Dune: Prophecy opens with a thesis statement. It comes as the Reverend Mother Tula Harkonnen (played by Olivia Williams), a member of the powerful, quasi-religious order known as the Sisterhood, instructs a group of novices in the subtle art of Truthsaying, which is used to determine whether someone is being dishonest. 'Humanity's greatest weapon is the lie,' she tells them'both the justification for the lesson and an explanation of the ethos that the Dune universe's rigid imperial society runs on. But the Sisters' weapon isn't just their ability to sniff out lies; it's also their ability to tell them. Tula and her fellow Sisters are not simply reacting to the deceptive men in control of the empire, as portrayed in the Dune books. Instead, the women of Dune: Prophecy are the show's heroes and its villains. Toying with the binary of 'good' and 'bad''and who falls into which category'is a core interest of the Dune franchise. The novelist Frank Herbert's (predominantly male) heroes are bound by virtue, but they're also deeply flawed: Paul Atreides, the protagonist of the first Dune novel, is a deconstruction of the messianic figure, his seemingly divine traits the result of forces beyond his control. The reader is encouraged to root for Paul, but the story's climax argues that the existence of an omnipotent despot spells bad news for a fragile interstellar empire....
Day 19 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a beacon in the clouds. This image from the James Webb Space Telescope features a bright H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. This nebula, known as N79, is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized, seen here by Webb's Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). N79 is a massive star-forming complex spanning roughly 1,630 light-years across. This particular image focuses on one of the three giant molecular cloud complexes, dubbed N79 South....
NASA has again postponed the return to Earth of Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station after Boeing's Starliner capsule malfunctioned in the middle of this year. The crew of the spacecraft arrived at the ISS in June. The objective was to test the Starliner's comprehensive capabilities, including launch, docking, and return systems. The mission was scheduled to last one week. Five of the capsule's 28 thrusters failed to function before docking with the ISS. Boeing claimed that its technology could guarantee the safe return of the astronauts. However, NASA expressed doubts and concluded that the risk was too high. The agency entrusted the task to SpaceX. Elon Musk's company launched the Crew-9 mission in September to, among other things, return Williams and Wilmore. Until now, the stalled astronauts were scheduled to return in February aboard the Crew Dragon rocket. However, NASA has announced that it expects the expedition to return to Earth's surface after the arrival of Crew-10, which will be sent in late March 2025 at the earliest....
Day 14 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a sky full of stars. The open cluster Westerlund 1 is located roughly 12,000 light-years away, residing behind a huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust. Westerlund 1, seen in this James Webb Space Telescope image, is an impressive example of a super star cluster: It contains hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost 1 million suns and others 2,000 times larger than the sun (as large as the orbit of Saturn). If our solar system was located at the center of this remarkable cluster, our night sky would be full of hundreds of stars as bright as the full moon....
