That burning question: how common is basic life? Beyond that: how common is intelligent life? I've come to believe the odds on the latter are incredibly small, but the former seems more possible. Finding it in this star system would suggest it's very common.
Hopefully Clipper will give us an idea of the answer. I suspect you're right and we'll find simple life is common, at least on worlds that can support the right chemistry, but intelligence is much rarer.
Europa: Likely a warm ocean, maybe containing more water than all of Earth's oceans combined but the icy crust may have very uneven thickness- best to shop for an optimal place to land a mining probe. Odds of finding life..very good indeed.
SpaceX:. Outstanding engineering, but in the end wrongheaded to worry so about getting humans out into space. Instead send our robotic emissaries. It's a matter
of economics.
Nobels: computer science exists in a rather strange hinterland between physics, electrical engineering and pure mathematics. It's an enormous success and no doubt deserves it's prize. It's interesting that Hinton at least worries about the dangers inherent in his own creation.
Didymos:. All hail the cubesats- the unsung heroes of space exploration! One could write a book on their exploits (and Springer Verlag does have an excellent one available). Small but mighty and you don't need a Starship to launch them out of the gravity well!
I actually wrote an article for Sky & Telescope last year on cubesats, but sadly it's only available in the print edition! They have a lot of potential, and I think NASA, ESA and the other space agencies should learn from them and change their mindset towards sending a lot of smaller, cheaper, but less reliable probes out into the solar system. We'd learn a lot more than we do by sending an expensive probe once a decade.
I'm a big fan of the little giants. They're well within the price point for any space agency that is short on quid (and aren't they all,) whither it be JAXA, ESA, KSA, CONAE, ISRO and the two ISAs, not to mention a host of other aspirants. I think even I, if I had a good machine shop might be able to cobble one together! 😉
I would normally add NASA to that list of cash short agencies but there's a bit of a militarization of space thing going and I imagine they're currently flush with military-goal appropriations and are using private subcontractors.
That burning question: how common is basic life? Beyond that: how common is intelligent life? I've come to believe the odds on the latter are incredibly small, but the former seems more possible. Finding it in this star system would suggest it's very common.
Hopefully Clipper will give us an idea of the answer. I suspect you're right and we'll find simple life is common, at least on worlds that can support the right chemistry, but intelligence is much rarer.
Europa: Likely a warm ocean, maybe containing more water than all of Earth's oceans combined but the icy crust may have very uneven thickness- best to shop for an optimal place to land a mining probe. Odds of finding life..very good indeed.
SpaceX:. Outstanding engineering, but in the end wrongheaded to worry so about getting humans out into space. Instead send our robotic emissaries. It's a matter
of economics.
Nobels: computer science exists in a rather strange hinterland between physics, electrical engineering and pure mathematics. It's an enormous success and no doubt deserves it's prize. It's interesting that Hinton at least worries about the dangers inherent in his own creation.
Didymos:. All hail the cubesats- the unsung heroes of space exploration! One could write a book on their exploits (and Springer Verlag does have an excellent one available). Small but mighty and you don't need a Starship to launch them out of the gravity well!
I actually wrote an article for Sky & Telescope last year on cubesats, but sadly it's only available in the print edition! They have a lot of potential, and I think NASA, ESA and the other space agencies should learn from them and change their mindset towards sending a lot of smaller, cheaper, but less reliable probes out into the solar system. We'd learn a lot more than we do by sending an expensive probe once a decade.
I'm a big fan of the little giants. They're well within the price point for any space agency that is short on quid (and aren't they all,) whither it be JAXA, ESA, KSA, CONAE, ISRO and the two ISAs, not to mention a host of other aspirants. I think even I, if I had a good machine shop might be able to cobble one together! 😉
I would normally add NASA to that list of cash short agencies but there's a bit of a militarization of space thing going and I imagine they're currently flush with military-goal appropriations and are using private subcontractors.
What a waste!
Really interesting bit about the 2024 Nobles; thanks for surfacing that