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Archive for the ‘alien life’ category: Page 41

Sep 17, 2022

Our Universe Resides In the Center of a Black Hole, New Theory reveals

Posted by in categories: alien life, quantum physics

What’s our position in the universe? Some astronomers believe that the relative emptiness in our location in space may be why we haven’t found other intelligent life yet. It may even go beyond that. One theory states that our universe is actually trapped inside a giant black hole, which itself is part of a much larger cosmos.

It all centers on a very different theory of what exactly a black hole is. The usual general understanding is nothing can escape a black hole’s intense gravity, not even light. Called the black hole information paradox, it’s thought that even the information about an object that gets sucked in vanishes into oblivion. But therein lies a problem.

This understanding violates a certain rule in quantum mechanics known as “unitarity,” which states that information can never be completely lost. Some trace of it will always remain. So how can scientists get over the hump?

Sep 16, 2022

Strange Hexagonal Diamonds Found on Earth Came From Another World

Posted by in categories: alien life, particle physics

Four meteorites in northwest Africa were found to contain mysterious hexagonal diamonds that don’t naturally occur on Earth. Essentially, scientists exploring the contents of the space rocks discovered extraterrestrial materials, if you will, alien diamonds. According to Alan Salek, a member of the team that discovered the materials, “some people in the field doubted the existence of this material.” As with regular diamonds, hexagonal diamonds are made of carbon, but their atoms are arranged hexagonally rather than cubically.

The first hexagonal diamonds were recorded in meteorites in the United States and India in the 1960s and were dubbed lonsdaleite. The previously discovered crystals, however, were so small – only nanometres wide – that their hexagonality could not be confirmed. A powerful electron microscope was used by Salek and his colleagues to examine 18 meteorite samples in search of larger crystals. One of them was from Australia, and the other three were from northwestern Africa. It was found that four of the African meteorites contained hexagonal diamonds, some measuring up to a micrometer – about 1,000 times larger than anything previously discovered.

In this way, the team was able to confirm the hexagonal structure’s unusual characteristics. Salek says that now that they have larger crystals, they can get a better understanding of how they form and maybe replicate that process. Scientists are interested in Lonsdaleite since it might have even more industrial potential as a result of its theoretical hardness being stronger than a regular diamond. High-end saw blades, for instance, already contain regular diamonds.

Sep 14, 2022

Does Cosmic Fine-Tuning Demand Explanation? | Episode 1208 | Closer To Truth

Posted by in categories: alien life, physics

The universe works for us because of deep physical laws. But if the values of these laws change much, then all we see and know could not exist. If small changes to the laws of physics would make life impossible, does fine-tuning require an explanation? Featuring interviews with Bernard Carr, David Deutsch, Richard Swinburne, Rodney Holder, and Christopher Isham.

Season 12, Episode 8 — #CloserToTruth.

Continue reading “Does Cosmic Fine-Tuning Demand Explanation? | Episode 1208 | Closer To Truth” »

Sep 13, 2022

Potentially habitable “super-Earth” discovered 100 light-years away

Posted by in categories: alien life, physics

An international team of scientists announced on Wednesday that they have discovered two new “super-Earth” planets just 100 light-years away. Both of them are significantly larger than our own planet — and one of them may even be suitable for life.

Super-Earths are a unique class of exoplanet in the solar system that are more massive than our planet but lighter than the ice giants, according to NASA. They are made by some combination of gas and rock and can get up to 10 times the size of Earth’s mass.

The findings, discovered with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the University of Liège’s Search for Habitable Planets Eclipsing Ultra-Cool Stars (SPECULOOS), will be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Sep 13, 2022

Fermi Paradox: The Singularity and Dormant Civilizations

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks, singularity

An exploration of the technological singularity and whether it will happen and what implications it has on astrobiology and solving the Fermi Paradox.

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Continue reading “Fermi Paradox: The Singularity and Dormant Civilizations” »

Sep 13, 2022

We can spot life outside the solar system in the next 25 years, says astrophysicist

Posted by in categories: alien life, futurism

Work is afoot to build the necessary instruments to do so.

ETH Zurich, the Swiss federal institute, recently opened its new Center for the Origin and Prevalence of Life, an interdisciplinary institute to analyze the current and future observations of the Earth and the universe. During the opening ceremony, astrophysicist Sasha Quanz said that we might be able to detect the presence of life outside our solar system in the next 25 years, Space.com.


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Continue reading “We can spot life outside the solar system in the next 25 years, says astrophysicist” »

Sep 13, 2022

Is the universe a graveyard? This theory suggests humanity may be alone

Posted by in category: alien life

Ever since we’ve had the technology, we’ve looked to the stars in search of alien life. It’s assumed that we’re looking because we want to find other life in the universe, but what if we’re looking to make sure there isn’t any?

Sep 12, 2022

61 years ago, the founding father of SETI fundamentally altered the search for aliens

Posted by in categories: alien life, information science, physics

This places Drake in the company of towering physicists with equations named after them, including James Clerk Maxwell and Erwin Schrödinger. Unlike those, Drake’s equation does not encapsulate a law of nature. Instead, it combines some poorly known probabilities into an informed estimate.

Whatever reasonable values you feed into the equation (see image below), it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we shouldn’t be alone in the galaxy. Drake remained a proponent and a supporter of the search for extraterrestrial life throughout his days, but has his equation taught us anything?

Continue reading “61 years ago, the founding father of SETI fundamentally altered the search for aliens” »

Sep 12, 2022

Did God Create The Universe? Brian Greene on The Multiverse & The Fine Tuning Argument

Posted by in categories: alien life, physics

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Why does our universe appear so exquisitely tuned to create the conditions necessary for life? This is a question that has troubled cosmologists and physicists for decades.

Continue reading “Did God Create The Universe? Brian Greene on The Multiverse & The Fine Tuning Argument” »

Sep 11, 2022

Hitting the Books: How to uncover the true nature of the multiverse

Posted by in categories: alien life, physics

It’s difficult to describe the state of the universe’s affairs back when the whole of everything was compressed to a size slightly smaller than the period at the end of this sentence — on account that the concepts of time and space literally didn’t yet apply. But that challenge hasn’t stopped pioneering theoretical astrophysicist, Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton, from seeking knowledge at the edge of the known universe and beyond. In her new book, Before the Big Bang, Mersini-Houghton recounts her early life in communist Albania, her career as she rose to prominence in the male-dominated field of astrophysics and discusses her research into the multiverse which could fundamentally rewrite our understanding of reality.

Excerpted from Before The Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond by Laura Mersini-Houghton. Published by Mariner Books. Copyright © 2022 by Laura Mersini-Houghton. All rights reserved.

Scientific investigations of problems like the creation of the universe, which we can neither observe nor reproduce and test in a lab, are similar to detective work in that they rely on intuition as well as evidence. Like a detective, as pieces of the puzzle start falling into place, researchers can intuitively sense the answer is close. This was the feeling I had as Rich and I tried to figure out how we could test our theory about the multiverse. Rationally, it seemed like a long shot, but intuitively, it seemed achievable.

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