Video Clip: The Fermi Paradox

This video on the Fermi Paradox by Kurz Gesagt is a thought-provoking piece on the absence of other known civilizations in our galaxy.  He also talks about the impossibility of travel to any other galaxies outside our cluster due to increasing distances. It is a very sobering piece, though I think we have plenty to explore in our own neighborhood, particularly if the space is available for settlement.  

Unless, as he postulates, a Type III civilization that controls the entire Milky Way is zapping potential civilizations that rise to threaten the neighborhood.  Think of it as the opposite of Star Trek where the Vulcans step in and help an emerging Earth.  This bleak scenario is close to ideas expressed by Dr. Hawking, where he noted we could get into trouble as we become a space-faring civilization.  Plenty to ponder as we move forward with SETI and space travel.

Mr. Gesagt has other informative video, including videos on the big bang and our moon.  I recommend you take a look at these videos as well. 

Away from the Politics: More on the Big Bang

While the U.S. and Russia have been tussling on a variety of issues, some solid science has been going on unabated.  For instance, last month the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of gravitational waves formed when the universe was a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old.  While I cannot really wrap my head around the particulars, this discovery (if successfully duplicated by others) could further confirm the theory of cosmic inflation, or the idea of rapid expansion of the universe in the first 380,000 years of its existence.  I found a nice scientific cartoon (really) that walks us through these ideas at PhD Comics.  And here is the March 17th video from the Center with the scientific announcement.

The research itself involved scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of Minnesota, while the observations themselves were made at the BICEP2 telescope near the South Pole.