Mr. Spock Would Be Proud
First Contact Day Newsletter is going where no one has gone before.
The First Contact Day Newsletter has reached over 230,000+ subscribers! Become a paid subscriber for exclusive content such as an exclusive Founding Member shirt that is now available!
Visit the Merch Store to get the the one and only Official Planning Committee shirts for First Contact Day!
Do you know a scientist or someone who has contributed to furthering humankind that we can spotlight? Contact us! We want to support those who support humanity!
Star Trek News & Updates
WHY BRUCE HORAK LEFT STAR TREK STRANGE NEW WORLDS
"Bruce Horak left Star Trek Strange New Worlds after his character was killed off in the penultimate episode of the show’s freshman run. But was the actor’s short stay in the new series part of the original plan?
Horak exited Star Trek Strange New Worlds in June simply because his character had already served his purpose. In a couple of interviews after the episode aired, the actor shared that he knew even before he had been officially cast that Hemmer won’t survive the show’s freshman run..."
"Paul Wesley Talks About Creating A Whole New Kirk For ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 2
In addition to the showrunners, actor Paul Wesley has done a series of post-season finale interviews about introducing his James T. Kirk into Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. He’s talking about how he approached the role, and how he’ll be a different Kirk in season 2.
Vampire Diaries star Paul Wesley took on the daunting task of playing the iconic character of James T. Kirk, originated by William Shatner and later played by Chris Pine in the J.J. Abrams Kelvin Timeline movies. In all of his interviews, Wesley made it clear he and the showrunners agreed to not try to emulate either performance..."
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY’S PRIME LORCA COULD BE HEADED TO STRANGE NEW WORLDS
"The question of what exactly happened to the real Prime Lorca may finally be answered in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) was introduced in Star Trek: Discovery season 1 as the captain of the then-experimental titular ship. Lorca easily became a fan favorite, and that’s why several viewers were shaken to the core when it was revealed that he was not the real Prime Lorca.
The real Prime Lorca was assigned as the captain of the USS Buran at some point in 2256, but unknown to anyone at this time, he had actually been replaced by Terran Lorca, the character’s evil counterpart from the Mirror Universe..."
Star Trek Fun Fact
James Doohan (Scotty) created the Klingon language
"The show is notorious for creating an entire language for its fictional Klingon alien species. How this came about was Doohan made the grammar and vocabulary for the language. They then brought in a linguist Mark Okrand to finish up the language.
'I started by looking at Star Trek: The Motion Picture, because that’s where Klingon was actually first spoken,' Okrand told StarTrek.com. 'There are perhaps a half dozen lines in Klingon with subtitles at the beginning of the film. I wrote down those lines as best I could, made a list of the sounds in the words and figured out what a legitimate syllable was. That was the beginning.' He then explained, 'When I met Mark Lenard, the actor who spoke them in that film, he told me that they were devised by James Doohan. So James Doohan actually originated Klingon. I came along and fleshed it out.'"
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
Cynthia Sue Larson has been on the lookout since July 5, when CERN turned the world’s most powerful particle collider back on for a third time. Larson is looking for “reality shifts and Mandela Effects,” or evidence of multiple universes, timelines, rips in the space-time continuum, or other evidence that reality as we know it has been distorted by the Large Hadron Collider.
First electric nanomotor made from DNA material
A research team led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has succeeded for the first time in producing a molecular electric motor using the DNA origami method. The tiny machine made of genetic material self-assembles and converts electrical energy into kinetic energy. The new nanomotors can be switched on and off, and the researchers can control the rotation speed and rotational direction.
The best semiconductor of them all?
Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, and in its pure form the material has become the foundation of much of modern technology, from solar cells to computer chips. But silicon’s properties as a semiconductor are far from ideal.
For one thing, although silicon lets electrons whizz through its structure easily, it is much less accommodating to “holes” — electrons’ positively charged counterparts — and harnessing both is important for some kinds of chips. What’s more, silicon is not very good at conducting heat, which is why overheating issues and expensive cooling systems are common in computers.