Hello there Reader! I hope you're having a great week.

As I write this, I'm just back from a delightful lunch at a local independent coffee place. Since the tiny village we live in has seen the closure of its bakery, church and pub recently, it might seem foolish to open a coffee shop serving home-made sandwiches, cakes and cookies, but judging by how busy they were today, it was a great decision! I hope they continue to go from strength to strength, I'll certainly be dropping in from now on. With the summer coming up, we might get some hill-walkers stopping by, and if their reputation continues to spread, they ought to do very well. And yes, the food was delicious, and the coffee better than the typical chain places we see on every high street.

Space News

Have we discovered Dyson Spheres? Evidence of advanced alien civilisations?

The short answer is no. But we have detected some anomalous data from relatively nearby stars which merits investigation. This video from the SETI Institute does a great job of explaining the latest findings.

What is a Dyson Sphere? Back in the 1960s, Freeman Dyson realised that as a civilisation grows, so does its need for energy. Eventually, any sufficiently advanced civilisation (he reasoned) would need to harness more of the energy from their star than hits their home world. So they would build megastructures - rings, perhaps, or flotillas of solar panels - to capture more of the star's power. The ultimate form of this would be a sphere completely enclosing the star, allowing all of its energy to be converted and used. The result of this would be a huge amount of waste heat. Every use of that energy would result in some losses, as no mechanism can be 100% efficient. If we imagine the sphere, you couldn't let all that heat keep building inside, otherwise your sphere would end up as hot as your star! So eventually all of the energy from the star would need to be radiated into space as heat, which we would see as infra-red energy. So if we were looking for these structures, one way would be to check out stars for an excess of infra-red radiation. We understand pretty well how stars work, so one emitting more IR energy than we can explain by solar processes might be a sign of a Dyson structure.

And that's what's been seen. A selection of stars which are pushing over sixty times the IR that we would expect them to. Now it's way too early to suggest that this is definitely evidence of anything, and even though the stars are 'relatively' nearby, they're still too far to image directly. So it will be some time before we can expect an answer to the question 'what is it?'... Occam's Razor tells us that it's probably dust, asteroid belts, or other debris that doesn't require little green men to explain.

But models suggest that this is consistent with a structure covering about 60% of the star, and an internal temperature of 25C, which is extremely intriguing.

Source: youtube.com

Other Books To Check Out

I've gathered a few great books from independent authors like me, I hope you'll check them out.

And let me know if you have any books to recommend! I'm particularly interested in indie authors, but anything you've read and loved would be awesome.

Buy it now!

storyoriginapp.com

Forever isn't certain, trust no one...

She thought they were safe. Hidden. Happy. She was wrong. And now her life, her race and her heart will pay the price for trying to disrupt destiny.

A historical fantasy thriller adventure through the reign of Henry VIII's Reformation England to the fantastical realm of Naturae.

After a confrontation with a shadowy figure from Aioffe's past, any hope of a quiet life in deeply religious northern England for the runaway fae soulmates is destroyed.

Homebody Joshua is torn apart from his secretive wife. Only his belief in her innocence and the kindness of strangers keeps him alive. He sets out on a dangerous quest to recover what he has lost, but finds himself questioning his own faith and future.

Heartbroken and alone, Aioffe refuses to comply with the destiny envisaged for her, until she discovers a darker secret which threatens to destroy the Naturae realm and fae immortality.

The fate of an entire race rests on their shoulders, can they reunite in time to disrupt destiny?

https://storyoriginapp.com/swaps/b874e526-1787-11ef-a5c0-7bdfdd9a356e

Two empires fight an endless war to dominate the stars. One man is caught in the middle.

It's a beautiful day on the planet Thisia. The sort of day Zhan Marcus hates.

Fourteen years, Marcus has served in His Sovereign Majesty's Army-fighting for the Empire of Rozhon, the world at the center of the human universe. A world he's never seen.

He has been to dozens of worlds like this one, fighting the brutal Kyszai, a foe whose arcane technology is fueled by the suffering and death of human captives. Marcus has lost countless men in that endless fight-sacrificed his own blood, his youth, and his faith.

None of that has brought victory. Now, the emperor's army has sent Marcus and his exhausted men here, to Thisia. They say the fight will be an easy one; they say the enemy is weak and unprepared.

Marcus knows better. After fourteen years, he knows that a clear sky and a cool breeze are not good omens, but ill. A beautiful day is a poor day for a battle.

