Intergalactic Traveling In Science Fiction VS Reality

I just finished the second book in Scott Westerfeld's awesome duology Succession: The Killing of Worlds. In it, First Engineer Frick aboard the Lynx, a space frigate, describes the way the ship’s power is generated for its interstellar traveling:

   What a strange way to generate power, the First Engineer wondered: Making pocket universes, the false (?) realms formed whenever a starship bigbanged its drive. How many other realities had humanity created with this process?

   And would there one day be other thinking beings inside them, in the small realities born of humanity’s hubris? Then those, making pocket universes of their own…

   Frick shook his head. There was no time for philosophical digression.

Rendition of what a future Warp Drive spaceship
could look like

I just wanted to share this with you because I found the way devised by Westerfeld to be quite intriguing (of course, the actual physics behind any real theories being beyond me, I may also be completely blind to any flaws it might contain). Many theories have been expounded on faster-than-light travel, such as Warp Drive (bending space around the ship to have it then propel the ship at speeds exceeding that of light, as people surmise happened right after the big bang), which is what NASA is looking into building, apparently. Then there are other things to consider, like black holes, antimatter, quantum entanglement… Who knows?

I still like Scott Westerfeld’s idea, it is, after all, rather poetic. And after all, we are supposedly near creating our own black hole already!

Have a great day!

Edit:
OK, so technically the black hole in Westerfeld's ship is used to power "the ship's photon canon, artificial gravity, [and] life support," not allow it to travel through space at a FTL* speed. But it's still a really cool concept!
*FTL = Faster Than Light

And Another St. Valentine's Day Goes By...

...dripping poison into the hearts of those without a life teammate. And who's to blame for this affliction?
Poison Heart Bear! "The cousin the other Care Bears never told us about."

Source: instagram

Haha! Just kidding :) But I love the adorable monsters Bobby Chiu creates (see more here).

Sit In A Chair Or Sit On A Chair – The History Of An English Expression

The Iron Throne from the Game of Thrones series
No...this post is not at all about the show...

Here's a regular old throne...

As I’m editing my second book (a long, time-consuming process that’s slowly destroying my neck and back), I find myself running often to my favorite dictionaries to make sure I’m using the write expression, or even the right preposition (see my previous post on prepositions here).

Anyway, the expression I’d like to discuss today, is a deceptively easy one: if you were to sit down, would you say “in” a chair, or “on” it?

It turns out it depends.

In most cases, you’d sit “on” a chair. But, if we are talking of a throne-like arm-chair, then you would say sit “in” the chair.

...then you've got Michael Jackson's throne.

For you see, thrones and similarly fancy seats would often be used by rulers to denote their own importance in front of their subjects—they were the ones who could sit down, while everyone else had to stand (it did, might I add, allow for much easier genuflecting before said ruler). So really, sitting “in” a chair, “is a reminiscence of the time when the lord or seigneur sat ‘in his chair.’”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can say it both ways!

Have a great day :)

Source:

History of the Chair – Wiki 

On The First Belgian King

King Leopold I was known to be quite easy on the eye, so to speak, with
plenty of conquests and portraits to prove it (though portraits shouldn't always be trusted).

And it's in part thanks to them that he went from street rat to sultan, so to speak (he was, after all, always a prince, even if a poor one).

Click here for more deets on the King and his rise to power!