The Ultimate Origins of Humanity
Feature Story:
After the James Webb Space Telescope, what's the next big thing for astronomers?--John Mather spent decades making the James Webb Space Telescope a reality. Here's what he thinks could come next, reports Space.com. "The so-called "Habitable Worlds Observatory" (HWO)— the mega-successor to Hubble and JWST, has been recommended by an important committee known as the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. Mather suggested it may be possible to assemble the Habitable Worlds Observatory and other next-generation telescopes in space instead of on the ground. HabEx) is a concept for a mission to directly image planetary systems around Sun-like stars. HabEx will be sensitive to all types of planets; however its main goal is, for the first time, to directly image Earth-like exoplanets, and characterize their atmospheric content. By measuring the spectra of these planets, HabEx will search for signatures of habitability such as water, and be sensitive to gases in the atmosphere indicative of biological activity, such as oxygen or ozone.
In an email to The Galaxy Report, Mather wrote: "Given that the HWO is responsive to the recommendations of the Decadal Survey, it would be a general purpose observatory for almost every area of astronomy. The Decadal did a really nice job of outlining the many reasons. Your guess is as good as mine about which subject is ripe for a revolutionary discovery. Time domain multi-messenger astronomy is coming along nicely with the Rubin observatory coming soon. What a great time to be an astronomer!”
More Editors’ picks:
The New York Times: Are We Living in a Computer Simulation, and Can We Hack It?--A popular cosmological theory holds that the cosmos runs on quantum codes. So how hard could it be to tweak the supreme algorithm? reports Dennis Overbye. "If you could change the laws of nature, what would you change? That was the question that David Peterson, a computer scientist, SETI enthusiast of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), musician and mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, recently asked his colleagues and friends."
"I think we're really seeing the ultimate origins of humanity," astronomer Steven Finkelstein, of the University of Texas at Austin, tells Axios. "These early galaxies are the sites where the earliest stars formed. They formed the first heavy metals in the universe. Those heavy metals eventually became our Earth and our bodies, " writes Miriam Kramer for the Axios Space article: The JWST is already upending our understanding of the early universe.
Image credit: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photo: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Most Detailed Radio Image of Milky Way's Galactic Plane, reports Andrew Hopkins for The Conversation. "Two major astronomy research programs, called EMU and PEGASUS, have joined forces to resolve one of the mysteries of our Milky Way: where are all the supernova remnants? asks Hopkins.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life as We Don’t Know It--Scientists are abandoning conventional thinking to search for extraterrestrial creatures that bear little resemblance to Earthlings, reports Sarah Scoles for Scientific American.
The Secret Code of the Universe: A Remarkable Way of Measuring the Fine Structure Constant, reports Vienne University of Technology. "The value of one over 137, also known as the fine structure constant, is considered a crucial number in physics. It plays a significant role in atomic and particle physics.While traditionally the fine structure constant is measured indirectly through calculations and measurements of other physical quantities, researchers at TU Wien have developed an experiment that allows for the direct measurement of the fine structure constant in the form of an angle."
Alien-hunting laser could find life on Mars 'within the next few years': Handheld device can search for large organic compounds in tiny particles of planetary material, reports The Daily Mail."The device, weighing just 17 pounds, uses a pulsed ultraviolet laser to remove tiny planetary particles from planetary material, which are analyzed by an Orbitrap looking for organic compounds."
There's No Planet B--write Arwen Nicholson & Raphaëlle Haywood for Aeon Magazine. The scientific evidence is clear: the only celestial body that can support us is the one we evolved with. Here’s why. "The best-case scenario for terraforming Mars leaves us with an atmosphere we are incapable of breathing."
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