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Solar System

Hope for Titan Ocean Evaporates into Ice Desert
May 4, 2006
Saturn’s moon Titan is a desert of sand made of ice grains mixed with hydrocarbons.  These grains form large fields of wind-driven dunes found over much of the planet-sized moon.  “Titan’s Seas Are Sand,” reported a press release from U of Arizona based on a paper in the May 5 issue of Science (see Perspective […]
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Intelligent Design

Solar Eclipses Unique to Earth, SETI Researcher “Finds”
May 4, 2006
Like many before him, Seth Shostak pondered the significance of total solar eclipses for the one planet with observers to appreciate them.  “OK, I’ve done the math,” the SETI Institute director said for SETI Thursday on Space.com.  “What you always suspected might be true … is true: namely that the best place in the solar […]
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Cosmology

Unconstant Constant Could Challenge Basic Physics
April 27, 2006
“Shifting constant could shake laws of nature,” said Mark Peplow in Nature.1  “From the speed of light to the charge on an electron, the fundamental constants of physics had been assumed to be immutable,” he continued.  “But that comfortable assumption is being challenged.”  The latest challenge is ratio of the mass of a proton to […]
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Astronomy

Astrobiology Ten Years Later: Can It Justify Its Funding?
April 17, 2006
Astrobiology just turned ten years old, but is experiencing growing pains, partly due to a starvation diet.  This “science without a subject” (as George Gaylord Simpson quipped about its predecessor, exobiology) is struggling to justify itself at the Congressional feeding trough.  Proponents tout it as the most important subject in the universe.  Why, then, is […]
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Origin of Life

“Fertile Imagination” Envisions Life on Titan
April 4, 2006
The dramatic landing of the Huygens Probe on Titan over a year ago (01/14/2005, 01/21/2005, 12/05/2005) is finally getting some overdue notice from the media.  The PBS science series NOVA just aired a new program on Cassini-Huygens, “Voyage to the Mystery Moon” (see your local PBS station for rebroadcast times), and Astronomy Magazine’s May 2006 […]
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Astronomy

More Hints at Early Origin of Stars, Galaxies
March 31, 2006
Several articles this month showed further evidence for a growing realization in astronomy: stars and galaxies were already mature at the beginning of the universe (see, for instance, 09/21/2005 entry).  Some recent examples: Spitzer Clusters:  JPL issued a press release stating that the Spitzer Space Telescope, on a “cosmic safari,” found evidence for clusters of […]
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Origin of Life

Dry-Marsers Score Points
March 23, 2006
Those looking for water on Mars in hopes that life would grow in it had some setbacks this week.  National Geographic and Mars Daily reported on work by Gwendolyn Bart (U of Arizona) who found gullies on the moon similar to those on Mars thought to be formed by water.  Since the moon never had […]
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Astronomy

Planet-Making a Lost Art
March 21, 2006
Exclusive  Solar system theorists are trying to reverse engineer the planets without the recipe.  Planets exist, but they can’t get from a rotating disk of dust and gas to a solar system from their models.  They are at a loss to explain Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and a host of Jupiter-class planets around other stars. […]
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Solar System

Stardust Finds Burnt Rock in Comet Dust
March 14, 2006
Major upset in solar system origin theories indicated by minerals that had to form hot.
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Origin of Life

The Astrobiology Sky Is Falling
March 13, 2006
Rocco Mancinelli (Principal Investigator, SETI Institute) made an impassioned plea on Space.com for continued funding of astrobiology projects, calling threatened funding cuts a “national disaster” if not reversed.  And what is astrobiology?  He defined it as “the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.”  His reasons for keeping astrobiology […]
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SETI

Deities for Atheists, or Atheism for Dummies?
March 9, 2006
Michael Shermer wrote a book review in Science entitled “Deities for Atheists.”1  The article reviewed George Basalla’s recent book, Civilized Life in the Universe: Scientists on Intelligent Extraterrestrials (Oxford, 2005).  Basalla (historian of science and technology, U of Delaware) contends that SETI is the continuation of an ancient religious quest.  If so, who are the […]
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Astronomy

Spiral Galaxies Wind Up Into Blurs In Short Cosmological Time
March 4, 2006
Cosmic billions of years have received another challenge from the physics of spiral arms in spiral galaxies.
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Physical Science

Keeping Icy Moons Warm for Billions of Years
March 1, 2006
Each spacecraft that has explored the outer solar system has yielded surprises.  It is common knowledge that Voyager scientists were blown away by the first views of active moons they expected to be cold and old.  Recent discoveries have only intensified the surprises.  Richard Kerr wrote recently in Science,1 Why is there geology on Saturn’s […]
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Biology

Alien Engineering: Is It Intelligent Design?
February 16, 2006
The SETI Institute finished airing a 2-part series on the History Channel called Alien Engineering (it will be rebroadcast on Feb. 18).  The series, featuring SETI Institute scientists Seth Shostak and Frank Drake, asks the following questions: Prepare for an exercise in imagination.  Suppose that an alien spacecraft crashed in the desert and we humans […]
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Origin of Life

SETI Tries to Stretch the Habitable Zone
February 9, 2006
Can life exist outside the circumstellar habitable zone, that ring of life around a star where the temperature is comfy?  “For more than 150 years,” Ker Than wrote for LiveScience, “…this zone has been defined as a narrow disk around a star where temperatures are moderate enough that water on the surface of a planet […]
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