VIDEO: The ESA's "Ambition" sets imagination ablaze!

This could also go under the alternate title "Space Magic as Instructed by Littlefinger" or "The Most Awesome Thing I've Seen in Ages!". Both titles would be completely appropriate. But it's actually a short film by Tomek Baginksi, commissioned by the European Space Agency (ESA) to celebrate and highlight the importance of the Rosetta mission, to explore the origins of the solar system.

Look, it doesn't matter what it's really about. It's just freakin' awesome, so watch it already!

 

This is pretty much how I envision Geomancy would work, being a part of the space magic in Rad Astra. So you can see how I'd be excited!

P.S. Is it me, or would Aidan Gillen make for a fantastic Stephen Strange?




via io9.com

More about the Rosetta Mission to orbit and land on a comet.

TEASER TRAILER: Avengers: Age of Ultron hits early!

If you watched Agents of SHIELD last night, you saw a quick mention about the teaser trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was to air with next week's episode. And then the trailer leaked today.

Marvel, being savvy to a good thing when they see it, released this official HD version this evening. Hopefully, they'll seize on next week's SHIELD as an opportunity to show even more. The film's U.S. debut--in all it's Hulkbusting glory--is May 1, 2015.

Enjoy!

Hat tip to io9.com

Hyperion: Saturnal moon of caves and energy beams!

That's no (ordinary) moon! It's an electrostatic field generator!

Truth is often stranger than (science) fiction and Hyperion, a moon of Saturn is no exception. Besides being a largely porous, ovoid object, Hyperion has an electrostatic field (similar to our own moon's) that can apparently capture space craft, like the Cassini probe. From NASA

Hyperion is porous and icy, with a bizarre, sponge-like appearance. Its surface is continuously bombarded by ultraviolet light from the sun and exposed to a rain of charged particles -- electrons and ions -- within the invisible bubble generated by Saturn's magnetic field, called the magnetosphere. The researchers think Hyperion's exposure to this hostile space environment is the source of the particle beam that struck Cassini.

Measurements made by several of Cassini's instruments during a close encounter with Hyperion on September 26, 2005, indicate that something unexpected took place in the charged particle environment around the spacecraft. Among those instruments, the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) detected that the spacecraft was magnetically connected to the surface of Hyperion for a brief period, allowing electrons to escape from the moon toward the robotic probe.

This raises the question of whether other bodies in the solar system have similar properties. Imagine the possibilities in your own games, stories, projects for objects that might pose a Bermuda Triangle-like danger to explores caught unawares. First they're caught in a natural tractor beam (of sorts) and then pulled down into the cavernous interiors. "Moon-as-monster" has a neat ring to it, is all I'm saying!

Via NASA

Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

More about the Cassini mission:

• http://www.nasa.gov/cassini
• http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Asteroids are good for lots of things

Tired of the same old space rock tumbling around in your home star system?

"Aw hell, who forgot to wind the wheel this morning?!"

Asteroid base - Captured asteroid serves as a space-based port; they can be dug into to provide cover, even disguised to appear as a regular 'ol space rock.

Mazes - Asteroids make for great zero-G labyrinths of any scale, including startfighter-sized tunnels if not the traditional humanoid-sized dungeon crawl.

Really big projectiles - Starship Troopers taught us they could be used as ammo for massive rail-gun type weapons with catastrophic consequences.

The trip to Grandma's just became one boring car ride.

Raw materials - That giant habitable ring around the sun needs ore! Where do you think it's going to come from? The value of an asteroid's mineral content has been valued in the trillions (today's dollars). Asteroids = treasure!

Colonization - Panspermia is the theory that life was seeded from space, via comets and/or asteroids. What happens when life already exists on a world that's about to be to get hit?

"Can I hang with you guys? Do you want to ride on my event horizon? Hey, where ya going? You know you can't escape, right?"

Food - Need to feed that rock-munching space kaiju? How about that stellar fragment that keeps following you around--or that sentient black hole that won't shut up?

Interdimensional jump gate - Buckaroo Banzai traveled through solid objects to breach the 8th dimension. What if phasing through rocks (or some sort of mineral found in them) were the only way (or easiest/quickest way) to travel between dimensions.

They remember what you did with the garden hose.

Insectoid alien nest - Weaving together several asteroids to make a hive or digging into the rocks to hollow them out for an alien ant nest.

Giant space geodes - Ultra rare jackpots for space miners or as a container for micro "Hollow Earth" adventures.

Monster - Space rocks need love too. And when they don't get it, they get angry, maybe even a little hostile. Think how many rocks there are between Mars and Jupiter that might have it out for us...WE'RE SURROUNDED!

Suggest more in the comments below, please!

TRAILER: "Interstellar" is out to save humanity

Interstellar is coming out on IMAX, of course. And SUPER, MEGA IMAX. There's a list of theaters where you can catch it on the even BIGGER, big screen. Also, check out this summary on the different film formats.*

Check out the awesome trailer: