Weaver said at the November press conference. By June and July, New Horizons will be close enough to study Pluto’s geology. “We’ll have lots of juicy science—historic science—well before the day of the closest approach,” he said.

That day of closest approach is July 14, 2015, when the spacecraft will be only about 6,200 miles from Pluto, zipping by at about 31,300 miles per hour. Its high-resolution cameras will be able to pick out surface details 230 feet wide, which, at the same distance from Earth, would be equivalent to identifying the ponds in New York City’s Central Park, according to planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, who’s leading the mission.

The rendezvous with Pluto will last six months, and New Horizons will map the geology, temperature, and composition of Pluto and its moons, and analyze the Plutonian atmosphere. As New Horizons leaves the Pluto system, it will glance back at Pluto passing in front of the sun to see whether there’s a haze above the atmosphere—a feature that was also seen on Neptune’s moon Triton, which is similar to Pluto in size, atmosphere, and surface composition. New Horizons may also discover a comet-like tail of particles streaming off Pluto.

Even when New Horizons leaves the Pluto system, it’s not quite done. In October, astronomers used Hubble to identify three smaller Kuiper Belt Objects that New Horizons could visit in around 2019. But whether the spacecraft will make the extra visit depends on its post-Pluto condition and NASA funding.

[MIKA27]

Tjipetir mystery: Why are rubber-like blocks washing up on beaches?

For the past few years, 100-year-old rubber-like blocks from Indonesia have been mysteriously washing up on beaches in the UK and northern Europe. The Titanic has been suggested as one of the possible sources - but now a beachcomber says she may have solved the puzzle of the Tjipetir blocks.

In the summer of 2012, Tracey Williams was walking her dog along a beach near her home in Newquay, Cornwall, when she spotted a black tablet on the sand, made of something resembling rubber.

It looked like a large chopping board and the word "Tjipetir" was engraved into it. Weeks later, she found another such curiosity on a different beach alongside bales of rubber, washed up in a cove.

Her curiosity piqued, she began to research the origins of these mysterious blocks. What she learned included stories of shipwrecks, an infamous World War One tragedy and the Titanic.

It also transpired that these blocks had been appearing on beaches across northern Europe, baffling everyone who had found them.

This image appears to show Tjipetir blocks on an Indonesian plantation in the late 19th or early 20th Century

Louise Mamet found this block at Dunes de Sainte Marguerite in Landeda, France

Jan Jacob Westerbeek found this block in Bergen aan Zee in the Netherlands on 8 December 2013

Adam and Marina found a Tjipetir block on a small island, Out Skerries, off Shetland in August

There has been speculation in the press as to the source of the washed-up blocks, with the Daily Mail and the Times recently running articles.The French press covered the story in April also.

But Williams believes she has worked out the source of the mystery - and it matches what the UK authorities think too.

Tracey Williams with two washed-up Tjipetir blocks

The word Tjipetir turned out to be that of a rubber plantation in West Java, Indonesia, which operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The blocks were not strictly rubber - they are most likely gutta-percha, the gum of a tree found in the Malay Peninsula and Malaysia. It was used in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries to insulate telegraph cables on the seabed.

Before modern plastic began to be widely used, gutta-percha was also made into such items as golf balls, teddy bear noses, picture frames and jewellery, among many others.

Williams began charting her progress on a Facebook page, which led to many people coming forward to reveal their own gutta-percha finds, often made when they were cleaning their local beach.

These were not only around England and Wales but also in Shetland, the Channel Islands, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Along with these blocks, bales and rolls of rubber are also being washed up.

There has been speculation that the gutta-percha could be coming from the wreck of the Titanic. "A French newspaper covered the story and reported that the Titanic had been carrying gutta-percha," Williams said.

"I checked the ship's manifest and discovered that it had indeed been carrying gutta-percha and bales of rubber. There was much wild press speculation about this afterwards."

Jonathan Johansson and his mother Lisbeth (pictured) found a block in March in Heestrand, Sweden

Friederike Wegert and her children found a block in March 2013 on Borkum, an island off the German coast

Jose de Cora found a Tjipetir block in San Cibrao, north-west Spain in August 2013

Corentin Perrin found this in November at Brem sur Mer in France when he fell on to "curiously hard" water

Then, in the summer of 2013, Williams had a breakthrough.

