Blog Stats
- 2,829,312 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- David on Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- Philosophers on Evolutionary Psychology - Assignment Ninjas on Feminism for Beginners
- Vincent on Trump’s New Cancel Culture: Cancelling Black Voters
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Whether it's ever morally acceptable to lie - Assignment Nation on Feminism for Beginners
- Is Bestiality Actually Wrong? – KO Sweden on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Answer the questions | Philosophy homework help - Quality Paper Writer on Feminism for Beginners
- Answer the questions | Philosophy homework help - Nerd My Essay on Feminism for Beginners
- Grace on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Ludwig Wittgenstein for Beginners
- Dissipation-Driven Adaptive Organization: Is Jeremy England The Next Charles Darwin?
- Was Alfred Lord Tennyson's Canto 56, in Which He Calls Nature "red in tooth and claw", the Product of His Reading Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species?
- Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs's Bizarre UFO Testimony?
- Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
- Question of the Day: What is the Origin of the Yellow "Star of David" That the Nazis Required Jews to Wear at the Time of the Holocaust?
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
- @abrahampiper Yahweh as a frustrated deity, much to be pitied! Abraham Piper's insight here, if thought about as a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 3 months ago
- RT @tbonier: More than 80M votes cast and we're not done yet. Thoughts: - It's too late for an "October surprise" to have a significant imp… 9 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: 1. Want to thank @DanielNewman for using his HUGE platform for this work. I want to clarify what this is. In the voter… 10 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 11 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 12 months ago
Tag Archives: astronomy
Kepler Space Telescope Detects an Alien Megastructure 1500 Light Years Away?
If you read nothing else between now and January, a recent article in The Atlantic Monthly perhaps should be it. (And then, when you start reading again in January, perhaps you should Google immediately the article’s subject for the rest … Continue reading
Does Time Exist? Einstein, Julian Barbour, Lee Smolin, Some Greek Philosophers–And The New Data From The NASA Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
Julian Barbour, Albert Einstein, and Parmenides vs. Anaximander and Lee Smolin. Theoretical physicist, Julian Barbour, believes that what we experience as time passing actually consists of frozen moments of space-time in relation to one another (akin to a flip book). It … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, einstein, lee smolin, NASA, physics, science, time
41 Comments
Life on Enceladus?
It appears that beneath the ice of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, is an ocean with sand resting on its bottom and heat vents reaching 190 degrees. Life around the vents? Possibly. Cassini will get within thirty miles of Enceladus … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, Enceladus, extraterrestrials, life, science, space
Leave a comment
God or the Multiverse: Who or What Banged the Big Bang?
Physicists Andrei Linde and Alan Guth “distorted by gravitational waves.” (HuffPost image.) __________ Cosmic background radiation has long been considered by physicists to be the smoking gun evidence for the big bang, but what about the recent discovery of bent … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, astronomy, atheism, Big Bang, God, light, multiverse, physics, science
4 Comments
The Cosmic Gun Smokes
Imagine positing a theory about the origin of the cosmos, then predicting something odd and otherwise implausible that one would find if the theory were true. Then imagine finding it. That’s what happened. This is via USA TODAY and The … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, atheism, Big Bang, God, ontological mystery, science
14 Comments
Image of Earth from Mars (100 Million Miles Away): What Would Augustine Say?
