Kyle MacLachlan plays Thomas Edison in "Tesla." (Courtesy of IFC Films)
Can you picture Thomas Edison with a smartphone? Or poking a rival with an ice-cream cone? When you watch Kyle MacLachlan play one of America’s most famous inventors in the movie “Tesla,” you can.
And wait until you hear which 21st-century tech genius MacLachlan would love to portray next.
“The story of Elon Musk would be interesting, just because I think he’s a quirky fellow,” MacLachlan told me during an interview for the inaugural Fiction Science podcast. “That would be challenging, to understand who that his, and how he moves through the world, what he thinks, how he interacts with people.”
MacLachlan is pretty good at playing quirky roles. His best-known character is FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who delves into dark secrets, interdimensional weirdness and damn fine coffee in “Twin Peaks,” the classic TV series directed by David Lynch.
In a wide-ranging Q&A, MacLachlan and I talked about “Tesla” and “Twin Peaks,” as well as “Dune,” the science-fiction cult classic (or classic flop, depending on your perspective) from 1984 that marked his big-budget movie debut.
A military-style Polaris RZR off-road vehicle plows through desert dunes with a Kymeta satellite antenna installed on top. (Kymeta Photo)
Kymeta Corp. — the satellite antenna venture that’s based in Redmond, Wash., and backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — has extended its reach into the service side of the satellite industry by acquiring Lepton Global Solutions.
Executives for the two companies said the move should strengthen their hand as they pursue contracts for government and military communications systems.
“Having a turnkey satellite service provider like Lepton accelerates Kymeta’s ability to successfully penetrate U.S. military and government customers in partnership with a well-established brand, deep channel experience and network support for those verticals,” Walter Berger, Kymeta’s president and chief operating officer, said today in a news release.
Rob Weitendorf, managing partner at Lepton, said he was excited to become part of Kymeta’s corporate family.
“We think the Kymeta antenna has changed the satellite marketplace, especially in the mobility world inside the government, whether it be for the U.S. Army or Coast Guard, or the Border Patrol or the U.S. Forest Service,” he told GeekWire. “The need for connectivity in the government marketplace has never been stronger.”
The saga had its genesis almost eight decades ago, and the action is set more than 10,000 years in the future. But the themes of the work — centering on the decline and fall of a high-tech empire, Machiavellian machinations and unintended consequences — are, if anything, more relevant than ever in the here and now.
That’s what makes the Foundation series the perfect literary work for the revival of the Cosmic Log Used Book Club.
The CLUB Club goes back to the foundation of Cosmic Log. In contrast to book clubs that promote pricey new publications, our aim is to highlight books with cosmic themes that should be available at used-book shops as well as local libraries.
Over the past 18 years, we’ve issued more than 60 CLUB Club selections — many of them suggested by Cosmic Log readers. And to celebrate the return of the CLUB Club, we’re giving you the full list at the end of this item.
We’re also presenting a book giveaway, so keep reading!
“Foundation” dates back to a series of short stories that were published in Astounding Magazine starting in 1942. In the 1950s, those stories were published as a book trilogy — and in the 1980s and 1990s, Asimov produced two sequels and two prequels.
The key concept is psychohistory, the idea that the mass behavior of billions of people can be predicted and shaped centuries in advance. The series’ foundational character, Hari Seldon, uses psychohistory to foresee the fall of a galactic empire. He also comes up with a plan to reduce the resulting dark age from 30,000 years to a mere millennium.
The latter half of the Foundation Trilogy highlights another concept: the potential for one individual with a talent for inspiring loyalty and fear to throw the course of history on a different track. That concept is as relevant today as it was in the midst of the Second World War.
To celebrate the revival of the CLUB Club, as well as the centennial year of Asimov’s birth, let’s have a trivial giveaway. This giveaway is “trivial” not only because it involves a trivia question, but also because there’s a relatively trivial sum at stake.
