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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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May 18th, 2005

unixronin: Pissed-off avatar (Pissed off)
Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 07:40 pm

Evidence indicates the Atlantic Conveyor could be shutting down.  The consequences of this could be severe, not least for the UK, which would become very much colder if it lost its influx of heat from the Gulf Stream.  (Finder's credit to [livejournal.com profile] rbos)

unixronin: Astronaut on EVA (Space)
Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 08:31 pm

We built five Shuttles.  We've so far lost two of them: Challenger on January 28, 1986, during launch, and Columbia seventeen years later to the day, on February 1, 2003, during re-entry.

I just started reading Titan, by Stephen Baxter (not the one by John Varley).  It was first published in hardcover in November 1997.  The third event of consequence that happens in the book (the first is the arrival of the Huygens probe on Titan) is the loss of Columbia, during re-entry, apparently sometime in 2004.

Coincidence, of course.  But still somehow chilling, and I found myself unable to stop reading at that point.

Would Baxter still have written this if he'd had foreknowledge?  It's probably impossible to say.