Humankind is one step closer...
We have a lot to celebrate!
The First Contact Day Newsletter is growing and is now recommended by 14 other Substack Newsletters! Due to demand we are going to switch from a monthly newsletter to multiple a month!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 1 has ended but humankind’s exploration of space has only begun. Below you can see one of the first images of the new Webb Telescope!
“Cosmic Cliffs” in Carina
What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth.
Star Trek News & Updates
The Official First Contact Day Planning Committee Shirts Are Now Available!
Kirk will be different in Season 2
From Screenrant.com
“In interviews with EW and Variety (via TrekMovie), Wesley has discussed how Kirk will be very different in season 2 than in his season 1 appearance. Wesley says that season 2's Kirk will still be accurate to the character, but that he isn't trying to necessarily emulate William Shatner or Chris Pine's versions. Unlike other iterations of the character, Wesley's Kirk will be pre-Enterprise and will explore more of who Kirk is before he sat in the Captain's chair. Wesley says that "there was less room to play with Kirk's humor" in Strange New Worlds season 1, and that fans can expect to see Kirk growing and exploring who he is in season 2.”
Sisko is Back!
From TrekMovie.com
“During IDW’s Thursday morning SDCC panel today they announced what they describe as “a bold new direction in Star Trek comics,” starting with a “brand-new flagship ongoing series that goes where no one has gone before.” Launching with Star Trek #1 in October 2022, the new series brings back the all-star crew behind IDW’s Star Trek – Year Five, for a series starring Benjamin Sisko and taking place three years after the events of DS9’s “What You Leave Behind,” and one year before Star Trek: Nemesis.”
Star Trek Fun Fact
Stephen Hawking is the only person to play himself on Star Trek
The appearance happens in the episode, “Descent” where Data, Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and Stephen Hawking are playing poker.
From Star Trek:
First Contact Day "A holiday celebrated in the Federation on April 5, marking the anniversaries of the flight of the Phoenix and of first contact between Humans and Vulcans in 2063."
The Phoenix was a Human spaceship launched in 2063. Constructed from an old Titan V nuclear ICBM, the Phoenix was designed by Zefram Cochrane, and was the first vessel in Earth history to travel at warp speed (having reached a speed of warp 1.1).
The Vulcans are a humanoid species native to the planet Vulcan. They are one of the founding species of the United Federation of Planets and made First Contact with humans upon learning of their achievement of warp speed.
Science & Technology News & Achievements
James Webb Space Telescope discovers candidates for most distant galaxies yet
"Astronomers have spotted what may be the two most distant galaxies ever seen hiding in early-release images from NASA's newest space telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope's early science work includes a program called the Grism Lens-Amplified Survey from Space, or GLASS. Through GLASS, astronomers are scrutinizing the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, which is so massive that its gravity is able to distort the space around it and act as a gravitational lens to magnify the images of far more distant galaxies behind it..."
Strange New Phase of Matter Created in Quantum Computer Acts Like It Has Two Time Dimensions
"By shining a laser pulse sequence inspired by the Fibonacci numbers at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a remarkable, never-before-seen phase of matter. The phase has the benefits of two time dimensions despite there still being only one singular flow of time, the physicists report July 20 in Nature..."
LHCb ramps up the search for dark photons
"Researching subatomic particles is an involved process. It can take hundreds—if not thousands—of scientists and engineers to build an experiment, keep it up and running, and analyze the enormous amounts of data it collects. That means physicists are always on the lookout for ways to do more for free: to squeeze out as much physics as possible with the machinery that already exists. And that’s exactly what a handful of physicists have set out to do with the LHCb experiment at CERN...."
The only way to beat the speed of light
"In our Universe, there are a few rules that everything must obey. Energy, momentum, and angular momentum are always conserved whenever any two quanta interact. The physics of any system of particles moving forward in time is identical to the physics of that same system reflected in a mirror, with particles exchanged for antiparticles, where the direction of time is reversed. And there’s an ultimate cosmic speed limit that applies to every object: nothing can ever exceed the speed of light, and nothing with mass can ever reach that vaunted speed..."