The prize is a $4 Amazon e-gift card that can be put toward the purchase of the Foundation Trilogy — or, frankly, any other purchase. I’ll send that amount to the first person answering the quiz question correctly in a comment below, based on submitted time stamp.
Here’s the question:
The Foundation series features a fictional reference work that has also popped up in books written by Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams. What is the two-word name of that reference work?
Update: We have a winner! Congrats to Kathy Coyle… The answer is “Encyclopedia Galactica.”
In case you’ve already gotten all the way through the Foundation series, here are 66 other CLUB Club selections you can check out using your e-gift card or your library card:
“The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell (June 2002 selection)
“Alice in Quantumland” by Robert Gilmore (July 2002)
“Mr. Tompkins” series by George Gamow (August 2002)
“Manifold: Time” by Stephen Baxter (September 2002)
“Dreamer” by Richard L. Miller (October 2002)
“Earth” by David Brin (November 2002)
“Roadside Picnic” by A. and B. Strugatsky (December 2002)
“Strange Matters” by Tom Siegfried (January 2003)
“Out of the Silent Planet” by C.S. Lewis (February 2003)
“Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein (March 2003)
“The Copper Crown” by Patricia Kennealy (April 2003)
“Dragon’s Egg” by Robert L. Forward (May 2003)
“The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene (June 2003)
“Contact” by Carl Sagan (July 2003)
“A Skywatcher’s Year” by Jeff Kanipe (August 2003)
Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (September 2003)
“Book of the New Sun” series by Gene Wolfe (September 2003)
“The Best of AIR” by Marc Abrahams (October 2003)
“Flare” by R. Zelazny and Thomas T. Thomas (November 2003)
“Mother of Storms” by John Barnes (November 2003)
“Mars: Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Planet” by Paul Raeburn (December 2003)
Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher (January 2004)
“A Princess of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs (February 2004)
“Bad Astronomy” by Phil Plait (March 2004)
“The Spirit of St. Louis” by Charles Lindbergh (April 2004)
“Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown (May 2004)
“The Man Who Sold the Moon” by Robert A. Heinlein (June 2004)
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by P.K. Dick (July 2004)
“Idlewild” by Nick Sagan (August 2004)
“The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe (October 2004)
“Science and Theology” by J.C. Polkinghorne (November 2004)
“Evolution” by Stephen Baxter (December 2004)
“Krakatoa” by Simon Winchester (January 2005)
“Killing Star” by C. Pellegrino and G. Zebrowski (February 2005)
“The Forge of God” by Greg Bear (March 2005)
“Short History of Nearly Everything” by B. Bryson (April 2005)
“The Red One” by Jack London (May 2005)
“N.Y. Times Book of Science Questions and Answers” (June 2005)
“Heavy Weather” by Bruce Sterling and “Forty Signs of Rain” by Kim Stanley Robinson (August 2005)
“Chaos” by James Gleick (October 2005)
“A Brief (or Briefer) History of Time” by Stephen Hawking (and Leonard Mlodinow) (November 2005)
“A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle (December 2005)
“1491” by Charles C. Mann (January 2006)
“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card (February 2006)
“The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine Pagels (March 2006)
“Prey” by Michael Crichton (April 2006)
“Hellstrom’s Hive” by Frank Herbert (May 2006)
“Inferno” by Jerry Pournelle (August 2006)
“This Place Has No Atmosphere” by Paula Danziger and “Countdown for Cindy” by Eloise Engel (September 2006)
“Orbit” by John J. Nance (October 2006)
“Time and Again” by Jack Finney (November 2006)
“God in the Equation” by Corey Powell (December 2006)
“Conversations on Consciousness” by S. Blackmore (Jan. 2007)
“Everyday Life in New Testament Times” by Bouquet (April 2007)
“Supernova” by Roger Allen and Eric Kotani (May 2007)
“The Twilight of Briareus” by Richard Cowper (June 2007)
“The Traveler” by John Twelve Hawks (July 2007)
“Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut (August 2007)
“Flatland” by Edwin A. Abbott and “The Fourth Dimension” by Rudy Rucker (December 2007)
“The Year 1000” by D. Danziger and R. Lacey (November 2009)
“Creation” by Randal Keynes (January 2010)
“In Search of Time” by Dan Falk (February 2010)
“Space” by James Michener (September 2011)
What’s your favorite cosmic reading matter? Pass your suggestion along in a comment, and it just might be featured as a future CLUB Club selection.
