The Browser - Life Tables

How To Search For Life On Mars

Robert Zubrin et al | New Atlantis | 22nd July 2022

There may well be life on Mars — if not little green men, then microorganisms such as microbes and bacteria. But NASA has stopped any serious searching, for fear that organic matter from Earth might contaminate Mars irreversibly, and vice-versa. These exaggerated fears are unworthy of us. Finding life elsewhere in the Universe would be the greatest possible scientific triumph of our era (3,300 words)

Future Tables

Venkatesh Rao | Ribbonfarm | 22nd July 2022

A bus time-table may be wrong about the exact movements of every given bus yet still right about the bus service in general. Time-tables work by describing "anchor objects" which, like buses, "possess some sort of natural stability", and which revert to a mean over time. Perhaps, when thinking about the future, we need less in the way of "vision" and more in the way of time-tables (2,300 words)

You could advertise to our 60,000 curious, intelligent readers.
Want to reach this most delightful of audiences? Book a classified ad in The Browser today.

Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Sylvia Bishop, Assistant Publisher; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director

Editorial comments and letters to the editor: editor@thebrowser.com‌‌ | Technical issues and support requests: support@thebrowser.com‌‌ | Or write at any time to the publisher: uri@thebrowser.com

Proudly published with Ghost, the fiercely independent website and newsletter platform