INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE LAWS OF PHYSICS: ALIENS ARE TO ADVANCED TO BE DETECTED
INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE LAWS OF PHYSICS: ALIENS ARE TO ADVANCED TO BE DETECTED
Aliens may exist in a realm far beyond the abilities for any human to understand or comprehend.
Have you seen something you could not comprehend? Author and futurist Arthur C. Clark states, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" as his third law as to how we can be exposed to alien contact and our inability to distinguish it from some magical phenomena.
Maybe it’s something broader. Columbia University director Caleb Sharf suggests, "After all, if the cosmos holds other life, and if some of that life has evolved beyond our own waypoints of complexity and technology, we should be considering some very extreme possibilities…”, when he hints at the idea that possibly all that exists has a basis in some sort of alien intelligence incomprehensible to human senses.
There is too much unknown in the universe to dismiss such an idea and since it is something humans cannot even begin to understand, how could humans even disagree?
THE KARDASHEV SCALE - TYPE I, II, III, IV & V CIVILIZATION
INTERESTING FACTS
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From the outset, things mentioned by Clark and Sharf are just that, ideas. These ideas cannot necessarily be peer-reviewed, and they are definitely untestable. This is brainstorming at its finest to broaden the mindset that people have about the existence of aliens. Aliens can be physical beings much like humans or they can exist all around us, possibly on a molecular level. The talk of a higher complexity of alien existence is a conversation that must be had so that we don’t overlook all the different viable possibilities that exist out there.
CONCLUSION
Not much is known about the existence of aliens, and this could be for a reason. Aliens may exist in another dimension, in reality not of our own, or all around us in an indistinguishable manner. If aliens exist in a higher complexity than humans can understand then this may start to answer some of the questions we have about the universe itself. Hypothesis’s surrounding this idea is merely in the brainstorming phase and cannot even begin to be proven.
The talk about this is only meant to broaden the thinking that people have so that we can begin to push the dialogue in this direction. With the advancement of human technology maybe one day in the future, research on this topic can begin. Until then, humans are stuck with the unknown. The fact of the matter is, the answer is out there and no idea is too farfetched to be ignored.
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QUANTUM PHYSICS confirm: Death Is Only An Illusion By Your Egyptologist Voids the Void Discovered in the Great Pyramid
The ink isn’t even dry on the news stories (ask your parents what it means) about the discovery of a massive, previously unknown void or empty area inside the Great Pyramid of Giza that was being called “the discovery of the century” when the century suddenly ended as a renowned Egyptian archeologist announced that this is no big deal since they’ve known about it for years. Why did this expert void the void? Was he annoyed that they would avoid asking him first or is he paranoid that he may soon be unemployed?
“The pyramid is full of voids and that does not mean there is a secret chamber or a new discovery.”
This is no ordinary Egyptologist. Zahi Hawass is the former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs and is involved with the ScanPyramids project, a research team using state-of-the-art non-invasive technology based on cosmic rays and muons (heavy electrons) to detect changes in the solid structure of the pyramid. The ScanPyramids team announced last week the discovery of a void (they avoided calling it a ‘chamber’ because they weren’t sure of its purpose and ‘chamber’ apparently gets pyramid fans all hot and bothered) above the Grand Gallery that was at least 100 feet long with a cross-section that made it similar in shape to the Grand Gallery. The team believed this was the first new discovery of anything inside the Great Pyramid since the 19th century.
Not so fast, said Zahi Hawass.
“[They] showed us their conclusions, and we informed them this is not a discovery.”
He told The Hindu Times that archeologists have known about this void for 25 years. The current head of the government’s antiquities council, Mustafa Waziri, gave the ScanPyramids team an archeological ass-chewing for jumping the gun with the announcement.
“The project has to proceed in a scientific way that follows the steps of scientific research and its discussion before publication.”
Let’s just say he was definitely annoyed by how the news of the void was deployed. That’s not to say this is not a big discovery, just not the discovery of the century. It appears the void has been closed since the Great Pyramid was built 4500 years ago, which would make anything inside of it, including the air itself, extremely significant. This also validates the new non-invasive technology, which can only get better.
As Shakespeare might say, the announcement last week about the void was “much ado about nothing.”
Egyptologist Voids the Void Discovered in the Great PyramidThe ink isn’t even dry on the news stories (ask your parents what it means) about the discovery of a massive, previously unknown void or empty area inside the Great Pyramid of Giza that was being called “the discovery of the century” when the century suddenly ended as a renowned Egyptian archeologist announced that this is no big deal since they’ve known about it for years. Why did this expert void the void? Was he annoyed that they would avoid asking him first or is he paranoid that he may soon be unemployed?
“The pyramid is full of voids and that does not mean there is a secret chamber or a new discovery.”
This is no ordinary Egyptologist. Zahi Hawass is the former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs and is involved with the ScanPyramids project, a research team using state-of-the-art non-invasive technology based on cosmic rays and muons (heavy electrons) to detect changes in the solid structure of the pyramid. The ScanPyramids team announced last week the discovery of a void (they avoided calling it a ‘chamber’ because they weren’t sure of its purpose and ‘chamber’ apparently gets pyramid fans all hot and bothered) above the Grand Gallery that was at least 100 feet long with a cross-section that made it similar in shape to the Grand Gallery. The team believed this was the first new discovery of anything inside the Great Pyramid since the 19th century.
Not so fast, said Zahi Hawass.
“[They] showed us their conclusions, and we informed them this is not a discovery.”
He told The Hindu Times that archeologists have known about this void for 25 years. The current head of the government’s antiquities council, Mustafa Waziri, gave the ScanPyramids team an archeological ass-chewing for jumping the gun with the announcement.
“The project has to proceed in a scientific way that follows the steps of scientific research and its discussion before publication.”
Let’s just say he was definitely annoyed by how the news of the void was deployed. That’s not to say this is not a big discovery, just not the discovery of the century. It appears the void has been closed since the Great Pyramid was built 4500 years ago, which would make anything inside of it, including the air itself, extremely significant. This also validates the new non-invasive technology, which can only get better.
As Shakespeare might say, the announcement last week about the void was “much ado about nothing.”
Weird Phenomenon In The Sky Appears Above Gilbert, Arizona
Alien life may have had billions of years to brew inside Saturn's icy moon Enceladus
Deep inside Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn some 890 million miles from Earth, one of our best chances of discovering alien life is heating up.
Enceladus is less than 1% the size of our moon yet hides an ocean containing up to 10% as much water as exists on Earth. What’s more, chemical studies of ice jets shooting out of Enceladus’ south pole suggest the moon’s deep, warm waters could be “a candy store” for microbes.
No one yet knows if aliens exist in this distant subsurface ocean. However, a study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy suggest the moon’s hidden sea of water may be billions of years old — perhaps even as old as Earth’s own oceans.
“This could be good news for the astrobiological potential of Enceladus’s ocean,” Kevin Hand, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who wasn’t involved in the research, told Business Insider in an email. “We don’t know how long it takes for the origin of life to occur, but more time is probably better.”