In contrast to the rigid one-or-zero realm of classical computing, Braket and similar platforms take advantage of the fuzziness of quantum algorithms, in which quantum bits — or “qubits” — can represent multiple values simultaneously until the results are read out.
Quantum computing is particularly well-suited for tackling challenges ranging from cryptography — which serves as the foundation of secure online commerce — to the development of new chemical compounds for industrial and medical use. Some of the first applications could well be in the realm of system optimization, including the optimization of your financial portfolio.
A mosaic image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft uses false color to highlight the recently exposed brine, or salty liquids, that were pushed up from a deep reservoir under Ceres' crust. In this view of a region of Occator Crater, they appear reddish. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA)
For example, consider the bright spots in Ceres’ Occator Crater, which some have likened to “alien headlights.” The reflectivity is due to a crust of sodium carbonate, a salt left behind by the evaporation of briny water that percolated up to the surface.
Gravity readings gathered during the latter days of Dawn’s mission led scientists to conclude that the brine came from a reservoir that’s 25 miles deep and hundreds of miles wide.
In one of the bright spots, known as Cerealia Facula, Dawn’s instruments detected a concentration of hydrated salt compounds. The fact that those compounds are still hydrated suggest that they must have reached the surface relatively recently — perhaps within the past few centuries. That suggests that the transfer of liquid material from Ceres’ deep reservoir is continuing.
“For the large deposit at Cerealia Facula, the bulk of the salts were supplied from a slushy area just beneath the surface that was melted by the heat of the impact that formed the crater about 20 million years ago,” Dawn principal investigator, Carol Raymond, explained in a news release. “The impact heat subsided after a few million years; however, the impact also created large fractures that could reach the deep, long-lived reservoir, allowing brine to continue percolating to the surface.”
Dawn’s scientists saw additional evidence for Ceres’ active, slush-based geology in the presence of conical hills reminiscent of earthly features known as pingos. On Earth, pingos are formed when pressurized groundwater freezes beneath the surface and pushes up the soil above. Similar geological structures have been observed on Mars.
On icy moons such as Europa, Enceladus and Titan, geological activity is primarily driven by gravitational interactions with their parent planets. The fact that Ceres is geologically active, even though its crust is not being flexed by a nearby planet, widens the possibilities for finding slush or liquid water deep within ice-rich worlds in the main asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt and elsewhere.
The data-gathering phase of Dawn’s mission ended in 2018, and the dead spacecraft is now silently circling Ceres. But decades or centuries from now, the scientific findings resulting from the mission just might guide explorers to new kinds of interplanetary watering holes.
David Dickinson, author of "The Backyard Astronomer's Field Guide," sets up a telescope in his backyard. (Courtesy of David Dickinson)
Ready for a star party?
The COVID-19 pandemic has put a damper on summer star parties and other public gatherings, and skywatching isn’t exactly the kind of thing best done via a Zoom session. But you can still experience the wonders of the universe, just by looking up into dark, clear skies.
Four planets are on view: Jupiter and Saturn after sunset, and Mars and Venus before sunrise.
Although now is not the best time for Americans to spot the International Space Station, you just might be able to track the latest batch of SpaceX Starlink satellites as the stream across the sky. (Plug in your coordinates on Heavens-Above.com to check viewing times.)
Dickinson’s guide is designed to cover the more established targets of the night sky, ranging from the constellations to star clusters, nebulae and galaxies.
