We have an update from Bill Burns over at e-fanzines, and a few more zines to share.
Update from Bill:
http://www.monsffa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ImpulseOctober2023PDF.pdf
We archive our documents on our website, so if you wish a look back in time, look for WARP and Impulse on the top menu bar.
From the earliest days of science fiction, space travellers travelled to the Moon, to Mars, to Venus, and to other planets as they were discovered. Early science fiction – before the late 199th century – treated the planets as just different earths. Science fictional tropes from the late 19th century right to the Space Age declared Mercury to be an oven on the side facing the sun and a freezer on the other. Venus was a planet of swamps, jungles, and dinosaurs. Mars was a cool desert planet, with all the water in the canals.
Then, science had its little say. Starting in the early 1960s, the first interplanetary probes knocked down the tropes of science fiction. Or as T.H. Huxley (1825 – 1895) put it: “The great tragedy of Science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
But have no fear, there were plenty of other ways to look at the planets … and more planets to look at.
Pictures and short video of MonSFFA’s visit to the Montreal Aviation Museum in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue have been uploaded to our website and ca
n be accessed by clicking the field trips menu item under activities. Or go directly to http://www.monsffa.ca/?page_id=28425
MonSFFA meets on the 14th of October, close enough to Hallowe’en for a celebration of monsters, Jack-o’-Lanterns, and their ilk.
Come costumed, bring your crafty ornaments and decorations! There might be prizes!
All fans invited to join us at the Royal Canadian Legion branch in Lachine: 3015 Rue Henri Dunant, Lachine, H8S 1R5
Bennu is an asteroid that could threaten the Earth, though the possibility is a narrow one. Still, a wise move to find out what it is made of, just in case we need to eliminate it sometime in the future. Besides that, the always important question: what are WE made of, what are the prime building blocks of our solar system? Asteroids are untouched remnants of the solar system’s formation.
Canada provided the instruments that made asteroid Bennu the most completely measured asteroid so far, and therefore will receive a portion of the sample for study. https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/osiris-rex/canadas-role.asp
The BBC has the story from the launch of the mission to the arrival at NASA, with videos here: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-66907727
And of course the NASA site is a veritable rabbit hole, pictures, simulations, videos. https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
But this isn’t the end of the story! OSIRIS-REx is now headed back out toward another asteroid. The spacecraft will arrive at Apophis in April 2029, around when the asteroid is expected to encounter Earth. A few years ago, Apophis was discovered to be on an actual collision course, which was the cause of a lot of excitement, but follow-up studies have it narrowly missing us. Whew! Good idea to learn about its composition. —Cathy
READ ALL ABOUT IT! NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
Canada played crucial role in OSIRIS-REx mission that collected asteroid fragments
A spacecraft that has travelled more than 950 million kilometres is dropping off a care package on Sunday: samples from an asteroid that lies more than 100 million kilometres from Earth.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) launched in 2016 destined for an asteroid named Bennu. Its main mission: to stick an arm out, “high-five” the asteroid and then vacuum up some of the debris, referred to as “touch and go.”
It successfully did so in 2020. Now, the rocky samples — roughly 250 grams in total, the largest ever to return to Earth — are on their way to be studied by science teams, including those from Canada.
That’s thanks to our contribution of the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA), an instrument that mapped out the asteroid in 3D in order to find a good place for the sample collection.
READ More: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/osiris-rex-sample-return-1.6974159
A capsule carrying precious samples from asteroid Bennu landed on Earth on Sunday.
Nasa scientists hope the material could give hints to how life here began.
BBC Science editor Rebecca Morelle explains why the samples are so important.
From Bill Burns at e-fanzines:
New today at https://efanzines.com are:
Octothorpe #92, a regular fannish podcast by John Coxon, Alison Scott and Liz Batty
Opuntia #557, edited by Dale Speirs
Leybl Botwinik’s CyberCozen – Sep 2023
Guy H. Lillian III’s Spartacus #68
—
Bill
There will be a Scintillation 5! The dates will be June 14-16 2004 at the usual place: the China town Holiday Inn.
Hello!
Attached is the September 2023 edition of /Shooting My CUFFs/, the newsletter of the Canadian Unity Fan Fund 2023-2024 campaign. Enjoy! Shooting My CUFFs #6
This is my first attempt to set up a public Discord group. I invite you to join the CUFF Discord group at
Let’s see how this works!
Yours, Garth Spencer, 2023 CUFF delegate
With this mailing. N’APA 266. The issue is large enough that there is no room in the mailing for anything else.
A Nasa probe into hundreds of UFO sightings found there was no evidence aliens were behind the unexplained phenomena, but the space agency also could not rule out that possibility.
If the truth is out there, this long-awaited report offers no conclusive evidence.
But it did outline how Nasa will investigate what it calls UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) with improved technology and artificial intelligence.
Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said the US space agency will not only take the lead in researching possible UAP incidents, but will share data with more transparency.
The report is 36 pages of quite technical and scientific observations, so here are some of the key takeaways.
The very last page of the report said “there is no reason to conclude” that extra-terrestrial sources are behind the hundreds of UAP sightings Nasa has investigated.
“However, if we acknowledge that as one possibility, then those objects must have travelled through our solar system to get here,” the report said.
Although the report did not conclude extra-terrestrial life exists, Nasa didn’t deny the possibility of “potential unknown alien technology operating in Earth’s atmosphere”.