Jack Hagerty Says:
June 29th, 2007 at 11:21 pm Skepterist Says: “Can y’all combine your estimates into one analogy? In other words, if the stars were as small as a molecule (you didn’t say which molecule), how big would the chamber be if it were scaled to enclose the entire Milky Way? Or alternatively, how big would the stars be if the galaxy were ( Read more... )

New measurements of Mars' south polar region indicate extensive frozen water. The polar region contains enough frozen water to cover the whole planet in a liquid layer approximately 11 meters (36 feet) deep.

From
( Read more... )

Life: it has to be everywhere it could possibly be.

Why? Recently they’ve discovered that bacteria can be blown away from Earth on the solar wind. So that means it’s had four billion years to find places suitable for it throughout the solar system, so expect to find it on most of the moons of the gas giants, as well as in Martian subsoil.

But that’ ( Read more... )

Nerd Corner.

I recently was given a model of a Klingon D7, a spaceship from the original Star Trek series. I was happy to accept such a gift, as I’ve fond memories of the 60’s series and I make kit models from time to time. This one also has fairly few pieces, so it was fun, not frustrating.

Only question was the colour. From my dim memories ( Read more... )

Let’s look at oil, shall we? Not only does it run our cars, but our food chains depend on it, as do many of our building materials, clothing, electronics, cable insulation, product casings,  power generation, - anything that uses plastic.

So what is life going to be like without oil? It depends on what we can substitute for it.

Power ( Read more... )

7. Do you think there is any hope for the future?

Define "hope".

The species Homo Sapiens is unlikely to become extinct any time soon, although I think a huge population crash is plausible. Indeed, if we can't sustain current technologies, it's inevitable. We can't feed 10 billion people without modern chemicals; weed killers & insecticides that ( Read more... )

If anthills or termite colonies were sentient in a way that was comprehensible to humans, they'd have specialist castes for carrying and receiving messages between nests. this would probably be based on smell/pheromones, tho it could be based on movement - eg: bee dances ( Read more... )