Expanding our horizons in space: asteroid mining, lunar bases, planetary exploration. Where is NASA headed and what is the role of private enterprise? A collection of articles and videos exploring our near and distant future in space.
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Expanding our horizons in space: asteroid mining, lunar bases, planetary exploration. Where is NASA headed and what is the role of private enterprise? A collection of articles and videos exploring our near and distant future in space.
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Science: What are we discovering about ourselves and our world? Space: How we inhabit our solar system, our galaxy, our universe. SETI: Are we alone? Inventions: What new tools are the world's greatest toolmakers devising? Delete the scoop?
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Are we alone in the universe? How to explain the Great Silence? Is there intelligent life on other planets? A collection of articles on SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Drake Equation.
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Physics might be considered the most fundamental of all sciences, for all other sciences derive from basic principles of forces, motion, electromagnetism and... thermodynamics. And yet, physical laws are mathematical models of the world. But mathematics itself is abstract, deriving from constructs of philosophy... Delete the scoop?
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Agility and scientific creativity have not become endangered species -- despite the efforts of some at both political extremes. Indeed, we're still displaying an eagerness for pragmatic problem-solving may yet help us to thrive. Delete the scoop?
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Increasingly, scientific consensus is failing to influence public policy. Facts, statistics and data appear insufficient to change highly politicized minds... and science has started scrutinizing why. Chris Mooney describes in detail how bad it is - that millions of our neighbors deem facts to be malleably ignorable. Though soundly refuted by scientific studies, angry parents continue to believe their children acquired autism through vaccinations: "Where do they get their 'science' from? From the Internet, celebrities, other frantic-angry parents, and a few non-mainstream researchers and doctors who continue to challenge the scientific consensus, all of which forms a self-reinforcing echo chamber of misinformation," writes Mooney, noting that for every five hours of cable news, just one minute is devoted to science. In 2009, 15 year old U.S. students ranked 17th out of 34 developed countries in science. Delete the scoop?
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Lately we've been hearing more from a corner of the New Age that was strangely quiet for a while: Parapsychology. This perennial favorite keeps returning to grab the public's imagination, so maybe it's time to try for a little perspective. Let me admit from the start that I have a murky and conflicted relationship with the quaint concept of "psi." On the one hand, trained as a physical scientist, I find little to admire about a field that has almost nothing to show after two hundred years of strenuous and diligent effort. Every year, the claims that are made by proponents shrink as our horizons of measurement advance. A field that once purported to find treasures, cure illnesses, convey infinite energy and speak with the dead now craves marginal evidence for a few statistical anomalies in some randomized card tricks. That's pretty hard to respect. Delete the scoop?
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For years I've followed advances that investigate reinforcement processes in the human brain, especially those involving dopamine and other messenger chemicals that are active in mediating pleasure response. One might call this topic chemically-mediated states of arousal that self-reinforce patterns of behavior. Certainly, knowing that life's wholesome pleasures are chemically reinforced doesn't make love any less sincere, a sunset less beautiful, or even faith in God any less sincere. Delete the scoop?
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How do we recapture our enthusiasm for space? Neil deGrasse Tyson examines America’s ailing aerospace industry and NASA’s shrinking vision -- and asks what it would take for America to remain the leading power in space: “In fact we may be entering a new age of geopolitics, in which economic strength wields greater power than military strength. If that’s the case, we shouldn’t need reminders that innovations in science and technology drive tomorrow’s economies. That’s been true since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. And so healthy investment in space exploration—something we saw 50 years ago, and something many other countries have just figured out—is like a new force of nature operating on a nation’s economic prosperity. As nothing else does, the frontier of space exploration, which draws upon a dozen fields of science and engineering, attracts the ambitions of those who are still in the educational pipeline. It is they who become the scientists and technologists. It is they who invent tomorrow.” Delete the scoop?
