The "Wait But Why" blog takes an in depth look at something some of us were discussing on another thread: the Fermi Paradox. Everyone feels something when they’re in a really good starry place on a really good starry night and they look up and see this: Some people stick with the traditional, feeling struck … Continue reading The Fermi Paradox – Wait But Why
Tag: Earth
NASA – The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation
This NASA document has been around for a while, but it remains relevant. If you're going to engage in space travel, you have some unyielding scientific and engineering realities to contend with. This article is a bit dry, but it's a pretty good introduction into the realities of spaceflight. Tyranny is a human trait that … Continue reading NASA – The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation
What Astronomy Says About Religion | Seth Shostak
It's a recurrent experience that never fails to perplex me: Random people will seek my advice on questions of religion. Rather than posing queries about how the cosmos works, they want me to enlighten them on why. Bottom line: We were so ordinary as to be thoroughly invisible -- as would be any other worlds, … Continue reading What Astronomy Says About Religion | Seth Shostak
What Makes an Alien Intelligent?
An interesting article in The New Yorker on the necessity of keeping an open mind about what form an alien intelligence might take. Yet, even as the Kepler mission gets closer to finding a mirror image of our own planet, many scientists have ceased believing that we should be looking for ourselves in space. There … Continue reading What Makes an Alien Intelligent?
The flower-shaped starshade that might help us detect Earth-like planets
Pretty cool. Jeremy Kasdin in this TED talk discusses an idea to remove the glare of a star's light in order to possibly get a look at its planets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYNUpQrZISc
The fine tuning “problem”
An interesting article byJonathan Borwein and David H. Bailey on why science needs philosophy. When renowned scientists now talk seriously about millions of multiverses, the old question “are we alone?” gets a whole new meaning. Our ever-expanding universe is incomprehensibly large – and its rate of growth is apparently accelerating – but if so it’s … Continue reading The fine tuning “problem”
Microbes May Have Fueled Permian Extinction, Earth’s Biggest
A microbial feeding frenzy may have fueled the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, new research suggests. The findings suggest that bacteria, with a little help from massive volcanism, produced large quantities of methane, thereby killing 90 percent of life on the planet. more at Microbes May Have Fueled Permian Extinction, Earth's Biggest. I've often wondered … Continue reading Microbes May Have Fueled Permian Extinction, Earth’s Biggest
Did “Cosmos” Pick the Wrong Hero?
As I suspected, there's consternation about Cosmos's highlighting of Giordano Bruno, and not all of it is coming from religious apologists. In Cosmos, Tyson does carefully say that Bruno was not a scientist, and instead describes that picture of infinite worlds as a “guess.” But Bruno was not guessing. He was advancing his own, heretical … Continue reading Did “Cosmos” Pick the Wrong Hero?
Europa Report, a review
Somehow I completely missed the release of this movie. It seems to represent the beginning of something I've hoped to see for a while: small independent productions that make use of the lowering cost of CG technology to make narrow genre films. Most film science fiction is, unfortunately, garbage scientifically. The cost and risk of … Continue reading Europa Report, a review
Kepler’s Latest Exoplanet Hoard, Graphed
Ok, so if you're like me, you probably didn't pay much attention to the latest announcement of the number of exoplanets that had been found by Kepler. It seems like those kinds of announcements have become old hat. This reaction must have been common, and must have annoyed someone at NASA, so they created this … Continue reading Kepler’s Latest Exoplanet Hoard, Graphed
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