Igor Chernakov, The blog of

Hello, my name is Igor. I'm interested in a lot of stuff like dinosaurs, cars, comics, board games, movies, art, travel, mysteries, history, space, phenomenas and many more. Articles and links on all of these subjects you can find below. Have fun and thanks for visiting!

[igorchernakov]

What George Lucas should have done was delivered on what he promised: the story of a great man and his fall into darkness. In doing this, he could have skipped the Phantom Menace in it’s entirety, for it served little purpose in the greater narrative. He could have centered the first two films on an intelligent, thoughtful Jedi master who was lured to the Dark Side. The third film would have then chronicled the crusade of a tortured, badass Darth Vader who traversed the galaxy hunting down Jedi. That would have been epic.

But instead George Lucas gave us something very different: the adventures of an annoying hot-shot kid who somehow inexplicably morphed into Darth Vader. When you consider what could have been, one cannot help but feel letdown.

[igorchernakov]

Cinerama is a widescreen process that originally projected images simultaneously from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply curved screen, subtending 146° of arc. The trademarked process was marketed by the Cinerama corporation. It was the first of a number of novel processes introduced during the 1950s, when the movie industry was reacting to competition from television. Cinerama was presented to the public as a theatrical event, with reserved seating and printed programs, and audience members often dressed in their best attire for the evening.

[igorchernakov]

Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. This is compared with the "hot" fusion which takes place naturally within stars, under immense pressure and at temperatures of millions of degrees, and distinguished from muon-catalyzed fusion. There is currently no accepted theoretical model which would allow cold fusion to occur. In 1989 Martin Fleischmann (then one of the world's leading electrochemists) and Stanley Pons reported that their apparatus had produced anomalous heat of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes. They further reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium. The small tabletop experiment involved electrolysis of heavy water on the surface of a palladium electrode. The reported results received wide media attention, and raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy.

[igorchernakov]

New research suggests that a giant celestial missile, much like the one that killed off dinosaurs, nearly did the same to humans a century ago.

For two days in August 1883, Mexican astronomer Jose Bonilla was the lone witness to 450 heavenly objects passing across the face of the sun, each one surrounded by a glowing mist. When Bonilla later published his findings in the French journal L'Astronomie, his editor dismissed the phenomenon as flecks of dust or bugs obscuring Bonilla's telescope. But now, a new study by researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico offers a different, sobering take: The objects Bonilla saw were actually fragments of a massive comet that narrowly missed Earth. Each one was exponentially more powerful than an atomic bomb. What's more, 

The parent comet must originally have tipped the scale at a billion tons or more 

That's quite similar in mass to the celestial object suspected of killing off the dinosaurs when it struck the Earth 65 million years ago.

[igorchernakov]

The "Dinosauroid"

In 1982, Dale A. Russell, then curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, conjectured a possible evolutionary path for Troodon, if it had not perished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65 million years ago, suggesting that it could have evolved into intelligent beings similar in body plan to humans. Over geologic time, Russell noted that there had been a steady increase in the encephalization quotient or EQ (the relative brain weight when compared to other species with the same body weight) among the dinosaurs. Russell had discovered the first Troodontid skull, and noted that, while its EQ was low compared to humans, it was six times higher than that of other dinosaurs. Russell suggested that if the trend in Troodon evolution had continued to the present, its brain case could by now measure 1,100 cm3, comparable to that of a human.

[igorchernakov]

Armageddon filming locations

The surface of the asteroid, where the shuttles Independence and Freedom crash-land, was filmed at the Barry Barber Ranch near the tiny town of Interior, off I-90 east of Rapid City, in the Badlands National Park, South Dakota. The same location had previously featured as the surface of Tango Urilla in Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 Starship Troopers.

[igorchernakov]

Cola Wars

The Cola Wars are a campaign of mutually-targeted television advertisements and marketing campaigns since the 1980s between soft drink manufacturers The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. As of March 2011, Pepsi was in third place behind Coca-Cola and Diet Coke. In 2010, Diet Coke outsold Pepsi; Coca-Cola sold 1.6 billion cases of its regular soda and 927 million cases of its diet soda, while Pepsi sold 892 million cases.

[igorchernakov]

Silicon-based life forms

Like carbon, silicon can form four stable bonds with itself and other elements, and long chemical chains known as silane polymers, which are very similar to the hydrocarbons essential to life on Earth. Silicon is more reactive than carbon, which could make it optimal for extremely cold environments. However, silanes spontaneously burn in the presence of oxygen, so an oxygen atmosphere would be deadly to any silicon-based life, and water as a solvent would be equally deadly for the same reason. So, any environment with the potential for silicon-based life would have to be very cold and devoid of oxygen and water, but with another compatible solvent, such as liquid methane or a methyl compound to exhibit polymer activity.

