India's Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft (illustrated) searched for the Vikram lander from orbit. Chandrayaan 2 will continue observing the moon for about a year.

ISRO

By Lisa Grossman

The sun is setting on India’s first attempted lunar landing. As night fell over the lunar south pole on September 20, scientists’ hopes that the solar-powered Vikram lander would contact Earth before the end of one lunar day have been dashed.

Officials at the Indian space agency ISRO reportedly believe that the Vikram lander died on impact with the lunar surface on September 6. The probe lost contact shortly before it was meant to touch down near the moon’s south pole (SN: 9/6/19), according to the Times of India.

Still, there was hope that Vikram or its onboard rover would perk up and reestablish contact. ISRO spent two weeks — the equivalent of one lunar day — trying to communicate with Vikram. The lander and its rover, Pragyan, were designed to last one lunar day before the lack of sunlight and cold temperatures shut them down.

ISRO said that its Chandrayaan 2 orbiter took pictures on September 10 showing the lander lying flat or tilted on its side. Those images, however, were not publicly released.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also flew over the landing site on September 17. But “lunar local time was near dusk; large shadows covered much of the area,” the space agency said in an e-mail. “The exact location of the lander was not known, so the lander may not be in the camera field of view.” NASA said that it would search again on October 14, when the sun is higher in the lunar sky.

After the sun completely sets on Vikram’s landing site, temperatures there will drop to about –180° Celsius for another two weeks. The solar-powered lander’s electronics are not expected to survive the frigid night.

ISRO has yet to put out an official statement. But the Times of India reported on September 20 that the team analyzing the mission’s failure believes that it was caused by an error in the spacecraft’s automatic landing program. The newspaper quoted an unnamed scientist as saying that the lander may have started spinning on its way to the lunar surface so that thrusters meant to slow the descent instead accelerated it.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

Area 51 bestormen? Ans Hoornweg 'weet' al lang wat er daar gebeurt

Wat ik kan zien is dat ze daar gecrashte UFO’s hebben. Deze vrouw zegt te weten wat er gebeurt in het geheimzinnige Area 51

The Unusual Secret of Latest UFO Footage

New Questions About Latest UFO Footage

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UFOs are observed through telescopes. At times, however, they cannot be identified due to the minimal quality of evidence associated with their sightings. Throughout that time period, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in the identical website. Throughout that time frame, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in exactly the same site.

My sighting only lasted lots of seconds. The sighting itself, in spite of the corroborative sightings, isn’t hard to dismiss by itself. It’s quite easy to comprehend why there are a lot of UFO sightings. It’s very simple to comprehend why there are a great deal of UFO sightings. Now, UFO sighting has been a matter of amusement rather than a concern, though there are ample evidences about their scary general appearance. Today, UFO sighting has been an issue of amusement in the place of a concern, although there are ample evidences about their scary look. Many reported UFO sightings actually wind up being something as easy as a balloon.

UFOs are frequently associated with aliens and conspiracy theories. They are frequently associated with aliens and conspiracy theories. Sometimes, however, they cannot be identified because of the low quality of evidence related to their sightings. Throughout that time period, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in the exact same site.

Source: 

• http://footageofufos.com/2019/09/the-unusual-secret-of-latest-ufo-footage/

ttps://beforeitsnews.com/ }

One interesting and increasingly talked about area of the world of the paranormal is the Shadow Person. These are often described as vaguely humanoid entities of pure black, variously as either well-defined or more amorphous and cloud-like, which are usually only glimpsed in the periphery of vision and are known to conjure up waves of irrational fear. They have been speculated as being everything from demons, to interdimensional interlopers, to earth spirits or even angels, and they are commonly accepted as being a separate phenomena from regular ghosts. Considering their fleeting nature, evasiveness, and seeming aversion to be witnessed head-on, there has been very little photographic evidence put forward towards their existence, but on occasion some images come out that seem to be in keeping with the idea of Shadow People. While inconclusive and often blurry or vague, thee photographs offer a glimpse into a poorly understood realm of the paranormal, and here we will look at some of the more famous and indeed controversial such photos of Shadow People.

