The last Australian opposition leader to tell the truth and lay all cards on the table before an election was John Hewson in 1993. He lost an “unlosable” election that took place at the end of a deep recession and against a deeply unpopular government. Since that election, every opposition leader’s strategy has been to […]
Bad, bad astronomer (Convergence of infinite series)
[19th Jan 2014: An update to yesterday’s rant – After significant outcry from mathematically minded readers everywhere, Phil Plait has very publicly admitted his mistakes and posted clarifications to the original article. So full respect for the bad astronomer has been restored. Let this be a lesson to all. ;)] — Oh dear. One of […]
Book Review: Wolf Hall
We’re all familiar with the Catholic reverence for Saint Thomas More and the celebration of him as defender of the faith against a king who pursued ecclesiastical reform for purely personal reasons. As with most perspectives of “the establishment” – and that establishment in particular – this view has always sat a bit uneasy with […]
Life in the Solar System Part 5: Meteorites as Transports for Life
Antarctica is an important region for meteorite discovery, because meteorites are typically well preserved by the icy conditions. Exploration of the Antarctic by scientists has accelerated in the last few decades; some of this research has been motivated by the search for meteorites, and research teams regularly travel to Antarctica exclusively to search for well-preserved meteorites. Several Antarctic meteorites are […]
Life in the Solar System Part 4: Possible Habitats for Life
The only known habitat for life is Earth. There are many other possible habitats for life in the Solar System. We can apply the knowledge we have of the durability of life on Earth in order to determine limits for conditions that may support life as we know it. Observations that have been made of the Solar System […]
Life in the Solar System Part 3: The Origins of Life
The main theme of this series of blog posts is the premise that despite the study of life being an extremely fertile area of research within science, it is actually still as messy as the proverbial dog’s breakfast. Many questions remain open and debate over fundamental issues is common. This state of affairs is summarised well by the following […]
Life in the Solar System Part 2: How Rare is Life?
Now that we’ve defined that life is “a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian Evolution”, I’d like to look at the question of how rare life is. We know that life originated once (we’re here). Beyond that, we don’t really know much. Even though all known Earth Life evolved from a single ancestor, life […]
Life in the Solar System Part 1: Defining Life
Welcome to the inaugural post. I won’t waste time on pleasantries – we’ll get straight into the first topic. Life exists on Earth (I think we can be pretty sure of that). But I find the possibility that life exists elsewhere in the Solar System intriguing. It has been variously speculated that microbial life could […]
Recent Comments