She was contacted separately by two people - who did not want to be named - and both pinpointed one wreck as the source. They knew of a salvage company carrying out recovery of cargo from Japanese liner the Miyazaki Maru, which had sunk during World War One. It had been carrying the Tjipetir blocks.

It sank 150 miles (241.5km) west of the Scilly Isles.

Miyazaki Maru

• Built in 1909 in Kobe, Japan
• Ocean liner of 8,520 tons
• Sunk on 31 May, 1917 during a voyage from Yokohama to London by German submarine U-88
• Was carrying cargo and passengers - eight people died
• Now situated 150 miles (241.5km) west of the Scilly Isles

"I was told that when salvage work is done, the cargo they are looking for is pulled out in large amounts, and the gutta-percha and rubber bales have been released from the ship's hold as a result," Williams said.

"So both my sources told me that shipwreck is where those items are mainly coming from. I've been shown evidence supporting this."

Walther Schwieger also sank the Lusitania

But Williams isn't the only person who thinks the gutta-percha is coming from the Miyazaki Maru.

The government's Receiver of Wreck, Alison Kentuck, the official who administers wreck and salvage laws within UK territorial waters, also says it is most likely the blocks are indeed cargo from that ship.

"When we are made aware of wreckage we conduct research to find the owner," she said. "We look at the age of the items, where they could have come from and examine any markings.

"Our findings with these particular items pointed towards that particular wreck. So although we have not confirmed it, the Miyazaki Maru is our favoured possibility as the source of the washed-up blocks."

The Miyazaki Maru was sunk by a German submarine, U-88, captained by Walther Schwieger, one of Germany's most successful U-boat aces.

Schwieger was also in charge of another German U-boat which, in May 1915, sank the RMS Lusitania, a liner bound for Liverpool, carrying 1,924 passengers and crew from New York. That notorious event led to more than 1,100 deaths, including more than 100 Americans and is thought to have hastened the US's entry into the war.

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who specialises in tracking flotsam, says the Tjipetir blocks may be washing up on beaches for centuries. "Based on the findings so far, they are clearly being fed into the hemispheric ocean circulation. It only takes 25 years for flotsam to go around the world, and they've probably been around long enough to go around the world three times.

"They're still in good condition after all these years, which is unusual. They're probably one of the great pieces of flotsam that people may be finding 100 years from now."

Ebbesmeyer also said various gyres - or ocean currents - may pull the blocks from Spain across to the Americas "mirroring the same route that Columbus took" before possibly ending up in Florida. The ones found in the North Sea "should go up past Norway, turn east past the top of Siberia, go through the Bering Strait into the North Pacific and go all over from there".

Several people have also reported finding Tjipetir blocks back in 2008, before the current salvage operation is thought to have begun on the Miyazaki Maru.

One person has come forward to say they found a block more than 30 years ago and used it as a chopping board to gut fish on their fishing boat.

"Many ships would have been carrying gutta-percha, so it's possible that the cargo is coming from more than one source," says Williams, who is writing a book about the Tjipetir story. "It is being seen as pollution - and I clean debris from my local beaches all the time - but the gutta-percha is a natural product, so it does degrade. I've seen disintegrated blocks on the beach."

"Perhaps other companies are salvaging material from World War One wrecks too. It is possible that some of it is from the Titanic? I don't know."

[MIKA27]

The Mysterious Black Mountain of Queensland

Rising up from the wilderness of Queensland, Australia, is an eerie sight that stands in stark contrast to the brush and eucalyptus trees around it. Looming over the surrounding green sea of trees is a colossal, blackened jumble of enormous boulders that looks less like a natural formation than something that was intentionally dumped here by giant hands. This is the place known as the Black Mountain. Long heavily associated with bizarre unexplained phenomena and intertwined with dark folklore, it is a strange place long shunned and feared by the indigenous people, and the region is made no less ominous by sightings of strange creatures, unexplained lights, and the numerous people who have come here never to return.

Black Mountain is located in the Black Mountain National Park in Queensland, Australia, which is located around 25km (16 miles) south of Cooktown. The nature of the bizarre mound certainly makes its appearance conducive to scary stories and myths. From a distance, Black Mountain looks like a solid monolith of black looming over the primeval forest around it, but on closer inspection one can see it is in fact composed of gigantic, granite boulders, many of which measure up to 20 feet long, and soars up 900 feet over the surrounding landscape. These boulders were formed from solidifying magma around 250 million years ago, lack any trace of surface soil and have a distinct black coloration caused by a thin coating of iron and manganese oxides, as well as a film of blue-green algae covering the exposed surfaces.

