Hey, individual orbitals are several orders of magnitude smaller than pentacene molecules.

It is one thing to establish that some statement is true -i. e., getting to know it-; it is another thing to prove it true, if proving involves something like perfect certainty. Knowledge does not entail certainty, thinking otherwise is simply bad epistemology.

So you may be right that science cannot prove statements right (I do not wish to advance judgement about this), but this is still compatible with science being in the business of securing truths, attaining knowledge about the world.

Well, there has been some philosophy of science since, and much of it has been realist.
This is an option that, if workable, is preferable. Many philosophers of science believe it is workable -although admittedly, some don't.

> The worst, that could happen for a physicist, would be that the observations could be explained with GR.

This kind of (extremely common) remarks strike me as frivolous. It is one thing to say that physicists enjoy being disproved, because this shows the length of the road ahead; it is another thing to say that physicists would hate to attain knowledge in one particular area or other. Science is in the business of securing truths, not in the business of idly advancing ever-refutable theories.

Not that I wish to start a heady argument, but I doubt the result of replacing your brain with a chip would still be you.

At least in Spain, where I live, it is not illegal to copy copyrighted material if it is for non-for-profit, personal use. More precisely, judges sistematically dismiss complaints by copyright owners in those cases.

Let us hope it remains so.

Me, instead, I think of Asimov's "The Last Question". In that story the journey "towards the light", or some such, begins when humankind learns how to obtain energy directly from the Sun; inserting a plug in the yellow ball so to speak. This happens in year 2056, so there you are.

Something a bit more serious: even if one of these grandiose schemes works, it is not the solution. What we need is not a forfait for endless energy-consumption, but to reduce it: unlimited energy goes with unlimited waste.

It is slightly sad to see people concentrating their efforts in trying to keep the resource-depleting party on forever.

The Nature Podcast -which, by the way, all of you nerds should listen to if you do not already do- covered this story some three weeks ago. They say Titan. Their reasons are, roughly:

* Although Europa is our best bet for an independent origin of life -life on Mars may share causes with life of Earth- studying this would involve intimate measuring below the surface. Drilling in Europa, though, may be a century, and not just two or three decades, away.
* A Titan mission, although unlikely to find life, may more easily and more thoroughly study the surface of the satellite. This has to do with Titan's atmosphere, and the possibility of launching a hot-air balloon to map the surface.
* The third reason: hot-air ballons are cool and romantic. Also, we could for the first time devise a floating lander. More fun and romanticism. Floating on lakes may be a one-off, but ballooning may be useful for many other cellestial bodies in the Solar System.

So, Titan.

Aeronautical designs do reproduce: It is neither merely by chance, nor because they are responses to the same engineering problems, that planes are similar to one another. It is, rather, that good designs serve as the starting point for other designs, which copy well-tested features of the former. The keyword here is "copy".

I don't think many popular science writers, or whoever it is that shapes the public understanding of scientific issues, have read, let alone endorse, The Origin of Species. It is truer that most of them do endorse the so-called Modern Synthesis, a synthesis between evolution-theoretic ideas and genetics, which cristallised around the mid-40s and is, arguably, not the last word in the theory of evolution. But I don't see how having Darwin's name associated -in all justice- to the Modern Synthesis cluster is any more harmful to the theory than having Einstein's name associated -in all justice- to the theory of relativity.

On the other hand, from TFA:

"Using phrases like "Darwinian selection" or "Darwinian evolution" implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective. For instance, "Newtonian physics" distinguishes the mechanical physics Newton explored from subatomic quantum physics. So "Darwinian evolution" raises a question: What's the other evolution?

Into the breach: intelligent design."

Of course. This is just as it should be. Intelligent design is a powerful source of evolution. Or how does the writer think Airbuses emerged from the Wright brothers' prototype? The passage I just quoted implies that there is no legitimate evolution that is not Darwinian. This is plain silly.

Apparently, winter of 2009 will be one of the coldest in the last 30 or 40 years. Many people is saying that we should find such extreme temperatures increasingly common as a result of global warming.
Is it impossible that this particular result is being publicised to remind the general public that we have been like this before in history, and that global warming may not be to blame as regards are current weather? At the very least, I am afraid this piece of news may have this as a result.

It is remarkable that not a single post in this thread has been modded below +4. Really all of them are that interesting, or is it rather that /.ers find this issue particularly Interesting, Insightful and Funny?

Many people (I venture to say that the majority, in the US) think that business success is a clear sign of overall excellence. A extreme version of this line of thought is Calvin's doctrine that worldly success was a clear sign of being pre-destined for salvation. Mutatis mutandis with Microsoft and being the saviour of higher education.

There is no justification for Calvin's version of this idea, neither is there for most of its contemporary counterparts.