IdeaFestival

Finding Avatar's Pandora

2009-12-04T10:23:16-05:00

"James Cameron’s new movie Avatar depicts a gas giant with a habitable moon around it, and the MarketSaw editors are interested in whether such a planet could exist around one of the Centauri stars."

Posting parts of an interview with Yale astronomer Debra Fischer, Paul Gilster connects popular entertainment and the search for planets around our closest stellar neighbor. MarketSaw is a blog that reviews 3D motion pictures and recently interviewed Fischer. The stellar companions are of course the triple Centauri system, a mere four light years away from our star.

Wayne

Cross-posted from Kentucky Space blog

Slip the IdeaFestival into their stockings

2009-12-04T08:32:00-05:00

Give the gift of IF this holiday season! Your out of the box thinking will come attractively wrapped in ribbon and bow.

Wayne

Flying the Big Red space Chair

2009-12-03T08:28:45-05:00

At MSNBC, Cosmic Log's Alan Boyle describes how a red armchair wound up near space. HD video of the event, which has been viewed more than a half million times, is here.

Wayne

Turning away the Search People

2009-12-02T12:31:35-05:00

The suggestion by Rupert Murdoch that he may prevent Google from indexing his news properties, including the Wall Street Journal, has lately been newsworthy. While the old model of charging for content may be irretrievably broken, it's far from clear what might replace that lost income since news retailers have struggled to profit from the time and expense of journaling. On the other hand, Google has certainly profited, leaving Murdoch to wonder if the money is under new ownership and what he might do about it. The Big Think mulls it over:

But, as Murdoch realizes, the content they produce is worth something, and they do have some leverage. While the traffic that search engines like Google generate for websites is valuable, Murdoch is right to point out that 'search people' —people who come to websites by way of a search engine—are not as valuable as regular subscribers because they spend relatively little time on the sites they visit. At the same time the right to index those sites is worth something to the search engines, whose ads sales depend on them having comprehensive and useful results. It's certainly worth something to Bing, the search engine Microsoft hopes will rival Google, to have exclusive access to the content News Corp. can provide. And since News Corp. is making so little money off the revenue generated by search-engine traffic, Murdoch can, as Jarvis Coffin argues, plausibly say they will do without it, instead focusing on higher-value regular users. Unless, that is, the search engines are willing to share some of their revenues with him.

Wayne

Wrecked

2009-12-02T09:48:31-05:00

"As the Eye is formed, such are its powers" - William Blake

In this season of good will, this little essay and the quote above come highly recommended.

Backed up by a reference to what we now know about the physical act of perception as well as an admirable and rare rhetorical restraint, Big Think explores our human eyesight. Crushed by every wrong that has come before, David Berreby points out that we don't see the world as it is and then color it with our prejudices, but that how we see, and how we encounter with the world in general, is wrecked from the start. And just as our minds impose meaning on an electromagnetic blaze that gives no thought of its own, what we make of beggars and presidents alike may be right. It may be wrong. But it's always made. "We are," he says, "part of what we're trying to explain."

Wayne

Depression changes how we see the world. Can the arts change that?

2009-12-01T09:32:36-05:00

If depression changes - literally - how we see the world, could visual training help its sufferers? Just as dance did what physical therapy could not, one wonders how the visual and performing arts might contribute to healing.

Wayne

Going rogue, the physics of finance

2009-11-30T09:02:27-05:00

Can economic systems also act like natural systems? The interdisciplinary practice of econophysics looks for the parallels between the two, and like the recently uncovered fact that rogue light bursts can occur in optical fiber, or the confirmation of towering, unpredicted ocean waves, recent research that suggests the equity markets may also exhibit similar characteristics, the kind of unexpected and devastating events Nassim Nicholas Taleb called "Black Swans" at the 2008 IdeaFestival. Put one way, they are the infrequent but inevitable consequence of open non-linear systems.

Put another, life is unpredictable.

Wayne

Ghosts of Christmas Yet to Come

2009-11-27T14:04:49-05:00

So it's not the same as having Ray Bradury magically appear to describe how he came to write the Martian Chronicles, but a theatrical trick used to make ghosts appear could lead to holographic video for all sorts of other dramatic interventions - perfect for delivering bad news or, perhaps, escaping same.

Wayne

Black Friday Fugue

2009-11-27T12:39:18-05:00

Presented in all its 8-bit glory, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, for organ, seemed like the perfect theatrical match for the drama of today's events.

Hat tip: Luciano Floridi

Flight to Geyser moon

2009-11-25T09:52:19-05:00

Planetary scientist Emily Lakdawalla stitched together this gorgeous image from the Cassini fly by of the plumes of the Saturn moon, Enceladus. If you like this image, check out the time-lapse photography of the doughty craft's approach that's also on display on her blog at the Planetary Society.

At the base of these geysers may lie an ocean, a subject of intense astrobiological interest.

Wayne

Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI / mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla