NASA milestone: We’re one step closer to ‘finding Earth’s twin’

By Krystal Clark, Source: Blastr.com

Scientists are one step closer to finding a new Earth. NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered its first planet located within the “habitable zone.” That means its surface can hold liquid water, i.e., it could sustain life!

NASA’s calling the new planet Kepler-22b. It’s located 600 light-years away, and it’s about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. At the moment, scientists are still unsure about the planet’s composition. Yes, it can hold water, but there’s no confirmation about its surface being rocky, gaseous or even liquid. Despite the unknown, they believe finding Kepler-22b is a step in the right direction.

Kepler program scientist Douglas Hudgins said, “This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin. Kepler’s results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA’s science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe.”

Speaking of Earth’s twin, Kepler-22b does share some notable similarities. It orbits a sun-like star in about 290 days, with its host star belonging to the same class as our sun, which is called G-type. Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in early February, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed.

So how does Kepler find these habitable planets? They measure dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets that cross in front of, or “transit,” them. The program needs at least three transits to confirm a signal as a planet.

More info on Kepler-22b will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek sequel recruits the original RoboCop

By Marc Bernardin, source: Blastr.com

The latest actor to join Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Simon Pegg for another adventure on the Starship Enterprise is science-fiction veteran Peter Weller. But who will the once and future Buckaroo Banzai play?

Star Trek 2: Totally Not the Wrath of Khan has already lined up Alice Eve and set its sights on Benicio del Toro, but the notoriously secretive Abrams is keeping who those actors will play under wraps. Same goes for Weller, who’s been keeping himself busy appearing on Dexter and Fringe, when he’s not off being a history professor.

Some seem to think that Weller, who’s got some experience with human-cyborg relations, might be playing some version of the Borg. Me, I’m putting my money on Commodore Matthew Decker, the cracked commander who did battle with an implacable interstellar menace in the classic Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine.”

Of course, I’m not saying how much money.

Fables creator sounds off on Once Upon A Time’s ‘similarities’

By Marc Bernardin, Source: Blastr.com

Ever since ABC’s Once Upon a Time premiered earlier this fall, sharp-eyed viewers have notice that it bears a rather striking resemblance to the long-running, fairy-tale-centric Vertigo comic Fables, which was optioned by ABC a few years back. Now, Fables’ creator Bill Willingham gives us his take on how the two relate.

Willingham wrote something of an essay over the weekend in which he interviewed himself about his comic and Adam Horowitz and Ed Kitsis’ hit show. You should head over to Comic Book Resources to read the entire piece—it’s a pretty well-reasoned take on idea generation and how, in Hollywood, not everything is as malicious as it might seem—but here are some of the highlights:

“Our fantastic literature is rife with ‘they’ve been hiding amongst us all along’ scenarios. There were plenty of such tales long before Fables came along. There will be scads of them long after Once has aired its final episode and Fables shipped its final issue. If you start with the notion of fairy tale characters still alive in the modern world, the next step of placing them in a secret community seems almost axiomatic.”