Starship Asterisk*

Of course, it depends on how one defines art. Since I have a very broad definition of art, anything that is beautiful and inspiring, I have no problem calling this art. In fact, I find art in nature; art is a human perspective on something perceived and is not necessarily something created by humans...

I agree with Knut that being among the oldest blogs (which I don't think APOD is) is not relevant to future funding (or it should'nt be). Rather, as he says, it seems that future outreach to the general public is a much better argument for funding b/c this site is used by the people's whose tax doll...

I voted that it is not a blog b/c most blogs tend to be slanted in an adverse manner. Of course, we can not avoid "slanting" in our endeavors but starship asterisk is about as "neutral" as a community forum can be. It's one of the reasons for enjoying it and letting it consume pa...

Would it help the discussion about the size and age of the universe to say that the expansion of the universe is not constrained by the constant (speed of light) so the universe is bigger than it is older? That is the size of the universe is not the same as the age of the universe, i.e. it is bigger...

This is one of my favorite APOD's in a long time bc of the connection between Earth and the cosmos. My love of nature led me to camping, camping led to watching the night sky, which led to my interest in astronomy. One thing that was always present on those summer nights looking up were fireflies. T...

Hi Babaonet. Agreed that Kepler et al figured out where Aristotle was wrong; and Einstein figured out the flaws with Newton. You are right that science as a communal activity aims at a better understanding of the empirical world. I guess what I'm thinking about is using the word "truth" in...

Babaonet, you say, "I realized that only science is true and can answer my questions." While I have a good bit of faith in science and it's ability to describe what we see, I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that only science is true. In fact, if we look at the history of science, we...

As a kid I had to do a report on the solar system in grade school; but my real interest developed years later from my time camping in combination with my job as a philosophy professor. When I would go camping I would spend the nights looking at the sky. It didn't take long before I bought a star gui...