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How to make a mind—part2 What we need is our rare and wonderful Earth, and approximately 4.54 billion years. Of course, that begs the question. How did we end up with our Earth, and how important is it that a planet is like our Earth to create intelligent tool users? According to the “Rare Earth …
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Can’t we just look at it? In episode 56 and episode 57, we looked at a couple of methods of detecting planets that are orbiting around stars other than our own sun. These methods involve a good deal of analysis and inference. Today, we learn about how astronomers can look directly at a planet around …
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The hunt for planet tomato Unlike the method described in the previous episode, the transit method allows one to look at many stars at a time. When a planet crosses between us and the star it’s orbiting, the star’s light dims very slightly. If we can detect that dimming, we can detect said planet. Here’s …
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The stars wibble and wobble as their planets go round There are several ways of detecting planets that orbit stars other than our sun. One method, called Doppler spectroscopy, relies on the fact that an orbiting planet causes its star to wobble. Spectrometers are used to observe the spectral lines within the stars light, (see …
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The search for Planet 9 @AntonyTheReal_ showed me a video recently, in which one of the folks was rather upset with NASA. It bothered him that they were presenting details of a planet orbiting another star, lightyears away, while at the same time, we’re still not certain whether or not there is a ninth planet …
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Irrational computers, investing, and racist robots It’s easy to assume that computers and computer software, being without emotions, are more rational than we are. However, our software systems are like children of the mind, and they inherit our bias and irrationality. In fact, since they cannot judge context, they are less rational than we. Here …
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Complex analysis, the stock market, and seeing what you expect Two theories about the stock market, the efficient market hypothesis and technical analysis, are each attempting to analyze the same complicated system—namely the stock market and the fluctuations of different share prices in different companies. Both theories start by assuming that the price always reflects …
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More about the dark side In 1933 Fritz Zwicky was studying the motion of galaxies within the Coma Cluster. He found that the motion could only be explained if there was considerably more mass present than what could be observed. Later, in the late 1970s, Vera Rubin was observing the rotational dynamics of the andromeda …
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What is “dark energy,” and is there really such a thing? In the early 1990s, two separate teams tracked the rate of expansion of the universe by using type Ia supernovas as standard candles, (see episode 41 and episode 42 for details on standard candle usage.) Each team found that the rate of expansion of …
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Let’s celebrate, with balloons! The first manned flight of a hot air balloon took place in France in 1783. However, sky lanterns, paper and wood hot air balloons that don’t carry people, have been around in China since as early as 300 BC. Why did it take ever so long? During the research for episode …