Comet 67P Only Looks Gray, It’s Actually Black
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission has now released the first narrow-angle color composite image of Comet 67P – taken through a set of red, green, and blue filters.
Life, Unbounded
Discussion and news about planets, exoplanets, and astrobiology
Space
Big Mirrors, High Hopes: Extremely Large Telescope Is A Go
In astronomy, bigger is almost always better. The size of a telescope’s aperture (or primary optical element) not only determines how many pesky little photons it can capture, but also the ultimate resolution of the image that can be formed...
Space
Alien Yet Familiar: Following Curiosity Across Mars
822 Martian days after landing, NASA’s Curiosity rover, carrying the Mars Science Laboratory, continues on its extraordinary journey across landscapes that are both utterly alien, and remarkably familiar...
The Cusp of Knowing and the Evolution of Science
In a nice piece on his Scientific American blog ‘Cross-Check‘, John Horgan recently gave me some much appreciated praise, whilst provoking discussion on a contentious subject – whether or not big science as we’ve known it ‘may be coming to an end’ (John’s words)...
Space
That Comet? That's You, 4.5 Billion Years Ago
As the European Space Agency’s Philae lander bounced and settled onto the surface of comet 67P/C-G’s crumbly nucleus it wasn’t just space exploration, it was time travel...
Space
The Surreal Task of Landing on a Comet
On November 12th 2014 the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission will eject the small robotic lander Philae on a trajectory that should take it down to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (or 67P/C-P for short)...
Astrobiology Roundup: Planets, Moons, and Stinky Comets
Scientific discoveries across all fields just keep coming and coming. Here’s a small assortment of goodies from the past couple of weeks.
Space
Failure to Launch Is Always An Option
Do not try this at home. A Russian Proton-M launch goes wrong – and it can happen to anyone (wait for the shock wave). A rocket is a controlled bomb.
Space
Complex Life Owes Its Existence To Parasites?
Is complex life rare in the cosmos? The idea that it could be rests on the observation that the existence of life like us – with large, energy hungry, complicated cells – may be contingent on a number of very specific and unlikely factors in the history of the Earth...
Space
Recent Lunar Discoveries Reveal a "New Moon"
Think you know about the Moon? I did, but then I started reading ‘The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation‘ (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and realized that my knowledge amounted to a teensy scrap of lunar dust...
Blog Index
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Anthropology in Practice
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Cross-Check
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Roots of Unity
Mathematics: learning it, doing it, celebrating it.
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Adventures in the good science of rock-breaking.
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The Artful Amoeba
A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
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Voices
Exploring and celebrating diversity in science.
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