The Nightshirt Sightings, Portents, Forebodings, Suspicions

Posts tagged with “scientific sublime”

The Immensity of Things

Monday, 9 May, 2011

Speaking of films that attempt to show the bigness of the universe, a new, anatomically accurate (that is, from actual star mapping) video by the American Museum of Natural History is truly sublime: ***

Ebert on the Universe

Monday, 4 April, 2011

One day last week Roger Ebert turned is mind from film to contemplate the immensity of things: … The universe is too large for me to comprehend how large that really might be. I’ve seen those animations where Earth shrinks to a pin point, and then the sun shrinks to a pin point, and then […]

Saganism

Monday, 21 February, 2011

Carl Sagan was a hero to most of us who in one way or another like to watch the skies. The mellifluous-voiced, turtleneck-and-corduroy-wearing astronomer inspired my generation to care about space, about our planet, and about our future as a spacefaring civilization. He was not only a fashion plate but also a prophet of what […]

SETI, UFOs, and the Scientific Sublime

Monday, 16 November, 2009

“They” Are Not “Them”: A Hybrid View of the UFO Presence

Sunday, 6 September, 2009

For many years I was skeptical of the UFO phenomenon. I was persuaded by SETI pioneers like Carl Sagan: It’s pretty certain that the universe is full of intelligent civilizations, but the vast interstellar distances and the vast timescales involved in traversing them made the notion of an alien presence in our skies seem (to […]