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The Mystery of Methane on Mars and Titan
The Mystery of Methane on Mars & Titan By Sushil K. Atreya MARS has long been thought of as a possible abode of life. The discovery of methane in its atmosphere has rekindled those visions. The visible face of Mars looks nearly static, apart from a few wispy clouds (white). But the methane hints at a beehive of biological or geochemical activity underground. Of all the planets in the solar system other than Earth, own way, revealing either that we are not alone in the universe Mars has arguably the greatest potential for life, either extinct or that both Mars and Titan harbor large underground bodies or extant. It resembles Earth in so many ways: its formation of water together with unexpected levels of geochemical activ- process, its early climate history, its reservoirs of water, its vol- ity. Understanding the origin and fate of methane on these bod- canoes and other geologic processes. Microorganisms would fit ies will provide crucial clues to the processes that shape the right in. Another planetary body, Saturn’s largest moon Titan, formation, evolution and habitability of terrestrial worlds in also routinely comes up in discussions of extraterrestrial biology. this solar system and possibly in others. In its primordial past, Titan possessed conditions conducive to Methane (CH4) is abundant on the giant planets—Jupiter, the formation of molecular precursors of life, and some scientists Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—where it was the product of chem- believe it may have been alive then and might even be alive now. ical processing of primordial solar nebula material. On Earth, To add intrigue to these possibilities, astronomers studying though, methane is special. -
Last and First Men
LAST AND FIRST MEN A STORY OF THE NEAR AND FAR FUTURE by W. Olaf Stapledon Project Gutenburg PREFACE THIS is a work of fiction. I have tried to invent a story which may seem a possible, or at least not wholly impossible, account of the future of man; and I have tried to make that story relevant to the change that is taking place today in man's outlook. To romance of the future may seem to be indulgence in ungoverned speculation for the sake of the marvellous. Yet controlled imagination in this sphere can be a very valuable exercise for minds bewildered about the present and its potentialities. Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to entertain new values. But if such imaginative construction of possible futures is to be at all potent, our imagination must be strictly disciplined. We must endeavour not to go beyond the bounds of possibility set by the particular state of culture within which we live. The merely fantastic has only minor power. Not that we should seek actually to prophesy what will as a matter of fact occur; for in our present state such prophecy is certainly futile, save in the simplest matters. -
The Imagined Wests of Kim Stanley Robinson in the "Three Californias" and Mars Trilogies
Portland State University PDXScholar Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Publications and Presentations Planning Spring 2003 Falling into History: The Imagined Wests of Kim Stanley Robinson in the "Three Californias" and Mars Trilogies Carl Abbott Portland State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/usp_fac Part of the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Citation Details Abbott, C. Falling into History: The Imagined Wests of Kim Stanley Robinson in the "Three Californias" and Mars Trilogies. The Western Historical Quarterly , Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 27-47. This Article is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. Falling into History: The ImaginedWests of Kim Stanley Robinson in the "Three Californias" and Mars Trilogies Carl Abbott California science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson has imagined the future of Southern California in three novels published 1984-1990, and the settle ment of Mars in another trilogy published 1993-1996. In framing these narratives he worked in explicitly historical terms and incorporated themes and issues that characterize the "new western history" of the 1980s and 1990s, thus providing evidence of the resonance of that new historiography. .EDMars is Kim Stanley Robinson's R highly praised science fiction novel published in 1993.1 Its pivotal section carries the title "Falling into History." More than two decades have passed since permanent human settlers arrived on the red planet in 2027, and the growing Martian communities have become too complex to be guided by simple earth-made plans or single individuals. -
The Ethics of Terraforming and Areoforming in an Age of Climate Change
Engineering Planets, Engineering Ourselves: The Ethics of Terraforming and Areoforming in an Age of Climate Change Patrick D. Murphy (University of Central Florida)1 Abstract The concept of terraforming, the engineered transformation of alien planets into habitats suitable for human settlement, has taken on new meaning in science fiction and contemporary culture as climate change has indicated that human beings are currently transforming this planet but without a clear plan for sustaining inhabitability. Literary depictions by Kim Stanley Robinson of both climate change and terraforming raise ethical questions about the engineering of this and other planets, while the science fiction novels of Joan Slonczewski raise ethical questions about engineering human beings to adapt to alien environments. Together, they provide ways of thinking about the intertwined ethical questions of engineering the biosphere and engineering the species in the context of human and environmental sustainability. In particular, some works, such as the novels of Karen Traviss, raise the issue of how much the human species might have to engineer itself to pay the price of its unplanned engineering of planet Earth. Nearly twenty years ago Bill McKibben claimed that "we are at the end of nature" (8). In support of this seemingly hyperbolic statement, he referred to a 1957 scientific paper which claimed that "Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment" (qtd. in McKibben 10), by pumping rapidly increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 1 Patrick Murphy, Department of English, University of Central Florida, Building: CNH301 P.O. Box 161346 Orlando, FL 32816-1346 [email protected] 54 Many people, myself included, thought McKibben had gone over the top. -
Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality
Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia 2008 Karen Peta Hall Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Discipline of English and Cultural Studies School of Social and Cultural Studies ii Abstract Genres are constituted, implicitly and explicitly, through their construction of the past. Genres continually reconstitute themselves, as authors, producers and, most importantly, readers situate texts in relation to one another; each text implies a reader who will locate the text on a spectrum of previously developed generic characteristics. Though science fiction appears to be a genre concerned with the future, I argue that the persistent presence of lost race stories – where the contemporary world and groups of people thought to exist only in the past intersect – in science fiction demonstrates that the past is crucial in the operation of the genre. By tracing the origins and evolution of the lost race story from late nineteenth-century novels through the early twentieth-century American pulp science fiction magazines to novel-length narratives, and narrative series, at the end of the twentieth century, this thesis shows how the consistent presence, and varied uses, of lost race stories in science fiction complicates previous critical narratives of the history and definitions of science fiction. In examining the implicit and explicit aspects of temporality and genre, this thesis works through close readings of exemplar texts as well as historicist, structural and theoretically informed readings. It focuses particularly on women writers, thus extending previous accounts of women’s participation in science fiction and demonstrating that gender inflects constructions of authority, genre and temporality. -
The War of the Worlds Postcolonialism, Americanism, and Terrorism in Modern Science Fiction Film
Durkstra 4167430 | 1 The War of the Worlds Postcolonialism, Americanism, and Terrorism in Modern Science Fiction Film Sytse Durkstra English Language and Culture Supervisor | Chris Louttit Sytse Durkstra | s4167430 | Email [email protected] Durkstra 4167430 | 2 ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND CULTURE Teacher who will receive this document: Chris Louttit Title of document: The War of the Worlds: Postcolonialism, Americanism, and Terrorism in Modern Science Fiction Film Name of course: BA Thesis English Language and Culture Date of submission: 15 June 2015 The work submitted here is the sole responsibility of the undersigned, who has neither committed plagiarism nor colluded in its production. Signed Name of student: Sytse Durkstra Student number: 4167430 Durkstra 4167430 | 3 And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, reeling now across the heather, articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly, as it seemed with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. - H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? . Are we or they Lords of the World? . And how are all things made for man? - Kepler In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. -
Environmental Philosophy and the Ethics of Terraforming Mars
ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE ETHICS OF TERRAFORMING MARS: ADDING THE VOICES OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND ECOFEMINISM TO THE ONGOING DEBATE Robert Heath French Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2013 APPROVED: Robert Figueroa, Committee Chair Eugene Hargrove, Committee Member Adam Briggle, Committee Member Patricia Glazebrook, Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies Mark Wardell, Dean of the Toulouse Graduate School French, Robert Heath. Environmental Philosophy and the Ethics of Terraforming Mars: Adding the Voices of Environmental Justice and Ecofeminism to the Ongoing Debate. Master of Arts (Philosophy), August 2013, 133 pp., 1 table, bibliography, 78 titles. Questions concerning the ethics of terraforming Mars have received some attention from both philosophers and scientists during recent decades. A variety of theoretical approaches have been supplied by a number of authors, however research pursuant to this thesis has indicated at least two major blindspots in the published literature on the topic. First, a broad category of human considerations involving risks, dangers, and social, political, and economic inequalities that would likely be associated with efforts to terraform Mars have been woefully overlooked in the published literature to date. I attempt to rectify that oversight by employing the interpretive lens of environmental justice to address questions of environmental colonialism, equality in terms of political participation and inclusion in decision making structures, risks associated with technological progressivism, and responses to anthropogenic climate change. Only by including the historically marginalized and politically disenfranchised “voices,” of both humans and nonhumans, can any future plan to terraform Mars be deemed ethical, moral or just according to the framework provided by environmental justice. -
TIME Space Newsletter September 10, 2019
TIME Space Newsletter September 10, 2019 Dear readers, Not a lot of people would want to go back to the Paleocene Epoch. For one thing, the dinosaurs were only beginning to die out, and while they'd be nifty to see, they were murder on mammals. It would be a good 65 million years before humans got a literal toe-hold on the world. The Eocene wouldn't be much better. It was around that time that what is now the Indian subcontinent crashed into Asia, and while all that produced some lovely mountains, there was a lot of slo-mo violence of clashing plates before things settled down. As far as epochs go, the Holocene is everyone's favorite. It started close to 12,000 years ago, as the last Ice Age was ending, and produced the conditions that allowed all the species we love best—ourselves, and charismatic megafauna like the bald eagle, the panda and the tiger—to thrive. From humanity's perspective, it would be perfectly fine if the Holocene went on forever. But it won't. It's ending now—it may have already ended in the 1950s, according to some scientists—to be replaced by the Anthropocene. The name says it all: it's an epoch in which one species—ours, anthro—became the leading driver of the state of the planet, more powerful, at least in the short-term, than the larger forces of geology, meteorology, even biology. We have, of course, abused that power, fouling the air, annihilating species, wiping out forests and distorting the climate. -
