Daily Archives: February 3, 2009

I Don't Give a Damn About My Bad Reputation

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when “bad reputation” is good

Recasting the bad reputation the profession of research professor has.

How would you react to this statement: “Many aspiring swimmers are not pursuing olympic careers because doing so would require spending 30, 40, 50 hours in the pool, in addition to weight and flexibility workouts. This single-minded, work-ethics focus of otherwise talented athletes gives olympic competitors bad reputation – we need to work on funding alternatives, such as support for olympians who can afford to spend only half of that time in the pool”

Marco!

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Fermi’s paradox solved?

The so-called Fermi Paradox has haunted SETI researchers ever since. Not least because the famous Drake equation, which attempts put a figure on the number intelligent civilisations out there now, implies that if the number of intelligent civilisations capable of communication in our galaxy is greater than 1, then we should eventually hear from them.

That overlooks one small factor, says Reginald Smith from the Bouchet-Franklin Institute in Rochester, New York state. He says that there is a limit to how far a signal from ET can travel before it becomes too faint to hear. And when you factor that in, everything changes.