Slime Mold Network

A Japan-based research team found that if they placed bits of food (oat flakes) around a central Physarum in the same location as 36 outlying cities around Tokyo, the mold created a network connecting the food sources that looked rather like the existing rail system.

"Self-organization, self-optimization and self-repair as it naturally occurs in the slime mold Physarum polycephalum are capabilities that may be required for technological systems such as mobile communication networks or networks of dynamically connected computational devices"

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=what-we-can-learn-from-slime-mold-h-2010-01-21

Trinitite

Trinitite is the name given to deposits left behind after nulcear testing. It's composed of silica and quartz from sand sucked up into the centre of the explosion, where it fuses together to form a kind of man made pseudo-mineral.

A number of different types of Trinitite have been identified. Green is the most common form. Black contains iron from the tower structure. Red contains copper from the 'gadget' itself or from the communications cables that led away from the site. Both black and red specimens are extremely rare. Rounded pearls are also found which come from melted silica that returned to solid form before hitting the ground.

Philip K Dick

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and

unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful. A few years ago, no college

or university would ever have considered inviting one of us to speak.

We were mercifully confined to lurid pulp magazines, impressing no

one. In those days, friends would say me, “But are you writing

anything serious?” meaning “Are you writing anything other than

science fiction?” We longed to be accepted. We yearned to be noticed.

Then, suddenly, the academic world noticed us, we were invited to give

speeches and appear on panels — and immediately we made idiots of

ourselves.

Fake Space

'Mars', looks like an episode of the Banana Splits....

THE BIOSPHERE

I vaguely remember this being publicised when it opened, now it's all rubbish inside.

By 2006, the property, which is in exurban Tucson, was slated to be redeveloped for a planned community.^[4] As of June 5, 2007, the property including surrounding land, totaling 1,650 acres (6.7 km²), had been sold to a residential home developer for US$50 million.

In the 1960s, the Astrogeology branch of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Flagstaff created an artificial crater field at Cinder Lake in order to train astronauts as well as test equipment and techniques for lunar exploration. They used a Lunar Orbiter image to re-create an actual lunar landscape by setting off charges of the right size to make craters of the right size, as well as setting them off in the proper sequence to get the overlaying ejecta layed out in the same order as seen in the lunar image.

Holograms