Image source: NASA (of course). The rover? Curiosity. __________ The fact that this image was taken by Curiosity raises a question: Given that Augustine included curiosity among the vices in his Confessions (Book 10, section 35), would he have approved … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, atheism, augustine, curiosity, Mars, philosophy, psychology, religion, science
2 Comments
Fresh Water! Mars Rover Curiosity Finds 3.5 Billion-Year Old Lake Sediment in Gale Crater That Could Have Supported Life
There was some big news yesterday that you might have missed. It appeared in the science section of the The New York Times (December 9, 2013): [L]ife [on Mars], at least in the ancient past, is at least plausible. John P. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, evolution, Gale Crater, life, life on mars, Mars, SETI, space, young earth creationism
1 Comment
Curiosity at Rocknest
A pretty stunning Mars photo from Rocknest was released by NASA a couple of weeks back. Here it is in the event you missed it. __________ Of course, there’s also something distinctly gloomy about the photo, for it shows a … Continue reading
Two Potentially Life Friendly Planets Discovered in Same Solar System 1200 Light Years Away
Here’s something to fire the imagination. This is from the science section of The New York Times this week: Astronomers said Thursday that they had found the most Earth-like worlds yet known in the outer cosmos, a pair of planets that appear … Continue reading
Astronomer Phil Plait on How to Stop Asteroids
After Russia’s nervy meteor encounter last week, the following TED talk by Phil Plait is obviously important:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged asteroids, astronomy, dinoasaurs, disaster, meteors, science, space
Leave a comment
Genesis 2: Historic Mars News, December 3rd?
NASA plans to reveal news “for the history books” based on data coming from the Mars rover, Curiosity. A press conference is to be held at an upcoming science conference scheduled for December 3-7. This is at Wired: “If it’s going in the history books, … Continue reading
The Farthest You’ll Ever See
NASA recently released the below Hubble image. It’s a high quality (2 million second) exposure of deep space galaxies, the most distant of which are 13.2 billion light years away. What you’re seeing is not our time, but the universe … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, Emily Dickinson, galaxies, Huckleberry Finn, life, NASA, night sky, space, telescopes
1 Comment
Mars, the Book
A miracle. This is not the American Southwest, but part of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater on Mars. The (apparently sedimentary) rocks exposed here are more than three billion years old. Curiosity is about six miles from them. Behold the Book of Mars. We’ll … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astrobiology, astronomy, life, life on mars, Mars, NASA, science, space, wonder
Leave a comment
Mars and the F-Word (Fossil)
Now that Curiosity has landed safely in Gale Crater and directly upon an alluvial fan at the base of Mount Sharp–a mountain likened in its strategraphic layering to the Grand Canyon, my imagination is vexed. I want the rover to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, astronomy, astrophysics, biology, curiosity, earth, Mars, Mars life, planets, science
2 Comments
Curiosity is John Wesley Powell on Mars
Last night, my wife Rachel and I took our two daughters, Lia and Aria, to the Will Geer Theatricum in Los Angeles to see a hippie rendition of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. But though the Will Geer production was colorful and I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, curiosity, grand canyon, john wesley powell, life on mars, Mars, science, space
Leave a comment
On Earth as It Is on Mars: Curiosity Mars Rover is Heading for the Grand Canyon of Mars, and May Provide Strong Evidence Against Young Earth Creationism
Are you curious about Curiosity, NASA’s new Mars rover, scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., this month? Here’s part of a report in the Los Angeles Times about it: Curiosity will take 8.5 months to travel the 354 million … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, astronomy, biology, geology, God, Jesus, Mars, science, young earth creationism
4 Comments
Carl Sagan Day: Three Historians Reflect on Carl Sagan’s Life
For “Carl Sagan Day” (which is today), this extended reflection on Carl Sagan’s life seems fitting to post.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, atheism, carl sagan, carl sagan day, history of science, humanism, Michael Shermer, science, skepticism
Leave a comment
Life Perspective Adjustment: A Recent NASA Image of the Earth and Moon from 6 Million Miles Away
The below image was recently taken of the Earth and moon by Juno, a NASA space probe currently on its way to Jupiter. Seize the dot.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronomy, carpe diem, earth, juno, life, love, NASA, peace, solar system, universe
1 Comment
The Evolutionary Universe 1, Genesis Literalism 0
Question: Five days after the creation of the universe, were there whales? Answer: Obviously not. Why? Because the earth was not here five days after the universe began. And, for that matter, it was not here a billion years after the universe began. The earth … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, astronomy, atheism, atheist, Charles Darwin, creation, evolution, Genesis, jerry coyne, John Macarthur, Richard Dawkins, theology
2 Comments
