“Our Earth and the air we breathe have changed drastically since Earth formed 4.5 billions years ago,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute about a new study that created five models representing key points from our planet’s evolution, like chemical snapshots through Earth’s own geologic epochs that will allow astronomers identify young to modern Earth-like planets in transit, using our own Earth’s history as a template.
Before we get to today’s big story –a spooky headline says we’re entering a new age, “The Novacene”, I want to share some thoughts. The story says that we are in the final era of human life on Earth.—that we homo sapiens are an evolutionary transition phase from biology to machine life. That the mutation in the brain of a single human being some 200,000 years ago that turned primates into a super-intelligent species that would conquer the world was a genetic accident that will lead to a new hyper-intelligent species, a new evolutionary epoch.
“Planet Earth Report” provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species. Our caffeine-inspired curation team scours the world, doing your work for you –all in one place.
There is more to the universe than the observable, said astrophysicist Tomonori Totani at the University of Tokyo who led a study on how life’s building blocks could spontaneously form in the universe – a process known as abiogenesis. “In contemporary cosmology, it is agreed, adds Totani , that the universe underwent a period of rapid inflation producing a vast region of expansion beyond the horizon of what we can directly observe. Factoring this greater volume into models of abiogenesis hugely increases the chances of life occurring.”
Organic compounds called Thiophenes –found on Earth in coal, crude oil and oddly enough, in white truffles–were also recently discovered on Mars. Washington State University astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch thinks their presence would be consistent with the presence of life on Mars some three billion years ago, which could be detected by Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or MOMA, which uses a less destructive analyzing method than that performed by the current Curiosity Rover, allowing for the collection of larger molecules.
“Planet Earth Report” provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species. Our caffeine-inspired curation team scours the world, doing your work for you –all in one place.
