This May 2025 edition, and past issues of Impulse can also be viewed or downloaded via our Website (www.MonSFFA.ca); visit the Impulse page.
This issue promotes the upcoming May club meeting (this Saturday, the 10th), outlines the club’s 2025 summer schedule and reports on our presentation on “Ssssnakes in SF&F” at the club’s April get-together.
Enjoy your issue of Impulse! And we hope to see you at our upcoming club meeting, Saturday, May 10, 1:00PM-5:00PM.
Calling all artists! The Draconis festival is again looking for a person to create a drawing or an image representing this year’s festival for our social media, publicity and merchandise. You think you have the necessary talent and you want to contribute to the festival’s success? This is your chance! Our budget is $350, so prepare your submissions accordingly.
We are open to pretty much any concept; all we are asking is that it must represent the idea of the festival or of role playing games in general (and not one particular game); and it must include the word “Draconis” and the year 2025..
If you’d like to participate, you can send us a sketch of your idea at info@festivaldraconis.ca with the subject “Draconis concours d’image”. You have until Sunday June 1 to do so. We will announce the winner during the following week, and then you’ll have one month to complete your drawing. No submission using AI will be accepted.
For reference, the final image must be 14” x 14” (35 cm x 35 cm), with a 300 dpi resolution.
Festival Draconis
Community
Appel à tous les artistes! Le festival Draconis est de nouveau à la recherche d’une personne pour créer un dessin ou une image représentant l’édition 2025 du festival sur nos médias sociaux, notre publicité et notre marchandise. Vous croyez avoir le talent, et vous voulez participer au succès du festival? C’est l’occasion de le faire! Notre budget est de $350, alors préparez vos soumissions en conséquence.
Nos contraintes sont peu nombreuses: votre image doit représenter le concept du festival ou du jeu de rôle en général (et non un jeu en particulier), et doit inclure le mot “Draconis” et l’année 2025.
Si vous êtes intéressé à participer, vous avez jusqu’au dimanche 1er juin pour nous envoyer un croquis de votre idée par courriel au info@festivaldraconis.ca, avec le sujet “Draconis concours d’image”. Nous annoncerons le ou la gagnant.e la semaine suivante, et à partir de ce moment, vous aurez un mois pour finaliser votre dessin. Aucune soumission utilisant l’IA ne sera acceptée.
Pour référence, l’image finale devra être de 14”x14” (35 cm x 35 cm) et d’une résolution de 300 dpi.
MonSFFA’s next meeting is scheduled to take place this Saturday, May 10, from 1:00PM to 5:00PM!
We will gather at our usual downtown meeting locale, Le Nouvel Hotel, 1740 René-Lévesque Ouest (corner St-Mathieu).
Out-of-towners, as always, may join our ZOOM-chat and take part in the meeting from the comfort of home!
On the Agenda:
The Cartoons of Tom Gauld: SF, Fantasy, Literature, and Commentary. And Books!
We examine the art and humour of prolific cartoonist Tom Gauld, whose work covers a wide range: science, science fiction, fantasy, role-playing games, classic literature, politics, and more. Gauld happily combines different genres in a single cartoon. Vampire tropes… and modern politics; classic literature…and science fiction; fantasy…and the reality of television. Not only does Gauld love books, he also loves booklovers, and publishes in major newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The New Scientist, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.
Section 31 (Game)
How well do you know your sci-fi spaceships, aircraft, and vehicles? As a Section 31 agent, you will be required to covertly gather information on various of these as potential targets, and this afternoon, we will test your ability to correctly identify a few!
and more…
Meeting Theme: We will be discussing, during the course of this meeting, our annual club field trip, upcoming in June! We’ll welcome your suggestions as to which museum, exhibition, or interesting locale to visit this year.
We’re looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our downtown meeting hall for this May 2025 meeting! Bring a friend! See you all there this Saturday, May 10, 1:00PM-5:00PM!