A poor day to die.

https://storyoriginapp.com/swaps/ab3ba0c2-11cc-11ef-bac8-7bee4076c0de

Review Copy

A world beneath the surface. How did it get there?

Elliot Adams, a seasoned astronaut, embarks on a routine mission to survey the site for humanity's first lunar base. However, a catastrophic collision between an asteroid and Earth, coupled with a violent meteor shower, disrupts the moon's serenity and upends Elliot's world. In the aftermath, Elliot finds himself trapped under the moon's surface beneath layers of rock, dust, and debris. As he struggles to escape, he stumbles upon a mysterious airlock - a doorway to a world that defies imagination. Welcome to Lunar: a hidden civilization flourishing beneath the moon's crust. With Earth seemingly destroyed, Lunar appears to be the answer to Elliot's prayers, but will it prove too good to be true? And how exactly did Lunar come to exist? Follow Elliot on his perilous journey as he attempts to unlock the secrets of Lunar. Humanity's survival might just depend on it.

Review copy: https://storyoriginapp.com/swaps/372dc8d6-f1e2-11ee-aaed-afe9d9611dfc

Free: storyoriginapp.com

As torn petals of a rose fall, a hero must rise in a race against destiny.

What starts as a fairy tale rescue spirals into an intricate web of dark fantasy laced with intrigue and magic. After the downtrodden merchant Kaine saves the runaway Princess Lydia from an unexpected monster, he feels inexplicably drawn to her. Lydia's uncanny knowledge of his deepest secrets looms over him, suggesting she knows more about him than he has revealed.

However, there is little time to investigate this mystery. The princess is betrothed to the magic wielding Throatian Kingdom, and Lydia's father has rewarded Kaine with a job offer he cannot refuse.

As the rehearsal dinner for Lydia's arranged wedding unfolds, tension simmers amidst foreign customs and whispered conversations. The Throatian Royal family, draped in magic, is keen to forge an alliance with the Darian Kingdom. Meanwhile, Lydia, now fully aware of her royal responsibilities, summons Kaine for a private meeting in the chilling stillness of the graveyard. Her impending wedding signifies more than a pact of sword and sorcery, and something else-dark and twisted-stirs in the shadows.

With time dwindling short, and the ceremony happening the next day, will Kaine unshackle himself from his past to embrace the guardian he is destined to become? Or will the ties binding him to Lydia be torn apart like petals in the wind?

Journey with Kaine and Lydia as they attempt to prevent a war and save a kingdom in the first volume of the Symphony of Crowns and Gods series.

Strange News

Words Lost in the Forest the Strange Case of Pagan Dialects From Narew

Language has always fascinated me. How we decide to name the things around us, the way languages evolve and mutate over time, and even the idea that there might have been one single 'proto-language' from which all others have descended. And it seems there are still discoveries to be made. In 1978, an amateur book collector called Vyacheslav Zinov bought an old latin prayer book from a man in Belarus. Stitched into the back of it were several hand-written pages, describing the 'pagan dialects of Narew', which Zinov made copies of to preserve, since the ink was fading. In 1983, Zinov realised the language was similar to Lithuanian, and so sent this copy to Vilnius University. It turned out that he had accidentally discovered the only evidence of a unique Baltic language that no longer existed, called Yotvingian. Using just those few pages, it was possible to reconstruct how words from Yotvingian had evolved into the modern Baltic tongues, and then continue extrapolating the rest of the language. It turned out to be heavily influenced by Germanic languages, which tallied with the rule of the Teutonic Knights in the region. Another piece of a linguistic puzzle fell into place, thanks to the chance survival of a Polish missionary's scribbled notes for talking with the locals.

Source: deepbaltic.com

Other Books To Check Out

Miscellany

A young woman was filming herself in Portugal with her friends when a brilliant meteor flew overhead. She accidentally framed it so perfectly, people assumed it was a fake.

Source: threads.net

Speaking of accidental celestial sightings, Destin from Smarter Every Day caught satellites on camera during the eclipse. (Also he did a remarkable multi-exposure image of the eclipse on slide film).

Source: youtube.com

A font that lets you write monsters.

Source: tunera.xyz

And Finally

Can a bunch of circles play Fur Elise?

That's the intriguing question asked by Marc Evanstein, who has been experimenting with algorithmically-produced music. In this ten-minute video, he not only answers that question, but digs into Fourier analysis, variations on a theme and even sneaks in a joke or three. And there isn't an 'AI' in sight...

Source: youtube.com