Counting sheep on Malacandra?

The odds of finding flocks of sheep on the surface of Mars seem to be dropping to almost nil:

“Mars methane hunt comes up empty, flummoxing scientists: Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft did not find the gas in red planet’s atmosphere during its first months of operation.”

Few if any tourists to Mars are likely to wake up confused, wondering whether they’re actually in New Zealand.

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Continuing in the same spirit of practical science, here’s a bit of nutritional information:

“Should We Drink Milk to Strengthen Bones? For generations, we’ve been told milk helps build strong bones. But does science back this up?”

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I’m shocked.  Shocked, I tell you!

“Finally Some Robust Research Into Whether “Diversity Training” Actually Works – Unfortunately It’s Not Very Promising”

Really.  Is any sentient, thinking, non-ideologically-driven human even slightly surprised by this?

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Genealogy is becoming more difficult”

“New Hominin Shakes the Family Tree—Again: What does the discovery of Homo luzonensis mean for our understanding of humanity’s history?”

And here’s a question that, as my own age begins to be more easily reckoned in geological epochs rather than in years, is becoming ever more urgent:

“Why Hasn’t Evolution Dealt With the Inefficiency of Aging?”

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I can’t decide whether I like this thought or dislike it, and whether I think it would be theologically helpful or theologically problematic:

“Are we living in a computer simulation? I don’t know. Probably.  Why this computer scientist thinks reality might be a video game.”

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Yesterday, in a post entitled “An astronomical breakthrough, a moral quagmire, and the difficulty of economics,” I wrote about an astonishing new photograph of a black hole — or, to be more precise, of the place, surrounded by light, where a black hole sits.  It really is something that I would never have imagined when I was growing up.

Here are two interesting background pieces about that achievement and what permitted it:

“That image of a black hole you saw everywhere? Thank this grad student for making it possible”

“This Week, Capitalism Enabled the Seeing of the Unseeable”

Posted from San Diego, California