The NCAR-based Community Earth System Model (CESM) is one of the world’s most sophisticated models of global climate. Created by scientists at NCAR, the Department of Energy, and collaborators, this powerful model simulates the many processes in our climate system, ranging from clouds and atmospheric chemicals to ice to marine ecosystems. ©UCAR.

Understanding the Planetary Climate System

Published by on April 23, 2013 | Leave a response

This is going to be a brief intro­duc­tion to the cli­mate mod­el­ing beyond those atmos­pheric mod­els I did ear­lier. Global-scale cli­mate mod­els, which sim­u­late the cli­mate of the entire planet, are of a par­tic­u­lar inter­est here. Cli­mate is the long-term sta­tis­ti­cal expres­sion of short-term weather. It varies over dif­fer­ent time scales rang­ing from years to hun­dreds of mil­lions of years, and… Read more →

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{Procrastination Post} The Making of a Book Cover

{Procrastination Post} The Making of a Book Cover

Published by on April 19, 2013 | 4 Responses

It’s been a long time since I was in design business–nothing fancy, mostly mag­a­zine ads, book­lets, some­times fur­ni­ture stick­ers, and indus­trial design for the tool stores. (I’m happy those days are over, tho.) I’m not really back in busi­ness, but I design my own cov­ers. You can see them on my books page and on the ded­i­cated Falaha’s books site.… Read more →

The Social Dimensions of the Permanent Human Settlement of Space

The Social Dimensions of the Permanent Human Settlement of Space

Published by on February 17, 2013 | Leave a response

I’m patiently wait­ing for the week 4 of the Astro­bi­ol­ogy and the Search for Extrater­res­trial Life course, pre­sented by Charles Cock­ell. Those who are with me in this course, you prob­a­bly know that Prof. Cock­ell is a won­der­ful lec­turer and a very enthu­si­as­tic per­son, not to men­tion that Cockell’s papers on polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, applied to a pos­si­ble future extrater­res­trial set­ting,… Read more →

The graphic shows habitable zone distances around various types of stars. Some of the known extrasolar planets that are considered to be in the habitable zone of their stars are also shown. On this scale, Earth-Sun distance is 1 AU. CREDIT: Chester Herman

Habitable Zone: Redefined (Model Included)

Published by on January 30, 2013 | 4 Responses

I’m return­ing to the topic of hab­it­able zones around stars, since I came across some inter­est­ing stuff. I admit I haven’t been keep­ing a good eye on new things lately being busy with my books. Another, Closer Look at Chem­istry and Hab­zone Trace ele­ments (met­als, as they are called) in stars may influ­ence the evo­lu­tion of hab­it­able zones and all poten­tial… Read more →

Habitable Worlds: Are We Alone?

Habitable Worlds: Are We Alone?

Published by on January 24, 2013 | 6 Responses

Now, I’m not going to write a post answer­ing that ques­tion. Instead, I invite you to explore that on your own and I’m talk­ing about Hab­it­able Worlds online course. It’s going to be launched soon. Hab­Worlds is a pow­er­ful adap­tive learn­ing plat­form with sci­en­tif­i­cally accu­rate sim­u­la­tions and infor­ma­tive lec­tures, and will allow you to expe­ri­ence sci­ence beyond dry obser­va­tions and facts.… Read more →