Did Quantum 'Nothingness' Give Birth to the Universe?

Today’s stories include: A new Earth-sized, volcanic planet is a good candidate for harboring life and An Explorer of Abyssal Depths Looks to Oceans on Other Worlds.

In New Paradox, Black Holes Appear to Evade Heat Death, reports George Musser for Quanta--The puzzling behavior of black hole interiors has led researchers to propose a new physical law: the second law of quantum complexity.

Milky Way’s Black Hole Serves Up an ‘Awe Moment’--Filaments of radio energy from Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, are turning astronomers’ heads, reports Dennis Overbye for New York Times Science. "The streaks may be the fading remains of explosive outbursts from the black hole, Sagittarius A*, which contains the mass of 4 million suns, according to Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University."

A new Earth-sized, volcanic planet is a good candidate for harboring life--Exoplanet LP 791-18d is likely to have an atmosphere and liquid water, reports Big Think. "The planet, which orbits a relatively cool M-class star, has an orbital period of 2.75 days and is estimated to have surface temperatures slightly higher than Earth's, potentially allowing for liquid water.  Despite challenges such as being tidally locked and exposed to solar flares, the planet checks off multiple factors believed to be necessary for life."

Quantum nothingness might have birthed the Universe--There is no such thing as a void in the Universe, reports Big Think. "Out of the vacuum of space, particles come and go. Our entire Universe might even have emerged out of it."

How Einstein made the biggest blunder of his life--When Einstein gave General Relativity to the world, he included an extraneous cosmological constant. How did his 'biggest blunder' occur? probes Ethan Siegel.

How heavy hydrogen reveals the dark Universe--Just by observing the tiny amount of deuterium left over from the Big Bang, we can determine that dark matter and dark energy must exist, reports Big Think.

Dying stars build humongous 'cocoons' that shake the fabric of space-time, reports Briley Lewis for Live Science. New simulations show that dying stars release enormous "cocoons" of gas that may rattle with space-time ripples called gravitational waves.

Scripps News: Our galaxy has hundreds of millions of habitable planets--Researchers studied the orbits of 150 planets in the Milky Way and found that many of them were at the right temperature to have life.

Repeated signals from the center of the Milky Way could be aliens, new study claims, reports Stephanie Pappas for Space.com.--A new search for extraterrestrial life has scientists looking inward — toward the center of our galaxy. "The researchers are listening in to the middle of the Milky Way because it is dense with stars and potentially habitable exoplanets. What's more, if intelligent aliens at the core of the Milky Way wanted to reach out to the rest of the galaxy, they could send signals sweeping across a wide array of planets, given their privileged position at the center of the galaxy."

Curated by The Galaxy Report editorial staff.