Archive for May, 2007

28 new worlds - not!

Yesterday I wrote that the California & Carnegie Planet Search had announced on Monday that they found 28 new planets around other stars. It turns out that only five of the 28 are actual new discoveries. The Monday announcement was really a review of California & Carnegie Planet Search discoveries announced over the past year. […]

Special places

What do Machu Picchu, L’Anse aux Meadows, Hadrian’s Wall, Lady Liberty, Victoria Falls, Mesa Verde, Brugge’s old heart, Macquarie Island, the Ming and Qing Imperial Tombs, Timbuktu, and the Grand Canyon have in common?
They’re all on the UNESCO World Heritage List, that’s what. In all, the List includes 830 unique sites.
Which have you explored? […]

What if dinosaurs still ruled the Earth?

I’m preoccupied with finishing the manuscript of the second edition of Humans to Mars, so here’s another brief pointer to one of my favorite websites.
The Speculative Dinosaur Project is rollicking great fun, not least because its participants don’t take themselves too seriously. It seeks to answer the question in the post title above. On Specworld […]

Carfree cities

I’m a big fan of J. H. Crawford’s book Carfree Cities and the website that goes with it. Crawford updated his online newsletter Carfree Times this past Monday, and it’s worth a look.

Andromeda, the Milky Way, and you

Enjoy the Milky Way while you can. Our home galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy are the main members of the Local Group of galaxies; you can think of them as the anchor stores of the Local Group mall. Unlike Sears and JCPenney, however, our galaxy and Andromeda are moving closer all the time. In a […]

POPclocks

Never mind going to see the latest horror flick at the cineplex - if you want to scare yourself, check out the U.S. Census Bureau’s U.S. and World Population Clocks website.
The U.S. adds a new person every 11 seconds. The world adds a new person every 2.5 seconds. My grandfather was born nearly a century […]

Saving spaceflight

Every so often I become worried about whether we’ll have a future in space. Right now my thoughts run this way because we’re sacrificing so much to go boldly where we went 40 years ago.
The robotic Mars exploration program has been truncated, the Terrestrial Planet Finder and Europa Orbiter have been cancelled, work to […]


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