The remarkable thing is that we haven’t found so much as a fossil bacterium in recent Mars samples. The belief that whatever’s weird out there must be aliens is a sheer act of faith. The same people who would dismiss massive evidence for design in the universe and life forms believe in ET with no evidence at all. That’s probably because, at heart, their commitment is one of the few types of religion that naturalism permits.
Astronomy
Then, they came for Sir Isaac . . .
Newton. The latest year zero reset target, as Telegraph reports: Sir Isaac Newton has been labelled as a potential beneficiary of “colonial-era activity” in draft plans to “decolonise” the engineering curriculum at Sheffield University. Students learning about the mathematician and scientist’s three laws of motion, the core of modern physics, could see changes in their Read More…
Researchers: Radioactive snowflakes will destroy stars!
A pair of researchers with Indiana University and Illinois University, respectively, has developed a theory that suggests crystalizing uranium “snowflakes” deep inside white dwarfs could instigate an explosion large enough to destroy the star. (No, it doesn’t matter much but it’s Saturday night.)
Researchers: “Vast reservoir” of complex molecules found in cold cloud, not dying stars, as expected
Researcher: “It’s like going into a boutique shop and just browsing the inventory on the front-end without ever knowing there was a back room. We’ve been collecting little molecules for 50 years or so and now we have discovered there’s a back door. When we opened that door and looked in, we found this giant warehouse of molecules and chemistry that we did not expect,” said McGuire.
Remember space junk ‘Oumuamua? A conventional explanation is now offered: Nitrogen ice from Pluto
It’s curious how folklore can prevail for ages in science as long as it has a naturalistic origin. Maybe Top People shouldn’t count on everyone just forgetting that now.
Avi Loeb at Scientific American on the importance of reproducibility in science
Okay re the importance of reproducibility but it was never clear why Oumuamua was supposed to be ET anyway. More Oumuamuas would not make it more likely.
Astronomers: Maybe there really isn’t a Planet Nine
At Nature: The researchers found that the objects’ orbits could be explained without the presence of a nearby planet.
A recent black hole collision has spurred thinking about the tiniest scales
Classically, it shouldn’t have happened.
Here’s something we don’t see every day: A blazar in the early universe
Researchers: At this distance, PSO J0309+27 is seen as it was when the universe was less than a billion years old, or just over 7 percent of its current age.
Out there near Pluto, mysterious Arrakoth may be a time capsule into our early solar system
From Max Planck Society: “There is as yet no explanation as to how a body as flat as Arrokoth could emerge from this process,” says Rezac. ” Note: No one has so far claimed that it an “extraterrestrial lightsail.” Or a space alien’s experiment. What’s going wrong here? 😉
First alignment of Jupiter and Saturn in centuries
Among other sources, the Daily Mail hails it as the Star of Bethlehem.
It turns out! Not only was space junk Oumuamua an “extraterrestrial lightsail” but our whole universe might be an alien’s experiment!
The stuff that comes out of Harvard these days and gets published in Scientific American used to be tabloid news. What has changed?
Will the universe stop making stars any time soon?
We live in a universe that, like it or not, has a beginning and an end. That is better suited to some philosophies than others.
Harvard astronomer still thinks space cigarillo Oumuamua might be “alien tech”
Skepticism makes no headway here so it must in fact be a sort of naturalist religious cult.
Claim: Solar system might once have had two companion stars
But wait! Who’s claiming this? The second author of this paper is Abraham (Avi) Loeb. That rings a bell. Wasn’t he the one who suggested that the obvious space junk Oumuamua was an extraterrestrial light sail? Look, why does the name “Harvard” put all doubts about credibility to rest? Especially in these times?