Google Plus is dying

And I am grieving. It's been the impetus for SO much inspiration and joy--having connected with many, many like-minded gamers, artists, scientists, writers, cartographers, musicians, video makers, journalists, and other kinds of fabulous nerds and geeks, over the last several years.

I feel like I'm losing a close relative. 

Soon Google will pull the plug completely. Until then, I'll be firing up the furnace here on the blog. (At least until the end comes for Blogger--whenever that is!)

You can find a complete list of where I'm at on Where Am I. 

I'll post a final, updated list of links when the end of G+ finally, inevitably arrives.

New logo! Playtesting! Convention planning!

It's been a while since I've had free time to post, so here's a quick round up of what's going on in this neck of the universe:

Saturday Night Space Opera has AWESOME new artwork!

An illustrator pal o'mine, Bill Hauser completed one HELL of a masthead banner and logo for the SNSO website. It far outshines the previous one I did in MS Paint! Check it out in all it's stupendous, fully detailed glory!

Rad Astra in playtest...

The first full test of character creation and basic rules has begun on my space opera roleplaying game. Hoping to have the core rules completed by Labor Day. I'm filling in bits of setting material as I go, but it'll be nice once I finish the rules and just whole-hog focus on setting again soon. More details here. 

$25 with a T-shirt!

Con of the North 2017 planning underway

It's funny how quickly Saturday Night Space Opera games come and go. By the time one rolls around, I'm already working on promotional materials for the next one. It's no different with Con of the North, the local, big tabletop game convention. It's typically in February every year, but scheduling for 2017 has already begun. Co-captain John Till and will be sitting down shortly to work on plans for SNSO's second year at the con. I still haven't written a wrap-up of 2016's games!

First on the agenda: get our GMs to REGISTER NOW WHILE IT'S ONLY $20. It's harder than you think.

Stay tuned to this frequency for more updates...

Rad Astra in playtest

It's been a while since I gave an update here, but things are humming along with Rad Astra. I'm working on a revised draft of the rules, which (at this point) are no longer just an X-plorers-based setting. It will be it's own game. Though, I will do an X-plorers version and I'm talking to a few interested parties in converting for other systems as well.

In truth, I've been testing various rules over the course of the last 6 years or so. I've messed with enough of under the hood that I began rewriting the underlying mechanics. Once that started, it was hard to stop. I will say that having all of those house rules in one document--and easily accessible just for my own sake--makes me just a wee bit giddy.
 
Next week, my regular gaming group (made up of almost all game masters) will dip toes in to some of the classes and basic mechanics, such as how abilities and skills will operate. There's more over at the official development site if that stuff interests you. To be honest, I'm more a fan of setting than I am of rules--unless the two can be combined in some interesting way...

Stay tuned for more Radness!

STAR WARS EPISODE VII HAS A TITLE....

I sorta' feel like while The Force Awakens isn't knock-me-over awesome, it's also not giving me the violent, cringing reflex I fist had after hearing The Phantom Menace. My wife says they should have just called it STAR WARS: Fifty Shades of Grey. Heh.

One thing that I do like though is the subhead font. They've really made it look pretty sharp. It's had quite a history already.

The original typeface...

Thoughts on the new title?

News via io9.com

Rad Astra, where are you?

It's been a while since I've done a proper Rad Astra update. And for good reason--I've stalled. I've made good headway on what started as a setting book for X-plorers--but that really can be easily adapted to any scifi game. Here's what's completed (though not all of these are published on the site):

• Five classes, plus a "bonus" multi-class option
• Alternate rules for earning XP, building skills, and a few other options for PCs
• About 30 or so creatures (monsters and aliens)
• Four playable alien classes
• Equipment and gear options
• Rules for space magic
• Optional rules for building robots
• Three adventure modules
• About a dozen artifacts/treasures
• Various adventure hooks and "news from around the galaxy" bits
• Plus a few other surprises

But, I've run into several barriers this year, including:

100% increase in babies

We had a kid! She's awesome. Like the best, most awesomest thing ever. She's my new hobby. I don't really talk about her on the blog, but I expect as I work to introduce her to the geek lifestyle, that will change. The outcome? My time/energy was diverted. A recent conversation with my wife was very encouraging in respect to reclaiming those resources so I could "work on nerd things" like Rad Astra.

