Social media claimed the space agency is using religious experts to predict reactions to aliens.
Social media has falsely claimed NASA hired religious experts to predict people’s reactions to aliens. The truth is deeper — and more mundane.
Category: alien life – Page 88
Interstellar Travel and Post-Humans
“Interstellar Travel and Post-Humans” by Martin Rees is one of the chapters of the book “The Next Step: Exponential Life”.
Astronomers like myself are professionally engaged in thinking about huge expanses of space and time. We view our home planet in a cosmic context. We wonder whether there is life elsewhere in the cosmos. But, more significantly, we are mindful of the immense future that lies ahead—the post-human future where our remote descendants may transcend human limitations—here on Earth but (more probably) far beyond. This is my theme in the present chapter.
The stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture. But the even longer time-horizons that stretch ahead—though familiar to every astronomer —have not permeated our culture to the same extent. Our Sun is less than half way through its life. It formed 4.5 billion years ago, but it has got six billion more before the fuel runs out. It will then flare up, engulfing the inner planets and vaporizing any life that might still remain on Earth. But even after the Sun’s demise, the expanding universe will continue—perhaps forever—destined to become ever colder, ever emptier.
Any creatures witnessing the Sun’s demise six billion years hence will not be human —they will be as different from us as we are from a bug. Post-human evolution could be as prolonged as the Darwinian evolution that has led to us, and even more wonderful—and will have spread far from Earth, even among the stars. Indeed, this conclusion is strengthened when we realize that future evolution will proceed not on the million-year timescale characteristic of Darwinian selection, but at the much accelerated rate allowed by genetic modification and the advance of machine intelligence (and forced by the drastic environmental pressures that would confront any humans who were to construct habitats beyond the Earth). Natural selection may have slowed: its rigors are tempered in civilized countries. But it will be replaced by “directed” evolution.
Inflatable Planes Could Search for Alien Life in the Clouds of Venus
But could it actually work?
Lighter-than-air spacecraft might one day help explore the clouds of Venus and investigate signs of ancient life on the planet.
Proposed in 2014 by Northrop Grumman, the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverability Platform (VAMP) project would deploy crewed inflatable aircraft from space to skim Venus’ upper atmosphere.
Now, a press release from West Virginia University reveals that engineers are developing software to allow spacecraft similar to these to navigate Venus’ atmosphere autonomously.
Could we send humans to Venus? The statement, brought to our attention by Universe Today says the main goal of the new project is to “propose a software solution that will allow hybrid aerobots to explore the atmosphere of Venus.” The researchers claim that their software would optimize flight paths while accounting for strong winds and sunlight intensity, allowing it to plan the crafts flights for the longest periods possible.
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How Realistic Is The Expanse? | Unveiled
How close to real life is the Amazon sci-fi series, “The Expanse”? Join us… and find out!
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Science fiction shows and movies can sometimes struggle with a bad reputation passed down to them by a number of low-budget, poorly executed films in the genre. The Amazon series “The Expanse”, based on the novels by James S. A. Corey, however, tries to overthrow the idea that sci-fi can’t hold up to science. So, how well does it do? In this video, Unveiled finds out!
This is Unveiled, giving you incredible answers to extraordinary questions!
Find more amazing videos for your curiosity here:
The Real Reason Why We Haven’t Returned to the Moon — https://youtu.be/Y5CvEBDkVos.
Are We Living in an Island Universe? — https://youtu.be/m1iYoC1uZdo.
0:00 Intro.
Organic Molecules Have Been Confirmed in The Jezero Crater on Mars
It hasn’t even been on Mars a full year, and NASA’s Perseverance rover is making excellent surprise discoveries.
Amid a number of findings announced this week at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, scientists have revealed that the Jezero Crater formed from molten volcanic magma – and that organic molecules have been discovered in rocks and dust on the crater floor.
This is by no means evidence for life on Mars. Organic compounds are simply those that contain carbon-hydrogen bonds, and these can form by any number of non-biological processes. Indeed, organic compounds have been discovered on Mars before, both by the Curiosity rover and the Mars Express orbiter.
$10 Billion Webb Space Telescope Launch Delayed — Here’s What We Know
The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful, and most technologically challenging space telescope ever built.
The Webb Telescope is so large; it must be folded like origami to fit inside its rocket fairing for the ride into space. Once in space, unfolding and readying Webb for science is a complex process that will take about six months.
Webb is designed to see the most distant galaxies in the Universe and study how galaxies evolved over cosmic time. Webb will study planets orbiting other stars looking for the chemical signatures of the building blocks of life. Webb will also study planets within our own solar system.
We’ve Found A Unique Giant ‘Tatooine’ Planet That Orbits Two Stars Say Scientists
Astronomers just found something unique in the Milky Way–a giant exoplanet in a 200-days orbit around two stars.
In a find that remind us of that binary sunset in the original Star Wars movie, the Tatooine-like “TIC 172900988b” is a Jupiter-sized planet.
Known as a “circumbinary” planet, TIC 172900988b’s existence has been revealed in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal by a team led by Veselin B. Kostov of the SETI Institute.
Although not unique in being a circumbinary planet–astronomers have found 14 such bodies so far–it’s the most massive transiting circumbinary planet to date.
It’s also the first to be found using a single set of data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) all-sky survey space telescope.
However, finding it wasn’t easy.
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We Asked a NASA Expert: How Did Perseverance Mars Rover Pick Its Landing Spot? [Video]
How did NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover pick its exact landing spot? Believe it or not, the Mars rover decided precisely where to land just moments before it touched down. It’s thanks to the work of engineers like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Swati Mohan and new technology called Terrain…
Mars rover pick its exact landing spot? Believe it or not, the Mars rover decided precisely where to land just moments before it touched down. It’s thanks to the work of engineers like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Swati Mohan and new technology called Terrain Relative Navigation.
When NASA decides to send a rover to Mars, a whole group of experts gets together to figure out where it needs to go for the best science for that mission. Perseverance’s mission was to find the signs of past life on Mars. So, all the experts got together and picked Jezero crater.