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From teleportation and space elevators to alien contact and interstellar travel, science fiction and fantasy writers have come up with some brilliant and innovative ideas. Yet how plausible are these ideas--for instance, could Mr. Weasley's flying car in the Harry Potter books really exist? Which concepts might actually happen, and which ones wouldn't work at all?Wizards, Aliens, and Starshipsdelves into the most extraordinary details in science fiction and fantasy--such as time warps, shape changing, rocket launches, and illumination by floating candle--and shows readers the physics and math behind the phenomena. With simple mathematical models, and in most cases using no more than high school algebra, Charles Adler ranges across a plethora of remarkable imaginings, from the works of Ursula K. Le Guin toStar TrekandAvatar, to explore what might become reality. Adler explains why fantasy in the Harry Potter and Dresden Files novels cannot adhere strictly to scientific laws, and when magic might make scientific sense in the muggle world. He examines space travel and wonders why it isn't cheaper and more common today. Adler also discusses exoplanets and how the search for alien life has shifted from radio communications to space-based telescopes. He concludes by investigating the future survival of humanity and other intelligent races. Throughout, he cites an abundance of science fiction and fantasy authors, and includes concise descriptions of stories as well as a glossary of science terms. Wizards, Aliens, and Starshipswill speak to anyone wanting to know about the correct--and incorrect--science of science fiction and fantasy.

Slide makes his case -- and then some -- that the \"importance of the fan magazine in American society as an arbiter of (not always good) taste, a source of knowledge, and a gateway to the fabled land of Hollywood and its people cannot be denied.\"

Atreides reviews Chaotic Heart, a perzine by Star.

In a recent series of papers, Leibowitz revealed two pacemaker frequencies associated with flares observed near the Sgr A* location: one for X-ray flares and the other for IR (infrared) flares. He proposed an astrophysical model to account for these two frequencies, involving a unique body orbiting the Sgr A* black hole (supposed nonrotating) close to its last stable circular orbit. In the framework of this model, the Roche lobe contacts the star’s surface near the periastrons, which generates matter pullouts. The resulting X events are then separated by time intervals that are close to integer multiples of the radial orbital frequency, which explains the X pacemaker. One revisits this X sequence orbiting-body interpretation but in a full general relativistic framework, which is more appropriate than the pseudo-Newtonian Paczyński-Wiita potential approach used by Leibowitz. One concludes that no main sequence (or giant) star can survive the tidal effects, whereas no pullout matter is possible for white dwarfs (or neutron stars), on the orbits compatible with the X pacemaker frequency, even if large eccentricities are allowed. This confirms the result obtained by Leibowitz (on the impossibility of a main sequence or usual compact star, since the only solution he found involves an “unusual internal structure star”) but (1) in the framework of full relativistic calculations and (2) extending the result to the eccentric case.

This paper examines the relationship between star power and box office revenues using box office data from nine countries and a continuous measure of star power based on the number of visits to a star's web page on IMDB, the most popular web site for movie-related information. The degree of star power is computed for the top star, top three stars, and the director for the films in our sample. The results indicate that replacing an average star with a top star would increase revenues by an average of $16,618,570, while replacing three average stars with three top stars would increase revenues by an average of $64,410,381.

The frequent flaring events in the X-ray and the NIR radiation of Sgr A* seem not to be periodic in time. However, statistical regularities, here termed \"modulations by a pacemaker\", are found in the recorded arrival times of both types of events. The characteristic time of the X-ray pacemaker is 149 min and that of the NIR pacemaker is 40 min. Their reality as derived from observed data can be accepted at larger than 4.6{\\sigma} and 3.8{\\sigma} levels of statistical confidence, respectively. These results can be interpreted as evidence for a star that revolves around the BH of Sgr A* in a slightly elliptical precessing orbit, at a distance of 3-3.5 Schwarzschild radii of the BH. The period of the X-ray pacemaker, which is not a periodicity of the flare occurrences themselves, is the epicyclic period of the star orbital motion. This is the time interval between 2 successive passages of the star through the peri-center of its orbit. The NIR pacemaker period is the sidereal binary period of the star revolution. The origin of the X-ray flares is in episodes of intense mass loss from the star that occur preferably near the pericenter phase of the binary revolution. The NIR flares originate or are triggered by processes that are internal to the star. The radiation emitted in the direction of Earth is slightly modulated by the changing aspect ratio of the two components of the BH\\star binary to the line of sight from Earth at the sidereal binary frequency.