At least I've got my health

Or not. This one nearly leveled me, and I never, ever mention it because I'm a fairly private individual. Also, who gives a shit? Really, everyone has their day-to-day struggles. On this blog, it would get old fast. The details aren't important, but after 5 months and a lot of visits to the doc, things are finally back on track. But it sucked up a lot of previously mentioned time/energy.

Redundancy

Interest in space opera, thanks to juggernauts like Guardians of the Galaxy, has surged. We're living in a new golden age of wahoo, gonzo scifi. There's been an uptick in homebrewed scfi settings and games. I've agonized for 6 months on this: do we need another one?

This all seemed like a good idea back in the fall of 2012. I proposed this idea of doing a pastiche setting that ripped off the best and worst of comics, movies, and TV. It's by no means an original idea--and one that can be done many different ways. Currently there are several projects that are creatively knocking it out of the cosmos. Let's say that I'm able to get Rad Astra out a year from now--it would be pretty late to the party. Plus, I'd like to think that I could measure up to those, but the next barrier has a lot to do with quality...

Insufficient funds 

Money.Yep, it makes the world go round. At one point, I had a small sum saved for paying artists for much needed game art and maps. That's long gone. I'd switched to thinking I would do a gazetter (essentially a zine) and compile it into an almanac at the end of the year. But still, these things aren't cheap. Incidentally, I've considered doing Rad Astra sans art, but really, the theme demands it. And so do I.

I've got no game

In January of this year I attended Con of the North, our local game con here in the Twin Cities. I only had time to show up and run a single game of X-plorers (in the Rad Astra setting). I was woefully under-prepared. It was a complete disaster. I was overtired and the experience (from my perspective) was so bad that I didn't even want to blog about it. The adventure itself was pretty cool, but I just couldn't pull it off. The players said they had fun, but the end result was me going home and feeling like I'd let them down.

The longer-term result was a real lull in my RPGing. I'd even lost interest in it for a while. When I'd finally stopped feeling sorry for myself and my interest was renewed, I found it really tough to get a group together to play. Not to mention, I had all these things I'd written for Rad Astra that I'd been desperate to run--and no one to try them out on. The drought continues to this day.

So what now?

I don't know. I'm all over the map on this. I've thought of doing one of the following:

1. Kill this little darling. It's dead weight. Cut the cord and be done with it. Short term pain for long term gain.
2. Kickstarter! Beg strangers on the interwebs for money. I hate this option.
3. Partner with a publisher. I really only know of one who might take it. I'd have less control but it has a better chance of seeing publication. 
4. Take a million years to finish it and publish it anyway. (Not really an option, because I'll resort to #1 if I can't get it done without a clear finish date, e.g., end of the year.)

"What now?" indeed--besides the catharsis of writing this post. Do I double down? Are there more options I'm not seeing? The pity party is over, it's time to decide. Feel free to offer sideline analysis in the comments.

Rad Astra status and players companion blog

YES, work continues on Rad Astra. The pace is a bit slower than I'd like (the kid is now 9 months old!) but we're still plugging along. :) I'd considered a Kickstarter at one point (or a donation button), but I think I'd rather do something more on my own--though that will take longer to produce.

My two big tasks right now are polishing some rules on magic (which I'd prefer to playtest before releasing) and finding some illustrators. I've been curating an image file for inspiration and to use in pitching to artists. Playtesting will need to be done outside my regular group as they meet rather infrequently and I need to get this ship moving if there's any hope of getting the setting done by the end of the year!

In the meantime, you may recall that a while back I set up a separate players' companion blog for Rad Astra. I'm less concerned with players cheating and checking out the real blog as much as I am just overloading them on info. Regular readers will see pretty much what they've seen here, but in some cases pared down. Exonauts will still be the go-to for those looking to run a game in the setting including adventure hooks and stats for monsters, etc.

Currently the PC version covers classes and the premise for the setting, plus a few other tidbits. But I'm thinking it (eventually) will have:

• A storefront/where to go to get stuff (equipment, weapons, etc.)
• Things they can do (e.g. gambling/carousing at space casinos and dives) 
• Tips about certain interesting areas of the galaxy to explore
• Want ads (basically a job board of missions)

So there you have it, many irons in a slow, but still burning fire!

Con of the North this weekend...

John Harris / Temple

Just a quick note to remind you Twin Citians out there (or folks passing through) that local gaming convention Con of the North is happening this weekend. I'll be running a Rad Astra version of X-plorers. I sincerely hope to debut a few new classes.

