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Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts

Thursday 25 June 2015

Dwarf planet Ceres reveals pyramid-shaped mystery



OK, this is just too much.
First, NASA's Dawn probe spotted curiously sparkly bright spots on the surface of Ceres, the dwarf planet that lies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Beats us, the scientists said.
Now, cameras on the tractor-trailer-size spacecraft have captured a baffling structure rising 3 miles above the planet's cratered surface.
Conveniently, the thing looks an awful lot like a pyramid.
    "Intriguing," the NASA scientists said.


    To be fair, the agency offered no suggestion that the towering structure is an offering to some long-lost space emperor or home to our new alien overlords.
    And, to be even more fair, it's probably just a really tall mountain in a solar system filled with wondrous and strange natural phenomena.
    But the Dawn mission has done nothing but stoke imaginations since the discovery of mysterious bright spots on the surface of the dwarf planet in February and the beginning of the probe's orbit in March.
    Folks have claimed to have spotted giant alien motherships hovering over the planet, bat-winged spaceships parked on its surface and even evidence of alien cities.
    But the mystery only deepened with the most recent batch of images showing even more bright spots alongside the largest one, which NASA said looks to stretch some 6 miles.
    Many, of course, insist that the spots look for all the world like brightly lit cities twinkling on the shadowed surface of the distant dwarf planet.
    I knew it! There's gambling going on on Ceres! #aliens pic.twitter.com/QP6PB6JFho

    — Chris Reher (@Chris_Reher) June 13, 2015
    Of course, NASA hasn't traveled down that road. Scientists, they say, still don't know what the spots are. Maybe ice. Maybe salt.
    "But scientists are considering other options, too," NASA said coyly.
    But #itsaliens, right?
    Source : FirstPost

    Saturday 7 March 2015

    Massive Exoplanet Evolved in Extreme 4-Star System

    According to a team of astronomers headed by Dr Lewis Roberts from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, an extrasolar gas giant called 30 Arietis Bb (30 Ari Bb) is the second known example of a planet residing in a system with four stars.

    30-Ari-System-Four-Stars-and-a-Planet

    Artists conception of the 30 Ari star system. In the foreground is the primary star about which the massive exoplanet orbits. The primary's newly-found binary partner, a red dwarf, can be seen in the upper left and the secondary binary system can be seen to the upper right.

    While 30 Ari Bb was known before, it was thought to reside in a system of three stars, not four.

    The system, called 30 Ari, is located in the constellation Aries, approximately 136 light-years away.

    “Star systems come in myriad forms. There can be single stars, binary stars, triple stars, even quintuple star systems. It’s amazing the way nature puts these things together,” Dr Roberts said.

    The planet itself is enormous, with 9.88 times the mass of Jupiter. It orbits its primary star, 30 Ari B, every 335 days. This star has a relatively close partner star, which the planet does not orbit.

    The pair, in turn, is locked in a long-distance orbit with another pair of stars about 1,670 AU away.

    “It’s highly unlikely that this planet, or any moons that might circle it, could sustain life,” Dr Roberts and his colleagues said.

    The first four-star planet, Ph1b, was discovered in the star system Kepler-64 (KIC 4862625) in 2013 by astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler mission.

    The latest discovery, reported in the Astronomical Journal (arXiv.org preprint), suggests that exoplanets in quadruple star systems might be less rare than once thought.

    The similarity between Kepler-64 and 30 Ari is that both systems are quadruples consisting of two relatively close pairs that are widely separated.

    In fact, recent studies have shown that this type of star systems is itself more common than previously believed.

    “About 4% of Sun-like stars are in quadruple systems, which is up from previous estimates because observational techniques are steadily improving,” said team member Dr Andrei Tokovinin of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

    The scientists also reported on a triple-star planetary system, HD 2638, which hosts a so-called hot-Jupiter.

    This giant planet, named HD 2638b, orbits its primary star tightly, completing one lap every 3 days.

    Source : sci-news.com

    Friday 13 February 2015

    This woman wants to live and die on Mars—and 200,000 others would gladly take her place

    Volker Maiwald, executive officer and habitat engineer of Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission, walks among the rock formations in the Utah desert

    Ok, it's Utah - but we can dream. (Reuters/Jim Urquhart)

    Dina was born in Iraq, lives in the US, and may end her life on Mars.

    She’s one of 663 people who are still in the running for a place on the first four-person team that Mars One, a Dutch organization launched in 2011, wants to send to the red planet. Candidates have been whittled down from some 200,000 who applied.

    In a video made for the Guardian by Stateless Media, Dina (whose last name isn’t given) and two other hopefuls—one from the UK, one from Mozambique—discuss love, sex, and death on Mars.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8na3oQzcwCk

    Dina is 29 now, but she’ll be nearing 40 by the time of the Mars mission’s planned launch in 2024. She could be almost a year older than that when they arrive on Mars, which is up to 300 days’ travel away .
    Her days may then be numbered. A group of strategic engineering graduates estimated that the first of the travelers would die in 68 days—though the plan is to live there much longer .

