Posts Tagged Adam Frank

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Professor Adam Frank makes the case for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s role in earth-centric science. “Without NASA, climate research worldwide would be hobbled,” he writes.

The makers of the latest Marvel blockbuster, Doctor Strange, wanted the fantasy film to have scientific substance. For help, they turned to astrophysicist Adam Frank, who was a science consultant on the film.

University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank helps NPR listeners answer: If there are points in space with only three atoms per cubic meter, what fills in the rest? / All Things Considered

How can we calculate the likelihood of technological civilizations having existed on other planets? That’s a question Adam Frank, professor of astronomy, considers in an essay, “Yes, There Have Been Aliens,” published in the New York Times.

Astronomy professor Adam Frank traces the “line from [Ellis] Chesbrough’s audacious plan to make Chicago a clean, functioning city 150 years ago and the invisible infrastructures hiding behind your cell phone” today. / NPR.org

Are humans unique and alone in the vast universe? This question– summed up in the famous Drake equation–has for a half-century been one of the most intractable and uncertain in science. But a new paper shows that the recent discoveries of exoplanets combined with a broader approach to the question makes it possible to assign a new empirically valid probability to whether any other advanced technological civilizations have ever existed.

The Kavli HUMAN Project holds great promise for putting big data to the test. But as astronomy professor Adam Frank argue, “with great promise comes great responsibility.” / NPR

Twenty-five years ago today, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. The images it has been sending back to Earth for all these years have become iconic, and yet it came very close to being a billion dollar failure. One of the heroes who rescued Hubble from ruin and made it a great science success story is Rochester optics professor Duncan Moore.

How long can a technological civilization last? Will human-caused climate change or species extinctions threaten its collapse or can industrial development continue without restrictions? In a new paper, two astrophysicists argue that these questions may soon be resolvable scientifically.