The search for planets around other stars is heating up. So far, there are over 4,000 confirmed exoplanets. What would the Earth look like in one of these searches?

Help support Deep Astronomy by getting one month free trial of The Great Courses Plus: http://ow.ly/AVDF30fiZ33 Whether you believe in the singularly or not, there’s one thing that everyone agrees on, the rapid improvement and pace of all our technology is speeding up at an ever alarming rate. Right now anyone with a smartphone and average 3G connection can video chat with their friends on the opposite side of planet Earth. Twenty years ago this would have been science fiction. More impressive, only a few weeks ago Google’s DeepMind team created an AI that became the world's best player of the game Go within 3 days, a game that is regarded as the most complex board game ever invented This week join us and our special guest Dr. James Hughes, founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and Editor in Chief for the Journal of Posthuman Studies. Dr. Hughes is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of Humanity+, the Neuroethics Society, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and the Working Group on Ethics and Technology at Yale University. He also serves on the State of Connecticut Regenerative Medicine Research Advisory Committee. You won’t want to miss this week’s discussion as we dive into topics like: * Which technologies, especially new ones, are likely to have the greatest impact on human beings and human societies in the 21st century? * What ethical issues do those technologies and their applications raise for humans, our civilization, and our world? * How much can we extrapolate from the past and how much accelerating change should we anticipate? * What sort of policy positions can be recommended to promote the best possible outcomes for individuals and societies? ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8haXO3VGVvs

Please go to the event page and let us know you're coming: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/104933578966497599647/events/cajib65khe1jj4h5cjjonjd6ee0 The history of science is full of success stories: those things scientists did right to advance our knowledge of the universe, but we don't talk about the mistakes very much. And there have been some doozies! It seems that even brilliant physicists, astronomers and biologists aren't immune from the occasional blunder, the only difference is that when THEY make them, it has a pretty big impact on how we understand the world around us. Please join +Tony Darnell and +Alberto Conti as they discuss an amazing new book by Dr. +Mario Livio, "Brilliant Blunders: Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe" Some topics: * Darwin's theory of evolution shouldn't have worked * Fred Hoyle thought the Big Bang was nonsense * Lord Kelvin got the age of the Earth wrong - by a lot * Linus Pauling built the wrong model for DNA * Albert Einstein was wrong about what held the universe in equilibrium Big mistakes? Sure, but without them, our understanding of the universe we live in wouldn't have advanced. We're looking forward to a lively discussion, so hope to see you there! If you want weekly space and astronomy news updates, please subscribe to the DeepAstronomy channel. New episodes are uploaded every Friday night. Follow me on Google+ http://gplus.to/DeepAstronomy http://gplus.to/TonyDarnell We also have a great Google+ Community, come share your thoughts and join the discussion! https://plus.google.com/communities/109849939648748938781 Don't forget Facebook, there's a whole page dedicated to Space Fans: http://facebook.com/SpaceFan ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqvuNEvkPjU

Although cataclysmic explosions and the fiery furnaces of massive stars are attention-grabbers, many of the most critically important events and physical processes in astronomy take place in the coolest objects in the cosmos: regions within which stars and planets are born and the seeds of life are planted, as just one example. Please join our hosts, Tony Darnell and Harley Thronson, as they discuss with Drs. Margaret Meixner of the Space Telescope Science Institute and David Leisawitz from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the science that can be revealed by an observatory operating at the longest infrared wavelengths. ORIGINS Space Telescope websites: https://origins.ipac.caltech.edu/ https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/firs/ Telecons mentioned by Margaret are here: https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/firs/events/ Like this content? Please consider becoming a patron: https://patreon.com/DeepAstronomy Follow DeepAstronomy on Twitter: @DeepAstronomy Join our free Discord server for always-on chat action! https://discord.gg/nqGpvtK ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vVlc-m1Md8