Why people bother with Star Wars references remains beyond me. Like - it was a movie in the 1970s or so, with an unending stream of sequels and prequels and reboots and regurgitations. Do people still watch these things? If I wanted an unending sequences of prequels and reboots, I'd watch a Bond movie.

The one thing that I'd add is that the identification if the dark material on Iapetus as debris from the Pheobe ring was news in 2007.

There is a possibility a large moon is necessary for intelligent life,

It's a possibility. It attracts a fair amount of discussion. With a sample size of 1, we have no way of assessing whether or not it's a true statement. It is just as likely that the development of life, and intelligence, are completely unrelated to the presence of a medium-size moon.

The relative sizes of the Earth/Moon system is a total anomaly,

Is it? Moon diameter is 0.2724 that of Earth ; Charon's diameter is 0.5050 that of Pluto. For masses the corresponding ratios are 0.0122 (1/81) and 0.1160 (1/9). so, is the Moon a "total anomaly"?

so much so that it is very very close to the point where you have to call them a double planet rather than a planet and moon.

I've been taking an interest in astronomy for 40 odd years now, and I don't know what the point where I'd "have to" call a system a "double planet" is. I don't recall ever seeing the term defined in the astronomical literature. Even Wikipedia puts it as no stronger than an "informal term".

What would be the benefit of such a term? Once you acknowledge that two objects are in an orbital relationship, you need to calculate various properties (mutual eccentricities, velocities, masses, periods), but these are going to be essentially the same calculations whether you're looking at Pluto-Charon or Pluto-Nix (or is it Hydra that's the smallest known component of that system?). It's only when systems are close enough that they become tidally-locked that you get something new happening. Until the atmospheres meet. It's the same situation for multiple stars too - until you have to account for mass transfers from one to the other, then you're still looking at a Keplerian system.

Wouldn't Camera shake for cameras mean a need for faster image acquisition?

That is one possible solution. On the other hand, better technique in the photographer is a zero-cost option that has been available for a century or so.

Using a tripod is a solution too. But leaning on a wall, post, whatever has always been available (unless you're into really unusual sports). Changing your shutter speed is normally an option too. But that's all down to the most important lens in the camera - the one behind the viewfinder.

I don't need to worry about it - it happens. when I go to work, I'm typically a hundred or so kilometres beyond the reach of the last cellphone tower (they don't build them in the middle of the ocean). There are other options for regaining access, typically by sending an email to another (non-Google) account. Since I have my work-supplied email (which we're required to use our own webmail ; forwarding to any other account is not permitted ; we've had people miss flights in the past through failures of third-party email, hence the only way to get work email is by logging in to our webmail server), a google account, and at least two others, that's not a problem.

In answer to someone below who posits your house burning down - this is why you have things called "friends" and keep backups of important documents and data (or some of the originals, as appropriate) in a locked box at their house. And you reciprocate, of course. It's called "off-site backup" - you may have heard of it.

If you've got too few friends for that, then you probably have bigger problems.

Didn't Kodak stop producing Tech Pan a few years ago? (They may have sold the brand and production to some other company?)

Out-source the work to overseas zombies, of course.

OK, so I took the time to look it up.

The oldest references that I can find to the age of the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) is the Florida Museum of Natural History, who are of the opinion that the morpological differences between Alligator olseni (White, 1942) and Alligator mississippiensis (Daudan, 1802) are insufficient to justify calling them separate species. By the rules of zoological nomenclature the senior synomym applies. Specimens ascribed to olseni (and therefore, if you accept the FLMNH position, to mississippiensis) date back to the early Miocene at 16-18 Myr, possibly the earliest Miocene at 22-23 Myr. If you don't accept the FLMNH synonymy, then the oldest known fossils of Alligator mississippiensis date to the Pliocene around 5 million years. http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertp... http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertp...

Sorry to destroy your assertion by doing the most trivial of research. I hope that your attention to detail is better when you're coding Ruby, but you've hardly left that impression.

If I had time, I might look it up by checking for reports of fossils. But what would I know - I'm just a working geologist who deals with this stuff every day of the week. I'm sure you claimed experience in coding Ruby is far more relevant. How much variation in tooth profile and spacing do you see in the fossils you have access to?

The likelihood of getting a vaguely complete DNA sequence from multi-billion-year old fossils is slender. Our best example of "ancient DNA" from fossils has a less than 1% complete genome from rocks a little over 100Myr old. 2000 Myr old fossils might have a 0.0000000000000000001 % complete genome (if preserved in exceptionally well.

I don't have access to the full paper, but this doesn't surprise me.

The morphology-based âoeconcept of hypobradytely does not necessarily imply genomic, biochemical, or physiological identity between modern and fossil taxa," a claim of extreme evolutionary stasisâ"a lack of speciation over billions of yearsâ"would be strengthened not only by discovery of additional fossil communities but by firm evidence of their molecular biology

Schopf may have had his boldest claimed discovery challenged (successfully) by Brasier (recently deceased, alas ; Intended to buy the guy a whiskey if I ever met him ; fun writer), but that doesn't make Schopf a fool. Unlike some of the dimmer denizens of Slashdot, he wasn't going to make that error.

Raman spectrscopy can detect gross differences in composition and structure - lipids versus cellulose, for example, but in such old rocks it's not going to be a high precision tool. It's about the best tool we've got for such old fossils though.

Many bacteria - I don't know if this particular group - can engage in varying degrees of horizontal gene transfer by conjugation or a number of other processes. Most bacterial reproduction is asexual, but it's not the only trick in their repertoire.

every software house I worked for in the last couple of decades had people constantly talking about what the code "thinks", "wants", etc.

A recent article I listend to o nAI development suggested that it was better to name your routines like "B217" instead of "Understand_Question", precisely to dodge anthropomorphic thinking like this.