Scientists long suspected Enceladus might hide an ocean.
They reasoned radioactive elements could heat up the moon’s rocky core enough to melt surrounding ice. Or Saturn’s gravity — through a process similar to tides on Earth — could knead and heat Enceladus’s rocky core as it orbited the planet. Or perhaps both at once.
However, the existence of Enceladus’s ocean was mythical until the arrival of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in 2004.
The nuclear-powered probe later flew through the moon’s icy jets, giving scientists a crude “taste” of the water’s other ingredients — including gases that microbes could feed on, salts, and tiny grains of silica rock from the seafloor.
Cassini also gathered more than a decade of data on the moon’s wobble before NASA purposefully destroyed the robot in Saturn’s thick atmosphere. A 2015 analysis of that wobble signalled the existence of a global subsurface ocean, further raising the chances for life’s foothold below the moon’s icy crust.
What researchers were less certain about is how long the ocean of Enceladus has existed.
On Earth — the only inhabited world we know of — it took nearly a billion years for life to emerge, then billions more to thrive and diversify into plants and animals. (Earth is 4.54 billion years old, and the oldest-known life are fossils of deep-sea hydrothermal vents dating back 3.77 billion years old.)
Knowing that a younger ocean would lower the chances for finding alien life at Enceladus in the future, a group of seven scientists set out to estimate its age.
Measurements of Enceladus and its ocean suggest the moon’s core was about 100 times hotter than heat given off by decaying radioactive elements could explain, according to a European Space Agency press release.
The new study tackled the age of Enceladus’s ocean by taking everything scientists knew about the moon — primarily from Cassini data — and plugging it into 3D simulations. The model explored how much heat tidal friction could generate at the moon’s core, and where it’d go over millions of years.
When the Europe-based research group assumed the moon’s ion could generate enough heat to form a global ocean.
There was also enough warmth to keep the ocean liquid for tens of millions or perhaps billions of years, according to a NASA-JPL press release. All of the ocean’s water also cycled through Enceladus’ rocky core every 25-250 million years — a process that could bring life-giving chemicals to the surface.
“Long-lived, sustained geothermal activity on Enceladus’s seafloor could spell good news for geochemistry that gives way to biochemistry,” Hand said.
Future missions to Enceladus may be able to determine if hydrothermal vents exist on the moon’s seafloor, according to the ESA, further raising the moon’s profile as a place to seek out alien life.
EXPERTS DISCLOSE ALIEN SPECIES RESIDE IN THE UNIVERSE
Scientists believe that as the universe is so enormous and, presumably, filled with an incalculable number of planets capable of supporting life, any of those extraterrestrial life forms may probably be more advanced technologically when compared to us. Quite possibly one of the reasons the inhabitants of these planets have not established contact with us is due to our lack of technological means and a minimal knowledge of the laws of the universe.
Is there any chance that this will change in the years to come?
This strong conviction in alien existence originates from an instinctual acknowledgment of the Universe as a magnificent sowing mechanism that had broaden to a large number of areas the gift of life and evolution.
The most prominent among the proponents of this belief is the brilliant inventor Elon Musk, the founder of the SpaceX program, who firmly believe in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and with his innovations which could boost the human desire to explore space and hopefully make interaction with our presently concealed intergalactic neighbors.
Elon Musk’s bold ambitiousness has been clarified in an article composed in the New York Times by Astrophysicist Adam Frank, entitled – Yes, There Have Been Aliens.
According to him, we’re not the initial generation of intelligent humanoids which have developed on the blue pale dot. The probability is thin for mankind to be the exclusively evolved creatures in this enormous of the universe, a 1 in 10 billion trillions to be more precise.
This give opportunity to presume that there are tremendous chances outsiders even now to be among us, understanding that our DNA may very well be blended with theirs, therefore have figured out how to consistently blend into the general public unnoticed.
This could mean that our star is not hosting its first generation of living beings which find a way how to beam radio signals into space. Adam Frank’s research is based upon the challenging and innovating mathematical formula serving as an instruction for any person enthusiastic about acquiring genuine evidence of extraterrestrial life in the universe.
It certainly could be challenging to decode Drake’s Equation by yourself, the scientific community is currently focusing on a method to place numbers on the table. The formula looks like this:
N = R * fp ne fl fi fe L
fp – the percentage of stars with planets
ne – the number of planets similar to Earth
fl – the number of Earth-like planets capable of supporting and maintaining life
fi – the percentage of celestial bodies with life that can further develop intelligent life forms
fe – the percentage of intelligent species able to detect otherworldly technology originating from another foreign civilization (i.e. ration transmissions)
L – the average number of earth-years during which advanced civilizations emit signals.
Multiplying the two components of the formula with the period of time that sophisticated civilizations take to communicate reveals the whole quantity of civilizations that have walked the exact lands we are exploring at present.
The complicated Drake Equation can only be solved after discovering accurate values for every one of its components. Scientists speculate this will be achievable in coming years, but nonetheless, warn those quantities are likely to be worthless if attempting to discover species with a potential beyond that of mankind constructs.
Astronomers already have found over 3,000 neighboring exoplanets, with roughly 20% of these planets within habitable areas. The latest NASA press release of 7 Earth-like planets just a couple of light years separate from us has increased expectations of discovering alien existence in the years to come.
The only thing we are able to do at this moment is waiting for the time when we’ll discover our cosmic neighbors, however, waiting for science to deliver the results will likely take just too much time of one’s life, so it’s better to seek for indications on our very own planet. After all, mysteries on Earth are surfacing every day, and there are various leads to pursue which might be quickly labeled as otherworldly.
SOUNDS OF ALIEN LIFE ON JUPITER RECORDED BY NASA’S JUNO SPACECRAFT
SOUNDS OF ALIEN LIFE ON JUPITER RECORDED BY NASA’S JUNO SPACECRAFT
Horrendous sounds of life of an unknown origin are being recorded on Jupiter by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Further examination of the footage suggests they are originated by some unknown obscure colossal creatures living on the planet.
Scientific circles awaited with anticipation the moment when after 5 years of intergalactic travel, Juno finally arrived at its destination – Jupiter and after attaining a stable orbit of the planet, managed to collect and send back to Earth information, of inestimable significance, about Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetic field, and weather phenomena.
On June 24, Juno crossed the perimeter of Jupiter’s magnetic field and that’s when the WAVES instrument aboard the spacecraft began getting a progression of entrancing radio signals that sound extraordinary when moved down into the discernible range.
According to sources in NASA, researchers can not yet affirm with certainty precisely what is going on under the billowing clouds of Jupiter’s atmosphere yet, as reported by them, a booming blast that is heard on the recording is caused by specific phenomena called astrophysical bow shock. It is the consequence of the interaction between a celestial object’s magnetic field and the atmospheric plasma flows that are hindered and warmed by the magnetic field they encounter giving rise to the shocking, extraordinary sounds.
