Articles about astronomy and space exploration.
In October 2012, I shared how astronomers had announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our Sun. Now a decade later, the planet count in Proxima Centauri system potentially has been raised to three with the discovery of what appears to be another smaller planet. …
Third planet discovered orbiting Proxima CentauriRead More »
On Wednesday, February 26, 2014 — one day after the release of his new book, The Future of the Mind — theoretical physicist Michio Kaku1 spoke to a standing room only audience at Milwaukee’s Boswell Book Company about the future of the human mind. …
Michio Kaku explores the future of the mindRead More »
Milwaukee area educators Jean Creighton (Director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and Kathy Gustavson (science teacher at Nicolet High School, Glendale) have been selected by NASA as one of 12 Airborne Astronomy Ambassador teams for 2014.
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Two Milwaukee educators chosen as NASA Astronomy AmbassadorsRead More »
The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium took place this past Tuesday through Thursday (February 4–6, 2014) at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
NIAC seeks innovative, technically credible advanced concepts that could one day change what is possible in aeronautics and space. The organization grants fellowships to individuals who are developing such concepts — NIAC Fellows represent academia, the private sector and government research labs.
The 2014 symposium featured progress presentations from current and new NIAC Fellows. Their updates addressed such diverse research as revolutionary approaches to exploration, novel methods of propulsion and ways to support humans in extreme environments. …
Are humans alone in the universe?
The Drake Equation is an attempt to summarize the factors that determine humans’ ability to communicate with an extraterrestrial civilization. This is accomplished by providing a simple formula to calculate the number of civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy from which we potentially could receive a signal.
Shortly after humanity’s first search for an extraterrestrial radio signal (conducted in 1960 at Green Bank, West Virginia — a search known as “Project Ozma“1 ), the very first scientific conference on searching for extraterrestrial intelligence took place. Astronomer Frank Drake (who was behind Project Ozma) came up with a simple equation — now called “the Drake Equation” — to frame the agenda of that 1961 conference. …