Here’s an interesting theory that contributes to abiogenesis.
Category Archives: General Science
Animals
Pretty cool. What does this say about prospects for extraterrestrial life?
Ice Sculptures
Natural ones. Some very beautiful nature photography.
Human Ancestry
Gets more complicated. A very interesting article by Alan Boyle, on whether there were other Homos around besides Sapiens and Neanderthalensis.
It’s All In The Name
Some thoughts on the “killer whale” incident. What I find annoying about it (which the article hints at, but doesn’t make explicit) is all of the commentators repeatedly referring to the animal as “the whale.” O’Reilly made a fool of himself on this last night, when he compared an Orca to Moby Dick. Hint to the media — “killer whales” are not whales. They are the largest member of the family Delphinidae. In other words, they are dolphins.
Neo-Neanderthals
Should we create them? It’s an interesting ethical dilemma.
Iron Rush
Did a meteorite find drive the Inuit migration across Canada hundreds of years ago?
Nah, couldn’t be. Nothing that happens in space is relevant to what happens on earth.
For some reason, this reminds me of the global warming debate. Not to mention the difficulty that Alverez had in selling the dinosaur extinction theory.
[Update a few minutes later]
This is also an interesting example of how technology, or the desire for it, can influence human migration patterns. It may have some relevance to space policy…
An Orbital Mechanics Problem
Cory Doctorow needs the solution to one for a story.
There is no analytical solution to his problem — you really have to do a sim.
Top Science Stories Of The Decade
Without getting into the issue of whether this year is the end of the decade, Alan Boyle has a list of science stories of the ten years of the double goose egg, of which this is definitely the last. I have a couple nits, though.
First, SpaceShipOne and the X-Prize had nothing to do with science really — they were engineering achievements. Spaceflight is not synonymous with science, and the notion that it is is one of the things that holds us back from doing more of it, and more cost effectively.
And if the 2007 Nobel prize to which he is referring was Al Gore’s, it had nothing to do with science either, unless it was bogus science, as his “documentary” was (for which the Oscar should also be revoked). It was a Peace Prize, not a science prize.
Humanity Saved
…by shellfish? The lead is interesting:
A couple hundred thousand years ago, the planet became a much colder and drier place. In Africa, deserts expanded, species were wiped out and the human race was in deep trouble.
Climate change! But it wasn’t warming. And it wasn’t caused by humanity. Or at least, there’s no case made that it was. I continue to think that a cooling planet is much more to be feared than a warming one, and I’m thinking more and more that it’s not necessarily unlikely.