Scientists have identified the earliest known animal in the geological record.
It's a 558-million-year-old oval-shaped creature that may have borne a superficial resemblance to a segmented jellyfish.Researchers found specimens of the creature, known as Dickinsonia, that were so well preserved they still contained molecules of cholesterol.
This fat is a hallmark of animal life, the team reports in the journal Science.
Dickinsonia belongs to a group of life forms known as the Ediacaran biota. They were the first complex multi-cellular organisms to appear on Earth.
But they have been extremely difficult to classify, and their position on the tree of life has been one of the greatest mysteries in palaeontology.
Different teams of scientists have variously classified them as lichens, fungi, protozoans, evolutionary dead-ends and even as an intermediate stage between plants and animals.
The new analysis of a specimen found in north-west Russia places Dickinsoniafirmly within the animal kingdom.
Read more here:  BBC

Turns out Vulcan, Mr. Spock's Star Trek fictional home world, has a real-world counterpart. A new survey has discovered a planet located exactly where Spock's would have been.This all takes a little explaining for those of us who aren't planetary scholars. Back in 1991, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and three astronomers wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine about where Vulcan might be located."The star around which Vulcan orbits was never identified in the original series or in any of the feature films based on it and so has never been officially established," they wrote. But Roddenberry's group had a candidate in mind. "We prefer the identification of 40 Eridani as Vulcan's sun."The orange dwarf-star 40 Eridani is 4 billion years old, about the same age as our sun, they went on to say. Roddenberry and the astronomers thought that would give an intelligent civilization time to evolve -- and no one has ever denied the intelligence of Vulcans.
Read more here:  CNET

It is fascinating to see how CGI is brought to life these days and a new featurette which will be included on the Blu-ray release of ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom‘ is showing how the Indoraptor was brought to life. One of the most fearsome creations in the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise to date, there was a lot of effort put in by the VFX team, and this clip shows it! This isn’t the full featurette as you’ll need to buy the Blu-ray to check it out, but the clip gives enough of an idea of all the hard work that goes into creating these dinosaurs. Also, for those who love to see these extra features, it will likely leave you hungry for more!
Read more here:  ScienceFiction.com

At its best, science fiction can present a captivating, inventive picture of societal trends and flaws.
The Metacritic data we compiled here to track the most critically acclaimed sci-fi movies of all time traces a lineage of great films from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" through the Tom Cruise-led "Minority Report" and Spike Jonze's "Her."
The resulting list includes all of the highest-rated movies that feature a "sci-fi" tag on the site, which turned out to be a wide-ranging categorization.
Read more here:  Business Insider

Are you ready to start your holiday shopping?  Ready or not, the holidays are rapidly approaching!  There are only 14 weeks left until Christmas so we are spotlighting one of our products each week until the big day is here.  Master Replicas Group is your one stop shop to get the perfect gift for the space enthusiast and/or Science Fiction fan in your life. Today, the spotlight is on our Moon Tycho Crater Space Terrain.  
Using data from NASA satellites and new, 3D printing technologies, Master Replicas Group has re-created two remarkably detailed models of Tycho crater on the moon and Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. Each limited-edition model measures about 10 square inches (25 square centimeters) and comes with a special display plaque that can hang on a wall or stand on a shelf.
To order a space terrain for your favorite space explorer , click here:  Space Terrains

You asked and we delivered!  After many requests from our customers, we are happy to announce that you can now order the HAL 9000 Bluetooth Speaker and the HAL 9000 with Command Console with our new payment plan.
The payment plan will allow you to make 4 installments on either of the HAL 9000s.   For the HAL 9000 Bluetooth Speaker, payments will be due once a month.  Payments for the HAL 9000 with Command Console will be due once every two months.  Of course the pay-in-full option is also still available.
To learn more about the HAL 9000 and the payment plan, please click here:  HAL 9000

It's going to be a big night for space tourism. The private spaceflight company SpaceX will reveal its first passenger for a trip around the moon on the company's massive BFR rocket and you can watch it all live online. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has even dropped tantalizing previews of the BFR's new rocket design on Twitter.SpaceX will unveil its BFR rocket passenger (the name stands for Big Falcon Rocket) in a webcast tonight (Sept. 17) at its Hawthorne, California headquarters. You can watch it live here, courtesy of SpaceX, beginning at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 Sept. 18 GMT).
Read more here: Space.com

As the planet-wide Martian dust storm clears, NASA scientists have increased their efforts to contact the nearly 15-year-old Opportunity rover, which has been silent since June 10.
Some scientists are beginning to feel apprehensive, but there’s a plan in place.. The deep-space network of NASA communications satellites began a 45-day period of “active listening” on Wednesday, during which they will send signals from Earth to Mars several times a day. Radio receivers will listen passively and continue doing so until January 2019, at the earliest.
“I think we have a plan that, if the vehicle is alive, we’ll hear from it,” Steve Squyres, principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, told Gizmodo. “The question is whether it’s alive.”
Read more here:  GIZMODO