One treasure trove of shadow people reports is the notorious Waverly Hills Sanatorium, in Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States. Opened in 1910, it was originally envisioned as a hospital for tuberculosis patients during an outbreak in the region at the time. Considering its secretive operations and the pall of death cast over it, it quickly became the center of rumors of human experimentation, mistreatment, suffering, and death, and by the time it closed in 1961 around 64,000 people were said to have died here in horrifying circumstances. Considering this, it is already ripe for tales of hauntings, and it is supposedly quite imbued with all manner of spirits, some of the most often seen being the mysterious Shadow People. One well-circulated photo of one of these entities was released after a tour of the facility in 2014, during which a woman took a picture of an empty area and noticed this image when the film was developed.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium photo

Another visitor was investigating the old sanatorium by himself when he snapped a photo of a room full of old equipment. The image shows what appears to be some sort of shadowy figure looming in the foreground, and the photographer insists that he was alone at the time. What do you think?

Waverly Hills Sanatorium photo

Speaking of haunted tuberculosis hospitals, we also have the Lima Tuberculosis Hospital in Allen County, Ohio, which closed in 1972 and has remained abandoned ever since. The former hospital has become infamous for its various hauntings, including reports of shadow people, which are said to follow visitors about, mostly only visible in the periphery of the vision and only briefly witnessed before flickering away. Yet on occasion there have been some photos taken of these mysterious figures, and one of them was taken by an urban explorer who didn’t notice what he had captured on film until much later.

Lima Tuberculosis Hospital photo

One location that seems to be absolutely infested with Shadow People entities is Lawler Ford Road, in Glencoe, Missouri. Built in the 1860s, it has over the years accrued a long list of strange lore, such as ghost lights and persistent reports of Shadow People, and such is its odd legacy that the road is more commonly known as “Zombie Road.” Reports of shadowy entities lurking in the wilderness here are numerous, and some of them have allegedly been captured on film. One of the more striking of these is an image taken by Tom Halstead, of the paranormal investigator group “Paranormal Taskforce,” who in 2005 took this eerie photo of a whole procession of purported Shadow People milling about in the tree-line apparently staring at him. Halstead has been adamant that there were no other people there at the time, and that the whole area was surrounded by water, due to a high water level of the river, yet the figures just sort of melted away. The picture was featured in the documentary Legacy of Shadows.

Zombie Road Shadow People

Halstead returned to the area in 2006, when he took another anomalous photo at a bridge in the area well known for its paranormal phenomena. The photo in this case is a bit less defined, but also seems to show some sort of black, vaguely humanoid figure at close range to the camera. It is a strange image to be sure, making one wonder if it is real or just a photography trick.

Zombie Road Shadow Person photo

Other supposedly haunted places have their own alleged photos of Shadow People, such as the famously haunted RMS Queen Mary, which was in its glory days a British ocean liner that largely sailed about the North Atlantic Ocean before being retired in 1967. The vessel was then sailed to the port of Long Beach, California, where it became a hotel and tourist attraction and has gained a reputation for being intensely haunted ever since. One of the many paranormal phenomena reported from here is, you guessed it, Shadow People. Indeed, one of the best photos of a supposed Shadow Person ever taken was snapped here, and you can see it below. Is this just a trick of lighting, or what?

The Queen Mary photo

Another rather famous image of a purported Shadow Person was taken at the former Moundsville Prison, in West Virginia. Between its years of operation spanning from 1866 to its closing in 1995, this was the final destination for all manner of some of society’s worst offenders, many of whom spent their last days on earth here. Murders, riots, and suffering were rampant here, and it is perhaps no surprise that the location should be insanely haunted. Many types of apparitions have been sighted here, including Shadow People, said to come here to feed off the negative energy, and photos of strange things are not uncommon at all. One such picture was taken by Polly Gear, of the Mountaineer Paranormal Group, and seems to show a black figure lurking at the end of a hallway, even though Gear has insisted that no one was there at the time. What is it?

Moundsville Prison Shadow Person photo

One figure that the Shadow People seem to be prone to taking is that of the “Hat Man,” a black figure with a hat perched upon its head that is seen in many far flung cases. The Hat Man has been sighted all over the place, and has indeed become a paranormal phenomenon all unto itself, and while there has rarely been any photographic proof of it there has been some. In 2011, a family visited Trentham Cottage, in Port Arthur, Australia, which is a former prison facility and convict settlement, when they took a random photograph of a doorway. At the time there was nothing there, but when they looked at the photos later they could see an anomalous entity clearly wearing a hat standing there. What is it and why did it appear in this picture?

