In the beginning of the series, Rick and partner Shane are in a firefight and Rick is shot and enters a coma. Upon waking in a hospital, he discovers the undead are in the building and town. Rick returns home and shortly decides to go to Atlanta, where the survivors were told to await help, to find his wife Lori and son Carl. He discovers the city is crowded with zombies and bumps into Glenn, a scavenger for a band of survivors. Following Glenn, Rick discovers Lori and Carl are okay along with Shane, who is less than happy that his former partner has returned. He also meets new survivors.

The group search for a place to call home, settling in several temporary camps, including a prison, which comes to the attention of an insane man calling himself the Governor. The Governor runs his local city, Woodbury, Georgia, like a dictator and tortures Rick and other members of his group, culminating in an assault. After the prison is made unsecure by an attack, Rick and the surviving members encounter cannibals and a township that is enclosed and safe, but holds a secret.

It has recently gone into production as a movie, with option of a later serials, read on for news on casting and stuffs.

• Ain’t It Cool News visits the set of The Walking Dead. “To be frank,” writer Quint says of a particular scene, “this looked f—— terrifying.”

• ScreenCrave points to two new production photos from The Walking Dead set, remarking, “AMC has a grade-A line up of original programming and The Walking Dead should be no different.” 411Mania and MovieWeb also spotlight the images.

• MTV reports that The Blind Side‘s Robert “IronE” Singleton will be joining the cast of The Walking Dead as a character named T-Dog, while DreadCentral notes that Adrian Kali Turner has been cast as Duane Jones.

• UGO references AMCtv.com’s interview with Robert Kirkman, in which The Walking Dead comic author describes Andrew Lincoln as “a man who eats, drinks and sleeps Rick Grimes.”

Pioneer One is the latest project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith whose previous indie feature The Lionshare, became VODO’s biggest success to date with over 450,000 downloads since its release. The success of the project inspired the writer/director duo to develop this quality drama in collaboration with VODO and its distribution partners. With a successful distribution of the pilot they’re hunting for the donors and sponsors that will make the continuation of the show possible.

The show’s pilot was shot for just $6000, raised through the micro-funding platform Kickstarter. “This production was possible due in no small part to the willingness of talented, professional people working for free,” explains Bernhard. “From actors to composers, they did this because they believed in the project and wanted to see it happen.The production was a journey in and of itself. Check out the video blogs that were posted to the web that tell the story from script to finished episode”: vimeo.com/channels/pioneerone.

The initial pilot is very short, and you really don’t see where they dropped the $6k in donations, aside from knowing they’re operating one camera. Or someone, rather, is operating one camera, who is clearly not qualified to be doing so based on the very amateur film studentish angles used and the inability to smoothly frame a shot. It feels as though the entire thing was shot in one take day with no reshooting scenes that didn’t play out well, especially during a lot of the two person conversations where the camera is trying to stick to the rule of thirds but the persons are so close to each other they’re basically cutting a person out each time the opposite speaks and vice versa.

I don’t mean to overly criticise it, it’s a good attempt, but it just lacks a lot, and doesn’t seem to be worth the $6k spent. They better bust into zombie apocalypse and bunker survival soon because they can drop their costs dramatically if they went the route of true survival horror. Oh well, here’s hoping.

The demo will highlight the Unity engine technology that will drive Battlestar Galactica Online game experience and demonstrate how the game’s browser-based platform will reach the huge global audience already playing browser-based MMOGs on Bigpoint.com and through Bigpoint’s many popular distribution partners. The game, however, will be remarkably shit and is set to disappoint BSG fans, as they have come to expect since the original leak in 2007 of an MMORPG that went vaporware, then MMORPG, then vaporware, then MMOG (MMOG is also secret code for “Sucks cock harder than a $2 hooker.”)

The debut trailer for Battlestar Galactica Online is now available on the official E3 Expo virtual press room and the BGO Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/bgo).

Go here to add yourself to the waiting list for the announcement of release of this destined soon-to-be flop: http://battlestar-galactica.bigpoint.com/

The first paper said hydrogen gas flowing down through Titan’s atmosphere disappears at the surface, suggesting it could be being breathed by alien bugs. The other paper reports there is a lack of a certain chemical on the surface, leading scientists to believe it may be being consumed by life. Scientists had expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce a coating of acetylene on Titan’s surface but Cassini detected no acetylene there.

