Learning to Live in Steven Weinberg's Pointless Universe

Sponsored by

    

July 29, 2021

Dear Reader,   This week, we’re reflecting on nothing less than the meaning of life, the universe, and, well, everything. Or, rather, the meaninglessness of it all, as espoused by the late, legendary physicist Steven Weinberg, who died last week at the age of 88. Our lead story details the rich legacy of Weinberg’s claims of cosmic pointlessness, especially their influence upon subsequent generations of researchers and science communicators. Elsewhere, we have stories about science on China’s new space station, how an asteroid strike resembles a pandemic, a controversial project to study UFOs and more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Space & Physics Learning to Live in Steven Weinberg's Pointless Universe The late physicist’s most infamous statement still beguiles scientists and vexes believers By Dan Falk

Space & Physics China's Space Station Is Preparing to Host 1,000 Science Experiments The spaceborne studies will cover diverse topics, from dark matter and gravitational waves to the growth of cancer and pathogenic bacteria By Smriti Mallapaty,Nature magazine

Space & Physics InSight Lander Makes Best-Yet Maps of Martian Depths The NASA mission used seismic waves from marsquakes to perform a core-to-crust survey of the planet’s subsurface By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Sponsor Content by Space: Science & Technology, a Science Partner Journal Submit Your Space Robot Research To disseminate the current advances in space robots, and to stimulate discussion on the future research in this field, Space: Science & Technology invites papers for publication consideration in its special issue on Space and Robot. Submit your paper today! Learn more: https://bit.ly/3zlFMGa

Space & Physics Why an Asteroid Strike Is Like a Pandemic Both are low-probability but catastrophic events—and both can be mitigated if we act early enough By Casey Dreier

Space & Physics The Human Framework for Alien Life By Andrea Gawrylewski

Space & Physics Avi Loeb's Galileo Project Will Search for Evidence of Alien Visitation With nearly $2 million in private funding, the controversial new initiative is targeting unidentified phenomena in Earth’s skies and beyond By Adam Mann

Space & Physics Announcing a New Plan for Solving the Mystery of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena The newly organized Galileo Project will use a three-pronged approach to replace unreliable eyewitness reports with reproducible scientific observations By Avi Loeb

Extraterrestrial Life Harvard's Avi Loeb Thinks We Should Study UFOs--and He's Not Wrong As a SETI scientist, I’m grateful that he has the freedom—and the guts—to go where few would dare to go By Seth Shostak

Policy NASA Investigates Renaming James Webb Space Telescope after Anti-LGBT+ Claims Some astronomers argue the space agency’s next flagship observatory will memorialize discrimination. Others are waiting for more evidence By Alexandra Witze,Nature magazine

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Space & Physics, Volume 4, Issue 4

QUOTE OF THE DAY "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." The late physicist Steven Weinberg, in his classic 1977 book, "The First Three Minutes"

ADVERTISEMENT

FROM THE ARCHIVE Science Should Not Try to Absorb Religion and Other Ways of Knowing Our diverse ways of seeing reality will never, and should never, meld into a monolithic worldview By John Horgan | June 2021

LATEST ISSUES

Questions?   Comments?

Download the Scientific American App

To view this email as a web page, go here. You received this email because you opted-in to receive email from Scientific American. To ensure delivery please add news@email.scientificamerican.com to your address book. Unsubscribe     Manage Email Preferences     Privacy Policy     Contact Us