Day 43 & 44 - February 15 & 16, 2025 - Saturday & Sunday - Arafura Sea

We have had two quiet sea days crossing from the Coral Sea in the South Pacific to the Arafura Sea in the Indian Ocean.  The weather has continued to be nasty.  The sunrise photo on today's post is from this morning (Sunday the 16th).  It was too rainy and overcast yesterday to get a photo.  Today I was able to get in a 2 mile walk at 6:00 AM.  The temperature was about 80 degrees and there was some wind, but no rain.  Last night I was awakened by thunder and during my walk this morning I saw lightning in the south toward the mainland.  

As I said, it has been two quiet and peaceful days at sea.  We have attended a number of excellent lectures over a wide variety of topics.  I will share a few.

This was a great summary about our next stop in Darwin.

Dr. Babcock as usual presented an interesting lecture about Australia and New Zealand and their roll in the great Wars.

George Sranko provided an enlightening and amusing program about the most unusual mating rituals in nature and how the evolution of the mating displays have often been a disadvantage to the survival of the species.  

One of my favorite lecturers, Dr. Charley Lineweaver of the Australian National University gave an excellent program entitled "Are We Alone?"  Is there other life in the universe?

Dr. Lineweaver's research areas include exoplanetology, cosmobiology and cancer.  He has numerous degrees in English, history and Physics from multiple universities.

Dr. Lineweaver presented a very good argument that there IS NOT intelligent life in the universe as we know it.  Despite the fact there are billions of earth-like planets in our universe.  He does not rule out that there is "life", but he then asks the question, What is life?  If you would like to learn more, he has posted his original course online at www.arewealone.us .  Despite his stance regarding intelligent life in the universe, he is a member of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).  His point is that a null result is as important as actually finding intelligent life.

It was a very fascinating lecture.

This was the result of a survey he did of 2000 biologist.  There are still a lot of answers to be found.

Well, as you can see from this sampling of the lectures onboard the Viking Sky, there is not a lack of variety in the subject matter.  We are also fortunate that the majority of the lecturers are experts in their field and very good speakers.

We are looking forward to a full day in Darwin tomorrow.  We have an early excursion to go crocodile hunting (well looking)...