News Briefs 30-07-2010
Posted by Turner Young at 10:28, 30 Jul 2010My god, it’s full of… planets?
- Is the Milky Way “rich” in Earth-like planets? And was this headline leaked?
- A universe with no end… or beginning.
- Touchable holograms.
- Galactic thunderbolts.
- Is there buried life on Maaaaaaars?
- Meanwhile, Martian dust-devil spotted.
- The face on Mars, revisited.
- Ship lost at sea for 150 years, found.
- Death becomes him… Tokyo's oldest living man died 30 years ago.
- Fingal's Cave-- inspiration to Celtic legends, modern art and Floyd.
- Asteroid impact in 2182? Tell your kids to tell their kids to tell their kids.
- New keys to unlock a cure for Alzheimer's
- Is quantum consciousness the bridge between science and spirituality?
- …Or is quantum consciousness just quantum “flapdoodle”?
- Escaping nightmares according to script AKA dream therapy.
- Who needs a post-human future when we’ve got a cyborg past.
- Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls… solved?
- In the days preceding the CIA, we had... 'The Pond'.
- People skilled in nuclear forensics are on the decline in the US.
- Are earthquakes more common than we thought?
- Rebuilding human joints, one stem cell at a time.
- Mouth to mouth goes the way of the dodo.
- Michael Bay to make alien abduction movie?
- The hottest market in real estate is underground.
Thanks Greg!
Quote of the Day:
“..I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
I. Newton
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Comments
12 April 2007
8 min 1 sec
Not that I dare to betray my geeky brethren who have *also* fantasized with that kind of gadget, but... dontcha feel that the only driving force in technology nowadays is entertainment?
Sure it's nice to have an iPhone that you can use to view a lot of fun & dumb video-clips at Youtube —not to mention a whole lotta PORN— but shouldn't we also be encouraging young engineers to worry about the development of technology that could also, you know, SAVE lives or help us colonize space?
A society in which young people aspire either to be movie stars, rappers, or —if they are smart enough— the founders of the new Facebook, is not exactly what I had in mind for the Brave New World of the XXIst century :-/
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
9 May 2010
8 min 49 sec
A universe with no end… or beginning.
That is a pretty interesting theory and actually made a good amount of sense, specifically on red shifting. I'm interested on what this theories take on lighter elements getting heavier and how(if) they break down.
Cogito Ergo Sum •°•
26 June 2005
6 hours 50 min
Shermer citing Stenger ... should we expect an unbiased opinion? Oh, I think not. For anyone unfamiliar with the musings of physicist-philosopher, Victor Stenger this page should give you a flavour of what he's about:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/v...
Apart from his militant (he calls it "positive") atheism, his main (and obviously related) targets are those who argue in favour of fine tuning in the universe and those who would introduce consciousness into quantum physics. I'm clearly not a physicist nor a mathematician but it seems to me that, in a rather desperate attempt to avoid consciousness, his alternatives are at least as questionable as those he is trying to dismiss. For example, he introduces particles zig-zagging backwards and forwards in time to resolve the question of non-locality:
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vsten...
His attack on the idea of a finely tuned universe, although often cited by the sceptical community, has in turn been attacked. This is a quote from a blog entry by another physicist:
It is a distraction, encouraging us to simply look the other way, to condescending dismiss the evidence for the fine-tuning of the universe for life. It is utter garbage, thinly concealed behind a veil of mathematics.
The worst part is that others are taking Stenger’s work as the definitive debunking of fine-tuning.
http://letterstonature.wordpress.com/201...
Dave.
PS - That same scientist also has some interesting observations about another well known sceptic, P. Z. Myers:
http://letterstonature.wordpress.com/201...
Website: David's Muse