Scientists have been finding planets around other stars by observing the “wobble” created by the interplay of the planet’s gravity and that of its parent sun for several years. And until now, those findings have invariably been giant gas planets similar to Jupiter or Saturn. But now a team of Portugese astronomers has presented findings indicating that they’ve detected an enormous rocky planet orbiting the star mu Arae. Scientists say that this planet is probably as large as a rocky world can become, roughly the size of the planet Uranus – about 14 times the size of Earth. And don’t get your hopes up for finding life on this terrestrial planet either: it’s locked into a tight, dizzying orbit that whips it around its star in a ten-day year, which also means it’s close enough to its sun to bake its surface continuously to the tune of 1,160 degrees Fahrenheit (or until it turns a crispy golden brown, no doubt). Two other planets, including a Jupiter-like gas giant that takes 650 days to orbit the star, were also discovered. The mu Arae system is only 50 light years away, one of the nearest solar systems discovered to our own.
Source: Space.com

Star Trek: The Next Generation star Patrick Stewart is reportedly making a full recovery from what’s being described as a “pre-emptive” angioplasty surgery. A blood flow problem was discovered during a routine physical last week, and a procedure to head off any future problems was recommended. Stewart is recovering at home, and may even return to work as early as next week, with work still to be done on the film The Game Of Their Lives and voice work still ahead for an animated Fox series called American Dad.
Source: Associated Press

A few weeks ago, we brought your attention to an enigmatic announcement from River West Brands, a licensing company which has obtained the rights to the long-dormant brand name of ColecoVision, arguably the most sophisticated video game console of the pre-NES 1980s. New River West’s plans for the ColecoVision brand are becoming readily apparent as the company has signed a deal with Techno Source, the Hong Kong toy company responsible for the nifty Intellivision 25-in-1 TV game in 2003. It also seems as though River West will be reviving Coleco’s classic LED-based handheld sports games such as Head-To-Head Football. Though no launch date has been announced for the products, the new ColecoVision games are expected to retail for anywhere from “$4.99 to $19.99,” according to Techno Source.
Source: Calgary Herald

Another giant in the field of movie music has passed on. Renowned composer Elmer Bernstein died Wednesday. Best known for his non-genre work on such classic films as The Ten Commandments, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Magnificent Seven (and its numerous sequels), Animal House, True Grit and Airplane!, he also racked up quite a few genre credits, ranging from Ghostbusters to Heavy Metal to Saturn 3 and beyond. He also scored numerous specials and documentaries for National Geographic, IBM, and even the United Nations. He was nominated for 11 Oscars with one win (for Thoroughly Modern Millie), and was instrumental in the formation of the Varese Sarabande label, which has released soundtrack recordings almost exclusively for the last 25 years. Mr. Bernstein was 82 years old.
Sources: CNN, IMDb, Varese Sarabande Records

ARCA, a team of civilians (primarily students) hoping to take a shot at the Ansari X Prize, has announced a September 8th date for a test launch – not an X Prize qualifying launch – of a scaled-down version of its single-stage, vertical launch rocket. Their three-person Orizont (Horizon) vehicle won’t be rolled out for a qualifying flight until a successful test of its unmanned “little brother,” Demonstrator 2B. Launched from the shore of the Black Sea, the 40% scale version of ARCA’s X Prize contender will give the team engineers their first full launch test of what they are calling “the world’s first composite materials monopropellant rocket engine,” designed by the ARCA team members on a tight budget. The engine has proven itself in 28 ground tests to date, and the September 8th launch will be its first flight test. Led by Dumitru Popescu, ARCA has been developing its unique engine since 1998.
Source: Ansari X Prize

It’s headed straight back to Earth with its otherworldly cargo, but don’t worry, it’s not going to terraform the whole planet in a flash. Launched in 2001, JPL’s Genesis space probe is about to return the first samples from space to Earth since the Apollo program ended. Genesis has been on a looping trajectory around the sun for three years, gathering samples of solar wind particles and trapping them on what NASA calls “ultra-pure wafers” of gold, diamond, silicon and sapphire. The samples, encased in a re-entry capsule, will return to Earth where a helicopter will snag it in mid-air and bring it safely to the ground. That intricate recovery operation is scheduled to take place on September 8th at the U.S. Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range. If all goes well, NASA scientists will be able to more accurately determine the composition of the sun and the early solar system.
Source: NASA / JPL

The Cassini probe has already made impressive discoveries at Saturn. NASA has announced that Cassini images have uncovered two previously undiscovered moons in orbit of the ringed planet, and they’re among the smallest bodies that have yet been detected in space – each is barely 2 miles in diameter. They’ve been given the provisional names s/2004 S1 and s/2004 S2 for now, and there will need to be further verification of their size and orbits – and undoubtedly other members of Saturn’s family are waiting to be captured by Cassini’s cameras in the course of its four-year survey of the planet and its moons.
Source: NASA / JPL

The sixth Doctor’s audio adventures continue in the latest double-CD Doctor Who audio drama, Medicinal Purposes. It’s another trip into Earth’s own past for the Doctor and Evelyn (Colin Baker and Maggie Stables, very possibly the best audio Doctor-companion pairing out there) as they find themselves plunged into a doctor’s questionable experiments with the dead. Medicinal Purposes is due to be released next week, and you can order it now from theLogBook.com Store.

theLogBook.com and Phosphor Dot Fossils are proud sponsors of the second annual Oklahoma Gaming Exhibition, September 18th in Tulsa, OK, and this year we’ll be showing off something truly unique: OKGE will see the first public appearance of the ultra-rare Odyssey2 trackball controller by Wico. Apparently made in very, very small numbers only – this is one of only two known to exist – the Odyssey2 Command Control trackball puts a different spin on some old favorites on this system. This will be the first hands-on public appearance of one of these controllers at a retrogaming show, and it’ll be set up for play at the Phosphor Dot Fossils table. (If you read our report from last year’s OKGE, you’ll remember that one of the show’s attendees just happened to bring this treasure with him, which we subsequently acquired after the show – proof that you never know when a “holy grail” will show up unexpectedly!) If you want to test drive this Odyssey2 rarity for yourself, roll on into Tulsa on September 18th and have a ball with us at OKGE.

