Back in the good old days, kids inhaled nitrous oxide out of whip cream canisters without a care in the world. But, according to geochemist A.R. Ravishankara, "manmade nitrous oxide is now the elephant in the room among ozone-depleting substances." It causes more ozone destruction in the upper atmosphere than any other form of emission - and according to the atmospheric models created by Ravishankara and his team, the gas is likely to linger in the atmosphere for the rest of the century.

According to their study, nitrous oxide is dangerous because it comes from natural sources as well as human-made ones:

Nitrous oxide is emitted from livestock manure, sewage treatment, combustion and certain other industrial processes. Dentists use it as a sedative (so-called "laughing gas"). In nature, bacteria in soil and the oceans break down nitrogen-containing compounds, releasing nitrous oxide. About one-third of global nitrous oxide emissions are from human activities. Nitrous oxide, like chlorofluorocarbons, is stable when emitted at ground level, but breaks down when it reaches the stratosphere to form other gases, called nitrogen oxides, that trigger ozone-destroying reactions.

So now you know. Every hit you take on that nitrous cracker is killing the Earth.

via Science

Image via CelebrateNothing.

At this year's meeting of the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, at a panel titled "Solar and Stellar Variability ― impact on Earth and Planets," a multidisciplinary group of experts discussed the evolving research into the types of suns and planets that would be hospitable to the development of life.

Edward Guinan, a professor of astronomy at Villanova University, claims that our sun provided better conditions for the formation of life in its youth. Over four billion years ago, the sun rotated ten times faster than it does today, causing the sun to generate a stronger magnetic field and considerably more radiation than it does today. These conditions have aided the formation of life, but other stars exist that maintain such a rapid rotation for a much longer duration:

The Sun does not seem like the perfect star for a system where life might arise. Although it is hard to argue with the Sun's ‘success' as it so far is the only star known to host a planet with life, our studies indicate that the ideal stars to support planets suitable for life for tens of billions of years may be a smaller slower burning ‘orange dwarf' with a longer lifetime than the Sun ― about 20-40 billion years. These stars, also called K stars, are stable stars with a habitable zone that remains in the same place for tens of billions of years. They are 10 times more numerous than the Sun, and may provide the best potential habitat for life in the long run.

Jean-Mathias Grießmeier of ASTRON's research similarly suggests that the Earth may not be an ideal planet for the formation and development of life. Grießmeier examined planetary magnetic fields, finding that a planet with a stronger magnetic field is less likely to have its atmosphere blown away by cosmic debris and is also better able to shield its surface from cosmic radiation. Guinan suggests that planets larger than Earth might be better able to protect any burgeoning life forms:

On the more speculative side we have also found indications that planets like Earth are also not necessarily the best suited for life to thrive. Planets two to three times more massive than the Earth, with a higher gravity, can retain the atmosphere better. They may have a larger liquid iron core giving a stronger magnetic field that protects against the early onslaught of cosmic rays. Furthermore, a larger planet cools more slowly and maintains its magnetic protection. This kind of planet may be more likely to harbour life.

That K stars are relatively common may offer new hope for the possibility of extraterrestrial life, although astronomers are quick to note they don't fully understand how common or fragile life in the universe may be. But their findings do suggest that, on a cosmological scale, Earth can't support life much longer. Says Guinan:

The Earth's period of habitability is nearly over ― on a cosmological timescale. In a half to one billion years the Sun will start to be too luminous and warm for water to exist in liquid form on Earth, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect in less than 2 billion years.

[Science Daily]

But first, let's lay down the ground rules as to what I would call the "destruction" of one's planet:

I. If the character's planet explodes, that definitely counts.
II. If the planet in question is rendered instantly uninhabitable (due to, say, nuclear war), that probably counts, assuming the character (and any other survivors) had to then find a new planet on which to live.
III. If the planet's destruction was more gradual (like due to environmental collapse) and there was time to evacuate most of the planet, I'm not going to count that, if only because there's nothing particularly special about the character's survivor status. However...
IV. If the character in question is the only survivor, then whatever the circumstances of the planet's demise, I'm counting that.

With all that in mind, here's the list...

