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26 January 2009
SETI and Spore
I recently started getting Seed magazine, and am consistently impressed with how good it is. My favorite part is the “Seed salon” where they take two really smart people from fields that might not typically interact, put them in a room together and get them talking. I just discovered that they post videos of the Seed Salon online! Take a look at this one, where Jill Tarter, a pioneer in …
3 November 2008
Vote Adama in '08
Can’t decide who to vote for? (hint: Obama) Courtesy of io9, here are some sci-fi alternatives to the current candidates. Adama ’08!
7 October 2008
Red Mars on TV!
If you are reading this blog, which you are, and you have not read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, you should drop everything and go get the book. I read it in high school, before I really knew much about Mars but when I was starting to think about planetary astronomy. It is the story of the first colonists to permanently setlle the red planet, and is more realistic …
2 July 2008
Spore
Have you heard of the game Spore? It is a computer game being released this fall and is the first game in quite a while that I am considering buying, despite the fact that I have no time to play games anymore. Here is an old video of an early version of the game: Here’s the gist of it (paraphrased from the wiki article): The game begins with a comet …
12 May 2008
Lego Mars!
Targeted ads in gmail sometimes show me some awesome sites. I posted before about the chance to buy land on Mars, and now I learn that Lego has a Mars Mission set of toys! They even manage to slip a few facts in on the web site. For example, they have “transmissions from Mars” and one of them describes working in Valles Marineris, giving all its impressive stats. Of course, …
30 April 2008
DARPA is Working on What?!
Arthur C. Clarke was a brilliant man and was known for coming up with ideas that were not only astounding, but also plausible in the near future. He was one of the first to propose communications satellites in geostationary orbits. He also invented the concept of a space elevator that would lift cargo from the surface of a planet all the way out to space. People are now actively working …
24 April 2008
The Search for Life on Mars: Part 1
Pre-Space Age The prospect of life on Mars has tantalized humans for centuries. We long to find some proof that we are not alone, that the universe is not as empty as it seems, and so we look to the most Earth-like planet in our solar system for signs of life. Early astronomers quickly noticed that Mars shares some properties with the Earth. In 1783, William Herschel discussed the similarities …
19 March 2008
Arthur C. Clarke
I am saddened to report that science fiction author and visionary Arthur C. Clarke passed away today. AP has more information. If you are not familiar with his writing, Clarke was one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction. Of his stories, my favorites are Childhood’s End, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Rendezvous with Rama. He had a way of seizing upon an idea, whether simple or complex, and …
18 March 2008
Fire and Ice: Tidally Locked Exoplanets
What would the climate be like if the earth was closer to the sun than Mercury, and was tidally locked, so that the same side of the planet always faced the sun? This was the question that Anita Ganesan and colleagues set out to answer with their poster last Thursday night at LPSC. I didn’t get the chance to talk to them directly, but I read their poster and abstract …