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Science has accumulated enemies. Some are put off by the ambitious and optimistic Modernist Agenda of perpetual human self-improvement -- a program aimed at discovering and then applying the very tools of Creation, in order to make better societies, better lives, better generations. Is this ambitious goal possible, or ethical, or even sane? Aldous Huxley once spoke for all grouchy intellectuals, when he derided progress as "just another idol." Grumbling that it will all come to no good, voices ranging from Bill Joy and Francis Fukuyama to Osama and the Unabomber have shared a common underlying theme, protesting the West's headlong plunge into territories and powers once left to God. Artists and authors, from Michael Crichton to Margaret Atwood, portray technological ambition as hubris, that age-old, prideful route to chaos or damnatio Delete the scoop?
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Scientist and science fiction writer David Brin carries Intelligent Design creationism to its logical conclusion by showing the numerous “other alternatives” to Darwinian evolution that creationists don’t want you to know about, such as Guided Evolution, Intelligent Design of Intelligent Deisgners, Evolution of Intelligent Designers, Cycles of Creation, Panspermia... Delete the scoop?
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Among the many battlefronts in culture war, few have raised a specter of worry among scientists more than the great big imbroglio over Human-generated Global Climate Change (HGCC)... also called Anthopogenic Global Warming (AGW). Especially in America, positions are staked and fiercely held, by parties who claim they are evidence-based, while their opponents are either conspirators or the gullible "koolaid-drinking" tools of a propaganda machine. An especially vexing aspect of this polarization is the near perfect correlation of one side in this controversy with a pre-established position along the left-right political axis. Even worse is an undercurrent of spite for expert opinion, as a basis for guiding public policy. Delete the scoop?
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Whatever your level of involvement, you can have the satisfaction of participating in humanity's greatest endeavor. In an era when political factions and media empires are waging relentless "war on science" this trend toward active participation -- or providing some financial support -- is the surest way to help support an active, vigorous, future hungry and scientific civilization. Delete the scoop?
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The notion of gun-propelled launch goes back to Jules Verne. Such Mass Drivers have been envisioned in numerous Sci Fi tales, including Earthlight, by Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Heart of the Comet by Benford & Brin. We've also seen them portrayed in Buck Rogers, Babylon 5 and Halo. Now, two researchers propose that a space-capable mass driver may be feasible. Startram would act as an electromagnetic catapult, using maglev technology, to accelerate and launch spacecraft into orbit, without using rockets or propellant. James Powell and George Maise take a highly optimistic view, claiming that a system capable of launching payload into orbit for less than $40/kg could be built using existing technology—if we were to gather substantial international support. Delete the scoop?
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If we cannot find aliens in the stars, we might create alien intelligences on Earth. If we cannot find aliens in the stars, we might create alien intelligences on Earth. Humanity has often looked outward beyond the tribe with a combination of sociability and paranoia for mates or insights or the next potential threat. Now we scan the skies for extraterrestrial intelligences, but so far all we have run across is a Great Silence, also known as the Fermi Paradox — the quandary that asks where all the alien civilizations are.If we lack extraterrestrials to contact, humans might look closer to home, Brin suggests. "If we want others to talk to, hey, let’s make them," he speculates. Delete the scoop?
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Here David Brin offers some rebuttals to those denying the possibilty of human-caused climate change— with links to the full climate science. It's extended, exhausting and somewhat repetitious. Print it before your next crazy-uncle encounter. Delete the scoop?
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In that spirit I will focus on the trait of neoteny -- or the retention of childlike characteristics in mature members of a species. This process appears so amplified in humanity that we have been called the neotenous clan of apes. Humans much more closely resemble chimp or gorilla infants than adults of either species, e.g., in the smooth, vertical dome of the forehead and the relative ease of bipedality displayed by very young apes. Delete the scoop?
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A return to ambitious technologies of space: Japanese company Obayashi has announced plans to construct a space elevator capable of shuttling passengers 36,000 km above the earth by 2050. Delete the scoop?
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The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. "Reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on the minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Read the article in The New York Times. Delete the scoop?
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It appears that a small cabal of the Good Billionaires -- those who got rich through innovation and who feel loyal to the future -- are about to to fund a new effort worth some excitement and attention. It aims at transforming not just our Earth -- but the whole solar system. And, along the way, this endeavor may help bootstrap us back into our natural condition... a species, nation and civilization that believes (again) in can-do ambition. Can that be achieved - while making us all rich - through asteroid mining? Delete the scoop?
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