12 Possibilities for Extraterrestrial Life to What is Our Universe Expanding Into?
Weekend Edition
This weekend's stories include How the James Webb Space Telescope broke the universe from MIT to The start of time, and much more.
12 Assumptions for Extraterrestrial Life --argues author and the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly: "I have some strongly-stated, loosely-held hunches about the probability of life elsewhere in the universe. My certainty about these beliefs is quite low, but it is much higher than my belief in the alternatives. His first two assumptions: "1) Life is rampant and common throughout the universe. 2) This ubiquitous life is single-celled and elemental, and remains at this level for very long periods. Most planets with life never advance beyond the single cell."
Alien life could be turning harsh planets into paradises — and astronomers want to find them, reports Paul Sutter for Live Science. Early life made an inhospitable Earth more habitable, and aliens could be doing the same thing on their worlds, new research proposes.
What Is Our Universe Expanding Into? asks Nautilus magazine. One question for Paul Sutter, a theoretical cosmologist at Stony Brook University. "The Big Bang happened everywhere in the cosmos simultaneously."
Ripples in fabric of universe may reveal start of time, reports Raphael Rosen, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. ""We can't see the early universe directly, but maybe we can see it indirectly if we look at how gravitational waves from that time have affected matter and radiation that we can observe today," said Deepen Garg, lead author of a paper reporting the results in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics."
MIT: How the James Webb Space Telescope broke the universe--Scientists were in awe of the flood of data that arrived when the new space observatory booted up, reports Jonathan O'Callaghan for the MIT Technology REview. “It was more than we expected,” says Heidi Hammel, a NASA interdisciplinary scientist for JWST and vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, DC. “Every hour we were looking at a galaxy or an exoplanet or star formation. It was like a firehose.”
We may not be alone in the Universe. Should we reach out?--A conversation with an advanced alien species is likely to be simple and to take 1,000 years. It might also be dangerous, reports Big Think.
Astronomers capture "21-centimeter line" radio signal from ancient galaxy at record-breaking distance--The detection of the special radio wavelength from the most distant galaxy means astronomers may be ready to investigate how the earliest stars form, reports Space.com
NASA’s TESS Discovers Planetary System’s Second Earth-Size World. Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky.
Standard Model of Cosmology Survives a Telescope’s Surprising Finds, reports Rebecca Boyle for Quanta.com--Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb.
Sweeping Milky Way Portrait of Dark Energy Camera in Chile Captures More Than 3 Billion Stars--Behold a "gargantuan astronomical data tapestry" of our glorious home galaxy, reports CNET. "Several billion stars may sound like a bonkers number, but it's just a small drop in the galactic bucket. NASA estimates there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. The new survey covers just 6.5% of the night sky as seen from the Southern Hemisphere."
Why the Hubble telescope is still in the game — even as JWST wows--NASA’s nearly 33-year-old observatory still has plenty of top science to do, and astronomers want to extend its lifetime, reports Alexandra Witze for Nature. “People are saying, ‘Is Hubble going to be useless now?’” adds Tom Brown, head of the Hubble mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. “It’s not, because it has unique capabilities.”
The average brightness of the night sky is increasing 10% every year, making the stars less visible, reports Sky & Telescope.
The Galaxy Report newsletter brings you daily news of space and science that has the capacity to provide clues to the mystery of our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our current Anthropocene Epoch.