Help classify a million galaxies
Welcome to GalaxyZoo , the project which harnesses the power of the internet - and your brain - to classify a million galaxies. By taking part, you'll not only be contributing to scientific research, but you'll view parts of the Universe that literally no-one has ever seen before and get a sense of the glorious diversity of galaxies that pepper the sky.
Why do we need you? The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you.
GZ is now live! Sign up to start classifying galaxies right away:
www.galaxyzoo.org
Space graphic by Mads Dam
Most types of galactic Plankton drift silently in interstallar space.
It spends 99,99% of its lifetime in a dormant state, dreaming of light.
Awakes only when a nearby star blossoms into a nova, drowning space with light.
Within seconds Plankton multiplies into millions of copies devouring
most of the photons that would otherwise have flooded the skies.
In short, thanks to Plankton the nightsky remains black...
All immortals will be
struck by lightning
Sorry, there are limits for growth...
Mayby the title sounds like a weird quote from a classic drama, but actually it is a quite normal consequence of the weather.
Thunder is not rare in Denmark, and each time thousands of lightnings are let loose. And yet only one person is hit annually.
However, if you have infinitely much time at your disposal, every possibility will one day be released.
Therefore a lightning is waiting in the future to strike anyone claiming to be immortal. Consider it having struck you already, but not yet.
Futurum exactum in latin. Regrettably, immortality is not possible in reality, only fiction:
All immortals will eventually be struck by lightning. Some day...
In the end you cannot escape the lightning.
Even if you should perish earlier, from some other accident,
lightning will sooner or later find your grave and split your stone...
Are there more than four?
The idea of 4 elements are usually seen as obsolete metaphysics, that finally collapsed centuries ago.
However, this is only partly true. The original theory made physical sense, but creates nonsense when applied chemically.
Above Fire was supposed to exist a mysterious substance phlogiston, with a negative weight to balance equations.
(And you thought modern physics were weird?). Read more...
Welcome to the chromosphere
The English mathematician John Wallis (1616-1703) was a friend of Isaac Newton. According to his diary, Newton once bragged to Wallis about his little dog Diamond.
"My dog Diamond knows some mathematics.
Today he proved two theorems before lunch."
"Your dog must be a genius," said Wallis.
"Oh I wouldn't go that far," replied Newton. "The first theorem had an error and the second had a pathological exception."
H.H. Løyche, Denmark
Farah Mendlesohn (ed.):
Glorifying Terrorism
Rackstraw Press, England
268 pages, £15 (incl. p&p) / $30 to US (incl. S&H)
GT.booksales@gmail.com
After much debate, England’s legislature passed a Bill on the 14th of April 2006, outlawing anything which might be read or interpreted as glorification of terrorism. As a consequence, journalists and historians cannot cover the background of terror deeds, and authors of fiction can no longer describe terrorists as heroes. According to the law, countless works should in principle be removed from libraries, book shops and private homes – works like biographies on Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela and other freedom fighters, The Trotskyist Manifesto, J.G. Ballard’s Running Wild, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Stephen King’s The Running Man, Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, and even movies like Mel Gibson’s Braveheart and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. The law passed despite vigorous protests from citizens, who regard it as a clampdown on the freedom of speech. Among the critics was Farah Mendlesohn, who took the initiative to this fantastic anthology of texts, which deliberately violate the law.
Journalist Andrew McKie of The Daily Telegraph has written the preface. The contributors are Kathryn Allen, Chaz Brenchley, Marie Brennan, Hal Duncan, Suzette Haden Elgin, Kira Franz, Van Aaron Hughes, Davin Ireland, Gwyneth Jones, Vylar Kaftan, Lucy Kemnizter, H.H. Løyche, Ken MacLeod, Una McCormack, Adam Roberts, Elisabeth Sourbut, Katherine Sparrow, Kari Sperring, Charles Stross, Rachel Swirsky, Lavie Tidhar, James A. Trimarco, Jo Walton, Ian Watson and Ian Whates.
Glorifying Terrorism is, technically, illegal - because every SF/F story in this anthology breaks the current UK law that bans the glorification of terrorism. Whatever that is, of course.
rackstrawpress.nfshost.com
Khristo D. Poshtakov
The first book of science-fiction to appear in Bulgaria was published in 1880. It was Jules Verne’s Around the world in 80 days. Twenty five years later most books of this author had been published, as those of Herbert G. Wells, Andre Lory, Mora Yokay, Edward Belamy, Jonatan Swift, Paolo Montegazi and other writers of the style. Somewhat later were Publisher fantasy Works by Jack London and Edgar Allan Poe.
