And The Word Became Stardust

Why don’t they do SETI?

This article at SPACE.com asks the question: why don’t other nations get into the search for life on other planets?

The suggested answer? The good ol’ American frontier spirit. We just can’t get over our need to look for stuff, to go to the next place.

Or maybe the Europeans are into the “Rare Earth” hypothesis as I am.

Origami in space

Via Slashdot…

The University of Tokyo and the Japan folded paper (origami) plane society hopes to fly a paper airplane from the International Space Station to Earth. The plane will be 30-40cm long and weigh about 30 grams. A University of Tokyo research group has successfully designed a special paper plane model that was able to withstand a Mach 7 high velocity stream for 10 seconds. The experimental plane was about one-fifth the size and withstood temperatures as high as 300C without burning up.

Good gravy. Story here.

Rare Moon

BBC NEWS: “Earth’s Moon is ‘cosmic rarity’”

Well, sure.

This was realized theoretically a long time ago but now it has observational legs.

The Moon was created when an object as big as the planet Mars smacked into the Earth billions of years ago.

The impact hurled debris into orbit, some of which eventually consolidated to form our Moon.

The Astrophysical Journal reports that just 5-10% of planetary systems in the Universe have moons created this way.

“When a moon forms from a violent collision, dust should be blasted everywhere,” said lead author Nadya Gorlova of the University of Florida in Gainesville, US.

“If there were lots of moons forming, we would have seen dust around lots of stars - but we didn’t.”

We’ve got a big moon that stabilizes our axis of rotation. We’ve got a big magnetic field and thick atmosphere that deflects most of the deadly radiation coming from the Sun and parts elsewhere. We wouldn’t be here without any of this.

So take some time this Thanksgiving to thank God for the great place we have to live in the universe.

Babies Have Innate Social Skills

MSNBC.com — Even babies judge their companions

Interesting. Fascinating.

A quote from the article:

Babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk, according to a study by researchers at Yale University’s Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday’s journal Nature.

The infants watched a googly-eyed wooden toy trying to climb roller-coaster hills and then another googly-eyed toy come by and either help it over the mountain or push it backward. They then were presented with the toys to see which they would play with.

Nearly every baby picked the helpful toy over the bad one.

The babies also chose neutral toys — ones that didn’t help or hinder — over the naughty ones. And the babies chose the helping toys over the neutral ones.

Before anyone says anything, I’m not in the slightest using stuff like this to justify infant baptism. It is interesting to be seeing babies “choose” things, however. Hmmm… (j/k)

Blech

Writing papers blows… it’s been forever since I had to do this…