The TESS telescope is a shiny little thinking metal tube, drinking the light of 20 million stars in our cosmic neighborhood. It launched last year on a voyage to identify planets that look like this one—a miraculous feat, if it succeeds. Among the panoply of planets found so far, there is positively no place like […]
SETI
David Grinspoon is a comparative planetologist and an astrobiologist. He’s also a big book nerd, and his love for both fiction and nonfiction are proudly on display in his own new book, Earth In Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future. Grinspoon’s book uses insight from the study of the other planets in our solar system […]
We here at LWON have been all over this and we (ok, I) agree completely with AG: astrobiologists out-compete evolutionary psychologists for getting the most publicity out of the least evidence. Also I just ran across an interesting but illogical argument: if the principles of physics, chemistry, and geology “work beyond our planet,” why not […]
Heather asked about the SETI telescope at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, whether having its budget zeroed out mattered in any way. Had it ever found anything? Could it be re-purposed? No it hasn’t and yes it can, but I don’t care because, ma’am, I am seriously running out of patience with the whole enterprise. […]