I'm behind schedule though mainly because of babies, being sick, work, babies, crappy weather, and ....did I mention babies? It'd be unfair to lay all the blame on the kid, so I think "lack of sleep" should cover all of the bases. Thankfully, we've been getting caught up and I'm back at squaring away background characters and plot for the adventure.

I'm only running one game so I can spend the rest of the con playing and racking up some XP of my own. Anyway--it should be fun!

40 years after Apollo - asteroid mining our next booster to the stars

You know the first man on the moon, but do you know the last? Do you know what he said before departing?

Today marks 40 years since we left our moon. There were many reasons why we left--most of them were issues here on Earth that were more pressing, less costly, or had stolen the zeitgeist of popular support.

In the intervening decades, space enthusiasts, astrophiles, and rocket jockies who've been heartbroken at the lack of progress to establish a permanent human presence off-world have been looking for a more commercial rationale to return to the great space race of yore. They found it in the asteroid belt.

The untapped resources that float between Jupiter and Mars (and futher out, in the Kuiper Belt) contain a wealth of metals, minerals, gasses, and even liquids with market value--that would sustain a burgeoning economy for centuries to come. And those resources would not only supply us here at home, but could propel futher exploration.

We chose to go to our moon to help turn the tide of the Cold War, but in the process opened a door to magnanimous scientific inspiration. The chore of getting living beings to walk on its surface was an engineering and technical undertaking unlike any other previous or since. But on December 14, 1972, we came home and haven't been back.

Mining.com just posted an infographic explaining how asteroid mining will soon become a neccessity, given the soon-to-peak mineral and metallurgical resources market. It's also a story and start-ups like Planetary Resources are trying desperately to convey. They're hoping to light a fire public opinion and venture capitalists alike. The windfall from these efforts could (in all likelihood, would) spur an economic and scientific revolution that would carry our species to the ends of the solar system--and hopefully--beyond.

Click to enlarge

Oh, and that last man? He was Eugene Andrew Cernan, commander of Apollo 17. And these were the words he uttered just before launching off the surface (starts at 1:12):

IMAGE: First exoplanet without a sun spotted!

Feast your eyes on that pale blue dot (lower right) folks--this is the first CONFIRMED rogue planet discovered outside our solar system! We've already detected the existence of billions of others) But this is the first one we've laid eyes on--land it's less than 100 light years away!

Just think: it's out there alone...combing it's pomador...scoping the universe for chicks.

Artists interpretation:

Wait, here's a better one:

So what do we know about the inscrutably named CFBDSIRJ2149? From io9:

Located just 100 light years from Earth, it's the nearest free-floating planet candidate ever discovered. It's big (around 4—7 times the mass of Jupiter), but not too big. Objects more than 13 times the mass of our solar system's largest planet are considered to be not planets at all, but brown dwarfs. It has company; the planet appears to belong to a traveling band of celestial objects known as the AB Doradus Moving Group. It's also very cool. In visible light, the planet would be a dim, deep-red color. In the images seen here the planet appears blue, as light at longer IR wavelengths are thought to have been absorbed by molecules in the planet's atmosphere.

Rogue planets are often dubbed "orphans" having no "parent" star. But it shouldn't be assumed that they're always frozen, lifeless hells, some scientists believe that rogue planets could have their own internal heat that might make for more habitable conditions (think bacteria or sea plankton here).



Meanwhile, back on Earth, there's an effort by space enthusiast group Uwingu to get a book published to help exoplanets get real names that don't resmble barcode vomit. Via NBC News.

Big ol' tip of the bubble helmet to io9.com.

Also, LA times, CBS News, and the BBC.

Video: Space.com

Images: L. Calçada, P. Delorme, Nick Risinger, R. Saito, European Southern Observatory/VVV Consortium

New Lucas video on Star Wars, some musings on possible directors

So I've finally come around to this whole Disney takeover thing. I think this might actually be the BEST thing for Star Wars since it means all new blood. Plus, Star Wars will continue to get the bankroll it needs to endure, and I'm not sure anyone other than Disney has the cash to keep a franchise this big going.

Disney obviously did well with the Muppets and Marvel's The Avengers. The Mouse excells at churning out family-friendly fantasy and fun. And THIS is key, as I'll get into a little bit later. Anyway, here's the first news item of the day...



Above is the latest video with George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy about the future of the franchise. Part one is below:



The Hollywood Reporter says that Michael Arndt has been signed to pen the script for Episode 7. This is indeed welcome news as the dude has proven with Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine that he can write with pathos and still keep things light comedically speaking. Here's hoping he can instill some rousing action scenes as well!

