It's official!: J.J. Abrams WON'T be directing a 3rd Star Trek Movie

Remember when Simon Pegg Zachary Quinto promised that J.J. would be back for more Trek? Oops :( 

Sci-fi fans have known forever that you can't just step off the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and on to the Millennium Falcon, but J.J. Abrams has only now finally admitted it. The director of Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness is locked in and ready to start in January on Star Wars: Episode VII, and we've assumed since he first signed on that it meant he wouldn't be able to direct Star Trek 3. 

Now, after a few months of hedging, Abrams has finally admitted it too. Here's what he said to Collider, talking about the Blu-ray release of Star Trek Into Darkness:

Well? Abrams is stepping down as director. Here's what he had to say about it:

"Whomever it is that directs the film will be someone we all know is going to keep the cast and crew in good hands. I feel very lucky to have been part of it, and it definitely feels like the right time to let someone come in and do their own thing. I certainly don’t want someone to come in and try to do what I would have done. We want to hire someone who’s gonna come in and bring their own sensibility. I’m very excited to see what comes next, despite feeling jealous of whomever that person is."

And who will that person be? You can probably aim a dart at your favorite up-and-coming Hollywood director and assume they're a pretty good guess, based on the variety of rumors we've heard. Recent chatter suggested that the frontrunner was G.I. Joe: Retaliation (a.k.a. "Ninja Mountain") director Jon M. 

Chu, who was in consideration alongside Attack the Block director Joe Cornish, Fast & Furious mastermind Justin Lin and Brad Bird, the Pixar veteran who turned to live action spectacularly with Mission: Impossible-- Ghost Protocol. Then recent chatter started suggesting that Rupert Wyatt, who has attached himself to a ton of projects since directing Rise of the Planet of the Apes, might take over. 

It's clear that Abrams, who will still produce the third Star Trek film, will have a hand in choosing his successor. But if he's made his pick yet, he's keeping mum about it. Then again, we know perfectly well by now that he's really good at that. 

Who do you think will direct the next Star Trek tell us ion the comments?

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Professor says we'll be able to build a TARDIS-like time machine someday

Time machines similar to Dr Who’s Tardis are possible, Professor Brian Cox said in a speech at the British Science Festival.

“Can you build a time machine?” said Professor Cox. “The answer is yes.”

There’s just one, tiny problem, Professor Cox says - if you can build a machine capable of time-travel, you can only travel into the future. You can’t come back. 

Professor Cox also suggested that research at the LHC might uncover extra dimensions - thus, perhaps finally explaining how the Tardis is bigger on the inside. 

Professor Cox , a Dr Who fan, is to deliver a 60-minute speech on Dr Who to be screened by the BBC on November 23 - tackling questions such as extraterrestrial life, travelling to other dimensions and time travel. 

Professor Cox says that time travel is possible, and has already been done - albeit at a very small scale. The technology to accelerate something as big as a police box to near light speed does not yet exist. 

Professor Cox says that, armed with such technology, “You can go into the future; you've got almost total freedom of movement in the future.”

To “travel” forward in time, you simply need to accelerate to speeds close to the speed of light, Cox says - as you get close to that speed, time slows down, but only for you, according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity.

“If you go fast, your clock runs slow relative to people who are still. As you approach the speed of light, your clock runs so slow you could come back 10,000 years in the future," said Professor Cox.

Cox said previously on Conan O’Brien’s chat show that travel into the past was “impossible”, saying, “You can travel into the future as fast as you like. You can’t travel into the past.” 

But in his speech in Birmingham, the physicist went into more detail - suggesting that “wormholes” often used in science fiction as portals through time may not offer a simple way to travel into the past.

 “In General Relativity, you can do it in principle. It's to do with building these things called wormholes; shortcuts through space and time. But most physicists doubt it. Hawking came up with the 'chronology protection conjecture' - physics we don't yet understand that means wormholes are not stable.”

Travelling between different dimensions, though, might be easier - a relief for the Doctor, for whom “transdimensional engineering” was a key part of the Tardis.

Cox says, “We look for extra dimensions at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). You can imagine extra dimensions in space, and that we are living on a sheet of higher dimensional space.” 

Whether this explains how the interior of the Tardis is “dimensionally transcendental” -  bigger on the inside - will perhaps be revealed in Cox’s speech on the 23rd.
Dr Who

Source: Yahoo Uk

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Voyager 1 spacecraft reaches interstellar space

Voyager I just became the first man-made object to reach interstellar space -- and it’s running on technology that’s decades older, slower and less complex than whatever you’re using to read this page.

According to CNN, experts at NASA have "VERY strong evidence" that Voyager 1 has crossed through the heliosphere -- the magnetic boundary that separates our solar system from the rest of the Milky Way galaxy -- to enter interstellar space.

