The Montréal 2027 Worldcon bid filed its official bid to host the 2027 Worldcon with Seattle 2025 on December 7, 2024, and the bid was accepted by Seattle 2025. See the Worldcon Bids Page for links to the documents in the bid filing.
On the same day, the Tel Aviv 2027 Worldcon bid sent an announcement to SMOFCon 41 for presentation to the Worldcon Q&A session announcing that the bid is suspended. Tel Aviv in 2027 bid chair Guy Kovel wrote: “Regrettably, due to the situation in Israel, we would have to push our bid to a later year, we have not yet made an announcement as we are still in internal discussions as to what year we would be able to bid for.”
The deadline for filing bids to host the 2027 Worldcon is February 14, 2025. Instructions for filing a 2027 Worldcon bid are on the 2025 Worldcon website.
Note: The author of this post is a member of the Montréal 2027 bid committee and the bid’s parent non-profit corporation.
Mars may be named after the god of war, but it seems more like a sappy romantic. NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft spotted these hearts on the Martian surface throughout its time in orbit. All of them are natural formations, but let’s just go ahead and interpret them as love notes from the red planet. Image credit. NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems.
Our first operational change in response to our member survey has been to open eligibility lists early this year. Our eligibility list volunteers have been hard at work verifying a wide array of submitted works, and you can see our current list of confirmed eligible works on our public list page here. This page can be shared widely, everyone has access to it. We hope that the additional time with compiled lists of confirmed works has given our members a chance to explore more titles in the lead up to nominating window. Our eligibility list submissions will close at 11:59pm on Saturday, February 22, 2025. The nominating period will open on March 1. For a more comprehensive look at our 2025 calendar, click here.
Until February 22, CSFFA members are encouraged to add works they are familiar with or have done in 2024. You will need to have purchased your 2025 membership in order to access the member-only eligible work submission forms. If you are a publisher or do not have a membership and would like assistance adding works to the lists, please contact us. If you only published a few works, we are more than happy to put them in for you. You must send us full details of the work and a URL for members to access to get more information about the work.
The eligibility lists for works done in 2024 by Canadian citizens and permanent residents. For full details on eligibility rules, see here. and on the Aurora Award categories, here. Reminder that no work can be nominated unless it has been added to the eligibility lists before the nominating period begins.
New this year: Our public eligibility page now contains links to external URLs for each work, which you will find to the right of the entry marked as [info]. For works that are available to read in full online (eg. short stories in online magazines), the [info] link should direct you to that work so you can read it. For other works, the info link provides publication, synopses, and purchase options.
A recently discovered near-Earth asteroid, dubbed 2024 YR4, is making headlines because of the slim possibility that it could impact Earth on Dec. 22, 2032. Early observations suggest that it has about a 1% chance of colliding with our planet. So why all the fuss?
2024 YR4 is garnering so much attention because of more than 37,000 near-Earth asteroids already discovered, it is the only one with more than a 1 in 1,000 chance of impact. “It is rare to have an asteroid with a non-zero probability of hitting Earth,” said Heidi Hammel, Vice President for Science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy and Vice President of the The Planetary Society’s board of directors.
To put it into context, 2024 YR4 has a Torino scale rating of as high as 3. The Torino Impact Hazard Scale ranges from 0 (no chance of impact) to 10 (certain impact likely to cause planetwide devastation). Ratings of 1 are fairly common among newly discovered asteroids, but follow-up observations have always reduced that rating to 0. Asteroid 2024 YR4’s rating of 3 is the second-highest an asteroid has ever reached. The only asteroid ranked higher was Apophis, discovered in 2004 and rated 4, but subsequently downgraded to 1 and then 0. We now know with certainty that Apophis will only pass close to Earth in 2029.
Right now, ESA estimates that 2024 YR4’s diameter is in the range of 40-100 meters (around 130-330 feet). If it did collide with Earth, an impactor of that size could cause an explosion in the atmosphere or even an impact crater, either of which could cause serious, even devastating, damage on the ground.
Asteroid danger by the numbers The risk, characteristics, and rarity of various kinds of asteroid impacts.Image: NASA
Fortuitously, the Planet of Love reaches greatest brilliancy on Valentine’s Day. At magnitude –4.9, it’s the equivalent of crushing a 1.4-day-old Moon into a point source. That’s bright! Bright enough to cast a shadow from a rural site on a moonless night. Count yourself lucky if you have snow cover. The added contrast makes it the perfect backdrop for shadow-spotting.
Venus casts shadows of the author and his tripod-mounted camera on a garage door on September 14, 2023, during the planet’s morning apparition. Shadows are crisp compared to those cast by the Sun because Venus is a point source, not an extended disk. If you try this experiment and have difficulty seeing your shadow, sway back and forth, and it should become more obvious. Bob King
If you’re wondering what to give your love for Valentine’s Day, consider the nearest planet. In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, the fictional character George Bailey offers to lasso the Moon for his future wife Mary Hatch. Why not brandish your own imaginary lasso and “pull down” Venus for your sweetheart? (Don’t forget to have a box of specialty chocolates as a backup.)
From the BBC: There’s a new race in space, but it’s not where you might think. It’s happening close to home – in the nearest bit of space, right on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.
High in the skies of Earth, a new space race is underway. Here, just above the boundary where space begins, companies are trying to create a new class of daring satellites. Not quite high-altitude planes and not quite low-orbiting satellites, these sky skimmers are designed to race around our planet in an untapped region, with potentially huge benefits on offer.
Roughly 10,000 satellites are orbiting our planet right now, at speeds of up to 17,000mph (27,000km/h). Every one of these delicate contraptions is in constant free-fall and would drop straight back down to Earth were it not for the blistering speeds at which they travel. It’s their considerable sideways momentum, perfectly stabilised against the Earth’s gravitational pull downwards, that keeps satellites in orbit.
