“The presence of high degrees of oxygen in the atmosphere is like a bottleneck you have to get through in order to have a technological species,” said Dr. Adam Frank.

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What are the criteria for an extraterrestrial civilization to become a technological species? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to figure out as a team of international researchers examine how oxygen plays a role in technological advancement, specifically pertaining to it being a necessary requirement for producing fire. This study was partially funded by a NASA grant and holds the potential to help researchers better understand the criteria for identifying technological signatures of extraterrestrial intelligence, also known as “technosignatures”

Illustration depicting how higher atmospheric oxygen levels could lead to technoligcal advancement for an extraterrestrial species, specifically pertaining to the creation of fire. (Credit: University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw)

“You might be able to get biology—you might even be able to get intelligent creatures—in a world that doesn’t have oxygen, but without a ready source of fire, you’re never going to develop higher technology because higher technology requires fuel and melting,” said Dr. Adam Frank, who is Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester and co-author on the study.

Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of the solar system to date. The grand question is whether any of these planets are home to life. To find the answer, astronomers will likely need more powerful telescopes than exist today.

I am an astronomer who studies astrobiology and planets around distant stars. For the last seven years, I have been co-leading a team that is developing a new kind of space telescope that could collect a hundred times more light than the James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest space telescope ever built.

Almost all space telescopes, including Hubble and Webb, collect light using mirrors. Our proposed telescope, the Nautilus Space Observatory, would replace large, heavy mirrors with a novel, thin lens that is much lighter, cheaper and easier to produce than mirrored telescopes. Because of these differences, it would be possible to launch many individual units into orbit and create a powerful network of telescopes.

The longest — and last — full moon of the year will appear on Monday night and peak on Tuesday.

December’s full moon, also known as the Cold Moon and Long Night Moon, will reach peak illumination at 7:33 p.m. ET on Tuesday, according to NASA. It will look like a full moon until Thursday morning. The Old Farmer’s Almanac details specific moonrise times for different ZIP codes across the United States.

To view the full moon, it’s not rocket science: NASA recommends going outside and looking up at the sky. Using a telescope or binoculars will magnify the moon and clarify details on its surface.

The fascinating patterns of 35 repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) reveal new properties of these mysterious blasts of deep-space radiation that appear and disappear in milliseconds.