New Star Trek Movie For 2008

Variety have just posted a story confirming that Paramount will be making an

11^th Trek movie for release in 2008.   Biggest news is that Rick Berman

will not be producing as he has been replaced by J.J. Abrams who will

be producing, co-writing and directing.   

 

Planet Riker says:  This would be the Mission Impossible 3 J.J. Abrams,

right?      Well, we all remember how Nemesis went with a similar style

director; but hey, the only direction is up now!   Since Trek X broke the

cycle of good “even number” flicks maybe it’s fitting that Trek XI might

be the first great “odd number” Trek film.  It certainly couldn’t be worse

than Insurrection!

February 26 2006

A Good Moon Hoax Article

Space.com have a good article about the “Top Ten” Moon Hoaxclaims.   

 

It occurs to me that another good argument that might be made would be according

to Occam’sRazor:  that the simplest explanation isthe most likely.  Forexample,

some people dispute thatWilliam Shakespeare really wrote the 37 plays and various

sonnets traditionally attributedto him.  Occam’s Razor would suggestthat as a number

of Shakespeare’scontemporaries say he wrote the plays, none of them is recorded as

disputing the authorship, and theplays were published in his lifetime with his name

listed as the author then inthe absence of compelling evidence we simply must

accept Shakespeare as theauthor.   The main “evidence” that Shakespeare didn’t

write his plays was the he wasinsufficiently educated, that the original manuscripts

no longer exist, and thatdid not have the life experience to have written about such

things as foreign countries andaffairs of royalty.   All this ignoresthe fact that

Shakespeare did have aregular school education, that very few manuscripts of any

work survive from his era andthat nothing he wrote actually suggests any deep

familiarity with other countries orthe affairs of state.  In fact,Shakespeare’s

portrayal of the affairs of stateis far removed from the realities of the time but is

in perfect accord with thenecessities of drama.   Amusingly one ofthe people

suggested as the “real” author,Christopher Marlowe, came from a background of

poverty and had the same sort ofeducation as Shakespeare.  He also

inconveniently died in 1592, over 20years before the production of Shakespeare’s

last play.    You can only imagine the wacky argumentsproduced to support these

alternate Shakespeares.  I can only imagine that at some time in thefuture there

will be people questioningthe “real authorship” of the Beatles’ songs on the

grounds that Lennon andMcCartney didn’t have the musical knowledge to write

them!   In fact, I don’t need to imagine that, itwas suggested back in the 1960s.

 

I mention this because itshows what people can convince themselves intobelieving

despite the obvious evidence.  For example,  in the face of the evidence that many

thousands of people worked on themoon landings, and that 12 men claimed that

they walked on the moon (withfilm and video evidence) and that none of these people

have ever stated that it wasa fake (famous Moon Landing denier Bill Kaysing quit

his job at Rocketdyne in 1963, six years before the first Moon Landingand so can

hardly be said to have workedon the Apollo program which didn’t even exist in 1963)

it is  impossible to even consider that that the MoonLandings were a fake in the

absence of compelling evidence.

February 4 2006

Bush Seeks 1%Increase In NASA Funding for 2007

 

Space.com reportsthat President Bush is requesting that NASA’s funding be

Increasedto $16.792billion.

 

Now to put that intoperspective, Bush is requesting that the Defense

Budget be increased by 5% to $439.3 billion.  That’s a little over 26

times as much.   Next time someone tells you that there’s fartoo

much money spent on Space,you might point that little statistic

out to them. 

October 8 2005

So, Where IsEverybody?

 

Despite decades ofsearching no evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence has so

far been discovered.

 

Some possibleexplanations:

 

1. There is noextra-terrestrial life at all.  Thiswould seem unlikely.  Even if the

conditions that lead to life arerare it would be implausible that life would only

ever have arisen on oneplanet (out of a vast number).  Ofcourse, if you were

a believer in ‘intelligentdesign’ you might be prepared to believe this...

 

2. Extra-terrestrial lifeexists, but we are the only example of intelligence.  Again, this

seems relatively unlikely,unless conditions favouring life did not exist prior to the

formation of our planet, and/orthe evolution of intelligence is incredibly rare.