Black Mountain

This black coloration gives the boulders a sinister, forbidding appearance, as if they have been scorched by the fires of hell itself. The rocks are jumbled upon one and other, forming labyrinths of mazes and passages penetrating within the mountain which belch forward gusts of hot air accumulated from the daytime heat. This heat lends the rocks other odd properties. The boulders become hot in the sun, and when cold rain falls on them they slowly fracture and disintegrate over time, occasionally in a violent, explosive manner, only adding to the ominous, intimidating atmosphere pervading the place. In addition, the hot air moving through underground passages and abysses creates eerie sounds that have variously been described as sounding like moaning, screaming, crying, wailing, and deep hissing. A rotten stench also reportedly seeps from somewhere far below the surface from time to time.

With such a creepy appearance and demeanor, perhaps it is no surprise that Black Mountain has a long history of dark legends and myths. The Kuku Nyungkal people of the region have long shunned the mountain, calling it Kalkajaka, meaning “the place of the spear” and sometimes translated simply as “The Mountain of Death.” Aboriginal tales tell of the mountain as a haunted place, home to various evil spirits and demons lurking within, which are said to hunger for human souls, one of which is the spirit of a wicked medicine man called the Eater of Flesh. Stories tell of any unfortunate to approach the mountain being dragged to their deaths within its bowels by spectral hands, and shadowy ghosts are often allegedly seen here. Adding to this atmosphere of dread is the brutal massacre of Aboriginal people at the hands of early European settlers that supposedly took place in a nearby ravine, the ghosts of which are said to still dwell here screaming for revenge. Although there are several other rocks and caves in the vicinity that hold religious significance and are considered to be sacred by the Aborigines, to this day they refuse to go near Kallkajaka.

Indeed, well into modern times Black Mountain has been ground zero for a wide variety of high strangeness. It is said that animals are spooked by the mountain, and that it exudes some evil force that has been reported to disrupt the navigational equipment of airplanes flying nearby. In fact, planes mostly avoid flying near the mountain due to these unexplained anomalies as well as the strange air turbulence that is experienced within the vicinity. A 1991 aerial survey conducted by the Bureau of Mineral Resources to test for magnetic disturbances and radiation levels on the mountain turned up nothing unusual, yet the reports of these phenomena from pilots persist. It may not be so surprising that Black Mountain is also home to a good amount of UFO activity and reports of strange lights.

Black Mountain is also said to have cavernous underground chambers that are purported to hold everything from alien bases to lost civilizations, ancient tombs and priceless lost treasures. Some of the treasures said to reside within the depths of the many caves are lost stockpiles of gold, historic artifacts, and ancient texts. One of the stranger things said to lie under the mountain is a secret alien base from which UFOs emerge and which is inhabited by a race of reptilian alien humanoids that keep human slaves. Those who buy this far out idea further explain that the arrangement of the boulders is obviously artificial and that the entire mountain was built by the aliens themselves. Others speculate that the boulders were laid down by some ancient lost civilization millennia ago, and that this society thrived deep under the mountain in an enormous hollowed out domain. Some think such a civilization is still there.

Black Mountain boulders

Other bizarre tales revolve around the strange beasts said to inhabit the mountain. Although it is true that the area is home to many unique and endemic species, there are tales of creatures lurking here that are far weirder than one might imagine. Within the craggy maze of intertwined boulders are said to lurk enormous pythons that are not shy about attacking human beings. There is also an enigmatic large, cat-like predator known as the Queensland tiger that is thought to prowl the area and has been blamed for cattle mauling and mutilations that have occurred in the surrounding area. Occasional reports of large, reptilian humanoids emerging from the underground tunnels and crevices have also surfaced from the mountain. Additionally, there are numerous stories of fleeting, shadowy shapes that stalk the mountain, but it is unclear whether these represent some type of real animal, a more supernatural phenomenon, or merely a trick of shadow and light upon the black boulders.

Perhaps the most well-known and indeed scariest phenomenon related to Black Mountain is the multitude of mysterious disappearances that have taken place here. There are numerous stories of horses and even whole herds of cattle vanishing here as if swallowed by the mountain itself, but even more menacing are the stories of the many people who have allegedly come here and disappeared without a trace.

