Contrary to the spirit of this catalogue of bitches against critical thinking in the school system, I offered to answer a schoolkid’s questions. I do write children’s science sometimes, but am sure glad I don’t teach for a living. Doubtless there’s some state somewhere in the US where I’d get fired for saying this, below, Read More…
Cosmology
You heard about it here first: Statistically, we just know there is life on other planets
Ian O’Neill tells us, “Milky way stuffed with 50 billion alien worlds” Discover (Feb 19, 2011) Making estimates may sound trivial, but it does put the search for ET into perspective. There’s at least 50 billion worlds, which have fostered the development of basic lifeforms? How many have allowed advanced civilizations to evolve?If there are Read More…
Philosophy is dead files: And then the corpse sat up, right in the middle of the wake, and demanded a swig, and …
At Philosophy Now, Christopher Norris offers more evidence that Stephen Hawking should either take courses in philosophy or refrain from commenting on its supposed uselessness: Stephen Hawking recently fluttered the academic dovecotes by writing in his new book The Grand Design – and repeating to an eager company of interviewers and journalists – that philosophy Read More…
So what will you do when your turn comes?
Nathan Black reports for Christian Post “Intelligent Design Proponent Fired from NASA Lab” (Jan. 26 2011). David Coppedge is an information technology specialist and system administrator on JPL’s international Cassini mission to Saturn, the most ambitious interplanetary exploration ever launched. A division of California Institute of Technology, JPL operates under a contract with the federal Read More…
The 4% solution: The ultimate Copernican revolution is “We’re different”?
In “The challenge of the great cosmic unknowns” ( New Scientist 24 January 2011), Dan Falk reviews Richard Panek’s The 4% Universe: Dark matter, dark energy, and the race to discover the rest of reality: As he nears the present day, Panek weaves together two separate yet closely related storylines. In the first, he takes Read More…
More from the “They Thought the Earth Was Flat” file …
antikythera, main hub (Wiki Commons) Here we learn, A mechanical instrument made from bronze and wood in ancient Greece was a calendar for predicting solar eclipses and the dates of the Olympic Games, scientists have discovered. X-ray analysis of the device, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, has revealed that it marked the timing of sporting Read More…
To be fine tuned for life, the universe should have been tuned differently?
At Slashdot “News for Nerds.Stuff that Matters” we learn: eldavojohn writes “A common argument one might encounter in intelligent design or the arduous process of resolving science with religion is that the physical constants of our world are fine tuned for life by some creator or designer. A University of Alberta theoretical physicist claims quite Read More…
Vid: The prequel to the Big Bang?
A friend points to a popular overview of current ideas in theoretical physics on pre-Big Bang cosmology, check out “What Happened Before the Big Bang?” a recent episode of the BBC’s Horizon series. It’s on YouTube in six parts, featuring Michio Kaku, Neil Turok, Lee Smolin, Andre Linde, Roger Penrose, and Laura Mersini-Hougton. What do Read More…
Multiverse: Recent studies suggest that some alternative universes “may not be so inhospitable” – assuming they exist
Well, the supernatural may be “outside the scope of science,” but universes whose existence is not demonstrated, which are imagined principally to get out of a jam with the evidence from this universe, are reasonably doubted, despite thought experiments. The tentative tone here is well justified. It should be used more often.
Do atheists know enough about the concept of God to reject it on rational grounds?
Sometimes I think atheists are simply having arguments with themselves – or, more precisely, with phantoms bred by their own ignorance. It’s easy to see why atheism does not make more headway, even in modern secular society: Once atheists begin to spell out the sort of deity they are rejecting, it becomes clear that they Read More…
End of the world news: Most recent update
We are told by Howard Falcon-Lang, science reporter for BBC news, that the fate of the universe is now revealed by the galactic lens and that the universe will expand forever (19 August 2010): Knowing the distribution of dark energy tells astronomers that the Universe will continue to get bigger indefinitely. Eventually it will become Read More…
Coffee!!: You’re lucky enough if you even find the other sock anyway, as I often don’t
In “Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world?”, Richard Webb explains why we might need a new theory of quantum mechanics: In our day-to-day world, we are accustomed to the idea that two events are unlikely to be correlated unless there is a clear connection of cause and effect. Pulling a red sock Read More…
Stephen Hawking: Either Star Trek or we are doomed
Well, here’s what I see. I see that Stephen Hawking needs a cup of tea, a warm blanket, and a nap.
The Panda’s Thumb Goes After Casey Luskin Yet Again
Casey Luskin, Program Officer in Public Policy and Legal Affairs for the Discovery Institute, has recently published an article entitled ZEAL FOR DARWIN’S HOUSE CONSUMES THEM:HOW SUPPORTERS OF EVOLUTION ENCOURAGE VIOLATIONS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE in the Liberty University Law Review. Luskin continues to be a favorite target of the anti-ID crowd over at The Read More…
The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!
A friend directed me to this fun little article from the Jewish World Review. I’m not a regular reader of JWR, so missed this wonderful little piece from Paul Greenberg, in which he recalls the Sokal Hoax of 1996. For those not familiar with it, the Sokal Hoax was an article written by Professor Alan Read More…