Big Picture Science – Doomsday Live: Recent Scares

by Gary Niederhoff on December 3, 2012

Part 3 of Doomsday Live, Part 2, featuring an enumeration of recent doomsday scares that ended up not being so accurate.
(TRT 2:15)

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Jim December 5, 2012 at 9:50 pm: Heard Seth in part-1 (I think it was Seth) start by saying he doesn’t know anything about alien sociology. Ok… good start. But then goes on to apply all kinds of human history and current human technology to state as fact (ok, I know this is partly satirical, but still….) how aliens could not possibly have detected us because our radio waves haven’t even made it to the nearest star. Well, unless he or his source is authority on all things alien – and in particular all methods they may use to detect another life form on a distant planet, how can such a conclusion possibly be made? he was funny to listen to, but highly un-credible.
Seth Shostak January 2, 2013 at 11:08 am: I think what I said was that our signals — mostly radar, FM radio and television — have only made it about 60 or 70 light-years into space. That’s not very far (although 15 or so times the distance of the NEAREST star). But the point is that the distance is less than one-thousandth the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy. As a consequence, I would strongly suspect that no one knows of Homo sapiens’ existence, as these signals have still not reached far enough.

Reference to “all methods” sounds as if the writer knows physics that violates Einstein’s theories. If so, then he should write it up! Undoubtedly good for a Noble Prize.