Life in the universe is a fascinating topic. The simplest question: Are we alone? It breeds so many deeper and more profound scientific questions, like “How many habitable planets are there?” “How likely is life to develop on any given planet?” and “How long can a civilization survive?” We can’t answer them definitively, but we can narrow it down. The Drake equation, shown above, was first developed by Frank Drake, the head of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), in 1961. He took the question of are we alone and made it quantifiable, in a probabilistic way. It lets us...
I promised my friend Dash I would use the term ‘Apoceclipse’ to describe last night’s Perigee Harvest Moon Lunar Eclipse, so here it is! Last night was great fun, even though I couldn’t see the event at all due to cloud cover. Here’s why. It all started with a media blitz and a crazy day at the Science Centre. I started off by doing a Global News interview in the morning, and then a 680 news phone in around lunchtime. I had a planetarium show, and then it was off to CBC downtown to do the national news live! It...
When I do a planetarium show for an audience, and they see the night sky for the first time, I always ask them ‘What do you see?’ The response is the usual stuff – Stars, the Moon, maybe planets, or the Milky Way. But they seem to be missing the most important and largest part of the sky – the Darkness. Space itself. Stars light up the cosmos, but if there were no stars, would we think that the universe was empty? Perhaps, but if you can imagine this scenario, it gives you an important perspective when you want to...
