Category: Entertainment

What happens when you ask two southern European women to eschew their expressive hand gestures?

Quality entertainment, that’s what.

The concept of asteroid mining for critical minerals is transitioning from a theoretical idea to a practical venture, promising to revolutionize not only resource extraction but potentially offering a cleaner alternative to traditional Earth-based mining. The notion, circulating since the 1970s, has recently gained momentum. Companies such as AstroForge, Trans Astronautica Corporation, and Karman+ are preparing to deploy advanced technologies for space trials, setting the stage for asteroid mining operations.

Space missions from Japan and the U.S. have been initiated to survey asteroids and retrieve samples. Notably, NASA’s Psyche mission, launched in October 2023, is en route to its namesake asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter, with exploration activities scheduled to commence in August 2029.

This burgeoning field has captured the attention of economists who are assessing its implications for the global economy. A significant study by Ian Lange of the Colorado School of Mines, published on October 16, investigates the economic landscape of asteroid mining. This research anticipates a substantial expansion of the industry in coming decades, spurred by escalating demand for metals essential for electronics, renewable energy technologies, and electric vehicles.

Lange’s analysis highlights the rich deposits of vital metals such as nickel, cobalt, iron, and platinum in asteroids, potentially exceeding terrestrial reserves by over a thousand-fold. The advent of reusable rocket technology by entities like SpaceX and Rocket Lab has significantly reduced launch costs, rendering asteroid mining an economically feasible endeavor.

Personally, I am a big fan of sci-fi, so this whole endeavor sounds very cool to me.

For years, the cycle of building and then discarding movie and TV sets into landfills was the norm in Hollywood. A practice veteran art director Karen Steward knows this all too well. “The dumpsters just line up at the end of the show,” she explained, “And there’s no talking about it, because it’s time to get off the soundstage.”.

Steward and her colleagues from the Art Directors Guild have been advocating for change, striving for sustainability and reducing waste within an industry traditionally ruled by the maxims of speed and cost-efficiency. She noted the initial challenges in shifting the mindset, recounting, “We’re all about not wasting time, and hurry up, and get it done, and time is money.”.

Echoing the urgency of this mission, Earth Angel, a consultancy that assists productions in minimizing their carbon footprints, reported that an average movie or TV show in 2022 was responsible for generating approximately 240 tons of waste, half of which resulted from the disposal of sets and props. Emellie O’Brien, Earth Angel’s founder, emphasized the potential for more sustainable practices, stating, “There are definitely more innovative, efficient ways of working. We often just don’t give people the space and the breathing room to uncover those solutions.”

A practical approach to reducing waste has been the reuse of old sets, as demonstrated by Beachwood Services. This Sony Pictures Entertainment-owned service rents out previously used sets and props, offering a sustainable alternative to building new ones from scratch.

Despite some resistance from art directors wary of compromising their creative vision, Beachwood encourages modification and customization of these assets. Sondra Garcia, director of scenic operations at Beachwood, reassured, “We tell people, ‘You’re going to put your own spin on it. You’re going to paint it. You’re going to reconfigure it. And then it is your design.'”

When sets no longer meet the criteria for high-budget productions, they find a new purpose at organizations like EcoSet. This Los Angeles-based entity steps in to prevent these materials from becoming landfill waste by offering them to those in need.

The efficient use of resources and reducing waste is a worthy goal. So it is good to see those wherever they work.

We have all watched movies with terrifying dinosaurs in them. (unless you don’t like dinosaur movies…)

The loud roar of the T.Rex from the Jurassic Park movies have become very iconic and show up in our popular media all the time. But is that actually what they sounded like?

While it is impossible to get an exact replica of how a T.Rex would sound, researchers have a pretty good idea.

If you are just interested in the possible sound the T.Rex produced, just skip to the 3:43 minute mark on the video. If you want to know how scientist go about approximating these sounds, then I would recommend starting from the beginning of the video.

“Dune: Part Two” has made quite the impact, drawing in large crowds with its stunning visuals, sound, music, and story. But were did the idea of Arrakis, the desert planet central to the story come from? While sci-fi stories set on desert planets are a bit of a (overused) troupe nowadays, published in 1965, Dune is certainly not new to the scene.

When Frank Herbert witnessed ecologists working on the sands along Oregon’s coast, it sparked inspiration for his iconic sci-fi novel, Dune.

Near Florence, Oregon, a vast expanse of sand dunes separates the Pacific Ocean from dense forests. These dunes are in a constant state of flux, reshaping the landscape dramatically over time, reminiscent of scenes from another planet.

It was the encroaching dunes threatening local infrastructure in the 1950s that first drew Frank Herbert, then a budding journalist, to the area. He saw firsthand how the US Soil Conservation Service (SCS) and other agencies were combating this threat by stabilizing the sands, an effort akin to terraforming.

This visit profoundly influenced Herbert, later serving as a key inspiration for Dune, where controlling desert sands is a central plot element. Herbert’s depiction of the desert planet Arrakis and its inhabitants’ efforts to terraform their world echoes the real-life attempts to manage Oregon’s dunes.

According to a biography written by Herbert’s son Brian Herbert, the idea of transforming the dunes made a huge impression. “Dad realized he had something bigger in front of him than a magazine article,” Brian Herbert wrote. “He sat back at his desk and remembered flying over the Oregon dunes in a Cessna. Sand. A desert world. He envisioned the earth without the technology to stop encroaching sand dunes, and extrapolated that idea until an entire planet had become a desert.”

Herbert’s connection to nature was deep-rooted, nurtured by his upbringing in the Pacific Northwest. His broad interests fueled his science fiction narratives, with dunes becoming a focal point after learning about Oregon’s terraforming efforts.

His observations during a visit to Florence, where he surveyed the dunes and discussed strategies with scientists, informed his later work. The SCS’s initiatives, particularly the planting of European beachgrass to anchor the shifting sands, directly paralleled the fictional endeavors of Dune’s Fremen people. “Downwind sides of old dunes presented the first plantation areas. The Fremen aimed first for a cycle of poverty grass with peatlike hair cilia to intertwine, mat and fix the dunes by depriving the wind of its big weapon: movable grains.” Herbert wrote, describing the Arrakis project in Dune’s appendix.

Herbert’s article “They stopped the moving sands” never saw the light of day, but his experiences significantly shaped Dune’s world. From that we got the iconic novel, and some excellent films too!

If you want to see my review of Dune: Part Two, you can find it here.