Experts warn there could be other explanations for the results. But taken together, they fulfil two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist. NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay said: “If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.”

Scientists believe that when the Sun swells up, swallowing Earth, conditions could be ideal on Titan. Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, said: “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process. “In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.”

Another thing that flew under the radar that is about 8 months old is the findings on those microbes in the Martian meteorite that caused such a HUGE fuss in the mid 90s (from a meteor found in the 80s!) amongst scientists (and theists / creationists for sure!) has been found to be exactly what it looked like, (paranthetical abuse!) microbes from Mars!

NASA scientists have produced the most compelling evidence yet that bacterial life exists on Mars.  It shows that microscopic worm-like structures found in a Martian meteorite that hit the Earth 13,000 years ago are almost certainly fossilised bacteria. The so-called bio-morphs are embedded beneath the surface layers of the rock, suggesting they were present when the meteorite arrived, rather than being the result of contamination by earthly bacteria. “This is very strong evidence of life on Mars,” said David Mackay, a senior scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston, who was part of the team of scientists that originally investigated the meteorite when it was discovered in 1984.

In a 1996 study of the sample, Dr Mackay and others argued the microfossils were evidence of life, but sceptics dismissed the claims, saying similar-shaped structures may not be biological. The new analyses, the product of high-resolution electron microscopy, make a strong case for the Allan Hills 84001 Meteorite having carried Martian life to Earth. The microscopes were focused on tiny magnetite crystals present in the surface layers of the meteorite, which have the form of simple bacteria.

Some argued these could be the result of a carbonate breaking down in the heat of the impact. The new analyses show this is unlikely to have resulted in the structures seen in the rock. Close examination suggested that about 25 per cent of the crystal structures were chemically consistent with being formed from bacteria. “We feel vindicated. We’ve shown the alternate explanation is absolutely incorrect, leading us back to our original position that these structures are formed by bacteria on Mars,” Dr Mackay said.

Scientists say the meteorite was broken off the surface of Mars by the impact of an asteroid, and reached Earth after floating through space for about 16 million years. It landed in Allan Hills in Antarctica. Scientists were able to trace the meteorite back to Mars, as its chemical composition matched the relative proportions of various gases measured in observations of the atmosphere of Mars made by the Viking spacecraft in the 1970s. The meteorite also preserves evidence of liquid water on Mars.

Europa’s unlit interior is still considered to be the most likely location for extant life in the Solar System. Life could exist in its under-ice ocean, perhaps subsisting in an environment similar to Earth’s deep-ocean hydrothermal vents or the Antarctic Lake Vostok. Life in such an ocean could possibly be similar to microbial life on Earth in the deep ocean. So far, there is no evidence that life exists on Europa, but the likely presence of liquid water has spurred calls to send a probe there.

Let’s not forget water on the moon people. We live in some pretty exciting times! It’ll definitely challenge the status quo between the baby boomers and their strong theological views (and those zombie like masses of American teenagers brainwashed by them) and the more cold clinical evil villainous scientist types like .. well, like us!

Most of you know I’m an ultra-skeptic, but credit where credit is due, this again has me confused terribly, the only other time I have been unable to provide immediately a good solid scientific explaination for something of this nature was the Norway spiral phenomenon in question. So, here’s a picture of it as scene by people in Brisbane, along with the current news coverage of the phenomenon.

One last thing though; if some company or person launched something that travelled for an hour within our atmosphere and ended up ‘out of control’ over one of Australia’s most populated cities, why isn’t there an investigation or at least charges being laid? That’s assuming that a privately launched rocket of unknown and undisclosed type or origin could maintain flight for over an hour; but let’s face it, our government would spend a small fortune investigating an anonymous cock and balls scrawled on Parliament house in sharpie, why won’t they even look into or address this?

UPDATE: Witness reports have come in from the entire eastern coast of Australia from Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria inclusively.

EDIT: Latest coverage has been placed first, view below for earlier story, newer version has witness records from all over the eastern seaboard of Australia.

in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria all reported seeing a bright light moving in an erratic way in the sky early this morning, prompting speculation of a UFO.

One witness in Redcliffe in northern Brisbane told The Sunday Mail of a ball of light moving across the sky at about 5.50am today.

“It was a perfect spiral of light,” the witness said.

“I realised soon it was not the moon but that it was shooting like a comet from the southern sky and off into the northwest.”

