The mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is a magnificent and historically important event.  The images coming to us from space as the astronauts work on repairing the telescope are beautiful, up close and personal and once again instill awe in those of us that watch.

For most of my life the increasingly incredible pictures and videos that have come back from space have taken we humans out of our planetary realm and realities and lifted up into the cosmos.  The world literally stopped and listened on transistor radios when John Glenn orbited earth in the early 1960s.  The whole world watched as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in July 1969.  The first space walks allowed us to live through others the almost unimaginable reality of a human floating freely in space.

Since then we have become detached from what NASA and other space agencies are doing up above as we have allowed ourselves to become somewhat jaded.  The first time things happen we are captivated, as they continue in on-going frequency they seem to lose their impact.  We no longer stop what we are doing to stand, listen and watch in awe. We again get absorbed both in our personal lives and the seemingly urgent and much more important political, cultural and economic dynamics of our world.

The Hubble telescope has been in orbit for 15 years.  In that time it has altered the knowledge and theories scientists have held about the universe and its infiniteness.  It has shown us …

Amidst all the chatter and news stories about who said what in the Presidential race and how SUVs have become undesirable, there was a story last week that will be one that 2008 will be remembered for, at least in the scientific community.  NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander found ice on Mars!!

As long as humanity has known about the solar system there has been conjecture as to whether there was life anywhere else.  Mars has always been the prime suspect and has led to many books, movies and one famous radio event about Martians.  Most of the time such life forms have been presented as strange angry creatures that attack earth as we humans have trouble thinking other wise.  Those of us who believe in the statistical inevitability of life elsewhere have waited for concrete evidence.

The discovery of water on Mars does not suggest that there has or is life on Mars.  We do currently believe however that water is essential for the existence of life.  We now know, conclusively for the first time that water exists on another planet.  That is an incredible discovery.  It is a first.  Water is not unique to earth.

In an earlier column here I discussed the fact that scientists found another sun and planetary system that is similar to ours.  I also suggested in another column that perhaps the definition of life should be expanded as we search for it in space.  The fact that ‘life’ should be narrowly defined by earthly …

All my life I have believed that there must be other intelligent life in the Universe.  When you gaze upon the endless starry night it seems statistically impossible that there isn’t some form of intelligent life out there.  It may not be human-like but life there must be.  In a prior column, I wrote about the fact that scientists looking for life elsewhere have redefined the definition of life as it was concluded that perhaps our earth bound definition  needs to be greatly expanded.

Last week there was an announcement that astronomers had discovered that there were five planets circling a star called 55 Cancri where it had been thought there were only four.    This makes this planetary system the most extensive found outside our own. Further, this fifth planet has some earthly characteristics relative to its distance from 55 Cancri, so that it just might have water.  This discovery came about as scientists are in transition from studying planets to studying planetary systems.  As Geoff Marcy, a professor at University of California, Berkeley said:  “We now know our Sun and its family of planets is not unusual”. 

Another way of saying this is that scientists, in their effort to locate life elsewhere have moved from looking for planets that are earth-like to solar systems that are similar to ours.  This is an obvious and logical progression.  Technology is not yet at the stage where we can find small planets.  Evidently the smallest size detectable is on the scale of Jupiter.  …

It was 50 years ago this week that the Russians launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite to orbit the earth. It changed the world.  In fact, there are few, if any events of the last 50 years that had such a global impact on just about every aspect of humanity. I can still remember the night that, as a young boy standing in the front yard with my parents; we looked up at the starry sky waiting for Sputnik.  There it was, a slow man-made star moving across the sky. We listened to its’ beeping on the radio. It filled me with wonder.  I did not see it as Russian but rather as man made, that we humans had done this.  The phrase “The sky’s the limit” was now a phrase of the past. This was space!