Monthly Archives: August 2009

From Dune to Waterworld: Part II

Fire and Ice, Venus and Mars, are just beyond the limits of the Habitable Zone in our solar system. How might worlds turn out differently, on the Outer Fringe…. Good question. People have noted before now that Mars and Venus … Continue reading

Posted in Cosmos, Sol Space, exoplanets | 2 Comments

We’re All Africans

African tribe populated rest of the world – Telegraph. Simple really. We were all Africans some 60,000 years ago, then a tribe got a bit of wanderlust and left. More probably a corridor opened up along the coasts and we … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropology, Biology | 1 Comment

Theory of Brown Dwarfs and their kin

[astro-ph/0006383] Theory of Low-Mass Stars and Substellar Objects. Excellent paper on Brown dwarfs with model figures on radius, temperature and luminosity, plus different spectral band strengths, for a number of ages of the model brown dwarfs. In otherwords a major … Continue reading

Posted in Cosmos, exoplanets | Leave a comment

Monoliths of Mars

I personally hope that one of our many probes to the planets will turn up an anomaly that can’t be explained as a natural formation. The weird thing in Saturn’s rings, the white spot of Venus and rectangular craters on … Continue reading

Posted in SETI | Leave a comment

Down from the Trees NOT Up from the Ground

Humans are the only habitually bipedal apes on the ground. However their ancestors and close kin show signs of adaptations to bipedalism going right back to a certain ape from 20 million years ago, Morotopithecus, as illuminated for us by … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropology, Biology | Leave a comment

Nukes to LEO

The old Delta Clipper concept was a very cool outcome from the old SDIO, but NASA and its cronies killed it, either through false promises of “something better” (remember “VentureStar”?) or neglect. However not everyone has forgotten DC-X’s potential and … Continue reading

Posted in Energy futures, Sol Space, Super-Tech | Leave a comment

Captain Future and the Future Men

Back in 1940 a pulp magazine publisher was looking around for some inspiration to create an SF offering for the hungry hordes of teenagers (boys usually) chasing something to read. Thus was born “Captain Future”, in a series of short-novel … Continue reading

Posted in Carnival | 2 Comments

Signs in the Sky II

Update on my UFO… I saw it again, but this time it was a bit more clearly a plane in the sunlight. No wonder so many dodgey videos of UFOs get taken – a featureless point of light in the … Continue reading

Posted in Carnival | Leave a comment

Why Whales Don’t Have Gills… or why we don’t colonise the Sea

“New Scientist” article on the evolution of whales and why they didn’t learn to breathe water… Why Whales Don’t Have Gills …basically it’s too much hard work for not enough oxygen. Whales, as mammals, need a good oxygen supply and … Continue reading

Posted in Carnival | 1 Comment

Signs in the Sky

I just saw a UFO. A bright point of light apparently flying Westwards in the morning Brisbane sky, after I’d watched a turbo-prop flyover from the airport c.9 AM. Now I’m too much of a sky-watcher to think it was … Continue reading

Posted in Belief or Not, Cosmos, Super-Tech | 1 Comment