Space discoveries, Alien life etc news thread

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This thread to post all the weird, bizarre, interesting etc... discoveries in Space and about Alien stuff

Oxygen Discovery Raises Hopes for Saturn Moon Life

Two years ago, when NASA's Cassini Solstice spacecraft flew past the moon Dione, it noticed something familiar. Oxygen is present in Saturn's third-largest moon's exosphere (its extended, tenuous atmosphere), and according to research published this week, Cassini's hi-tech "nose" had sniffed it.

Obviously, the first thing that springs to mind when discussing oxygen is that it's a pretty important component for life on Earth. But Dione, a barren and icy world, possesses few attributes that would make it suitable for life as we know it.

http://news.discovery.com/space/oxyg...mkcpgn=fbdsc17

Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel

Andreas Tziolas is drafting a blueprint for a mission to a nearby star. Here, he discusses how we'll get there -- and why we try.
...
In September of last year DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, convened a conference in Orlando, Florida, to discuss and promote one of its newest and most intriguing research projects: The 100 Year Starship Study. According to DARPA, the study is intended to "develop and mature a technology portfolio that will enable long-distance manned space flight a century from now." To that end, DARPA is now negotiating a grant of $500,000 to ex-astronaut Dorothy Jemison, whose personal foundation will team up with Project Icarus, a division of Icarus Interstellar, to seed the plans for an interstellar mission that could span several centuries.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...travel/253335/

Warp Drives May Come With a Killer Downside

While many factors involving FTL travel are purely theoretical — and may remain in the realm of imagination for a very long time, if not ever — there are some concepts that play well with currently-accepted physics.

The Alcubierre warp drive is one of those concepts.

Proposed by Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994, the drive would propel a ship at superluminal speeds by creating a bubble of negative energy around it, expanding space (and time) behind the ship while compressing space in front of it. In much the same way that a surfer rides a wave, the bubble of space containing the ship and its passengers would be pushed at velocities not limited to the speed of light toward a destination.

Of course, when the ship reaches its destination it has to stop. And that’s when all hell breaks loose.

http://www.universetoday.com/93882/w...ller-downside/

[West Texican]

A Salt-Free Primordial Soup?

Most scientists who study the origin of life assume that it occurred in the ocean. But a minority view is that ions in seawater may interfere with prebiotic chemistry, making a freshwater environment more likely. “The main argument for a marine origin is that there is so much seawater,” says David Deamer of UC Santa Cruz. Roughly 98% of the Earth’s water bodies are salty, and this percentage was likely much higher 4 billion years ago when we think the first life-forms made their appearance.

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/article...imordial-soup/



Kepler Statistical Analysis Suggests Earthlike Planets Extremely Rare

While Kepler shows us the happy result that there are almost certainly several planets for every star, it shows us that our solar system is distributed freakishly outwards, in comparison to more typical planetary systems.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ke..._Rare_999.html

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Planet Starship: Runaway Planets Zoom at a Fraction of Light-Speed

Cambridge, MA - Seven years ago, astronomers boggled when they found the first runaway star flying out of our Galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour. The discovery intrigued theorists, who wondered: If a star can get tossed outward at such an extreme velocity, could the same thing happen to planets?

New research shows that the answer is yes. Not only do runaway planets exist, but some of them zoom through space at a few percent of the speed of light - up to 30 million miles per hour.

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2012/pr201206.html

A Solar System Littered With Alien Artifacts?

As powerful space telescopes seek out Earth-like planets, and SETI radio telescopes listen for transmissions from aliens, physical evidence for intelligent extraterrestrials might be right in our backyard.

I'm not talking about flying saucers or oddball ancient artifacts attributed to visits by so-called "space gods," however. Instead, I'm looking for something as mundane as the pieces of interstellar probes that could have visited our solar system on numerous occasions over geologic time.

http://news.discovery.com/space/our-...ts-111109.html

At a June 27 press conference, Russian astronomer Andrei Finkelstein said that extraterrestrials definitely exist, and that we're likely to find them within two decades.

"The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms," said Finkelstein, the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Applied Astronomy Institute in St. Petersburg. He was speaking at the opening of an international symposium on the search for extraterrestrial civilizations that was being held at the institute.

"There are fundamental laws which apply to the entire universe," Finkelstein was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Because those fundamental laws allowed intelligent life to develop on Earth, they ought to engender intelligent life elsewhere, too, he reasoned.

http://www.space.com/12111-find-alie...-20-years.html

[Vehemence]

Houston, Monday, July 21--Men have landed and walked on the moon.


