Conformity of Science

Unlike a mathematical proof, a scientific theory is empirical and is always open to falsification if new evidence is presented. That is, no theory is ever considered strictly certain. Instead, science is proud to make predictions with great probability, bearing in mind that the most likely event is not always what actually happens.

During the Yom Kippur War, cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman was asked to explain why one squad of aircraft had returned safely, yet a second squad on the exact same operation had lost all of its planes. Rather than conduct a study in the hope of a new hypothesis, Kahneman simply reiterated the importance of expecting some coincidences in life, explaining that absurdly rare things, by definition, occasionally happen. In this sense, probabilities can run counter to our intuitions, which rely heavily on heuristics including mental availability.

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Universe

“I don’t know — when I was growing up, there was no such thing as planets around other stars. If you were to talk about it at a scientific meeting, people would laugh at you….” Oh, how times change. And so begins a new short documentary by Goddard video producer Ryan Fitzgibbons and videographer Jamal Smith. 20 Years of Hubble Science: Exoplanets highlights the Hubble Space Telescope’s contributions to the study of planets around other stars. In the video, Goddard scientists Marc Kuchner , Aki Roberge , and Jennifer Wiseman discuss how Hubble’s coronagraph and resulting images have helped scientists find exoplanets, dusty disks around other stars, and infant solar systems. All three astronomers are members of our Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory . The science is at the leading edge and the graphics are awesome — especially the animated timeline showing all exoplanet discoveries to date. Go to the Scientific Visualization Studio website to download and view ...

Water on Mars

Mars perhaps first caught public fancy in the late 1870s, when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli reported using a telescope to observe canali, or channels, on Mars. A possible mistranslation of this word as canals may have fired the imagination of Percival Lowell, an American businessman with an interest in astronomy. Lowell founded an observatory in Arizona, where his observations of the red planet convinced him that the canals were dug by intelligent beings - a view which he energetically promoted for many years. By the turn of the century, popular songs told of sending messages between Earth and Mars by way of huge signal mirrors. On the dark side, H.G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds portrayed an invasion of Earth by technologically superior Martians desperate for water. In the early 1900s novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs, known for the Tarzan series, also entertained young readers with tales of adventures among the exotic inhabitants of Mars, which he called Bars...

Problem on conducting the Program

Every time when I got started to write the blog I think of the unlocking mystery of my mind. Every theories that have been kept in a single panel of the box called science are really the working phenomenon of this world. Few weeks ago I conducted the online program about the " Unlocking the Mystery of Universe " I found it quite interesting because of the many people's interest in it. When such type of program was designed and put in act we simply got the two kinds of problem. First one is we can handle the queries on own because there are various mail and queries receiving at a time, this problem get worst for me as I was conducting this from cell phone device. Next thing I found is the members don't go with topics indeed they ask whatever they have in their minds about the whole of science. Infact one of the member copy and paste the question from the internet and ask it. The problem first is the outcome of not generalizing the people with the same interests...

Space Science and Exploration

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