Some 65 million years ago the greatest asteroid impact in a billion years may have sown life throughout the solar system, even as it ravaged life on Earth. Blasted debris escaped Earth’s gravitational force forming irregular orbits around the sun, eventually finding its way to the planets and moons of the solar system.
Many scientists believe that it is, suggests Paul Davies, theoretical physicist at Arizona State University and director of the Beyond Center, in The Demon in the Machine. Davies suggests that the Great Red Spot is an example of a “dissipative structure” first recognized in the 1970’s by the chemist Ilya Prigogine, who defined life as operating far from equilibrium with its environment and supporting a continued throughput of matter and energy.
“Planet Earth Report” provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalist about the discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.
“The Sun is 10 billion times brighter than an Earth-like planet around it, so that’s a lot of light you have to suppress if you want to see an orbiting planet. A K star might be ‘only’ a billion times brighter than an Earth orbiting around it,” said Giada Arney of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. And, they live a very long time—17 billion to 70 billion years, compared to 10 billion years for the Sun—giving plenty of time for life to evolve. Also, K stars have less extreme activity in their youth than the universe’s dimmest stars, called M stars or “red dwarfs.”
Findings from a seminal experiment point to unknown forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the Universe. The long-awaited first results from the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory show fundamental tiny subatomic particles called muons –similar to an electron but far heavier, is an integral element of the cosmos–appear to be disobeying the known laws of physics predicted by scientists’ best theory, the Standard Model of particle physics when shot through an intense magnetic field at Fermilab.
A mysterious vertical rock formation, akin to the monolith in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel and Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, towers above the surface of Mars’ 17-mile-wide and deeply-grooved moon Phobos. The origin of the monolith and even Phobos itself, which means “fear” in Greek, is unknown. The monolith may explain Russia’s almost mystical obsession with Phobos. First the Soviet Union, then more recently, Russia, made three attempts to reach the enigmatic object, but software errors and launch disasters have aborted each attempt.
The Galaxy Report newsletter brings you twice-weekly news of space and science that has the capacity to provide clues to the mystery of our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our current Anthropocene Epoch.