Forty-four sky charts, organized by month, point out wonders that can be found with the naked eye, with binoculars or with a telescope like the one that Dickinson sets up in his backyard or on the top floor of a nearby parking garage.
“Your observatory is wherever you’re observing,” he said.
“The Backyard Astronomer’s Field Guide” is spiral-bound for convenient use in the field. (Page Street Publishing / Laura Benton)
Dickinson also provides context that goes beyond latitude and longitude: Which naked-eye stars have planets orbiting them? What are the myths behind the constellation’s names, and what did other cultures see in them? What makes a planetary nebula “planetary”?
The guide includes a list of online tools, websites and publications to help you plot out your observing strategy — including Stellarium, a free planetarium program that’s priceless.
So what are the best deep-sky objects to turn your telescope toward while you’re waiting for the Perseids? Dickinson recommends M13, a globular star cluster in Hercules, the Ring Nebula in Lyra, the variable star Algol (a.k.a. the Demon Star) in Perseus … and Epsilon Lyrae, the “double-double” star in the constellation Lyra.
You’re unlikely to repeat Messier’s mistake, as long as you have Dickinson’s field guide sitting next to your lounge chair (preferably consulted by the light of a red flashlight to preserve your night vision).
To celebrate the summer’s big week for skywatching — and reward you for reading down this far — I’m giving away a copy of “The Backyard Astronomer’s Field Guide.” Just be the first to answer this Cosmic Log quiz question in the comment section below:
What is the name of the closest planetary nebula to Earth?
The first person to answer correctly, based on my assessment of the time stamp, will be eligible to receive the book by mail (U.S. postal addresses only). If I can’t get in touch with that person via email in a timely fashion, I’ll move on to the next person on the list.
Back in the old days, Cosmic Log was known for its community of commenters, and I’m hoping we can revive that spirit. If you have a favorite night-sky object to observe, or a favorite resource for skywatching, pass it along in a comment. Your recommendation may end up in a future Cosmic Log roundup.
Update for 11:25 a.m. PT Aug. 9: We have a winner! Boris Zuchner was the first to answer the quiz question correctly, with an assist by Professor Google. As revealed on page 160 of “The Backyard Astronomer’s Field Guide,” the closest planetary nebula to Earth is the Helix Nebula, a.k.a. NGC 7293. Assuming that Boris’ mailing address is in the United States, he’ll be able to look that fact up himself in the future, thanks to the book I’ll be sending him.
As I wrote in the comments, don’t be a stranger! It took me a while to approve the comments this time around, but I’ll try to be faster on the draw for the next book giveaway.
The U.S. Space Force has given its stamp of approval to United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, shown in the artist’s conception at left; and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, shown at right. (ULA Illustration for Vulcan / GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota for Falcon Heavy)
The U.S. Space Force designated United Launch Alliance and SpaceX as the winners of a multibillion-dollar competition for national security launches over a five-year period, passing up a proposal from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture in the process.
Northrop Grumman and its OmegA rocket also lost out in the Phase II competition for the National Security Space Launch program.
ULA will receive a 60% share of the launch manifest for contracts awarded in the 2020-2024 time frame, with the first missions launching in fiscal 2022, said William Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics.
SpaceX will receive the other 40%.
The competition extended through the creation of the U.S. Space Force, whose Space and Missile Systems Center will be in charge of executing the launches in partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office.
The five-year Phase II program provides for fixed-price but indefinite-delivery contracts, which means there isn’t a specified total payout. But Roper said it’d be reasonable to estimate that somewhere around 32 to 34 launches would be covered, which would translate to billions of dollars in business.
Three launches were assigned today: ULA is scheduled to launch two missions known as USSF-51 and USSF-106 for the Space Force in 2022, while SpaceX has been assigned USSF-67 in mid-2022.