1-11. Superman (and every other alien in DC Comics)

Obviously, Superman is pretty much the originator of this archetype in modern science fiction, what with him being the Last Son of Krypton. That said, the last few years in comics have seen the (re)introductions of a fully Kryptonian Supergirl, a "third Kryptonian" who survived Krypton's brief foray in interstellar warfare, General Zod, Ursa, Lon, a whole gaggle of Phantom Zone criminals, Christopher Kent, and most recently 100,000 Kryptonians released from Brainiac's imprisonment. So for someone who for so long was defined by his cosmic uniqueness, the Man of Steel is now part of a very, very big crowd.

Superman is far from alone in the DC Universe when it comes to surviving the death of his home planet. The Martian Manhunter is one of only a tiny handful of his people, the Green Martians, to survive the destruction of Mars (although there are significantly more of their brother species, the White Martians). Admittedly, J'onn J'onzz is somewhat dead at the moment, but after Superman he's the most iconic survivor of a dead world in all of comic books.

You might also want to count Superboy-Prime and Power Girl as separate cases from the other Kryptonians, as they were first the only survivors of Krypton in their respective universe before the Crisis on Infinite Earths (well, Power Girl also had the Superman of Earth-2, but work with me here) and are now the only survivors of their entire universes, not to mention two of the only people who trace their origins back to the original, infinite multiverse.

The Legion of Superheroes members Element Lad and Blok are the only living members of their respective races, while Kilowog, the lovable Green Lantern with a fondness for calling people "Poozers", is the only survivor of Bolovax Vik. There's also the planet another Green Lantern, John Stewart, accidentally blew up back in Cosmic Odyssey. The destruction of Xanshi turned one of its princesses, who was being educated off-world at the time, into the villain Fatality.

Teen Titans stalwart Starfire was next in line to rule the planet Tamaran before it imploded in a war with the Psions. Recent events also saw the destruction of Throneworld, the home of the other other other Starman, Prince Gavyn, at the hands of Lady Styx. Oh, and then there's always Lobo, last of the Czarnians, who exists pretty much to parody all the other examples on this list, as he blew up his own planet on a whim.

Clearly, the creative types at DC have a thing for blowing up planets, but there at least a few other examples of this in the rest of science fiction. Let's take a look at those now.

12-14. Arthur Dent and company from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Saved from the Vogon constructor fleet's demolition of Earth by the alien travel writer Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent lacks a lot of the internal angst and survivor guilt of most of the people on this list, probably because he's just so easily befuddled. Along with Trillian, a beautiful young woman Arthur was doing a halfway decent job of flirting with before Zaphod Beeblebrox, the only slightly insane President of the Galaxy, whisked her away, he is now one of the only two Earthlings left in the entire universe.

Well, at least until the Magaratheans finish building another one or before he spends a decade stuck in prehistoric Earth with a bunch of hairdressers or until the dolphins do whatever it is they did in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish to restore the planet. But then the Vogons finally finish the jobs through the multiverse (or the whole sort of general mishmash, as Douglas Adams preferred to call it) in Mostly Harmless, finally and completely destroying the Earth, taking Arthur and Trillian along with it. But Eoin Colfer's upcoming continuation of the saga, And Another Thing, will likely resurrect them in some capacity, as otherwise it would be a pretty uneventful book.

Though he never appears in the books themselves, one might also count Ford Prefect's father, who was the only person to survive the mysterious Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758, which probably destroyed the planet of Betelgeuse Seven, although Ford's father was always rather hazy on the details.

15-19. Spock (and at least a couple other aliens from Star Trek)

One of less than 10,000 survivors of Nero's destruction of the planet Vulcan in the new Star Trek movie (told you there was a massive spoiler in here), Spock might now be the most famous example of this particular trope. I'd also wager Spock is going to be pretty much the only Vulcan seen in future movies, what with the older, Leonard Nimoy version of Spock keeping all the other survivors busy rebuilding their civilization on New Vulcan.

You can't mention the new Spock without also acknowledging Nero and the crew of the Narada are the only survivors of Romulus. Well, then again, all their time traveling left them dead and the fate of Romulus in the new timeline is now uncertain, so maybe they only count in the original timeline.

There's also Guinan from The Next Generation, who had survived the destruction of her planet El-Auria at the hand of the Borg. There are also a lot of planets, particularly in The Original Series, that seemed to have a single inhabitant (mostly of the godly or energy being variety), but I won't count those as the planets themselves seemed mostly unaffected.