Veteran Hollywood composer David Raskin, whose musical career spanned over sixty years, died Monday, August 9th of heart failure. Though he’s arguably best known for scoring the 1944 film Laura, he also racked up an impressive number of genre credits, from Nicholas Meyer’s controversial TV movie The Day After to the serialized Superman featurettes starring Kirk Alyn in 1948. Just a few of his other notable movie scores included The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles To Earth, and television scores ranging from Ben Casey to Wagon Train. Mr. Raskin died just five days after his 92nd birthday.
Sources: Film Score Monthly, Internet Movie Database

Although NASA has ruled out any future space shuttle missions that don’t visit the International Space Station, apparently it’s not giving up on the Hubble Space Telescope just yet. The proponents for a robotic mission to salvage the orbiting telescope have been given one year to present the agency with a workable mission proposal, and a budget of at least $1 billion will be sought from Congress to put the mission into practice by 2007 – a critical deadline since Hubble’s orbit is expected to decay in 2008. Already, the telescope is encountering technical problems, with the most recent symptom being the failure of an instrument called the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which NASA says is responsible for about 30% of all data and imagery retrieved by Hubble. One of the leading ideas is to ramp up the development and construction schedule of a remote-controlled robot called Dextre, originally designed for work around the Space Station.
Sources: BBC News, CNN

As if we needed a reminder that the exploration of space isn’t for the weak-hearted, a team of Ansari X Prize hopefuls suffered a major setback on August 8th when their vehicle, the Rubicon 1, exploded after liftoff in an unmanned test flight. According to Eric Meier, one of the designers of the Rubicon 1, the $20,000 vehicle cannot be recovered or repaired, but must be completely rebuilt. Meier and his team intend to build a new craft and continue vying for the X Prize, whose deadline is the end of this year. Two other teams, one also from the U.S. and the other Canadian, have already announced dates for their qualifying flights.
Source: CNN

If it works for the Doctor, why not? A new season of five Gallifrey audio adventures, a spinoff chronicling life (and backstabbing politics) on the home world of Doctor Who‘s Time Lords, is in the works, and it will mark the first collaboration between Romana’s two incarnations, played respectivley by Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward. Louise Jameson, John Leeson and Lynda Bellingham will reprise their roles of Leela, K9 and the Inquisitor as well, and there are already rumblings of a third season. Producer Gary Russell has said that he’s aiming for the second run of adventures to have even more of a “West Wing feel,” focusing on political machinations and betrayals rather than action. The new series begins in spring 2005, and a complete guide to the first four Gallifrey audio plays will be appearing soon on theLogBook.com.
Sources: BBC, Outpost Gallifrey

Classic Gaming Expo 2004 is mere days away, being held in San Jose, California for the first time ever, and great things are afoot for the premier retrogaming event in North America. Apple co-founder (and Apple II designer) Steve Wozniak has been confirmed as a guest speaker at the show, and of course there are new games in the works, including Bristles, an announced-but-never-released Atari 5200 game by First Star Software, the creators of the classic 80s game Miner 2049er. In a first for new releases of old games, Bristles has actually been completed and released by the First Star team itself. For more information on CGE, click here.
Source: Classic Gaming Expo

Another first at this year’s CGE is the debut of Messiah Entertainment’s wireless NES and SNES controllers. These sleek and beautiful looking things offer a range of over 30 feet from the console with 2.4Ghz receivers, and there are even “collectible” editions that pair two controllers and two receivers in a dandy-looking lunchbox container. Messiah will be debuting these controllers at CGE next weekend, but they’ll also be showing them off at East Coast Gaming Expo on September 11th in Reading, PA, and at OKGE the following weekend in Tulsa (we’ll be at OKGE as well, and we’re definitely going to test-drive some of these). And if that doesn’t already have you drooling, Messiah also lists other wireless products coming in the future: NES Advantage wireless joysticks, wireless Sega Genesis controllers, and wireless Atari 2600 joysticks. Pre-orders are already being taken via major credit cards and PayPal – click here for more information.

Emmy-winning former Babylon 5 makeup artist John Vulich, whose makeup company Optic Nerve provided the show’s aliens with their unique look, is on the receiving end of a federal lawsuit by the Screen Actors’ Guild. The actors’ union alleges that Vulich sent bulk e-mails to SAG members in 2003 to speak out against a proposed merger with the AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) union, even though Vulich himself is not a SAG member. An attorney for Vulich claims that the makeup artist allowed his computer to be used by “union dissidents.” The SAG/AFTRA merger was defeated when put to a vote of SAG’s membership. Vulich is currently working on a series of horror movies filming in Romania and – in a first – near the disused Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Sources: StudioBriefing, CNN