George Dvorsky's discussions

I support this.

To be fair, though, Huber has a lot of experience with this sort of thing, and I can only assume he documented things according to spec, and took all precautions when recovering the artifact.

Yep, I caught that, and also the keys that have clearly been cleaned to show the letters. Don’t love that. 

I like where you’re going with this...

Arg, now fixed. Thanks for the head’s up. 

Cool idea. 

I actually asked Westbury this very question, but I excluded his remark for brevity. Here’s how he responded: Read more

Absolutely not fair to say these possibilities were given “equal” consideration. As stated in the paper, “Our analyses suggest strongly that a single contact event occurred in eastern Polynesia, before the settlement of Rapa Nui, between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group most closely related to the… Read more

Fair question. In the case of dinos, many paleontologists simply assumed that dinosaurs laid hard eggs, because birds do, too. As for mosasaurs, paleontologists didn’t think they were capable of live births. I suppose, for the examples you give, it would be difficult to backtrack this history from DNA alone, but I… Read more

Heh, I actually meant to use the word “donned,” but “adorned” came out for some reason. Now fixed.

The tank was used during the atomic tests and subsequently exposed to radiation. As noted in the press materials: “USS Nevada, like other ships at Bikini, was a floating platform for military equipment and instruments designed to see what the atomic bomb would do to them. One of four tanks placed on Nevada, this is… Read more

Kind words always appreciated, thank you. 

Good point, we do have a tag for paleontology—just slipped my mind. 

It’s becoming increasingly unrealistic to pin the settlement of the Americas to no earlier than the 13,000 to 14,000 timeframe as tons of archaeological evidence exists well before that time, as you point out. This study from August being the most recent, not to mention this latest study with the mammoth pit. But… Read more

Time to embrace and celebrate your inner axolotl.

I also heard from David Weintraub, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s Physics and Astronomy department. His response arrived after we went to publication, but I’d like to share his insights here. Read more

Well that would definitely change my opinion of the situation—thanks for sharing.

Some of you may have seen a similar report issued today by a different set of researchers from the University of Montreal who reached the same conclusion about water on K2-18b. As reported in Verge, this paper was uploaded to the arXiv server last night and it’s still going through peer review at the Astronomical… Read more

I agree that it’s weird to still be talking about linear evolution in the context of hominin evolution, but it certainly seemed to be a big deal during the press conference yesterday, with the researchers taking great pains to make their case in discrediting the supposedly prevailing linear model.

One thing I didn’t mention in this piece is how, after Mars, the list of other viable places to set up colonies falls off sharply. Realistically, we only have the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to consider, which present their own challenges, including the tremendous amount of radiation pouring out from the gas giants.