OK, I'll make an exception for Bele and Lokai from the legendary episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", in which the consuming racial hatred of their two peoples (one's skin is black on the left and white on the right, while the other is black on the right and white on the left) has left those two the last survivors of a war that has destroyed their planet Cheron. Admittedly, they don't survive for very long, not when there's an opportunity to finally kill each other.

20-26. The Doctor from Doctor Who (and maybe a couple others)

Spock isn't the only famous alien to get the Superman treatment in recent years; Russell T. Davies and company blew up Gallifrey before the new Star Trek movie was still in the earliest planning stages. Actually, between the Doctor and Spock both losing their planets in recent revivals of their series, you'd maybe think there's some sort of trend in modern science fiction that finds lone aliens more interesting than entire alien cultures. And I'm not sure they're entirely wrong.

Anyway, The Doctor is one of the most angst-ridden survivors you could imagine, which I suppose is understandable considered he kind of was the one responsible for destroying Gallifrey. Of course, it also turned out The Master survived (at least for a little bit, pending an inevitable resurrection) by running away to the end of the universe, and there are ever so slightly more credible than usual rumors that the Rani will return in the next series played by Gillian Anderson. But either way, the Doctor is for now the Last of the Time Lords, and he'll be the first one to tell you that. (No, seriously - he really could tone down how much he mentions that, as it's kind of a downer.)

Still, the Doctor wasn't the first person to occupy the TARDIS who had survived the destruction of an entire people. That tragic distinction goes to Nyssa, who watched her planet Traken be destroyed by the bizarrely universe-spanning threat in Logopolis. To her credit, she's much more stoic about this than the Doctor, although that might have been because the show's writers never really bothered to come up with a cohesive character for her.

Gallifrey also isn't the only planet the Doctor blew up, as he quite decisively destroyed the Dalek homeworld of Skaro back in the unspeakably awesome seventh Doctor story Remembrance of the Daleks. Although new series Daleks like the one in Dalek or Dalek Sec might plausibly claim to be "the last of the Daleks", probably the best candidate to call a "survivor" of Skaro's destruction is the lone black Dalek at the end of Remembrance, left all alone in the entire universe after the destruction of all his comrades on Earth and the rest of his race back on Skaro. Of course, the Doctor then uses the overwhelming despair of fact to literally talk him to death, but for a good five minutes there he was indisputably the Last of the Daleks, at least until they came back. Again. And again. And again...

The classic City of Death, written by Douglas Adams, introduced Scaroth, last of the Jaggaroth. Four billion years ago, he and a few other last refugees of his warlike race fled the destruction of his planet and came to primordial Earth. He then proceeded to accidentally kill of the rest of his race when his spaceship exploded. The decidedly less class The Hand of Fear showed Eldrad, a genocidal outcast of his silicon-based race, who had survived the extinction of his species by being encased in rock for 150 million years (well, that is one way to do it). And let's not forget The Cybermen - the original versions, anyway - who survived the destruction of their planet Mondas in The Tenth Planet and became the marauding terrors of the galaxy (or, if not exactly terrors, then certainly minor annoyances, depending on how well the particular story was written).

27. Princess Leia

The full impact of this gets lost in the shuffle of all the action in the original Star Wars, but Princess Leia is forced to watch her entire planet be destroyed, leaving her quite possibly the only survivor of Alderaan in the entire universe. (Well, there are probably a few diplomats on Coruscant and elsewhere, but the movies don't give any evidence to support this. The Expanded Universe says there were about 60,000 Alderaanians off-world at the time of its destruction.) Admittedly, she's technically not from Alderaan at all, as she was born in space to a mother from Naboo and a father from Tatooine, but she spent all but the first twelve or so hours of her life as the daughter of the Organas, rulers of Alderaan, so there's no way she doesn't count.

Also, Princess Leia is probably the best example of the kind of cognitive dissonance Douglas Adams talked about when he described Arthur Dent's reaction to losing his planet - it's too big a tragedy to really comprehend, and thus impossible to properly grieve. Leia never really seems to deal with her Alderaan's destruction, although I suppose she could have worked through her emotions during the year or so between the events of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Honestly, it's sort of weird how Alderaan is just completely forgotten in the later movies. You might think "Remember Alderaan!" would be an effective battle cry for a rebellion trying to remind people of the Empire's monstrous crimes. Bit of a lost marketing opportunity there. But I digress.

