To buy his way out of serious debt, a straight general contractor agrees to allow the soul of a deceased interior designer to share his body- Jekyll & Hyde style – for just five days, only to find that his new boarder wants to evict his soul and take over his life.
THE GIST:
Scott Damon, a near-bankrupt general contractor to New York’s spoiled elite, has always dismissed the occult. So when his client, Hannah Gordon, offers him an easy $40,000 to channel a spirit through his body for just five days, Scott is desperate enough to give it a try. But after submitting to Hannah’s smudge smoke and incantations, he awakens the next morning to a world that doesn’t look right…and it isn’t.
Hannah has summoned designer Pierre Nalan, her deceased mentor, into Scott’s body so that, speaking through Scott, Pierre can help with her debut exhibit in the city’s premier interior design Showcase. The worst part is, Scott is left unconscious while Pierre takes over. Once again having flesh at his command, Pierre immediately begins wreaking havoc—jeopardizing Scott’s job, tampering with his family, and rearranging his sexual identity by using Scott’s hunky physique to tempt a former lover. Scott’s furious, but it seems he’s powerless to stop Pierre from running—and ruining—his life. Before his eyes, Scott’s world becomes Jekyll and Hyde meets Designing Women—and he doesn’t think it could get any worse.
That is, until he realizes that Pierre’s interior designs go beyond Hannah’s exhibit; his main project is kicking Scott out of his body altogether. Now, at the opening Gala of the design Showcase, Scott has one chance to seize control from his unwanted guest and get his life (and body) back the way it belongs.
]]>(reprint from the Planetary Society site)
Posted by Larry Crumpler FROM PLANETARY.ORG
2013/09/18 11:27 CDT
Topics: mission status, Mars, Mars Exploration Rovers, Opportunity
• Opportunity “wades ashore” at Solander Point on September 13
• Climbing Solander Point is imminent
• Spectacular Navcam panorama of the major geologic contact at this location
On sol 3425 Opportunity “waded ashore” at Solander Point after crossing a sea of sand between here and Cape York. Cape York was an “island” remnant of the rim of Endeavour crater that Opportunity left back in May. Since then it has been driving south to the next largest and mountainous remnant of the crater rim, Solander Point. The sand surrounds the isolated remnants of the rim of Endeavour crater and both Cape York and Solander Point are small exposures of very ancient terrain nearly engulfed by the later sands of Merdiani Planum.
In the last few weeks we have been “sailing” northwest along the “east coast” of Solander Point looking at an odd escarpment along its east edge. But finally on September 13, Opportunity landed on the bed rock of Solander Point. The rest of this week we have spent walking across the tip of Solander Point to get to the bright outcrops on the west side.
This morning we arrived at that outcrop where Opportunity will spent the weekend doing detailed analysis before moving on. Current the solar power is getting less as late fall approaches on Mars. So Opportunity needs to start the climb along the ridge of Solander Point where the northerly slopes will yield more power and science activities may continue I the coming months.
The big goal is 200 meters south, but the terrain right here on sol 3431 is awesome. There are several geologic units that are overlapping here. And Opportunity is sitting on the contact. On the east side of the contact are rocks maybe a billion years older than those on the west side of the contact. This sort of age progression is what geologic look for when trying to understand the past by reading the rocks. Opportunity is allowing us for the first time to do not only fundamental geographic exploration, but it is enabling on the ground geologic study of past climatic history on Mars. You only get to do that once per planet. We are here. And we are doing it now, this weekend.
]]>Two astronauts are now auctioning their personal space artifacts in a bid to help protect the Earth from asteroids.
Apollo 9 spacewalker Rusty Schweickart and International Space Station flight engineer Ed Lu have put up for sale flown-in-space mission patches, flags, medals and pins to support the launch of the private Sentinel space telescope designed to discover, map, and track asteroids with orbits that approach Earth and therefore are a risk to humanity.
“We want to literally save the world,” said Lu, who as chief executive officer leads the B612 Foundation, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to opening up the frontier of space exploration and protecting humanity from asteroid impacts. “Not only will the money raised by this auction go to supporting the Sentinel mission, but also we hope the increased attention to our cause will help everyone realize that they really can take a critical role in protecting our planet in a real and concrete way.” [See Photos of Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]
The eBay auction began on June 27 and runs through Sunday (July 7). All eight lots offered — five from Schweickart and three from Lu — can be viewed and bid on through b612auction.com.
