There?s a certain type of sudden realization that cartoonists often portray with a light bulb going on over the head?the “Eureka!” experience. What?s going on inside our brains when this happens?
Mark Jung-Beeman says this happens “when you need to tie together things that are distantly related. That’s exactly what an insight is. It’s tying together information that people already know, but they don’t recognize how they are related until that key moment.”
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Tommy Woodard took a digital photo in Provo, Utah that appears to be a UFO hovering over some trees. He was taking photos in Provo Canyon on Tuesday while scouting for a possible film location. He didn’t notice anything unusual in the photograph, until he noticed a small speck in the corner. He zoomed in on it and saw the UFO.
He says, “The closer I got, the more impressed I got by it. I was kind of skeptical but it’s pretty obvious when you zoom in.” He called the Hill Air Force Base to ask if any planes were flying in the canyon onTuesday but says, “They kind of laughed, you know.”
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A vital but unasked question is: what happens to human waste in space? Right now, astronauts bring it back home with them, but on longer space voyages, other solutions will be needed.
This will become more important in the future, when long space voyages are planned. Karen Miller writes that on a two-year trip to Mars, a crew of six humans will generate more than six tons of solid organic waste. Before we can venture out on long space trips, we’ll have to figure out how to recycle it.
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People are often surprised to find out that the Vatican owns an observatory in Tucson, Arizona. They originally had a telescope in Rome, but the growing population made the sky too bright for astronomical observations. Jesuit astronomer Guy Consolmagno says, “?The Church, in modern times, wants to show the world that it’s not afraid of science, that it supports science, that it thinks science is a wonderful thing. Not only to reassure the scientists, but also to reassure the religious people science is a good thing. Don’t listen to people who say you have to choose one or the other.”
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