Also, a few of the directors being mentioned (via Collider) include: J. J. Abrams (Star Trek, Super 8, LOST), Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth), John Favreu (Iron Man 1 2, Zathura), and (via EW) Matthew Vaughn (X-men First Class, Kick-Ass, Stardust).

Collider also reported that Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed) is being considered, but I think that this is really lip service with looking at directors who direct more "independent films". I think he's the longshot by 12 parsecs.

Of all of those, I'd be up for Favreau and Vaughn. I think Abrams is a bit too stylized and what worked for the Star Trek reboot wouldn't necessarily translate for Star Wars. And I'm really iffy on GBT. I liked Hellboy, but didn't love it. I think he does really well on smaller, more personal films, but he made a lot of unneccessary changes to Hellboy that I think actually weakened the character. I think he too would instill too much of his own tastes into the trilogy.

The next director needs to understand why the prequels were failures--because they don't belong to the director--so no lensflares, J.J., and no grown-men with lovesick problems, G.

Lucas was under the gun and had collaborators galore to help him with the original Star Wars. Now, obviously not all films end up becoming blockbusters that redfine the genre--but the alchemical collective genius of early ILM made for success. Follow that up with Irvin Kershner (KERSH!) who invested his energies deeply into the characters for Empire Strikes Back, even more than Lucas did in his original. Kersh had the hardest job of all--to take the biggest movie of all time and make a SAGA out of it and then make it BIGGER than ever.

The director for Star Wars 7 has much the same task.

Compare that to when Lucas began on the prequels created a fortress of creatives willing to do anything to support his efforts (some would call them "yesmen" but I think that's a bit too cynical). The prequels were victims of their own beloved master. I'm sure he showed the script to some close friends--but Lucas' insular ways meant he didn't get the creative push from peer-level collaborators that made the first trilogy great. So the new director needs to take him/her self out of the equation. Here's my case for Favreau and Vaughn:

I like Favreau best of the bunch so far--he's great with getting exceptional performaces from his actors and he's obviously well-experienced with big effects. His movies always put FUN first--somethng that's DESPERATELY needed in what's beginning to feel like a tired and over-wrought franchise.

Vaughn isn't one to be dismissed though--he's exceptional with ensemble casts and likewise has the knowledge to take on something as visually effects driven as our precious Star Wars. He also has some serious writing chops having adapted material from Mark Millar and Neil Gaiman.

More to come, I'm sure, as the Star Wars announcements are flying at light speed--far faster than they ever did between previous films!


Images: IMDB

COMING SOON: Insect brains in robots!

Holy F#$%! This is insane and yet REALLY happening: researchers are working on putting honey bee brains into robotic insect bodies! How long before some madman puts his own brain into a giant robotic exoskeleton? Does nobody think these things through?

Apparently they did, in fact, as the purpose is a bit more altruistic. From io9:

The researchers hope a robotic insect could supplement or replace the shrinking population of honey bees that pollinate essential plant life.

Now, while this might sound like some kind of outlandish futurist joke, there are some serious players — and money — involved. Called the "Green Brain Project," it was recently given £1 million (USD $1,614,700) by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), as well as hardware donations from the NVIDIA corporation.

and...

The Green Brain Project could further our understanding of both artificial intelligence and the neuroscientific underpinnings of animal cognition. But also, along with the National Science Foundation-funded Robobees project (led by Harvard University), the advent of an artificial pollinator could provide a solution (either temporarily or permanently) to the problem of dwindling honey bee populations — an organism that's currently dealing with the devastating effects of colony collapse disorder. In fact, the artificial honey bee may be the first of many robots we introduce into the environment to make up for the current era of widespread extinctions.

BUT STILL. How long until we're fighting off GIANT SPACE HORNETS?

OUR LASERS ARE VASTLY UNDERPOWERED FOR THIS KIND OF THREAT!

Full article.

NASA: We found 2.5 million supermassive black holes gorging themselves

DUDE. Don't look up, lest your eyeballs be sucked into any one of 2.5 MILLION supermassive black holes currently digesting spacetime. NASA announced today that they've pinpointed the suckers (ha!) using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope.

