That's the title of this essay from the Electronic Journal of Folklore. The essay is from vol. 15 (published in 2000). It's also available in PDF. It's a good overview of ancient astronomy / astrology and gets into familiar concepts and themes that will be familiar to...
science
Are UFOlogists Scientists?
That's the question Antonio Paris asked on the Aerial Phenomenon blog. Have a look - a nice graphic illustrating the difference between science and pseudoscience. Editor's note: added the image:
How Scientists Could Be Fooled Into Thinking They’ve Found Extraterrestrial Life
That's the title of an interesting and appropriately cautionary essay by George Dvorsky. He also wrote a piece entitled "14 Intriguing Ways We Could Detect Signs Of An Alien Civilization." Here's another article on how scientists could also draw the wrong conclusion:...
Space Science: New Book on the Quest to Discover ET Life and the UFO Issue
This forthcoming book by Antonio Paris looks promising: Space Science: Challenges for the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis of UFO Phenomenon. The link says that the book will "addresses what the UFO community conveniently fails to address." For what those failures are,...
Graham Hancock and Bad Archaeology
Professional archaeologist Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, the force behind the Bad Archaeology blog, recently posted a series of articles detailing the (poor) research techniques and (flawed) argumentation of Graham Hancock. Here are the links to the series: Hancock’s...
Is Speculation Science?
It is when it's about the search for extraterrestrial life and panspermia. In yet another example of just this, I'd invite you all to read "Far-Off Planets Like the Earth Dot the Galaxy." Have any of these planets actually been identified? No. Have any of them yielded...
NASA and 3-D Printing
I had to say something about this recent article from DeZeen: "NASA Develops 3-D Printing Factory in Space." I just finished the draft for The Portent, and there's a scene in it that involves the marriage of nanotechnology (and/or synthetic biology) and 3-D printing....
Ancient Nanotechnology: Glass-Blowers from Space?
Just read this very interesting article - it's about how ancient Roman glass makers ground up silver and gold to the size of 50 nano-meters in diameter (less than 1000th the size of a grain of table salt) to produce a goblet that appears green when lit from the front...
Templeton Foundation Funding Search for Alien Spacecraft … Really
The Templeton foundation has awarded $200,000 to astronomer Geoff Marcy (UC-Berkeley) to see if he can detect alien spacecraft passing in front of distant stars. Before you laugh, Marcy is easily the most famous astronomer among those detecting extra-solar planets....
Historical Adam and Genetic Adam and Eve: Update
In light of the discussion on this blog some time ago about recent research in human genetics and the historical Adam, I thought readers might find two recent items on "genetic Adam and Eve" of interest. "Genetic" Adam and Eve Could Have Been Contemporaries?...
Thoughts on the Atacama (non) Alien and Unidentified DNA
If you've been reading the comments to the posts I've written about Steven Greer's alleged six-inch alien specimen, you'll notice that several folks have presumed that the 9% unidentified DNA means the specimen is alien or an alien-human hybrid. That isn't the case....
Are We All Martians?
This notion has been around for a long time. I remember hearing Richard Hoagland say it many times on Coast to Coast AM. But now we have "science" (goofy face here) intervening. It was also a sub-plotline in The Facade. The Mysterious Universe blog recently posted an...
The Geo-Centric Universe: Yep, There are Still People Who Believe It
The Exposing Pseudoastronomy podcast devoted a recent episode to this long held myth. It's a classic mis-reading of the Bible, which never actually makes the claim, though church authorities of all stripes assumed it (assisted by "creatively" reading into the text)...
Atacama Human-Not-Alien Specimen Update
Thanks go to Cris Putnam for sending this link my way today. It's from the Stanford Daily . . . as in Stanford University . . . as in that place that employs Dr. Garry Nolan, the guy who did the DNA analysis of the Atacama "alien". The story once again has both Dr....
Panspermia Junk Science
If intelligent design is junk science (as it is so often accused of being), then this absolutely qualifies as junk science: "ET Genetic Code May Be Found In Human DNA, According To Kazakhstan Scientists' Biological SETI Theory." But Mike, it's peer reviewed. And it's...