07 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 Human Space Exploration is Overrated

Perhaps what we should do is genetically engineer new forms of Intelligent life that can survive the stress of space yet still conduct scientific experiments. Actually, such creatures have already been made in the lab. They're called robots. You don't have to feed them, they don't need life support, and they won't get upset if you don't bring them back to Earth. People, on the other hand, generally want to breathe, eat, and eventually come home. It's probably true that no city has ever held...
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We don't remember most of the astronauts, but we do have favorite space photos taken by all the robots we've sent out into the solar system.

12 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 The Origin of Life is Speculative

The question of the origin of life is essentially speculative. We have to construct, by straightforward thinking on the basis of very few factual observations, a plausible and self-consistent picture of a process which must have occurred before any of the forms which are known to us in the fossil record could have existed.
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We have no fossil record of the origin of life, we are left only to attempt to recreate it in the lab, but we won't know if we got the process right.