Today’s stories range from How common is life in the Universe? And how can we find out? to Primordial black holes may lurk throughout the universe, and much more. “The Galaxy Report” brings you news of space and science that has the capacity to provide clues to the mystery of our existence and adds a much needed cosmic perspective in our current Anthropocene Epoch.
How common is life in the Universe? And how can we find out? –-Some astrobiologists believe life is rare, while others believe it is common in the Universe. How can we find out which view is correct? asks this Big Think podcast. “The Fermi Paradox can be restated plainly: “If alien life is common, then where is everybody?” The answers to this question range from mundane to macabre. Continued research will help reveal whether life is rare or common in the Universe. Europa may be the best hope for finding complex life in our Solar System.”
Born at the dawn of time, primordial black holes may lurk throughout the universe – should they exist. But what if one struck the Earth or even, perhaps, a human being? Ian Randall discovers whether there is legitimate cause for concern or if such a scenario is mere science fiction reports Physics World.
Imagining early Earth as an exoplanet can help us search for alien life, scientists say. “Molecular time travelers” are one piece of the puzzle to understand whether there’s life beyond Earth,” reports Elizabeth Howell for Space.com”–“The ancient Earth is kind of an exoplanet,” said Aaron Goldman, a biology professor at Oberlin College who studies the emergence of life. He said that comparison works because the early Earth is so different than what we know of today.
UAP Footage Captured By A US Army Helicopter Has Just Been Released, reports Forbes. “As they move, the three points of light appear to dance around each other in ways that would seem to defy known physics for a mechanical aircraft. “The circle-dance maneuver is just not possible,” Former U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter pilot Chris Lehto told The DeBrief. “They do a full 360-degree turn in less than 3 seconds!”
‘Mind-Blowing’ Lost City With a Cosmic Link Discovered in the Amazon –A sprawling society with pyramids, moats, and “forest islands” thrived from 500 to 1400 A.D. in the Bolivian Amazon, reports Motherboard Science. “The immense settlements stretch across some 80 square miles of the Llanos de Mojos region of Bolivia and include pyramids, causeways, canals, ramparts, elevated “forest islands,” and buildings arranged in ways that hint at cosmological worldview. “
“The Vanished Rivers” –Mystery of How Mars Became Uninhabitable Endures, reports Max Moe for The Daily Galaxy. “Billions of years ago, Mars was a land of wild and scenic rivers that were wider than those on Earth today—and occurred at hundreds of locations on the red planet.”
Could dark matter be decaying… into dark energy? asks Ethan Siegel for Big Think. On the largest cosmic scales, it isn’t atoms or light that dominate the behavior of the expanding Universe, but two invisible, energetic components: dark matter and dark energy. Over the past 7 billion years or so, dark matter’s energy density has dropped precipitously, while dark energy has become relatively more important, with the latter now dominating the Universe’s expansion rate. Could this be because dark matter is decaying away into dark energy? It’s a wild idea, but one that can be scrupulous.
Physicists predict Earth will become a chaotic world, with dire consequences, reports Paul Sutter for LiveScience. “If the Earth System gets into the region of chaotic behavior, we will lose all hope of somehow fixing the problem. Humans aren’t just making Earth warmer, they are making the climate chaotic, a stark new study suggests.”
‘Unsustainable’: how satellite swarms pose a rising threat to astronomy –SpaceX and other companies are still struggling to make their satellites darker in the night sky, reports Nature.
What the Voyager Space Probes Can Teach Us About Immortality as They Sail Through Space for Eons, reports James Edward Huchingson for Singularity Hub.
The Wow! Signal: An amateur astronomer may have pinpointed ‘alien’ signal’s origin–Could NASA train its most powerful telescopes on the coordinates? asks Interesting Engineering.
The Standard Model of Particle Physics May Be Broken, reports Roger Jones for Singularity Hub. “While we are not absolutely certain these effects require a novel explanation, the evidence seems to be growing that some new physics is needed.”
The struggle to find the origins of time –What is time? Why is it so different from space? And where did it come from? Scientists are still stumped by these questions — but working harder than ever to answer them, reports Astronomy.com
How to Build a Wormhole in Just 3 (Nearly Impossible) Steps, reports Paul Sutter for Ars Technica. “You’ve got yourself a fancy new spaceship and you want to start on a five-year tour of the galaxy. But there’s a problem: Space is big. Really big. And even at the fastest speeds imaginable, it takes eons of crawling across the interstellar voids to get anywhere interesting. The solution? It’s time to build a wormhole. …It’s a staple of science-fiction, and it’s rooted in science-fact. How difficult could it be? Here’s a hint: incredibly difficult.”
These oddball galaxies are missing their dark matter –A pair of dim, puffy galaxies are devoid of this key cosmic ingredient. Now astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope say they may know why, reports National Geographic..
Scientists Discover Nearly 1 Billion-Year-Old Organisms, Possibly Alive –The microorganisms are 830 million years old, and may still be kicking, reports Motherboard Science, The find has implications for the search for life on Mars, researchers say.
Astronomers just discovered the farthest object in the known universe — but what is it? reports Jeanna Bryner for LiveScience. The massive object is a colossal 13.5 billion light-years away. “Astronomers hope to find more of these early-universe structures with the James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched Dec. 25, 2021 and will search for the oldest objects in the universe. “Its discovery is good news for the Webb telescope which will likely find many more,” Harvard’s Avi Loeb told Live Science. “Finding a mushroom in the periphery of your backyard often implies that there are many more out there.”
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