Monthly Archives: September 2007

Mars less wet than we thought?

Mars has a habit of disappointing us; exotic possibilities are presented to us, before fading away into nothingness when we look more closely. Percival Lowell’s canals didn’t survive close scrutiny, and now Phil reports that the merciless gaze of the … Continue reading

Categories: paper reviews, planets

September post-doc carnival

Pondering Fool is hosting this months collection. The theme is ‘advice’, and there’s lots of the sage variety on offer.

Categories: links

19th century geologists slandered again

Are folks at the University of Bristol intentionally trying to annoy me? In the very same week that I write about the abundant signs of old age in the rock record, they put out a press release which states: By … Continue reading

Categories: deep time, geology, public science

Trilobites didn’t go extinct…

…they just evolved into beings of pure electromagnetism and infested the sun. I know that we humans are prone to finding familiar patterns in weird places, but I have to say I find the claimed resemblance less than compelling. When … Continue reading

Categories: planets, public science

How fast is the Arctic melting?

Blockbuster headlines about the thawing of the North-West Passage are all very well, but you can’t really assess the significance of the record low in Arctic summer sea-ice cover (as reported by both the European Space Agency and the National … Continue reading

Categories: climate science