• D-Brief notes the apparent discovery by Hubble of water plumes from Europa.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper noting different solutions to the mystery of Boyajian's Star.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos of deserted Pripyat in Ukraine.
• Joe. My. God. notes that 80% of Chicago police dashcams were disabled by the police.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money and Noel ( Read more... )

• The Big Picture shares photos of motorbike racing in South Africa.
• Centauri Dreams considers the stellar weather that planets of red dwarf stars might encounter.
• Dead Things looks at two genetic studies which complicate the narrative of humanity's spread.
• Dangerous Minds shares the infamous anti-disco night of 1979 that spelled the end of the genre in ( Read more... )

• The Dragon's Gaze looks at Proxima Centauri b, its atmosphere and its geomagnetics and its history and, of course, its potential habitability.
• The Dragon's Tales wonders about the origins of Titan's channels.
• Torontoist notes mental health care issues for those without a family doctor.
• The Volokh Conspiracy notes European Union rulings on linkage.
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I've been excited by the apparent discovery of Proxima Centauri b, reporting the first rumours of the world's discovery and then sharing (among other things) two news round-up postsMy excitement is well-justified: In a best-case scenario, Proxima Centauri b could be as close to being an Earth-like world as we could reasonably imagine. It could be a ( Read more... )

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The first confirmation I had of the discovery of Proxima Centauri b came from James Nicoll, who shared the European Southern Observatory's announcement that the Pale Red Dot search program bore spectacular fruit.

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Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy, Jennifer Ouellette at Gizmodo, and Franck Marchis at the Planetary Society Blog provided among the first ( Read more... )

• News of Proxima Centauri b spread across the blogosphere yesterday, to Discover's D-Brief and Crux, to Joe. My. God., to the Planetary Society Blog, and to Centauri Dreams and The Dragon's Gaze.
• blogTO notes the impending opening of Toronto's first Uniqlo and suggests TTC buses may soon have a new colour scheme.
• The Dragon's Gaze discusses detecting ( Read more... )

In astronomer and writer Chris Impey's 2010 Talking About Life, an anthology of his interviews with leading experts in astronomy and related fields about extraterrestrial life, there was a passage in his interview with Debra Fischer that caught my attention for its alternate history potential. Solar systems, including our own, are apparently as ( Read more... )

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• blogTO writes about the impending installation of snooze stations across Toronto.
• Centauri Dreams considers the astrobiological implications of stromatolites.
• D-Brief notes that Titan has methane-flooded canyons.
• The Dragon's Gaze looks at the Kepler-444 system and notes studies of HR 8799.
• The Dragon's Tales notes an assassination attempt against a ( Read more... )