    Intimacy is not encouraged, because of the potential risks of childbirth—though in the long term the future of colony would rely on it .

    No one will return from the mission. This led, last year, to a prohibition on Muslims joining the mission , issued by the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment in the United Arab Emirates. It judged the mission to be so inevitably fatal that it is essentially suicide.

    In the future, the mission plans to meet its costs, to a large extent, via broadcast rights . The first mission will cost $6 billion, according to estimates, though a subsequent mission—a plan is already in the pipeline—would be somewhat cheaper.

    Source : qz.com

    Friday 14 November 2014

    A Universe of Blue Dots? --"Water Common During the Formation of All Planetary Systems"

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    pic-hyper-terra

    The new SciFi blockbuster, Interstellar, shows astonauts from post apocalyptic earth, destroyed by what appears to be a modern dust-bowl, catapulted into the unknown of outer space in the hopes of finding a new home for the human race, only to discover an extraterrestrial tidal wave on a distant exo planet. How realistic is the premise of an alien water planet? New findings suggest it's based on solid science.
    "This is an important step forward in our quest to find out if life exists on other planets," said Tim Harries, from the University of Exeter's Physics and Astronomy department, who was part of the research team. "We know that water is vital for the evolution of life on Earth, but it was possible that the Earth's water originated in the specific conditions of the early solar system, and that those circumstances might occur infrequently elsewhere. By identifying the ancient heritage of Earth's water, we can see that the way in which our solar system was formed will not be unique, and that exoplanets will form in environments with abundant water. Consequently, it raises the possibility that some exoplanets could house the right conditions, and water resources, for life to evolve."
    The implication of these findings is that some of the solar system's water must have been inherited from the Sun's birth environment, and thus predate the Sun itself. If our solar system's formation was typical, this implies that water is a common ingredient during the formation of all planetary systems.

    To date, the Kepler satellite has detected nearly 1,000 confirmed extrasolar planets. The widespread availability of water during the planet-formation process puts a promising outlook on the prevalence of life throughout the galaxy.

    A pioneering new study has shown that water found on Earth predates the formation of the Sun – raising hopes that life could exist on exoplanets, the planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. The ground-breaking research set out to discover the origin of the water that was deposited on the Earth as it formed.

    It found that a significant fraction of water found on Earth, and across our solar system, predates the formation of the Sun. By showing that water is 'inherited' from the environment when a star is born, the international team of scientists believe other exoplanetary systems also had access to an abundance of water during their own formation.

    As water is a key component for the development of life on Earth, the study has important implications for the potential for life elsewhere in the galaxy.

    Scientists have previously been able to understand the conditions present when stars are formed by looking at the composition of comets and asteroids, which show which gases, dust and, most importantly, ices were circling the star at its birth.

    The team of international scientists were able to use 'heavy water' ices – those with an excess of water made with the element deuterium rather than hydrogen – to determine whether the water ices formed before, or during, the solar system's formation.

    Saturday 8 November 2014

    Is Earth the only technologically-intensive civilization in Universe?

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    Earth-With-Internet-Lights-Desktop-Wallpaper

    A new study has revealed that the combination of earth-based science of sustainability and the space-oriented field of astrobiology can shed light on the future of technological civilization on Earth and is the planet first and only technologically-intensive culture in Universe.
    Human-caused climate change, ocean acidification and species extinctions may eventually threaten the collapse of civilization, according to some scientists, while other people argue that for political or economic reasons industrial development should be allowed without restrictions.

    In the paper, two astrophysicists argue that these questions may soon be resolvable scientifically, thanks to new data about the Earth and about other planets in our galaxy, and by combining the earth-based science of sustainability with the space-oriented field of astrobiology .

    Astrophysicists Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan call for creation of a new research program to answer questions about humanity's future in the broadest astronomical context.

    The authors explained that the point would be to see that Earth's current situation might, in some sense, be natural or at least a natural and generic consequence of certain evolutionary pathways.

    The researchers also showed that how habitability studies of exoplanets hold important lessons for sustaining the civilization we have developed on Earth.

    According to the results, studying past extinction events and using theoretical tools to model the future evolutionary trajectory of humankind and of still unknown but plausible alien civilizations could inform decisions that would lead to a sustainable future.

    Source : Zee news

    Saturday 1 November 2014

    Planet-forming lifeline discovered in a binary star system

    GG Tauri-A

    Artist’s impression of the double-star system GG Tauri-A.

    If the feeding process into the system’s inner disk occurs elsewhere, the findings introduce many new potential locations to find exoplanets.

    For the first time, researchers using ALMA have detected a streamer of gas flowing from a massive outer disk toward the inner reaches of a binary star system. This never-before-seen feature may be responsible for sustaining a second, smaller disk of planet-forming material that otherwise would have disappeared long ago. Half of Sun-like stars are born in binary systems, meaning that these findings will have major consequences for the hunt for exoplanets.

