Our Universe was busy this week with news ranging from the discovery a new impact on Jupiter to NASA chief, Bill Nelson, reporting that UFOs might be extraterrestrial life forms or beings from an alternate universe to NASA’s inventing ‘curious AI’ for deep space detection of life.
“There are currently 175 known moons orbiting the eight planets in our solar system. While most of these moons orbit Saturn and Jupiter, which are outside the Sun’s habitable zone, that may not be the case in other solar systems,” said Stephen Kane, an associate professor of planetary astrophysics and a member of the University of California Riverside’s Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center about the life-bearing potential of moons of planets beyond our solar system. “Including rocky exomoons in our search for life in space will greatly expand the places we can look.”
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
“After having monitored tens of thousands of galaxies, we know there are other discoveries waiting to happen. Either faint objects, objects that change quickly, or things we do not even know about yet. The search is still going on!” wrote astrophysicist and cosmologist, Brad Tucker, currently a Research Fellow at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mt. Stromlo Observatory at the Australian National University, in an email to The Daily Galaxy about undiscovered gems in the Kepler Mission archives. Tucker is one of the leads of the Kepler Extra-Galactic Survey, KEGS, a Kepler Space Telescope Key Program, to understand why and how stars blow.
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Dark matter is aptly named. It emits no light and interacts with visible matter only via gravity. But dark matter might be only the tip of an invisible universe of unknown forces. This possibility has led to a hunt for “dark photons.” Such photons are analogous to ordinary photons, but they are exchanged among particles of dark matter, and according to some models, they may have mass.
The center of our Galaxy has been intensely studied for many years, but it still harbors surprises for scientists. A snake-like structure lurking near our galaxy’s supermassive black hole is one of the more intriguing discoveries. “Part of the thrill of science is stumbling across a mystery that is not easy to solve,” said Jun-Hui Zhao of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,. “While we don’t have the answer yet, the path to finding it is fascinating.”
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Mars holds her secrets close, planetary-science experts have noted. The Red Planet is crisscrossed with the distinctive tracks of big, long-dead rivers, but we still don’t know what kind of weather fed them. Scientists aren’t sure, because their understanding of the Martian climate billions of years ago remains incomplete according to a ground-breaking 2019 study from the University of Chicago.
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The Point of No Return -Scientists Compare Current Climate Change to Geologic Past (Weekend Feature)
Is Information the Fifth State of Matter in the Universe?
Is Dark Matter Only the Tip of an Invisible Universe of Unknown Forces?
Have Astronomers Detected a Cosmic String from the Dawn of the Universe?
“Their Source a Mystery” -The Wild and Scenic Rivers of Ancient Mars