November 2014

Destination: Void by Frank Herbert

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The novel “Destination: Void” by Frank Herbert was published for the first time in 1965 in the magazine “Galaxy” with the title “Do I Wake or Dream?” and as a book in 1966. A revised edition was published in 1978.

An interstellar spaceship is traveling to the Tau Ceti system carrying a crew in hibernation. It’s led by an Organic Mental Core (WTO), a brain separated from his body. However, in a short time two WTOs have become catatonic and a third one has gone mad.

The few members of the emergency crew have very few choices to avoid the order to abort the mission and return back before leaving the solar system. One of the possibilities is to develop an artificial consciousness. However, it seems that the official information on the mission don’t always correspond to the truth.

Fabiola Giannotti at the ATLAS experiment (Photo courtesy Claudia Marcelloni/CERN. All rights reserved)

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CERN has announced the appointment of Italian scientist Fabiola Gianotti as new Director-General. The formalization will take place at the December meeting of the Council of Delegates that govern CERN. Dr. Gianotti’s mandate will start on January 1, 2016 and will run for five years. She’ll be the first woman to hold that office.

ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter with the Eye Tracking Device (Photo ESA/NASA)

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The use of lasers in eye surgery has become normal and now a space technology has become part of the surgical instruments. It’s an instrument that can follow the patient’s eye movements without interfering with the work of the surgeon and consequently direct with extreme precision the laser scalpel.

The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke

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The novel “The Sands of Mars” by Arthur C. Clarke was published for the first time in 1951.

Martin Gibson is a famous science fiction writer but has never traveled in space. Finally, he has an opportunity and leaves on the Ares, a starship that will be reach the Martian colony. First he has to go to “Space Station One”, in Earth’s orbit, where interplanetary trips start.

When he embarks on Ares, Martin Gibson is assigned Jimmy Spencer, a astronaut in training, whose task is to help him to settle in space and to answer his questions. The relationship between the two of them isn’t always easy but eventually they become friends. It’s also thanks to Jimmy Martin that he gets interested in the future of the Martian colony more than he imagined.