Speculative Nonfiction

Speculative Hard Science and Science Fiction. And Metal.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Phantom Hound, Northern Face (2019)

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Sunday, January 5, 2020

Terraforming Venus; Venus-forming Earth

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Terraforming Venus would require taking almost all of the CO2 out of its atmosphere, so it becomes breathable, doesn't crush us (current...

Star Wars Episode IX Review (CONTAINS SPOILERS BUT MAY NOT MATTER SINCE I'M THE LAST ONE TO SEE IT)

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It's the best of the three new ones, and I think the second best in the entire franchise after Empire. I'm lazy, so some of these t...
Saturday, January 4, 2020

Timeline of Manned Interstellar Travel, Based on Simple Economics: No Humans on Alpha Centauri Planets Until 2613

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It has been estimated that a manned Mars mission would cost $100 billion. Compare this to the most recent unmanned lander, Insight, at $830...
Sunday, October 13, 2019

Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast Show, Plus Selected Discography Review

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Bruce Dickinson with flamethrowers. From Rolling Stone. I went to see Maiden in September in Sacramento (and thanks to Mr. Black for...
Thursday, September 26, 2019

Profits From Asteroid Mining

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After the very cool news showing pretty solid evidence that an asteroid breakup and bolide shower was likely responsible for the mid-Ordovic...
Saturday, August 10, 2019

CNS Damage in Mice Experiencing Mars-Voyage-Like Radiation for Six Months

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This is not good news. We should expect that humans undergoing a Mars trip, with selectively vulnerable hippocampi and dependent on complex...
Sunday, July 21, 2019

An Existential Risk Comparable to the Singularity

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Imagine that due to some breakthrough in computer science, we can determine (with certainty) that for a certain architecture, there are some...
Thursday, June 20, 2019

If You Like to Gamble, I Tell You I'm Your Man

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Wrll, it made me think of Motorhead, for a second, but no actual connection. The same cannot be said for this .
Monday, May 13, 2019

Things That Might Bother You About Avengers Movies

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I noted before that the "20 Things Wrong With [Amazingly Successful Franchise Film]" articles are sad, then wrote just such an art...
Thursday, May 2, 2019

Asia, Don't Cry (Alpha, 1983)

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Hey, I don't want to hear your whining about me posting this song. Why am I making you listen to this? You know what you did. And no...
Saturday, April 20, 2019

If Threonine and Aspartate are Detected on Europa, They Must Have Been Recently Generated

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Important paper for detecting biosignatures elsewhere in the solar system. Truong et al measure the decomposition rate of amino acids in co...
Friday, April 12, 2019

Warm Spot on Europa Produces Plume

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Image credit space.com Current explanations for this warm plume (in fact, authors refer to it as a hotspot) are thermal inertia (basic...
Thursday, April 11, 2019

The Evidence - 2013 Metal Versions of Synchronicity II (The Police, Synchronicity, 1983) and Pressure (Billy Joel, The Nylon Curtain, 1982)

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I've always thought that both of these uncharacteristically intense (for eighties "adult contemporary") and well-written songs...
Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Molecules with MW > 200 Found in Enceladus Vapor

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That's bigger than all amino acids and nucleobases. (Note, 9 months old, I had missed this before.) Press release here , paper here . ...
Sunday, March 31, 2019

Putting Numbers on Panspermia: Material From Earth Impacting Outer System Moons, and Escaping Solar System

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In a simulation, Worth Sigurdsson and House (2013) (WSH) retrodict that Europa, Callisto, Titan, and Enceladus have received 1,900, 370, 51...
Friday, March 29, 2019

Asteroid Bennu is Ejecting Dust; Also, "Alien Tech" on Bennu? (Hint: No)

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One solution to the Fermi paradox is that there's evidence around us and we just haven't noticed it yet. An estimate of 20 MA for c...
Thursday, March 28, 2019

Security Precautions for Keyless Ignition vs Remote Entry

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This is certainly the most practical post in the history of this blog, but it involves the hazards of relying on modern technology; specific...
Friday, March 22, 2019

AIs Are Beating Experts at Old, Relevant, Real-World Problems

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When I was a molecular biology undergrad in the mid 90s, the Big Question in biochemistry was protein folding - how to predict the 3D struct...
Saturday, March 9, 2019

STOP METI

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tl;dr if you worry about the singularity or bio-terrorism as an existential threat, you should help the effort to stop efforts to announce o...
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About Me

Michael Caton
I am a physician, writer and trail runner. You can reach me at mdcblogs@gmail.com.
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