ULA’s two contracts amount to $337 million, and SpaceX’s contract is worth $316 million. Roper said details about the payloads are classified.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad. (SpaceX via YouTube)
After weeks of delay, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sent up 57 more satellites for its Starlink broadband internet constellation, with two BlackSky planet-watching satellites hitching a ride.
The launch was originally scheduled for June, but had to be put off several times due to technical concerns, weather delays and range schedule conflicts. This time around, the countdown proceeded smoothly to liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:12 a.m. ET Aug. 7 (10:12 p.m. PT Aug. 6).
An illustration shows the Hubble Space Telescope against the background of a total lunar eclipse. (NASA / ESA / M. Kornmesser)
Astronomers made use of the Hubble Space Telescope — and a total lunar eclipse — to rehearse their routine for seeking signs of life in alien atmospheres.
You’ll be relieved to know that the experiment, conducted on Jan. 20-21, 2019, determined that there are indeed signs of life on Earth.
The evidence came in the form of a strong spectral fingerprint for ozone. To detect that ultraviolet fingerprint, Hubble didn’t look at Earth directly. Instead, it analyzed the dim reddish light that was first refracted by Earth’s atmosphere, and then reflected back by the moon during last year’s lunar eclipse.
“Finding ozone is significant because it is a photochemical byproduct of molecular oxygen, which is itself a byproduct of life,” said Allison Youngblood of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colo., lead researcher of Hubble’s observations.
Other ground-based telescopes made spectroscopic observations at other wavelengths during the eclipse. They were looking for the fingerprints of different atmospheric ingredients linked to life’s presence, such as oxygen and methane.
This wasn’t just an academic exercise. Astronomers hope future observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Roman Space Telescope, will be able to detect life’s fingerprints in the atmospheres of faraway exoplanets. But that takes practice.
“One of NASA’s major goals is to identify planets that could support life,” Youngblood said in a Hubble news release. “But how would we know a habitable or an uninhabited planet if we saw one? What would they look like with the techniques that astronomers have at their disposal for characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets? That’s why it’s important to develop models of Earth’s spectrum as a template for categorizing atmospheres on extrasolar planets.”
Hermeus has won a $1.5 million award for the effort under the terms of a contract with AFWERX, the Air Force’s innovation program. The award follows Hermeus’ successful test of a Mach 5 engine prototype in February.
Hermeus and the Air Force will conduct a rapid assessment of the company’s hypersonic concept for the Presidential and Executive Airlift Directorate’s fleet, which includes the Air Force One airplanes.
The next planes in the Air Force One fleet will be Boeing 747 jets, which are currently being modified for presidential use. Those planes are due for delivery in 2024. Presumably, hypersonic technology will be considered for the next next Air Force One.
“Leaps in capability are vital as we work to complicate the calculus of our adversaries,” Brig. Gen. Ryan Britton, program executive officier for the airlift directorate, explained in a news release.
“By leveraging commercial investment to drive new technologies into the Air Force, we are able to maximize our payback on Department of Defense investments,” Britton said. “The Presidential and Executive Airlift Directorate is proud to support Hermeus in making this game-changing capability a reality as we look to recapitalize the fleet in the future.”
Hermeus says it brought its Mach 5 concept from design to test in just nine months. The test campaign served to reduce risk for Hermeus’ turbine-based combined cycle engine architecture, and demonstrated the team’s ability to execute projects efficiently.
“Using our pre-cooler technology, we’ve taken an off-the-shelf gas turbine engine and operated it at flight speed conditions faster than the famed SR-71,” said Glenn Case, Hermeus’ chief technical officer. “In addition, we’ve pushed the ramjet mode to Mach 4-5 conditions, demonstrating full-range hypersonic air-breathing propulsion capability.”
There are a couple of connections between Hermeus and Blue Origin, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ space venture. Before joining Hermeus, Case worked as a propulsion design and engineer at Blue Origin. And one of Hermeus’ advisers is Rob Meyerson, Blue Origin’s former president.
This report was published on Cosmic Log. Accept no substitutes.