All those little circles are really reality-ripping hot DOGs (dust obscured galaxies) with black holes at their centers that care not for your puny "sentience" or pleas for mercy. NOM-NOM-NOM. From Universe Today:

WISE scanned the whole sky twice in infrared light, completing its survey in early 2011. Like night-vision goggles probing the dark, the telescope captured millions of images of the sky. All the data from the mission have been released publicly, allowing astronomers to dig in and make new discoveries.

The latest findings are helping astronomers better understand how galaxies and the behemoth black holes at their centers grow and evolve together. For example, the giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, has 4 million times the mass of our sun and has gone through periodic feeding frenzies where material falls towards the black hole, heats up and irradiates its surroundings. Bigger central black holes, up to a billion times the mass of our sun, may even shut down star formation in galaxies.

In one study, astronomers used WISE to identify about 2.5 million actively feeding supermassive black holes across the full sky, stretching back to distances more than 10 billion light-years away. About two-thirds of these objects never had been detected before because dust blocks their visible light. WISE easily sees these monsters because their powerful, accreting black holes warm the dust, causing it to glow in infrared light.

It's funny, but quasars always seem to come up as "extroverts" on the Myers Briggs.

WISE actually picked up other objects too, including asteroids, quasars, and a whole mess o' other stuff that you probablly think is cool, but should thank your stars isn't headed this way.

STAY IN SCHOOL, BECAUSE SCIENCE. IS. COOL.

Coverage:

• NASA (all images are from NASA, check out their page for more!)
• Universe Today
• io9.com did a live blog with recap
• Red Orbit
• Wired.com

A giant leap home.

Thanks Neil, for helping to make our dreams a reality.

1930-2012

CURIOSITY LANDS TONIGHT!

If you haven't seen this "Seven Minutes of Terror" video detailing the difficulties of landing a one-ton rover on the Red Planet tonight, then here it is, in all it's nail-biting glory:


NASA is running a live feed right now.

io9.com has a great bunch o'links too.

Here's to Curiosity sticking the landing!

Expiscor Eternus!

UPDATE: NASA has confirmed Curiosity has landed safely on Mars. SCIENCE ROCKS!

Ray Bradbury gone

My hometown newspaper, the Star Tribune just posted a story about the passing of science fiction author Ray Bradbury. I think it's safe to say that he was both an icon of the genre. And yet, he also did a great deal of mainstream work that continues to inspire. His writing extended into film and television, either through direct development of his work or the incredible influence he had on writers, filmmakers, and even scientists and social scientists. From the STrib:

His writings ranged from horror and mystery to humor and sympathetic stories about the Irish, blacks and Mexican-Americans. Bradbury also scripted John Huston's 1956 film version of "Moby Dick" and wrote for "The Twilight Zone" and other television programs, including "The Ray Bradbury Theater," for which he adapted dozens of his works.

"What I have always been is a hybrid author," Bradbury said in 2009. "I am completely in love with movies, and I am completely in love with theater, and I am completely in love with libraries."

His most famous work, Fahrenheit 451, was perhaps the best example of his work that straddled both sci-fi and true-to-life commentary.

"The Martian Chronicles" prophesized the banning of books, especially works of fantasy, a theme Bradbury would take on fully in the 1953 release, "Fahrenheit 451." Inspired by the Cold War, the rise of television and the author's passion for libraries, it was an apocalyptic narrative of nuclear war abroad and empty pleasure at home, with firefighters assigned to burn books instead of putting blazes out (451 degrees Fahrenheit, Bradbury had been told, was the temperature at which texts went up in flames).."

It was Bradbury's only true science-fiction work, according to the author, who said all his other works should have been classified as fantasy. "It was a book based on real facts and also on my hatred for people who burn books," he told The Associated Press in 2002.

One of his shortstories for which I'll always remember him is A Sound of Thunder, in which Bradbury used the concept of the "butterfly effect" to illustrate how small changes can have enormous repercussions in the future. A concept that's been turned into not only a well traveled sci-fi trope for time travel plots, but helped us understand how important it is to be more reflective of our impact in everything from the environment to how we treat one another.

Here's to a man who, at 91, was still writing, still active, and still making an impact in the world of sci-fi.

Have a favorite Bradbury story?

X-plorers hitting retail stores with new cover

The admirable space admiral John Adams of Brave Halfling Publishing has commissioned a new cover by Steve Zieser (above) for the next printing of the X-plorers RPG. It's quite snazzy if I do say so myself!

While I was able to snag a box set or two in the last printing, I still have yet to lay hands on an actual printed copy myself. So I'm looking forward to getting a full-sized book.

