An overview of the possibilities of life on Mars and recent science that suggests that it may have gone extinct by its own doing.
An exploration of time scales and time passage and its relation to the Fermi Paradox as a straightforwards solution.
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This is a comparison scale for all living things in the Universe.
The Kardashev scale is a technique for determining a civilization’s technical degree of progress. In 1964, Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev suggested it. Based on the entire quantity of energy that the human species can collect and use, this scale system helps us comprehend how far the human species can progress.
Europa, here we come.
In the coming years, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will send two robotic missions to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
Scientists have come up with laser technology that is capable of picking up alien signals from worlds that are far away. According to the Daily Star, the machine that is miniaturized was tailored to fit the specialized space missions of NASA. Such a device has the potential to revolutionize the long-standing search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
During those 14,000 years, who knows what humanity will look like, making the information contained in Voyager 2 quaint and a relic of our ancient past. Working off of this line of thought, if humanity were to receive an alien probe, it would be studied, analyzed, and then most likely, we would send a response across the galaxy. By the time our response made it to, say, Alpha Centauri and Proxima B, that civilization would have likely advanced far beyond the initial probe, and that, according to some astronomers, could be a fatal mistake for our world.
Stephen Hawking once said “One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back.” Right now, humanity would likely be the passive recipient of a more advanced alien civilization’s probe, without being able to know what the real intentions of the aliens may be. Would they come in peace and brotherhood like the Vulcans in Star Trek: First Contact, or would they be similar to those from Independence Day?
Now that technology is reaching the point where signals can be more easily transmitted into the vastness of outer space, scientists are becoming more cautious about what we do to give away our position in the universe. Just one alien probe, confirming we’re not alone, could be enough to destabilize human society and that’s even without considering a further response, thousands of years in the future. Mathematically, humanity is likely not alone, but space travel takes so long to reach even the closest destination, that none of us will likely be alive when the probes make Earthfall.
As space missions delve deeper into the outer solar system, the need for more compact, resource-conserving and accurate analytical tools has become increasingly critical—especially as the hunt for extraterrestrial life and habitable planets or moons continues.
A University of Maryland–led team developed a new instrument specifically tailored to the needs of NASA space missions. Their mini laser-sourced analyzer is significantly smaller and more resource efficient than its predecessors—all without compromising the quality of its ability to analyze planetary material samples and potential biological activity onsite. The team’s paper on this new device was published in the journal Nature Astronomy on January 16, 2023.
Weighing only about 17 pounds, the instrument is a physically scaled-down combination of two important tools for detecting signs of life and identifying compositions of materials: a pulsed ultraviolet laser that removes small amounts of material from a planetary sample and an Orbitrap analyzer that delivers high-resolution data about the chemistry of the examined materials.
The world’s second-most powerful rocket—though it’s largest partially renewable rocket—yesterday blasted-off on a secret mission for the US Space Force amid spectacular views. Only the fifth flight of the company’s heavy-life Falcon Heavy rocket (though the second inside a few months), the event took place in twilight Sunday, with a satellite being successfully sent into geosynchronous Earth orbit (meaning it will orbit at the same speed as Earth rotates). Two side-boosters then returned to land in tandem on launch pads.
They were the 163th and 164th successful landings of an orbital-class rocket, according to SpaceX.
The mission, called USSF-67, took a communications satellite into orbit for the US military.
It blasted off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:56 p.m. ET with the side-boosters returning minutes later to two adjacent launch pads in Cape Canaveral.
There could be or could have been life in the subsurface of Io (the “Pizza Moon”) — an overlooked target for astrobiology.
Posted at BigThink, direct link at:
Posted on Big Think.
Does anyone believe extraterrestrials have visited Earth? I am super curious to see what the members of this group believe!
A habitable zone is an area just the right distance from a star so water can exist on a planet’s surface and the conditions are neither too hot nor too cold for life.
Scientists believe they’ve discovered a cache of gemstones on the surface of Mars.
No, we’re not talking about diamonds — according to a study published last month in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets by a team of Arizona State University and NASA-affiliated researchers, the Red Planet’s Gale Crater is teeming with opals.
Let’s get it out of the way: bling iced out with precious gems from another planet sounds like the coldest flex in the solar system. But there’s also scientific significance to the finding, which suggests that the area held vast reserves of water far more recently than we previously thought. That means the discovery could also force us to rewrite theories of ancient life on Mars.
