Blogs / Science Not Fiction

S.A.R.A.H. (Self-actuated Residential Automated Habitat), the talking, thinking, usually helpful house on Eureka is such a regular on the show that  she could qualify as just another wacky genius in a town full of them. But though she’s smarter than any smart house ever known, she has a bit of a problem: her power source.  We’re told that her radioisotope thermoelectric generator supplies plenty of power for energy independence, but these devices only output power at low levels, albeit for a long time, plus they depend on radioactive materials—which is why in real life they’re used on long-lived unmanned probes and satellites.

S.A.R.A.H.’s designer, Douglas Fargo, should take some cues from the Solar Decathlon, a biennial contest hosted by the U.S. Department of energy. This year, representatives from 20 teams have reconstructed their high-tech solar-powered houses on the National Mall in Washington D.C. for inspection by the public and judges alike. (See 80beats’ gallery of some of the houses.) Houses are scored on 10 criteria, from efficient appliances to market-worthiness.

Most of the houses share a few themes: They maximize the insulation to minimize heat and cool loss; they have large sections of walls that can be opened onto decks and patios to increase the amount of livable space in the house; they had ways to access appliances or climate controls remotely, whether from an iPhone app or an Internet connection; and all of them can, at the minimum, operate without electricity from the grid, though many generate excess power.

Each house has been carefully designed to suit their own regional cultures. The team from University of Louisiana, Lafayette produced BeauSoleil, a Cajun-style home that combined energy efficiency with the ability to resist hurricane-strength winds. The Illinois team’s Gable Home fits in with Midwestern farm architecture, and Team California’s Refract House is designed to take full advantage of the sunny but typically mild climate in the southern part of the state.

Team Germany’s house is an austere cube (it is German, after all) with a single large living space on the inside, but covered in solar panels on the outside. Much like S.A.R.A.H., furniture and appliances fold in and out so the room can change function from eating space to social area to sleeping area. The house was designed to maximize the power generating possibilities, and it can pump out twice as much electricity as it needs to operate. The technology is pretty expensive, and the unit cost of the German house was projected to be between $650,000 to $850,000.

Naturally, some of the houses are a little ambitious. The University of Kentucky’s house maintains its internal environment by monitoring weather from a university feed that updates at the zip code-level resolution.  The Iowa State house has a vacuum-sealed door, which seems to me would make it challenging to open when salespeople or evangelicals come knocking unexpectedly (then again, maybe that’s not such a bad thing).

All of the houses will be on display through October 18, so Washingtonians and D.C. tourists might consider stopping by to see these would-be S.A.R.A.H.s in the, uh, flesh.

For those of you who couldn’t make it to San Diego last week, Discovermagazine.com and the National Academy of Sciences’ Science & Entertainment Exchange present our panel discussion on “Mad Science,” featuring Jaime Paglia (co-Executive Producer of Eureka), Kevin Grazier (Battlestar Galactica and Eureka science adviser), Jane Espenson (Dollhouse, Battlestar, Caprica, and lots more), Ricardo Gil da Costa (science adviser for Fringe), and Rob Chiappetta and Glenn Whitman (writers for Fringe).

If you don’t have  time to watch the video you can read recaps and quotes from the panel here, here, here, here and here.

Big thanks to Jennifer at SEE, to all of our panelists, and to the Bad Astronomer, who found time to moderate our panel while he wasn’t partying with Hollywood starlets (Phil – we kid because we love).

The geniuses of Eureka are inspired by a pretty good source: the geniuses of Cambridge, Mass.

Before his TV writing career took off, Jaime Paglia, co-creator of SyFy’s number-one-rated show,  had a part-time gig as a program director of a science and technology public radio show called Cambridge Forum.

“It was this rare opportunity to be in Cambridge, Massachusetts where literally you have some of the greatest minds in science and technology,” Paglia told me in an interview recently. “Tim Berners-Lee, who literally invented the Internet, and Rodney Brooks, head of MIT robotics lab, the guy who made Sojourner, and who invented the Roomba in his spare time. Those guys, they see the world differently. There’s a unique way their brains work that allows them to be as creative as they are.”