Please Note: While we strive to keep on schedule, we do, sometimes, fall behind a little, or find ourselves having to reshuffle the order of items on the agenda for one reason or another, or reschedule planned presentations/discussions. Therefore, please understand that all programming is subject to change!
MonSFFA’s next meeting is scheduled to take place this Saturday, May 10, from 1:00PM to 5:00PM!
We will gather at our downtown meeting locale, Le Nouvel Hotel, 1740 René-Lévesque Ouest (corner St-Mathieu).
Out-of-towners, as always, may join our ZOOM-chat and take part in the meeting from the comfort of home!
On the Agenda:
The Cartoons of Tom Gauld: SF, Fantasy, Literature, and Commentary. And Books!
We examine the art and humour of prolific cartoonist Tom Gauld, whose work covers a wide range: science, science fiction, fantasy, role-playing games, classic literature, politics, and more. Gauld happily combines different genres in a single cartoon. Vampire tropes… and modern politics; classic literature…and science fiction; fantasy…and the reality of television. Not only does Gauld love books, he also loves booklovers, and publishes in major newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The New Scientist, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.
Section 31 (Game)
How well do you know your sci-fi spaceships, aircraft, and vehicles? As a Section 31 agent, you will be required to covertly gather information on various of these as potential targets, and this afternoon, we will test your ability to correctly identify a few!
and more…
Meeting Theme: We will be discussing, during the course of this meeting, our annual club field trip, upcoming in June! We’ll welcome your suggestions as to which museum, exhibition, or interesting locale to visit this year.
We’re looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our downtown meeting hall for this May 2025 meeting! Bring a friend! See you all there on Saturday, May 10, 1:00PM-5:00PM!
Please Note: While we strive to keep on schedule, we do, sometimes, fall behind a little, or find ourselves having to reshuffle the order of items on the agenda for one reason or another, or reschedule planned presentations/discussions. Therefore, please understand that all programming is subject to change!
The Cartoons of Tom Gauld: SF, fantasy, literature, and commentary. And books.
Tom Gauld (born 1976) is an astonishingly prolific Scottish cartoonist. His cartoons cover a wide range: science, science fiction, fantasy, role playing games, classic literature, politics, and more. Gauld happily combines different genres in a single cartoon. Vampire tropes – and modern politics. Classic literature – and science fiction. Fantasy – and the reality of television. Not only does Gauld love books – he also loves booklovers.
He publishes in major newspapers and magazines including The New Scientist, The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and more. His work has been collected in more than 20 books.
One of Gauld’s best-known cartoons, showing the eternal struggle between science and science fiction.
THE STARLINK INCIDENT IS NOT WHAT WE THOUGHT: It never made sense. On Feb. 3rd, 2022, SpaceX launched a batch of 49 Starlinks to low-Earth orbit–something they had done many times before. This time was different, though. Almost immediately, dozens of the new satellites began to fall out of the sky.
Above: A Starlink satellite falls from the sky over Puerto Rico on Feb. 7, 2022. [video]At the time, SpaceX offered this explanation: “Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday (Feb. 3rd) were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday, (Feb. 4th).”
A more accurate statement might have read “…impacted by a very minor geomagnetic storm.” The satellites flew into a storm that barely registered on NOAA scales: It was a G1, the weakest possible, unlikely to cause a mass decay of satellites. Something about “The Starlink Incident” was not adding up.
Space scientists Scott McIntosh and Robert Leamon of Lynker Space, Inc., have a new and different idea: “The Terminator did it,” says McIntosh.
Not to be confused with the killer robot, McIntosh’s Terminator is an event on the sun that helps explain the mysterious progression of solar cycles. Four centuries after Galileo discovered sunspots, researchers still cannot accurately predict the timing and strength of the sun’s 11-year solar cycle. Even “11 years” isn’t real; observed cycles vary from less than 9 years to more than 14 years long.