28-29. The Survivors of the Twelve Colonies and the Final Five on Battlestar Galactica

OK, it might be a bit of a stretch to count the Galactica and the rest of the fleet as quite the same thing as the others on this list. After all, none of the Twelve Colonies were exactly destroyed, but the Cylon-launched nuclear bombardment did make then uninhabitable to humans in very short order (and thus my reasons for Rule II become obvious). Sure, Helo, Anders, and a bunch of other survivors managed to live on the charred remains of Caprica for a few months, but it was clear they had no long-term future on that world, even if they did manage to escape the Cylons indefinitely. Perhaps a stronger case can be made for The Final Five, who used an orbiting satellite outfitted with their recently rediscovered resurrection technology to survive the destruction of Cylon Earth some 2000 years before the events of the series.

30. Cale Tucker and the rest of humanity from Titan A.E.

And finally, we have this somewhat forgotten 2000 animated film (co-written by Joss Whedon!), which considers the fate of humanity in the year 3028. The race of energy beings known as the Drej have destroyed Earth in retaliation for whatever the humans discovered in the mysterious Project Titan. The survivors are now nomads who are generally ignored or looked down upon by the rest of the galaxy. Ultimately, Cale Tucker, the son of one of the scientists responsible for Project Titan, helps lead humanity back from the brink of extinction and comes up with a plan to create a new Earth. I mean, of course he does - after all, he's voiced by Matt Damon, and that guy can do anything.

In any event, that's more than enough to get this list started. Who else is out there in science fiction nursing the unimaginable pain and survivor's guilt of being the last of one's kind and without a planet to call one's own?

A study published this week in Nature argues that pollution has turned plants into better carbon dioxide processing machines. Hazy weather has allowed plants to fix 10% more carbon in the soil than they did before the 1960s, when air quality was better.

Ecologist Lina Mercado, lead author on the study, said polluted air is part of "global dimming." She added:

[Dimming] resulted in a net 10% increase in the amount of carbon stored by the land once other effects were taken into account.

But this study won't be used to justify shooting more particulates into the atmosphere. Instead, it could be used as evidence for geo-engineering as a way of regulating climate change.

According to BBC News:

The research will also add weight to arguments about geo-engineering, the idea of curbing global warming by adding reflective materials to the atmosphere.

Because plants absorb more carbon dioxide when they experience global dimming, geo-engineers might try to bounce light away from the planet to maintain dimming without pollution.

via BBC News

Photo of smog in Beijing by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images.

The WWF, in conjunction with the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network, released The Living Planet Report 2008, which projects humanity’s ecological footprint relative to the Earth’s biocapacity. And, after looking at factors such as deforestation, water consumption, pollution, climate change, and overexploitation of wildlife, the findings are dire:

Our global footprint now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 per cent. If our demands on the planet continue at the same rate, by the mid-2030s we will need the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles. And this year’s report captures, for the first time, the impact of our consumption on the Earth’s water resources and our vulnerability to water scarcity in many areas.

But the report isn’t entirely pessimistic. The WWF believes that humanity can alter the path of overconsumption and, by turning toward sustainable practices, close the gap between mankind’s ecological footprint and the Earth’s biocapacity:

The good news is that we have the means to reverse the ecological credit crunch – it is not too late to prevent an irreversible ecological recession setting in. This report identifies the key areas where we need to transform our lifestyles and economies to put us on a more sustainable trajectory.

It’s either that or get on that space colonization thing ASAP.

[World Wildlife Fund via Phenomenica]

He writes:

The magnetic field deflects a lot of the Sun’s incredibly nasty radiation, so if you take it away, we could all get microwaved to a crisp.

Even scarier: The Earth's magnetic field has weakened by ten percent over the last 160 years. Does that mean we're due for a flip? Dan Lathrop, a geophysicist at University of Maryland, will try to find out when he spins up his mega steel ball and recreates (on a small scale) the magnetic conditions on Earth. [via Collision Detection]

Local geologists think drilling activities could've caused the hole, which was still growing as of Thursday, and threatening to consume a main highway nearby. Turns out, Daisetta is sitting on top of a giant salt dome, which is great for trapping oil. But drillers have a tendency to circulate salt water back down the holes the bore, which scientists think might've dissolved the dome and caused the collapse. Here is a photo of a shallower portion of the sinkhole, with barrels floating in it.

