"Deep Impact" released 1998

One of two comet/asteroid disaster movies to hit theaters, Deep Impact, opened May 8, 1998.  A seven-mile wide comet is on a collision course with Earth, and the world prepares for a mass extinction.

Steven Spielberg was executive producer.  It starred Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Maximillian Schell, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Jon Favreau, Denise Crosby (of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame), and Blair Underwood.

The movie is based on the 1993 novel The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke.  

Arthur C Clarke, science fiction author, born 1917

Arthur C. Clarke, born December 16, 1917 in Somerset, England, was a science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and one of the most influential science fiction writers of all time.  He wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the best science fiction films ever, for which he garnered an Academy Award nomination.  He won three Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards for his works. 

He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 and was knighted in 2000.  By that time, his health had deteriorated to the point that he could not travel to London from Sri Lanka where he resided until his death in 2008.

The Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction writing is an annual award in England.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" released 1968

Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered April 2, 1968 in Washington, DC.  It opened in New York City and a limited release across the US on April 3, and finally in Los Angeles April 4.

Now considered one of the best movies of all time, it did not get favorable reviews at the time of its release.  Some comments include "monumentally unimaginative movie", "somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring".  According to imdb.com, many people walked out of the theatres.

It won an Academy Award for Best Special Visual Effects, and nominated for 3 more: Best Director, Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, and Best Art Direction.  In 1991, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aeshetically significant".

Star Trek episode "The Devil in the Dark" airs 1967

One of the best, and creepiest, epsiodes of Star Trek (The Original Series), The Devil in the Dark aired March 9, 1967.  The crew of the Enterprise is called to the planet Janus VI, where a monster has been killing members of a mining colony.  As the investigation continues, Kirk, Spock and McCoy realize that the "monster" called the Horta, might not be as evil as first thought.

In 1995, Arthur C. Clarke said this was only episode he could recall.  It impressed him because "the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous need not be malevolent."

Many critics consider this episode as one of the best of the original series.  William Shatner said this was his favorite episode.  Leonard Nimoy said it was a "wonderful episode about the fear of the unknown, how we fear and even hate something that we don't know anything about, learn who your enemy is, and it's not, maybe then it's not no longer your enemy."

Uhura and Sulu don't appear in this episode.

"2010" released 1984

2010, the movie adaption of Arthur C. Clarke's sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, was released December 7, 1984.  The subtitle for 2010 was "The Year We Make Contact".  It starred Roy Scheider, Dame Helen Mirren and John Lithgow.  Keir Dullea reprised his role as David Bowman from 2001.   Douglas Rains reprised his role as the voice of the HAL 9000 computer.

The movie is about a joint venture between the Soviet Union and the United States on a journey to Jupiter.  They find a huge monolith, like the ones in 2001, orbiting Jupiter.

It was nominated for 5 Oscars.  It won a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Science news this week: Europa, Mars and a Super-Moon!

When Voyager 2 flew past the Jovian moon Europa in 1979, Earthlings received images of a flat white surface, no craters, just mysterious brown streaks across the moon’s exterior.  The lack of features meant some force was present to erase the evidence of asteroid impacts.  I even remember reading news reports saying the closer Voyager 2 got to Europa, the younger the moon looked.  In fact, according to Popular Science, the discoveries prompted Arthur C. Clarke to write a sequel to his highly successful 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In his novel 2010, they beings warned the Earthlings, “all these words are yours – except Europa.  Attempt no landing here.”  Author Corey S. Powell reports that this warning has become a in-joke and a taunt to scientists.

Last week, NASA reported a huge global sub-surface ocean on the Saturnine moon Enceladus but this week they reported Europa as being the wettest known world in the solar system with more than twice the water on earth.  Life needs water.  Everywhere water exists on Earth so does life.  So to find alien life, one must look for alien water.  Europa has about 3 million cubic kilometers of it.

Life also needs good and energy, which Europa also contains.  Scientists suggest the oceans could be ‘nourished by a drizzle of organic chemicals’ stirred by volcanic vents.

Proving it will be a task worthy of Jupiter himself.  It’s about 600 million miles from here to Europa and that could take about 6 years.  The surface of the moon receives an average radiation dose of 500 rem/day, which can fry unshielded electronics in just a few days.  Lastly, the ice shell is about 10 miles thick, much more than the ice covering the Antarctica.  Many scientist are saying we should try, though.

The last probe to visit Jupiter and her moons was Galileo in 1995 and lasted until 2003 when the mission ended.  In May this year, NASA began developing a probe to visit Europa sometime in the 2020’s.

We might never find out what is below the surface of Europa unless we ignore the warnings of Arthur C. Clarke and put a lander on it.

 

In other news this week, it has been one year since NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) entered orbit above the Red Planet. Among its objectives, MAVEN will try to figure out where the water went.

 

 

Gases escaping from Mars:

And don’t miss the lunar eclipse with a Super-Moon, this Sunday, Sept 27.