This week all the science buzz was Elon Musk and Mars, all the time. Of which I’ll have more tomorrow evening on Sunday Kos. In the meantime, I’m reading an advance review copy of David Grinspoon’s new book, Earth in Human Hands, and so far it is one of the best science books I’ve read all year. It may yet bog down—it is a sizable work, big enough to be intimidating at first glance. But I’m halfway through and so far it’s so well written, it flows so beautifully, and it pulls together a huge amount of science so seamlessly into the book’s thesis, that I suspect it will hold up just fine through to the end.
So, with the next debate in mind—assuming Trump doesn’t wuss out—this would be a good start:
[T]he question I’d love to see asked in the next Presidential Debate is this: “A recent peer reviewed study indicates that the US is not on target to meet the promised reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This is mainly due to methane release being greater than previously thought, but other factors matter as well. What will you do as President to get us back on track?”
- By the time you read this, Rosetta will have softly crash-landed, err, sort of jostled, onto the surface of Comet 67P. Rosetta captured images all the way down, the last one coming in from a distance of 5 meters! You can see the latest official info here at Rosetta’s homepage.
The biggest hurdle life faces under a red dwarf is its weak light. Its radiation is also most intense at different wavelengths than we get from the Sun. The peak of radiation — where it is the most intense, where you get the most photons — is in the infra-red range. From our Sun, the peak of intensity is in the blue-green range.