Hello Troops,
Yesterday afternoon Megan Warner, BJ Warner and I had the opportunity to sit down with several of our Farpoint Cadets, universally considered to be the brightest future intellects of America. The meeting was held in the London Room at Renaissance Academy on the far eastern border of Lehi Utah (my new classroom). This gathering of Farpoint Cadets also caught the attention of the National Security Agency, the FBI, the CIA, Interpol, NASA, the Pentagon, MI5, and several UFOlogists. Helicopters circled over the school while several black Suburbans crowded the parking lot. From my second story classroom, I saw a Lincoln Towncar parked near the school's fire hydrant bearing the Chinese flag. The car had diplomatic licence plates. My prediction had come true. Word of our Cadet meeting was leaked. Everyone wanted to get a good look at the people who someday, would become the planet's leading movers and shakers.
I kept the cadets away from the large classroom window. They didn't need the distraction. We had work to do. Those Cadets, and others like them soon to join, will someday solve world hunger. They will find solutions to the world's energy problems. They will develop technologies to take us to Mars, Europa and beyond. They are the ones who will work beside adult imagineers in the imagining and creation of our soon to be built Farpoint Station at Kepler 62e.
"We've got our work cut out for us," I reminded them at the start of the meeting. "Farpoint has competition. I think you know who they are. They've been in touch with you, haven't they?"
Several of the cadets nodded while others squirmed uncomfortable in their chairs.
"I see some of you have entertained the possibility of joining them." My accusation hit home. One young cadet attempted to hide his notebook behind his chair.
"NOT so fast. Let me see what you've got there?" I walked over to the boy and held out my hand. Using his mental powers, he tried to distract me and put me off the scent. "Padawan, your thoughts betray you. Give it to me." Reluctantly, he surrendered the notebook. I opened the front cover.
I found a yellow and blue sticker from the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Several of the cadets stood to see. I closed the notebook. "We'll talk about this after the meeting," I said as I handed the notebook back. The boy nodded.
Megan and BJ discussed the finer points of volunteering at their two respective Centers. Megan is the director of the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center. BJ is the director of the Discovery Space Center. Megan and BJ are bother and sister. We discussed the reasons for observing and reviewed the mechanics of requesting a mission from the blog link. There were several questions, after which I outlined the basics of the Farpoint universe. The next meeting will be held in July at a yet to be announced location - hopefully far from preying eyes.
We've got a great group of cadets. Perhaps you think you've got what it takes to be one.
Visit the Farpoint website to find out.
FarpointStation.org.
The Hobbit. The Desolation of Smaug
Space and Science News
26 New Black Holes Discovered?
Astronomers have discovered 26 new likely black holes in the neighboring Andromeda galaxy — the largest haul of black hole candidates ever found in a galaxy apart from our own.
Black holes, which emit almost no light themselves, can be seen only by the light given off by material falling into them. The supermassive black holes that populate the centers of most galaxies are easy to spot because their surroundings are so bright, but much smaller stellar mass black holes are considerably harder to find.
The 26 new candidates, in combination with nine previously discovered black holes in Andromeda, bring the known tally in that galaxy to 35.
The universe may have been borne inside a black hole, and the black holes in our own cosmos might be birthing new universes of their own, if one physicist's controversial idea about time is true.
Going against the standard view of most scientists, theoretical physicist Lee Smolin has suggested that time is real, rather than the illusion that Einstein's theory of relativity makes it out to be. Smolin, who's based at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, outlines the idea in his new book "Time Reborn" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 2013).
Smolin says, "A star that collapses into a black hole very quickly squeezes down to infinite density and time stops — that's according to general relativity. And basically that moment when time stops is deferred by quantum mechanics, by quantum uncertainty, and rather than collapsing to infinite density, the star collapses to a certain extreme density, and then bounces back and begins to expand again. And that expanding star becomes the birth of a new universe. The point where time ends inside a black hole becomes joined to the point where time begins in a Big Bang in a new universe."
Today’s mobile devices are constantly in use—so constantly that battery life is a huge problem. I recently hosted an afternoon barbecue at a community pool; over in one corner, folks jockeyed for a turn to charge their mobile devices at the one available outlet. Meanwhile, the sun shown down brightly on mobile phones scattered across the picnic tables, as the batteries on those idle devices quietly drained.
The SunPartner Group, a 30-employee startup in Aix-en-Provence, France, thinks that’s a real waste. Folks sitting in restaurants, in outdoor cafes, or at their desks typically pull out their phones and put them face up in front of them; put solar cells on the phones and there’d be a lot less scrambling to find a wall outlet. And they’ve built a low-cost transparent panel that does just that. They’re now testing it with a number of manufacturers and expect to see it built into mobile devices early next year.
The Imginarium. Looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary
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| We learn to hate. Be Careful what you say around kids |
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| Refills? I'm going to remember this. Those are my kind of Slurpees. |
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| Some things are best learned in advance |
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| They've figured out how to block the Government's secret surveillance |
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| An adult sized swing. The Perfect Playground |
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| McDonald's prices when I worked there in 1975 |
