Aliens
esiegel | October 19, 2013"I think one of the reasons that we like conspiracy theories is I think that we like to feel like there is a group of people who are so smart and powerful that they can pull the wool over an entire country or in fact even an entire world's eyes. That certainly makes us feel like somehow we're protected, even if it's not in our best interest." -Jason Ritter
Everyone knows one: the friend-or-relative who simply can't believe that things are the way they are, that someone's out to get them, trick them, or con them in some way. It's where my sympathies for Todd Snider came to a screeching halt in…
gregladen | September 19, 2013No.
First, let me tell you that the Journal of Cosmology has a very checkered history and anything published in it can not be trusted in the same way one might trust counter-intuitive results, provisionally at least, in a legit journal.
An article in the journal indicates that British scientists found stuff way high up at the edge of the out space-atmosphere boundary that must be from comets.
They give the argument that it must be from a comet because they did their sampling of it during a time when comet dust would be likely found in the region (because a comet's remains,a meteor swarm,…
gregladen | January 17, 2013I know, right?
Anthony Watts, of the science-denialist Whats Up with That blog, has got his shorts in a knot because of a post I wrote indicating that he is a boob. He is upset because in a screen shot of him talking about a totally absurd pseudo-scientific claim that should have been rejected out of hand, I failed to include enough of the post to show that he was skeptical about the claim.
Let me be very very clear: This is not a claim to be skeptical about. This is a Teapot orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars claim. A person who has reported debunked claims about alien life again…
gregladen | June 30, 2012Every now and then a news story comes along that makes me want to repost this particular thing I wrote a long time ago. And it has happened again. First, the news story:
National Geographic Channel has run a poll in which they found that 36% of Americans "believe UFO's exist." This is in line with previous results. There are other findings as well, but one item is new. The survey asked people who would do a better job of fighting off Aliens if they come to earth and, well, wanna fight. Obama killed Romney on that question.
So just keep that in mind when you are in the voting booth,…
heathero | December 1, 2010NASA has made a bit of a stir by announcing a press conference for tomorrow at 2pm EST. Scientists are going to reveal some exciting new findings relvent to the search for extraterrestrial life. Some people are anticipating/hoping that they will announce that extraterrestrial life has been confirmed. No one would be more excited than I (I love being able to make silly statements like this) were that the case, but I would bet a lot of money that it is, sadly, not. Don't get me wrong, I am super-excited about this announcement because most likely it is going to deal with extremeophile…
cevans | September 22, 2010
Let's define alien.
Definition number one: unfamiliar. By that description alone, a good 99% of life on this planet is alien. Breathing water, living nestled in thermal vents, stalking prey on the veldt, growing out of the Earth and eating sunlight, without eyes, without legs, with extra legs, color-blind, carapaced, marsupial, with exoskeletons, with jelly for brains, microbial, in a test tube, growing from spores. Not to mention the extremophiles, those nutty organisms that thrive in hellish environments like boiling acid, liquid asphalt, radioactive waste, and under extreme pressure.
I'…
cagapakis | May 18, 2010My silkworms are starting to turn into silkmoths! The first moth emerged from his cocoon this weekend, I hope more are close behind so that he can mate before he dies! I didn't expect him to come out so soon so I didn't have my real camera but I wanted to share my blurry phone pictures of the event:
In industrial silk production they can't use the cocoon that gets left behind because the moth uses an enzyme called cocoonase to chew his way out, breaking the otherwise continuous silk thread. I'm starting to explore ways that I can use this silk though--so far I've only made friendship…
cagapakis | May 17, 2010Are aliens little green men of unpredictable motives? Horrible insect-like face-hugging, chest-exploding monsters? Are they super-smart, super-slimy, super-fishy, body-cavity-probing, disc-flying creatures, searching for planets to colonize and people to destroy as Stephen Hawking warned, or are they something much more mundane? Could there be alien life already on earth, too microscopic, too different to notice? Could life on earth have been seeded from an alien land, with secret messages encoded in our DNA? We've been scanning the sky for extraterrestrial radio signals for years, should we…
vlicata | May 2, 2010While driving to the Astrobiology 2010 Conference last week, I and a graduate student from my lab briefly discussed Stephen Hawking's recent declaration that humans should try to avoid contact with what would surely be hostile aliens. It seemed odd to be attending a conference where a primary aim is finding extraterrestrial life while the news media and the blogosphere was reverberating with Hawking's hawkish alien opinions. What really made the whole situation even more odd, however, was the almost total absence of any reaction to, or even general acknowledgement of Hawking's remarks at…
sa smith | May 2, 2010There was something bothering me about Stephen Hawkings position on aliens.
Some memory that wasnt resurfacing properly.
As I was clicking though Netflix last night, I remembered.
Dear Stephen Hawking--
You dont need to worry about aliens invading our planet to escape their own polluted world. The Rock got Sara and Seth to Witch Mountain safely. See?Race to Witch Mountain - Trailer feat. The Rock | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com
jstemwedel | April 30, 2010
Despite the crush of the closing weeks of the semester, I found a little time to follow the conversation about whether Earthicans ought to welcome a meeting with whatever extraterrestrial life might be out there to meet us, or whether we'd be better off hiding under the bed.
Although the Free-Ride offspring have not followed the point and counterpoint on the best alien life action plan, they're generally more enthusiastic futurists than I am. So, I asked them to dig deep into their imaginations and give us their visions of first contact.
It should surprise no one that the elder and younger…
sa smith | April 27, 2010Abbies deep, dark secret:Dr. Who makes me cry.
Every episode. Every episode I end up bawling for some reason or another. So I always watch it by myself, and I make sure to have some 'Family Guy' or 'Mighty Boosh' ready to cheer me up afterwords.
One of the worst is episode 158, "The End of The World".
God, to think of everything weve created on Earth, good or bad... the very last thing leftover from our civilization is a recording of Britney Spears singing 'Toxic'... Im not shitting you, it makes me tear up just writing about it.
But thats just it, isnt it? Nothing we do is lasting. The…
oracknows | April 1, 2010One of the most persistent and prevalent examples of a modern myth that will not die is the story of Area 51. So ingrained in our culture has it become that nearly everyone (at least in the U.S.) knows what you are talking about when you refer to it. It's been featured in movies as diverse as Independence Day (one of my favorite big budget, brain-meltingly silly end-of-the-world movies about alien invasion) and, of course, Area 51. Forests of trees have been slain in order to publish books on the subject, and cable TV channels serve up near constant stream of documentaries either about Area…
cevans | April 12, 2009
Universe has a firm "No Skepticism" policy.
Don't get me wrong, I dig empirical knowledge. And I like the ancient, Pyrrhonian school of Skepticism founded by Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 B.C.); Pyrrhonian skeptics believed that nothing could be known, not even "this" (i.e the very statement that nothing could be known) and strived for a constant state of inquiry as a source of pleasure. Since absolute knowledge is unattainable, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics felt that their end was: "In opinionatives, indisturbance; in impulsives, moderation; and in disquietives, suspension," which is essentially…
esiegel | February 26, 2008I was thinking about the timeline that brought us here, today, from the origin of the Universe up through the present day. I realized that the most uncertain thing that we know of, the step that we have the least information about, is the origin of life on Earth. All hypotheses about how life on Earth originated fall into three categories:
Abiogenesis, or the idea that life came from non-life, somehow, on Earth.
Life originated elsewhere in the Universe, and was brought to Earth, where it now thrives (e.g., panspermia, or exogenesis).
Life was created or designed by an outside force/being.…