In astronomy, cutting-edge technology often begins with a bunch of bulldozers, busted rocks, and dump trucks.
So it goes with the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), which will be the world’s largest and most powerful when it sees “first light” in 2024. Astronomers hope to use the huge observatory to study the ancient universe and look for signs of alien life.
Construction crews atop a Chilean mountain range broke ground for the $US1 billion project on Tuesday.
Posted in alien life
We explore some of the ramifications arising from superflares on the evolutionary history of Earth, other planets in the solar system, and exoplanets. We propose that the most powerful superflares can serve as plausible drivers of extinction events, and that their periodicity corresponds to certain patterns in the terrestrial fossil diversity record. On the other hand, weaker superflares may play a positive role in enabling the origin of life through the formation of key organic compounds. Superflares could also prove to be quite detrimental to the evolution of complex life on present-day Mars and exoplanets in the habitable zone of M- and K-dwarfs. We conclude that the risk posed by superflares has not been sufficiently appreciated, and that humanity might potentially witness a superflare event in the next $\sim {10}^{3}$ years, leading to devastating economic and technological losses. In light of the many uncertainties and assumptions associated with our analysis, we recommend that these results should be viewed with due caution.
Giorgio Tsoukalos is in Manila for History Con 2018.
Giorgio Tsoukalos, of “Ancient Aliens,” one of History channel’s most popular and longest-running shows, believes that all ancient civilizations were visited by extraterrestrial beings at some point.
And yes, that includes ancient Philippines.
According to him, the country has some bizarre folktales that could prove his theories that humans aren’t alone in the universe.
One of the biggest challenges for astronomers searching for habitable exoplanets is trying to match up newly discovered worlds with the increasingly long list of criteria that we believe are required for life to take root. A planet may be at a reasonable distance from its host star, but if that star is too young or too old, or just the wrong type, life as we know it would have a hard time there. Now, researchers are reporting the existence of several new planets that appear to meet all the requirements.
The research, which was conducted by scientists from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, focuses on planets that are at a safe distance from their host star, but that are also getting enough UV light to trigger the chemical reactions that serve as the foundation for life to exist.
The researchers involved with the study used data from previous experiments that demonstrated the conditions under which the building blocks of life may have formed. Chemicals produced as a result of carbon-rich meteorites slamming into the early Earth are thought to have been a precursor for life, but the scientists still needed to account for the role that the sun played.
Scientists have identified a group of planets outside our solar system where the same chemical conditions that may have led to life on Earth exist.
The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB), found that the chances for life to develop on the surface of a rocky planet like Earth are connected to the type and strength of light given off by its host star.
Their study, published in the journal Science Advances, proposes that stars which give off sufficient ultraviolet (UV) light could kick-start life on their orbiting planets in the same way it likely developed on Earth, where the UV light powers a series of chemical reactions that produce the building blocks of life.
Posted in alien life
