Recently, Dutch company Mars One has started recruiting volunteers for a one way trip to Mars. The goal is to land the first crew of two males and two females on the red planet in 2023, and another every two years after that. Settlements will already be prepared by robotic missions to go on beforehand. …
Fused words
I’ve come to notice some patterns in some people’s speaking that I find sort of irritating but also interesting. It seems that certain groups of words that are spoken together often enough become ‘fused’ together to be one word in the mind. For example (and once I mention this you will hear it all the …
Conscious babies?
Some new research shows that babies may be having conscious thoughts an memories as early as five months old. I wonder, though, what kind of memories those would be. Our experience with life and the way we interpret things we see is colored so much by our past experiences, that it's hard to imagine how we would see …
On the distractions of video games.
Though I have been doing better in recent years, sometimes I get sucked into a game and waste several dozen hours building a civilization or digging a hole or flying through space. Â After one of these sessions, I always end up feeling a bit guilty. What more productive things could I have done with …
SN 1006 thoughts
Over one thousand years ago, in AD 1006, a supernova lit up the night sky brighter than Venus, and visible during the day for weeks. Today, a new image taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory gives us a deliciously detailed look at this ancient explosion. Looking at this picture, I wonder what surrounding worlds must …
Jonas David 