Another Brisbane resident said: “There was absolutely no sound in a perfectly clear, darkened sky before dawn.”

Police and search and rescue crews confirmed they had received calls from Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast about the UFO.

The weather bureau said there were no weather conditions which would explain the light. A Defence spokeswoman also said she had no explanation.

In Victoria, a Herald Sun reader identified as Matt said he saw the light after fishing on Port Phillip Bay.

“It was really weird,” he said.

“We tried to take photos with our phones but all you could see was black.”

The light was also seen in Sydney, Wollongong and Canberra, reports The Daily Telegraph. A witness told the ABC she saw a light “racing across the sky” about 5.50am. She described the light as “like a lollipop swirl” that came from the west and was headed east out to sea.

“It was unreal,” she said.

“There was a cloud in the sky – just this light with a swirl in the middle.”

Another caller said:”It was a perfect spiral of light.

“I realised soon it was not the moon but that it was shooting like a comet from the southern sky and off into the northwest.’’

Original coverage:

Geoffrey Whyatt from the Sydney Observatory says it was probably a satellite, space junk or a rocket.

“The fact that you’ve got the rotation, the spiral effect, is very reminiscent of the much widely reported sightings from Norway and Russia last year, which both turned out to be a Bulava missile which was being adjusted in its orbit,” he said.

“So possibly a rocket, I would say, having some sort of gyroscopic stability rocket fired on its side.”

Mr Whyatt says it is a rare phenomenon.

“The first I saw of the spirals was last year when they were reported in Norway and then a few days later in Russia,” he said.

“The Norway one was very spectacular because of its symmetrical appearance.

“But the one this morning and the one in Russia bear a striking similarity of being the same effects from a rocket trying to be controlled or adjusted.”

A privately-owned rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on its first test flight is believed to be responsible.

But Doug Moffett from UFO Research NSW says he has a few problems with this theory.

“Firstly, the time of the launch was 18.45 GMT, which translates to 4.45am EST, the duration of the flight was 9 minutes 38 seconds – this is a full hour before the reported sightings,” he said.

“Secondly, where was the glow from the boosters or from the friction created by the craft moving through the atmosphere, where was the tail of the rocket?

“Thirdly, why would anyone launch a rocket on a maiden test flight with a trajectory that would take it over the most heavily populated parts of Australia?

“And how big must this rocket have been to be seen so clearly, at the same time, over such a vast distance?”

‘Like a bright star’

Canberra resident James Butcher says he was driving home from a night out with his brother when they spotted the “strange spiral light in the sky”.

“It had a distinct bright centre, much like a bright star, indicating an object shedding light trails, spiralling and fattening out from it,” he said.

“The effect lasted only two or three minutes, moving and descending quickly out of view.

“The colour was yellowish but this may have been blurred and tinted by the morning fog.”

Wollongong man Eddie Wise says he also saw the light during his morning walk just before 6:00am.

He says he has never seen anything like it.

“It was like a yellowish, greenish light with a light spiral around it,” he said.

“It sort of moved around, bobbed up and down and then it went behind a cloud.

“I’m just amazed. I want to know what it was.”

A caller to the ABC, Robyn, says she saw the phenomenon from her home on Sydney’s north shore just before 6:00am.

She says it was over within two minutes.

“There was this white light up in the sky like a huge revolving moon,” Robyn said.

“At first I thought it was the moon but it was travelling so fast, high up above the eastern horizon and twirling as it went.

“It was just amazing and to be quite frank, I was quite frightened and my heart’s still pounding.”

‘Lollipop-type swirl’

A number of people from Morayfield and Caboolture in Queensland have reported that they too saw a white light in the sky about 5:50am.

“It was just the one light. I just came home from my walk and I happened to look up in the sky, and here it was racing across the sky,” Linda told 612 ABC Brisbane.

“I bashed on the window for my husband to have a look and he flew out.

“It was spectacular.”

Linda described the light as like a lollipop swirl.

She says the light came from the west and was headed east, out to sea.

“It was just unreal. There was a cloud in the sky – just this light with a swirl in the middle,” she said.

Peter, from Balmoral, says he saw the light while he was on a ferry terminal on the Brisbane River.

“It certainly had that lollipop-type swirl … but it was travelling low and fairly fast, and as it went past me and I looked up, it looked like a row of lights, maybe four lights,” he said.

Denise, at Pine Mountain, told ABC radio in Brisbane that she saw the lights shortly before 6:00am.

