Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
There's been some attention lately to a contest on designing an interstellar generation ship, a large scale ship that humans live in for generations while it crosses interstellar space to another solar system. As Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams notes, generation ships are a long time staple in science fiction, albeit with the common trope … Continue reading Optimism for interstellar exploration
Among my earliest memories are the TV series Star Trek and Lost in Space, two shows that promised a universe teeming with alien life, intelligent life. As a boy, the aliens seemed everywhere. We'd probably find some on Mars and Venus, and there wasn't much doubt we'd find them in other solar systems. And that … Continue reading Where are the aliens?
Over the years, I've done a lot of posts speculating about alien civilizations. My take is generally that while extraterrestrial life may be prevalent in the universe, complex life is rare, and intelligent civilization producing life is profoundly rare. This seems evident from our own history, where simple life appears to have started as soon … Continue reading Aliens and intergalactic spheres of influence
I've discussed the difficulties of interstellar exploration before. To get a spacecraft to another star within a human lifetime requires accelerating it to an appreciable percentage of c (the speed of light), say 10-20%. In general that requires titanic amounts of energy. (Forget about the common sci-fi scenarios of going into warp drive or jumping … Continue reading The Q-Drive and the difficulty of interstellar exploration
I was very young when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969, so I have no memory of the landing, and only limited memory of the Apollo program in general. I think I remember seeing some of Apollo 17 on TV in 1972, the final flight to the moon. (At the … Continue reading Apollo 11 and the lost space age
Gizmodo has an interesting article that someone asked my thoughts on. Part of their "Giz asks" series, it asks various physicists what's at the edge of the universe? The physicists polled include Sean Carroll, Jo Dunkley, Jessie Shelton, Michael Troxel, Abigail Vieregg, and Arthur B. Kosowsky. They all give similar answers, that space isn't known … Continue reading What’s at the edge of the universe?
I've always loved space opera, but when I was growing up, as I learned more about science, I discovered that a lot of the tropes in space opera are problematic. Space operas, to tell adventure stories among the stars, often have to make compromises. One of the earliest and most pervasive is FTL (faster than … Continue reading Why faster than light travel is inevitably also time travel
There's been a lot of celebration this holiday season of the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission, the first time humans went into (relatively) deep space and orbited another body, the moon. I'm glad to see Apollo 8 getting some recognition. It's usually overshadowed by Apollo 11, the first mission to actually land on … Continue reading The difficulty of going to Mars
Science News has a short article discussing a calculation someone has done showing how small the volume of space examined by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is relative the overall size of the galaxy. With no luck so far in a six-decade search for signals from aliens, you’d be forgiven for thinking, “Where is everyone?” A … Continue reading SETI vs the possibility of interstellar exploration
Marc Defant gave a TEDx talk on the improbable events that had to happen in our planet's history for us to eventually evolve, along with the implications for other intelligent life in the galaxy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nCOhrYV7eg I find a lot to agree with in Defant's remarks, although there are a couple points I'd quibble with. The … Continue reading The extraordinary low probability of intelligent life
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