    A research group led by Anne Dutrey from the Laboratory of Astrophysics of Bordeaux, France, used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe the distribution of dust and gas in a multiple-star system called GG Tau-A. This object is only a few million years old and lies about 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus the Bull.

    Like a wheel in a wheel, GG Tau-A contains a large, outer disk encircling the entire system as well as an inner disk around the main central star. This second inner disk has a mass roughly equivalent to that of Jupiter. Its presence has been an intriguing mystery for astronomers since it is losing material to its central star at a rate that should have depleted it long ago.

    While observing these structures with ALMA, the team made the exciting discovery of gas clumps in the region between the two disks. The new observations suggest that material is being transferred from the outer to the inner disk, creating a sustaining lifeline between the two.

    “Material flowing through the cavity was predicted by computer simulations but has not been imaged before. Detecting these clumps indicates that material is moving between the disks, allowing one to feed off the other,” said Dutrey. “These observations demonstrate that material from the outer disk can sustain the inner disk for a long time. This has major consequences for potential planet formation.”

    Planets are born from the material left over from star birth. This is a slow process, meaning that an enduring disk is a prerequisite for planet formation. If the feeding process into the inner disk now seen with ALMA occurs in other multiple-star systems, the findings introduce a vast number of new potential locations to find exoplanets in the future.

    The first phase of exoplanet searches was directed at single-host stars like the Sun. More recently, it has been shown that a large fraction of giant planets orbit binary-star systems. Now, researchers have begun to take an even closer look and investigate the possibility of planets orbiting the individual stars of multiple-star systems. The new discovery supports the possible existence of such planets, giving exoplanet discoverers new happy hunting grounds.

    “Almost half the Sun-like stars were born in binary systems,” said Emmanuel Di Folco from the Laboratory of Astrophysics of Bordeaux, France. “This means that we have found a mechanism to sustain planet formation that applies to a significant number of stars in the Milky Way. Our observations are a big step forward in truly understanding planet formation.”ast

    Cassini sees sunny seas on Titan

    pia18432-16

    This near-infrared, color view from Cassini shows the Sun glinting off of Titan's north polar seas.

    As it soared past Saturn’s large moon Titan recently, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft caught a glimpse of bright sunlight reflecting off hydrocarbon seas.

    In the past, Cassini had captured separate views of the polar seas and the Sun glinting off them, but this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view.

    Also in the image:

    – An arrow-shaped complex of bright methane clouds hovers near Titan’s north pole. The clouds could be actively refilling the lakes with rainfall.

    – A “bathtub ring,” or bright margin, around Kraken Mare — the sea containing the reflected sunglint — indicates that the sea was larger at some point, but evaporation has decreased its size.

    Titan’s seas are mostly liquid methane and ethane. Before Cassini’s arrival at Saturn, scientists suspected that Titan might have bodies of open liquid on its surface. Cassini found only great fields of sand dunes near the equator and lower latitudes but located lakes and seas near the poles, particularly in the north.

    The new view shows Titan in infrared light. It was obtained by Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on August 21.

     

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    Tuesday 28 October 2014

    Popular Physicist Says , "We are alone in the universe"

    brian-cox_1974873a

    The process which led to the creation of humankind on earth was a fluke - and it is highly unlikely it has been repeated anywhere else in the universe.

    That is the view of English physicist Professor Brian Cox, who made the assertion in an episode of BBC's Human Universe.

    Professor Cox thwarted suggestions alien life was a possibility and said he believed humans were the only form of life in the universe, despite the astronomical number of other planets in the galaxy.

    The presenter and scientist, who also appeared on the ABC's Q&A program last week, blamed a series of "evolutionary bottlenecks" as the main reason no extraterrestrial life has been discovered.

    "There is only one advanced technological civilisation in this galaxy and there has only ever been one - and that's us," Professor Cox said. "We are unique.

    "It's a dizzying thought. There are billions of planets out there, surely there must have been a second genesis?
    "But we must be careful because the story of life on this planet shows that the transition from single-celled life to complex life may not have been inevitable."

    Professor Cox went on to say that the extinction of dinosaurs, believed by scientists to have been caused by a meteor impact, allowed mammals and ultimately humans to dominate the planet.

    "We still struggle to understand how this happened," he said. "It's incredibly unusual.

    "We're confident this only happened once in the oceans of the primordial earth. Life here did squeeze through."

    Professor Cox's views are in stark contrast to those of astrophysicists Dr Timothy Brandt and Dr David Spiege of Princeton University, who last month made the claim that our best chance of finding aliens, if they exist at all, lies in the examination of plant life on planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.

    They said if alien life existed on exoplanets, it might be possible to detect traces of water, oxygen and chlorophyll.

    Meanwhile, NASA has offered a more widely accepted prediction; that one hundred million worlds in our galaxy are capable and fit to host alien life.