Astronomers Discover the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way to Will It Be Possible to Decipher an Extraterrestrial Language?

Today’s Big Question: “If humanity encounters extraterrestrial life and they have a language, will it be possible for us to decipher it?”

The process of deciphering an unknown language involves analyzing patterns in the language, such as the frequency of certain sounds or the way words are structured. Evolution should favor some universal traits in the emergence of any form of communication on any planet. With enough data and analysis, linguists may be able to identify the basic elements of the language and begin to understand its grammar and syntax.

However, this process would be much more difficult with an extraterrestrial language, as it is likely to be completely different from any language we have encountered on Earth. It would require a great deal of time, effort, and resources to analyze and decode such a language.

Additionally, it's possible that an extraterrestrial language may not be based on sounds at all but instead use some other form of communication, such as light signals or chemical signals. In that case, deciphering the language would be even more challenging.

The Galaxy Report  Editorial Staff

Today’s news stories:

Astronomers Discover Up the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way--There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants, reports Quanta. “People didn’t have a really good idea of what the proto-galaxy looked like,” said Vedant Chandra, an astrophysicist at Harvard University and one of the lead authors on a recent paper detailing the ancient star discoveries.

Does consciousness create the universe? A new book makes the startling claim. An interview with Robert Lanza, creator of the Biocentrism theory and co-author of the new sci-fi novel "Observer," written with Nancy Kress. While the nature of consciousness is still not fully understood, it is generally considered to be an emergent property of the brain and nervous system. Consciousness is thought to arise from the complex interactions between neurons in the brain, rather than being a fundamental force that creates the universe.

Are There Black Holes Older than the Universe?--Primordial black holes (PBHs) older than the big bang could rewrite cosmology by providing evidence for a previous universe. It's a wild idea, but some physicists think we've got a chance of finding them, reports Bernard Carr for New Scientist. "I was working on this idea under the supervision of Stephen Hawking, who had started to think about such a possibility just a few years earlier."

PBHs are thought to have formed during the first moments after the Big Bang, when the Universe was extremely dense and hot.There is currently no direct observational evidence for the existence of PBHs, but they are predicted by certain models of the early universe. If they exist, PBHs would have a wide range of masses, from as small as a single atom to as large as millions of suns. PBHs could also potentially play a role in explaining dark matter, as they would be an invisible and non-interacting form of matter.

Primordial black holes are interesting because they could provide clues to the early universe and the physics that governs it. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in PBHs as a possible explanation for various astrophysical phenomena, such as gravitational waves and fast radio bursts. However, further research and observational evidence is needed to confirm their existence and understand their properties.

Here are examples of the largest known black holes:

TON 618: This supermassive black hole is located in a quasar about 10.4 billion light-years away from Earth. Its estimated mass is around 66 billion times that of our Sun.

SDSS J010013.02+280225.8: This black hole is estimated to have a mass of about 50 billion times that of the Sun and is located around 3.7 billion light-years away from Earth.

OJ 287: This supermassive black hole is located about 3.5 billion light-years away from Earth and has an estimated mass of about 18 billion times that of the Sun.

S5 0014+81: This is another quasar with a supermassive black hole located about 12.2 billion light-years away from Earth. Its estimated mass is around 40 billion times that of the Sun.

Holmberg 15A: This is a galaxy located about 700 million light-years away from Earth, and it has a supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of about 40 billion times that of the Sun.

The Real Reason We Can't Outpace Light Speed, explains Don Lincoln for Big Think. "Even a simple radio signal, which travels at the fastest speed possible, will take eight years to make a round trip.

JWST Found No Atmosphere at Earth-sized World, Trappist 1-B, reports The Hill. The Webb Space Telescope has found no evidence of an atmosphere at one of the seven rocky, Earth-sized planets orbiting a nearby star.

Stretching human lifespan to 200 years? Implications of bowhead whale study, reports David Warmflash for the Genetic Literacy Project. "There’s no one gene that can extend the human lifespan dramatically, but current science suggests that entire sets of genes could be a big part of the answer. Part of the answer to the mystery of aging might be found in the vast oceans of our world." 

The oldest verified age for a human being is 122 years and 164 days. This record was set by Jeanne Calment, a French woman who was born on February 21, 1875, and died on August 4, 1997. Her remarkable longevity has been extensively documented and verified by various organizations, including the Guinness World Records.