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Astronomy

Saturday night: Ex-Pentagon whistleblower warns of UFO 9-11

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. Read More ›

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 teaching to explain the “global origins and historical context” of his theories, documents suggest. The plans form part of the engineering faculty’s efforts to “challenge long-standing conscious and unconscious biases” among students to tackle “Eurocentric” and “white saviour” approaches to science and maths, and promote “inclusive design”. When objectivity, core physical science and core Math are demonised through implicit, euphemistic tagging as racist, it is 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.) Read More ›

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. Read More ›

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. Read More ›

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? ;) Read More ›

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? Read More ›