From the little data we have about Jupiter, we know it is impossible that carbon-based life forms could survive on its surface to survive types of life. But this does not exclude the possibility of a different type of life form since exobiologists believe exotic life forms could exist in Jupiter’s thick, 5,000 mile deep atmosphere, which is for the most part hydrogen, but it does additionally contain amounts of ammonia, methane and water. These are the very gasses that were utilized as a part of the renowned Miller-Urey experiment that showed how the fundamental building blocks of life could be created by interactions between gasses in a planet’s environment.
Artist’s rendition of possible life forms on a gas giant
The Miller-Urey experiment was relatively easy, water vapor was placed in a flask comprising of hydrogen gas, methane, and ammonia. Miller transferred the electronic pulse through the compound and, after only one week of zapping the gas, the substance of the flask had already revealed remnants of organic molecules and amino acids, the precursors of life. Jupiter possesses the gases and also has lightning storms to carry out its own experiments
The possibility of Jupiter to sustain life forms has frequently encouraged many speculations by numerous writers and scholars. In the 1971 science fiction novella,” A Meeting with Medusa”, writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke theorizes about the capability of Jupiter not only to possess a minuscule air plankton life forms but also huge, jellyfish-like organisms, held afloat by hydrogen-filled compartments, these kind of rightly- named beasts would likely consume the minuscule types similar to the filter-feeders floating in the Earth’s oceans.
One of the most prominent scientists like Carl Sagan consents with the vast majority of the hypotheses about the presence of Jupiter’s life forms. Certainly, the Juno spacecraft recording, subsequently, after it passed Jupiter’s magnetopause emerge as exceptionally fascinating. Nevertheless, that is certainly not what occurs to magnet-women later in life, it’s the area around a planet where it features a magnetic field more powerful compared to that of the star it’s orbiting. Fundamentally, the planet’s home turf.
Is it conceivable that these sounds originated from particular life shapes on the surface of Jupiter?
Could possibly be a consequence of an intelligent life form communication?
Source: ufoholic.com
THE CIA DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS CONFIRMS EXTRATERRESTRIAL ACTIVITY ON OUR PLANET
Having a glimpse into the latest declassified UFO files and high ranking government officials statements, we are witnessing how UFO phenomenon all of a sudden becomes a reality.
It is difficult to envision that we are alone in this enormous universe, particularly after high ranked officials recently showed up in broad daylight with proclamations that we are not the only one in this boundless universe, also that we already have effectively established contact with extraterrestrial species.
Dimitri Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, in 2012 made an announcement shortly after his interview that was broadcast live on 5 tv stations. The Russian ex-president uncovered to a journalist that every leader of the Kremlin is given two envelopes with classified data in regards to the visit of extraterrestrial creatures.
Image: wp.com
It didn’t take long for his words to be shared in mass across all the media and social networks which caused great interest in the general public. After all, he is a high-level official that publicly acknowledged the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations during the presidential mandate.
In an interview for Sputnik, in 1980 a famous Russian astronaut Yevgheni Krunov gave a statement that he wont deny the existence of UFOs, they are more than just optical illusions, even some of their characteristics, such as they are something other than optical deceptions, even some of their qualities, for example, the quick difference in flight course at a 90 degree edge offers us a considerable measure of something worth mulling over.
Another observer of this various bizarre and baffling phenomena is another Russian space explorer, Ghenadie Strekalov. He portrayed a marvel saw on September 28, 1980, during his day shift on the Mir space station: a flying dish above the Earth, at an altitude of 20-30 km, around Newfoundland. The atmosphere was clear and the permeability was flawless, so he could look for around 10 seconds how the circle was moving delightful distinctive shades, and afterward vanishing in the space.
As indicated by publicly released data releases, in the time of 1952 alone have been examined and affirmed 100 UFO phenomena with no intelligent clarification, that were enlisted and named in the CIA chronicles as “inexplicable”.
According the report: “Almost 100 believable confessions remain inexplicable at the moment. However, the CIA monitoring will continue and no reports will be made public.”
In the latest batch of unclassified CIA documents, the officials indicated that records don’t contain any data in regards to crushed UFOs, experiences or kidnappings, however, they are certain people, in general, will find them to a great degree captivating:
“We have decided to release to publicity a few files that even the most skeptical individuals will find appealing. Five of these files are fit for “X Files” agent Fox Mulder, but the other 5 files are perfect for his skeptical partner, agent Dana Scully.”
The declassification of these 10 records corresponds with the relaunch of the “X Files”, nonetheless, conspiracy theorists trust that CIA’s decision to make these reports open does not complement the relaunch of the new X Files series, yet rather are an endeavor to warm-up the audience for later divulgences.
“Apparently, the CIA used the rebirth of the X Files franchise to remind the people that the agency has agents investigating these cases.”, proclaims Stephen Basset, official chief of Paradigm Research Group, an association that militates at the White House all together for the legislature of the United States to concede that extraterrestrials do exist.
However, it might take some time for this world as it is to acknowledge the UFO reality, and hope remains that in the days to come, the government will soon pour the beans relating the presence of extraterrestrials.
Bizarre lights spotted in skies above Mexico City during quake (VIDEOS)
The lights could be seen flashing above Mexico City in hues of greens and white. Video uploaded from the scene shows the dramatic display.
Así el cielo durante el #Sismopic.twitter.com/zlcPA7YSDM
— L4L0 (@lalocedeno) September 8, 2017
Luces mientras temblaba en la CDMX #AlertaSismica #Temblo
Little is known about the phenomenon, which can sometimes be explained by exploding generators or power systems. Another explanation claims that the tectonic movement of rocks including quartz, generates a piezoelectric field which produces flashes of light.
A 2014 study said the stress of the tectonic plates can break apart pairs of negatively-charged oxygen atoms, pushing them towards the Earth’s surface and forming a light-emitting plasma when it combines with air.
A tsunami warning is in place following Friday’s earthquake, the strongest in a century. At least five people are reported dead with the number expected to rise.
READ MORE: Tsunami warning as 8.2 quake strikes off south-western Mexico coast (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)
Met dit instrument gaan we uitzoeken of de maan Enceladus leefbaar is
Caroline Kraaijvanger
NASA heeft een plan!
Saturnus’ maan Enceladus spreekt tot de verbeelding. Er zijn namelijk sterke aanwijzingen dat onder de dikke ijslaag die de maan rijk is, een vloeibare oceaan te vinden is. Zou het in die oceaan – net als in de oceanen op aarde – wemelen van het leven?
Instrument
Onderzoekers staan te popelen om dat uit te zoeken. Maar dat valt natuurlijk nog niet mee. Want we hebben het hier over een oceaan die zich onder een kilometersdikke laag ijs bevindt. Maar NASA is niet voor één gat te vangen en komt nu met een instrument op de proppen waarmee we mogelijk een schat aan informatie over die ondergrondse oceaan kunnen verzamelen.