Trentham Cottage Hat Man photo

It is often the case that these figures are not noticed in these pictures until later, with the photographer not aware that anything is awry until they are shocked to see what they have captured when looking through their photographs. Another instance of this comes from a photographer who was taking pics of the 4th Street Bridge, in Los Angeles, staying there with a friend for around 20 minutes. When they went through the photographs later they were surprised to find a rather curious figure standing up within the shadows peering down at them. The location is supposedly impossible to get up to, and one wonders just what this figure is.

4th Street Bridge Shadow Person photo

As with all photographic evidence of supposed paranormal phenomena, these images are far from proving anything. They are inconclusive, perhaps able to be faked, and only serve to fuel speculation on the existence of these mysteries. Yet they nevertheless provide a rare glimpse into the specific phenomena of Shadow People, which are often considered to be the most elusive and mysteries of entities. Whether any of these photographs actually show these apparitions in action I leave for you the reader to decide, and whether there is anything to it or not they are bizarre glimpses into a particularly odd area of the paranormal all the same.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Mystery as Area 51 'cops' pick up woman who stormed barrier to enter secret base

The old lady is thought to be the only person who actually "stormed" the secretive military 'alien' base

An "old" lady has been filmed storming Area 51 during an internet organised event that saw millions arranging to storm the highly classified base.

Area-51 became flooded with alien truth-seekers on a mission to uncover so-called extraterrestrial sightings on Friday.

Witnesses claim the old woman was "picked up" by two trucks as she walked across the desert.

Her current whereabouts and her identity remain unknown.

For decades, conspiracy theorists have believed the highly-classified Homey Airbase in the Mojave Desert, Nevada, US, holds extraterrestrial life-forms.

Official reports suggest experimental aircraft and black project weapon systems are tested there, but conspiracists remain unconvinced.

One person seemingly asks onlooking security guards: "Hey, are you guys going to do anything about that?"

To which someone replies: "Eventually." "Eventually?" the man asks, laughing.

Someone else adds: "I didn't think they'd actually do it."

Before shouting to her: "Don't do it, don't do it."

But she ignored the pleads and was seen ducking under a final barrier featuring a large "stop" sign.

Witnesses can be heard saying: "Oh my god, oh know. She's still going.

"Good luck.

READ MORE

• USS Nimitz UFO was 'searching for something underwater', NASA scientist suggests

"She gives no f**ks."

According to Twitter user Matthew Carswell, who posted the video on Saturday, state authorities were out of their jurisdiction and unable to step in considering it’s a federal base.

The eyewitness said the woman was instead picked up by two trucks about “half a mile in”.

He speculated she had probably been arrested as a result.

READ MORE

• Budweiser launch special alien-themed beer ahead of Area 51 raid

Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said only 150 people travelled closer to the base itself and just 75 actually approached the gates.

Another group of 40 people gathered at a different gate.

At this stage, it is the only report of anyone actually attempting to “storm” the government site.

It comes after a US airforce general warned that Area 51 has "secrets that deserve to be protected".

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

It’s the greatest paranormal/ufology/conspiracy event of the century — if not perhaps ever – so it’s only fitting that it ends today in … disappointment? Unfortunately, that’s the news from Area 51 this weekend where what started out as “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” became a 2 million-persons-coming extravaganza which downsized into a couple of music festivals after another storm of warnings, lawsuits, folds, fauxs and fallacies and then reached a peep of a climax as an estimated 3,000 people showed up, around five people got arrested and no one actually stormed Area 51.

Except one woman.

“So like some old lady ACTUALLY stormed #area51.”

That’s the headline on a tweet by Matthew Carswell (@Leche_frio) which showed a video of what appears to be the only person to actually step around the barrier, cross the border, and storm Area 51 on this iconic/ironic weekend. OK, “storm” may be an exaggeration as it appears she walked in very slowly – perhaps out of caution or perhaps because she’s an “old lady.” (You can watch the video for yourself on Twitter or here.)

Hold my hand until we get inside the ship.

