I'm guessing it'll be some kind of organic molecules, but it might be molecules that can form without the need for life, in which case it could be important in telling us what type of molecules were precursors of the origin of life on Earth. Evidence of actual life would be incredibly awesome but I don't want to get…

Of course, if he thinks it's actually popping up from the region of the city, the cameras would have to be pretty far apart—but they could always experiment with varying the distance until they began to get parallax with the buildings (relative to the mountains behind them, say). And if they could gauge the distance…

They should really set up twin cameras side-by side, like a homebrewed 3D camera, so they could gauge the distance (and make sure it's not just a bug) using parallax.

On Ward's "Future Evolution":

But we are already bending Earth to our whims by releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, the idea is just to try to counteract that, since if less unchecked it will lead to a rapid temperature increase damaging to both humans and ecosystems. And there is nothing all that unnatural about wanting a…

Although just moving away from fossil fuels would be ideal, we may already be past the point of no return on that one; personally I think our best hope at this point is massive investment in carbon capture—some combination of "planting trees" and "air purification" above, although if the scheme suggested in this io9…

That seems like kind of a strawman, only a few fringe types have ever really said that the prime goal of environmentalism should be to restore the environment to neolithic conditions before humans started messing with it, regardless of what the consequences to humanity would be. The mainstream idea has always been to…

Yeah, I was confused by this too, here's a good article that explains it: http://www.milehighcinema.com/2011/07/12/evil-dead-4-and-why-evil-dead-ii-is-not-a-remake/

Evil Dead 2 and 3, yes. But the original Evil Dead had very little campiness or humor, it was just a really scary movie.

Why would running a sub-simulation "tax the system"? A given collection of molecules shouldn't be any harder to simulate if it's arranged in a computer running a simulation than if it's in any other complicated but non-purposeful arrangement. Maybe you misunderstood the article, these guys aren't trying to tax the…

I said "the word 'androgynous' doesn't seem to appear in any of the books"—in other words, I already checked all the books in the "Wrinkle in Time" series (Many Waters too, although I think Charles only has a cameo there), according to amazon's "search inside the book" feature the word "androgynous" isn't in any of…

"Charles Wallace is explicitly repeatedly described as androgynous"

The article does say that people with their lenses removed can see ultraviolet light, but it doesn't say that ordinary people can see UV light if it's strong enough, as you suggest in your comment—in fact they specifically say that the "glow" we see under a blacklight is due to the fact that "some surfaces absorb it…

Is there any sort of consensus among scientists that these are the main causes, or are giving your own opinion? The wikipedia article seems to suggest there's still a lot of different hypotheses among scientists, though wikipedia doesn't always represent these things accurately.

How realistic is it to suppose that artificial pollinators could be a practical replacement for real bees? Aren't there billions or even trillions of bees in the world, constantly replenishing their numbers through reproduction? How much would it cost to manufacture that many robo-bees, and continually replace the…

How about Quantum Leap? The weird blue rays/electricity, plus the sound effect, really ingrained itself in my memory...

The dramatic problem with number two, so as I can see, is that globally nothing really matters. You may save your boyfriend from dying by changing the past of your own universe—in fact infinitely many versions of you will do this—but you have to live with that fact that the only reason you're allowed by physics to do…

In the "Four types of time travel" section, I don't think the distinction you make between #1 and #2 really makes any sense—in #2, if you already know how a historical event turned out then obviously you will fail if you try to "change" it (so you'll still have things like a gun jamming when you try to kill Hitler),…

Are any of the effects of zero gravity (like bone-thinning) actually damaging until the person returns to Earth's gravity? If someone planned to stay there permanently, maybe the lower gravity wouldn't shorten their lifespan (other things like cosmic rays might though).

"Intergalactic efforts" didn't appear in Branson's own quotes, it was probably just the article's writer trying to make a cute pun on Virgin Galactic (which of course is just a brand name, not a literal statement that he plans to colonize the galaxy).