[just--space]

[igorchernakov]

The bright spot in the lower left is SN 1994D, a star in the midst of a supernova, in the galaxy NGC 4526. During this final performance, the star will briefly outshine its parent galaxy. No supernovae have been observed in our galaxy in over four hundred years.

[igorchernakov]

The MV Doña Paz was a Philippine-registered passenger ferry that sank after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector on December 20, 1987. With an estimated death toll of 4,386 people and only 24 survivors, it was the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history. Doña Paz was traveling from Leyte island to the Philippine capital of Manila. The vessel was seriously overcrowded, with at least 2000 passengers not listed on the manifest. In addition, it was claimed that the ship carried no radio and that the life-jackets were locked away. But official blame was directed at the MT Vector, which was found to be unseaworthy, and operating without a license, lookout or qualified master.

[igorchernakov]

The Door to Hell is a natural gas field in Derweze, Ahal Province, Turkmenistan. It is noted for its natural gas fire which has been burning continuously since it was lit by Soviet petroleum engineers in 1971. The fire is fed by the rich natural gas deposits in the area. The pungent smell of burning sulfur pervades the area for some distance.

[igorchernakov]

In 1861, a palaeontologist by the name of Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer, wrote about his discovery of a single, fossilised feather at a limestone quarry near Solnhofen, Germany. Soon after von Meyer’s find, an almost complete fossil of the animal it belonged to was discovered – that of Archaeopteryx.

It was to be one of the most important fossil discoveries ever made. On first inspection, it looked like other fossils of theropod dinosaurs of the time. But the fact clear imprints of feathers were found all around its body is what made Archaeopteryx so special. Until this time, no intermediate forms between living animals and their ancestors had been found. It supported Charles Darwin’s controversial theory of evolution and was soon declared to be an evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds. And you can clearly see why as here was an animal, known to have lived about 147 million years ago, that looked half-dinosaur, half-bird.

[igorchernakov]

Tianzi Mountain is located in Zhangjiajie in the Hunan Province of China, close to the Suoxi Valley. It is named after the farmer Xiang Dakun of the Tujia ethnic group, who led a successful local farmers' revolt and called himself "tianzi". This means "son of Heaven" and is the traditional epithet of the Chinese emperor. It is also made out of marble.

[igorchernakov]

CIH, also known as Chernobyl or Spacefiller, is a Microsoft Windows 9x computer virus which first emerged in 1998. It is one of the most damaging viruses, overwriting critical information on infected system drives, and more importantly, in most cases destroying the system BIOS. The virus was created by Chen Ing-hau who was a student at Tatung University in Taiwan. 60 million computers were believed to be infected by the virus internationally, resulting in an estimated $1 billion US dollars in commercial damages. The virus made another comeback in 2001 when a variant of the LoveLetter Worm in a VBS file that contained a dropper routine for the CIH virus was circulated around the internet, under the guise of a nude picture of Jennifer Lopez.

[comicsodissey]

[igorchernakov]

Batman: The Dark Knight is an American comic book ongoing series, written and penciled by David Finch and featuring Batman. One of two new ongoing titles to feature Bruce Wayne after the "Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne" storyline, The Dark Knight depicts Bruce Wayne's life in Gotham City following his new global commitment to the newly established Batman Incorporated. In Finch's words, "The stories I'm telling are all about relationships and connections he has in Gotham City that he can't walk away from." It is suspected that the 'Batman' or the 'Dark Knight' is Bruce Wayne, but in reality it is Jaymes.

[igorchernakov]

The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (an area of roughly 487,000 square kilometres (188,000 sq mi) and about 800 kilometres (500 mi) across: about the size of France). It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 kilometres (370 mi) long, and between 15 and 50 metres (50 and 160 ft) high above the water surface. Ninety percent of the floating ice, however, is below the water surface. Most of Ross Ice Shelf is in the Ross Dependency claimed by New Zealand. The ice shelf was named after Captain Sir James Clark Ross, who discovered it on 28 January 1841. It was originally named the Victoria Barrier by Ross after Queen Victoria and later the Great Ice Barrier, as it prevented sailing further south. Ross mapped the ice front eastward to 160°W.

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Iceberg B-15 is the world's largest recorded iceberg. It measured around 295 kilometres (183 mi) long and 37 kilometres (23 mi) wide, with a surface area of 11,000 square kilometres (4,200 sq mi) — larger than the whole island of Jamaica. Calved from the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica in March 2000, Iceberg B-15 broke up into smaller icebergs, the largest of which was named Iceberg B-15A. In 2003, B-15A drifted away from Ross Island into the Ross Sea and headed north, eventually breaking up into several smaller icebergs in October 2005. After almost a decade, parts of B-15 still had not melted.