I found the following quote from actor Stephen Mangan in a copy of yesterday’s Telegraph:

“Science. It is the way, the truth and the light. Not just for its beauty, its ability to deliver us from quacks and astrologers and homeopathy, its ability to illuminate the strange and wonderous place that it this universe, but also for being the gift of accumulated knowledge that mankind continues to hand down through the generations.”

I can’t say I’ve paid much attention to Mangan’s work as a comedy actor in the past, but this quote pretty much sums up the the way I feel about science, and does so in the most succinct and elegant manner.

My mind was stretched this morning by the following passage from an article in h+ magazine:

“They were trying to establish exactly how organic photosynthesis approaches 95% efficiency, whereas the most sophisticated human solar cells operate at only half that. What they discovered is nothing short of remarkable. Using femtosecond lasers to follow the movement of light energy through a photosynthetic bacterial cell, Engel et al. observed the energy traveling along every possible direction at the same time. Instead of following a single trajectory like the electrons on a silicon chip, the energy in photosynthesis explores all of its options and collapses the quantum process only after the fact, retroactively “deciding” upon the most efficient pathway”

According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, the universe we know and love is likely nothing more than a 3D “hologram” produced by physical processes taking place on a distant, 2D surface:

The “holographic principle” challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.

Read the full story at New Scientist.

New Scientist magazine asked six major SF writers for their thoughts on the future of science fiction, and received some interesting replies:

Continue reading “The future of science fiction”

Phil Plait has news of an exciting development in astronomy – the first optical images of planets orbiting other stars.

Yet there they are, proof that our planetary system is not the only one in the Universe… There, with your own eyes, you can see for yourself that other planets exist. They are not Earthlike, not even a little… they are massive, young, hot planets that are probably mostly gaseous and completely inhospitable. But there they are.

Read the full story (and see the pictures) on Phil’s Discover Magazine blog: http://tinyurl.com/6lvxru

If you really want to know, Phil Plait has done the maths. Read the full article on his Discover blog by clicking here.

According to space.com, scientists now believe that massive objects outside our universe are drawing clusters of galaxies toward themselves in a process they’ve dubbed “Dark Flow”:

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can’t be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon “dark flow.”

After examining data from space probes sent to investigate passing comets, researchers at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology claim to have found strong evidence that life began in space.

Full story: www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/articles/life-on-comets.html

In this speech transcript, Charles Stross turns his attention to the way technology’s going to affect our lives over the next twenty years.

“Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight…” Read the full story on the BBC website.