Giant Freakin Robot

You open the mailbox and beneath the small stack of bills, and you find a postcard from a traveling family member who’s stopping in Branson, MO to see the Mel Tillis Theater. Then you spend the rest of the day envying all of the relatives of the Mars Curiosity rover, because they probably don’t have to put up with that shit.

Curiosity has been giving us gorgeous views of the Red Planet since it touched soil in August 2012, but these interactive panoramic photo compilations, hosted by 360Cities, are some of the most beautiful and important pictures ever taken, giving us a vivid gallery of a place I’ll never get to travel to. This panorama is a composite of 130 images taken using both the Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), and the 34mm Mastcam, all shot from the Yellowknife Bay region of the massive Gale Crater. It’s where Curiosity recently took its first drilling sample and very recently processed the rock’s dust into its onboard laboratory for testing. But that’s the technical news. This is all about the pretty shit.

Take a small but expansive tour of the Martian grounds, either zooming out to take in the mountainous horizon beneath a more distant sun, or zoom into the cracked ground and try and convince yourself you saw a lizard right before you moved the mouse and changed the image completely.

Though I’m slightly disappointed there aren’t any symbols that look like crop circles lying about, Curiosity is still young, and there will be more images to come, giving me more time to craft a design of Curiosity on my ceiling with glow-in-the-dark stars.

The people have spoken! And by “people,” I mean “William Shatner’s people.” Last week we told you about how the SETI Institute was allowing the public to vote on the official names for two of Pluto’s recently discovered, so-far-unnamed moons. As often happens whenever someone posts a poll online, a group of fans decided to team up to try and overwhelm the vote for their option of choice. In this case, William Shatner used Twitter to call upon his legions, suggesting they write in “Vulcan.” And while Vulcan wasn’t an official option on the list, it should surprise no one that it handily took first place in the voting, with 174,062 votes.

In spite of the sizable lead for Vulcan, it’s unclear at this point if one of Pluto’s moons will actually be saddled with the name of Spock’s homeworld. As we mentioned in our original story, the name still has to be approved by the International Astronomical Union, and Vulcan could theoretically be disqualified for not following the rules. The IAU’s naming conventions for moons of Pluto is that “those that share Pluto’s orbital rhythm take the name of underworld deities.” Hence the official suggestions included names like Orpheus, Styx, and the one that came in second, Cerberus. Hopefully Vulcan won’t be disqualified on a technicality, but you never know.

It could take between one and two months before the IAU officially declares whether Pluto’s P4 and P5 will become Vulcan and Cerberus. Hopefully they’ll have a sense of humor about the whole thing and let the departure from protocol pass. Just do us all a favor and don’t bring any Red Matter anywhere near the place.

So what does everyone’s favorite Vulcan think of the possibility of a new Vulcan in our neck of the woods? Actor Leonard Nimoy says, “If my people were emotional they would say they are pleased.”

You may recall last week, when we told you that the SETI Institute was inviting the public to help name P4 and P5, Pluto’s so-far-untitled moons. The existing, already-named moons are called Nix, Charon, and Hydra. They all fit within the International Astronomical Union’s naming convention for the dwarf planet’s satellites: namely, that “Those that share Pluto’s orbital rhythm take the name of underworld deities.” The proposed new names all fit within that pattern, but SETI also invited voters to write in their own suggestions. And then William Shatner happened.

Don’t ask us to explain this picture.

I’m not a Halo fan, or a big player or the first-person shooter genre in general. I’m not saying anything negative about them. My talent is severely lacking anytime I attempt one. But I’ll definitely be willing to take on former Halo developer Bungie Studios’ long-awaited Destiny, so if you don’t hear from me for a few years after the game is released, tell my wife and daughter I did it to save their lives.

So, for the past six years, Bungie has been hard at work on the “mythic sci-fi universe” of Destiny, and apparently it will be less a single gaming experience and more of a life dedication that will place your character in a living world that adapts and changes over time randomly, so that you’ll never have the same gaming session twice. And what is that character doing? He’s a Guardian for the only city left on Earth, constantly battling to save it from evil alien races bent on destruction. And there’s a giant extra-terrestrial globe hovering right above the city, offering extra protection, and it’s what powers you. Check out the trailer and some behind-the-scenes info in the video below.