An interesting Star Trek: Voyager episode along those lines: Blink of an Eye (episode) | Memory Alpha | Fandom
OH, there’s an SF story using that idea! What was it? No worries, I’ll find it tomorrow; busy with dinner at the moment…
Some good news: the Senate voted to fund several research budgets at levels higher than Trump’s budget proposals. These are for NSF, NOAA and NASA, but not for the CDC and NIH.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-senate-passes-bill-boost-federal-science-spending-after-white-house-sought-2026-01-15/
This one?
Yes, and also in the Heechee Saga.
So yesterday there could have been history’s first space capsule vs cruise ship collision.
CYA at NASA… or something to actually be worried about?
This might be of interest to the crowd in this thread:
Lest we forget…
I was working at a radio station as an intern that day, and remember being both horrified at what had happened, and excited to be among the first to see the news coverage as it came in.
[Posting in response to a private request on this issue; my apologies to the requester for the ~2 month delay]
This is a misunderstanding of the phenomenon of “Kessler syndrome”, which isn’t a discrete event but rather a state in which a substantial density of debris in a particular orbit will be in a self-sustaining condition, generating more debris through impacts with other spacecraft and objects in orbit. This will continue until the entire orbital azimuth is essentially cleared (by objects and debris falling out of orbit through natural decay or by a hypothetical method of debris removal). In the lowest part of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) i.e. below 500 km the orbital lifetime of an object in a near circular orbit will be on close order of a year (depending on solar activity effects on thermospheric drag and the ballistic coefficient for that regime) but at the higher end of LEO the decay time can be on the order of hundreds or even thousands of years. Objects in more eccentric orbits may have shorter or longer orbital lifespans depending on how long they spend in the thicker parts of the thermosphere but bear in mind that as debris falls out of one orbit it falls into lower orbits and spreads across a broad range of azimuths into the path of objects that cross the trajectory of the slowly decaying debris. A an accidental Kessler syndrome (or intentional cascade from attacks on multiple satellites in different azimuths or dispersal of debris) at the mid-to-upper range of LEO could produce effective denial of orbital space and make even access to upper orbits and interplanetary space extremely risky for the foreseeable future.
Aerospace America: “Understanding the misunderstood Kessler Syndrome”
Aerospace America: “A conversation with Donald Kessler”
Stranger
Right. It’s not a singular catastrophe, just an ongoing mess.
Just how serious is a matter for research.
One of the best articles I’ve read about the Artemis II mission: After 54 Years, Astronauts Are Going Back to the Moon | TIME
Just putting this hear, visual exploration
From the article -
…“Magnetic driven auroras on uranus” that’s a diagnosis I don’t need in my life.
Eh. Look at the bright side: it’ll sterilize your hemorrhoids. 
I hope astronomers are watching this star closely now:
One of the largest known stars in the universe underwent a dramatic transformation in 2014, new research shows, and may be preparing to explode.
A study led by Gonzalo Muñoz-Sanchez at the National Observatory of Athens, published in Nature Astronomy today, argues that the enormous star WOH G64 has transitioned from a red supergiant to a rare yellow hypergiant – in what may be evidence of impending supernova.
The evidence suggests we may be witnessing, in real time, a massive star shedding its outer layers, shrinking as it heats up, and moving closer to the end of its short life.
I’m not sure how long such a process might take, and perhaps the experts don’t either. I suppose the very last bit happens quickly, but perhaps we are talking thousands of years until then.
Remember it is about 160,000 light years away–so it may well have already happened–even though we can’t see the results yet.
The only timeline that matters (to us) is when the light gets here.
It has been revealed that it was Mike Fincke who experienced the medical emergency. What it was is still kept private – but probably not pregnancy 
Brian
I’m going with, “chaotic flatulence” until disabused of this notion. 