SELFI
Het instrument wordt kortweg SELFI genoemd. Dat staat voor Submillimeter Enceladus Life Fundamentels Instrument. Het instrument maakt handig gebruik van de pakweg honderd geisers die op Enceladus te vinden zijn en die – via enorme scheuren in de ijskap – continu waterdamp, CO2, methaan en andere gassen de lucht in slingeren. “We kunnen deze pluimen scannen om te zien wat er uit Enceladus komt zetten,” vertelt onderzoeker Gordon Chin. “Waterdamp en andere moleculen kunnen iets onthullen over de chemie van de oceaan.”
Onder de dikke ijskap van Enceladus bevindt zich mogelijk een oceaan. Mogelijk bevinden zich op de bodem van de oceaan hydrothermale bronnen die waterstofgas voortbrengen (en waar op aarde nogal wat leven rond te vinden is). De aanwezigheid van zulke bronnen zou bevestigd kunnen worden door de pluimen die de geisers op de maan genereren, te bestuderen.
Afbeelding: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Southwest Research Institute.
Radiostations
SELFI zou dat alles vanaf een afstandje kunnen doen. “Submillimetergolflengtes bieden ons een manier om te meten hoeveel verschillende moleculen er in een koud gas zitten,” vertelt Chin. “Moleculen zoals water en koolstofmonoxide en anderen zijn een soort kleine radiostations die op specifieke frequenties uitzenden en laten weten “hé, ik ben water, ik ben koolstofmonoxide”. Onderzoeker Paul Racette voegt toe: “De spectrale lijnen zijn zo duidelijk dat we chemische stoffen kunnen identificeren en kwantificeren zonder dat daarbij verwarring kan ontstaan.”
Dertien moleculen
SELFI zou in staat zijn om dertien soorten moleculen tegelijkertijd te detecteren en analyseren. Je moet dan onder meer denken aan water, maar ook methanol, ozon, waterstofperoxide, zwaveldioxide en natriumchloride (het stofje dat de oceanen op aarde zout maakt).
Door de gegevens die SELFI verzamelt, te extrapoleren kunnen onderzoekers een beeld krijgen van hoe de oceaan onder Enceladus’ ijskap in elkaar steekt en of in die oceaan bijvoorbeeld ook hydrothermale bronnen te vinden zijn. En op basis daarvan kan dan weer meer gezegd worden over de leefbaarheid van de oceaan.µ
Planetoïden vallen ongevraagd en ongeweigerd deze foto van Hubble binnen
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Een kosmische fotobom!
Op de diepe opnames van ruimtetelescoop Hubble zijn duizenden sterrenstelsels te zien. Sommige van die sterrenstelsels zijn gigantisch (zoals de gele elliptische sterrenstelsels en de blauwe spiraalstelsels). Anderen staan weer ontzettend ver weg (de rode sterrenstelsels).
Strepen
Maar wat nog veel meer in het oog springt, zijn natuurlijk de opvallende strepen die dwars over de opname lopen. Het zijn planetoïden die gemiddeld zo’n 257 miljoen kilometer van de aarde verwijderd zijn.
De sporen die de planetoïden achterlaten, lijken iets af te buigen. Het is het resultaat van een verschijnsel dat parallax wordt genoemd. Terwijl Hubble rond de aarde draait, lijkt de planetoíde ten opzichte van de op veel grotere afstand staande sterren en sterrenstelsels op de achtergrond langs een boogje te bewegen. Het effect is een beetje vergelijkbaar met het effect dat je ziet vanuit een bewegende auto, waarbij bomen langs de kant van de weg veel sneller lijken te bewegen dan de objecten op grotere afstand erachter. Daarnaast dragen ook de beweging van de aarde rond de zon en de bewegingen van de planetoïden zelf nog bij aan het feit dat deze planetoïden door de ruimte lijken te zwalken.
Afbeelding: NASA / ESA / B. Sunnquist & J. Mack (STScI).
Sporen
De planetoïden laten niet één lang spoor achter, maar duiken herhaaldelijk op. Dat komt doordat deze Hubble-foto (boven) is opgebouwd uit meerdere kiekjes van Hubble. De twintig ‘sporen’ van planetoïden die je hier ziet, zijn veroorzaakt door zeven unieke objecten. Twee daarvan waren ons reeds bekend. De overige vijf reflecteerden te weinig licht om eerder ontdekt te kunnen worden.
Hieronder zie je nog een fotobom. Tijdens het maken van deze diepe opname, vielen vijf planetoïden (samen goed voor zo’n 22 sporen) de foto binnen. Geen van deze planetoïden waren astronomen bekend.
Hier vereeuwigde Hubble het cluster Abell 370 en dus ook een handjevol planetoïden!
Afbeelding: NASA / ESA & STScI.
En zo kunnen zelfs op diepe opnamen van Hubble heel dicht bij huis dus nog nieuwe dingen worden ontdekt!
'Planeet X wordt waarschijnlijk binnen een paar jaar gevonden'
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Astronoom Konstantin Batygin weet het vrijwel zeker: Planeet X bestaat. En hij is vastbesloten ‘m op te sporen.
Het was begin 2016 wereldnieuws. Astronomen Konstantin Batygin en Mike Brown hadden sterke aanwijzingen gevonden voor het bestaan van een negende planeet in ons zonnestelsel. De planeet zou tien keer groter zijn dan de aarde, 500 keer zwaarder zijn dan Pluto en een slordige 90 miljard kilometer van de zon verwijderd zijn. Batygin en Brown leidden het bestaan van de planeet af uit het effect dat deze lijkt te hebben op de banen van een aantal Kuipergordelobjecten. De Kuipergordelobjecten in kwestie hebben allemaal elliptische banen, maar volgen dezelfde richting in de fysieke ruimte. “De kans dat dit toeval is, is slechts 0,007 procent,” vertelde Brown in 2016. “Kortom: het kán haast geen toeval zijn. Er moet iets zijn dat de koers van deze objecten bepaalt.” En dat ‘iets’ is volgens Batygin en Brown dus Planeet X.
Opeenstapeling van bewijs
Inmiddels zijn we bijna twee jaar verder en is Planeet X nog altijd een vermoeden: het is astronomen namelijk nog niet gelukt om de planeet te spotten. Wél stapelt het bewijs – dat NASA recent nog ‘overtuigend’ noemde – voor het bestaan van de planeet zich op.
Planeet X doet er mogelijk wel 20.000 jaar over om een rondje rond de zon te voltooien!
Afbeelding: Caltech / R. Hurt (IPAC).
