Friday, September 3, 2010
In recent years NASA's programs for advanced technology has been cut by
more than 50%, robotic exploration precursor missions were eliminated,
commercial spaceflight, student research and robotic exploration were
scaled back or postponed, and University research was sharply curtailed.
In a letter to Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), chair of the House Science
Committee, 14 Nobel laureates, joined by leaders in the space program,
endorsed Pres. Obamas strategy of restoring these programs by abandoning
the Constellation program that would return astronauts to the moon for no
apparent purpose. The Obama plan would position NASA to shift its focus to
astrobiology, which has emerged as the most exciting field of space
research.
Earth went through a relatively brief cold spell about 13,000 years ago
called the Younger Dryas climate episode. It coincided with the
disappearance of the North American Clovis culture, and killed the
mammoths
and other Ice Age mega fauna. The accepted explanation was that ocean
currents in the North Atlantic had been disrupted by a large body of
freshwater emptying into the ocean. Three years ago, however, a story in
Nature by Rex Dalton, reported an alternative explanation involving the
impact of a comet. The key comet evidence was micro-diamonds found in
sedimentary layers from that period. Now comes another group that goes to
the same site but what they find is not diamonds but carbonized arthropod
feces. The first group disputes this evidence and is preparing another
paper. It's not pretty, but it's science.
Send copies to all the pompous nincompoops it will offend. That's it!
They
will sell it for you. BBC News today published their reactions to
Hawking's
new book in which he says that science can explain the origin of the
universe without invoking God. This is "naturalism," the dominant
philosophy of science in the 21st century. It restates the first law of
science discovered by Thales of Miletus in 585 BC: for every observable
effect, there is a physical cause. I don't have Hawking's book, so I don't
know exactly how he said it, but I would have preferred to say: "invoking
God would not help me to explain the origin of the universe. Hawking
explains that the existence of gravity means the universe created itself
from nothing. The first offended pompous nincompoop was Chief Rabbi Lord
Sacks in the Times: "What would we do for entertainment without scientists
telling us with breathless excitement that God did not create the universe
as if they were the first to discover this astonishing proposition." Yes,
and did you learn anything?
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