Schweickart, who launched in March 1969 on the Apollo 9 mission to test fly the lunar module that later would land Americans on the moon, contributed to the auction a 4-by-6-inch (10 by 15 cm) American flag that accompanied him in Earth orbit for 10 days. He is also auctioning two silver lapel pins in the shapes of his two space vehicles, dubbed “Gumdrop” and “Spider,” among other memorabilia.
Lu is offering three embroidered patches, one each carried on his three spaceflights. One of the badges, representing Expedition 7, launched on a Russian cargo freighter to the International Space Station and landed on NASA’s space shuttle Discovery after circling the Earth 12,700 times.
The auction coincides with the one year anniversary since the B612 Foundation announced its plans for the Sentinel infrared space telescope to catalog 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids that are larger than 460 feet (140 meters). The $450 million mission is slated to launch in 2017 into a Venus-like orbit around the sun.
In April, the B612 Foundation said it had raised $2 million toward the Sentinel mission. The astronaut artifact auction hopes to advance that total.
“Both Rusty and I were privileged to see the Earth as few others have, and that experience has convinced us that there is nothing more important than the B612 Sentinel mission,” explained Lu, “simply because there is no more important mission than protecting our home planet.”
For more about the Sentinel mission, or to bid in the B612 Foundation’s auction, see: b612auction.com.
Follow collectSpace.com on Facebookand on Twitter at @collectSpace. Copyright 2013 collectSpace.com. All rights reserved.
]]>Cosmic hearts started beating a little faster last fall when a team of European astronomers announced that they had found a planet with a mass comparable to Earth’s orbiting Alpha Centauri B, part of a triple star that is the Sun’s nearest neighbor, only 4.4 light years from here.
A wide-field view of the sky around Alpha Centauri, 4.4 light-years from Earth, the star system closest to our own.
Now, however, in a shot across the bow of cosmological optimism, a new analysis of the European data has cast doubt on whether there is actually a “there” there at Alpha Centauri B.
At the core of our explorations is the quest to know if life exists beyond Earth. The Planetary Society is a leader in the search for life on other worlds, whether intelligent or microbial. Our active projects: SETI Optical Telescope – Looking for laser signals beamed across the vastness of space. SETI Radio Searches – Huge radio dishes sift through nature’s random noise for beacons from other civilizations.
In 2006, The Planetary Society unveiled the first All-Sky Optical SETI (OSETI) telescope. Funded by The Planetary Society and operated by a Harvard University team, it’s completely dedicated to capturing that one pulse of light that might be a communication.
One faint signal from light-years away could prove we’re not alone in this universe. The Planetary Society is committed to finding that signal — tirelessly surveying the skies with our Southern SETI project and our Optical SETI Telescope. You can be a part of these projects and help us keep the search going.
Reposted From the Article By Phil Plait, of BAD ASTRONOMY
Posted Tuesday, May 21, 2013, at 11:59 AM
This summer, a different kind of science fiction movie, Europa Report, is coming out. I saw some buzz about it last year, and it looked interesting—it’s a science fiction movie about a crew going to Jupiter’s moon Europa to look for signs of life. Europa is known to have an ocean of liquid water below its surface, and is one of the better bets in our solar system to look for life.
The trailer was just released, so see for yourself! You can watch it in high resolution on the Apple Trailer site.
As it so happens, I’ve seen the whole flick, because of reasons (fine, I can divulge this much: In the near future I’ll be doing some work with the team that created it—and no, I can’t say just what for the moment, but I will say I’m not in the movie, nor did I help with its production in any way). It’s really good! Like I said before, it’s different: It’s done half documentary style, half movie narrative. The format works very well, giving the movie a heightened sense of suspense.
The special effects are fantastic, and the cast is excellent (for example, it stars Sharlto Copley from District 9. Bear McCreary did the music, too (he scored Eureka, Defiance, Battlestar Galactica, and much more). I wasn’t sure what to expect sitting down to watch it, but I was impressed. The science is very good, which is no surprise since they had JPL scientists as advisers on it.
It’ll be available for download on iTunes on June 27, and in theaters on Aug. 2.
FOR ORIGINAL ENTIRE ARTICLE ON THE BAD ASTRONOMY BLOG, click here.