2021
Inmiddels hebben Batygin en Brown al zo’n 20% van het stukje heelal waarin ze planeet X verwachten, afgespeurd. Dus er zit zeker schot in. Brown liet begin 2016 aan Scientias.nl weten te verwachten dat Planeet X binnen een jaar of vijf wel ontdekt zou worden. En dat lijkt nog steeds haalbaar, zo vertelt Batygin. “Je weet het nooit zeker, natuurlijk. Als het elke keer als we willen observeren slecht weer is, komen we bijvoorbeeld in de problemen. Maar het lijkt waarschijnlijk dat we de planeet tegen 2021 wel gevonden hebben.” In principe zouden we de planeet zelfs dit jaar nog kunnen spotten. Batygin schat de kans dat het bewijs voor het bestaan van de planeet zich ophoudt in de data die eind september verzameld is, op zo’n 10 tot 15 procent.
De twijfel voorbij
Ervan uitgaande dat de planeet echt bestaat, natuurlijk. Want dat is – zolang we de planeet niet direct spotten – toch altijd nog onzeker. Maar Batygin is die twijfel eigenlijk voorbij, zo vertelt hij. “Op dit punt ben ik vrijwel zeker dat er een Planeet X is.” Hij verwijst hierbij naar een recent paper waarin hij samen met collega Alessandro Morbidelli de interpretatie van alle verzamelde data die op het bestaan van Planeet X wijzen, van een update heeft voorzien. “Nu we de data beter begrijpen, zie ik eerlijk gezegd geen manier meer om het zonnestelsel zonder een Planeet X te verklaren.”
Gewoontjes
Het lijkt dus een kwestie van tijd voor we Planeet X spotten. En die ontdekking zal een hoop veranderen, denkt Batygin. Zo wordt het zonnestelsel in zekere zin groter. Nu gaat het wanneer we over het zonnestelsel spreken vaak over de ruimte waarin de planeten cirkelen. En die ruimte zal met de ontdekking van Planeet X flink groter worden: de planeet is naar schatting zo’n twintig keer verder verwijderd van de zon dan de huidige buitenste planeet in ons zonnestelsel, Neptunus. Daarnaast zal de ontdekking ervoor zorgen dat ons zonnestelsel wat ‘gewoontjes’ wordt. Want opeens bezit het dan een superaarde: “over het algemeen genomen het type planeet dat het meest voorkomt”.
Mocht Planeet X ergens in de komende jaren ontdekt worden, dan wacht Batygin en collega’s behalve een hoop aandacht van de media ook een enorme hoop werk. Want opeens is er dan een negende planeet om verder te verkennen. Eén van de eerste onderzoeksvragen die dan aan bod zullen komen, is ongetwijfeld de vraag waar deze planeet geboren is. Op de huidige plek, op zo’n grote afstand van de zon? Dat lijkt niet zo aannemelijk. Stond ‘ie dan eerst dichter bij de zon en is ‘ie door andere planeten weggetrapt? Of hoorde de planeet eigenlijk bij een andere ster en heeft onze zon deze ‘gestolen’? Batygin verwacht dat we vrij kort na de ontdekking van de planeet ook de oorsprong ervan wel helder kunnen krijgen. “Er zal flink wat gemodelleerd moeten worden, maar ik vermoed dat het snel kan gaan.” Zodra de baan van de planeet in kaart is gebracht, kan immers met simulaties worden nagegaan wat deze allemaal heeft meegemaakt.
Terwijl Brown en Batygin jagen op de negende planeet in ons zonnestelsel dromen anderen al van de ontdekking van nog meer planeten. Recent onderzoek suggereert nu reeds dat er naast Planeet X ook nog een tiende planeet op ontdekking wacht. Batygin heeft er niet echt een mening over “maar het bewijs is veelbelovend”. Hij zal er in ieder geval niet gek van opkijken als er op termijn nog meer planeten in de achterhoede van het zonnestelsel worden gevonden. “Het zonnestelsel is groot. Maar op dit moment hebben we echter alleen heel sterk bewijs voor Planeet X. Het is opwindend om te zien wat de toekomst gaat brengen.”
'Mogelijk een uitgebreid planetenstelsel rond dichtstbijzijnde ster Proxima Centauri'
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Daarop hinten onderzoekers na de ontdekking van koud stof rond de ster.
Met behulp van de ALMA-sterrenwacht op Chili hebben astronomen rond Proxima Centauri – de ster die het dichtst bij ons in de buurt staat – koud stof ontdekt. Het stof vormt als het ware een kring rond Proxima Centauri en strekt zich uit tot op enkele honderden miljoenen kilometers van de ster. Naar schatting herbergt deze stofgordel ongeveer één honderdste van een aardmassa aan materiaal. De temperatuur van dat materiaal ligt rond de -230 graden Celsius, zo schatten de astronomen. Daarmee is de stofgordel ongeveer net zo koud als de Kuipergordel in ons eigen zonnestelsel.
Tweede stofgordel?
Maar dat is nog niet alles. ALMA heeft namelijk ook aanwijzingen gevonden voor een tweede stofgordel op iets grotere afstand van Proxima Centauri. Deze stofgordel is ongeveer tien keer verder van de ster verwijderd dan de eerste stofgordel en is tevens aanzienlijk kouder.
Planetenstelsel
Het is een fascinerende ontdekking, zo vertelt onderzoeker Guillem Anglada. “Het stof rond Proxima is belangrijk omdat dit, na de ontdekking van de aardse planeet Proxima b (zie kader, red.) de eerste aanwijzing is dat de meest nabije buurster van de zon omgeven is door een uitgebreid planetenstelsel.”
Planetoïden rond Proxima Centauri
De stofgordels bestaan waarschijnlijk uit rots- en ijsdeeltjes die zijn achtergebleven na het planeetvormingsproces. De rots- en ijsdeeltjes in beide gordels hebben grootten die uiteenlopen van minder dan een millimeter tot vele kilometers (in het laatste geval kun je van planetoïden spreken). “Dit resultaat wijst erop dat Proxima Centauri een meervoudig planetenstelsel kan hebben, met een rijke geschiedenis van interacties die tot de vorming van een stofgordel heeft geleid. Verder onderzoek kan informatie verschaffen over de locaties waar zich nog onontdekte planeten kunnen bevinden.”
Een artistieke impressie laat zien hoe de pas ontdekte stofschijven rond Proxima Centauri eruit zouden kunnen zien. Let op: de schets is niet op schaal. Om de ster duidelijk zichtbaar te laten zijn, is de binnenste gordel op grotere afstand van de ster getekend. In werkelijkheid is de gordel minder groot.
Afbeelding: ESO / M. Kornmesser.