A new class of satellites is aiming to push the limits of this balancing act and plough a much more precarious, lower orbit that would skim the top of Earth’s atmosphere. Known as Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), spacecraft at these altitudes have to battle against the significantly greater drag from the air in the upper reaches of the atmosphere than their loftier cousins, lest they get pushed out of the sky. Should they manage it, however, such satellites might achieve something even more jaw-dropping – they could potentially fly forever.
“When you start describing it to people, it starts to sound like a perpetual motion machine,” says Spence Wise, senior vice-president at Redwire, an aerospace firm in Florida. A perpetual motion machine is not meant to be possible. But it almost is, in this instance.
UNPRECEDENTED STARLINK REENTRIES: Last month, more than 120 Starlink satellites fell out of orbit. The daily rate of reentries is unprecedented and might be altering the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere.
What goes up, must come down–which could be a problem when you’re launching thousands of satellites. Since 2018, SpaceX has placed more than 7,000 Starlink satellites into Earth orbit, and now they are starting to come down. In January alone, more than 120 Starlinks deorbited, creating a shower of fireballs.
“The sustained rate of daily reentries is unprecedented,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics who tracks satellites. “They are retiring and incinerating about 4 or 5 Starlinks every day.”
Planners have long known this would happen. First generation (Gen1) Starlink satellites are being retired to make way for newer models. “More than 500 of the 4700 Gen1 Starlinks have now reentered,” says McDowell.
When Starlinks reenter, they disintegrate before hitting the ground, adding metallic vapors to the atmosphere. A study published in 2023 found evidence of the lingering devris. In February 2023, NASA flew a WB-57 aircraft 60,000 feet over Alaska to collect aerosols. 10% of the particles contained aluminum and other metals from the “burn-up” of satellites.
Right: NASA’s WB-57 high altitude airplane. [more]
What we’re observing is a giant uncontrolled experiment in atmospheric chemistry. The demise of just one Gen1 Starlink satellite produces about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of aluminum oxide, a compound that eats away at the ozone layer. A new study finds these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022, and the recent surge is increasing the pollution even more.
On the bright side, each reentry produces a beautiful fireball–and the odds are increasing that you’ll see one. Visit the Aerospace Corporation for reentry predictions, and submit your photos here.
WHAT ARE ‘MIYAKE EVENTS’? So you thought the Carrington Event was bad? Researchers have found evidence in tree rings of solar storms 10 times worse. The discovery of “Miyake Events” has placed dendrochronologists at the center of space weather research.
A WARNING FROM THE TREES: How bad can a solar storm be? Just ask a tree. Unlike human records, which go back hundreds of years, trees can remember solar storms for millennia.
Above: Rings in the stump of an Ancient Bristlecone Pine may reveal evidence of extreme solar storms dwarfing modern events.
Nagoya University doctoral student Fusa Miyake made the discovery in 2012 while studying rings in the stump of a 1900-year-old Japanese cedar. One ring, in particular, drew her attention. Grown in the year 774–75 AD, it contained a 12% jump in carbon-14 (14C), an isotope created by cosmic radiation. The surge was 20 times greater than ordinary fluctuations in cosmic rays. Other teams confirmed the spike in wood from Germany, Russia, the United States, Finland, and New Zealand. Whatever happened, trees all over the world experienced it.
Most researchers think it was a solar storm—an extraordinary one. Often, we point to the Carrington Event of 1859 as the worst-case scenario for solar storms. The 774-75 AD storm was at least 10 times stronger; if it happened today, it would floor modern technology. Since Miyake’s initial discovery, she and others have confirmed four more examples (7176 BC, 5259 BC, 664-663 BC, 993 AD). Researchers call them “Miyake Events.”
It’s not clear that all Miyake Events are caused by the sun. Supernova explosions and gamma-ray bursts also produce carbon spikes. However, the evidence tilts toward solar storms. For each of the confirmed Miyake Events, researchers have found matching spikes of 10Be and/or 36Cl in ice cores. These isotopes are known to trace strong solar activity. Moreover, the 774-75 AD Miyake Event had eyewitnesses; historical reports of auroras in China and England suggest the sun was extremely active around that time.
Miyake Events have placed dendrochronologists (scientists who study tree rings) in the center of space weather research. After Miyake’s initial discovery in 2012, the international tree ring community began working together to look for evidence of solar superstorms. Their collaboration is called “the COSMIC initiative.” COSMIC results published in a 2018 edition of Nature confirm that Miyake Events in 774-75 AD and 993 AD were indeed global. Trees on five continents recorded carbon spikes.
“There could be additional Miyake Events throughout the Holocene” says Irina Panyushkina, a member of the COSMIC initiative from the University of Arizona’s Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research. “Finding them will be a slow and systematic process.”
Above: A global map of COSMIC tree ring and ice core measurements [more]
“An important new source for annual 14C measurements are floating tree-ring records from Europe and the Great Lakes,” says Panyushkina. “These are very old rings that could potentially capture 14C spikes as far back as 15,000 years. Eventually, I believe we will have a complete record of Miyake Events throughout that period.”
Four more candidates for Miyake Events have recently been identified (12,350 BC, 5410 BC, 1052 C, and 1279 C). The candidate in 12,350 BC, identified from tree rings the French Alps, may be more than twice the size of any other Miyake Event. Confirmation requires checking trees on many continents and finding matching spikes of 10Be and 36Cl in ice cores.
A complete survey of Miyake Events could tell us how often solar superstorms occur and how much peril the sun presents to a technological society. Stay tuned for updates from the trees.