The first Bulgarian story of science-fiction has been written in 1899 by Ivan Vazov and its title was “The last day of XXth century”. In this story one describes a trip of the Bulgarian king through the city of Sofia (Bulgarian capital city) which, in the future, has arrived at an “enormous” population: 350 000 habitants! Sofia has developed much and shows buildings and beautiful palaces, paved streets and beautiful gardens. Conversations at a distance from the king’s palace are carried through a “phonograph”, cars move driven by steam machines. The only realized prediction of the author was the return of monarchy, as the royalist party has won the 2001 elections and the Bulgarian king Simeon, exiled in Spain since 1948 (he is cousin of the Spanish king Juan Carlos) came back to take the Prime Minister office....
New english section on SFera Online
Marian Taralunga: Hi friends, we have opened a new corner on our website - the english section.
Most of you know that few years back we used to run a brother website called "Imagikon". At that time, we had an important number of contributors from all over the world.
We start off again, embedding the english written novels within our romanian language website.
We`ll try to publish all the stories / poems / essays / articles that were posted on Imagikon as well as your new contributions from nowadays.
Find us here:
www.sferaonline.ro/sectiuni/english
If the section becomes robust enough, we`ll move it under a much friendlier name. Enjoy!
Yesterday I visited Brian Aldiss' Official Site - www.brianwaldiss.com - and got somewhat surprised. No Aldiss, no science fiction at all, not even an explanation of why this was so. Just a lot of mpg-music for sale. What the devil happened here!?
I tried to click 'Contact', but was only returned to the frontpage. Weird, had Aldiss disappeared from this universe, or had I unknowingly entered a parallel dimension...?
Essay by Ovidiu Bufnila, image counselor
The deprivation of huge naval forces found in the bloody, tragic and impressive clenching announces an imperial structure. The difference is prepared. The imperial divers are dipping their harpoon in the Barbarians' blood. But aren't the Barbarians charming beings in the volutes of the world's hidden plan? Aren't they revealing themselves in the rain that came from beyond the visible horizon, modeling new gods? Aren't the Barbarians the ones who understand the truth of the pinky clouds better than the obsolescent savants that don't see the metaphysics in its splendor, only the clumsy piling of some water drops....
Inventor of Mechanical Television
Paul Gottlieb Nipkow (1860-1940) was a german physicist who pioneered television.
Nipkow noticed that the metal Selenium had a special ability:
its conductivity depended on light. Perhaps this could be used to convert an image to electricity?
December 1883 he found of a way to send a moving picture by wire: Television was born....
The political correct version and other variations
I'll admit: the usual version is short and efficient. But it's also the horror-version. How about a fantasy-version? Or science fiction? How would a surrealist paint it? Or maybe as music..?
Here's the original version: Invent a timemachine, travel a century back in time and kill your grandfather. Then he won't marry, nor have any children. Childrens children also disappears and so on. Thus your parents no longer exist, and neither do you....
If your eyes were adjustable like television
There are many possible optical illusions. Some are just a trick to fool the eye, or a gimmick in the filmindustry. But art has also found them usefull sometimes, fx Escher, Magritte, Dali.
However, all illusions I've seen did have one irritating drawback. Each time I was left with the impression that the illusion was an effect of the picture, not the eye. That's actually an extra illusion by itself. The optical illusion is caused by the optics itself (=eye+brain), no picture is required. You may create an optical illusion merely by manipulating your own eyes....
And Quarks and Cows...
Penguins? In a preface written for Mikhail Shifman's 1999 book, ITEP Lectures on Particle Physics and Field Theory, John Ellis (CERN) recalls how the gluon interference diagram came to be called a penguin diagram.
One night in spring 1977, Ellis lost a bet during a game of darts. His penalty: use the word 'penguin' in a journal article...
A step towards infinity...
Why large numbers? Why should a large number be interesting? Does it have any practical value?
You might as well ask why numbers, any number, should be interesting at all. But we use numbers all the time. To count things, to order things, to measure. Science need numbers, one could argue that numbers are the language of science. Trade would become impossible without numbers, except on the most primitive level. Numbers have lots of functions. But we use them both to count, and to think. Arranged as a spectrum we would find the smallest, but most popular numbers at one end. The other end would present the extreme magnitudes, only rarely used. However, rare does not autimatically imply unimportance. Likewise, many popular things makes only a small difference. If there's always a bit more, who cares to count...
Large numbers do have importance, in principle. They are part of the edge of our worldmap. If something is "countless" it becomes virtually unknown. Of course, we may speak of things in qualitative terms only, but then we can't seperate a drop from an ocean....
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A story by George Malinov
The reception room of the United Phantoms Company with its classic office furniture was a cozy place; a delicate odor filled the air, reminiscent of something half way between the smell of a pine forest and fresh hay. For a moment Irene even closed her eyes, moved deeply by the scent.
“Unbelievable," she said. "I have never felt anything like this."