Proxima Centauri mag zich de laatste jaren in steeds meer aandacht verheugen. Zo wordt er momenteel ook hard nagedacht over een ruimtemissie naar de dichtstbijzijnde ster (die toch nog zo’n 4 lichtjaar van ons verwijderd is). Gedacht wordt aan microsondes die aan grote lichtzeilen hangen en door lasers op aarde worden voortgestuwd (lees er hier alles over). Voor je zo’n missie op pad stuurt, moet je natuurlijk wel een goed beeld hebben van de bestemming en eventuele gevaarlijke planetoïdengordels die hier te vinden zijn. En ALMA kan daarbij dus helpen, zo benadrukt onderzoeker Pedro Amado. “Deze eerste resultaten laten zien dat ALMA stofstructuren rond Proxima kan detecteren. Vervolgwaarnemingen zullen ons een gedetailleerder beeld van het Proxima-stelsel geven.” En uiteindelijk kunnen we zo ook meer te weten komen over ons eigen zonnestelsel. “In combinatie met het onderzoek van protoplanetaire schijven rond jonge sterren zal dit meer inzicht geven in de processen die 4,6 miljard jaar geleden tot de vorming van de aarde en de rest van het zonnestelsel hebben geleid. Wat we nu zien, is nog maar een voorproefje van wat er komen gaat!”
NASA's nieuwe Marsrover krijgt recordbrekend veel camera's mee
Caroline Kraaijvanger
23 stuks. Knappe alien die daaraan weet te ontsnappen!
De afgelopen decennia heeft NASA verschillende rovers naar Mars gestuurd (zie kader). Maar geen enkele rover had zoveel camera’s als het exemplaar dat in 2020 naar Mars vertrekt. De Mars 2020-missiewordt namelijk uitgerust met 23 camera’s, zo heeft NASA bekend gemaakt.
Functie
De rover zal de camera’s onder meer gebruiken om panoramafoto’s te maken, obstakels te spotten en de atmosfeer van Mars te bestuderen. Ook kunnen de camera’s ingezet worden om andere instrumenten aan boord van de rover te assisteren. Bovendien zullen de camera’s foto’s maken terwijl de Mars 2020-rover afdaalt naar het oppervlak van de rode planeet. Een primeur: voor het eerst zullen de camera’s foto’s maken van parachutes die boven een andere planeet openklappen.
Beter
De Mars 2020-missie heeft niet alleen meer camera’s. Ze zijn ook beter. Zo beschikt de nieuwste Marsrover over Navcams en Hazcams (respectievelijk bedoeld om ritjes te plannen en obstakels te vermijden) die plaatjes met een hogere resolutie én in kleur afleveren. Ook is het gezichtsveld van de lenzen van deze camera’s groter. “Onze eerdere Navcams maakten meerdere foto’s en plakten die aaneen,” stelt Colin McKinney. “Met het grotere gezichtsveld krijgen we hetzelfde beeld met één kiekje.” Tevens zijn de camera’s in staat om scherpe foto’s te maken terwijl de rover beweegt. “De cameratechnologie wordt steeds beter,” vertelt Justin Maki. “Elke opeenvolgende missie is in staat om die verbeteringen te benutten, wat leidt tot betere prestaties en lagere kosten.”
Afbeelding: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Maar al die camera’s brengen ook een grote uitdaging met zich mee. Ze brengen namelijk bijzonder veel foto’s voort en die moeten allemaal naar de aarde worden verzonden. Het vereist dat de data flink gecomprimeerd wordt. In Spirit en Opportunity regelde de computer dat. In Curiosity namen de camera’s zelf dat proces reeds voor hun rekening. En ook in de Mars 2020-rover wordt gebruik gemaakt van dergelijke slimme camera’s.
Blue jets, red sprites and other flashes
In recent years, the International Space Station has given astronauts the chance to photograph transient luminous events – or TLEs – natural light shows produced at the tops of thunderstorms.
Two weeks ago, we published a photo by Paul Smith of an awesome red sprite over Oklahoma. Red sprites are a type of transient luminous event (TLE), different from the more familiar lightning that takes place in the troposphere, or lowest part of Earth’s atmosphere. A related phenomena are the blue jets, which pulse from the tops of intense thunderstorms and reach up toward the edge of space. In 2015, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen photograped blue jets from the International Space Station. A subsequent analysis of the video footage by researchers at Denmark’s National Space Institute – published in early 2017 – revealed some amazing results!
Olivier Chanrion, lead author of the publication reported:
During 160 seconds of video footage, 245 pulsating blue discharges were observed, corresponding to a rate of about 90 per minute.
One of the blue jets observed reached 25 miles (40 km) above sea level.
Watch the video above to see Mogensen’s footage, and learn more about blue jets, red sprites and other flashes high above thunderstorms.
Or, read a transcript of the video from NASA
Red sprite over Oklahoma, caught by Paul Smith on October 6, 2017. Read more about this image.
Bottom line: New NASA ScienceCast on blue jets, red sprites and other flashes above thunderstorms, seen from space.
Astronomers Use Shadowy Alien Worlds to Peer Inside Stars
New analyses allow scientists to measure stellar densities using orbiting planets
By Sarah Lewin, SPACE.com
Distant planets tell all: A new analysis uses alien worlds' orbital treks to peek inside their stars.
NASA's ever-watchful Kepler space telescope has identified thousands of exoplanets by noting the tiny brightness dips caused when these worlds "transit," or cross the face of, their host stars. The length between dimmings tells scientists how long the planet takes to orbit—how long its year is—and the level of dimming shows how much smaller the planet is than the star.
And now, the speed of the planet's passing can also divine the star's density. [Wildest Alien Planet Discoveries of 2016]
"It's really weird that a planet that's orbiting far away from the star can tell us anything about the star's interior—I think that's really bizarre but cool," said Emily Sandford, an astronomer at Columbia University in New York and lead author on the new work.
"Basically, by measuring very precisely the shape of those dimmings, the amount of light that's missing over time when a planet passes in front, you can measure the density of the star the planet's orbiting," she told Space.com.
Using a method first derived by astrophysicsts Sara Seager and Gabriela Mallen-Ornelas in 2003, Sandford and co-author David Kipping, also of Columbia, analyzed data on 66 Kepler stars to determine their densities. Their precision rivalled that of asteroseismology, a technique used on bright stars that uses oscillations in their shine to reconstruct their interior properties. While asteroseismology requires very precise brightness measurements, Sandford said, the new calculation needs less pristine data.
Essentially, the process works because how long a planet spends in front of its star is tied to the star's density. Planets that are far away from their stars spend less time in front of them—imagine a planet right at the star's surface, which would spend half of its orbit in front of it, versus one that is very far away, and only crosses in front for a quick part of its orbit, Sandford said. But at the same time, a planet has to move at a certain speed to maintain a steady orbit based on how massive the star is—if the planet is going too slowly, it will fall into the star, and if it's going too fast, it will fly away.
"We can then use that knowledge of [proportionally] how far the planet is from its star, combined with the duration of the transit, to solve for the stellar density," Sandford said. "If a planet is far away and yet takes a long time to transit, we know that the star must be big, puffy, and low-density; if a planet is close-in and yet transits quickly, we know that the star must be small, compact, and high-density."
In other words, the denser a star is—the more massive it is compared to its radius—the less time the planet spends in front of it.
While researchers already knew about this relationship between transiting planets and their parent stars' densities, it's only since Kepler's launch in 2009 that more than a handful of transiting planets have been available for analysis, according to Sandford.