The Pete Mullen cover will still be available through the end of the month.

GOLD RUSH IN SPACE! Asteroid Mining is Coming!

So it seems my previous post kicking off a new adventure was more timely than I thought: space mining is the next big thing! Planetary Resources Inc., which may as well be called Rich Billionaires Inc., is a consortium of wealthy space geeks who want to start mining asteroids for mineral commodities. With almost 9,000 known asteroids out in the Mars-Jupiter belt that might go for as much as a billion bucks a piece, this isn't as far-out as it initially sounds.

From Wired.com:

In terms of extraction, Planetary Resources hopes to go after the platinum-group metals — which include platinum, palladium, osmium, and iridium — highly valuable commodities used in medical devices, renewable energy products, catalytic converters, and potentially in automotive fuel cells.

Platinum alone is worth around $23,000 a pound — nearly the same as gold. Mining the top few feet of a single modestly sized, half-mile-diameter asteroid could yield around 130 tons of platinum, worth roughly $6 billion.

Within the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources hopes to launch between two and five space-based telescopes at an estimated cost of a few million dollars each that will identify potentially valuable asteroids. Other than their size and orbit, little detailed information is available about the current catalog of near-Earth asteroids. Planetary Resources’ Arkyd-101 Space Telescopes will figure out whether any are worth the trouble of resource extraction.

Within five to seven years, the company hopes to send out a small swarm of similar spacecraft for a more detailed prospecting mission, mapping out a valuable asteroid in detail and identifying rich resource veins. They estimate such a mission will cost between $25 and 30 million.

The group is also planning on using robots to do the mining (reducing human risks) as well as shipping it home.

If there's anything that will get private enterprise to drive a new space race folks--THIS IS IT. And with it, here's hoping a few thousand scientific discoveries along the way.

Check out the cool videos put up by ABC News
More at Gizmodo

Image: Artist concept by Denise Watt for NASA

John Carter Breaks Even

Better than breaking even--the film has taken in about $263,903,533 worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. You'll recall the budget was estimated at $250 million.

While I can't imagine this guarantees a sequel, it's nice to know that at least it made it's money back.

I'm hoping to see it in theaters one more time (second run probably) before it ventures off to the Blu-ray presses.

Life and stuff...

Gah, so I missed Thark Thursday--my bad--but I have an excuse! We're in the process of moving to our new (and first!) home. We close at the end of the month and we're extremely excited. For the last 8 years we've been living in a charming but often too-small apartment. In the new place I'll finally get all my books, games, and geek swag into one area. Plus, there's a workbench (!) in the basement which will end up as a mad science lab for all sorts of geeky experiments!

Anywho, with the move just weeks away we've been packing like crazy to get things ready and so blogging and other nerdly pursuits have been moved to the back burner. But never fear space cadets--things will be up and in full swing by middle of May. Until then, blogging will likely be sparse, but I'll try and pop in when time allows.

Hope you all had a great Easter weekend!

Help Find the First Exomoon!

This is EXACTLY the kind of crowdfunding project I love. FIND AN ALIEN MOON! It's not a comic, or a video game on Kickstarter--this is FOR REAL.

To date, there are more than 700 confirmed exoplanets (as of this writing)--but none of them yet have an identifiable moon. Researchers at the University of Cambridge are hoping to use the Kepler Telescope to find the first. The astronomers heading this search are using Petridish.org (think Kickstarter for science) to crowdfund their project.

In order to study exomoons, we will need to use Kepler telescope data. The Kepler looks at stars and takes photos every hour, searching for changes in the brightness of each star. The dimming of a star correlates with the passing of a planet or moon in front of it. Further, because planets and moons orbit around each other, the gravitational tug of the moon causes the planets to wobble. We can detect that wobbling motion and use those clues to know that a moon is there.

To analyze all of the Kepler data, we need a small supercomputer working 24 hours a day to sift through the data. This supercomputer, like most technology, comes at a high cost, so we would be unable to make strides in this research arena without the private support of $10,000.

They're two-thirds the way there already, but they need help to reach their goal. In case you're wondering, I backed it myself--I only blog about projects I personally back.

With all the creative projects out there, it's great to see something that could really change our world and the way we view the universe. Petridish has plenty of other great projects to back as well.

THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO BOLDLY GO!

Back the hunt for exomoons on Petridish.org

Now, who wants to start the first crowdfunder to build one of these?

Hat tip to Boing Boing