Today’s stories range from Ancient Microbes May Help Us Find Alien Life Forms to There’s Growing Evidence Life on Earth Started With More Than Just RNA, and much more.
New NASA Webb Space Telescope Data Has Astronomers Buzzing on Twitter –If the last few days are any indication, we’re about to witness a starry-eyed future for astronomy, reports CNet.
SETI’s search for alien life has entered a new era. SETI is no longer just a guessing game. About one in five stars has a planet in the habitable zone, where conditions are favorable for life to form. We are finally ready to look for what is out there in a systematic way.
A team of astronomers has developed a method that will allow them to ‘see’ through the fog of the early Universe and detect light from the first stars and galaxies. “The first stars were surrounded by clouds of hydrogen, which absorb light really well, so it’s hard to detect or observe the light behind the clouds directly,” reports University of Cambridge.
Ancient Microbes May Help Us Find Alien Life Forms, reports SciTectDaily. “Scientists have reconstructed what life was like for some of Earth’s earliest organisms by using light-capturing proteins in living microbes. These endeavors could help us recognize signs of alien life on other planets, whose atmospheres may more closely resemble our early, pre-oxygen planet. These microbes evolved rhodopsins, proteins with the ability to turn sunlight into energy, and used them to power cellular processes.”
Now Nasa’s Shown Us the Universe’s Beginning, Want to Read About How It Ends? “Have those Webb Telescope images whetted your appetite? If so, Olaf Stapledon’s 1939 novel ‘Star Maker’ is the forgotten sci-fi classic for you,” reports Esquire.
The Webb Telescope Shows We Don’t Need Astronauts to Explore the Cosmos –We love the romance of human travel to space, but robots like the Webb telescope are cheaper, safer and more capable, reports The Wall Street Journal.
There’s Growing Evidence Life on Earth Started With More Than Just RNA. “How life originated on Earth continues to fascinate scientists, but it’s not easy peering back billions of years into the past. Now, evidence is growing for a relatively new hypothesis of how life began: with a very precise mix of RNA and DNA,” reports David Nield for Science Alert.
Why Jupiter doesn’t have rings like Saturn. Gigantic moons prevent giant icy ring formations, reports UC Riverside. “It’s long bothered me why Jupiter doesn’t have even more amazing rings that would put Saturn’s to shame,” said UCR astrophysicist Stephen Kane, who led the research.
Blazars, the gas-guzzling black holes at the center of galaxies, could produce most of the tiny particles known as neutrinos we catch on Earth, reports Sky & Telescope.
Analysis of Milky Way Fermi bubble high-velocity clouds suggests a foreign origin, reports Space.com. “A team of researchers with affiliations to multiple institutions in the U.S. has found that the metal content of Fermi bubble high-velocity clouds does not match with material in the Milky Way’s galactic center, suggesting that at least some of the material comes from somewhere else.”
“The Big Bang Vanishes” –Scientists Doubt Most Famous Scientific Theory Since Einstein’s Relativity, reports The Daily Galaxy. ““The Big Bang theory says nothing about what banged, why it banged, or what happened before it banged,” observed MIT theoretical physicist and cosmologist Alan Guth, who pioneered the the theory that the universe dramatically expanded in size in a fleeting fraction of a second after the Big Bang.”
Humanity’s First-Ever Exoplanet Discovery Was an Unbelievable Fluke. “In the early 1990s, planetary history was made. In 1992, two astronomers, Alexander Wolszczan and Dale Frail, published a paper in Nature announcing the discovery of the very first planets outside the Solar System,” reports Science Alert.
Scott Bolton on his missions to the gas giants of the solar system. “After decades of heading NASA’s exploration of Saturn, Jupiter and their moons, the space physicist describes what we have learned and what future missions must now answer,” reports New Scientist.
Wormhole or Crimson Circle? James Webb Telescope Reveals Stunning Galaxy That Looks Like an Interdimensional Portal, reports The Weather Channel. “A recently released picture of the Messier 74 galaxy has been doing the rounds on the internet — and it is exceedingly clear to see why. The spiral galaxy (also called NGC 628) has been dubbed the “Phantom Galaxy” by space enthusiasts and looks like something you would see on the silver screen of a Marvel movie.”
Astronomers are mapping millions of hidden galaxies. “Millions of distant galaxies are obscured by the Magellanic Clouds, which orbit the Milky Way. However, using several different telescopes, astronomers can see beyond them to build a 3D map of the hidden galaxies,” reports New Scientist.
Curated by The Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff
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Recent Galaxy Reports:
Unmistakable Signal of Alien Life to What Happens if China Makes First Contact?
Clues to Alien Life to A Galaxy 100 x Size of Milky Way
Cracks in Einstein’s Theory of Gravity to Colossal Shock Wave Bigger than the Milky Way
Monster Comet Arriving from the Oort Cloud to Black Hole Apocalypse
Enigmas of Stephen Hawking’s Blackboard to Why the Universe and Life Exist
Einstein’s Critics to NASA Theologians Prepare for Alien Contact
Mind-Bending New Multiverse Theory to Dark-Matter Asteroids of the Milky Way
Mysterious Expanding Regions of Dark Matter to Are Black Holes Holograms
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