Three Unexplainable Mysteries of Life on Earth to Search for Alien Life Narrows to Five planets

Planet Earth Edition

Today’s news stories include AI Uncovers Previously Undetected Extraterrestrial Signals of Interest to We Have a Real UFO Problem. And It’s Not Balloons, and more.

Three unexplainable mysteries of life on Earth--Earth, for all we know, is the only planet with life on it. But how did it start? explores Brian Resnick for Vox. "The quest of discovering the “how” of life on Earth is bigger than just filling in the missing chapters of the history book of our world. To search for the origins of life on Earth is to ask other big questions: How rare is it for life to form on any planet? How improbable is it for life to form on any planet, anywhere?"

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life: Machine Learning Uncovers Previously Undetected Signals of Interest, reports SciTechDaily. “We’re scaling this search effort to 1 million stars today with the MeerKAT telescope and beyond. We believe that work like this will help accelerate the rate we’re able to make discoveries in our grand effort to answer the question ‘are we alone in the universe?’”

We Have a Real UFO Problem. And It’s Not Balloons, reports Politico. "The unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) accelerated at speeds up to Mach 1, the speed of sound. They could hold their position, appearing motionless, despite Category 4 hurricane-force winds of 120 knots. They did not have any visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion — in other words nothing that resembled normal aircraft with wings, flaps or engines."

Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing--The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments have shown that it works, reports Charlie Wood for Quanta."15 years ago, Masahiro Hotta, a theoretical physicist at Tohoku University in Japan, proposed that perhaps the vacuum could, in fact, be coaxed into giving something up."

Venus grade: NASA seeks a lander battery tough enough to survive Earth's evil twin, reports John Loeffler for Space.com. Venus' surface is a hellish place, but that won't stop NASA's future landers from trying to explore it.

How Loneliness Reshapes the Brain--Feelings of loneliness prompt changes in the brain that further isolate people from social contact, reports Quanta."Circuits in our brain and changes in our behavior can trap us in a catch-22 situation: While we desire connection with others, we view them as unreliable, judgmental and unfriendly. Consequently, we keep our distance, consciously or unconsciously spurning potential opportunities for connections."

Super-fast Insect Urination Powered by the Physics of Superpropulsion--Saad Bhamla was in his backyard when he noticed something he had never seen before: an insect urinating. “Little is known about the fluid dynamics of excretion, despite its impact on the morphology, energetics, and behavior of animals. We wanted to see if this tiny insect had come up with any clever engineering or physics innovations in order to pee this way,” reports Georgia Tech.

Astrobiologist narrows search for alien life to five planets--The new theory has saved countless hours of research and significant material resources, reports The Jerusalem Post.