Above: Oppositely charged bands of magnetism march toward the sun’s equator where they “terminate” one another, kickstarting the next solar cycle. [more]
McIntosh and Leamon realized that forecasters had been overlooking something. There is a moment that happens every 11 years or so when opposing magnetic fields from the sun’s previous and upcoming solar cycles collide. They called this moment, which signals the death of the old cycle, “The Termination Event.”
After a Termination Event, the sun roars to life–”like a hot stove where someone suddenly turns the burner on,” McIntosh likes to say. Solar ultraviolet radiation abruptly jumps to a higher level, heating the upper atmosphere and dramatically increasing aerodynamic drag on satellites.
This plot supports what McIntosh and Leamon are saying:
The histogram shows the number of objects falling out of Earth orbit each year since 1975. Vertical dashed lines mark Termination Events. There’s an uptick in satellite decay around the time of every Terminator, none bigger than 2022.
As SpaceX was assembling the doomed Starlinks of Group 4-7 in early 2022, they had no idea that the Terminator Event had, in fact, just happened. Unwittingly, they launched the satellites into a radically altered near-space environment. “Some of our satellite partners said it was just pea soup up there,” says Leamon.
SpaceX wasn’t the only company hit hard. Capella Space also struggled in 2022 to keep its constellation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites in orbit.
“The atmospheric density in low Earth orbit was 2 to 3 times more than expected,” wrote Capella Space’s Scott Shambaugh in a paper entitled Doing Battle With the Sun. “This increase in drag threatened to prematurely de-orbit some of our spacecraft.” Indeed, many did deorbit earlier than their 3-year design lifetimes.
The Terminator did it? It makes more sense than a tiny storm.
Montreal improv group Improv 4 Breakfast is presenting episode 4 of their D&D-inspired live show, YES AND… DRAGONS.
Adventurers: Simon Pelletier, Selene Bance, and Stevie Laskaris
Victoria Arbour, curator at the Royal B.C. Museum, with Ruopodosaurus prints (far left for the foot and middle for the hand) in the field at Wolverine River near Tumbler Ridge, B.C., in August 2023. (Royal B.C. Museum)
Scientists have identified fossil dinosaur footprints from a new species in B.C. and Alberta. They’re believed to be the first tracks found in the world to be identified as belonging to club-tailed ankylosaurs, offering new insights about gaps in the fossil record.
Victoria Arbour, curator of paleontology at the Royal B.C. Museum and lead author of the new study, said Ruopodosaurus would have lumbered through the coastal redwood forests between the Rocky Mountains and an inland sea that covered Saskatchewan and Alberta during the Middle Cretaceous, about 100 million to 94 million years ago. Previously identified footprints suggest the other creatures it lived alongside: giant crocodiles, duck-billed dinosaurs and bird-like dinosaurs — and a related group of four-toed ankylosaurs.
But no bones of three-toed, club-tailed ankylosaurs have ever been found in North America from the Middle Cretaceous, which, until now, suggested they may have gone extinct during this time, before reappearing about 84 million years ago, perhaps by the migration of populations from Asia. The tracks from this new species suggest otherwise.
This species, Arbour said, is “new for North America. It’s new for the world…. And it really helps us fill in this gap in the fossil record.”
Royal B.C. Museum fossil preparator Calla Scott and former University of Victoria MSc student Teague Dickson apply a glue to a slab containing the fossil ankylosaur footprints to prepare it for making a silicone mould of the tracks in August 2024. (Royal B.C. Museum)
Scientists find ‘strongest evidence yet’ of life on distant planet
Pallab Ghosh, Science Correspondent BBC
Cambridge University: Artwork of K2-18b, a faraway world that may be home to life
Scientists have found new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.
A Cambridge team studying the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b has detected signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms.
This is the second, and more promising, time chemicals associated with life have been detected in the planet’s atmosphere by Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
But the team and independent astronomers stress that more data is needed to confirm these results.
The lead researcher, Prof Nikku Madhusudhan, told me at his lab at Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy that he hopes to obtain the clinching evidence soon.
“This is the strongest evidence yet there is possibly life out there. I can realistically say that we can confirm this signal within one to two years.”
