Hi there bloggies! The orbit of the infinite is here again for your… something not really sure what. But here we go anyway! The week just gone was busy in all kinds of ways but mainly in trying to advance my blogging world.
This week brought a few little gems from the dark depths of my mind and imagination:
First one is about a subject that trouble many… Why can’t we hear the Aliens? Everything from human stupidity to Galaxy taxes comes in here.
Later I posted only something on wisdom and philosophy in Sci-Fi moments. Sci Fi moments is something I’ve wanted to more of but I’ve not got around to it… expect a few more of these!
I’m going to try and mentiona blogger every week but no promises. This week I wanted to mention Roger of the previous blog Woebegone but Hopeful. He’s back after WordPress marked his blog as spam (stupid WordPress – are you listening?) with:
I’m trying to keep up with you all, and do great stuff. Make sure you come and say hi and let me know you’re about. Let me know what you’re thinking about the new look and new direction.
I hope you’re all well! Let me know what you’ve been up to!
Science fiction allows the writer to create situations that we wouldn’t normally expect in the normal run of things. This in turn allows us to stretch our thinking beyond the normal and into these situations and to think about. The battle between good and evil and the struggles faced by the characters stands out in all these stories.
This is a collection of a few that came to mind.
Do or do not – There is no try.
Yoda is one of the greatest characters in the Star Wars universe. His powerful knowledge and wisdom is delivered with such a gentle and even amusing method it really cuts to the core.
In this scene Luke Skywalker doubts his abilities say that he will try. Do or do not he is told…
This is where I fall
Peter Capaldi in my view was a great doctor and had some really great speeches to deliver. His powerful presence brought something into them that is quite unique. He he’s trying to convince his arch nemesis The Master (Missy) to stand with him, not becasue it’s easy or even becasue it will work, just becasue it’s the right thing to do.
Time is like a predator
In this clip, Captain Picard is trying to talk around Dr Soran, planning on destroying a star to enter the Nexus and gain an immortal life one of the most insightful speeches on time and humanity makes you think about the truth of our existence as Picard puts it.
What do you think of these? Are there better ones I should have thought of? Maybe I’ll include them in a later post?
Right now the human race has this big obsession with aliens. If they’re out there where are they? Why don’t they make contact? Are they ignoring us? Among this is the thinking that our radio signals from the past 100 years or so are showing a potential alien race where we are and so we should really be quieter.
Seti – the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has been scouring the radio waves for a sign that alien life is out there and transmitting radio waves that we can pick up. This brings to me images of aliens some light years away watching the BBC and you know what that annoys me becasue they haven’t paid their license!
Man on a can from Canva
I think that maybe we’re missing something. Consider for a moment the crude form of communication between two tins using a piece of string. Someone standing next to them with a radio or mobile phone can’t hear them and the people with the can’s can’t hear the phone conversation.
What if, just maybe there’s a different way of communication that aliens have found that is way better than radio? To them we’re still on strings and can’s and maybe they’re using gravity waves to communicate on and that’s much better?
USS Enterprise -E No Credit claimed
Because they probably have warp drive and if they still used radio the starship would overtake the radio signal so that would be useless. It’s better to deliver the message in person. You know, I’m kind of thinking here that we’re on radio silence probably becasue we’re not listening right.
I think we need to be ready though, becasue when we do find the right way to communicate we need to be ready for the millions of text messages asking where we are and telling us that we’re rude for ignoring them. We might be behind on Galaxy space rent as well which we might not be expecting.
Star Trek Picard First Official Trailer Released At SDCC 2019!
The first official trailer for Star Trek: Picard has been released at SDCC 2019, and it hits warp speed on every level! I’ve been looking foward to this series ever since it was announced, and the trailer looks awesome! Can’t wait to see Patrick Stewart return as Picard! It has also been confirmed that Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Jonathan del Arco, Brent Spiner and Jeri Ryan will be reprising their roles as Will Riker, Troy, Hugh the Borg, Data, and Seven of Nine.
The trailer is packed with fan pleasing moments, seeing Data and Seven on Nine again was awesome, and I’m sure Star Trek Picard will be well worth the wait.
Engage! Check out the trailer for Star Trek Picard!
Hi there bloggies! The orbit of the infinite comes around again, a day later than I would like but there it is.
As I sit here now I’m melting in what is only morning heat and the temperature is going to really climb today so I’m not sure how I’ll cope but you know I will.
I’m trying t make sure I get some posts in and last week I got a few in to entertain you:
My Nightfall Dance post is my first venture into the semi poetic for sometime, I’m told it’s apparently…
So there’s kind of been a exploration theme this last week gone, with the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing and talking about what good space exploration has done for the human race what do you think? Have we left it too long to go back?
Should we just stop it all and hide here on Earth?
