Posted on Sep 19, 2022 in Science
Today’s stories include The Enduring Mystery: How Big is the Universe? to the Planets that the Webb Space Telescope has Observed So Far to Saturn’s Lost Moon, and much more.
JWST’s First Glimpses of Early Galaxies Could Break Cosmology–The James Webb Space Telescope’s first images of the distant universe shocked astronomers. Is the discovery of unimaginably distant galaxies a mirage or a revolution? asks Jonathan O’Callaghan for Scientific American.
The Search for Intelligent Life Is About to Get a Lot More Interesting, reports Jon Gertner for The New York Times. “There are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe, home to an unimaginable abundance of planets. And now there are new ways to spot signs of life on them.”
Just how big is the Universe? We still don’t know, reports Big Think. You would think that with all our technology, like the James Webb Space Telescope, we would know how big the Universe is. But we don’t.
What Lies Beyond the Observable Universe? asks The Daily Galaxy. “Astronomers estimate that the observable universe — a bubble 14 billion light-years in radius, which represents how far we have been able to see since its beginning — contains at least two trillion galaxies and a trillion trillion stars,” writes Dennis Overbye in New York Times Science. “Most of these stars and galaxies are too far and too faint to be seen with any telescope known to humans.”
How Long Is the Drive to the Edge of the Universe? –See you in a quadrillion years or so. Don’t forget to pack zillions of tons of snacks! reports Randall Munroe for The New York Times.
Organic human-level intelligence may be just a brief interlude in human history before the machines take over, writes astrophysicist Martin Rees for The Conversation. “The lifetime of an organic civilization may be millennia at most, while its electronic diaspora could continue for billions of years. If we include this in the equation, it seems there may be more civilizations out there than we thought, but that the majority of them would be artificial.”
Should We Be Searching for Smart Aliens or Dumb Aliens?–There are two ways to look for extraterrestrial life. We’ve been focusing on only one, reports Adam Frank for The Atlantic.
These are all the planets that the James Webb Space Telescope has observed so far–From bizarre distant gas giants to the intricate bands of Jupiter, this is what the Webb telescope has been up to, reports Matthew Rozsa for Salon.com.
The Wow! signal is still an enigma, 45 years after its detection, but at least one possibility so far can’t be ruled out, reports Inverse. “There’s another possibility that hasn’t been considered, and it’s called a stochastic repeater.”
This Trait of Red Dwarf Star Systems Could Help Us Resolve The Red Sky Paradox, reports Science Alert. “There’s something very peculiar about Earth, aside from all the organisms crawling all over it. It’s our star, the Sun, that’s weird: It’s a yellow dwarf. Sun-like stars are a minority in the Milky Way. It’s estimated that fewer than 10 percent of the stars in our galaxy are G-type stars, like the Sun.”
How quantum physicists are looking for life on exoplanets reports Tanner Stening for Northeastern University.
“Lost” moon could explain several Saturn mysteries, say astronomers, reports New Atlas. “Saturn is home to several solar system mysteries. Using data from Cassini, astronomers now suggest a simple answer to a few questions – a lost moon once orbited the planet before being torn to shreds.”
Life on Mars? This Could Be the Place NASA’s Rover Helps Us Find It–Rocks collected by Perseverance are filled with organic molecules, and they formed in a lake that would have been habitable a few billion years ago, reports The New York Times.
Swiss Government Scientist Says We May Be on the Brink of Discovering Alien Life. Is he right? asks Futurism. “Dr. Sascha Quanz of Switzerland’s state-run Swiss Federal Institute of Technology said he thinks humans are likely to discover life beyond our planet within the next 25 years.”
Where does quantum uncertainty come from? asks Ethan Siegel for Big Think. No matter how good our measurement devices get, certain quantum properties always possess an inherent uncertainty. Can we figure out why?
Closest black hole to Earth is just 1500 light years away–A black hole with a mass about 10 times that of the sun is thought to be the closest to Earth discovered so far. It is orbited by a star that could host planets, from which the black hole would be visible in the sky, 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?
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Enigmas of Stephen Hawking’s Blackboard to Why the Universe and Life Exist
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Mind-Bending New Multiverse Theory to Dark-Matter Asteroids of the Milky Way
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