UFO Fever Grips Washington to Is Exoplanet Wolf B Our Best Bet for Life?

Today’s new stories include Astronomers Detect Unknown Object to James Webb telescope finds Milky Way's long-lost twin 9 billion years in the past, and more.

Astronomers Detect Unknown Object. Astrophysicist Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker and her team from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, spotted the mysterious object sending repeat radio signals every 18 minutes. “This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations,” she said. “That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that.”

UFO fever grips Washington, reports Politico. "Nearly all of the incidents remain officially unexplained, according to a report that was made public in 2021. Intelligence agencies are set to deliver a classified document to Congress by Monday updating that report. The original document looked at 144 incidents between 2004 and 2021 that were reported by U.S. government sources, mostly American military personnel.”

SpaceX Test Fires 31 Engines on the Most Powerful Rocket Ever--The ignition of the Super Heavy booster may set up an uncrewed orbital flight test next month of Starship, the company’s prototype spacecraft, reports Kenneth Chang for New York Times Science.

Meet The Team Simulating Europa’s Surface — On Earth, reports Astrobiology. As the Europa Clipper assembly operations take place at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and at partner institutions across the United States, the Ocean Worlds Lab at JPL is advancing our understanding of the physics, chemistry, and potential habitability of ocean worlds in our solar system.

Preflight Picture Of A Space-Bound Tardigrade, reports Keith Cowling for Astrobiology. "The objective of the Using Water Bears to Identify Biological Countermeasures to Stress during Multigenerational (Cell Science-04) investigation is to characterize the molecular biology of short term and multigenerational survival in the space environment by identifying genes that are required for adaptation and survival in high stress environments."

Which planets – and planetary moons – could actually have life? asks Matthew Rozsa for Salon. How close could aliens be? These are the prospects that meet the specific conditions for life to be possible. "One of the newest additions to the list of potentially habitable worlds, Wolf 1069b's discovery was announced in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics earlier this month. In terms of its physical dimensions, Wolf 1069b is an Earth-like exoplanet, and is indeed remarkably similar to Earth."

Is there life on our Solar System’s icy moons? asks Dirk Schulze-Makuch for Big Think. Extreme places on Earth may hold clues. Some microbes can withstand Earth’s most inhospitable corners, hinting that life may be able to survive similarly extreme conditions on other worlds.

James Webb telescope finds Milky Way's long-lost twin 9 billion years in the past, reports Ben Turner for Live Science. "The light from the distant Sparkler galaxy was spotted in the James Webb Telescope's First Deep Field and could teach us how our own Milky Way devoured other galaxies to grow."

Astronomers Detect a Strange New 'Molecular Bubble' Structure in Space, reports Science Alert. "It's only the second time astronomers have identified such a bubble with the ejection of material or 'outflow' associated with a growing star. The newly discovered structure could help scientists learn more about how stars affect their environment as they grow."

How do we know the timeline of our Universe? "From the earliest stages of the hot Big Bang (and even before) to our dark energy-dominated present, how and when did the Universe grow up? asks Ethan Siegel for Big Think.

Leonardo noted link between gravity and acceleration centuries before Einstein--Caltech engineers even re-created his experiment with a modern apparatus, reports Ars Technica.

Europe’s boldest space mission to search for life in outer solar system--Juice spacecraft’s ambitious 12-year voyage will observe Jupiter and three of its moons, reports Financial Times. "Juice, short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, will also help scientists assess whether living creatures might thrive in the deep oceans expected to lie beneath the moons’ ice crusts."

Scientists Attempt to Map the Multiverse--The most controversial idea in physics has leapt from niche academic circles to Hollywood blockbusters but physicists are still fighting about it, reports Discover. "Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind described the resulting picture as a “landscape” of universes, seemingly echoing the multiverse given by eternal inflation. In fact, many physicists believe the two ideas are intimately related. “You can’t separate them,” says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University. "

New Research Shows That Something Strange Is Going On in the Butterfly Nebula, reports SciTechDaily. "When a team led by astronomers at the University of Washington compared two exposures of the Butterfly Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 and 2020, they saw dramatic changes in the material within the wings."

The idea that life on Earth originated elsewhere is not as far out as it seems, reports Aeon.com. "Narrated by the UK physicist and TV presenter Brian Cox, this brief animation explores the arguments for ‘panspermia theory’, or the notion that microbes might be able to ‘hitchhike’ on meteoroids to spread life throughout the cosmos."