A Backyard Full of Flybys

Apparently there was flowing water on Mars until about 500,000 years ago.
Evidence is visible in images taken by Curiosity -
It's also what the orbiting craft Maven is looking for :
What caused the atmosphere to dissipate and the water to dry up ?


Was the planet inhabited ?
Did they leave suddenly because of drought ?
Did they come here ?
Are we the descendants of Martians ?

And why so many questions ?

Evidence of waterflow on Mars  Newton crater pic by NASA

Anyway, this idea has moved from the tin - foil realm into 'maybe' territory.
Actually it hasn't - but I like to speculate.

'Speculative fiction' seems to be a new category, although the term was allegedly coined in 1941.
This may have happened in a strange parallel multiverse, and has only now come to light.

I suppose that if the future is now, (as we frequently seem to hear ),
then speculative fiction is closer to now than science - fiction.
It sounds more plausible.
With events being 'Just around the corner'.

500,000 years ago was the last evidence of flowing water on Mars.
About the same time here on Earth, we see evidence of interbreeding in the human fossil record,
As modern man develops from diverse archaic threads...
...food for thought ?

Or just the premise for a hokey sci-fi ?

- Deep breath -

Dr David Miller, chief technological officer at NASA, says we are aiming to colonise Mars now, not
just go for a  visit.

This being the case , are we  returning en - masse to the old homeworld ?
I say 'en -masse', but it will probably be a lottery.
Or like the Hunger Game of Thrones, a fierce challenge
Winner Takes All
Survival of the fittest.


I was going to include a time-line diagram of the development of flight, but I'm no good at technical details, so -

2,400 years ago, kites were invented by the Chinese.

1783 was the year of the first hot air balloon flight (courtesy of the Montgolfier brothers).

The Wright brothers made the first manned aircraft flight in 1903.

The first moon landing was 46 years ago.

Now we are on Mars - well, a couple of robot explorers are.
Also, the lander Philae is riding a comet out there somewhere.
Our first ever landing on a comet

Comets were once considered omens, harbingers of news...

I still find it amazing to think:

We have exploration spacecraft wandering amongst the planets.
As well as Rosetta (Philae mothership),
we have the Mars Orbiter (Curiosity mothership) and Maven
Also Dawn which is orbiting Ceres
Cassini is exploring Saturn and its moons
New Horizons heading to Pluto and beyond .
And Voyager 1 & 2 which are already in the beyond...

Cassini anim using Gimp copyright NASA ?

Pictures from our very first flypast of Pluto will be here imminently.
Whilst New Horizons has been travelling,
Pluto was downgraded from Planet to dwarf planet
and upgraded to Planet again.

Whilst New Horizons has been travelling, we have seen the birth of Facebook and Twitter.

When New Horizons began its trek to Pluto, the International Space Station was not a thing.
Think about that for a moment.
The object orbiting the world with spacemen inside
Now such an everyday accepted fact,
was still in its infancy - the scheduled completion date was 2010.

In 2010, having passed Jupiter,
the New Horizons craft went into hibernation mode.
Finally, after a five year journey, it is awake again
Travelling at 32,000 mph (approximately)
We are mere days away from our first ever proper close-up sight of a world so small and so far away, that it was only discovered by its effects on other bodies.

We are closing in on the heavenly body formerly known as Planet X  (and almost named Percival )

What Pluto actually looks like will no longer be in the realms of Speculative Fiction.

So I'm quite excited...

Latest image  from Ceres showing a couple of bright spots...

P.S. Here is a link to lots of new NASA images
P.P.S. I have forgotten to mention Keppler in my rundown of explorercraft , for which I am sorry .
Keppler is drifting on a wobbly path having lost 2 of its 4 stabilisers.
It continues in its mission to detect potential habitable exoplanets in the 'goldilocks zone'.
It is now on a second mission, known as K2.

Intrepid Explorers...

I was recently researching the eradication of the dinosaurs, generally believed to be caused by a comet which struck the Earth,triggering a Hollywood style apocalypse of tsunamis, earthquakes and dust clouds obscuring the sun.
My research led me to realise that there have officially been five periods of extinction in our history, including one called 'The Great Dying' which I thought was a good name for such a sad event. Apparently in  the 'Great Dying' it was mostly bivalves and the like , so that's not too bad, is it ?
I mean , they're not really sentient beings are they ?
Just molluscs really.
Lower life forms are always harder to identify with...

Which brings me to wondering
Are we lower life forms ?

Is there superior life at large in our solar system ?

Yes, full on speculation here, given the ongoing strangeness that is Ceres -
Does anyone remember the bright spots in the craters of that strange little world ?

The spacecraft Dawn is now in orbit
and keeps teasing us with close up, but not quite detailed photographs.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

It's enough to make anyone reach for the tin - foil helmet.
Seriously though, are they just delaying the inevitable ?
Are they desperately trying to avoid showing us something ?
Personally I think it has the hallmarks of  'Oops, someone else beat us to it. '

Discarded heat shield of 'Opportunity' on Mars.

Perhaps Ceres has vast quantities of an as yet undiscovered rare metal, and we're seeing a mining colony.

