18Oct 2022 by Post

Intelligent Design and Planetary Timing 

astrophysicists, coincidences, complex life, E-ring, earth, Enceladus, fine-tuning, G rings, geysers, habitable zone, Intelligent Design, Jupiter, magnetic field, magnetic fields, Mars, Michael Denton, NASA, Neptune, perturbation, Physics, Earth & Space, plate tectonics, ring particles, Second Law of Thermodynamics, solar system, The Miracle of Man, thermodynamics, timing, Titan, Uranus
Enceladus is an especially fascinating case. Nearly 100 geysers of water ice are currently jetting out of its south pole at supersonic speed. Source
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16Apr 2020 by Post

Is Space Travel Our Destiny?

Abraham Loeb, atmosphere, BIO-Complexity, distance, Hubble Space Telescope, hydrogen, interstellar dust, interstellar ship, Mike Hippke, Milky Way, Neptune, oxidizers, oxygen, Physics, Earth & Space, Proxima Centauri, rockets, satellite TV, solar system, space travel, super-earths, The Privileged Planet, Tsiolkovsky equation, Uranus
A few days ago I published the paper “The Solar System: Favored for Space Travel” in the journal BIO-Complexity. I thought it would be helpful for me to give a short summary of the paper to Evolution News readers. I was motivated to do the study after two papers were published in 2018 on the difficulty of launching rockets from super-earths. Super-earths are the most common type of planet that are being discovered around exoplanets. They are somewhat loosely defined as being larger and more massive than Earth but smaller and less massive than Uranus or Neptune. From observations, super-earths seem to transition from rocky to gas-dominated composition above 1.5 times the size of Earth.  Two Studies Together, the two studies not only showed that it is more difficult to…
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07Jan 2020 by Post

Earth — The Mystery of Our Colorful Home

Apollo 8, Apollo astronauts, beauty, birds of paradise, butterflies, Carl Sagan, color, crystals, Don Davis, earth, Earthrise, emerald, flowers, Frank Borman, gem stones, insects, Io, Jim Lovell, lunar limb, Mars, Moon, natural selection, Neptune, peacock, Physics, Earth & Space, rainbows, reef fish, sexual selection, solar system, space art, surprise, Uranus, Venus
“Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth coming up! Wow, that’s pretty!” These were the words William Anders spoke to the other two Apollo 8 crew members, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, just before he took the now famous “earthrise” picture on December 24, 1968. Since then, other Apollo astronauts and even unmanned lunar spacecraft have taken similar pictures (see above). Notice how Anders reacted to the view of Earth rising over the lunar limb; these were obviously spontaneous reactions to something that caught him off guard. He expressed surprise and noted how pretty it looked. These are expressions of beauty. A beautiful thing surprises us. The fact that the earthrise pictures have been reproduced so many times speaks to their universal appeal. Probably most…
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