These Cambridge geniuses eventually found their way into the show, if not as Nathan Stark or Douglas Fargo (Did you know he had a first name? I had to look it up), then at least as Walter Perkins or Carl Carlson. And Paglia also has another inspiration for scientific heroes: Dr. Donald Paglia, UCLA medical professor emeritus and Jaime’s dad.
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I’m here at the Eureka panel at Comic-Con. Lead actor Colin Ferguson (Jack Carter on the show) is on location in Bulgaria and could not be at the panel. So a SyFy (heh) VP who’s here had  moderator Josh Gates call Ferguson in Bulgaria on his cell phone, leading to much hilarity. But Ferguson put the VP on the spot and demanded to know if there would be a fourth season of Eureka.

Answer: Yes, 22 more episodes for sure.

The VP also requested a musical episode. All of which is pretty awesome. SciNoFi loves it some Eureka.

I’ll have more from the panel, and an interview with creator Jaime Paglia.

We’ve just heard that we’re going back to Comic Con this summer, with a panel topic and line-up even bigger and better than last year’s event.

We are teaming up with Jennifer Ouellette and the crew at the Science and Entertainment Exchange to produce a panel on “MAD SCIENCE,” i.e. Science as a double-edged sword, ethically and morally neutral in and of itself, but dependent upon who wields it, and how.

Beloved Internet Personality Phil Plait is lined up to moderate (after he gets his tattoo) and we’re expecting guests from Eureka, Battlestar Galactica, Fringe, Stargate: Universe and more.  Watch this space for additional details.

The Sci Fi channel became Syfy last night, with a network presentation to the press and advertisers that featured many of the channel’s new and recurring shows — and a screening of the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. Emblematic of BSG’s traditional secrecy, Ron Moore led the screening audience through an oath not to reveal any spoilers about the last episode (backed up by NBC Universal reps making us sign little bits of paper to the same effect) so I can’t reveal anything about what to expect beyond a promise that it’s a wild ride that’s going to spark a lot of discussion. Check back with Science Not Fiction on Friday after the finale airs, and we’ll have excerpts from the Q&A that followed, featuring producers Moore and David Eick, as well leading cast members Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos, where we get some more answers about the deep background of the show. We’ll also have an interview with Kevin Grazier, BSG’s science advisor, about some of the science behind the rag tag fleet’s search for home.

If you can’t wait until Friday, come back tomorrow for coverage of tonight’s panel discussion at the United Nations, where the Battlestar crew will be joined by high level UN representatives to talk about the show’s take on human rights, terrorism, and reconciliation.

In other news, Eureka is still on track to return to our screens this summer, and the next season of Sanctuary is getting stuck into production this Monday. I’m also looking forward to Warehouse 13, which is set to premiere this summer and looks like a lot of fun.

The second issue of the Eureka comic book series is out. Our favorite small-town-that-happens-to-border-the-government’s-most-advanced-research-facility-sherriff, Carter, and his deputy, Jo, are continuing a manhunt.

Because they are interested in taking their quarry alive, Carter is equipped with something he has taken to calling a “bubble gun.” The gun immobilizes its target by shooting out a temporary force-field that forms a bubble. In the real world, bubbles—or more accurately, foam—actually are the basis of a gun designed to immobilize enemies.

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For Eureka fans anxiously waiting for the second half of the current third season to air (all but the last episode have already completed filming, but no air date has been annouced), there is finally some comfort to be had. Released today is the first in a four-part comic book series set in America’s favorite death-ray-posessing-small-town, Eureka. Once again, Sheriff Carter finds himself contending with the accidental fallout that comes from living in a town that happens to be home to the U.S. government’s most bleeding edge research and development facility.

