What was Pope John Paul II afraid of? Maybe he was afraid of finding out that he didn’t hold a monopoly on truth. At least Stephen Hawking is a more realistic person.
Famous British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says pope told him not to study beginning of universe
While everyone seems to be pointing to Al Gore’s new film “The Inconvenient Truth” as the be-all end-all about global warming, here’s what real scientists have to say:
Scientists respond to Gore’s warnings of climate catastrophe
Thank heavens this man did not become a US President!
Yes. Yes I do. I would love nothing more than to live a life of 200, 300, or more years. I find life interesting and there are lots of things I might like to try that one lifetime won’t afford me. Apparently so do several other people, and the subject is becoming a hot topic.
Technology Review ran an article last month about Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey, who has a plan on how to execute the necessary research to get the job done. And he’s not the only one who thinks its possible, Ray Kurzweil believes that we will achieve immortality within 20 years. There are of course a few people that think he’s off the mark, but I’ll take it ±20 years.
Dr. Ben Bova also put in his 2¢ a couple years ago with his book Immortality: How Science Is Extending Your Life Span and Changing the World
I look forward to the possibility of living so long, but its going to be a hell of a ride when trying to work out the social implications . You can’t exactly retire at 65 if you live for a couple hundred years.
New Scientist is running an article about a new solar sail method that could push a craft to Mars in about one month. Currently this is just a theoretical concept since the craft would need a push from a 60-megawatt microwave beam, which we currently do not have the capability of creating. Still, it’s a cool concept that could become a reality someday.
On the flip side, the Planetary Society is still on target to launch Cosmos 1, their experimental solar sail, on March 1st, 2005. I can’t wait to see how it performs.
I’m sitting here freezing my ass off, and I start thinking that maybe it’s time for a warmer climate. But where to go? Of course the usual choices to the south might do nicely, but as the universe is slowly getting colder it would only last for so long. So, what the hell, maybe it’s time to skip town and head for another universe.
This has to be absolutley devistating to the professor who worked on the Doppler wind experiment. He put 18 years of his life into it, and someone forgot to turn on the instrument that was to carry out the experiment. Sheesh! You can’t even get good customer service from the European Space Agency!
Professor’s Saturn Experiment Forgotten
UPDATE 02/09/2005:
Looks like they were actually able to recover some of the data.
2 days 16 hours till the Huygens probe begins its descent into Titan’s Atmosphere. God speed…
This bridge is one really incedible engineering job:
I came across this very interesting forum post about the Soviet Unions response to our “Star Wars” program. Lots of good pictures.
A couple of days ago the Cassini probe flew within 745 miles of Saturn’s moon Titan. This is the closest any probe has ever been to that moon. The Voyager probes showed only a hazy disk, but the new Cassini pictures reveal much more. Some scientists thing Titan might even be gealogically active.
I’m waiting with much anticipation for the Huygens probe’s plunge into Titan’s atmosphere. This should happen sometime in January, 2005.
