November 2014

The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom (Italian edition)

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The novel “The Jesus Incident” by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom was published for the first time in 1979. It’s the sequel to “Destination: Void”.

Ship brought its crew in the Tau Ceti system and a colony was established on the planet Pandora. It’s far from a paradise, with native life forms lethal to humans who are somehow interconnected and they’re connected to the mystery of the Avata. Life for humans and clones is hard and Ship isn’t happy.

The settlers had to decide how to WorShip but what’s happening isn’t satisfactory. To change the situation, Ship awakens from hibernation Raja Flattery, the first chaplain-psychiatrist, and reveals him the nature of the test it’s conducting. Raja must help the settlers to pass the test, otherwise Ship will eliminate the colony.

Alexander Gerst, Maksim Surayev and Gregory Reid Wiseman assisted after landing in the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft (Photo NASA/Bill Ingalls)

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A few hours ago, astronauts Gregory Reid Wiseman of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA and Russian cosmonaut Maksim Surayev returned to Earth on the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft, which landed smoothly in Kazakhstan. The three of them spent about six months on the International Space Station, where they arrived on May 28, 2014. Initially, they were part of Expedition 40, in the second half of their stay they were part of Expedition 41 with Maksim Surayev as commander of the Station.

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Czech Republic won Federation Cup 2014 defeating Germany in the Final thanks to the wins by Petra Kvitova against Andrea Petkovic and Angelique Kerber and by Lucie Safarova against Angelique Kerber. For Czech Republic this is the third Federation Cup won in four years.

Picture of the HL Tauri system with its forming planets taken by the ALMA telescope (Image ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO))

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In September 2014, ESO’s ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) telescope began the long baseline campaign, the one with the antennas separated by the maximum length achieved so far, which is 15 km away (a little more than 9 miles). In this mode, more powerful than before, ALMA observed with great results HL Tauri, a young star about 450 light years from Earth. It’s surrounded by a disk of dust that is slowly coalescing in certain areas to form planets.

R.A. Lafferty in his home around 1985

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Raphael Aloysius Lafferty was born on November 7, 1914 in Neola, Iowa, USA. He started his career as a writer only at the end of the ’50s. Most of his works are considered science fiction, though he had a very personal style, but he wrote stories of various genres, including the historical one. R.A. Lafferty died on March 18, 2002 in a nursing home in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.