The problem is how to make that happen. Getting Africans to Europe is obviously not an issue, but unless there is some sort of converse emigration of Europeans to Africa then it will amount to a fairly massive drain of intelligent and (obviously) motivated people from some of the countries that need them most, which…

Do you conversely support more Europeans in Africa?

I’m guessing they’re bright enough to saturate the images even when not pointing directly at the sun, but I really don’t know enough about photography to really say for sure. That would make them really bright though.

Io is tidally locked to Jupiter and is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Add in how much closer and bigger all the principles involved in the 55 Cancri system are and I think massive volcanism is a safe bet. Though you might be right about there being no crust to speak of.

Other than the smarts it takes to assemble and manage a global network of satellites optimized to detect the absurdly small light fluctuations caused by transiting planets around stars hundreds of trillions of kilometers from Earth.

I’m guessing since red dwarf stars are stable and long lived that we’re seeing the star in a stable and long term orbit, which would make it an anomaly for current models (which are far from complete so this is not all that surprising). There is a chance, as you mention, that we’re seeing the planet in a temporary…

Not so much a max distance, since we can see starlight from across the universe, but there would definitely be a max effective distance, which would totally depend on the efficiency of the solar panels being used. I imagine you’d have some form of nuclear back up when voyaging to the outer regions of the solar system.

No one can say yet how quickly because we have no idea just how much thrust this drive might produce when it has been fully tested, developed, and optimized. If it’s legitimate then this development process could take decades, like the internal combustion engine which is still being improved. If you could get it up to…

It’s the sun’s gravity that makes maintaining an orbit around Mercury so difficult in the long run because it slowly warps the orbit . Mercury’s so far down the gravity well that just stopping it there to orbit for any time at all was a major feat.

I think “irrumabo” would just mean “I am going to face fuck [you]” or something like that; I’m not sure what the slang for “...the fuck” would be in Latin, but minus that it could translate as:

Fortunately, I don’t think any cephalopods will be browsing io9 any time soon, though I could be wrong...

I don’t know if “myth” is the right word. Believing in something you directly experience is very different from believing in a conjured set of “just so” stories, even if that experience may end up to be misleading or entirely false (i.e. a Matrix like scenario). Personally, while I understand there is currently no way…

To be honest I think we’ve already reached peak homogeneity for the human species. Within a hundred years or so we will begin colonizing the Solar System which will probably involve a rapid re-diversification of human culture, similar to the period after the fall of the Roman Empire. Humans will eventually adapt to…

So will the JWT be able to look back far enough to see these massive early stars? If not, how much larger would a telescope need to be to do so?

A super volcano eruption would render most of the Earth uninhabitable.

I essentially agree with you, but I have no problem extending human-like legal protections to some of the more intelligent/sensitive species on the planet; just don’t grant them the same status as humans.

Not even the article you link to packs as in as much spin as you just managed in two sentences.

Then why go for full personhood in the first place? If shades of grey are possible, would it not be better to create a new legal category of sentient beings rather than lumping them in with humans?

Well, one of the reasons we rank above all mammals is because we’re the only mammals capable of ranking mammals in regard too each other. Given the lack of competition we might as well award the #1 spot to ourselves.

Exactly why granting legal personhood to primates is a poor way to try protect them. Freedom isn’t being transferred from one prison to a nicer one.