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why alien moons might just be teeming with life
Another day, another study identifying more potentially habitable worlds in the Kepler data, this time by professional astronomers and volunteers called the Planet Hunters who discussed their planet...
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why space travel can get really, really boring
After spending over 500 days in a simulated spacecraft, a small group of volunteers gave us a worrying peek into the future of space exploration. If astronauts of the near future will have to spend...
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did the cosmological principle get knocked down?
Since the dawn of modern cosmology there’s been an implicit assumption that no particular spot in the universe was supposed to be any more special than the rest. On the biggest scales of all, scales...
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a rocket-launched spaceliner: combining the worst of both worlds
If you ever explored the pages of popular science magazines from the heady days of the Space Race, inspired by novels of the Golden Age of science fiction, you’ve no doubt seen proposed ads for space...
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don’t panic, but the universe can explode at any second thanks to the higgs...
Oh for crying out loud, I’m gone for a Murphy’s Law kind of week and as soon as I can get back to blogging, the universe is supposed to explode. Well at least it’s all uphill from here. I mean if the...
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why it’s sometimes best not to compromise
Pretty much everyone with a TV on Earth knows how the space shuttle looks. Shaped like a fat, boxy plane strapped to a giant orange fuel tank with two rockets on the side, it’s been shown on countless...
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what a black hole’s spin tells us about its past
While many news outlets were reporting a new paper showing that a black hole’s accretion disk can accelerate gas to nearly the speed of light by the event horizon’s distortion of the very fabric of...
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why a flyby of mars may not live up to its intention
There’s been plenty of news coverage regarding the Inspiration Mars mission being funded by space tourist and tycoon Dennis Tito, who says he’s willing to pay whatever it takes to make the manned...
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fly me to the moon and print me an outpost
By now it’s hard to argue that modern 3D printing isn’t one of the hottest and most useful trends in engineering today and in the next five to ten years could well change the balance of powers in...
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are we ready to go roving on europa?
We’ve long known that there was an ocean or something very much like it under the icy crust of the Jovian moon Europa, and that this icy wasteland offers one of the best chances to find life in our...
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good news everyone! we’re actually mostly right about the universe.
Planck’s unblinking eye on the sky far from Earth was supposed to map the cosmic background radiation, the echos of the Big Bang, to figure out whether the previous CMBR maps were right and see how...
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why colonizing another planet really shouldn’t be a reality show
The Mars One project generated a good deal of media attention by promising to fund its efforts to colonize the Red Planet with a reality show which would follow the crews on their one way trip and...
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why mars is not the next apollo
According to Wired’s laundry list of technical and political issues with getting humans to Mars by the year 2030 or so, exploring another planet many millions of miles away won’t be Apollo 2.0 in many...
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the infinitely vast, mandatory multiverse?
At two events of the Wolrd Science Festival in early June, a group of five theoretical physicists debated whether we’re living in a multiverse, and more surprisingly, if our current understanding of...
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black hole interrupted, or rise of the suron
Apologies for the sudden hiatus everyone. In the last several weeks, life has interfered with any possibility of writing and when there has been time for anything, it’s been occupied by Project X...
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why luxury spaceships would be worth their price
Not too long ago, Ars ran an article detailing proposals for modifying the proven and successful hardware built for Apollo for flyby missions to Venus and Mars.None of these plans are new by any means...
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how not to lose your sanity on an alien planet
Despite the flimsy plans and questionable premise of the Mars One project, there are now tens of thousands of people who signed up to possibly die on another planet and only a few of them will be...
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to boldly come where none have come before?
PornHub has a grand vision, a vision of a man and a woman having sex on camera just as they reach the edge of space and feel the grasp of our planet’s gravity loosen for half an hour. It’s a vision...
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hey, what’s a world like you doing in a solar system like this?
According to some people, Pluto never stopped being a planet. While there was acrimony when the new definition was approved by the IAU, after a while it seemed that people got used to the idea that...
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how to doomsday prep like a planetary scientist
Unlike you see in the movies, no one will be rushing to save the Earth at the last minute with no budgetary or logistical constraints when we detect a killer asteroid headed towards us. Instead, there...
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