While Aborigines have stories of their people vanishing at the mountain since long before Europeans arrived, the first modern account of an unexplained disappearance here dates to 1877, when a courier by the name of Grayner went out on horseback looking for a stray calf only for the man, the horse, and the calf to never return. Widespread searches of the mountain turned up no trace of the animals or the courier, and it was assumed that they had fallen into one of the many jagged chasms between the boulders. A few years after this, a notorious criminal known as Sugarfoot Jack and a couple of his accomplices fled to Black Mountain following a shootout. They were never seen again, and despite the exhaustive police search that followed there was no evidence at all to hint at where they had gone. They had simply vanished.

The disappearances only increased in number and weirdness over the years. One of the more well-known tales allegedly occurred 13 years after the disappearance of Sugarfoot Jack. A constable Ryan, who was stationed in nearby Cooktown, tracked a fugitive to Black Mountain along with other trackers only for the trail to abruptly end at the mouth of one of the caves as if the criminal had just stepped off the face of the earth. Ryan entered the cave to see if the fugitive might be hiding inside, but according to those present he never came back out and no one else was willing to risk going in after him. Neither the criminal nor constable Ryan was ever seen again. In another case, a local man by the name of Harry Owens was out looking for stray cattle and when he did not return his partner, George Hawkins, informed the police and went out looking for him. When Hawkins did not return either, the police launched a search of the mountain for the two missing men. According to the account, two police officers ventured into one of the caves and only one of them emerged. When the lone officer came out from the darkness, he was reportedly completely unhinged and so terrified of whatever he had seen that he could not give a coherent report of what had happened. In the 1920s, two professional cave explorers who journeyed to the mountain to try and solve the enigma of these disappearances went missing themselves, as well as some trackers who went looking for them. More recently, in 1932, a backpacker named Harry Page went missing while hiking on Black Mountain and was later found dead from unknown causes. The list goes on.

In all cases except for the body of Page, no evidence was ever found to hint at what had happened to any of these people and extensive police investigation has never been able to come to any conclusion on the causes of their disappearances. It is as if the mountain itself swallowed them, which is actually not far from the official theory concerning the vanishings. It is mostly believed that these people most likely fell into the numerous caves, crevices, and chasms of the mountain or became hopelessly lost when trying to venture into the impenetrably dark passages. Whether this is what actually happened remains unknown. There have also been very few people to brave the mountain’s caves and return to tell the tale. One experienced bushman who penetrated into the mountain armed with a pistol and flashlight gave a harrowing account of his experience within:

I stepped into the opening, like other Black Mountain caves it dipped steeply downwards, narrowing as it went. Suddenly I found myself facing a solid wall of rock, but to the right there was a passageway just large enough for me to enter in a stooping position. I moved along it carefully for several yards. The floor was fairly level, the walls of very smooth granite. The passage twisted and turned this way and that, always sloping deeper into the earth. Presently I began to feel uneasy. A huge bat beat its wings against me as it passed, however I forced myself on, to push further. Soon my nostrils were filled with a sickly musty stench. Then my torch went out. I was in total darkness. From somewhere, that seemed the bowels of the earth I could hear a faint moaning which was then followed by the flapping of wings of thousands of bats. I began to panic as I groped and floundered back the way I thought I had come. My arms and legs were bleeding from bumps with unseen rocks. My outstretched hands clawed at space, I expected solid walls and floors, but could not find it. At one stage where I had wandered into a side passage, I came to the brink of what was undoubtedly a precipice-judging by the echoes. The air was foul and I felt increasing dizziness. Terrifying thoughts were racing through my mind about giant rock-pythons I have seen around this mountain. As I crawled along, getting weaker and loosing hope of ever coming out alive, I saw a tiny streak of light. It gave me super strength to worm my way towards a small cave mouth half a mile from the one I had entered. Reaching the open air I gulped in lungfuls of it and fell down exhausted. I later found that I had been underground for five hours, most of the time on my hands and knees. A King’s ransom would not induce me to enter those caves again.

