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He/she is from another race/planet!

5 days ago on Inside the private push for consumer space travel

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They looked at the decay of radioactive atoms found in the water. It is pretty interesting, there are various different methods to date something using physics. (: you should google it or ask your local physics teacher/science museum teacher or something like that.

8 days ago on Oldest cache of water on Earth may give clues to early life forms 1 reply 1 recommend

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Why would someone be offended by this question?
It is not offensive, it is like asking “Can science prove whether or not Unicorns are real?” or “Can science prove whether or not [insert whatever you want here] is real?”.

“Whether or not god is real” is an objective question about the universe, and any objective question about the universe should be answered, and the answer will be independent of your opinion and your likes.
And if you are ever offended by a fact about the universe, the only thing you can do is move to another universe, where the laws are philosophically more pleasing.

So I don’t see how this question could be offensive, or how an answer to the same question could be offensive.
Maybe you could explain it better, why and how exactly do you feel offended? So that I could relate to your situation.

12 days ago on Something Josh said on TheVergeCast

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Indeed.

19 days ago on 90 Seconds on The Verge: Adobe, Xbox, and Star Wars games

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I think what he meant is “But expanding the zone would still increase the chances (in our charts) of life existing elsewhere in the universe.”

I think he is referring to our official estimates of “how probable life is”, not to the actual chances.

23 days ago on Life on Venus? Scientists rethink the idea of 'habitable' planets 1 recommend

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Jarvis_,

Carbon is the most abundant thing that can bond and form physical life in the universe, and it can bond with pretty much everything it wants, and more: It’s bonds are not permanent, which allows for lots of experiments, which are fundamental for the evolutionary process.

Life could, physically, be made of other stuff, but we look for carbon based life because it would be easier, more probable. And as it would be our first time finding life, we’re going for the easiest possible path.

As we all know, probability is not law, it’s probability. Even if I have a chance of 1/6 of getting a 3 in a dice, I can still get seven 3s consecutively. But if we have to bet, we’ll go for the most probable, which is carbon.

And about water, well, we have one sample of life, and in our sample water is extremely helpful to unbound things and to make all sorts of “experiments” easier. So water would always be useful for evolution.
There could be, of course, highly specialized forms of life, as there are here at our planet, who don’t need water, and are not carbon based, but as we understand chemistry, it would be less probable, so money is best invested looking for water+carbon.

As a side note, I should say that, liquid water, and heat, don’t exist only near stars also because friction can cause heat (it is, actually, from a particle physics perspective, what always causes heat), and it is possible to find liquid water in moons, such as Europa.
(But it would be a lot harder to look for moons than planets).

And that there could be water and life in caves, in planets like Mars, for example, because it is hotter in there. But then again, it would be very hard to look for water and life underground, from Earth at least.

TL;DR Version
We’re going for what is more probable and cheaper. We know it IS (physically) possible to have lots of forms of life, and we’re sure Nature is a hell of a lot more creative than us. But money is not infinite, and it is our first time, so we’re going for the highest probability based on the information we have, what else could we do?
(Thanks for reading (: )

23 days ago on Life on Venus? Scientists rethink the idea of 'habitable' planets 1 reply 6 recommends

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Bravo, Paul. Bravo!

Thank you very much for this, and for all your pieces throughout the year. I learned a lot! (:

24 days ago on I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet

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Before that we need to take a look at Martian caves, because we don’t yet know if there is life there. We know there is liquid water (or at least liquid something) underground, and here at our caves there are pretty creepy crazy living beings, who breathe CO2 and produce H2SO4 (Sulfuric acid), and who don’t get any sunlight at all.
And if there is liquid water deep inside mars, there could be what we today call “extremophiles” there.
(I say “what we today call” because we are actually the extremophiles, because the early inhabitants of the Earth lived in conditions we call extreme, and that was normal for them, so for them our conditions are the extreme ones, and if you look at it chronologically, they’re the normal ones and we’re the extreme ones.)

So we would have to check it out, because nobody wants to be the guy who disrupted the amazing “Mars’ ecosystem” if there is one.

Ps.: I’m most definitely not a biologist, nor am I an exobiologist/astrobiologist, so don’t take my word for it. But I don’t think it would be so simple, or fast, to Terraform Mars.

