Science Fiction has long contemplated the idea that alien life not based on carbon chemistry such as silicon might exist on distant and strange worlds, or might be made to exist advanced biological engineering. What would such life be like?
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A European Space Agency satellite is expected to reenter and largely burn up in Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday morning.
The agency’s Space Debris Office, along with an international surveillance network, is monitoring and tracking the Earth-observing ERS-2 satellite, which is predicted to make its reentry at 3:53 p.m. ET Wednesday, with a 7.5-hour window of uncertainty. The ESA is also providing live updates on its website.
“As the spacecraft’s reentry is ‘natural’, without the possibility to perform manoeuvers, it is impossible to know exactly where and when it will reenter the atmosphere and begin to burn up,” according to a statement from the agency.
New research posits that life originated somewhere in the cosmos — and that it traveled through space on tiny particles of cosmic dust.
As we search the heavens for signs of alien life, is it possible that the easiest place to find aliens is to look in the mirror?
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Does life appear independently on different planets in the galaxy? Or does it spread from world to world? Or does it do both?
New research shows how life could spread via a basic, simple pathway: cosmic dust.
One thing scientists have learned in the past few decades is that life on Earth might have had an early start.
PDF | Plasmas up to a kilometer in size, behaving similarly to multicellular organisms have been filmed on 10 separate NASA space shuttle missions, over… | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate.
“New surveys of the sky provide groundbreaking opportunities to search for technosignatures coordinated with supernovae.” said Bárbara Cabrales.
Are we alone in the universe? This longstanding question is what the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute has been trying to answer for decades as its vast array of radio telescopes continues to scan the heavens for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth, also known as technsigatures. Now, a team of researchers led by the Berkeley SETI Research Center have developed the SETI Ellipsoid with the hope it will offer greater opportunities for identifying technsigatures from intelligent civilizations throughout the cosmos. These findings were recently published in The Astronomical Journal and hold the potential to help scientists better understand the necessary criterion for finding intelligent life beyond Earth.
For the study, the researchers began by hypothesizing that intelligent civilizations could use what’s known as a Schelling point (more commonly called a focal point) during supernovae events as an opportunity to broadcast coordinated signals announcing their existence to the cosmos. The researchers then compared this criterion to data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) spacecraft, finding the criterion matched 5 percent of TESS data. After searching through the data using their new SETI Ellipsoid method, the team identified zero technosignatures, but noted this new method could provide unique opportunities for identifying technosignatures in the future.
Continue reading “Unlocking the Cosmos: The SETI Ellipsoid Approach to Technosignature Detection” »
A group of researchers have posed a fascinating — and downright mind bending — thought experiment: If a planet like Earth can be “alive,” can it also have a mind of its own?
The team published a paper exploring this question in the International Journal of Astrobiology. In it, they present the idea of “planetary intelligence,” which describes the collective knowledge and cognition of an entire planet.
Though it seems like something ripped off the screen of a Marvel movie, they believe that the concept might actually help us deal with global issues such as climate change, or even help us discover extraterrestrial life.
SpaceX will become the co-owner of valuable data, biological samples, and possibly even patents and intellectual property related to human spaceflight, according to the terms and conditions of a new program inviting research on crewed Dragon missions.
The company started quietly inviting proposals “for exceptional science and research ideas that will enable life in space and on other planets,” to be executed on orbit using its Dragon spacecraft capsule. Specifically, SpaceX says it’s looking for research studies and experiments focused on fitness, or solutions to increase “efficiency and effectiveness,” and those focused on human health during long-duration spaceflight missions.
Selected research study groups would have access to SpaceX’s crewed Dragon missions, opening up a whole new use case for one of the company’s core products.
