Unauthorized Black Ops

“I think of filmmaking as a form of communication. Maybe it’s also an art, but that’s for somebody else to decide.”

Marvel’s new Black Panther trailer: the fight for Wakanda is on

Marvel has released a new trailer for Black Panther, showing off the newest look for Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa, the titular superhero, and Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger, the film’s fiery villain.

While the first trailer, which premiered in June, gave us a frenetic sampling of the cool details the film has to offer — the female bodyguards known as the Dora Milaje, Boseman in that signature Black Panther super suit, and Lupita Nyong'o giving fierce looks — this second trailer gives us more depth.

It hints that there’s a void left after Marvel’s Civil War, which saw T’Challa’s father assassinated. T’Challa, heir to the throne in his home country of Wakanda, has to assert how the nation, which is arguably the most technologically advanced on earth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will be ruled, and must grasp that power. But Killmonger seizes the opportunity to stage a coup.

Add in fight scenes, hi-tech gadgetry, not one but multiple vibranium-enhanced Black Panther super suits, and you’ve got a jaw-dropping trailer.

Directed by Ryan Coogler, Black Panther will be the first solo black superhero movie in Marvel’s current cinematic universe. And it’s an opportunity to tell a story from a different point of view — not just based on race. (The majority of characters in Marvel’s superhero stories so far have been white or European.) Black Panther is also a story about what the world of superpowers looks like to a country that isn’t the US, doesn’t share the US’s views, has a ruling king, and has its own unique circumstances to deal with.

From what we’ve seen so far, it sure looks impressive.

Black Panther Trailer (2018) directed by Ryan Coogler

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Astronomers in California are building the largest digital camera in the world. It will go on a giant telescope taking shape in Chile called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

LSST is different from most large telescopes. Instead of staring at a tiny patch of the sky and taking essentially one snapshot in time, LSST will take a panorama of every part of the sky…and it will do so over and over and over. The idea is to see what’s moving or changing in the heavens.

“That could be everything from asteroids, to variable stars, to supernova, to maybe new phenomenon that we don’t know about yet,” says Aaron Roodman, a physicist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Roodman is the scientist in charge of the integration and testing of the camera.

The Largest Digital Camera In The World Takes Shape