I have a lot of Clarke on the shelf, and I really liked his stuff early on, but as I have aged Clarke hasn't aged as well as I would like.

Not necessarily. A planet in orbit around a black hole (provided it was close enough) could experience some relatively significant time dilation. It would depend on the acceleration the planet experiences due to gravity. That is, time dilation on Mercury, which is deeper in the Sun's gravity well, is actually…

thanks! I think of it as my low-rent version of xkcd :-)

Actually, holding your breath is the LAST thing you want to do. If you ever happen to be on a space station and get shoved out an air lock, you want to exhale and let all the gas out of your body. Divers have to do something similar if they surface too fast (the Navy did some very famous tests with this) — if you are…

Yeah that was pretty grisly. In that case the explosive decompression was because the gradient was actually higher than it would be in space; 9 atmospheres to 1 as opposed to maybe 1/2-3/4 an atmosphere (that's the pressure on the average jet plane) to near-zero in space. Remember the pressure curves can be…

All this discussion of head explosions. My science nerd sense is up.

Yes, that should have got a mention I think. That movie gave millions of people misconceptions about depressurization, but it was a heck of a take on High Noon.

I don't have a many autographs, because I haven't chased them, even though my work as a reporter has actually given me a few chances to get some, though mostly from politicians. (I guess that doesn't really count). I've met Jesse Jackson back when Al Sharpton ran for Senator, and met Bill Bradley at some local New…

Disappointing that Marvel is cancelling this, though this review made me want to pick it up. I'll do my bit…

Well, problem is probably the wrong word and yes, planarians do the same thing, I suppose "only option" is better.

Well, then you have to come up with a way for a 2D creature to absorb energy. Leaves are essentially 2D and they do it. So it's certainly possible to go that way, though then the problem you run into is that the 2D creatures would just sort of assume their energy came from nowhere (they wouldn't be able to perceive…

Well, yes, one could imagine some jello-like substance holding the two halves together, but then you run into all kinds of structural problems, and you'd have to do digestion rather slowly. Remember that we digest by dissolving things in liquids. AFAIK there isn't any creature that doesn't do that, even single-celled…

There's also a story in an old issue of Asimov's Science Fiction — I'll have to look it up and retrieve the title and author — but it centers on a zoo of 4D animals, which people discover how to trap. Unfortunately it turns out that the animals we trap are the 4D equivalent of mice and voles. The intelligent 4D…

Actually the only effect I had a problem with was the CGI train. No stock footage?

Speaking again with a little science.

I wasn't saying they did that every time, but count up the number of episodes that implied aliens, or flatly impossible creatures, or whatever. I can't think of any that I watched or remembered where the big reveal was a mundane phenomenon that basically proved Scully the rationalist right and Mulder wrong. Perhaps…

Well, I can tell you that chemistry isn't just "specific applications of physics" except in the sense that just about anything is. If you're doing protein folding, for instance, there's a lot that can only be found empirically. Also, if I have an atom of say, iron, I can't deduce it's material properties from the atom…

The problem with the X-Files was that it's attitude towards science was the common fallacy that because we don't know everything we know nothing, and that the most fantastical, weirdest explanation for something was the correct one. From a narrative standpoint that's not terrible, but it would have been nice for once…

Speaking as a guy with a real physics background…

you're speaking of in the "Big Bang?" or this episode? I was really confused by the references in the review. Have we met Gus before?