Recent content by contrarian

Very curious that these hydrocarbons are found only as linear chains, without any branching, and only three different lengths at that (with a cutoff at dodecane due to instrument limitation). Possibly of biological origin since abiotic processes forming such compounds would be expected to...

Thanks for the correction. These were all done with keypunch programming I assume. That must have been very tedious. Tried that myself long ago and decided not to get into computers, and never looked back. The slightest error and it would not work. Wiggle room is highly preferable.

It is reasonable to believe that these ancient small satellite galaxies have small black holes at their cores. That they are so old, perhaps as old as the oldest galaxies regardless of size, might suggest that primordial black holes of highly variable size formed very early in the evolution of...

This should come as no surprise that it was found in western Australia. The oldest rocks at 4.4 billion years and the oldest verifiable fossil life forms at 3.5 billion years were also found there. Seems like a good place to find very old things.

Failures have certainly piled up, but from what I read some critical instruments to study interstellar space are still providing significant data, which is why they are powering down less critical systems. So yes, it may boil down to instrument failure in the end, but it looks as though one or...

Yes, the Voyagers used a version of Fortran (V) that is not used anymore. They were lucky to find the people who made these programs still around and helpful. But other Fortran variants are still used in a number of scientific computing apps.* * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran

They should have made those RTGs much bigger. Seems likely they did not expect these spacecraft to last so long.

All space flights with humans on board are "near the top for wastefulness", except for the Apollo missions. They had to be done just to prove it was possible.

There are plenty of moons to plant a flag on! We already put up six of them on our own Moon. The biggest issue is the cost. Where are they going to find all that money to build the spaceships?

The initial point was about a "dark planet", and how it would behave. This dead horse has now been beaten enough I hope.

The "habitability of the surface" was not critical to the issue. Habitability anywhere was the point, which would of course be inside the planet without an external heating source for surface.

Doubtless this is true as our Earth does not gain heat from any source, and it still has a hot core at around 6,000 C, and that after 4.5 billion years. It will be some billions of more years, one would think, before it cools down enough for the geodynamo to collapse. There will be some changes...

If this refers to continuous production of H2S, keep in mind that this compound is toxic to a lot of higher life forms. It seems unlikely that advanced organisms will evolve from this energy source. That is one consideration for the appearance of intelligent life on dark planets. Primitive life...

I doubt they are there now either. You will run out of an energy source after some period of time on a dark planet. Life on Earth probably got its first energy from H2S. It seems unlikely that this source of "dark energy" can compete with a renewable source, like that provided by photosynthesis.

It is purely political, and almost as purely a joke. Almost.....