“I for one welcome our new computer overlords,” wrote former Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings on the answer to his Final Jeopardy question as he conceded his defeat to the IBM supercomputer Watson. No matter who you were rooting for, it was indeed an historic day: February 16, 2011 will mark...
Big news in science and astronomy, so I can’t pass it up. The Keplar space telescope has recently discovered its first small, rocky exoplanet, designated Kepler-10b, located some 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The host star is about 11 billion years old, and unfortunately the planet is...
Happy 2011! Gosh, I’m feeling old. Hopefully, I’ll still make it to the 2060s and beyond, at which point we might… just might… be nearing the technological singularity and develop new bio- and nano-technologies enabling a rapid rise in health and over-all life expectancy. That’s my hope, anyway. To that...
I just stumbled upon a rather interesting, weird, and wonderful little blog called Curious Expeditions (curiousexpeditions.org). According the site, they are “devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre, and the obscure from around the globe.” While some of the posts are indeed a bit macabre, most (even the...
The United Nation is set to appoint Mrs. Mazlan Othman, the current Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (or UNOOSA), to serve as Earth’s official ambassador in the event of extraterrestrial contact. Until now, no one person had been designated for this task, and the exact...
Wow. We all knew the launch of the Kepler Telescope would likely reveal a few interesting Earth-like planets that might be capable of harboring life. I don’t think anyone expect hundreds of Earth-like planet candidates to be discovered within a year of its operation. But no one, not even NASA,...
Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, who might as well be known as “Zahi the Great and Mighty Curator of Upper and Lower Egypt”, now has his very own television show. Premiering July 14th at 10pm on the History Channel, “Chasing Mummies” is basically...
Back in January I wrote a small article lamenting the end of NASA’s Constellation Program, but was optimistically hopeful for the further development of commercial space ventures. It has always been my hope that our current president would be a progressive, pro-science president. With the announcement of the termination of...
I just stumbled across this book on Amazon.com and haven’t been able to stop laughing for the past two hours (I may need to call my doctor… although he might die of laughter too). I love irony. Yes, it is a real book. Excuse me. I must get back to...
It is now the year 2010. Looking back at my childhood, I recall how excited I was about this year. In the 1980s, the year 2010 was envision as the beginning of brilliant era of manned space exploration and scientific discovery. We would have numerous orbiting space stations, a permanent...
