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Now more than ever, one imagines that we should intensify our search for life out there.

Life down here has become difficult. And how else can we maintain American supremacy, if not by muscling in on outer space?

It seems, though, that economics is putting a difficult hue on our quest. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the SETI (Search For Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute has announced that it is setting aside some of its telescopes, as it cannot afford to run them.

Indeed, 42 radio dishes, named the Allen Telescope Array, are being silenced until someone can come up … Read more

The scientists are NASA seem so concerned about Internet speculation that supermoons cause natural disasters that they've released a video that's supposed to reassure you on this March 19th supermooning night.

NASA's YouTube video goes out of its way to reassure you that nothing will happen, that supermoons are merely fascinating events in which the moon is ever so slightly closer to the earth.

For example, the video says, a supermoon in 1983 passed without incident. There's something faintly touching, though, when the video's narrator feels the need to refer to an "almost supermoon&… Read more

Perhaps it's happened to you in a meeting or on a date. Perhaps you're one of those inconsiderate people who never obeys the plea to silence your cell phone in the movie theater.

But you might think that, before you go live to present your Final Four predictions on ESPN, you might have remembered to turn your cell phone off.

Not everyone, it seems. For here is Doug Gottlieb, who used to play for Oklahoma State as well as Notre Dame, inadvertently creating one of the more touching technological moments in TV history.

When he hears Super Mario … Read more

There are those who believe that a full moon puts them in a strange mood and even causes them to behave in a peculiar manner.

Some, though, want to credit the moon with even greater powers.

A week before the earthquake in Japan, there was already consternation in some quarters about the so-called supermoon. This will occur on March 19 when the moon comes extremely close to the earth. That's 221,567 miles, to be a little more precise.

Headlines were already being written featuring the evocative word "Moonageddon" relying on the prognostications of astronomers or, perhaps, … Read more

This is it. No, really. I know you might have been temporarily fooled two years ago when it seemed as if the Lost City of Atlantis had turned up on Google Earth.

But this time it's serious. Really serious. How do I know? Well, it's on the National Geographic Channel.

According to Reuters, tomorrow night the channel will reveal the work of Richard Freund, a professor at the University of Hartford, Conn., and his international team of Atlantis-seekers.

You will be wondering where Atlantis truly is. Throughout history there has been speculation that it was somewhere near Southern … Read more

Those who survive will think to themselves that it could have been worse.

Awful though some images of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami truly are, other images taken during the quake appear to show that things could have been even worse.

Even though the quake--U.S. Geological Survey Seismologist Lucy Jones told CBS News--was 30 times stronger than the devastating 1906 quake in San Francisco and 3.000 times more powerful that the Northridge quake, many buildings seem to have remained intact.

Another report in the Atlantic suggests that Japanese building codes and engineering practices have become ever more … Read more

Michelangelo's "David" has seen better days. He's spent centuries on his feet. He's tired, yet he cannot take a seat.

Now some are wondering whether engineering work that's taking place beneath him might cause the Renaissance icon to quite simply collapse with exhaustion.

The Telegraph reports that construction of a high-speed railway being built beneath Florence might cause one vibration too many for David.

The paper quotes Fernando de Simone, a specialist in subterranean engineering, as saying: "The tunnel will pass about 600 meters (2,000 feet) from the statue of David, the … Read more

Living in the Bay Area, one often wonders where certain beings really came from.

And it seems that the pressure for authorities to admit that everything down here isn't exactly human increases every day.

Now an astrobiologist with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Dr. Richard B. Hoover, has added to the excitement.

Hoover has spent considerable years traveling to remote places like Alaska and Siberia. There, he's collected meteorites, which he's taken back to his lab and examined.

He published his conclusions yesterday in the Journal of Cosmology, and one can only describe his findings as … Read more

Somehow, freaky sci-fi movies don't seem to be favored by Oscar voters.

However, I think I may have found some subject matter that Peter Guber, the great Golden State Warriors owner and producer of "The Kids Are Alright," might want to get a budget behind.

Apparently, the United States already knows quite a lot about UFO technology. Apparently, there are secret "black ops" installations somewhere in--oh, I'm guessing Arizona--where new forms of energy have been created using technology that has been gleaned from those up there, rather than us down here.

Please, you know … Read more