A trail leading to Black Mountain

It is a rather frightening glimpse at what can happen to those who dare to venture into the odiferous, hissing caves of Black Mountain, and perhaps a hint at the last things those who vanished here ever saw. It is certainly enough to dissuade most from trying to find out. Did those unfortunate souls merely get lost and die alone in the dark depths of the mountain caves? Or was there something more sinister at work? Perilous crevices, demons, vengeful ghosts, giant snakes, UFOs, aliens, reptilian slave masters, undiscovered predatory cats; the list of supposed culprits is vast. There are few who are willing to investigate further, and many of those who have tried have described feeling hopelessly confused, lost, and beset by a stifling feeling of intangible dread and panic when exploring here. The caves have been described as being complex and highly unpredictable, full of treacherous sudden drops, yawning chasms, shifting, dropping or even exploding rocks and boulders, unsteady footing, and jagged, sharp walls. The brutal heat pervading the confines of the passages, as well as an intermittent foul stench, the wailing and moaning emanating from the darkness, and the hundreds of fluttering bats everywhere only further enhance the sense of danger and disorientation inherit to this place. Many cave explorers have described exploring the caves of Black Mountain as being a singularly unpleasant experience that none wish to ever try again. Most tourists who visit Black Mountain National Park are content to view the foreboding mountain from a safe distance away.

Whether one believes any of the folklore or spooky stories surrounding Black Mountain, it is certainly a harsh, unfriendly place that instills a certain sense of unease and dread in those who see it. There is the sense that this menacing mound of boulders in the middle of the Australian wilderness is a place shunned by the rest of the natural world. An enigmatic place of natural wonder, mystery, and intangible fear, the Black Mountain of Queensland continues to stand tall over the terrain, perhaps just a pile of boulders, or perhaps watching, and maybe even inviting more souls to join its many unfathomable mysteries.

[MIKA27]

MERCEDES-BENZ SL63 AMG WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 2014 COLLECTOR’S EDITION

After winning the Formula 1 Championship, Mercedes-Benz has decided to release a two limited versions of its SL63 model. Meet the Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG World Championship 2014 Collector’s Edition, a vehicle that pays tribute to the world champion Lewis Hamilton and his runner-up teammate Nico Rosberg.

Hamilton’s SL is draped in all black, while Rosberg opted for an all white version. Both vehicles are powered by the same 5.5 liter V8 bi-turbo engine generating 585 horsepower. There will only be 19 examples of each model, with the individual vehicles being dedicated to the 19 F1 tracks that were raced at throughout the year. Not only are the cars ultra limited, they also carry a hefty price tag. If you can get your hands on one, expect to spend around $400,000 USD. But if you want to buy both the black and white models, you can save a little bit of cash. The set will cost you roughly $785,000 USD, and each one will be individually numbered.

[MIKA27]

STEAKSTONES

Do you want to impress your dinner guests and enjoy a live cooking session? SteakStones, lets your family and friends prepare their own sirloin steak. Simply heat up the lava stone in the oven, place it in the wooden cradle, and you´re ready to sizzle away! Several sets are available, for cooking meat, starters, even Asian food. Also available are large sharing platters.

[NJP]

That Benz is a Horny looking rig.

[MIKA27]

Australia's Role In The Global Satellite System Bringing 3G To The Battlefield

The US military is undergoing a radical change in its communications capabilities. Not only is DARPA’s Persistent Close Air Support cutting response times by nearly 90 per cent, but a new satellite-based comm system will soon deliver a 3G smartphone experience to soldiers anywhere on the planet.

Currently, US forces use an 11-satellite Ultra High Frequency (UHF) system called UHF Follow-On (or, UFO). And while the UFO has proven a useful and reliable system, it is reaching the end of its operational life. And so the US Navy has set about developing the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) to replace it.

The MUOS relies on four geosynchronous satellites to bounce signals back and forth over the horizon between four ground receivers peppered throughout the world — specifically in Australia, West Virginia, Hawaii and Sicily. In essence, MUOS is a global cellular service for the American Armed Forces — it even runs on a commercial 3G Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) backbone — and includes all the benefits of modern cell service. For example, once MUOS is operational, soldiers will see not just a significant boost to the reception quality and bandwidth of their field devices but also be able to simultaneously access voice, video and data — just like civilians have been able to for years. What’s more, the new system will finally provide reliable radio communications beyond the soldier’s line of sight. The MUOS satellites themselves offer 16 times the data throughput of the current UHF technology but are still backwards compatible with the existing system.

The second MUOS satellite, prior to launch.

Lockheed has been the primary contractor for this $US2 billion deal, with help from General Dynamics and a number of other defence contractors, since its inception in 2004. Two of the satellites have already launched and, save for local protests at the Sicily site, all ground stations are now operational. The other two satellites (as well as an in-orbit spare) are expected to be launched next year.