“Don’t do it, don’t do it!”

Needless to say (why else would we be doing this story?), she did it. Matthew Carswell (@Leche_frio) recorded the woman for about 45 seconds, showing her approach the secure facility’s back gate, dip under it and begin walking towards … what? Aliens? Men in Black? Security guards? Stealth bombers? (OK, they apologized for that one.)

“She gives no f–ks.”

Well, that’s obvious … although hard to tell because we never see her face. In fact, what’s more interesting is that Carswell pans the scene and we see a number of police officers watching her enter as well. After being asked too many times, he posted the answer on Twitter.

1. The cops couldn’t go after her since they were only state cops and it’s a federal base.”
2. She got scooped up by 2 trucks like half a mile in
3. No I don’t know what happened to her but I can assume she’s jail

That last assumption was confirmed by the Reno Gazette, where Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee revealed that the person was a 60-year-old woman (no identity given) and:

“She told us she was going to trespass. It was something she wanted to do, and she walked across.”

And?

The Reno Gazette says “the California woman now faces a trespassing charge and a $1,000 fine.”

They should have taken up a collection to pay the fine, court coasts, lawyer fees, etc. for the only person brave (or dumb) enough to do what began as a rallying cry just a few weeks ago:

“Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us”

They were right … they didn’t.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

What if we’ve been silently observed by an alien civilization since humanity’s genesis? A new idea put forth by astronomer Dr. James Benford in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal this week suggests that our search for alien intelligence should focus on the “co-orbital” asteroids that orbit the sun in a similar pattern to Earth. Benford suggests that these asteroids would provide perfect observation decks on which aliens may have stationed robotic probes, laying dormant since ancient times. He argues that these co-orbitals should be a primary target for SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. He also suggests that if we look at these asteroids and do not find evidence of ancient alien probes than it tells us something else: we’re well and truly alone and no one cares about us.

Now that might be a pretty big assumption to make. After all, there’s the whole fallacy of thinking that an alien intelligence would come up with the same plans, tactics, and techniques as an Earth-bound descendant of chimpanzees would. But it’s clear that Benford is right about one thing at least—if aliens did have a long-term observation strategy, co-orbital asteroids would be perfect staging areas.

Dr. James Benford calls these potential probes “lurkers.” They would be small probes that have remained hidden and unnoticed for thousands of years, watching us, or perhaps waiting for a signal to turn on and begin watching us. A news release covering Benford’s new paper says:

“They may respond to an intentional signal and may not, depending on unknown alien motivations. Lurkers would likely be robotic, like our own Voyager and New Horizons probes.”

“Co-orbitals” are a recently discovered group of asteroids that orbit the sun at similar rates to Earth, thereby staying at roughly the same distance from our planet. If aliens had stationed probes on these asteroids they would have a constant source of solar energy and and a secure, hidden, and stable place from which to observe us. Regardless if aliens use technology remotely similar to ours or not, the physical laws of the universe would still apply. Everything needs energy, and in the void of space solar energy is probably the best bet regardless of what the probe actually looks like. Benford says that probes hanging out on co-orbitals could possibly sustain themselves for many thousands of years.

Benford says that if we did find an alien probe on one of these co-orbitals we could simply photograph it and send it the photograph with a message saying “we see you.” And sure, that’s a pretty creepy thing to do, but so is spying on a whole species for all of their evolutionary history. It’s only fair.

But if we don’t find one, Benford says that it would be strong evidence that we truly are alone. He says:

“If we find nothing there, this gives us a profound result: no one has come to look at the life of the Earth, which has been evident in our atmosphere in spectral lines over interstellar distances for over a billion years.”

Would we even recognize evidence of an alien civilization if we saw it?

