Today is Star Wars Day, 4th of May….

Just a little something extra today.

Scifi has been responsible for some inventions that we use today….like GPS is said to have originated from a scifi story by Heinlein and the flip phone was inspired by Star Trek:  the original series….so what if anything has the great scifi series, Star Wars, given us?

Just 48 short years ago, movie director George Lucas used the phrase “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” as the opening to the first “Star Wars” movie, later labeled “Episode IV: A New Hope.” But at least four important aspects of the “Star Wars” saga are much closer – both in time and space – than Lucas was letting on.

One, the ability to add blue food coloring to milk, was possible even at the time the first film came out. But in 2024, “Star Wars”-themed blue milk became periodically available in grocery stores.

And we, an environmental health engineer and a civil engineer, know there are at least three more elements of these ancient, distant Lucas stories that might seem like science fiction but are, in fact, science reality.

Moisture farming

In that first movie, “Episode IV,” Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen was a farmer on the planet of Tatooine. He farmed water from air in the middle of a desert.

It might sound impossible, but it’s exactly what experts discussed at the second International Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit hosted by Arizona State University in March 2025.

Each day, a human needs to consume about the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of water (3 liters). With more than 8 billion people living on the planet, that means engineers need to produce nearly 2.6 trillion gallons (10 trillion liters) of clean drinking water every year. Taken globally, rainfall would be enough, but it’s distributed very unevenly – including landing in the oceans, where it immediately becomes too salty to drink safely.

…

Researchers at places such as Berkeley have developed solar-powered systems that can produce clean drinking water from thin air. In general, they use a material that traps water molecules from the air within its structure and then use sunlight to condense that water out of the material and into drinkable liquid. But there is still a ways to go before they are ready for commercial distribution and available to help large numbers of people.

(there is more….read on….)

https://theconversation.com/some-star-wars-stories-have-already-become-reality-255563

I thought I would lighten the mood a bit on this special day, at least for those Star Wars fans….

Have a wonderful day.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

NO this is not a review of yet another re-make of H G Wells timeless(no pun intended) classic…..but rather the news that a scientist has stated that he knows how to build a time machine……not a theory of a time machine but rather a how to build an actual time machine…..(in theory)…….

Astrophysicist Ron Mallett believes he’s found a way to travel back in time — theoretically.

The tenured University of Connecticut physics professor recently told CNN that he’s written a scientific equation that could serve as the foundation for an actual time machine. He’s even built a prototype device to illustrate a key component of his theory — though Mallett’s peers remain unconvinced that his time machine will ever come to fruition.

To understand Mallett’s machine, you need to know the basics of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which states that time accelerates or decelerates depending on the speed at which an object is moving.

Based on that theory, if a person was in a spaceship traveling near the speed of light, time would pass more slowly for them than it would for someone who remained on Earth. Essentially, the astronaut could zip around space for less than a week, and when they returned to Earth, 10 years would have passed for the people they’d left behind, making it seem to the astronaut like they’d time traveled to the future.

But while most physicists accept that skipping forward in time in that way is probably possible, time traveling to the past is a whole other issue — and one Mallett thinks he could solve using lasers.

https://futurism.com/astrophysicist-build-time-machine-past

His colleagues say it will not work……but is that not what the colleagues of the Wells book had to say as well?

Just a little something that I thought you, my reader, might like to know…..we can discuss it if you like…..

If you could travel back…..where would you want to visit?

Come on let’s step back in time for just a few minutes.

I would like to meet Thomas Paine……

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

I like it when SciFi fiction becomes reality and a recent article got me to thinling about a movie from years gone by….many people probably do not remember this film…..”Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun”…..

A quick run down……

A planet is discovered in the same orbit as Earth’s but is located on the exact opposite side of the sun, making it not visible from Earth. The European Space Exploration Council decide to send American astronaut Glenn Ross and British scientist John Kane via spaceship to explore the other planet. After a disastrous crash-landing Ross awakes to learn that Kane lies near death and that they apparently have returned to Earth, as evidenced by the presence of the Council director and his staff. Released to the custody of his wife, he soon learns things are not as they seem.

In case you are interested in the movie…..

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064519/

Now the article that made me think about this old movie…..it seems scientist want to open a portal to a parallel universe……does that sound familiar?  “Sliders” maybe?

Seriously this is not a joke or some trailer for a new SciFi movie……

Could 2019 be the year humans open the first portal to a shadowy dimension which mirrors our own world?

Scientists in Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee hope so, and have completed building equipment they are to test this summer which may allow us the first glimpse of a parallel universe which could be identical in many ways to our own, with mirror particles, mirror planets and possibly even mirror life.

That is according to Leah Broussard, the physicist behind the project, who described the attempt to reveal a hidden shadow world as “pretty wacky” in an interview with NBC last week.

The discovery of a concealed mirror world may sound like science fiction from the Stranger Things series, but it has been repeatedly suggested by physicists as a tempting means of explaining anomalous results. However, as yet, hard evidence such a realm exists has refused to manifest itself.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/parallel-universe-portal-mirror-world-science-stranger-things-oak-ridge-a8987681.html

See watching SciFi all those years is finally paying off….

Sunday is hot and I want cool weather….Pete I am jealous…LOL