"We have this enormous treasure trove of data, and we can start to apply some of these ideas that people thought of way in advance before the data was ready," Sandford said. "That's what we've done here." [How Do You Spot an Alien Planet from Earth? (Infographic)]
This method requires that the researchers know the planet's orbit well, or that they can predict that it's circular. (Circular orbits tend to be common in systems with multiple planets.) It also requires researchers to know the planet's full orbit length—so it must have passed in front of the star more than once.
Once those criteria are established, researchers can use these calculations in two key ways: to determine if a transit is really caused by a planet or if it's a false positive, and to analyze the other planets in a multiplanet system.
That false-positive case was one of the uses Seager had in mind when the equation was first developed, she told Space.com: "If you get the stellar density from the light curve alone, and then if you get the stellar density because you already know something about its mass and size … and if those densities don't match up, the thing you're looking at is not a planet," said Seager, who was not involved in the new study. "It's a blended object; it's a false positive; it's something else."
"All the applications are exciting, whether you want to just measure the densities of the set of stars, or whether you're using it as a kind of comparison tool," she added.
During its primary mission, Kepler looked at the same set of stars for four years, but future exoplanet hunters such as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), set to launch in 2018, will spend a much shorter time on each part of the sky—just a month or so. In systems with multiple planets, if one orbits quickly enough for researchers to see more than one full orbit, that planet could act as an "anchor" to pin down the star's density, letting researchers learn about the orbits of the other planets, too.
"There's going to be a lot of habitable-zone planets that fall out in that window where their orbital period is longer than a month," Sandford said. "If we only see one transit, if we can't measure the period directly, it might be a very, very faraway planet, in which case it's too cold to have liquid water, or it might fall right in the middle of the habitable zone."
"If we can use our method to constrain the star, and from there to constrain the outer planet's period, that could be really interesting for prioritizing certain planets for follow-up if we know that they're likely to be habitable-zone, potentially the right temperature range for liquid water, type planets," she added.
According to Vincent Van Eylen, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands who is uninvolved with the study, there's a saying that goes "Know thy star, know thy planet." Often, researchers use what they can glean about stars to identify what their planets might be made of and what the orbits look like.
Van Eylen's own research uses stars' densities and the durations of transits to learn about the planets' orbits—a reversal of Sandford's calculations.
"We don't know enough about stars, and everything we learn about planets somehow is indirect information that's related to stars," Van Eylen said. "In that way, it's kind of a sweet result that they can turn things around and actually learn about the planets, and thereby learn about the stars."
The new work has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal and is available on ArXiv.org.
Is there alien life in our solar system? Microbes may be thriving in a warm, underground ocean on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus
Alien life may be thriving in a warm, underground ocean on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, according to new research.
Scientists say tidal forces could have kept the subterranean sea liquid for billions of years - enough time for organisms to have developed.
The mysterious world has a very fragmented and porous rocky interior, ideal conditions for flowing water with the friction creating 10 gigawatts of heat.
This amount of energy would light and heat more than 7 million homes - and explains all the global properties of Enceladus observed by Cassini.
Scroll down for video
Alien life may be thriving in a warm, underground ocean on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, according to new research. Scientists say tidal forces could have kept the subterranean sea liquid for billions of years - enough time for organisms to have developed
Earlier this year Nasa's spacecraft picked up the first evidence of chemical reactions deep below the frozen crust - suggesting an environment capable of supporting life.
It was one of its final successes before plunging into Saturn's atmosphere at the end of its 12 year expedition to the ringed planet.
The latest study, published in Nature Astronomy, is based on a computer model using Cassini's observations.
These showed Enceladus has a global ocean fed by intense hydrothermal activity beneath the surface.
Its measurements of water escaping from geysers at the south pole showed the sea is salty - and contains organic molecules.
But tidal forces within the ice are not sufficient to sustain this activity.
Without an additional contribution the ocean would freeze in less than 30 million years.
So planetary scientist Dr Gael Choblet and colleagues explored the possibility this additional heating comes from the effect of tidal forces acting on the highly porous core.
They found enough heat would be generated by the resulting hydrothermal activity to keep the ocean liquid for 'tens of millions to billions of years.'
This heat is dissipated mainly at the poles - explaining why the ice shell is thinner there.
The model suggests an ocean has existed within Enceladus for eons - even though the small moon is only 887 million miles away from the sun.
Dr Choblet said: 'What we show is hydrothermal processes probably provide means to have efficient interactions between rocks and hot water in a large volume deep within the moon.
'What had been shown earlier is hydrothermal processes were very likely occurring right now within Enceladus. What we show in our study is the context of this activity.
'We also suggest this activity is relatively stable - for at least tens of millions of years.'
He said the life expectancy of the ocean and - perhaps more importantly - how long the hydrothermal activity has been occurring would be key to the emergence of microbes and other organisms.
The mysterious world has a very fragmented and porous rocky interior, ideal conditions for flowing water with the friction creating 10 gigawatts of heat
Dr Choblet, of Nantes University in France, said: 'Only future missions equipped with instruments capable of analysing the organic molecules in the plume with higher accuracy than the Cassini measurements will tell us whether the required conditions have been sustained long enough for life to have emerged on this distant ocean world.'
He added: 'Projected missions back to Enceladus are currently under consideration - especially in the US.
'If selected these would already enable us to analyse the chemicals emitted though Enceladus plumes with a much better precision than the instruments onboard the Cassini spacecraft could - especially the complex organics.
'With a possible launch in 2024 this means that new, more precise use information could be obtained in the 2030s.'
In October 2015 Nasa sent Cassini into a deep dive through one of the plumes of spray which shoot up into the atmosphere through cracks in the ice, and discovered hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
Scientists are certain they were created by reactions between warm water and rocks on the ocean floor.
Crucially, if hydrogen is present it can mix with carbon dioxide to form methane, which is consumed by microbes in the deep, dark seas of our own planet.
Enceladus is the sixth largest moon of Saturn. It is around 310 miles in diameter and approximately 790 million miles from Earth.
Scientists had long suspected that liquid water could exist on the moon because of the extreme tidal forces acting on the satellite from Saturn's gravity.
The model suggests an ocean has existed within Enceladus for eons - even though the small moon is only 887 million miles away from the sun.
Although scientists previously thought Enceladus' icy crust was around 13 miles thick, Cassini found at the south pole it could be as little as three miles deep.
The distant moon has long been hailed as one of the three best potential locations for finding extra terrestrial life in the solar system.
The others are Mars and Jupiter's satellite Europa. Such a discovery of even primitive microbes would make it almost certain life is widespread throughout the universe.
Dr Choblet said: 'Chemical analyses indicate that the ocean is salty and is fed by ongoing hydrothermal activity.
'Here, we show that more than 10GW of heat can be generated by tidal friction inside the unconsolidated rocky core.
'Water transport in the tidally heated permeable core results in hot narrow upwellings with temperatures exceeding 363K (90 degrees Celsius) characterised by powerful hotspots of 1 to 5 GW at the seafloor, particularly at the south pole.'
