Posts Tagged science
The New Elephant In The Room
Posted by Rational Dreamer in science on April 26th, 2010
How to turn the cute and adorable into the creepy and disturbing through the wonder of modern technology:
I guess that’s the price we pay for our steady diet of scifi thrillers…
Stephen Hawking Warns Against Making Alien Contact
Posted by Rational Dreamer in astronomy, science on April 25th, 2010
Stephen Hawking may be one of the greatest theoretical physicists in history, but I’m not terribly impressed by his recent warning about making contact with aliens:
In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was “perfectly rational” to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere. But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.
I certainly agree that any extra-terrestrial aliens visiting Earth within the next thousand years or more would almost certainly be light-years ahead of us in terms of technology. And rather than being like Native Americans in relation to Columbus, we could be like ants to are in relation to human beings. Given that the Sun was born more than eight billion years after the Big Bang, there has been more than enough time for alien civilizations to be millions, or even billions of years ahead of us in technological prowess.
Thus Hawking’s concerns that aliens might want to raid Earth for its resources would appear to be misplaced. What does Earth have that isn’t available in abundance elsewhere? Not water, not minerals, not energy sources—they can be all found throughout the Solar System. So there’s really no need to trash our planet to get at stuff that’s freely available in places like the asteroid belt, Mars, or Jupiter and Saturn and their moons.
God Speed, Hubble Space Telescope
Posted by Rational Dreamer in astronomy on May 20th, 2009
The Hubble Space Telescope was released back into the wild this morning, it’s 19 year check-up, repairs and upgrade successfully completed, and spectacularly so. The only “failure” was the incomplete repair of the lesser-used half of the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which they only half-expected to work anyway.
Here’s to many more years of spectacular images and even more spectacular scientific results. At one of the post-spacewalk press conferences, one of the scientists on the panel explained that Hubble now sends down 30 times more data than it did just after it launched, which is just one measure of how much more efficient and effective an instrument the newly, upgraded telescope has become. Long after its final plunge into the Pacific Ocean (hopefully many years hence), the scientific data obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope will continue to yield results that will bring us to a greater understanding of the universe around us.
Missing the Entire Thrust of the Argument
Posted by Rational Dreamer in creationism on May 19th, 2009
After a passable first attempt, and a merely “bleah” follow-up (a typical misrepresentation of what scientists claim about the Big Bang), Eric Hovind really hits rock bottom (pun intended) when it comes to his third “Creation Minute” video. See if you can spot the howler:
Perhaps if you’ve never studied high school geography you might have missed it, but Hovind’s questioning of how the Colorado River could have flowed uphill for millions of years to carve out the Grand Canyon demonstrates a profound (and wanton) ignorance of proven geological processes.
Kepler Scooped! (sort of…)
Posted by Rational Dreamer in science on April 21st, 2009
Just a couple of days ago I posted on this blog saying that the Kepler space telescope may already have the first Earth-like planet to be discovered—one capable of supporting life—in its sights. Well, now a team of European astronomers has made me look at little foolish by announcing that they have confirmation of the very first Earth-like planet to be located within a star’s habitable zone, before Kepler’s mission is even fully underway.
The team announced the discovery of a new exoplanet (a planet outside our own solar system), Gliese 581e, which is the lightest exoplanet ever discovered at less than twice the mass of Earth, but it takes just 3.15 days to orbit its star, and even though the star (Gliese 581) is a relatively cool red dwarf star, it is way too close and hot to have a chance of supporting life.
First Light!
Posted by Rational Dreamer in astronomy, science on April 20th, 2009
This is a very cool image. In fact, it’s hard to describe in mere words how cool this picture really is. What you’re looking at is the first image beamed down from the Kepler space telescope, launched into orbit around the Sun (trailing Earth’s orbit) just over a month ago. You can just imagine standing on the bridge of some futuristic spaceship and looking out onto such a scene as this. But the really cool thing about this image is that in all probability, the first ever Earth-like planet we discover outside our own Solar System is somewhere within this picture.
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