[MIKA27]

No, Walt Disney Isn't Cryogenically Frozen

It’s one of those urban legends that just won’t die. Was Walt Disney actually cryogenically frozen after he died so that he could be reanimated in the future? No.

This urban legend seems to have its origins in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when people were really getting interested in the futuristic science of freezing bodies. People of the 1960s were promised that sci-fi would soon become reality.

Bob Nelson, a former TV repairman, became president of the California Cryogenics Society in 1966 — the same year that Disney died. Nelson seems to have helped the rumour grow by claiming in a 1972 Los Angeles Times story that Disney wanted to be frozen:

“Walt Disney wanted to be frozen,” [bob Nelson] says, as casually as if he were talking about municipal bonds. “Lots of people think that he was, and that the body’s in cold storage in his basement. The truth is, Walt missed out. He never specified it in writing, and when he died the family didn’t go for it. They had him cremated. I personally have seen his ashes. They’re in Forest Lawn. Two weeks later we froze the first man. If Disney had been the first it would have made headlines around the world and been a real shot in the arm for cryonics. But that’s the way it goes.”

Nelson’s denial only seems to have fuelled speculation about Disney turning into a Waltsicle. The 1973 book Here Comes Immortality even uses the legend as a jumping off point for imagining a futuristic, libertarian paradise.

But Disney wasn’t frozen. He was cremated and buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California.

[Habana Mike]

But Disney wasn’t frozen. He was cremated and buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California.

Sure, I'm sure he was

[MIKA27]

Not Dead Yet: How Some Video Stores Are Thriving in the Age of Netflix

It was late April when the sole surviving location of Kim’s Video & Music announced that it was closing its doors for good. The beloved New York City video store minichain already had dwindled from four branches to one, but the First Avenue location managed to hang on for nearly five years after Kim’s flagship shop closed in 2009. The news was met with a fair amount of media attention, some nostalgic (Tom Roston’s piece in The New York Times ), while others (Cody Clarke’s to-the-point Smug Film post titled “I Don’t Care That Kim’s Is Closing, And You Shouldn’t Either”) were unmoved by the fact one of the city’s last vestiges of video store culture was calling it quits.

That the number of video stores around the world is on the decline isn’t exactly breaking news. For the past decade, a range of options—DVD-by-mail, video on demand, standalone rental boxes, and online streaming among them—have posed major challenges to the viability of video stores, rendering the phrase itself an anachronism. But just because Blockbuster couldn’t keep its iconic blue awnings hanging doesn’t mean there aren’t some intrepid entrepreneurs (and diehard cinephiles) taking a cue from their digital counterparts and finding ways to not just survive in the age of Netflix, but thrive.

Hop the F train from Kim’s final location to Brooklyn and you’ll find Video Free Brooklyn, a tiny storefront touting the tagline that “Video stores didn’t die, they just had to evolve.” Originally opened in 2002, the space was taken over by the husband-and-wife team of Aaron Hillis and Jennifer Loeber in 2012.

While the decision to purchase a video store at the height of streaming’s assault on the traditional rental industry seemed counterintuitive, Hillis calls it “a labor of love that, surprisingly, also made economic sense.” Part of that is location: Video Free Brooklyn resides on Smith Street, a main thoroughfare of the borough’s Cobble Hill neighborhood, which means steady walk-in traffic. And once people find it, they tend to come back. “The neighborhood tends to be more educated and media-savvy,” Hillis says, “which translates to more discerning tastes.”

Though the store measures just 375 square feet, basement storage allows Hillis—a noted film critic in his own right—to keep approximately 10,000 discs on hand. But rather than compete against the same wide-release films and television series that one can watch with the click of a button and an $8.99 streaming subscription, Hillis is curating a library of hard-to-find fare. “After the floodgates of the Internet opened, we’re now drowning in content and especially mediocrity,” Hillis says. “Video Free Brooklyn’s model is almost a no-brainer: My inventory is heavily curated, but so is my staff, all of whom work in the film industry and have extensive, nerdy knowledge about cinema. Coming into the shop is about nostalgia, the joy of discovery, and getting catered recommendations from passionate cinephiles. It’s a hangout, like the record store in High Fidelity.”

It’s Not Always About Profits

Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber know all about creating a community around cinema. In 1985, the childhood friends co-founded Vidiots in Santa Monica after realizing there was a need for a place that would celebrate cinema’s unsung genres by offering a range of independent, foreign, cult, and documentary films. Over the next two decades, they amassed a large following of cinephiles—Oscar-winning moviemakers included. But then the digital world began to encroach on their brick-and-mortar business, leading Polinger and Tauber to ask customers what to do next. They kept hearing the same suggestion: Go nonprofit!

