Space
We Could Find Alien Life, But Politicians Don’t Have The Will
![](https://conspirazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/aliens-hand-2-jhztXz.jpeg)
While alien life can be seen nightly on television and in the movies, it has never been seen in space. Not so much as a microbe, dead or alive, let alone a wrinkle-faced Klingon.
Despite this lack of protoplasmic presence, there are many researchers – sober, sceptical academics – who think that life beyond Earth is rampant. They suggest proof may come within a generation. These scientists support their sunny point of view with a few astronomical facts that were unknown a generation ago.
In particular, and thanks largely to the success of NASA’s Kepler space telescope, we can now safely claim that the universe is stuffed with temperate worlds. In the past two decades, thousands of planets have been discovered around other stars. New ones are turning up at the rate of at least one a day.
More impressive than the tally is their sheer abundance. It seems the majority of stars have planets, implying the existence of a trillion of these small bodies in the Milky Way galaxy alone.
A deeper analysis of Kepler data suggests that as many as one in five stars could sport a special kind of planet, one that is the same size as Earth and with similar average temperatures. Such planets, styled as “habitable”, could be swathed by atmospheres and awash in liquid water.
In other words, the Milky Way could be host to tens of billions of Earth’s cousins.
Sterile universe?
It is hard to accept that all these worlds are sterile, a circumstance that would make us, and all the flora and fauna of our planet, a miracle. Miracles have little status in science.
Of course, just because there is a lot of attractive, cosmic real estate doesn’t mean finding inhabitants would be easy. There are only three ways to do that, and they all depend on sophisticated and expensive experiments.
First, we could find life nearby. There is real effort to do that, particularly in our reconnaissance of Mars. So far, most of the search has been indirect: deploying rovers whose job is to locate the best places to dig into the red planet, and possibly uncover either fossilised or extant microbes beneath the sterile surface.
These are not attempts to find life. They are attempts to find places where life could be found. Progress is deliberate, and it is sluggish.
Without doubt, Mars remains the favourite bet for biology. Nonetheless, some experts prefer to wager on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. At least five of these satellites seem to be home to some sloshy environments – mostly liquid water, although in the case of Titan, natural gas.
Again, the type of life that could best thrive on these moons would be microscopic. Sensing its presence might be accomplished in several ways, ranging from simple flyby missions that nab effluvia from natural geysers, to sending elaborate drilling rigs to penetrate the ten miles of ice that separate the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa from the mammoth seas that lie below.
Sadly much of this reconnaissance hardware is still on the drawing boards, not in space. Progress is slow, mostly because funding is low.
A second scheme for sniffing out evidence of biology is to assay the atmospheres of planets around other stars. This is done using a time-honoured technique of astronomy, spectroscopy – an approach that would allow researchers to learn the composition of an atmosphere at many light-years’ distance.
While an experiment to find oxygen or methane in someone else’s air is straightforward to describe, it is hard to do. That is because planets are dim, and the stars they orbit are bright.
Various solutions to this problem have been imagined, including multi-element, orbiting telescopes and giant light blockers, or occulters, in space. It is rocket science, but it is not as hard as curing the common cold. Engineers could build this stuff within a dozen years, but only if they had the money.
The third approach to finding biology beyond Earth is looking beyond microbes for intelligent life by eavesdropping on radio signals or flashing laser lights. More antennae and better receivers could speed up this search, but once again, funding is the limiting factor.
So it boils down to this: we don’t know for certain that there is life in space, but the circumstances of the universe certainly suggest that this is a plausible idea. Finding it would be extraordinarily exciting, but because the payoff is uncertain, the investments in searching have been modest.
Of course, if you don’t ante up, you will never win the jackpot. And that is a question of will.
Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Space
NASA Discovers Hyper-Speed Object That Could Break Free from the Milky Way
According to NASA, a rogue, hyper-speed object, which is over
27,306 times the size of Earth, is hurtling so fast through our galaxy
that it might break free of the Milky Way.
Scientists say they have determined that the mysterious object was
cruising at a breakneck one million miles per hour when they spotted it
more than 400 light years from Earth. One light-year is equal to six
trillion miles.
Could this latest find be connected to the fake alien invasion that has long been in the pipeline?
The Mail Online reorts: While experts have not determined what the newfound celestial body is, they speculated it is a ‘brown dwarf,’ a star which is larger than a planet but lacks the mass to sustain long-term nuclear fusion in its core like Earth’s sun.
If the object confirmed as a brown dwarf, it would be first-ever to
be documented in a chaotic, hyper-speed orbit capable of breaking free
from our home galaxy.
A coalition of citizen-scientists with NASA’s ‘Backyard Worlds: Planet 9’ projectwere the first to spot the celestial body, the US space agency confirmed this week.
‘I can’t describe the level of excitement,’ German citizen-scientist Martin Kabatnik, a long-time member of NASA’s Backyard Worlds program, said in statement.
‘When I first saw how fast it was moving,’ the Nuremberg-based
researcher confessed, ‘I was convinced it must have been reported
already.’
Backyard Worlds citizen-scientists Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle
and Dan Caselden were the first to spot this million mph object a few
years ago, earning the hyper-speed object the catalogued name CWISE
J124909.08+362116.0.
According to astronomer Dr Kyle Kremer,
who has collaborated with them on better understanding the object,
several astrophysics theories could explain how the object, CWISE J1249
for short, could have gotten to its incredible speed.
In one theory, CWISE J1249 rocketed out of a two star or binary star
system after its ‘white dwarf’ sister star died off — collapsing in an
explosive runaway nuclear fusion reaction called a supernova.
Another viable theory has it that CWISE J1249 originated inside a
tight cluster of starts called a ‘globular cluster’ where it was flung
free via the pull of a black hole.
‘When a star encounters a black hole binary,’ Dr Kremer said in a
NASA statement on the discovery, ‘the complex dynamics of this
three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular
cluster.’
Space
Polish astronaut prepares for 2025 flight to ISS
![](https://conspirazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/frbu2r4q-Wuy2dm.jpeg)
Sławosz Uznański will be the second Pole in space and the first to fly to the International Space Station (ISS).
Uznański revealed that his mission to the ISS is planned for 2025 and will last about two weeks. He will launch from Cape Canaveral on a rocket provided by SpaceX. This journey not only represents a significant milestone for Uznański but also for Polish space exploration.
Last year, Uznański was officially selected for this mission, after which he commenced his training at the European Space Agency’s facility in Cologne, Germany. Initially planned for 2024, the mission faced delays, but new details have recently emerged on Uznański’s social media profiles.
During his two-week stay on the ISS, he will focus on Polish scientific projects and technology tests, including artificial intelligence applications in space and studies on the effects of microgravity on the human immune system.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA) received numerous project proposals for Uznański’s mission. Due to limited space, only seven were selected, highlighting the extensive interest and potential impact of this mission.
Uznański will travel to the ISS in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, a vehicle regularly used by NASA for transporting astronauts. The Crew Dragon will be mounted atop a Falcon 9 rocket, with the launch also set to take place at Cape Canaveral. While the exact launch date is yet to be confirmed, preparations are in full swing.
In a move to further his training, Uznański has relocated to Houston, Texas. Starting Monday, he will begin a new training phase at Axiom Space, a partner in the mission, followed by sessions at NASA and SpaceX facilities. This mission not only propels Uznański into space but also significantly advances Poland’s stature in the global aerospace sector.
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