“I got up at about 5:45 to let my horse out of his stable … and I saw this coming from a north-west direction towards the south-east,” she said.

“There was no noise. It was like bands of ribbon coming out of it and it looked like it was coming through a cloud, yet there were no clouds.”

Some interesting comments on the issue: -

• Tommy Posted at 3:15 PM Today

  yep, Russian rockets again….

  Comment 10 of 51

• Glen of Newcastle Posted at 3:20 PM Today

  This looks the same as the ones in Norway December 2009…spooky?

  Comment 11 of 51

• Hodge of Melbourne Posted at 3:28 PM Today

  I’m waiting to hear the weather balloon theory….swamp gas etc. They don’t want to admit that just maybe,it’s not from this world…and i think they forgetting the witnesses said it made no sound!

  Comment 12 of 51

• Man In Black Posted at 3:29 PM Today

  No other object has been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus. Even the former leader of your United States of America, James Earl Carter Jr., thought he saw a UFO once… But it’s been proven he only saw the planet Venus. Venus was at its peak brilliance last night. You probably thought you saw something up in the sky other than Venus, but I assure you, it was Venus. Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception. Yet you somehow brazenly declare seeing is believing? Your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder, and I wouldn’t flaunt your ignorance by telling anyone that you saw anything last night other than the planet Venus.

  Comment 13 of 51

• Believer of Gold Coast Posted at 3:43 PM Today

  aahh here we go another “rocket” cover up story! why dont you people/government just admit that its an extraterrestial object. why do you keep the public in the dark about these matters you greedy b**t***ds !!

  Comment 14 of 51

• Dr Simon Mahogney of Perth Posted at 3:48 PM Today

  They’re here, expect more UFC sightings as things heat up… disclosure is soon, prepare yourself :-)

  Comment 15 of 51

• Lee Taylor Posted at 3:54 PM Today

  its a weather balloon

  Comment 16 of 51

• Troy O of N.Q. Posted at 3:55 PM Today

  Why would a u.f.o. have lights when they are trying not to be seen?Are they unable to see at night?Do they not have a ‘space’ G.P.S and have to find their way by sight?Come on,Dont believe the hype.Last month it was the weather radars,Whats next,Santa?

  Comment 17 of 51

• Lisa of Sunny Q Posted at 3:59 PM Today

  man in black is really Sheldon from Big bang, beautiful, man in black beautiful.

  Comment 18 of 51

• Steven Posted at 4:00 PM Today

  And out of the woodwork come the loonies….

  Comment 19 of 51

• Straife of Brisbane Posted at 4:01 PM Today

  “Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, which launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 on June 4, 2010.[1] The Falcon 9 launch vehicle carried a Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit, a mockup of the Dragon spacecraft.” Launch date June 4, 2010, 14:45 EDT[1] Maybe it was a rocket after all.

Long have we theorised the above line by a madman bearing a labtern not to be talking about the literal God believed in by so many theists. Instead, we interpret, he is talking about what this god represented for European culture, the shared cultural belief in God which had once been its defining and uniting characteristic.

So to has man thrown off the yolk of theism, every element of the divine has been replicated at large through science, trickery, art, illusionism except one final element; the creation of life.

Until yesterday when flamboyant geneticist Craig Venter held true to the pledge he made nearly 15 years ago, unveiling his magnum opus. This landmark of scientific progress, published in the Journal of Science, stands on the shoulders of his race to decode the human genome in his own laboratory, egotistically his own DNA I might add.

The madman carrying this lantern has indeed created the first instance of purely synthetic life, opening the doors nanoscience falter at with the potential to create designer microbes for special jobs such as production of biofuels, pharmaceuticals, through to filtering contaminents from air and water.

“This is the first synthetic life that has been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromasome, made with four bottles of chemcals on a synthesizer from information on a computer,” Dr Venter said.

Lauded as a tour de force by Prof. Mattick from the Australian Research Council, Dr. Venters work is as ground breaking as science gets these days, the applications for man made life are phenominal and limited only by our imagination. That being said, mans imagination can often be self destructive, so think of all the fantastic synthesized zombie viruses the US military will make with this!

The bacterium used decoded DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides imprinting the synthetic DNA and inserting it into living bacterium, in this case Mycoplasma capricolum, allowing the bacterium to flourish with both it’s own and the synthetic DNA within, then finally using an antibiotic designed to kill all but the synthetic DNA allowing only the synthesized organism to proliferate and produce protein strands from the original Mycoplasma mycoides creating, simply, artificial life.

