Story Ideas – Inspiration from Titles & Headlines

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Story Ideas – Inspiration from Titles & Headlines

By Deb Gallardo

Okay, once again I’m wearing my “child of the sixties who loves anything to do with space” hat. As you may know, I’m a fan of the NASA sites. If you’re a teacher, you probably already know about all the “stuff” (that’s the technical term) for kids that is available through NASA. Well you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy reading the wealth of highly accessible and well-written space-related articles at spaceweather.com, to name just one of the NASA sites. I subscribe to a couple of their newsletters, so when a whole series of seemingly unrelated articles passed through my inbox recently and captured my attention, I decided I shouldn’t keep this to myself, but pass it on to you, my readers.

it shouldn’t take much imagination to find story fodder in even one of these articles. But viewed in close proximity, these stories, which may not be related to each other in reality, made me seriously consider writing a science fiction story. I’d always shied away, feeling I didn’t know enough of the science to write believably. And perhaps you, too, might just find your love of reading science fiction morphing into writing it. Here’s what I mean:

There’s something about the word “secret” that automatically stimulates our curiosity. It’s hard to resist mysteries. So scan these headlines and their brief excerpts (complete article links follow each selection in case you want to read more — an I encourage you to do so), and see if the juxtaposition of these headlines doesn’t give your brain a tickle of excitement and a flutter of that indescribable “something” you get when you recognize an idea.

Sunspots at 50-Year Low

Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 has become the “blankest year” of the Space Age. Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low, signifying a deep minimum in the 11-year cycle of solar activity.

Read the full story here:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30sep_blankyear.htm?list1128087

A Secret Layer of the Sun

“Next April, for a grand total of 8 minutes,NASA astronomers are going to glimpse a secret layer of the sun.

It is, in short, the birthplace of space weather. Researchers hope it is about to yield its secrets.”

Read the full story here:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/05sep_sumi.htm?list1128087

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Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low

In a briefing today at NASA headquarters, solar physicists announced that the solar wind is losing power. ‘…The solar wind isn’t inflating the heliosphere as much as it used to,’ says McComas. ‘That means less shielding against cosmic rays.’

In addition to weakened solar wind, ‘Ulysses also finds that the sun’s underlying magnetic field has weakened by more than 30% since the mid-1990s,’ says Posner. ‘This reduces natural shielding even more.’

Read the full story here:http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/23sep_solarwind.htm

A related news release about data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission explains the significance of the solar wind — information I never learned in science class because the data on the solar wind hadn’t been collected yet! They only began that 50 years ago.

“The sun’s million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy,” said Dave McComas, Ulysses’ solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “Ulysses data indicate the solar wind’s global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age.”

Read the full story here:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-178

Our Sun is Not a Perfect Sphere

Scientists using NASA’s RHESSI spacecraft have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision, and they find that it is not a perfect sphere. During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin “cantaloupe skin” that significantly increases its apparent oblateness.

Read the full story here:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/02oct_oblatesun.htm?list1128087

I must confess to being captivated just by the idea that there is a secret layer in the sun. I realize it’s not habitable, but what if it were? What if people — creatures of some kind — could LIVE in that secret layer? Do you see what I mean? The possibilities are endless.

As for the solar wind slow down, does the idea of a shrinking solar bubble protecting our solar system bother you and make you wonder if we are more vulnerable than we thought? What if the solar wind continues to die down and the bubble continues to shrink? What impact might that have on the outer planets? On the inner planets? More specifically, on earth?

What might be causing the solar wind change? What would happen if it grew stronger again? What if it grew too strong?

Why are we just now discovering the sun isn’t a perfect sphere? I realize that we have spacecraft that recently have been able to take readings impossible before, but haven’t scientists in the past several decades suspected this? If not, I’m interested in why not?

And are all these things related to the 50-year low in sunspot activity? Does this presage a time of difficult space weather or little change? What will be the impact? If all these things were related, in what way might they be connected and what would it mean to life on earth? In the rest of our solar system? Beyond our solar system?

Enjoy your speculation, and be sure to read those articles. I recommend subscribing to the NASA newsletters. Cool stuff you don’t necessarily see on the nightly news or on AOL’s headlines. And as always, please comment below to let me know what you enjoyed and why. I value your commentary.