“A lot of people were suggesting it to us and we didn’t really think we could do it,” says Tauber. “We just didn’t even know that it was an option.” Appropriately enough, they did know that one of their customers was in the business of helping organizations turn nonprofit. He confirmed that their status in the community and the fact they’d been hosting educational events since opening made them a perfect candidates. So in 2012, The Vidiots Foundation became official. The video store operation moved under the foundation’s umbrella in February.

From the outside, one would hardly know the difference. But internally, merging these operations “simplified our lives, because we had three websites [and] two sets of books and it was very confusing,” laughs Polinger. Though The Vidiots Foundation is in its infancy, Polinger and Tauber are quick to credit five-time Oscar nominee David O. Russell—whom Polinger calls their “guardian angel” (and whose son was a Vidiots intern—with helping them to realize the new organization’s evolving potential by connecting the duo with corporate sponsors like Annapurna Pictures, Fox, and The Weinstein Company.

As for the ways in which streaming services like Netflix might impact their future, Tauber and Polinger don’t seem worried. “I feel like we have so many movies that you just can’t get on Netflix or streaming,” she says. The bigger problem, they believe, is television. “Sunday night has become our worst night—that’s when the best TV is on,” Polinger says. “The DVR has done more to hurt us than Netflix.” Still, she maintains, any digital option lacks one key component: “The human connection thing is still really important. People come in here to talk about films.”

A Foundation for the Future

Taking a page out of Vidiots’ book, Seattle’s Scarecrow Video—the country’s largest independent video store with a library of more than 120,000 DVDs, Blu-rays, VHS tapes, laserdiscs, and VCDs—recently went the nonprofit route. Despite its impressive inventory, the Scarecrow team has learned it’s not always enough to just be a video store these days. In October, 2013, Scarecrow owners Carl Tostevin and Mickey McDonough penned an open letter to their customers in which they admitted “It is a difficult time to be a video store, and the past several years have not been kind. Our rental numbers have declined roughly 40 percent over the past six years. This isn’t a huge surprise—obviously technology has been moving this direction for some time—but the decline has been more dramatic than we had anticipated.” They reminded customers that they depend upon their patronage to stay afloat, then saw one of their best holiday seasons in years. But then January rolled around, and business slowed again.

Cue the all-staff meeting. “They said, ‘we are now open to accepting proposals from anyone for what to do with Scarecrow,'” says Kate Barr, a Scarecrow employee at the time. Barr and co-worker Joel Fisher proposed a nonprofit organization with the sole purpose of preserving and expanding the Scarecrow library and making it accessible to as many people as possible. The owners liked what they heard, and gave Barr and Fisher the go-ahead. Their first stop was Kickstarter, where they met their $100,000 fundraising goal within one week. “We were completely blown away by the amazing response,” admits Fisher. “We were not expecting it at all—especially not within hours.”

With more than 120,000 items, Seattle’s Scarecrow Video is the largest independent video store in the country.

Barr is now business manager and president of the board of The Scarecrow Project, as it’s known, and Fisher is Scarecrow’s operations manager and secretary of the board. With the first part of their funding in place, Barr and Fisher can begin attending to some of the items on their initial wish list: Scarecrow memberships, educational opportunities, and even more of parties, screenings, book signings, and guest visitors to The Screening Room. Though it wasn’t part of the initial plan, the number of calls they’ve received from fellow video store owners following the Kickstarter success makes Barr “wonder whether or not another piece of this puzzle is going to be acting as a lightning rod to bring all of the existing video stores that are able to survive together in some sort of coalition.”

Fisher admits that the convenience and on-demand nature of digital entertainment always will pose a challenge to physical retail outlets, but believes the issue goes beyond the idea of instant gratification. “There is room for all these things,” he says, “but it’s dangerous if people reach the mindset of, ‘If it’s not on Netflix it’s not worth watching.’ Because the selection is so small. It’s the same with cable television and on-demand services—even if you subscribe to all of these different avenues, you’re missing out.”