Klatu barada neck-tie?

Brats had to be reassured that the abducted member of staff was safe and well after he was carted off by the aliens. Police contributed to the invasion by providing sirens and flashing blue lights to signify the landing of the craft just before morning classes on July 10. Diana Goss, the headteacher, informed pupils that an alien craft had crashed near the school and pupils were encouraged to “follow a trail of debris” before stumbling across the UFO.

A member of staff was then abducted by aliens before the children were sent back to class. One parent, who did not want to be named (probably out of shame for having a pussy of a kid – ed), said he daughter had come home in tears. She said: “God only knows what the school was playing at. I mean to shock children into thinking that the aliens have landed and have abducted a teacher is just a little too much for seven-year-olds. My daughter was deeply upset by it all and came home looking shell shocked. She wasn’t sure what had happened and really wanted to know that everything was going to be alright.” said the parent, who is clearly as much of a pussy as her kid.

Another parent said: “By all accounts it sounds like something out of that film Mars Attacks or War of the Worlds. I don’t know what the school was thinking.” In 1938 thousands of Americans were left terrified after a broadcast by Orson Welles describing an alien invasion. The War of the Worlds radio announcement on October 30 lasted 60 minutes and was presented as a series of breaking news bulletins – suggesting that aliens really had landed in America.

It should be noted that internet dweebs the world over would clearly not be as scared given our invasion plans on various survivalist forums that already cover zombies, cyborgs, and of course alien invasions.

Like Google Earth with a mind-numbing amount of extra detail added – namely, everything. It will be built in Switzerland, home of that other enormously ambitious project to map just about everything, the Large Hadron Collider. Finances, pandemics, emissions, weather patterns, transport, wars – if humanity indulges in it, affects it or is afflicted by it, it goes into the simulator. Whether we actually want to see that is another question, because it could well be like having your own genome sequenced and finding out you’ll be dead by the end of the year.

Helbing hopes his simulator – he’s coined the term “knowledge accelerator” – will be up and running by 2022, which is, perhaps not coincidentally, exactly 42 years after Douglas Adams gave the world the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. Helbing believes it could be used by global leaders to view and manage current and future crises in “situation rooms”. “With our knowledge of the universe, we have sent men to the moon,” Helbing writes in a paper on the project released online. “Humankind is now facing serious crises for which we must develop new ways to tackle the global challenges of humanity in the 21st century.

“We know microscopic details of objects around us and within us. And yet we know relatively little about how our society works and how it reacts to changes brought upon it.” The start up cost will be somewhere around $1.5 billion and it’s so far wholly funded by the European Union, which shows it is taking the project and its possibilities very, very seriously.

For far too long we’ve had sub-standard television in Australia, it’s infuriating. Watching random American shows can wreck entire series’ of shows that haven’t aired here yet; the other day The Soup discussed the end of the most recent season of Dexter, we’re a season behind being trickle fed advertisement filled crap so it blew the season finale and most of the season for Australians.

Why do we have to wait aroun,d months behind, even when they lie and say ‘direct from the US’? Sure, it’s from the US, sure you probably got your copy directly from the US but the implication is it’s current or recent when it never is!

I organized a mass mail in to Sci-Fi TV about three months ago demanding a Sci-Fi 2, less non-scifi and no more same fucking episodes up to 5 times a day. A lot of people jumped on board, especially when I contacted the local pirate party, a great bastion of nerds if ever there was one.. We got a second channel, alright.

We also got far less scifi on them, more crap like Buffy, Angel, Charmed, and now KNIGHT RIDER, wtf. This shit should be on 111 HITS. And now we have two channels so episodes air 10 times per day, brilliant. And at most they screen maybe 5-10 different episodes a month, so you probably see the same old Stargate episode anywhere up to 50+ times in a month, it’s abysmal.

So, to all you scifi fans out there, don’t waste your time. Television over here is a joke, torrent your stuff from the US or use Tor or another proxy type service to watch shows live on US wesites. If you think series makers will suffer losing the market in AU to torrents you’re a twat, we’re so far down the trickle of income we barely count; and besides, let our TV channels fight to regain viewership.

You HAVE an alternative.

PIRATE. SHOWS. NOW.

Fuck you Foxtel, Singtel, and Optus.