That's just a theory, though — how sinkholes form is a bit of a mystery of science. Some people think unusual groundwater percolation can carve out an underground cavern that suddenly collapses. Either that or the angry Earth could've sent giant Sarlacc worm-plants to eat all humans and digest us in excruciating pain over thousands of years.

Source: Associated Press

Non-Sarlacc images via AP.

Artist Mark Goerner paints concept art for film and illustration projects, and in his spare time he likes to paint desolate images like the one above. In fact, this is the first part in a series of paintings that follow the aftermath of the moon crashing to the Earth through Spring, Summer, and Autumn.

The scenario starts with the effect of a meteorite's collision with one of the planet's moons as the catalyst for a series of events that would get the process of organic reanimation started. Imagine the fragments of a moon falling out of orbit, dashing across the planet's surface, and burrowing into the tectonic plates causing massive volcanoes and the release of giant gas clouds and dust.

NASA's Alan Stern said these planets are so far away from the sun that we haven't seen them yet:

Our old view, that the Solar System had nine planets will be supplanted by a view that there are hundreds if not thousands of planets in our Solar System. It could be that there are objects of Earth-mass in the Oort cloud (a band of debris surrounding our planetary system) but they would be frozen at these distances. They would look like a frozen Earth.

Beyond our solar system, millions more Earth 2s await. University of Arizona astronomer Michael Meyer, co-author of a study about extrasolar dirt-and-water worlds, told reporters:

Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets not unlike the processes we think led to planet Earth. That is very exciting.

Planet-hunters set for big bounty [BBC News]

It's a tale of two planets, Earth and Arkanar, who live together in brotherly love and all that boring jazz until a bitter war broke out between the two worlds. Afterwards, the Earth ages, matures and develops things like technology, computers, and digital watches. However, Arkanar stays rooted in medieval-era weaponry and warfare and starts stagnating. No one know why until the forces on Earth decide to send a spy to Arkanar, and guess who you get to play? It sounds a bit like Assassin's Creed where you get "regressed" back into the a similar era inside your head, except this time you get to take a blaster, a missile pod, or a hand grenade with you.

This might be the closest that a game has come to sticking you into a Harry Turtledove novel, except you have to also unravel the mystery of Arkanar's situation to boot. Bonus points if your character gets to brandish a laser rifle and tell everyone "This is my BOOMSTICK!"

When the Brotherhood comes calling, it forces potential members to undergo brutal tests and wear funky LED handcuffs to determine if they're worthy or not. The film has good-looking special effects and has a The Matrix meets The X-Men feel, with a dash of bondage thrown in. Looking forward to seeing this one when it hits stateside (it's variously listed under the English titles Brotherhood of Legio and Brotherhood of Legion).

[Quiet Earth]

• Half-Life: The original Half-Life came out in 1998, and it's sequel Half-Life 2 came out in 2004. The extremely popular game has spawned numerous "mini-sequels," including Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Episode 2, and the spinoff title Portal.

  In the game, you play Dr. Gordon Freeman, a scientist who unwittingly tears open a dimensional portal during a routine experiment at a facility in the Black Mesa Research Facility in New Mexico. Aliens begin pouring through the newly opened portal, and you find yourself both the target of these creatures, and of government forces who are trying to hush up the incident. You end up surviving (the sequels wouldn't make much sense otherwise) and things get continually worse. By the time Half-Life 2 begins, the Earth has been changed into a dystopian world that is slowly being de-terraformed into a wasteland. Oceans are being drained, buildings taken apart, and the place is full of both alien and humanoid forces who want to have your liver for dinner.

• 
  
• Halo: Halo 3 came out in September, to massively sales and fanboys complaining that it just "wasn't enough," but developer Bungie has created a fully realized universe within in the game.

  Halo takes place in the distant future where the human race is in the middle of a bitter war with an alien race called The Covenant. You play "Master Chief," a genetically engineered supersoldier (called a Spartan) who dons battle armor and serves as humanity's last hope. As the game progresses, you discover that the Covenant have found a giant ring-like object (a Halo) left behind by an ancient alien race called The Forerunners. If activated, the Halo will act as a deadly weapon, able to destroy entire planets. Much like Luke destroying the Death Star, you have to destroy the Halo and make sure the Covenant don't win. The Earth in Halo is brutally invaded by the Covenant, where they lay waste to entire continents with massive weapons, turning all of the land into glass. Cities have become battlefields, and most of the citizens have been wiped out, or are in deep hiding. It's not a pretty site when you see nukes going off all over the planet, and it's even less pretty when you have to go down there. Even if you manage to save the world, it's going to look like a wasteland when you're done.

