Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
There has been a bit of media flutter about the NASA Press Release entitled …. “NASA to Reveal New Discoveries in News Conference on Oceans Beyond Earth“. Yes the grammar of that press release title sucks, and so no, that NASA News Conference will not be taking place on an alien ocean. I must confess I am … Read more
A press release issued by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has generated a considerable quantity of media fodder. Stories have been popping up all over the place about the idea proposed, and some highly reputable sources have been joining in. For example New Scientist magazine jumped into the fray with this … Could fast radio bursts really be … Read more
NASA wonders if anybody out there can help them to name the recently announced seven earth sized planets that have been observed in orbit abound Trappist-1 … https://twitter.com/NASA/status/835199600709468160 Now to be clear, this is not a serious suggestion but instead is just a bit of fun (and publicity). Some random twitter user will not be … Read more
Often we can become trapped in binary thinking that blinds us to other possibilities that are potentially better answers. The classical example is that when faced with a glass that contains exactly 50% water you divide the world up into the optimists who see a glass that as half-full and the pessimists who see it … Read more
Regarding the question in the title, “How do we know how many Galaxies exist in the Universe?”, the short quick answer is that we do not have a precise number, instead what we have is an estimate that is based upon observational data collected by Hubble. There have been recent stories within the media regarding … Read more
Within the UK there is a political party known as UKIP (or UK Independence Party). It has developed a bit of a reputation over the years as a bastion of some rather odd ideas and so this is all about the latest example of such weirdness. A previous and rather famous example was David Silvester, a Ukip councillor for … Read more