November 2016

Reconstruction of the Chicxulub crater (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

0

An article published in the journal “Science” describes a study that found a possible connection between asteroid impacts and the production of habitats for new life forms. A team of researchers carried out a series of drills in the underground circular structure of Chicxulub, the large crater beneath the Yucatan peninsula generated by an impact. That event, which started the extinction of dinosaurs and many other life forms about 66 million years ago.

The Jonah Kit by Ian Watson

0

The novel “The Jonah Kit” by Ian Watson was published for the first time in 1975. It won the BSFA award for best novel of the year.

The Soviets conduct a series of experiments to imprint a mind on human beings but also on whales. Those are top-secret experiments but a child disappears from the lab and pops up in Tokyo stating that his mind is that of a dead cosmonaut revealing what happened to him.

Paul Hammond has already won a Nobel Prize but believes he has evidence of a theory that would totally upset human beings’s concept of the cosmos. The scientist thinks he can prove that the universe we perceive is actually just a kind of shadow of the real one and that God has forsaken it after creating it.

Tongtianlong limosus skeleton (Image courtesy Junchang Lü et al.)

0

An article published in the journal “Scientific Reports” describes the discovery of a new species of winged dinosaur that was named Tongtianlong limosus. The specimen studied was found in the Nanxiong Formation, in the Guangdong province, in south-eastern China, where it lived between 66 and 72 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period.

Alan Dean Foster in 2007

1

Alan Dean Foster was born on November 18, 1946 in New York City, New York, USA. In 1972 he published his first novel, “The Tar-Aiym Krang”. It’s set in Humanx Commonwealth, formed by humans and the insectoid Thranx, the fictional universe to which in which he set most of his works. It’s also the first to have Philip Lynx, also known as Flinx, and his minidrag Pip as its protagonists. In subsequent years, Alan Dean Foster wrote a long series of sequels to his first novel which form the Pip and Flinx adventures but also expanded the Humanx Commonwealth series with other subcycles set in that fictional universe. He’s also famous for writing the novelizations of many movies and stories set in the “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” universes.

The Olive Trees by Vincent Van Gogh

0

Yesterday in Paris a book containing 65 sketches attributed to Vincent Van Gogh titled “Vincent Van Gogh, the brouillard d’Arles, retrouvé carnet” (Vincent Van Gogh, the fog of Arlet, sketchbook found) was presented. It would be a sensational discovery and as such was promoted except that the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam responded to the presentation by stating that the sketches are fakes.