Sci-Fi Storm

Marvel and Fox (who holds the movie and TV rights to Marvel’s X-Men franchise) are working together on a pair of TV projects based on X-Men characters for two of Fox’s networks.

Legion, based on the character of the same name, has a pilot order from FX. Fargo creator Noah Hawley will write and exec produce. Legion is David Haller, who is in fact the son of Professor Xavier, and has suffered from multiple personality disorder for all his life. But his splintered personalities eventually manifest different mutant abilities.

Hellfire (the working title) is still in development at Fox, and follows a Special Agent that discovers that a woman with uncanny powers is working with a secret society of rich people called the “Hellfire Club” in a plot to take over the world – the same group led by Sebastian Shaw in X-Men: First Class. The show was created by Evan Katz (the 24 franchise), Manny Coto (the 24 franchise), Patrick McKay (Star Trek 3) and JD Payne (Star Trek 3).

The X-Men movie heads Bryan Singer, Lauren Shuler Donner and Simon Kinberg will executive produce both series along with Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory from Marvel TV.

Interestingly, neither series will bear the X-Men label, but will be set within the same universe as the movie franchise.

I personally think there is a less alien explanation, but there is a report making the rounds today that scientists have detected a star, KIC 8462852, that experiences very unusual and erratic dips in brightness. The brightness change is around 22%, which is far more than typically observed from planetary transits, which is more like 1%, and are generally more consistent.

While there are probably a number of more rational explanations, astronomer Jason Wright, who specializes in signs of advanced civilizations, put forth the ideal that massive solar panels arranged in orbit, could be an explanation, although even he says we should “approach it skeptically.”

A Dyson Sphere, popularized and named after mathematician and theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, is one of a number of theoretical megastructures in which a partial or complete shell is constructed around a star, allowing for near-complete use of the energy output of the star.

Another similar structure, the Ringworld as conceived by science fiction author Larry Niven, is a ring structure around a star where the inner surface would have millions of times the area of Earth as livable space. But in order to provide something approximating a day/night cycle on such a structure, a second, inner structure exists – the “shadow squares”, enormous panels in orbit that block the sunlight from the star from a section of the Ringworld.

Sound familiar? Perhaps we should be searching for Protectors or Puppeteers in the area…