Harold Camping died last month. In case you don't remember, Camping, the president of evangelical Family Radio, predicted that the world would end in 2011. Twice. He made these prognostications on the basis of numerology, which sounds like it might be a sophomore-level math subject, but isn't. The data for the calculations Camping used to … Continue reading The End of the World: Science or Religion? | Seth Shostak
Tag: Extraterrestrial life
When Will We Build the Starship Enterprise? | Seth Shostak
What if we could send humans anywhere at the speed of light, and at a rock-bottom price? That's eminently feasible if we send the information and not the protoplasm. No crew, just code. Consider: The human genome consists of about 3.3 billion base pairs. Since there are only four types of pair, that amounts to … Continue reading When Will We Build the Starship Enterprise? | Seth Shostak
Beasts or gods; why a War Of The Worlds is very unlikely
One of the scenarios that is often played out in science fiction is what would happen if we encountered an alien civilization. Often, we are portrayed as defending Earth from an alien invasion or fighting battles with the aliens in a war. Another scenario, commonly found in more culturally introspective fiction, focuses on what our … Continue reading Beasts or gods; why a War Of The Worlds is very unlikely
Why Life Does Not Really Exist | Brainwaves, Scientific American Blog Network
Why is defining life so frustratingly difficult? Why have scientists and philosophers failed for centuries to find a specific physical property or set of properties that clearly separates the living from the inanimate? Because such a property does not exist. Life is a concept that we invented. On the most fundamental level, all matter that … Continue reading Why Life Does Not Really Exist | Brainwaves, Scientific American Blog Network
Why extraterrestrial civilizations may be exceedingly rare
There's been a lot of news lately about the estimate of habitable planets in our galaxy. It sounds like there may be 40 billion planets in the habitable zones around their stars. This is cool stuff! The nearest one might be only 12 light years away. It's very tempting from this news, to conclude that … Continue reading Why extraterrestrial civilizations may be exceedingly rare
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