“I for one welcome our new computer overlords,” wrote former Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings on the answer to his Final Jeopardy question as he conceded his defeat to the IBM supercomputer Watson. No matter who you were rooting for, it was indeed an historic day: February 16, 2011 will mark...
Big news in science and astronomy, so I can’t pass it up. The Keplar space telescope has recently discovered its first small, rocky exoplanet, designated Kepler-10b, located some 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The host star is about 11 billion years old, and unfortunately the planet is...
I just stumbled upon a rather interesting, weird, and wonderful little blog called Curious Expeditions (curiousexpeditions.org). According the site, they are “devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre, and the obscure from around the globe.” While some of the posts are indeed a bit macabre, most (even the...
Wow. We all knew the launch of the Kepler Telescope would likely reveal a few interesting Earth-like planets that might be capable of harboring life. I don’t think anyone expect hundreds of Earth-like planet candidates to be discovered within a year of its operation. But no one, not even NASA,...
Back in January I wrote a small article lamenting the end of NASA’s Constellation Program, but was optimistically hopeful for the further development of commercial space ventures. It has always been my hope that our current president would be a progressive, pro-science president. With the announcement of the termination of...
Well, that is a bit sensational of a title. Nevertheless, the New York Times has this intriguing article about the current state of AI, and the fact that a few computer scientist are getting a little jittery about it. It seems that over the past 5 to 8 years, the...
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the greatest achievement in human history (the Apollo 11 lunar landing), I’d like to direct your viewing attention to the oh-so nostalgic gallery of Robert McCall’s space art for NASA. I remember growing up with these pictures, and others like them, dreaming of...