I’m trying to keep up with you all, but if anyone is feeling neglected out there do let me know as the reader makes it nearly impossible to know what’s going on…
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins awoke to start their fifth day in space at the end of their ninth revolution around the Moon. In Mission Control at the Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Eugene F. Kranz’s White Team of controllers arrived on console, with astronaut Charles M. Duke serving as Capcom. After a quick breakfast, Aldrin and Armstrong began re-activating the Lunar Module (LM) Eagle, including deploying its landing gear, and donned their pressure suits. Near the end of the 12th orbit around the Moon, Duke radioed up to Apollo 11 that they were GO to undock. The event took place behind the Moon during the start of their 13th revolution, the astronauts filming each other’s spacecraft as they began their independent flights (clip 1, clip 2). After they reappeared from behind the Moon, Armstrong radioed their status to MCC saying, “The Eagle has wings.” Collins in the Command Module (CM) Columbia observed, “I think you’ve got a fine looking flying machine there, Eagle, despite the fact you’re upside down,” prompting Armstrong to reply, “Somebody’s upside down.”
As if black holes weren’t mysterious enough, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found an unexpected thin disk of material furiously whirling around a supermassive black hole at the heart of the magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 3147, located 130 million light-years away.
The conundrum is that the disk shouldn’t be there, based on current astronomical theories. However, the unexpected presence of a disk so close to a black hole offers a unique opportunity to test Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. General relativity describes gravity as the curvature of space and special relativity describes the relationship between time and space.
Yesterday NASA completed a successful test of the abort system of the Orion spacecraft, this is just one headline in a whole list of announcements in space exploration. Whether it’s Space X, NASA or Blue Origin someone, somewhere is heading back to the Moon with a view to getting to Mars.
But why?
Many say we should be putting the money we would otherwise spend into helping developed parts of the world to survive, to bring all these people out of poverty and onto prosperity? I have to say it’s very hard to argue this point but as usual the answer (if there is an answer) is not that simple.
The economic argument alone is pretty compelling, the US government had made its money many times over from what it’s put into the space race. This can be attributed at least in part by innovation. This interesting little infographic from JPL explains more:
It’s also been noted that some military development projects as well as some essential domestic services cost more that some US space programs. But even with all these it’s not a reason why and it’s a bi-product of our space exploration activities.
Everything is temporary
Something that science and exploring our local planetary neighbourhood has uncovered is that everything is temporary. Venus and Mars have both had times in their history where liquid water has existed on the surface. Both now are barren and desolate worlds that could never support water, let alone any kind of complex life. On Mars we’re still searching for bacteria even though many say that the images from NASA clearly show an intelligent civilisation once lived there.
I’m not so sure… But each to their own.
Planet Earth
The point is that one day the Earth will expire, it will. Many say that man will wipe itself out before then but some aren’t willing to chance that what is certain is that either by ourselves or nature the human race will be extinct if we don’t learn to live beyond our Earth. So far human kind lives in the most hospitable places on Earth, even Antarctica which is perhaps the closest man can come to living on on Mars or any other world without leaving the Earth.
But this touches on perhaps the biggest reason.
The challenge
Perhaps the biggest reason is the challenge and the rewards that exploring space offers. Mankind has always wanted a challenge and this usually means that we’ve built a weapon to go and level come other poor country and take it over.
Basically we’ve been fighting over a fraction of a speck in the cosmos and that quite frankly is pointless. Just think what could be achieved if mankind actually decided that we need to do this properly, work together, drop the weapons, drop the money and work towards a better future for all of us by working towards a future beyond Earth.
That would be an amazing thing, it would be a crowning achievement for a race that started out in such a violent way. There would be no more need for war or famine or poverty becasue we would finally become one race and equal in it’s achievements.
I fear it may not happen for a while yet – but there is always the hope. When we do go (if) let’s just remember to leave the nukes at home.
I have to say I was hoping that I would get a little more of a run up with the new look blog but things have conspired to keep me to busy to update the blog.
For those of you that that don’t already know I’ll just update you with a few things. Firstly this is not Planet Simon anymore – the name of the blog has changed to Beyond the Infinite and as I explained it’s been a long time coming.
Last week nothing happened on here and I was pretty rammed with things but the week before I posted something on some thinking I’ve been having about how even small things can have a big effect on us:
I hope you guys have been doing great summer (or winter if you’re south of the equator) things and I think this time of year it seems hard to keep up with blogs and blogging. Do you guys find that?
For those of you that weren’t about last week I’ll just update you with a few things. Firstly this is not Planet Simon anymore – the name of the blog has changed to Beyond the Infinite and as I explained it’s been a long time coming.
For some reason much social media has a problem with the name beyond the infinite so much of it has changed to Syborg1974… bit of a pain but there you go.
With all of this going on I thought I would give you all my reasoning behind the strategy of the rebrand and the mad thinking behind it. A fair bit of thinking went into it and I thought the process might be useful for a few other bloggers out there: Creating a Blog Strategy that Engages with your Audience
In among all this chaos it was time to crank out the blog story for June before June ended and I managed it… just. The Prompt was Corona and I plucked out this little story:
So I’m hoping to be about a bit more and have some fun, interesting and mind boggling stuff for you… Make sure you have a look at the face lifted homepage, I’ve given it a more unique feel I think. But it’s the old stuff with new to come so keep watching!
