Star Wars taken over by the Walt Disney Empire!

Yes folks, George Lucas has not only sold out, he's sold out lock, stock and barrel and in a big way. Today, Disney announced they would be buying lucasfilm, along with the rights to all the Star Wars franchise including merchandising and games for the sum of $4.05 billion dollars in a cash and stock deal which will make George Lucas one of the major stockholders in Walt Disney. I imagine the Star Wars fanbase is going a little berserk at the moment, picturing Mickey Mouse wielding a lightsaber!  LOL, I guess he is already as you can see in the photo above. I added the thought bubble above George myself, as he really doesn't look all that happy in it.

The only good thing to come out of this as I can see is that Disney has announced that they will be releasing an Episode 7 in 2015. As far as I knew, George Lucas had still been claiming that there would be no more movies in the Star Wars franchise.

Of course, one has to wonder if this is really Disney taking over Lucasfilm, or is this really George Lucas taking over Walt Disney? After all, he ends up a major stockholder in the Walt Disney Co. and is saying that he will remain a "creative consultant" for the Star Wars franchise. Perhaps George Lucas has a little bit of the Emperor in him, and this is a stealth take-over of the Republic!

Stay tuned and we'll see just how this all falls out!

Curiosity discovers ancient streambed on Mars!

Well, it seems the Mars rover, Curiosity, has already started turning up new finds on Mars. NASA has announced today that the rover has discovered an ancient streambed that definitely would have been filled with flowing water that was anywhere from ankle deep to hip deep. The mission specialists say that the worn, rounded appearance of the stones in the streambed indicate that the stones were moved and rounded by flowing water that had to have lasted for years consistently. So this is not just a case of a small amount of melted water from time to time.

Curiosity is on it's way to an area near the edge of the crater it is in to do it's science thing, but the scientists at NASA say that this find is like "insurance" that they're going to find evidence of hospitable conditions on Mars for life at one time!

Here's a LINK to the original story at Astrobiology Magazine.