Story Identification: Novel in which aliens drain sun's energy

I read this book in my school's library and that was a long time ago. I will give my best to reproduce the important parts of it. Few scientists, while working on something in Antarctica observe that the sun goes dark for a very minute fraction of a second. One of the scientists recalls that this happened before and they investigate on that. Later they observe through some telescopic images that an alien space ship was draining energy from sun which caused that small moment of darkness.They then go near the sun and try to stop the aliens and save the human race. I also remember the last scene. The scientist's daughter watches the beautiful sun rising the next morning.

Why no automated warfare in Herbert’s Dune?

Frank Herbert created the weaponry in Dune to build a deadlock: If a lasgun is fired upon a Holtzmann shield, both will be destroyed. Unpredictably, there might be even larger damage up until to what corresponds to atomic warheads.

Has it ever been mentioned, why there is no automated warfare to take leverage of this situation? If you want to destroy your enemy, fly a lasgun-enabled drone to his shield-protected station, let the drone fire and get a destroyed enemy base for the prize of a single unmanned drone.

Drones exist in Dune, as we know from the failed assassination attempt with the poison-carrying drone against Paul.

How much spice was in the Atreides lost harvester?

Duke Leto Atreides commanded fierce loyalty from his subjects, a large part of which comes from his reciprocal loyalty to them, and this is neatly portrayed in the book:

• Leto, Paul, Liet-Kynes and co. fly an ornithopter to a spice harvester in the field


• It is attacked by a worm


• Rather than accept the loss or attempt to salvage spice, Leto (unexpectedly) ordered an impromptu rescue operation, saving the entire harvester crew, but losing a full load of unrefined spice

This action went a large way towards winning the allegiance of the xenophobic Fremen.

It is heavily implied that this was a highly unusual noble act, due to the high amount and cost of spice lost. How much value was lost, exactly? We know that "one briefcase full of spice would be enough to purchase an entire planet", but in this case:

• The spice was unrefined


• The amount was a full harvester load

How much, approximately, would this estimate to be?

Was the ring already affecting Frodo by the Council of Elrond?

I've read the LOTR books and watched the films many times, but reading other questions about it on SE I got to thinking.

Is there any indication that Frodo accepts the quest to Mount Doom in order to keep hold of the ring?

He had the ring for 17 years, and whilst he never put it on it was still in his possession. And he wore the ring on 2 separate occasions (3 in the book) on the way from the Shire to Rivendell.

Before the Council of Elrond, he had no plans other than to return to the Shire.

I understand that his selfless nature was why he chose to continue on as the ring-bearer to destroy the ring. But could there have been more to it than that?

It seems entirely out of his character to decide to go all of that way all of a sudden, even if he was at that point the best choice for taking the ring.

If I remember correctly in the original book, he volunteered to go because no one else would. But was there any indication, even the slightest, that he volunteered in order to be able to keep hold of the ring?

Was there any sign that it had already begun to have a hold on him?

Using Cell Phones as a Type of Radar

In The Dark Knight a city-wide surveillance system resembling radar is portrayed. What is a believable technical explanation for why a phone's speaker and microphone could be used to generate waves capable of this effect?

Identify sci-fi short story about hired assassin hunted after a botched job fleeing in self driving car

The premise is a but weird: the assassin lands at the airport after a failed mission knowing that he is marked for death unless he can reach somewhere first. The point of the story is how proud he is about being self-sufficient and driving his own car instead of taking public transportation. The car in question is in fact self driving and at time remote controlled by the authorities.

I want to show this story to my friends who are proud of driving stick-shift :)

Thanks in advance. -n

Movie Identification 70's-90's alien movie

I've been looking for a movie for sme 2 years now but cant find it. Here's what I remember : Aliens were kinda red boulder like things kind of like fantastic fours Thing Except more red and were trying find a Male dna sample for reproduction or something like that! I remember there were 2 aliens 1 female 1 male she lured the men out and they had sex then she or he killed them: Scenes: They were in their rock form testing dna And he said "this sample isn't the right one" "she pretended to be a hitch hiker and the driver said "You shouldnt ride with strangers... she said I know and they start getting it on up against a boulder then she breaks his neck"

A title would help greatly thanks guys