NERD NEWS

COAL ON MARS

“It’s so exciting! This could be a promising indicator of life on Mars,”Lin Yangting, lead scientist from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told state media. The exciting bit of evidence he speaks of comes in the form of carbon—carbon particles thinner than one-tenth the width of human hair.

The bit of carbon itself has had quite a journey. Ripped somehow from the surface of Mars, it travelled through space for 700,000 years to land on earth in a Moroccan desert, where it has been studied by an international team of scientists. It’s the 120th Mars rock ever discovered on earth, and in mid-December, 2014 Lin Yangting claimed that the meteor had fingerprints of life on China National Radio and in work published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.

Using Raman spectroscopy, Lin and his team claim to have ruled out the possibility that the matter is inorganic. The indicator of life is a “l(fā)ighter” carbon isotope, like that of coal and petroleum, which is a good indicator of biological life.

In the end, it is hardly the smoking gun for life on Mars, and Lin admits that more tests are needed; enormous claims require enormous proof. A US research team disagrees with Lin’s findings, stating that they think the particles could have come from magma. Whether the carbon fibers in the meteor suggest life or not, there’s certainly a lot more to learn from this space-traveling, 600-million-year-old rock from the Red Planet.

THE THREE MOVIE PROBLEM

Liu Cixin （劉慈欣） is the only name anyone cares about in Chinese sci-fi at the moment. His barnburner novel The Three-Body Problem （《三體》） came out in English in November, 2014, and it is rumored to be heading for the big screen, with the rest of the trilogy hot on its heels. The China Film Group Corporation, though, is taking things to the next level with three planned films from Liu’s work.

First, there is The Wandering Earth （《流浪地球》）, set on an Earth in peril, facing a sun about to release a flash of helium as the world government works to move the planet. The China Film Group has said that this film alone will cost around 50 million USD. The second is Micro Era （《微觀盡頭》）, penciled in at 40 million USD, and the third is The Era of Supernova（《超新星紀(jì)元》）, in which everyone over 13 is doomed, set for 60 million USD.

Indeed, if the rumors are true that The Three-Body Problem and its follow-up The Rural Teacher （《鄉(xiāng)村教師》） are slated to become movies, that brings Liu Cixin’s total movie count to five, meaning he has a very busy future ahead of him. In fact, Liu has said that he will personally write the screenplay for The Wandering Earth, Micro Era, and The Era of Supernova.

As to the others, it has been rumored that director Ning Hao, creator of the top-grossing buddy flick Breakup Buddies, is on hand to direct the sci-fi epic. Fans are, of course, hopeful that these films will do the books proud, but, with the China Film Group at the helm, hopes are not exactly high so far.

ANDROID RULES CHINA

Despite developer Google’s various engines and apps being unceremoniously blocked in the Middle Kingdom for some unknown and definitely not childish or ill-conceived reason, it seems Android is the king of mobile operating systems in China. Recent statistics from Baidu suggest that 886 million Chinese people rely on the Android operating system for their mobile fix.

The only previous count of this data came from 2013, which claimed that Android users measured 270 million, but this new count means that more than a third of all Android uses in the world come from China if Google’s own July statistics are correct.

In fact, as Tech in Asia points out, Google is in no position to count its Chinese users, given the way Google measures Android users via log-ins of individual devices from Google Play—a service denied to users in China. The 116 million boom stated by Baidu over the past year has been due to a number of things, not least of which is the new affordability of smartphones from places like Xiaomi and Coolpad. Attempts have been made to popularize a purely made-in-China operating system, such as the current COS（China Operating System） for presumably very patriotic smartphone users, but, for now, Android rules supreme.

LET THE BATTLE COMMENCE!

For the past 14 years gaming consoles have been banned in China, presumably because their violent nature would lead to moral bankruptcy, but the world’s most advanced and beloved game consoles are now legally finding their way into the Middle Kingdom. However, this opens up the country to yet another battle, one nearly as brutal as Call of Duty: Sony versus Microsoft.

It’s no secret that both gamers and their developers are very dedicated to their individual preferences. PlayStation or Xbox, triangle or “Y” button, to Kinect or not to Kinect—these are the questions. It seems the first salvo of these two gaming giants goes to Microsoft, who introduced their Xbox One a few months ago, but Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Vita are hot on their heels, due to come out January, 2015. Even though Microsoft hit first, Sony is the favorite to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people, with a lower price tag and a longer list of games.

In addition to the battle between Sony and Microsoft, there are two more fronts in this war. First, there are the gamers themselves. Online gaming—Starcraft, Warcraft, League of Legends—has a firm footing in China and is relatively cheap when compared to the 2,899 RMB for a PlayStation 4 or 3,699 for an Xbox One. There’s also the fact that shady, cheap, pirated versions of the consoles have been in the country for years with games costing around five RMB a piece, though in recent months there have been signs that the availability of these is reducing. The second front is that of the Ministry of Culture, a front on which Microsoft and Sony can expect few victories.