Once local and irregular, time-keeping became universal and linear in 311 BCE. History would never be the same again. What year is it? It’s 2019, obviously. An easy question. Last year was 2018. Next year will be 2020. We are confident that a century ago it was 1919, and in 1,000 years it will be […]
We’ll meet again. The intrepid logician Kurt Gödel believed in the afterlife. In four heartfelt letters to his mother he explained why As the foremost logician of the 20th century, Kurt Gödel is well known for his incompleteness theorems and contributions to set theory, the publications of which changed the course of mathematics, logic and […]
Throughout all previous epochs and periods of history of the development of the human race and society, and the active observation and subsequent direct exploration of space, the process of obtaining answers to some of the most difficult, essential questions seems to be heating up to the maximum, but at the same time complicating. Consequently, […]
An interview with Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe Conducted by Dr Predrag Slijepcevic, Brunel University London Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe is best known for his work on the modern version of the panspermia theory – life in the form of microbes has the cosmic origin – conceived and developed in collaboration with his PhD supervisor and a long-term […]
Two centuries before Einstein, Hume recognised that universal time, independent of an observer’s viewpoint, doesn’t exist In 1915, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the philosopher and physicist Moritz Schlick, who had recently composed an article on the theory of relativity. Einstein praised it: ‘From the philosophical perspective, nothing nearly as clear seems to have […]
“The body provides something for the spirit to look after and use.” “The void horrifies: so we are all immortal,” Simone de Beauvoir scoffed at the religious escapism of immortality in explaining why she is an atheist, adding: “Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly.” But there exists a certain orientation of spirit that […]
Neutrinos and their weird subatomic ways could help us understand high-energy particles, exploding stars and the origins of matter itself. Why, after millions of years of steadily lighting the cold darkness, does a supergiant star suddenly explode in a blinding blaze of glory brighter than 100 billion stars? What exotic objects in deep space are […]
It all started with an educational video. Benjamin Grant grew up as one of those kids fascinated by the idea of outer space, and our place in the universe. He ended up starting a “space club” at his first post-university job in New York, where everyone “ate lunch by themselves, at their desk, every day,” […]