This weekend’s features include Can Civilizations Can Spread Like Wildfire Through Space? and A new image plots everything in the known Universe and shows us what’s possible and what types of objects are prohibited by the laws of physics as we understand them.
Is space-time quantum? Six ways to unpick the fabric of the universe, explores New Scientist--"One of the biggest questions in physics asks whether space-time is classical or quantum in nature. From slow neutrinos to quantum foam, these experiments are hoping to finally answer it."
MOND vs Dark Matter: Cosmology’s crisis challenges scientific realism--"MOND would signal a break with our current cosmological model, making a mockery of the idea of scientific progress as gradually getting closer to a true account of reality, argues David Merritt." Promoters of abductive inference have explicitly stated that dark matter is a better explanation than MOND simply because “the theory [of gravity] is kept constant”.
What's the best evidence we've found for alien life? reports By Patrick Pester for Live Science. "There's just no evidence right now," Professor Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of "The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir" (Crown, 2020), told Live Science.
Carl Sagan Detected Life on Earth 30 Years Ago—Here’s Why His Experiment Still Matters Today reports Gareth Dorrian for Singularity Hub. Galileo provided the tools.
Has the Mystery Behind One of the US Military's UAP Videos been Solved--A group of Netherlands-based investigative journalists has conducted the most extensive analysis yet seen using open-source data, reports The Debrief.
New Theory Shows How Civilizations Can Spread Like Wildfire Through Space, reports Science Alert--A new theory considers how civilizations might grow in three different types of Universes (static, dark energy-dominated, and matter-dominated). Their results indicate that, depending on the framework, intelligent life has a finite amount of time to populate the Universe and is likely to do so exponentially.
Mice on Mars: Mouse embryos have been grown in space for the first time--An experiment on the International Space Station suggests early embryo development isn't affected by the low-gravity, high-radiation conditions, reports New Scientist. "There is a possibility of pregnancy during a future trip to Mars because it will take more than 6 months to travel there,” says Teruhiko Wakayama at the University of Yamanashi in Japan, who led the study. “We are conducting research to ensure we will be able to safely have children if that time comes.”
Venus’s atmospheric nitrogen explained by ancient plate tectonics, reports Nature. "Venus is the least understood of the terrestrial planets. Despite broad similarities to the Earth in mass and size, Venus has no evidence of plate tectonics recorded on its young surface, and Venus’s atmosphere is strikingly different."
Everything in the Universe Fits in This One Graph--A fascinating new graph, produced by astrophysicists Charles Lineweaver and Vihan Patel from the Australian National University’s Planetary Science Institute (PSI), plots everything in the known Universe and shows us what’s possible. It also shows what types of objects are prohibited by the laws of physics as we understand them, reports Universe Today.
Ice-spewing supervolcano may have been found on Pluto--Images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show a 44-kilometre-wide crater with hints of recent volcanic activity, reports New Scientist.
Uranus Aurora Discovery Offers Clues To Habitable Icy Worlds, reports Keith Cowing for Astrobiology. "The presence of an infrared aurora on the cold, outer planet of Uranus has been confirmed for the first time by University of Leicester astronomers. The discovery could shed light on the mysteries behind the magnetic fields of the planets of our solar system, and even on whether distant worlds might support life."
When Did Humans Evolve Language?--When did language start? Find out why the exact timeline for the evolution of language remains up for debate among researchers, reports Discover Magazine.
Curated by The Galaxy Report editorial staff