 

3. Humans are the mostadvanced race of beings, at least in this region of the

galaxy, so no other beings haveyet developed the ability to communicate with us.  On the

surface this might seemimplausible, given the age of the universe, but I suppose

somebody has to be “first”.  

 

4. Extra-terrestrial intelligenceexists but we do not have the means to detect it.   This

could be the case ofextra-terrestrials do not wish to communicate, or if they use

methods that are beyond ourability to detect.  A plausibleexplanation although it

relies on extraterrestrialsbeing indifferent to our existence. Alternatively, extra-

terrestrials might be scattered atsuch great distances that contact between them

and us is unlikely – howeverthis to some extent relies on similar reasoning to

point 3: that extra-terrestrialsare no more advanced than we are.

 

5.  Extra-terrestrial intelligence exists but wejust haven’t had enough time to find it, or for

it to find us.   This is the assumption of the SETI program.  If any of the other

explanations were true there would beno point trying to find ETs. 

 

6.  Extra-terrestrial intelligence is commonplacebut extra-terrestrials have made

efforts to hide their existence.  This explanation unfortunately veers veryclose to

what UFO conspiracy theoristswould suggest.   However if it is truethen efforts

such as SETI would befutile.   This explanation also assumesthat ETs don’t want

us to discover theirexistence, presumably because they think it would be

damaging to our culture.

 

7. Extra-terrestrialintelligence has developed, but those extra-terrestrial civilisations

have all destroyed themselves,or otherwise ceased to exist, in the remote past.

Possible, but not anencouraging thought.

 

Questions:

 

So how long do we keeptrying before we give up?     Ahard question; I suppose

it would be decades beforeanyone seriously gets disheartened about the prospects

of failure.

 

How do we proceed if we dofind something?    I suppose it would depend on what

we find.  A signal denoting intelligence isn’t necessarilythe same thing as getting

a complete download of theEncyclopedia Galactica.   I imagine that there might

be opposition by somepeople to the notion that we should attempt to respond to

a signal, as this wouldthen flag our existence to those beings at “the other end”. 

Whether we should assumethat other beings might harbour malevolent intentions

towards us, we would also haveto expect that they would not be able to make an

immediate response.  If there really were beings capable offaster-than-light travel

in our vicinity then theymight well discover us no matter what we do. If faster-than-light

travel is not possible then wehave nothing to worry about.   Itwouldn’t be worth

making the enormous effort totravel here.    Additionally, we probablywouldn’t have

anything of value for a moreadvanced civilisation to exploit.    Notethat in “Star Trek”

type scenarios almost  all the races are roughly at the same stageof development,

which is extremelyunlikely.   On the other hand, if avastly more advanced race

(suchas the Borg) really existed it is unlikely that they would have a dependenceon 

‘assimilating’or conquering other cultures.   Thenotion that we would have anything

of value, eitherbiologically or technologically, to a culture far more advanced to ours is

rather unlikely.

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October 3 2005

If It Looks Like aPlanet, and Smells Like a Planet, Then…

 

It would appear that therecently discovered 10^th planet, informally dubbed “Xena”,

really can be awarded planetarystatus now that it has been revealed today that it

has a moon:

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September 28 2005

Back To The Moon.  Why?Because If You Want to Go Anywhere You Have To

Get To The Moon First

 

NASA announced their Lunar Exploration Plans,currently scheduled for 2018,

last week.   Why the excitement over something that wasalready done over

30 years ago?  Well, to understand the purpose of the returnto the Moon, you have

to consider what comesafter that.   Mars and beyond.

 

Of course, NASA’s plansmay prove to be redundant if private enterprise gets there

first.   NASA could have a brand new ‘space race’ onits hands.   We can only hope.

 

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September 10 2005

New Company Aims ToColonise Mars

New company Four Frontiers hopes it will be possiblyto establish a privately run

Marscolony by 2025.   I note the quote byGene Roddenberry on the front page of

their web site.

 

Keep the faith, siblings!

 

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September 9 2005

New Sunlike Star Has A Proto-Planetary System That EerilyResembles The

Early Solar System

 

News of a ‘baby solarsystem’ around a star almost exactly the same size as the

Sun has been reported at space.com.  Most interesting is the evidence that this

planetary system appears toalready have several gas giant planets at distances

corresponding precisely to our ownsolar system.