Thinking Harder

Space Station Crew Crash-Lands; Hawking Talks

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Posted: April 22, 2008

"Ballistic re-entry" is a pleasant-sounding euphemism for what happened to Russia's Soyuz spacecraft on Saturday, but from press accounts like this one by MSNBC, it sounds as if the capsule basically crash-landed. What sort of questions does this incident raise for the safety of continued space exploration?

In other space exploration news, accomplished astrophysicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking stated last night that life probably exists on other planets but that it may not be intelligent enough to communicate with us. "Primitive life is very common, and intelligent life is fairly rare," he said, according to the Associated Press. "Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth."

Hawking endorsed human exploration of space, saying, "If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before."

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NOT SO

Idiots are those whose closed minded insular perspectives on life defines a limited scope of facts by excluding the unknown.
We don't know what we don't know. We know what we don't know. We know what we know, but advancements in knowlege will often prove our prior knowledge to be incorrect. Humans know less than 5% of what there is to know in the universe because on 5% of their brain power is utilized on a day to day basis. Geniuses use maybe 10% of their brain power. How do we unlock the 90-95% to allow humans to discover more truth? We don't know. UFOs, Planet X, hollow Earth, ESP, paranormal, warped space, time travel... no solid irrefutable truth, NOT YET. But maybe within our life time. At one time in mankind's recent past, the world was flat, they burned witches, gassed Jews, and travel to moon and Mars were science fiction fantasies. Who would have thunk humans can progress so far in such a relative short span of time?

Tony Lee of CA @ Feb 23, 2009 15:57:17 PM

What the...??

What the heck is this Planet Nibiru/UFO pseudoscience *garbage* doing on a SCIENCE newsblog reader commentary!!??
I give up. My fellow Americans are all idiots.

Julian the Apostate of CA @ May 09, 2008 00:27:38 AM

Planet X - Nibiru - Intelligent Life

*** Google (www.ufodigest.com):
- Enigmatic Fossils - Darwin on Trial
- Modern Science and the Ancient Writings on the Genesis of the Solar System
- The Genesis of the Monkey People and the Genesis of the Anunnaki People
*** NASA AND PLANET X
http://www.australia.to/story/0,25197,23040466-937,00,00.html
*** The book "Planet Eris and the Global Warming" (can be found at Amazon).

cristian negureanu of @ Apr 23, 2008 10:21:26 AM

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Thinking Harder

This blog is the public workshop of U.S. News writer and editor Ben Harder. In articles published in the magazine, he has covered a range of sciences, including medicine, human behavior, prehistory, and evolution. Here, he can explore those and other scientific fields more fully and more informally than is possible in print. He'll share whatever seems noteworthy or potentially useful, and he invites readers to do the same.

WTOP Audio
On Feb. 24, 2008, Ben discussed the link between artificial light and cancer on WTOP radio. Listen to the interview at WTOP News. He again talked about light pollution on WTOP on March 22, exploring its environmental effects.