Category: Science
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Great Filters, Part 3: Planetary Filters
I've discussed galactic and stellar-scale Great Filters. Now it's time to look at them on a planetary level. The first is the question of how stable planetary systems are. This is a problem which goes back to Isaac Newton. When Sir Isaac compiled his great work the Principia, he was bothered by one implication of…
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Great Filters, Part 2: Galactic and Stellar Filters
The first set of potential "Great Filters" I'm going to discuss are those which operate at the level of stars and galaxies — things which might make most galaxies, or most star systems, unsuitable for the development of life. But first, a digression. In science, especially in cosmology, the number 1 is a very funny…
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Great Filters, Part 1
Two weeks ago, during the world's first CYBER WorldCon, I participated in a panel discussion called "COVID-19: A Great Filter?" The panelists were myself, writer and Coronavirus expert Vylar Kaftan, and astrophysicist Valentin Ivanov. Our topic was the concept of the "Great Filter" and whether a plague like the current Coronavirus outbreak could qualify. …
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The First CYBER WorldCon!
This year's World Science Fiction Convention was to have taken place in New Zealand, but since that country is entirely sealed off from the outside world, the convention has gone entirely on-line. It's a CYBER WorldCon! See the link here. Despite obstacles the show will go on! I'm participating in several events, without leaving my…
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Work In Progress: The Billion Worlds
A while back I started thinking about the distant future. What can humanity expect if we don't invent a magic FTL drive, don't go extinct, and our civilization mostly putters along the way it has been since the invention of agriculture? I described some of my thoughts in this blog post from 2018. Extrapolating with…
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Historical Perspective
Like most of the rest of the world I've been thinking about diseases lately. What I've been thinking about is how mild the coronavirus epidemic has been. No, stop shouting at the screen and look at some numbers. The Spanish Flu: the post-World War I influenza epidemic caused 17-50 million deaths; I've seen the…
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Astronomical Notes
The big stargazing news this spring is Comet ATLAS (it's in all caps because it's named for the acronym-titled instrument which discovered it, not the ancient Greek Titan). It's been getting some attention in the skywatching and pop-science press because it has been brightening much faster than expected as it has approached the Sun. Right…
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Non-Political Coronavirus Post
As an SF writer my thoughts naturally turn to the future. What will be the long-term effects of this pandemic? Telecommuting: This may be the tipping point for telecommuting and working from home. A lot of businesses have resisted the idea much longer than they should have — chiefly, I think, from a nagging sense…
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How Risky Is Your Gathering?
In a time of alarm over virus transmission, how dangerous is a gathering of people? This post from Tyler Cowan's blog features a risk assessment calculator, giving the probability that someone at an event is carrying the Wuhan Coronavirus, based on the size of the event and the number of carriers nationwide. It's reassuring to…
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Very Sad News
Freeman Dyson has died. He had a long, productive, and apparently happy life, so it's not really sad news for him. It's sad news for the rest of the species, which will have to get by without one of the modern era's foremost intellects. He was one of those scientists who are better science fiction…
The Cambias Digression 