From Pluto with Love

I wonder if there's someone on Pluto wondering this
Whether mass extinction or a pandemic could result from an asteroid
colliding with their world...
...and whether early warning systems exist to prevent such a thing.
They probably have an early warning system.
With many heroic types ready to scramble at a moments notice.
In defence of the realm.

Would they have realms on Pluto ?

After all, Pluto is so small it was declassified for a while.
But who's to say it's not inhabited by Lilliputian people ?
To them it could be infinitely large.

Tardigrades could be their biggest threats.

They survive in space...

The reason for this ramble is the imminent flypast -
New Horizons, after an epic journey of nine years
will hurtle past Pluto, taking snapshots as it goes
at approximately 32000 miles an hour.

Not even slowing down for a pit-stop.

Drive-by mapping.* ( now is a livelink to New Horizons app )

But I digress, I was discussing the possibility of someone on Pluto watching a shooting star cross the heavens.
Would they make a wish for luck ?
What would they think if they knew it was us ?
It makes me aware that we are the aliens...

New Horizons, the Google street - mapping car of the heavens?

Not quite, but you get the idea.
It's one thing that Google are not involved with.
Speaking of which,
the latest tinkering Google-wise seems to stem from software known as Deep Dreams*
essentially virtual neural networking which can produce dream - like images.
 Do computers dream of electric sheep, and all that.
They've even made it open source , so everyone can get strange...

I tend to be wary of this sort of thing as it makes me question - why are they so intent on showing us their new toy ?
Do they really want people feeding endless images into it ?

Monkeys, dogs and insects are common Deep Dream warps...

Personally, I think the end results are interesting / nightmarish, but ultimately, rather dull.
Exactly what you'd expect from a virtual attempt at dream simulation;
Beyond the initial 'oh that looks trippy like 'shrooms or acid',

Images that look ' a bit weird ' but are ultimately repetitive in content.
Morphing and convoluting into endless permutations of increasingly outlandish oddities.

So, yes, it's a bit trippy -  if every trip was a bad one.

It's as though the machinery freaked out and went into meltdown, obsessing one element of the 'trip'.

The images are only really interesting when you realise they have been made by a device with no cognitive awareness.
The ongoing attempt to emulate humanity by machine is absorbing huge amounts of money and producing - not much.

Give it up, I say.
Or show us ground-breaking advances in medical technology.
Just stop tinkering with this sub - Terminator world of Skynet that doesn't exist.
Although recent news involving a death at a German car factory indicates otherwise.

Perhaps we could combine the two -

Let's make Pluto a Penal colony for murderous robots !

I'm sure there's a film there

If so , please remember where you read it first - intellectual property and all that.

I want a percentage on the merchandise.

Thank you!


This post contains a link to a sequence created  by Johan Nordberg , using Deep Dream .
Please exercise caution if viewing under the influence of psychedelics.
Actually, you won't need any...
I accept no responsibility for disturbance / flashbacks induced...

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.