Click to see the whole sketch (©xkcd) I love today’s XKCD comic. It depicts Sagan-Man, a superhero who possesses Carl Sagan’s ability to communicate science to the world. In this case Sagan-Man uses his inspirational tone to stop a thief in the act. Unfortunately, I was too young to...

On the red carpet: John Cusack tells me what he'll be doing on Dec. 21st, 2012. Skiing (credit: Debra O'Neill/Discovery News) Currently sitting in the departure lounge in LAX before I fly out to Washington D.C. to meet up with the Discovery News crew ahead of the launch of our brand new site (keep an...

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is suffering from amnesia, again. This is hardly surprising if we consider that the lifespan of Spirit should have been 3 months, the fact that it has lasted 69 months (so far) is nothing short of miraculous. In rover-mission-lifetime years, doesn’t...

“25 billion of your biggest bombs please. I’ll pay credit, thanks!” "I love the smell of venting volatiles in the morning..." The Pluto debate frustrates me, as you may have noticed. It’s not that I have particularly strong views about whether it should be called a planet...

Although I’ve been neck-deep in Ares I-X launch news today, I’ve had some time to see what else has been going on in the Universe. I really hope I’ll find the time to get to this stack of blog post ideas over the weekend, one of them is a particular peach. But before I turn in for the...

(Note the clever use of CAPS and excessive exclamation marks in the title. It speaks volumes.) I guess this confirms I was wrong. Consider this an apology to all the crackpots, doomsayers, cranks and Walter Wagner. I’m sorry I got it all… so… wrong. While out on the town in London,...

As we have probably all guessed by now, the Institute for Human Continuity is a viral campaign designed to generate a huge buzz around the upcoming November 13th movie called 2012. Ever since I started writing about 2012 (way back in May 2008 with “No Doomsday in 2012“), I’ve been...

For a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a conspiracy theorist’s brain, check out this hilarious explanation of the super-duper-hyper-speed-top-secret-military-drone that was captured in this video of an Iranian missile test on October 8th. There’s some spooky music added to the edited...

A better chance of making it to Saturn: The Reliant Robin Space Shuttle from the BBCs Top Gear. An ad on Craigslist has just appeared: Astronaut Needed (Northern Alberta). Sign me up! Oh, hold on… “Astronaut needed for experimental flight to Titan. I have been working on this project now...

<conspiracy mode> In the early hours of Friday morning at 4:31am, the spent Centaur rocket from the NASA LCROSS mission slammed into the surface of the south pole of the moon. What was the point in that? Well, NASA was hoping that the tumbling chunk of metal the size of a small bus would kick...