Month: November 2019

Enlarge (credit: NOAA)

Hurricanes are fed by warm ocean waters, so it's expected that we'll see larger, more dangerous storms as the planet continues to heat up due to climate change. These storms also have a major economic impact—Katrina is thought to have knocked a full percentage off the US' GDP in 2005. As such, we might expect to see hurricane-driven economic damages to be increasing over time.

But there's a lot of statistical noise in that system. Many storms miss the US entirely, and others miss the major urban centers and damage sparsely populated areas. The growth of wealth over time, as well as things like changing business codes, also complicate the analysis. As a result, detecting any change in damages is extremely difficult, and studies have come to very different conclusions about whether there's a trend or not.

But a new study suggests that the most powerful storms are in fact increasing. And perhaps just as significantly, its findings are consistent with a study of natural disasters published just a month ago, even though the two used very different methods.

Enlarge / L-R: NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans, Marshall Space Flight Center Director Wernher von Braun, and President John F. Kennedy. (credit: NASA)

Almost two-thirds of Americans agree that the space program's costs are justified. And fewer think that NASA's budget should be reduced or abolished than at any time since 1986. Those were two of the results from polling conducted by Gallup for the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. The poll found a clear upward trend for support for space exploration, starting at 41% in 1979 and rising to 64% by 2019.

But much less is known about why different Americans are in favor of space exploration. That would be useful information for policymakers—of all stripes—who hope to convince the public to open their wallets. It's a question that David Burbach, a political scientist at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island, has sought to answer in a new study published in the journal Space Policy.

Crossed priorities

Previous work has identified demographic or social differences in public support for the space program. Being young, white, male, or more highly educated all correlate with greater support for NASA than being older, non white, female, or having a lower educational attainment. Evangelical Christians are more lukewarm on the idea than the rest of the nation, but as it turns out there's not much of a split between Republican and Democratic voters on the topic.

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  The Mandalorian's pilot episode ends with an incredible gallery that recreates the episode's most iconic scenes as paintings. We open this review with a few samples for your desktop background of choice. [credit: Disney Plus / Lucasfilm ]

While Disney+ debuts today with a healthy slew of classic films and new series, its biggest day-one draw has to be Star Wars' first live-action TV series, The Mandalorian. Ahead of its launch, we wondered how well the show, about a bounty hunter living in the era between Episodes VI and VIII, might lean into the archetype of space westerns. Today, we now know that this is a full yee-haw and yippy-ki-yay of a gunslinging time with a new, faceless, grizzled anti-hero.

Even better, by the first episode's end, the reveal of his surprising journey had me shouting a hearty "whaaaaat?!" It's been a while since a TV series pilot has had me this excited.

This review of the series' pilot episode contains mild plot spoilers—and errs on the side of vague descriptions.