Musings on Red Dwarf Planets by Paul Gilster | Feb 23, 2024 | Exoplanetary Science | 17 comments I’m going to start in the Kuiper Belt this morning before going further out, because the news that the Belt may extend much further than expected reminds us of the nature of explorati … | Continue reading
Solar Gravity Lens Mission: Refinements and Clarifications by Paul Gilster | Feb 21, 2024 | Missions | 28 comments Having just discussed whether humans – as opposed to their machines – will one day make interstellar journeys, it’s a good time to ask where we could get today with … | Continue reading
To the Stars with Human Crews? by Paul Gilster | Feb 16, 2024 | Sail Concepts | 71 comments How long before we can send humans to another star system? Ask people active in the interstellar community and you’ll get answers ranging from ‘at least a century’ to ‘never.’ I’m inclined … | Continue reading
Otto Struve: A Prescient Look at Exoplanet Detection by Paul Gilster | Feb 14, 2024 | Exoplanetary Science | 18 comments Some things just run in families. If you look into the life of Otto Struve, you’ll find that the Russian-born astronomer was the great grandson of Friedrich Ge … | Continue reading
What We Know Now about TRAPPIST-1 (and what we don’t) by Paul Gilster | Feb 9, 2024 | Exoplanetary Science | 30 comments Our recent conversations about the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe emphasize how early in the search we are. Consider recent work on TRAPPIST-1, w … | Continue reading
White Holes: Tunnels in the Sky? by Paul Gilster | Feb 6, 2024 | Exotic Physics | 31 comments It’s good now and then to let the imagination soar. Don Wilkins has been poking into the work of Carlo Rovelli at the Perimeter Institute, where the physicist and writer explores unusual … | Continue reading
We noticed recently that the old white hen, our oldest, could not jump up into the roost any longer; we found her lying under it at night, a dangerous position for a hen to be in. Maria researched and discovered a vast and overgrown claw on the hen; she thought that was why the h … | Continue reading
Bud loves the sun, wherever it comes from, however long it lasts. The post Portrait: Bud In The Sun appeared first on Bedlam Farm. | Continue reading
Alone in the Cosmos? by Paul Gilster | Feb 2, 2024 | Astrobiology and SETI | 48 comments We live in a world that is increasingly at ease with the concept of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The evidence for this is all around us, but I’ll cite what Louis Friedman says in his ne … | Continue reading
Globular clusters, those vast ‘cities of stars’ that orbit our galaxy, get a certain amount of traction in SETI circles because of their age, dating back as they do to the earliest days of the Milky Way. But as Henry Cordova explains below, they’re a less promising target in many … | Continue reading
Alien Life or Chemistry? A New Approach by Paul Gilster | Jan 24, 2024 | Astrobiology and SETI | 25 comments Working in the field has its limitations, as Alex Tolley reminds us in the essay that follows, but at least biologists have historically been on the same planet with their … | Continue reading
Good news: warmer weather is coming next week after one final burst of hysteria from the Weather Channel. Watch out when they name a storm; it’s usually a stinker in a different way than the forecast. One more is coming next week, and then it will warm up noticeably. I’m ready fo … | Continue reading
Sue Silverstein has her groundbreaking art program on high drive. Her students happily abandon TikTok to sit for hours painting, weaving, sewing, and brushing. Her students’ art (eight classes) is made from the discarded objects sent to her by the Army Of Good. Here are three mor … | Continue reading
A cat-loving woman in Texas wrote me an angry message this morning daring me to sleep between two hay bales in subzero weather before I thought I knew how Zip might feel in the cold. I was tempted to write back and say I sleep in the barn every night and love it, but I decided th … | Continue reading
At Mansion Meditation Class, I made a pitch for the residents in the class to consider starting daily writing journals to record the essential feelings and events in their lives. I thought it would give them something healthy to recall when they thought about their lives. Since m … | Continue reading
I’m taking on bird photography, which may be the most challenging yet. This isn’t easy. Birds move much faster than I do, and they stay a micro-second, long enough to grab some seed or suet and sail off. To capture them, I have to use a tripod, which is challenging, and curse the … | Continue reading
Data Return from Proxima Centauri b by Paul Gilster | Jan 19, 2024 | Uncategorized | 13 comments The challenges involved in sending gram-class probes to Proxima Centauri could not be more stark. They’re implicit in Kevin Parkin’s analysis of the Breakthrough Starshot system model … | Continue reading
There’s no doubt that flowers make us smile and lift our spirits, so here are two more flower photos; I call it flower therapy. I know the bitter cold is spreading throughout the country; the thermometer is plunging now, even challenging our hardy stoves. If it gets awful, we’l … | Continue reading