It was reported that last year Voyager 1 was leaving the solar system NASA made it offical yesterday (September 12) 

With the density of electrons in interstellar space thought to be between 0.05 and 0.22 per cubic centimeter, measurements taken last spring indicated that Voyager 1 was at the time in a region with an electron density of around 0.08.

Voyager 1 was launched 1977 along with Voyager 2.Voyager 1 is now 11.7 billion miles away from earth.Although it took just three and a half decades for the first Voyager to leave the solar system, it won't make it to another star for another 40,000 years.

What do you thing of this historical event tell us in the comments?

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JK Rowling Reveals Plans For New Harry Potter Inspired Film

JK Rowling has signed a deal with Warner Bros. to write the screenplay for a new fantasy film based on parts of the Harry Potter novels.

The author announced the news on her Facebook page and explained it isn't a prequel or a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but more an extension of that world.

The film will be based on Harry Potter textbook and spin-off book, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and follows the adventures of it's fictional author Newt Scamander.

"Although it will be set in the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for seventeen years, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world," Rowling said.

There will be some familiar faces though, as the film will involve various magical creatures and characters that have featured previously in the Harry Potter books.

"The laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read the Harry Potter books or seen the films, but Newt's story will start in New York, seventy years before Harry's gets underway."

Talking about how the idea came about, Rowling said: "“It all started when Warner Bros. came to me with the suggestion of turning 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' into a film. I thought it was a fun idea, but the idea of seeing Newt Scamander, the supposed author of 'Fantastic Beasts', realized by another writer was difficult.

"Having lived for so long in my fictional universe, I feel very protective of it and I already knew a lot about Newt. As hard-core Harry Potter fans will know, I liked him so much that I even married his grandson, Rolf, to one of my favourite characters from the Harry Potter series, Luna Lovegood."

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be the first in a new film series, so we can probably expect the usual run of video game tie-ins and merchandise along the way too.

Via Mirror

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Bad Robot Are Building A Special Star Wars Facility

Star Wars: Episode VII was set to film in London. But the film's director J.J. Abrams found a way to bring the production back to LA..

JJ Abram's Bad Robot production company is getting itself ready for the arrival of Star Wars, and that includes investing in a new post-production facility in LA.

Some of the reason for this probably has something to do with JJ Abrams' wanting to work closer to his home.  Its a sort of small secret that Abrams would not really want to shoot Star Wars: Episode VII, as has been announced.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Abrams has, so far, shot all of his films in LA, where he had even covered some of the extra costs on Star Trek Into Darkness to keep the production closer to him.

Apparently the new additions to the Bad Robot complex includes editing bays, a prop workshop and a screening room.

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The 1st Doctor Who Xmas Special Pics (Plus The First Pics Of Matt Smith's Wig)

The first filming pics from Doctor Who’s upcoming Xmas special are here, along with Matt Smith’s wig! As a bonus, we also have the title for Who's upcoming 50th anniversary bash.

So first things first.

Doctor Who was recently caught filming, along with Matt Smith's new wig (which is looking mighty fine and dandy, if we can say so ourselves. That's one possible disaster of epic proportion avoided)—and just so you know, wigs are cool.

Filming for Matt Smith’s swansong as the Eleventh Doctor began Sunday, and Matt and Jenna Coleman, who plays the Doctor’s companion Clara, were all on hand; as was that good old sexy TARDIS.

You can see the pics below.

Now, as for the second little piece of news, the title for Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special—which will be 75-minutes long, by the way—starring Smith, Coleman, David Tennant, Billie Piper and John Hurt is: "The Day Of The Doctor."

What do you guys make of that?

Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special "The Day Of The Doctor" will air on November 23.

(via Doctor Who TV, Digital Spy and Den of Geek)

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Vin Diesel May Have ANOTHER Role In A Marvel Film

Yeah, we all know that Vin Diesel will be voicing Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy next year. But could he also have a much bigger role in Marvel’s Phase 3?

That’s what the action star seems to be hinting at in a new interview, where he describes the Groot role as just something to appease fans in the interim — until he jumps into a much bigger Marvel role in the future.

But it’s even crazier than that. Diesel describes the mysterious future role as something “so big” that represents a “merging of brands.” What the hell does that mean? A super-Marvel movie bringing together the Guardians and Avengers? A crossover into the X-Men-verse?

Read Diesel’s comments via Total Film and give us your best guess:

“When I met with Marvel it wasn’t for anything immediate. It was to talk about a film that would be introduced in the Phase 3 part of Marvel, not for a few years ... It was even talking about something so big I can’t even talk about because it’s like the merging of brands in a way, which I won’t get into.That was something way, way, way, way, way down the road.”

Marvel talks to me and says ‘We’re going to send something over in two weeks. We want to focus on the 2016 but we also want to, if possible, answer this growing request for something now.’”

If nothing else, this definitely has our curiosity piqued. Marvel is known to think several years in advance, and it makes sense they’d be brainstorming Phase 3 right about now. So what are Diesel and Marvel planning?

(Via Total Film)

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