• 
  
• BioShock: One of the most imaginative games to come along in years isn't set in the future at all, but in a bizarre undersea city that re-imagines the future of the past, and combines a steampunk science fiction approach with genetic modification technology.

  In BioShock the game controls Jack, a passenger aboard a plane in 1960. Disaster strikes and the plane plummets into the ocean, killing everyone aboard except you. You swim to a nearby tower poking out of the dark waters, and inside find a bathysphere that takes into Rapture, a full-sized city built secretly on the ocean floor in 1946. Through a series of audio recordings and newsreel style videos, you're shown how meglomaniacal millionaire Andrew Ryan built the city to get away from what he saw as the oppressive rules of government and religion. He envisioned Rapture as an undersea utopia, but it didn't take long for things to unravel. By the time Jack arrives in the city, it's clear that the place is falling apart, and most of the popular are dead. The only remaining inhabitants are "Splicers," genetically mutated humans who are murderous and insane, and a few human holdouts who have barricaded themselves into the few remaining safe places in the city. You become trapped in a battle between the leader of the black market, Atlas, and the insane Ryan himself. As the game progresses, you acquire raw genetic material that you can use at upgrade stations to modify your genetic template, meaning you can give yourself telekinesis, the ability to turn invisible, or the power to shoot flames from your hands. It's sort of like having Heroes on tap. You come to appreciate the beautiful disaster that Rapture has become, with the sea attempting to overtake the city that has become trapped in time.

• 
  
  
• Portal: Strictly speaking, Portal was meant to be a small one-note spinoff set in the Half-Life universe featuring a small game called Narbacular Drop that Half-Life developer Valve had acquired. It was included in The Orange Box, a game set Valve released last month that included Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2 and Portal. Portal has overwhelmingly been the smash hit of that set.

  In Portal you play Chell, a female test subject for Aperture Science, Inc. (a company in the Half-Life universe) who wakes up inside a gigantic maze and coached (or tortured, depending on your views) by an artificial intelligence called GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System). GLaDOS puts you through a series of testing chambers designed to help you learn how to use the "Portal" gun, which can create entrace and exit wormhole portals on walls, ceilings, and floors. Each chamber challenges you further with increasingly hard puzzles that you have to solve using the Portal gun in order to escape. As the game goes on, you notice that GLaDOS is a bit off her rocker, and all of the human observation posts are empty. In fact, she starts promising that cake will be waiting for you if you can complete the test course. Later you're able to slip behind the scenes and find some graffiti from a previous test subject telling you that the cake is a lie. Although if you finish the game, you find out that she might not have been lying all along. It's all immortalized in a song that GLaDOS sings you over the closing credits, which you can watch below.

• 
  

According to http://roadrunnerdm.livejournal.com/84288.html">Roadrunner's LiveJournal:

• 
  
• Starbuck will be locked up in the brig for "some time." Not exactly the sort of reception you'd expect for returning from the dead.
• 
  
• Leoben will be back in Starbuck's life, and they'll be spending some quality time together on a beach... on Earth. At least they won't have to jockey for a good spot on the sand.
• 
  
• Starbuck will have a lot more scenes with Laura Roslin, and with the Cylon ladies as well. One thing Starbuck has never really done is have a girl's night out.
• 
  
• Starbuck believes that she is a Cylon, although Katee herself doesn't buy it. One thing is for sure, if Starbuck turns out to be a Cylon, half the audience will have expected it, and the other half will be searching for Ron Moore's house with torches.
• 
  
• Kate Vernon will be reprising her role as Ellen Tigh, although she's not the 12th Cylon. Since Saul has always been torn up about having to kill her, this will most likely be some sort of guilty flashbacks coming from the bottom of a bottle.
• 
  
• Lee Adama is still a civilian in season four, although it's unclear if that means for the whole season or not. After the way he resigned last season, it's hard to see him putting a uniform back on. Of course, that doesn't stop him from hopping into a Viper whenever he feels like it and taking off.
• 
  
• She also made it fairly definitive that she won't be coming back to Bionic Woman at all, strike or not. Apparently there is no love lost between her and series star Michelle Ryan.

• News dump from Burbank conventions [Roadrunner]