Life on Other Worlds Might be Unrecognizable to Will Powerful New Tools Let Us Hear Alien Civilizations?
Weekend Edition
This weekends’ stories include: Scientists say they have found more moons with oceans in the Solar System and Why darkness between stars reveals more about the universe than light, and much more.
Do we live in a hologram? Why physics is still mesmerized by this idea--The holographic universe theory still grips physicists 25 years since it was first published, reports New Scientist. "The holographic universe is widely revered as one of the most important breakthroughs of the past few decades. The reason is that it strikes at the mystery of quantum gravity – the long-sought unification of quantum physics, which governs particles and their interactions, and general relativity, which casts gravity as the product of warped space-time."
Will Powerful New Tools Finally Let Us Hear Alien Civilizations? asks The Wall Street Journal. The most potent effort yet to find extraterrestrial life is searching for beings that may not want to be found.
A New Idea for How to Assemble Life--If we want to understand complex constructions, such as ourselves, assembly theory says we must account for the entire history of how such entities came to be, reports Philip Ball for Quanta. "There’s no guarantee that alien biology would use the same chemistries as on Earth, with familiar building blocks such as DNA and proteins. Scientists might even spot the signatures of such life forms without knowing they’re the work of biology.
Why darkness between stars reveals more about the universe than light--When looking up at the night sky, light from stars draws attention. But the darkness between the light can reveal even more about the universe, says Nobel prize-winning astrophysicist Adam Riess for New Scientist.
‘Einstein’ telescope high on Europe’s astronomy wish list--A massive gravitational-wave detector and the new solar telescope are among the priorities on funders’ latest roadmap, reports Nature. “I was particularly excited to see the nature of dark matter and dark energy marked out as key unanswered questions,” says Priyamvada Natarajan, an astronomer at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Scientists say they have found more moons with oceans in the Solar System–NASA probably is about to get serious about exploring the Uranian system, reports Eric Berger for Ars Technica. NASA may need to add the moons of Uranus to its exploration hit list. Besides being known for its funny name and its brilliant cyan shade, Uranus has at least 27 moons.
Satellite megaconstellations are threatening astronomy. What can be done?--Astronomers are becoming increasingly concerned of being blinded by the light from an estimated 400000 satellites planned for low Earth orbit, reports Space,com. "The point is that we can't come anywhere near duplicating major ground-based capabilities in space."
Stellar “Ashes” – Astronomers Discover Traces of Universe’s First Stars, reports SciTechDaily. “For the first time ever, we were able to identify the chemical traces of the explosions of the first stars in very distant gas clouds,” says Andrea Saccardi, a PhD student at the Observatoire de Paris – PSL, who led this study during his master’s thesis at the University of Florence.
MIT: In a first, astronomers spot a star swallowing a planet--Earth will meet a similar fate in 5 billion years. "The planetary demise appears to have taken place in our own galaxy, some 12,000 light-years away, near the eagle-like constellation Aquila. There, astronomers spotted an outburst from a star that became more than 100 times brighter over just 10 days, before quickly fading away."