The Evolution of Sherlock Holmes: Adapting Character Across Time
The Evolution of Sherlock Holmes: Adapting Character Across Time and Text Ashley D. Polasek Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY awarded by De Montfort University December 2014 Faculty of Art, Design, and Humanities De Montfort University Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 Theorising Character and Modern Mythology ............................................................ 1 ‘The Scarlet Thread’: Unraveling a Tangled Character ...........................................................1 ‘You Know My Methods’: Focus and Justification ..................................................................24 ‘Good Old Index’: A Review of Relevant Scholarship .............................................................29 ‘Such Individuals Exist Outside of Stories’: Constructing Modern Mythology .......................45 CHAPTER ONE: MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION ............................................. 62 Performing Inheritance, Environment, and Mutation .............................................. 62 Introduction..............................................................................................................................62 -
Catalogue 147: Science Fiction
And God said: DELETE lines One to Aleph. LOAD. RUN. And the Universe ceased to exist. Then he pondered for a few aeons, sighed, and added: ERASE. It never had existed. For David Catalogue 147: Science Fiction Bromer Booksellers 607 Boylston Street, at Copley Square Boston, MA 02116 P: 617-247-2818 F: 617-247-2975 E: [email protected] Visit our website at www.bromer.com n the Introduction to Catalogue 123, which contained the bulk of a In his fifty years as a bookman, David naturally recognized the signifi- science fiction collection he had assembled, David Bromer noted cance of the early rarities, the books that laid the groundwork for the that “science fiction is a robust genre of literature, not allowing authors of the modern era. He was pleased to discover, when cata- one to ever complete a collection.” The progressive nature of sci- loguing Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Comical History of the States and enceI and the social fabric that it impacts means that the genre itself Empires of the Worlds of the Moon and the Sun, that its author de- has to be fluid, never quite getting pinned down like a specimen under scribed a personal music player–anticipating in the year 1687 the cre- glass. ation of the Walkman and iPod three centuries later. In this regard, it is entirely fitting that David has been drawn to science Ultimately, science fiction primed the human imagination to accom- fiction as a reader, and as a collector. He is a scientist by training, hav- plish what is perhaps its greatest achievement: the exploration of ing earned a PhD in Metallurgy from MIT and worked in research fields space and the mission to the moon in 1969. -
Dyson Spheres Around White Dwarfs Arxiv:1503.04376V1 [Physics.Pop-Ph] 15 Mar 2015
Dyson Spheres around White Dwarfs Ibrahim_ Semiz∗ and Salim O˘gury Bo˘gazi¸ciUniversity, Department of Physics Bebek, Istanbul,_ TURKEY Abstract A Dyson Sphere is a hypothetical structure that an advanced civ- ilization might build around a star to intercept all of the star's light for its energy needs. One usually thinks of it as a spherical shell about one astronomical unit (AU) in radius, and surrounding a more or less Sun-like star; and might be detectable as an infrared point source. We point out that Dyson Spheres could also be built around white dwarfs. This type would avoid the need for artificial gravity technol- ogy, in contrast to the AU-scale Dyson Spheres. In fact, we show that parameters can be found to build Dyson Spheres suitable {temperature- and gravity-wise{ for human habitation. This type would be much harder to detect. 1 Introduction The "Dyson Sphere" [1] concept is well-known in discussions of possible in- telligent life in the universe, and has even infiltrated popular culture to some extent, including being prominently featured in a Star Trek episode [2]. In its simplest version, it is a spherical shell that totally surrounds a star to intercept all of the star's light. If a Dyson Sphere (from here on, sometimes \Sphere", sometimes DS) was built around the Sun, e.g. with same radius (1 AU) as Earth's orbit (Fig. 1), it would receive all the power of the Sun, 3:8 × 1026 W, in contrast to the power intercepted by Earth, 1:7 × 1017 W. -
Affective Reading in Margery Kempe, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Modern Fan Communities
Immature Pleasures: Affective Reading in Margery Kempe, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Modern Fan Communities by Anna Patricia Wilson A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of PhD in Medieval Studies Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Anna Wilson 2015 ii Immature Pleasures: Affective Reading in Margery Kempe, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Modern Fan Communities Anna Patricia Wilson PhD Medieval Studies Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto 2015 Abstract This thesis explores the ideological significance of immaturity to several late medieval texts that focus on the conjunction between reading and feeling. Using examples from modern fanfiction to help theorize affective reception (that is, reading and response that privileges feeling), this thesis argues that approaching medieval texts with a ‘fannish hermeneutics’ highlights how ideas of age and temporality structure relationships between reader and text across late medieval reading communities. In particular it examines how Margery Kempe, Petrarch, and Chaucer performed, resisted and played with the idea of immature reading in their texts. For each author, an immature relationship with texts becomes a space of inappropriate desires and emotional excess, ambivalence, anxiety, and subversive power. Although these authors moved in different intellectual communities, all interacted with a shared cultural ideology of immaturity and reading that emerged primarily from monastic theories of reading and worship from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. This study argues for the centrality of a ‘fannish hermeneutics’ to this reading tradition in Chapters One and Two, and in Chapters Three and Four further argues Petrarch’s debt to this same tradition of affective piety.