Science

Like Hawking says:

The 66-year-old British cosmologist, who suffers from ALS and must speak through a mechanical device, believes "if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before."

Happy Earth Day!

President Bush demonstrates that his "compassionate conservative" instincts will lead him to disaster to the very end. He makes a totally unnecessary  speech on climate change that doesn't advocate, thank God, the kinds of policies favored by all three presidential candidates that would lead to economic collapse:

This doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in NASA:

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated.

Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

All those years spent reading science fiction novels about life on other planets, all that nerdy "Star Trek" watching, all those movies -- wasted:

Advanced ground and space-based telescopes are discovering new planets around other stars almost daily, but an environmental scientist from England believes that even if some of those planets turn out to be Earthlike, the odds are very low they'll have intelligent inhabitants.

The three giants of the golden age of science fiction are now gone. Arthur C. Clarke has followed Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov into that unknown territory that all humans eventually travel to but nobody reports back from:

Quick, call Al Gore!

The future looks bright for the Earth

I know it's fun to argue about politics and economics and all that stuff, but let's not miss the significance of the big stuff:

Astronomers say they have found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.

Haven't you always suspected as much?

Consuming low-calorie drinks may increase the risk of putting on weight, according to scientists in the United States.

They have suggested that people who choose diet drinks containing artificial sweeteners tend to overcompensate and consume more calories than those who do not.

The latest victim of the digital age:

I greeted today's news with an instinctive combination of shock, grief, and indignant fury: Polaroid has announced it's ceasing production of its instant film, which will become unavailable after 2009. What will I do when I need more film my trusty Polaroid? What will all those people buying new Polaroids do?