It’s not that streaming platforms aren’t being curated—it’s who’s doing the curating. “What’s passively happening, whether people realize it or not, is that corporations are deciding what we should watch,” adds Barr. “The thing that made VHS catch on in the ’80s was this great sense of emancipation; prior to that, the only way you were seeing a movie was just by going to a theater. With streaming we are regressing a little bit, because once again the sacrifice we are making in order to have the ease of streaming is that we are putting that decision-making process in the hands of Netflix, Amazon, or whatever service.” And more often than not, those decisions are financially motivated—which is fine for the company’s coffers, but can also lead to that all-too-familiar fatigue that comes with scrolling past endless straight-to-video schlock and movies you’ve already seen but keep getting recommendations for.

For Hillis, the issue is not so much a question of survival as it is an evolutionary concept. “I’m unconvinced that video stores are in direct competition with streaming services or Netflix any more so than a free concert in the park, the World Cup, a local film festival, or anything that distracts someone away from my shop on a Saturday night,” he says. “Video stores need to provide some form of market exclusivity to maintain relevance. I don’t foresee them rising again in the age of one-click accessibility—but then again, it’s not like Facebook friends replaced real-life friends.”

MIKA: I miss my local Blockbuster. I remember clearly when Blockbuster first ever opened in melbourne, not only was it a video store but it had quite alot of Arcade machines, Ninja Turtles, Street Fighter, Double Dragon, I'd hang out for hours playing.

[MIKA27]

Sure, I'm sure he was

Please present your evidence Tell you the truth, I always thought he was also!

[MIKA27]

HIV evolving 'into milder form'

HIV is evolving to become less deadly and less infectious, according to a major scientific study.

The team at the University of Oxford shows the virus is being "watered down" as it adapts to our immune systems.

It said it was taking longer for HIV infection to cause Aids and that the changes in the virus may help efforts to contain the pandemic.

Some virologists suggest the virus may eventually become "almost harmless" as it continues to evolve.

More than 35 million people around the world are infected with HIV and inside their bodies a devastating battle takes place between the immune system and the virus.

HIV is a master of disguise. It rapidly and effortlessly mutates to evade and adapt to the immune system.

HIV, in red, has infected a cell in the immune system, yellow.

However, every so often HIV infects someone with a particularly effective immune system.

"[Then] the virus is trapped between a rock and hard place, it can get flattened or make a change to survive and if it has to change then it will come with a cost," said Prof Philip Goulder, from the University of Oxford.

Weakened

The "cost" is a reduced ability to replicate, which in turn makes the virus less infectious and means it takes longer to cause Aids.

This weakened virus is then spread to other people and a slow cycle of "watering-down" HIV begins.

The team showed this process happening in Africa by comparing Botswana, which has had an HIV problem for a long time, and South Africa where HIV arrived a decade later.

Prof Goulder told the BBC News website: "It is quite striking. You can see the ability to replicate is 10% lower in Botswana than South Africa and that's quite exciting.

"We are observing evolution happening in front of us and it is surprising how quickly the process is happening.

"The virus is slowing down in its ability to cause disease and that will help contribute to elimination."

Drug bonus

The findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesalso suggested anti-retroviral drugs were forcing HIV to evolve into milder forms.

It showed the drugs would primarily target the nastiest versions of HIV and encourage the milder ones to thrive.

Prof Goulder added: "Twenty years ago the time to Aids was 10 years, but in the last 10 years in Botswana that might have increased to 12.5 years, a sort of incremental change, but in the big picture that is a rapid change.

"One might imagine as time extends this could stretch further and further and in the future people being asymptomatic for decades."

The group did caution that even a watered-down version of HIV was still dangerous and could cause Aids.

Prof Jonathan Ball, a virologist at the University of Nottingham, told the BBC: "If the trend continues then we might see the global picture change - a longer disease causing much less transmission.

"In theory, if we were to let HIV run its course then we would see a human population emerge that was more resistant to the virus than we collectively are today - HIV infection would eventually become almost harmless.

"Such events have probably happened throughout history, but we are talking very large timescales."

Prof Andrew Freedman, a reader in infectious diseases at Cardiff University, said this was an "intriguing study".

He said: "By comparing the epidemic in Botswana with that which occurred somewhat later in South Africa, the researchers were able to demonstrate that the effect of this evolution is for the virus to become less virulent, or weaker, over time.

"The widespread use of antiretroviral therapy may also have a similar effect and together, these effects may contribute to the ultimate control of the HIV epidemic."

But he cautioned HIV was "an awfully long way" from becoming harmless and "other events will supersede that including wider access to treatment and eventually the development of a cure".