Then there is the three mile high mountain.
It stands out because it is alone in its mountain-ness.
Leftover heaps of detritus from excavation ?

Mountain near top right

Better quality images of Ceres can be found here.


Leaving Ceres aside for a moment, what of Pluto ?
As we close in, it also gets stranger.
Apparently it has an atmosphere- and methane has been detected.
Another recent discovery, thanks to increasingly detailed images are the four equidistant blobs on Pluto , each one estimated to be some 300 miles in diameter.

Please forgive me as I lapse into pure speculation...

                

The definition is still too vague, but the sense of mystery is almost palpable.

It's only a matter of days before New Horizons does the flypast thing.
The first ever flypast of Pluto.
I'm excited for many reasons.

It almost makes me proud to wear a tin-foil helmet.
But now, sadly , it's time for splashdown...

return in a Soyuz capsule...

Pointless Remakes R US

I recently heard of an incoming remake of the film The Birds
The Alfred Hitchcock classic.
I remember it well.
It genuinely scared me.
I also recall that it was the first Hitchcock film I'd seen in colour.
At first the idea of deadly sparrows seemed ridiculous.
I remember wondering how I could be afraid of such a hokey premise.
But it was terrifying to me, at an age when I was too young to understand the skill of a great director..

I accept that age inevitably creates a misguided fondness and a rosy glow for the way things were.
So perhaps it is viewed through nostalgic rose - tinted glasses.
Even so -

Why another remake ?

Of course I am biased - I've always loved fantastic films, particularly well made, thought - provoking ones.
From the intensity of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the almost whimsical Incredible Shrinking Man.
From the warnings of dystopian fascism inherent in Brazil and Robocop to the dangers of deluded dictators in Forbidden Planet and The Wizard of Oz.

For me one of the last straws was the proposed sequel to Bladerunner.
I'm sorry, but no.
No.

Not in my world.

I've pretty much stopped going to the cinema as a result of sequelitis coupled with remake-itis, and I'm not alone.

There was a brief flurry of interesting leftfield stuff that made me hopeful.
And then nothing.

I understand the bigger picture with global austerity meaning less risky film - making, and with brand identification, sequels are a safe bet - at least until the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

These days, though, it's almost an epidemic.
Remake everything seems to be the new affliction.

After all, they didn't have HD or 4K in those days - and it would be unfair to expect todays precious little snowflakes to put up with old - fashioned quality.
Spoiled by a lifetime of crash bang wallop on huge plasma screens floor to ceiling with 5:1 surround sound.

Thank God they didn't remake Laurel and Hardy.
Yet.

Case in point - no-one could imitate or ever hope to equal them onscreen.

Let their films remain as they are-  black and white, scratchy, some silent.

They are (im)perfect documents of their time.


I know that I must be sounding like a purist or a Luddite who doesn't want change, but I remember a similar feeling when I learned of the remake of King Kong.




I felt that my childhood memory of that strange old black and white film with its stop motion monsters would be sullied forever.
In the end, I relented and saw the Peter Jackson version in the cinema.
It was okay.
But l-o-o-o-n-g, and ultimately boring.
Which is another thing.
So many new films are l-o-o-o-n-g.
As though longer films are a sign of quality.

Puh - lease !

For me, this began with the Lord of The Rings trilogy (still looking at you Mr Jackson)
...and continued with the pointless extending of The Hobbit .

Yet, the bombastic visual and aural assault of many new films is more in line with trying to hold the attention of a hyperactive child.
Is that what we are now ?
Hyperactive children who must be held down and spoon - fed visual spectacle ?

The current ADHD - lack of attention span approach to relentless onscreen action is tiring and tiresome.
Case in point-
Transformers.

I remember Transformers as a poorly dubbed / animated cartoon connected to a series of products.
I always thought it was crudely rendered in a style I didn't like,
and along with He-Man / She-Ra, I just didn't see the attraction.

Perhaps I was just too old.

So, my apologies to those who grew up with the tales of the Decepticons etc...

King Kong was a re-telling of Beauty and The Beast...

From such an obvious beginning as a tie-in, I failed to see the further attraction of bombastic films.
Don't get me wrong - by all means Toy Story. 
It is a timeless tale.

But not Transformers.

Still, Michael Bay.

Directing the remake of The Birds.

Why can't he just film He-Man Masters of the Universe ?

At least I can ignore that.

But The Birds will be hard.

I'll have to add it to the ever-increasing list of films whose existence I don't acknowledge :

The remakes of  The Ladykillers, Psycho, The Wicker Man, The Planet of the Apes, Get Carter, Godzilla, The Thing, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Carrie, Nightmare on Elm Street...

And those are just my personal bugbears.

...then there are the endless Hollywood versions of perfectly good European films -

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Let The Right One In, etc

...for what reason ?

Unimaginative, unoriginal and unnecessary.









this is a redux of the original post . thank you

p.s. my first introduction to the work of Peter Jackson was the gross-out film Bad Taste, in which part of the heros brain is eaten by a seagull.
So there is a (tenuous) link between Peter Jackson and ' The Birds'.