Author Archives: Alex R. Howe

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About Alex R. Howe

I'm a full-time astrophysicist and a part-time science fiction writer.

Pluto Update: Mountains, Moats, and Methane

Posted on July 22, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

New images from space missions are often slow to be released. The Deep Space Network isn’t exactly broadband, and they have to process the images to make them look presentable. But we still have a few new shots of Pluto … Continue reading →

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Weird and Active Pluto and Charon

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

The New Horizons spacecraft successfully completed its flyby of Pluto on Tuesday and collected all the scientific data it was planned to without a hitch. On Wednesday, we got our first pick at what these new data revealed. Methane Ice … Continue reading →

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Pluto Update: Pictures and Video!

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

Update: New Horizons is alive! The flyby went as planned with no computer glitches. All the data appears to be there. Also NASA TV is working now, and UStream appears to be offline, so click there for the press conferences. … Continue reading →

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Breaking News: Pluto is the Largest Dwarf Planet!

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

At this writing, the New Horizons spacecraft is only hours away from its closest approach to Pluto. Except in the unlikely event that it crashes into something (*knocks on wood*) or the more likely event that its computer crashes (*knocks … Continue reading →

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Fan Fiction Review: Star Trek Continues, Episodes 1-4

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

I wrote about Star Trek Continues two years ago. It aims to create new episodes of the original Star Trek series in a style as close to the original as possible. I consider Star Trek Continues to be the best … Continue reading →

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You Know that Thing Where…?

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

What do you do when Google doesn’t understand what you’re talking about? Google is a brilliant tool for the modern era. It can search for anything in the blink of an eye…well, not quite. Searching for print books and other … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Jurassic World

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

Two decades after the disastrous events of Jurassic Park, Jurassic World is a wildly successful theme park serving millions of visitors every year. That is, until the experimental, genetically modified, highly-intelligent super-predator (because regular dinosaurs are boring, now), Indominus rex, … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Tomorrowland

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

Tomorrowland: a parallel dimension somehow accessed by Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla in 1887, in which the world’s most brilliant inventors and creators built a utopian, futuristic city to solve all the world’s problems. In the 1960s, the people of … Continue reading →

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What If? Rejects #6.1: A Well-Balanced Meal, Part 2

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. In Randall Munroe’s What If?, one of the most complex questions that he declines to answer is the following: What is the total nutritional value (calories, fat, vitamins, minerals, etc.) of the … Continue reading →

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What I Learned From Writing The Wayfarers

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

Last week, I published one of my short stories, The Wayfarers, and previously, I also described my writing process that went into one of my other stories, The Lacertan Indicent, and what I learned from it, so I wanted to … Continue reading →

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