But it has to be said, what if they just did something else? Sure co-orbitals would be perfect places to stage an observation from, but many people who have been told there’s a perfect way to do something end up doing it a completely different way, to varying degrees of success. Jumping straight to “well if it’s not there, in that specific spot, then that means it doesn’t exist anywhere else” is pretty ludicrous. That sounds like what I say about my car keys when I’m grumpy in the morning. But that’s a problem with looking for alien intelligence. We don’t know what it looks like, and we don’t know how it thinks. Assuming that it behaves exactly like Earth primates, when there’s a whole universe of infinite possibility seems a little bit small minded. But of course, that’s coming from someone who is 100% sure his car keys got eaten by a black hole at least three times per week.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

White UFOs Circle Apartments In Spain, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 22, 2019
Location of sighting: Seville, Spain

An eyewitness in Spain caught some strange white lights moving and disappearing over some buildings in his city. The objects seen to be playing...having fun knowing that the humans below were excitedly looking upward at them. I myself have been eyewitness to a similar event at midnight over my apartments here in Taiwan. I cant say what he saw, but I'll tell you what I saw. At midnight we walked into the inside area of our appartmemt garden area. We noticed several dozen white lights shooting across the sky at about 3X the speed of a jet plane. However as they disappeared from view behind the 10 floor apartments...suddenly about 6 of them came back and stared circling us. It was hard to record and it didn't come out well on video. But it lasted for about 15 minutes until about 3 untited and it looked like the moon then faded and gone. 
Scott C. Waring -Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

UFO Fleet Passes Over Brazil On Sept 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: September 16, 2019
Location of sighting: Bahia, Brazil
Source: Youtube user Ricado 

Here is a recent UFO sighting in the Brazil region of Bahia. The eyewitnesses caught three or more glowing objects moving across an over cast sky in the distance. You can hear the excitement in the voices of the many eyewitnesses as the UFOs cross the sky. They sound baffled by what these glowing objects could be. They make no sound, have no flashing airline lights. There seems to be no obvious explanation...leaving us with only one option left...UFOs. 
Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

Ancient ET Base Found In Antartica! UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Sept 23, 2019
Location of discovery: Antartica
Google Coordinates: 74° 3'44.57"S 103°16'4.79"W

I was looking at Google Earth in the Antartica region and found four underground base facilities located within 1km of each other. Each building sits on the ocean floor and barely breaks the surface of the top of the ocean. Each buildings between 2km and 2.8km across according to google ruler. Watch the video to learn and see more photos of them. This is 100% proof that alien bases exist in Antartica. 
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

A Visit to Watery Super-Earth Alien Planet K2-18 b Would Be Super-Strange

Water detected on distant super-Earth planet with potential to host alien life

A “WORLD FIRST” discovery on a distant planet could be the key to scientists finding alien life.

Alien discovery breakthrough as UK scientists detect water on distant super-Earth planet 

(Image: SWNS)

{ https://www.express.co.uk/ }

This Ridiculously Speedy Star Might Be Running Away from a Rare, Unproven Type of Black Hole

A young star, similar to the renegade star PG 1610+062, gets ejected from the Milky Way by a hungry black hole. So long!

(Image: © A. Irrgang, FAU)

There are a few different processes that explain how a star can get booted out of its home system, and they usually involve binary partnerships — that is, two stars orbiting around a common center of mass. If one member of the pair were to theoretically disappear — say, by exploding in a supernova or getting swallowed up by a supermassive black hole —the remaining star might get such a sudden, energetic kick in the pants that it would slingshot straight out of its home system, or even out of its home galaxy entirely. 

The case of PG 1610+062 may be a bit unusual though, the researchers wrote. Judging by the star's mass, velocity and likely origin (the team traced it to the Sagittarius spiral arm of the galaxy), it seems unlikely that the star ever came close enough to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy to see its partner star gobbled up. 

Rather, the star's fast-but-not-too-fast movement seems to suggest that it had a run-in with a mid-mass black hole — that is, a black hole with hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times the mass of the sun (as opposed to a stellar black hole, which can have up to about 20 suns' worth of mass, or a supermassive black hole, which can be millions or billions of times the sun's mass, according to NASA).

Scientists have never found convincing evidence that mid-mass black holes exist in our galaxy. This stellar runaway still isn't hard proof of their existence, but it does strengthen the case that mid-mass black holes could be out there, the researchers wrote. Now, "the race is on to actually find them," lead study author Andreas Irrgang, an astronomer at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, said in a statement. 

• The 12 Strangest Objects in the Universe
• 15 Unforgettable Images of Stars
• 9 Strange Excuses for Why We Haven't Met Aliens Yet

Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

{ https://futurism.com/the-byte }

There could be up to 10 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone

Our galaxy could be littered with warm, watery planets like Earth.

