When the future reaches us

A certain melancholy pervades us unwittingly. Today, 14 February 2016 (Valentine) is the inception date of Pris Stratton (NEXUS-6 N6FAB21416)

This is not the only replicant to be made during 2016. Roy Batti (NEXUS-6 N6MAA10816) was incepted on 6 January.

As we await the filming of Blade Runner II, we can only say that it is 2016 and the cars do not fly!

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Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu!

Titan's features

On November 13 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved the name Mount Doom for a peak on Saturn’s moon Titan.  According to the Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series, this mountain lies at the heart of Mordor and is the only site where the One Ring can be unmade. Titan is like a geek heaven, with place names coming from both J. R. R. Tolkien’s mythos and Frank Herbert’s Dune series.
All mountains on Titan are named for fictional peaks in Tolkien’s books. In addition to Mount Doom, there is Mount Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, where Bilbo and company travel to fight the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit and also the Misty Mountains which house the Dwarven city of Khazad-dum and the mines of Moria, where the dwarves dug too deep, unleashing the Balrog that kills Gandalf (well, almost killed him).

The plains of Titan are named from planets in Frank Herbert’s Dune series such as Arrakis Planitia, named for the planet where Paul Atreides becomes Muad’Dib and learns to ride the mighty sandworms. The Chusuk plain and Sikun labyrinth are also named for planets in the Dune series.
There are many other features in the Solar system that do not follow the habitual mithology nomenclature. You can see the current list of categories in the IAU's web site.
Note. As many of you will know, the post title is the Khuzdul battle cry of the Dwarves and its translation is Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!

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No words required

The final scene of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner
Enjoy!

Off topics: Ringworld

Ringworld is a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, considered a classic of science fiction literature. I read this novel many years ago (around the 80's) and it is one of my favorite SF books along with its sequels: The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children.

The "Ringworld" is an artificial ring about one million miles wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit (which makes it about 600 million miles in circumference), encircling a Sol-type star. It rotates, providing an artificial gravity that is 99.2% as strong as Earth's gravity through the action of centrifugal force. Ringworld has a habitable flat inner surface equivalent in area to approximately three million Earth-sized planets. The majority of the surface is land interspersed with shallow, freshwater seas. On opposite sides of the ring are two large deep saltwater oceans, placed in counterbalance to one another. Walls 1,000 miles tall along the edges retain the atmosphere.

Look at this wonderful animation:



More information at the Wikipedia