Has an Alien 'Dino-Killer' Fragment Been Found to Does the Story of Our Universe Need a Rewrite?
Holiday Weekend Edition
Swiss space researcher Thomas Zurbuchen would bet his car that extraterrestrial life exists, reports Swiss Info. “The idea that there is life in only one place in this huge universe is difficult,” the former NASA research chief told 20Minuten.ch. “We will soon find extraterrestrial life.”
Is the Story of Our Universe Starting to Unravel? probes Adam Frank, astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, and Marcelo Gleiser, a theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College, for The New York Times. "Eight months after the launch of the JWST, based in part on what the telescope has revealed, it’s beginning to look as if we may need to rethink key features of the origin and development of the universe."
Is a Monster Star’s Light Unlocking the Nature of Dark Matter?, explores Joshua Sokol for Quanta. Dark cosmic lenses reveal themselves by warping and magnifying faraway starlight. Scientists hope these lenses will be the key to unlocking the nature of dark matter.
The Moon's Enigmatic South Pole--"Sometimes dubbed "craters of eternal darkness", permanently shadowed regions are angled in such a way that the Sun's rays never reach their innards, meaning they have potentially stored ice for billions of years."
How will the JUICE mission look for habitability on Jupiter's moons--ESA’s JUICE mission will help us better understand whether Jupiter’s icy moons are habitable. But we need to be open to their unexpected secrets, says principal investigator Michele Dougherty, reports New Scientist.
What Happened to All the Supermassive Black Holes? Astronomers Surprised by Webb Data, explores SciTechDaily-- The findings, made with the JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), suggest our universe may be a bit more stable than was supposed.The work, headed by Allison Kirkpatrick, assistant professor of physics & astronomy at KU, focused on a long-studied zone of the cosmos dubbed the Extended Groth Strip, located between the Ursa Major and Boötes constellations. However, previous examinations of the area relied on a less powerful generation of space telescopes.
Scientists at odds over ‘alien artifact’ that may be ‘dino-killer fragment’--Harvard physicist Avi Loeb criticized by peers for ‘over-hyped’ claims of interstellar spacecraft though some find his ideas ‘credible’
Quantum Physics Can Explain Earth’s Weather, reports Katie McCormick, for Quanta Magazine--"By treating Earth as a topological insulator—a state of quantum matter—physicists found a powerful explanation for the twisting movements of the planet’s air and seas."
How Wealthy UFO Fans Helped Fuel Fringe Beliefs--There is a long U.S. legacy of plutocrat-funded pseudoscience. Congress just embraced it, reports Scientific American. In a 2017 interview with 60 Minutes, Robert Bigelow didn’t hesitate when he was asked if space aliens had ever visited Earth. “There has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence,” said Bigelow, a Las Vegas-based real estate mogul and founder of Bigelow Aerospace.
JWST may have seen black holes suppressing the creation of new stars--The supermassive black holes at the center of many galaxies were suspected to quench the formation of new stars – now the James Webb Space Telescope has spotted evidence of this, reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist.
Will the Universe Ever Stop Expanding?--“When we say that the universe is expanding, we mean something pretty literal,” says Dan Scolnic, an associate professor of physics at Duke University, who studies this cosmic growth. “I think it’s a little different than how people think of it. But we mean that the distance that objects are away from us—particularly other galaxies—is increasing.”
Have interstellar meteor fragments really been found in the ocean?--Astrophysicist Avi Loeb and his team claim to be the first to have found fragments from an interstellar meteor, but other scientists are extremely skeptical, reports New Scientist.
Curated by The Galaxy Report editorial staff.