Free Republic

So, with the third Dune film, Dune Messiah, still very much in development limbo, what can we expect from Villeneuve’s other big science fiction project, the much-discussed adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama? The short answer is: don’t expect it to be anything like Dune. And, if Villeneuve is very smart, he and his collaborators will make Rama very different from its source material. At the risk of sounding reductive, Rendezvous with Rama is a bit easier to define: It’s an epic work of speculative science fiction that firmly favors its concepts over its characters. Anecdotally, even huge...

The mystery of Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever spotted in our solar system, has taken a new, unexpected twist and it's from someone you might not expect – NASA. ..." Because of the varying degrees of brightness emanating from Oumuamua's surface, NASA suggests it is "highly elongated and probably less than half a mile (2,600 feet, or 800 meters) in its longest dimension."The intrigue of what Oumuamua is or isn't has picked up a considerably over the past few weeks, especially as some researchers have theorized that it could be an object from an extraterrestrial civilization.A study from the Harvard...

Explanation: Looking for an interplanetary vacation destination? Consider a visit to Europa, one of the Solar System's most tantalizing moons. Ice-covered Europa follows an elliptical path in its 85 hour orbit around our ruling gas giant Jupiter. Heat generated from strong tidal flexing by Jupiter's gravity keeps Europa's salty subsurface ocean liquid all year round. That also means even in the absence of sunlight Europa has energy that could support simple life forms. Unfortunately, it is currently not possible to make reservations at restaurants on Europa, where you might enjoy a dish of the local extreme shrimp. But you can...

This holiday season I’m featuring a nutcracker of another sort—the bearded capuchin of Brazil. Native to open woodlands called the Cerrado, these monkeys are nicknamed Hercules with a tail, and for good reason—they can lift a stone heavier than themselves to break open tough palm nuts. (Watch a video of the nutcracking monkeys.) A monkey with a missing foot can still crack just as well. Photograph courtesy Dorothy Fragaszy National Geographic grantee Dorothy Fragaszy has been studying these charismatic little critters in the field, and last week she stopped by headquarters to update us on her research. She passed out...