Two Americans, astronauts of Apollo 11, steered their fragile four-legged lunar module safely and smoothly to the historic landing yesterday at 4:17:40 P.M., Eastern daylight time.


Neil A. Armstrong, the 38-year-old civilian commander, radioed to earth and the mission control room here:
"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."


The first men to reach the moon--Mr. Armstrong and his co-pilot, Col. Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. of the Air Force--brought their ship to rest on a level, rock-strewn plain near the southwestern shore of the arid Sea of Tranquility.


About six and a half hours later, Mr. Armstrong opened the landing craft's hatch, stepped slowly down the ladder and declared as he planted the first human footprint on the lunar crust:
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/gene.../big/0720.html

[xav]

Stop trolling, this is not a joke thread

Could Ancient Aliens Live on Methuselah Planets?

The announcement of a pair of planets orbiting a 12.5 billion-year old star flies in the face of conventional wisdom that the earliest stars to be born in the Universe shouldn't possess planets at all.

12.5 billion years ago, the primeval universe was just beginning to make heavier elements beyond hydrogen and helium, in the fusion furnace cores of the first stars. It follows that there was very little if any material for fabricating terrestrial worlds or the rocky seed cores of gas giant planets.

http://news.discovery.com/space/coul...ts-120304.html

Is it Snowing Microbes on Enceladus?

March 27, 2012: There's a tiny moon orbiting beyond Saturn's rings that's full of promise, and maybe -- just maybe -- microbes.

In a series of tantalizingly close flybys to the moon, named "Enceladus," NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed watery jets erupting from what may be a vast underground sea. These jets, which spew through cracks in the moon's icy shell, could lead back to a habitable zone that is uniquely accessible in all the solar system.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...mar_enceladus/

Mysterious objects at the edge of the electromagnetic spectrum

Outside the realm of human vision is an entire electromagnetic spectrum of wonders. Each type of light--*from radio waves to gamma-rays--reveals something unique about the universe. Some wavelengths are best for studying black holes; others reveal newborn stars and planets; while others illuminate the earliest years of cosmic history.

NASA has many telescopes "working the wavelengths" up and down the electromagnetic spectrum. One of them, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope orbiting Earth, has just crossed a new electromagnetic frontier.

http://phys.org/news/2012-03-mysteri...-spectrum.html

Giant asteroid Vesta 'resembles planet'

The giant asteroid Vesta possesses many features usually associated with rocky planets like Earth, according to data from a Nasa probe.

Vesta has been viewed as a massive asteroid, but after studying the surface in detail, scientists are describing it as "transitional".

The Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting Vesta - one of the Solar System's most primitive objects - since July 2011.

They have documented many unexpected features on its battered surface.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17481911

[Dirtydiaper]

There were some reports here in Sweden about finding intelligent lifeforms in Denmark, but it turned out to be a German who just had made a wrong turn on the free-way.

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"Is there Life on Europa, Io or Ganymede?" New Mission Set to Jupiter's Moons

The Jupiter Icy moons Explorer – JUICE is the first Large-class mission chosen as part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. It will be launched in 2022 from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on an Ariane 5, arriving at Jupiter in 2030 to spend at least three years making detailed observations.Jupiter’s diverse Galilean moons – volcanic Io, icy Europa and rock-ice Ganymede and Callisto – make the Jovian system a miniature Solar System in its own right.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...rs-moons-.html

Unexplained Sounds Coming From The Ocean

Several very unusual sounds coming from the oceans have been recorded by scientists world-wide.

Are the sounds caused by very large life forms lurking in the unexplored darkness of Earth's deep oceans or perhaps something else?

Something is down there and experts do not know what it is...

All of these sounds have no thing in common - they remain unexplained.

http://messagetoeagle.com/unexplainedsoundocean.php

Plutonium to Pluto: Russian nuclear space travel breakthrough

A ground-breaking Russian nuclear space-travel propulsion system will be ready by 2017 and will power a ship capable of long-haul interplanetary missions by 2025, giving Russia a head start in the outer-space race.

The megawatt-class nuclear drive will function for up to three years and produce 100-150 kilowatts of energy at normal capacity.

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...rough_999.html

[West Texican]

Plutonium to Pluto: Russian nuclear space travel breakthrough

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...rough_999.html

Breakthrough? The Dawn spacecraft orbiting Vesta already uses the xenon ion propulsion system. The Russian proposal just replaces the photocells with a plutonium reactor for electrical power.

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Mars 'has life's building blocks'

New evidence from meteorites suggests that the basic building blocks of life are present on Mars.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18196353