25 days ago on So...let's talk about going to Mars forever

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Trusting physics is fine, but you’re putting your trust in human engineering when you do something like this.

You forgot the last part of what I said: “because I’d be able to read and make the calculations myself. And physics works.”
I’d be able to check by myself physics calculations involved, but not engineering blueprints, so there you have a point. And there is a history of engineering problems, we know that. But going to mars is something we made a few times, so the “engineering” part of the engineering is safe. The dangerous “engineering” here would be the new physics we would have to apply in order to get a heavier object to safely land, and that I’d be able to check as well (it would be hard and not fun, but I could).

Anyway, I’d probably not doublecheck everything; I don’t think any human being could. It’s a lot of data.
But I’d have to trust all the capable scientists involved. And, I bet there would be a lot more “doublecheking” than there is in building a car. Of course, it could blow up and kill everyone, I just don’t think the chance is high enough, otherwise it would not be allowed to takeoff.

(Ps. I think by ‘engineering’ you mean mechanical stuff, right? I’m not sure because technically any science with a direct objective to “build something” rather than “study something” is Engineering.)

25 days ago on So...let's talk about going to Mars forever

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Why not? Serious question. Can someone find an ethical reason why we shouldn’t bring an extinct animal back?
(A reason other than “They would destroy the environmental balance wherever we put them”.)

And about the problem of ruining an ecosystem, I think there is not way of introducing a new species to an environment without it having a significant impact there, right? Any species we bring back, to a place where there is life already, will disturb that ecosystem, because animals eat and kill other animals, unfortunately it just happens, either directly (by eating or fighting) or indirectly (by eating other animal’s food).

The only right thing to do is to terraform Mars, introduce thousands of new (extinct) species there, and make a reality show! =D
Although, once again, it would be very violent, because some species would probably go extinct even considering the hypothetical scenario of having an empty Earth so populate.

The whole thing is disturbing to me, because no matter what we do, there will be animals dying of starvation, being “murdered” by other animals, etc. Nature is violent, but also beautiful.
I’m not sure what my answer is yet.

28 days ago on Jurassic Park: An Open Discussion of Playing God

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No steaks? Think again.

28 days ago on So...let's talk about going to Mars forever

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It might be that Google bought motorola exactly for its patents. Google could be thinking ahead. Way ahead.

If motorola will pay itself in 3000 years, then in 6000 years Google will have a 100% profit out of thin air! (+ patience, a lot of patience.)

29 days ago on Does anyone know why Google bought Motorola? 2 replies 3 recommends

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I said Hobbes?! I meant Sternberg. Sternberg and Gardner.

about 1 month ago on Dangerous minds: new research unravels the brains of psychopaths

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As an addition to that, correlation does not imply causation. And it is (from what I’ve heard and read) a very complex area, and many different situations can lead to the same behavior. The brain wiring that causes Synesthesia for example, can also (in subtly different situations) mean you’re a genius, or a very creative person. And being left handed can also be a thin line between various bad conditions or high “intelligence”.

And my favorite example, the one I’ve read more about, is highly “intelligent” people (“intelligence” as defined by Hobbes, Gardner, etc.), such as overendoweds. (Or “gifteds”, “Super Endoweds”, for the lack of a better word to describe thousands of pages of research I’ve read on it…)
The brains of such people work, well, ‘differently’. And that may give the impression that sometimes they are psychopaths because of logical and different approaches to situations (as looking for a solution instead of worrying about a problem, thus suggesting they’re not “computing” their feelings) or that they’re bipolar because of the sensibility of their senses.
(Because of high sensibility about everything, in order to not get hurt they sometimes develop an amazing level of self control, and that + high concentration capabilities = some fascinating cases in which it is very hard to “diagnose” something or even understand their minds). (And the same goes to very intelligent people in general).

It is very nice though, to see that experiments are being conducted nonstop. When it gets to a level where it can be used in the legal system, it’ll be great.
An even more fascinating point are the moral questions that come with advancements in neuroscience.

about 1 month ago on Dangerous minds: new research unravels the brains of psychopaths 1 reply