Recent content by Chris Crawford

I looked over the weather data for April 8th all over the eclipse path. The average probably of clear skies over the entire eclipse path in the USA is about 50%. Which means that there's a good chance that millions of people will be disappointed. We might get lucky and have clear skies all...

First, I'd like to respond to Damon A, who wrote: "Non-chemical life? LOL!" There's a layer in every star associated with the shift from radiative heat transfer to convective heat transfer. It's analogous to the surface layer of the earth, where radiative heat transfer from the sun (that is...

Yes, most extremophiles appear to have evolved from conventionally developed life. However, this merely begs the question of where the life originated. It's possible that Venus may have had radically different surface conditions some billions of years ago, permitting the development of living...

Um, have you considered the fact that we cannot see the surface of Venus from earth? If little light from the surface gets OUT, then how much do you think gets IN? Yes, sunlight gets through -- but it's nowhere near as much sunlight as reaches the surface of the earth, even though we're...

Yes, Venus is a tantalizing target. It's also a very difficult target, because of the extremely high temperatures. The probes we have sent down to the surface all lasted a few minutes before failing. Sure, we can make metals that can handle those temperatures, but how do we build electronics...

Wouldn't it be better if precious funding for space projects was given to the investigations that held the greatest promise of interesting results? If this phosphine hypothesis be false, as seems likely, then we'd be wasting money following up on it. There are so many worthy investigations that...

Jeez, people sure are getting carried away by this discovery. There are plenty of ways that phosphine can be made abiologically. The hypothesis that this phosphine is generated by living systems is less plausible than the hypothesis that it is generated by chemical processes lower in the...