The compliment made the consultant of United Phantoms blush because the fragrance was actually his idea. He expected it would make people relax and ease the psychological pressure they felt when they came here to order phantoms. Irene didn’t look is if she experienced any particular stress. She had already visited the office of United Phantoms several times and as a result the details of the offer were more or less settled. Her husband, Mr. Govatz, had provided the company with all the necessary data and now she had only to ascertain some final points.
The consultant felt already a kind of adoration for Irene. In fact, he had never met a client like her. She readily agreed with all his suggestions, didn’t annoy the contractors with arbitrary ideas and listened to their complicated and sometimes boring technical explanations on different aspects of the project with keen and genuine interest.
Irene settled herself down in the elegant chair and began slowly looking through the folder the consultant had handled her. The project was close to its end and there were only minor details to clarify.
The consultant waited politely for Irene to get acquainted with the latest developments, and when she finished reading, he started his explanations.
Read more...
A story by Khristo Poshtakov
It was a regular bar, one of those found near null terminals or spaceports in any point of the intelligent universe. Nickeled holders for the consumption of various gas mixtures occupied the counter, their sterilized inhaling mouthpieces sticking out from the consumption sockets. Any patron of the place would be thoroughly familiar with the selection of cocktails; nevertheless their numbers were engraved in a dozen galactic languages. Four members of humankind were sitting on the comfortable stools in front of the counter. Three of them already knew one another, and the fourth one had just joined their company. They had been drawn together by their common need to kill some spare time between flights.
Read more...
A story by Khristo Poshtakov
Once the non-time effect was over, Ditt Raskin sleepily opened his eyes and was greeted by the greenish-blue disc of the planet filling two thirds of the main monitor. The sight made him think he had scored a hit this time.
"Land on it, Tim," he commanded the ship AI.
"But tell me first, how much is two plus two?"
"Four, chief," Tim responded to the in-joke. "I suggest you fasten your belts."
The brilliant points of the plasma drive blazed up in the blackness. A few hours later, the single-person exploration boat entered orbit around the planet and began the landing maneuvers. After scanning the data from the analysis system, Tim reported: "Fit for habitation; large bodies of water present; no traces of intelligent life and, quite surprisingly, complete absence of animal species. This is the first time I register a planet of floral type."
Read more...
Atanas P. Slavov, Bulgaria
Denn Sirr felt quite odd when he first stepped on the dark-red flagstones. A living body seemed to breathe under his feet. The flags were hard and rough, true, yet they were giving off heat – not the warmth of the sun, another. It seemed to belong to the red stone, just like the silent road stretching among the trees.
"What wonder this?" Denn Sirr muttered and crouched to examine the flag. A sudden conviction smote him that this was old, really old....
Atanas P. Slavov, Bulgaria
It's not even blackness around. Black is a color,
and the total absence of light is beyond that ...
beyond blindness... Whose thoughts are these? Mine? But I should be dead ... which evidently I'm not... Or - this is what death's like? Hovering in the absolute boundlessness of the nothingness, reasoning like a living man?
Aleksander Karapantschev, Bulgaria
On 29 September 1849, a tired lean man with a battered suitcase traveled on the Baltimore boat. His appearance was glum and at the same time brilliant. He had a finely chiseled lordly head and an almond-colored face; the lines of his eyebrows, perfect in his youth, had been distorted by trials, disparate from his thirsts; and his eyes - violet-blue, radiant - gazed somewhat absently, enshrouded in eternal sorrow. Occasionally, he would tighten his elegant scarf, touch his forehead, and then his hands would uncertainly disappear into the pockets of the creased frock-coat.
He was watching the morning bustle presently. Behind his back, the deck lived its usual chaotic life. Whistling, inky smoke wreaths mixed with a painfully hissing vapor....
Poul Pinn, England
With muted breath flesh in rags flash eyes acutely aware. Flesh and rags pull closer, their hope-lessness uncomfortably bare. Paladins scan these tramps and hags, catch gleams of intelligence in the eyes of the decimated faces behind the filthy hanging hair. Feeling uneasy they move on, leaving the huddled damned behind as they enter a crumbling labyrinth smelling of every foul odour imaginable, and a few far removed from the imagination. With a rapid studiousness born of disciplined training they cautiously inspect a flux of ill-lit alleys that rush at them from all directions.
Dark unformed shapes move swiftly across penumbral edges, fending off dull glows draining from rectangular yellow lights hanging watchful from stunted stalks of stone....
H.H. Løyche, Denmark
Taxi check pattern atavism. During a reception the journalist is cornered by an alcoholic playboy. The boozer claims to be a close friend of Midway Joe and promises to arrange a meeting. In the following weeks they meet several times in an apartment on Independence Avenue and wait for Joe, while the nervous host tipples whisky, sweats and free-wheels unbearable marine anecdotes. Their intention is to place the legend at the table end, opposite the journalist. One is to put the questions, the other answer, while a tape recorder registers the course of events. The journalist feels safe; he is not going to answer questions....
