In a previous article on science-fiction weapons systems we talked about the Relativistic Kill Weapon: a massive object accelerated to near light speed…
Before his literary descent into self-indulgent sprawl, Robert Heinlein used to write with verve and passion. His ‘Starship Troopers‘ worked on so many…
I recently had a chance to view the half-hour video, “The ‘Something from Nothing’ Universe” with its subtitle: “Exposing the supernatural phenomena behind…
Michael Shermer’s ‘Skeptic’ column in Scientific American is billed as “Viewing the world with a rational eye”. In his latest piece ‘The Myth…
In Greg Egan’s ‘Permutation City’ Paul Durham copies his consciousness into a computing substrate. While technically awesome, this may seem to you conceptually…
When the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted, America was abruptly catapulted to third world status. Brad Sheridan, ex-rich kid, was reduced to hustling a life…
“The logistic computer calculates that we have about a 62% chance of success, should we attempt to destroy the enemy base. Unfortunately, we…
Quantum mechanics is everywhere in science fiction but in some ways a passing familiarity with the weird phenomena can even detract from real…
A rotating black hole can generate huge amounts of energy for a sufficiently high-tech civilization. Outside the spherical event horizon lies an ellipsoidal…
On Wednesday April 6th Fermilab at Chicago reported an anomaly. Their Tevatron accelerator smashes protons and antiprotons at relativistic speeds and measures what…
The classic era of hard science fiction was distinguished by its setting, usually characterised by extreme physics or engineering: tidal forces around a neutron…
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva is now up and running but instead of being delighted, many theoretical physicists are beginning…
BBC 1’s new SF drama series ‘Outcasts’ features a group of ‘courageous pioneers’ who have left a dying earth for a new beginning…
‘Leviathans of Jupiter’ is the follow-on novel from Ben Bova’s ‘Jupiter’. In that novel scientist Grant Archer led a team to research life-forms…
Once the families were gods of power, the pantheons of the Scandinavians, Greeks and Hindus; the Persians, Gauls and Hittites; the Latins and…