Category: Science
The super-plane without wings that never was (science video).
Somewhere, there’s an alternative reality where the super-plane without wings became the dominant form of air-combat vehicle. The Coléoptère (beetle in French) was a viable VTOL aircraft designed in the 1950s. The main body functioned as a ramjet engine able to propel the aircraft at supersonic speeds, for an atomic-bomber interceptor role. In our slice of […]
How many alien civilisations exist in our galaxy? (science video)
Let’s take deep dive into the Drake equation, otherwise known as the probabilistic formula used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy. Luckily, our man with a brain the size of a planet, Lex Fridman, is on hand to run us through the equation and his take on […]
Can a civilisation with our current technology become a Kardashev-2 level society? (science video)
Kardashev-2 Civilisations are a hypothetical society that can encompass entire stars, tapping billions of times more energy than Earth currently uses (often by constructing megastructures like Dyson Spheres/Swarms). But could a civilisation with Earth’s present technology level also become a Kardashev-2 if we really pushed the boat out? Well, Isaac Arthur has the answer to […]
Colonising Venus with your big-boy pants on (science video).
Here’s an interesting science video on colonising Venus – first, with floating cities in the habital cloud zone, then with a little terraforming to cool the planet down to its original Earth-like state before runaway global warming turned the world into a hellscape. It’s going back to the first science fiction, such as Olaf Stapledon’s […]
Proxima Centauri radio signal intercepted, now under study (news).
Well, this is almost the expected end of 2020… The Guardian Newspaper has just reported in the last hour that a SETI-style scientific initiative called the Breakthrough Initiative, is now analysing multiple tantalising radio signals that originated from a planet, the third world of the Proxima Centauri star system – one of our closest neighbours, […]
Getting around the galaxy: your interstellar navigation primer (science video).
Getting around the galaxy – in reality – is a little more complicated than punching in some numbers into your hyperspace nav unit. Luckily, we have the world-brain that is Isaac Arthur on tap to bring you the skinny on how your starship will actually be able to boost up between star systems. Probably. Does […]
NASA’s space tech still making life better on Earth in 2020 (news).
The 2020 edition of NASA’s Spinoff Report – see https://spinoff.nasa.gov – highlights companies and sectors that have benefited from cooperation with NASA. Whether it’s upgrading air traffic control software or honing the food safety practices that keep dinner tables safe, NASA has worked for more than six decades to ensure its innovations benefit people on […]
SpaceX celebrating as Starship SN8 aces its high-altitude flight test (science news).
Well done, again, Elon Musk, as his SpaceX firm is celebrating as their Starship SN8 aced its all-important high-altitude flight test. It successfully lifted off from and ascended, transitioned propellant, and then performed its landing flip maneuver with precise flap control to reach its landing point. Low pressure in a fuel header tank during the […]
The Wow! Signal’s galactic origin (science video).
Here’s a forty-minute-long science video on where the Wow! signal might have come from, featuring an interview with Alberto Callabero who has just written a new paper which pins the possible origins of the Wow! Signal to a sunlike star over 1800 light-years away. The Wow! Signal, was picked up at the Big Ear radio […]
In Search of Alien Planets (science documentary).
An interesting science documentary about the hunt for exoplanets, called, somewhat fittingly, In Search of Alien Planets.