That’s the conclusion of researchers at Penn State University, who used data from NASA’s Kepler telescope to estimate the number of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way.

Their results, published in The Astronomical Journal this week, suggest that an Earth-like planet orbits one in every four Sun-like stars. Totalled up, that means there could be up to 10 billion Earth-like worlds in our home galaxy.

The estimate is an important step in the search for alien life, since any potential life on other planets would most likely be found on an Earth-like world warm enough to hold liquid water.

So a better understanding of the potential number of Earth-like planets in the galaxy can inform projects like the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, which will launch into space in the mid 2020s and hunt for signs of oxygen and water vapour on distant planets.

“We get a lot more return on our investment if we know when and where to look,” Eric Ford, a professor of astrophysics and co-author of the new study, told Business Insider.

Ford’s team defined an Earth-like planet as being anywhere from three-quarters to one-and-a-half times the size of Earth, and orbiting its star every 237 to 500 days.

That’s presumably within the star’s habitable zone – the “range of orbital distances at which the planets could support liquid water on their surfaces,” as Ford described it in a press release.

“For astronomers who are trying to figure out what is a good design for the next major space observatory, this piece of information is an integral part of that planning process,” he said.

5 to 10 billion planets like Earth

The researchers’ estimate is based on data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Launched in 2009, the telescope used what’s known as the transit method to find worlds outside our Solar System. It watched over 530,000 stars for tiny dips in a star’s brightness that could be caused by a planet passing in front of it – transits, in other words.

This work transformed our understanding of the galaxy. Kepler found more than 2,600 exoplanets, revealed that there are more planets than stars in the Milky Way, and gave researchers new insight into the diversity of planet types.

The telescope also allowed scientists to confirm for the first time that many exoplanets are similar to Earth.

The telescope retired last year after it ran out of fuel, but passed the planet-hunting torch to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched in April 2018.

Overall, Kepler’s results suggested that 20 percent to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky had Earth-like planets in their habitable zones.

But Ford’s team didn’t want to estimate the number of Earth-like planets in the galaxy based solely on the exoplanets Kepler found, because the transit method is only good at detecting large planets close to their stars (since they block out more light).

It’s not great, however, at finding small planets farther from their stars. Plus, Kepler’s method was biased toward small, dim stars about one third the mass of our Sun.

So to estimate how many planets Kepler might have missed, the researchers created computer simulations of hypothetical universes of stars and planets, based on a combination of Kepler’s planet catalogue and a survey of our galaxy’s stars from the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft.

Then the researchers’ program “observed” those stars as Kepler would have.

The simulation gave the scientists a sense of how many exoplanets in each hypothetical universe Kepler would have detected, and which kinds.

They could then compare that data to what the real Kepler telescope detected in our universe to estimate the abundance of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars.

“There are significant uncertainties in what range of stars you label ‘Sun-like,’ what range of orbital distances you consider to be ‘in the habitable zone,’ what range of planet sizes you consider to be ‘Earth-like,'” Ford said.

“Given those uncertainties, both 5 and 10 billion are reasonable estimates.”

Improving the search for aliens

The next step in the search for alien life is to study potentially habitable planets to figure out what they’re made of.

“Scientists are particularly interested in searching for biomarkers – molecules indicative of life – in the atmospheres of roughly Earth-size planets,” Ford said.

Even if a planet is in a star’s habitable zone, it still needs a substantial atmosphere to trap enough heat to sustain liquid water on its surface. Scientists can calculate the composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere by measuring how its star’s light behaves as it passes through.

This is where Ford’s research comes into play: If Earth-like worlds are abundant, there could be enough of them close by for NASA scientists to study with a smaller, cheaper telescope. If all the Earth-y worlds are far away, though, NASA would need to rely on more far-reaching telescopes.

The researchers recommended that future space missions plan for a range of possible incidences of Earth-like planets – between one for every 33 Sun-like stars and one for every two sun-like stars.

“One of the important things here is not just giving a single number but understanding the range of possibilities,” Ford said. “So that people who have to make decisions could hope for the best and plan for the worst and still be able to come up with a solid scientific strategy.”

• This article was originally published by Business Insider.

{ https://sciencespies.com/}