time travel, parallel universes, and other useful illusions
Is it possible to remember something that never actually happened? In his latest book, “The Magic Of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True,” Richard Dawkins suggests that it is. Could False Memory Syndrome be at the root of most paranormal encounters?
During the Apollo 8 moon mission, astronaut Bill Anders snapped a photograph of our planet rising over the moon’s surface. It was the first image of its kind ever taken. It showed our Earth, a spherical geoid, hovering in infinite darkness. The Sun illuminated blue oceans and swirling white clouds on one side, our lonely …
It’s happened again. Last year, 5,000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead on New Year’s Eve, their lifeless bodies littering the roads and fields of Arkansas. Yesterday, thousands more were found. The original story in January of last year set off a bit of a panic, you could say, a media blitz involving multiple reports of …
Continue reading “More Blackbird Deaths Herald The Dawn Of 2012”
Last week, IBM released its annual “Next 5 in 5,” highlighting the top five innovations they believe will become a reality in the next five years. Their focus in 2011 is on five key areas: Energy, security, mind reading, mobile, and analytics. Wait. Mind reading? Indeed. IBM visualizes a future in which users will be …
Continue reading “In 2017, Machines Might Be Able to Read Your Mind”
NASA is considering a 7-day mission to the Jovian moon Europa, which would commence in 2020 and allow us to explore its icy surface and the potentially life-bearing ocean underneath. Scientists have designed a mission that would involve sending two landers directly to Jupiter’s moon. They would be outfitted in such a way as to …
NASA has discovered the “heartbeat” of what may be the smallest black hole ever recorded. The mass of the black hole places it “near the theoretical minimum mass required for a black hole to be stable,” and it was discovered by measuring the steady “heartbeat” of x-rays emanating from the binary star system IGR J17091-3624. Black …
When something’s on a crash course to the Sun, you don’t expect it to do anything other than burst into a fiery ball of plasma nothingness. Enter Lovejoy. The comet, officially known as c/2011 w3 Lovejoy, was considered “doomed” as it traveled toward our central star. However, as Lovejoy made its final approach at about …