Eureka is one of our favorite shows here at Science Not Fiction, and the comic faithfully reunites us with characters we have come to love over the last two-and-a-half seasons on air. The adaptation to the printed page is helmed by Eureka co-creator Andrew Cosby, written by Brendan Hay (a relative newcomer to comics, but with television writing experience that probably explains his excellent ear for dialogue that is true to Eureka’s characters) and drawn by Diego Barreto. The story is set sometime near or after the end of Season One, giving Cosby and Hay the ability to use some fan-favorite characters that have since left the show, and the chance to fill in some of the backstories of other characters that couldn’t be handled in the limited screentime available on the show itself. The first issue immediately dives into Deputy Jo Lupo’s previously obscure military history. Lupo is a former U.S. Army Ranger, but little has been made of that on screen beyond justifying her zealous appreciation for guns, so seeing her experiences fleshed out is a promising start. We’re looking forward to issue #2 (and, Sci-Fi Powers-That-Be, an announcement from you on an air date would be nice too!)

Last night’s midseason finale of Eureka tied up a number of loose ends, and set up a number of new plot points for the second half of the third season, set to air sometime in 2009. (Incidentally, last minute struggles with the script for this episode were responsible for Eureka co-creater Jamie Paglia having to sprint through the San Diego Convention Center to make it on time to DISCOVER’s Comic-Con panel on the Science Behind Science Fiction.) One of the things that Sheriff Carter finds himself contending with is a “nanoparticle syntactic foam” that goes from foam to something harder than concrete in a few seconds—the ideal substance for sealing off the abandoned underground facility that has been featured throughout the season, but not something you’d want to spill on yourself.

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On Tuesday’s nights Eureka, a miniature sun was accidently born in the skies above the town, wreaking destruction. The solution? To shoot iron into the sunlet’s core.

This is in fact not far off how some real stars die: iron poisoning. (more…)

Last night on Eureka, Sherriff Carter was faced with a bumbling superhero who had constructed his gear from discarded pieces of technology thrown out by the town’s scientists. In this, our wannabe superhero was participating in the ultimate expression of the fine old art of dumpster diving.

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The curse of a mummy’s tomb lay over Eureka in last night’s episode. (Spoilers below!)

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As chance would have it, the night after writing this post about the equations shown in science fiction, an episode of Eureka aired in which Sheriff Carter was faced with the pictured board full of equations.

Carter, not the most technical of men, had to learn the equations in order to have chance at stopping a runaway time-loop. The equations looked familiar, so I checked in with Kevin Grazier, Eureka’s science advisor, a JPL researcher, and a panelist on DISCOVER’s “Science Behind Science Fiction” Panel at this year’s Comic-Con. It turns out that Kevin actually wrote the equations, borrowed from a real class he gives that touches on the theories of special and general relativity. The equations refer to how time behaves in Einstein’s relativity theory, in particular, the phenomenon of time dilation. The neat part is that pretty much anybody who finished high school can master the math and science behind special relativity’s prediction of time dilation (as the title of this post says, if Carter can do it, so can you!).

Time dilation occurs noticeably when a object is moving close to the speed of light: imagine a spacecraft shooting by the Earth. From the point of view of someone standing on Earth, time dilation means that time is running slowly onboard the spacecraft. A second on the spaceship could be equal to an hour on Earth. (Time dilation has been experimentally verified using subatomic particles and particle accelerators, but the principle is the same.) The key is this one part of the board, which I’ve highlighted.

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Last night’s episode of Eureka was terrific, easily one of the show’s best, with some amazing performances from the cast. If you haven’t seen the episode, or you haven’t yet watched Eureka at all, get over to the Sci Fi channel’s website and and catch it. The plot revolved around problems with the flow of time—and where you have time, you have clocks.

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Last night’s episode of Eureka, “Best in Faux,” had many of the town’s supersmart denizens trying to win a contest for the most lifelike robot dog. Despite an interest in more pressing matters, such as a potential volcanic eruption, Sheriff Carter is ordered to investigate why some of the robot entrants have experienced literal meltdowns. Robot dog competitions are taken seriously in the the town of Eureka. He shouldn’t have been too surprised–similar robot competitions have a long (forgive the pun) pedigree.

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