'The release of heat in narrow regions favours intense interaction between water and rock, and the transport of hydrothermal products from the core to the plume sources.'
Dr Choblet added: 'We predict that this internal activity can be sustained for tens of millions to billions of years.'
Enceladus Has a Porous Core That Keeps Its Ocean Hot
The tiny moon of Saturn has an unusual core that's like a pile of hot sand or mud.
Saturn's moon Enceladus has a warm ocean that's one of the most promising places to look for extraterrestrial life. Now it seems that ocean may stay warm thanks to a quirk in the moon's core.
Because Enceladus is so small, it doesn't have a solid core like Earth's, but rather a porous one. According to a study published today in Nature Astronomy by a team led by the University of Nantes, that core may be the key.
The scientists compiled various observations from the Cassini spacecraft, which studied Saturn and its moons for 13 years before falling into the planet forever this September. When it arrived in the Saturn system in 2004, the Cassini mission saw that Enceladus was shooting geysers out its south pole hundreds of miles into space. Something had to be creating liquid water below, and eventually a consensus built: there is a large liquid ocean on this little moon moon.
This new study say, Enceladus's small size (about 150 miles in diameter) means its core isn't rocky, but sort of mushy. It takes in water from the ocean, and that water comprises up to 20 percent of the core materials. "What we have in mind is not a sponge like porosity, it's more like a pile of sand or gravel," says Gael Choblet of Nantes, coauthor of the paper.
The rest of the core materials may experience radioactive decay and tidal forces to stay hot, which also heats up the water into super-hot jets moving toward the north and south pole. This affects the ice shell and keeps it fairly thin in those regions, which creates a geyser effect at the south pole.
Choblet says there's a preliminary indication of some kind of geologic activity at the moon's north pole, but that it's far less active. Partly, this owes to the thickness at the north pole — it's 7 miles deep, where other areas have a surface layer of ice about 15 to 20 miles above the ocean surface. The south pole, on the other hand, is cracked enough that water seeps through a thin ice layer out into interstellar space. "The motion of the porous floor of the liquid water produces very novel and very hot features at the poles," Choblet says.
Carly Howett, a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who was not involved with the paper, says this study takes modeling of Enceladus's core to a new level and goes a long way toward explaining the geyser activity.
"The difference between these results and previous models is not that surprising (porous cores would deform more until tidal stresses, and thus are heated more). But the magnitude of the heating is encouraging in explaining the high heat flows we see on the surface," she says. "Some of my work indicated it could be as high as 16 gigawatts across Enceladus' south polar terrain."
Why does this all matter? On Earth, anywhere there's water, there's life. So if we're searching for aliens big or small, watery worlds are a good place to start, and Enceladus has a ton of it. Cassini evidence shows that the moon may have complex chemistry, including chemicals associated with earthly ocean floor features called hydrothermal vents, where life on our own planet may have started.
"In our view, these hotspots at the base of the ocean would create the vents that thin the ice above," Choblet says. And from there? With all the right ingredients, we might have the best place to find alien life in our own solar system and confirm that life isn't just exclusive to Earth.
Alien Planets Can Reveal Clues to Their Stars' Insides: Here's How
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Coping with alienation
By Debkumar Mitra
In Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 science fiction film based on Philip K Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the androids on the run look exactly like their human creators. Humans love to see their image in everything they see around them. From apparitions to aliens, morphologically speaking, they are all humanoids to us. No wonder that in Stephen Spielberg’s 1982 ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, the little alien that charmed millions with its bulging sad eyes and long sinewy fingers looked every bit human as one could imagine.
Now, a group of evolutionary biologists claim that in the 200,000-odd worlds that possibly can harbour intelligent life in our galaxy alone, the aliens are more likely to ‘look like’ ‘higher order’ living beings as seen on Earth.
The paper, ‘Darwin’s Aliens’ (goo.gl/JwF3yA), published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, claims that Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution can be used to understand how major transitions may happen on an alien planet harbouring life. The scientists claim that these transitions from single-cell to multicellular organisms are likely to be close to terrestrial Darwinian evolution. According to them, extraterrestrial life will become “more advanced” organisms over time as a result of events known as ‘major transitions’.
The scientists claim that the aliens are likely to be made up of a hierarchy of entities. At every level of the alien organism, there will be mechanisms in placeto maintain cooperation, remove conflict and keep order so that the organismcan function. They have also posited an example of what those likely mechanisms could be, along with the sketch of how a complex, ‘higher order’ alien could look.
The Oxford University paper is a break from past researches in the domain of astrobiology. Past predictions of aliens have been based on what is seen on Earth. Our knowledge of chemistry, geology and physics is frequently used to make these predictions. For instance, the skin tone of humans can make or break our chances of survival. It is advantageous to have dark skin in places where the sun beats down for most parts of the year. In colder climates, human skin sports a lighter hue.
Not our ET: The ‘Octomite’, scientists’ impression of a ‘complex alien
From these observations, scientists often predict that aliens from cold and dark climates will probably be pale-skinned who would avoid bright light. On the other hand, aliens from warm planets will probably have darker skin. Despite the conclusions along the same vein, the Oxford paper’s predictions are independent of such a mechanistic approach and can be observed on Earth.
Despite its novel theoretical evolutionary approach, the paper’s prediction on how an alien could look will have to border on science fiction. There are many scientists who believe that alien life many not be biological at all.
According to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) astronomer Seth Shostak, the majority of the intelligence in the known universe is probably synthetic intelligence. There are others who claim that alien life could be noncarbonaceous, perhaps based on silicon, and speculate about whether the beings evolve according to the Darwinian plan. One of the major objections to siliconbased life is because of the quality called ‘handedness’ in biomolecules. This characteristic allows molecules to recognise and regulate all biological processes. And silicon doesn’t form many compounds with handedness.
In his book, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould proposed a series of thought experiments designed to probe the contingent nature of life’s history. Each of the experiments involved rewinding the ‘tape of life’ to a different period in the history of animal evolution, and then trying to understand how the story would unfurl — or if evolution takes hold at the point where the tape is stopped to tell the same ‘story’ as we know today.
From these thought experiments, Gould draws a conclusion, “…that early animal extinction patterns were essentially haphazard and counterfactually non-replicable”. He further says that “owing to the path-dependent nature of macroevolution, these early stochastic (random) sampling events dramatically shaped the future history of animal life on the Earth”. For those who believe in Gould’s theory, the Oxford study can lead to other dramatic outcomes than the team speculates.
We would love to know if there are ‘others’ in this universe. It is this sense of cosmological isolation that has given birth to our myths: from gods to Martians. As we know more about the universe and discover more ‘habitable’ worlds, the urge to know more about aliens grows. This latest research adds to the lore of the humanoid alien.
So, as we wait for an answer to Enrico Fermi’s famous query, ‘Where is everybody?’, these efforts will be, at best, informed speculation.
