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Continue reading “Are We Living In The Dark Forest? | An Answer to the Fermi Paradox” »
If humans want to survive long-term — millions of years into the future and beyond — we will have to grapple with existential threats to civilization and life itself. But we are more empowered than any species in history. This film is a journey far into the future to explore the extreme challenges we will face, and a vision into how far humanity might go to reinvent our planet.
Coming Spring 2025.
Researchers at MIT have developed a method to detect small asteroids in the main asteroid belt, significantly improving our ability to spot objects as little as 10 meters across.
This new technique, which identified 138 space rocks ranging from bus-to stadium-sized, allows for earlier detection and better tracking of potential near-Earth objects, enhancing planetary defense. The approach, using data from telescopes initially aimed at exoplanets, has uncovered over a hundred new asteroids, with implications for understanding asteroid origins and collision processes.
Advancements in Asteroid Detection.
The asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs is estimated to have been about 10 kilometers across. That’s about as wide as Brooklyn, New York. Such a massive impactor is predicted to hit Earth rarely, once every 100 million to 500 million years.
In contrast, much smaller asteroids, about the size of a bus, can strike Earth more frequently, every few years. These “decameter” asteroids, measuring just tens of meters across, are more likely to escape the main asteroid belt and migrate in to become near-Earth objects. If they make impact, these small but mighty space rocks can send shockwaves through entire regions, such as the 1908 impact in Tunguska, Siberia, and the 2013 asteroid that broke up in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Urals. Being able to observe decameter main-belt asteroids would provide a window into the origin of meteorites.
The team’s detection method, which identified 138 space rocks ranging from bus-to stadium-sized, could aid in tracking potential asteroid impactors.
Continue reading “MIT astronomers find the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main belt” »
♺ DETAILS
A pair of researchers, one with the Carnegie Institution for Science, the other with California Institute of Technology, has developed a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox. In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Michael Wong and Stuart Bartlett suggest that the reason that no aliens from other planets have visited us is because of superlinear scaling, which, they contend, leads to a singularity. (How do “Predator Civilizations” solve the Fermi Paradox?)
Continue reading “How do ‘Predator Civilizations’ solve the Fermi Paradox?” »
Yikes o.o! What I believe is that we need to have cooling systems underwater to keep things cooler so coral and fish can survive. It could also mean even that fish food supplies could run out in the future from the ocean.
Following a global assessment, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has revealed that 44% of reef-building coral species globally are at risk of extinction. The announcement was made at the ongoing COP29 UN climate conference.
Dr. Michael Sweet, Professor of Molecular Ecology and Head of the Aquatic Research Facility at the University of Derby, is among a pool of experts who contributed to the global coral assessment, which has revealed the severe impacts of our rapidly changing climate.
Continue reading “More than 40% of coral species face extinction, according to new research” »
ABSTRACT. We present a detailed study of the large-scale shock front in Stephan’s Quintet, a by-product of past and ongoing interactions. Using integral-field spectroscopy from the new William Herschel Telescope Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE), recent 144 MHz observations from the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey, and archival data from the Very Large Array and JWST, we obtain new measurements of key shock properties and determine its impact on the system. Harnessing the WEAVE large integral field unit’s field of view (90 |$\times$| 78 arcsec|$^{2}$|), spectral resolution (|$R\sim 2500$|), and continuous wavelength coverage across the optical band, we perform robust emission-line modelling and dynamically locate the shock within the multiphase intergalactic medium with higher precision than previously possible. The shocking of the cold gas phase is hypersonic, and comparisons with shock models show that it can readily account for the observed emission-line ratios. In contrast, we demonstrate that the shock is relatively weak in the hot plasma visible in X-rays (with Mach number of |$\mathcal {M}\sim 2\!-\!4$|), making it inefficient at producing the relativistic particles needed to explain the observed synchrotron emission. Instead, we propose that it has led to an adiabatic compression of the medium, which has increased the radio luminosity 10-fold. Comparison of the Balmer line-derived extinction map with the molecular gas and hot dust observed with JWST suggests that pre-existing dust may have survived the collision, allowing the condensation of H|$_2$| – a key channel for dissipating the shock energy.
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A small asteroid burned up in Earth’s atmosphere off the coast of California just hours after being discovered and before impact monitoring systems had registered its trajectory.
Last month, an asteroid impacted Earth’s atmosphere just hours after being detected — somehow, it managed to circumvent impact monitoring systems during its approach to our planet. However, on the bright side, the object measured just 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter and posed very little threat to anything on Earth’s surface.
This asteroid, designated 2024 UQ, was first discovered on Oct. 22 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey in Hawaii, a network of four telescopes that scan the sky for moving objects that might be space rocks on a collision course with Earth. Two hours later, the asteroid burned up over the Pacific Ocean near California, making it an “imminent impactor.”