Michael C. Heffernan, Canada
John Drover woke and the world was red. The emergency lights had gone on and it looked as if the place had been painted in blood. After a valium and two cocktails he'd fallen asleep for hours. He knew because the plane had landed. Rubbing his eyes he looked up and down the rows of seats. They were all empty. Oxygen masks dangled down from above like snakes. Up at the front the seatbelt indicator flashed at regular intervals. Blinds were drawn down over all of the windows. It was cold, too. He could see his breath form in thick plumes out in front of him. Goose flesh covered his arms. His teeth began to chatter like Morse code.
"Hello," John called out. There was nothing. The air was still and quite....
Khristo Poshtakov, Bulgaria
It was growing dark. The last hikers hurried along the narrow path down the steep mountain slope toward the bus terminal which was perched at a curve of the mountain road near to the parking lot. Their silhouettes rushed behind the loose curtain of the tree trunks but Vasco's indifferent stare only registered their movement, without actually paying attention to them. He was lying stretched out on the grass of "his" meadow, overwhelmed by his own past which made him the most solitary man in the Universe.
Stars appeared on the dark sky one after the other, winced at him compassionately and seemed to whisper to him....
Ovidiu Bufnila, Romania
Ibhib the Gunner of Longville stormed me up from my den.
He had scored about the catacombs of Beauburg for the best part of a week. He wanted to know my whereabouts so he had inquired left and right. He made then a spectacle of himself and came to blows with a couple of batmen. He did them in; he did, and drank their blood. The fickle bastard! Then he took his time walking along the banks of the underground river and had a fling with the swarthy broad Brunhilde. He had a mouthful of her tits and gave her such a hell of a thrashing that she hollered till there were cracks in the vaults of the galleries where the stiffs lay dormant.
I surely followed Ibhib with my feelers. I couldn't trust scoundrels like him. I hadn't seen him ever since Moreaugarin had given us the slip. The Gunner had not changed a bit. Maybe his belly heaved a little over the belt. A flimsy haze shimmered over his eyes. The scales on his strong chest seemed to have become rusty in some places. And his joints creaked, poor wretch! Well, the old space hound's luck was running thin....
Aleksandar Žiljak, Croatia
Space port, rainy night. Lukas listens to the raindrops as they drum against the roof, pour into the gutter and gurgle, watering the Aldebaran vines coiling around the hotel in the firm embrace that is probably the only thing holding it from collapsing. The vestibule is becalmed in semi-darkness. Sleeping lantern-fungi, rooted all over the ceiling and walls, hardly smoulder.
It is almost two o'clock and the hotel finally sunk into silence. Even the Baglins in the room 131 quieted down, the merry band with their beer and frantic songs. Their ship landed three days ago and, as far as Lukas heard, they plan to stay for at least three more days....
Introduction by H.H. Løyche
As a modernistic literary offspring, the history of science fiction hardly dates back more than a century. You may define the beginning as early as Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818) or as late as Hugo Gernsback's introduction of the word scientifiction (1926). But long before our tradition, the satire counted a number of untimedly, fantastic ideas. Ignorant of his future collegues, Lucian of Samosata (app. 120-180 AD) send people to the Moon, and Voltaire (1694-1778) let aliens from outer space pay us a visit....
Dan Simmons Interview
We have met the enemy and they are us: Walls began rotting away, and the main character - the reader - realized that everything he had believed about his world was made up - a concensual hallucination. I love the early phrase of Gibson, when he was just creating the concept of cyberspace, while the web was actually being woven in the physical world, the electronic world. He talked about the cyberspace as being a concensual hallucination, and that is truly what it is, even now, when the majority doesnt have VR individually, and computers are crude, like watching television in 1937, on a black and white three inch screen....
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Nano Art
A new kind of images
NanoArt is a new art form where micro or nanosculptures created by artists or scientists through chemical or/and physical processes are visualized with powerful research tools like Scanning Electron Microscopes. Mono-chromatic electron microscope scans are processed further using different artistic techniques to create pieces of art to be showcased for general public. Read more...
Video: Mads. Sound: Mikkes (remix)
Video: Mads Dam. Sound: Nature
Video: Mads Dam. Sound: Nature
Disturbing the atmosphere
Living image by Mads Dam
If you see a pattern moving right or left, up or down - it's an illusion.
If you see a pattern starting ordered and gradually becoming chaotic,
this is also an illusion. In fact, the pattern itself is an illusion...
Photos by Lars Mikkes
Atmospheric sights by Mads dam
4 Variations of Jørgen Elbangs painting
Photo Romance from Denmark
Far from everybody are lucky, getting laid every day.
Here's a couple having sex once a year 'round Easter....
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