Astronomy

With a total absence of intelligent life in the Capital Hill region of Canberra, we thought we’d ask a Canberra-based academic, the ANU’s Dr Paul Francis, if there’s any hope of something with a pulse up there…

The search for extraterrestrial life has been going on in earnest for decades now. Are we any closer to finding intelligent life?
It’s pretty clear that there is no intelligent life elsewhere in our own solar system. But what about on planets orbiting other stars? If you go out on a starry night, it could be that every star you see has planets with intelligent life, and that aliens are staring back at you from every star. Or it could be that there is no other life in the universe and all those planets are dead and dusty.

Will we ever be able to learn more about those distant worlds?
Going to visit these other stars is far beyond current technology, so the only thing we can do it listen for radio signals from them. Until now nothing has been detected. But our current surveys could only pick something up if one of the nearest few stars had a highly advanced technological race on a planet orbiting it, and this race was broadcasting enormously powerful radio signals in our direction. So it’s not really conclusive.

Continue reading "Punch Q&A: Are we alone?" »

As an avid consumer of news, I’m considering adopting a few new hobbies over the next few months.

They include: Developing a crystal meth addiction, having 12 sugars in my morning coffee, throwing cinder blocks through shopfronts, having unprotected sex with at least four people a day, permanently wearing one of those beer helmets and making a giant inflatable ark-type thing out of all those condoms I won’t be using. 

In case you’ve been living under a rock in a Cold War-style nuclear bunker, the end of the world has been slated for 2012… or 2036… or something.

Continue reading "It’s the end of the world as we know it - and so what?" »

If you haven’t heard about the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) it’s time to tune in. Along with its cousins the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) and the US Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), the GMT will be a telescope of an entirely different magnitude to any that has ever existed.

The Australian connection to the GMT is being forged in northern NSW through one of the grand elders of optical astronomy.

The recently reincarnated AAO – the Australian Astronomical Observatory at Coonabarabran – was the most advanced telescope in the world when it was opened in 1974. At 4 metres it was one of the largest telescopes of its day and the first to be computer operated.

Continue reading "Australia’s starring role in the next great eye on the sky" »

I have a theory that about 90 per cent of the viewer interest in motor sport of any kind is the potential to watch serious crashes.

Just look at what they show from the “highlights” of the Daytona series on Sports Tonight – it’s 40 cars doing quadruple flips over each other at 200 kilometres with the commentator yelling “whoa mamma!”

As space shuttle Endeavour waits on the Florida tarmac like so many QANTAS “express” flights, any interest we maintain in the NASA space program has similarly boiled down to the initial take-off explosion and whether or not the shuttle will blow-up before it touches back home. This is a shame because space exploration is an amazing and important human achievement.

Continue reading "Let’s go to Mars, I’ll explain on the way" »