Stephen Hawking: Alien but primitive life likely: "WASHINGTON - Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has been thinking a lot about the cosmic question, "Are we alone?" The answer is probably not, he says."

Pretty short on details, but it's interesting to see that I share my view on aliens with Stephen Hawking. I usually state is as "all we need to do is find ONE extraterrestrial bacterium and it changes everything," but his quote from the article of "primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare" is essentially the same sentiment.

Still slacking on those Hawai'i pictures, but here are the iPhone shots from Club 740 in L.A. that I mentioned:



L.A. was pretty much a hole. This was my first time there and, I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed. I know that I didn't see any of the really nice neighborhoods, but the view that you'd be paying for was nothing special. It'd have been a great view without the smog, sure, but what are you going to do?

Is There Anybody Out There? "Is there anybody out there? Probably not, according to a scientist from the University of East Anglia. A mathematical model produced by Prof Andrew Watson suggests that the odds of finding new life on other Earth-like planets are low, given the time it has taken for beings such as humans to evolve and the remaining life span of Earth."

So, I have a problem with this one. It starts off talking about the "odds of finding new life on other Earth-like planets," but it turns out that they guy has only calculated the odds of intelligent life. Oh noes, we're never going to meet the little green men!! Who cares? Isn't the important thing that we find life - ANY life - on some other celestial body than the Earth? Wouldn't ooze on Europa or subsurface bacteria on Mars be enough? Wouldn't fossil evidence of past bacteriological activity on Mars be enough?? The odds of finding LIFE AT ALL are actually much higher. For example, using the guy's numbers from the article, the probability of finding single-celled bacteria would have an upper bound of at least TEN PERCENT over four billion years and that's pretty good odds given the size of the universe.

It's not really clear from the article, but I assume that the odds are the chance of a given Earth-like planet harboring life over a four billion year period, so we need to find some Earth-like planets first. That actually isn't too far off. Detecting life on them is going to be interesting, though.

The reporter also says "life" and not "life as we know it," throughout the article but that's an entirely other rant.

I've been sucked into Eve Online, so I have been neglecting my Hawai'i pictures, but here's one of downtown Los Angeles from last weekend:




I've got some aweful iPhone pictures from the party that we went down for, so I'll talk about L.A. when I post them.

I don't know how long it will hold my attention, but for now Eve is interesting. It feels very much like what Elite wanted to be but couldn't since the resources simply didn't exist in 1984.

We drove all the way around Maui on HWY 31, trying to get to some hiking near Puuiki without driving the Hana road but were finally stopped by rockslides at Manawainui Bridge, only a few miles from our destination. The view from the bridge was interesting but we didn't linger due to the active construction work to shore up the cliff face:

 

A few more of the view from the retreat on Maui:


  

I'm not sure what the smoke was from, but there was no fire response that I saw, so I assume it was some sort of controlled burn. Big though....