Recently in The Universe Category

"In April, the world will celebrate the quinquagenary of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, so it seems a good time to take stock of the silence. Three new books tackle the issue in three different ways. One, an immensely readable investigation of the SETI enterprise (with a surprising conclusion); the second, a technical guide to what we should be looking for and how; and the third, a left-field argument that the alien question has already been answered."

In New Scientist, Michael Hanlon surveys three new books about the continuing search for alien life, and attempts to grapple with the Fermi paradox."Today it is rare to meet an astronomer who doesn't believe that the universe is teeming with life. There is a feeling in the air that light will soon be shed on some of science's most fundamental questions: is Earth's biosphere unique? Do other minds ponder the universe?"

"The second law states that a force is proportional to an object's mass and its acceleration. But since the 1980s, some physicists have eyed the law with suspicion, arguing that subtle changes to it at extremely small accelerations could explain the observed motion of stars in galaxies." Also on the subject of spinning, a new experiment finds a way to test Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) on Earth, which, if successful, could revise Newton's heretofore ironclad 2nd law...and explain away the longstanding dark matter problem. (By way of my new favorite Twitter feed, @newscientist.)

"'There's going to be all kinds of weird stuff out there,' said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, who wasn't part of the research. 'This is an unparalleled data set. The universe really is a weird place. It's fantastic.'" In the midst of its current planet-hunting sweep, NASA's Kepler telescope discovers two examples of a new type of heavenly body that are "too hot to be planets and too small to be stars." (Although some think they're recently-born planets; others dying "white-dwarf" stars.) "'The universe keeps making strange things stranger than we can think of in our imagination,' said Jon Morse, head of astrophysics for NASA."

'We've looked at far, far fewer than 10 million stars since 1960, and so we really can't say anything worthwhile yet about whether or not intelligent life is out there,' Drake said. 'Given our capabilities now, we might have something useful to say one way or another in 25 years.'"

In the wake of all these new planets, the WP takes a gander at the new and improved SETI program. "'We're finding new extra-solar planets every week,' she said. 'We now know microbes can live in extreme environments on Earth thought to be impossible for life not very long ago, and so many more things seem possible in terms of life beyond Earth.'"

"Charbonneau said it's unlikely that any life on the newly discovered planet would be similar to life on Earth, but he didn't discount the idea entirely. 'This planet probably does have liquid water,' he said." Don't mean to turn GitM into the We Found a Planet Weekly, but this also seems like big doings: Astronomers discover a watery, Earth-like planet relatively nearby. (As in 40 light years away, orbiting GJ 1214b.) "While the planet probably has too thick of an atmosphere and is too hot to support life similar to that found on Earth, the discovery is being heralded as a major breakthrough in humanity's search for life on other planets." I'll say.

Update: "'I was instantly excited because the glint reminded me of an image of our own planet taken from orbit around Earth, showing a reflection of sunlight on an ocean,' Stephan said. 'But we also had to do more work to make sure the glint we were seeing wasn't lightning or an erupting volcano.'" Might be some more water closer to home too: NASA confirms liquid on Saturn's moon of Titan.

"It could be a planet, though even if it isn't, there's plenty of reason to be excited. For one thing, astronomers got an image of it. The reason it's so tough to image a planet is its proximity to the blinding light of its star, which in this case is about a million times brighter. It would be like trying to see a candle burning next to the beam of a million-candlepower searchlight." Astronomers spot a new planet called GJ 785 B -- by looking right at it. "In short, says McElwain, 'We're using state-of-the-art instruments on a state-of-the-art telescope.'"

"'We are still coming to terms with just how smooth the LHC commissioning is going,' said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer as the record was announced. 'It is fantastic.'" Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world...Also in science news, the now armed and fully operational Large Hadron Collider is breaking particle beam records as it warms up for the Big Show, when its handlers will work to recreate the conditions at one billionth of a second after the Big Bang. "Said Heuer: 'We are continuing to take it step by step, and there is a lot to do before we start [first] physics in 2010. I'm keeping my champagne on ice until then.'" (By way of Dangerous Meta.)

"'The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon,' the space agency said in a written statement." It's official: Data from NASA's LCROSS impact of a few weeks ago confirms the recent findings of Chandraayan-1: It ain't Hoth or Rura Penthe, but there is a "significant amount" of water on the moon, like, ice-field size.

"The amount of water they found in the plume was a couple of hundred kilograms in total, but that indicates there is a lot more still lying on the surface. They don't know how much exactly just yet." (As we found out recently, the same might also hold true of Mars.)

"'The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich,' said Colaprete. 'Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years.'" I'm very reminded of James Hogan's Inherit the Stars right now. Also, it's probably about time to start taking lunar exploration a bit more seriously again, eh?

"'Houston, Hubble has been released,' Atlantis commander Scott Altman radioed Mission Control. 'It's safely back on its journey of exploration as we begin the steps to conclude ours." The crew of STS-125 re-release the Hubble into high orbit, their epic repair-and-upgrade mission accomplished. "'We have literally thousands of astronomers out there around the world waiting to use these new capabilities,' Morse said. 'And they are chomping at the bit to get their data.'" Great work, Atlantis.

Update: Spiffy pic above -- and many more like it -- courtesy of Boston.com's The Big Picture and Hal at Blivet.

Speaking of NASA, somebody page Jim Starlin (and file this next to the Great Eye): Another holdover from last week, The agency's Chandra X-Ray Laboratory captures an eerie and beautiful galactic "hand" reaching across the cosmos. "[T]he display is caused by a young and powerful pulsar, known by the rather prosaic name of PSR B1509-58...The space agency says B1509 -- created by a collapsed star -- is one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators in the Galaxy. The nebula is formed by a torrent of electrons and ions emitted by the 1,700-year-old phenomenon. The finger-like structures are apparently caused by 'energizing knots of material in a neighboring gas cloud,' NASA says."

"'There is 'something new and interesting going on in the universe,' said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md." Aspiring Jor-Els: Best get to work on those interstellar child-bearing rockets. Scientists detect a distant -- and very loud -- roar on the other side of the universe. "'The universe really threw us a curve,' Kogut said. 'Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted.'" (Sssh, listen...there went Earth-2.)

"'We've discovered this incredible dark energy, we don't understand what the hell it is,' said Lawrence Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University. 'It's extremely small, extremely weak, and it's so close to being zero, it's just a total mystery why it should have this small value and not be zero." While they're still not entirely sure what in fact they're looking at, Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicists announce they've found another way to measure and quantify "dark energy", a.k.a. the repulsive "cosmological constant" force causing the universe to expand rather than contract. "This is a much-needed confirmation that the earlier work was correct, the astronomers said, comparing it to football referees examining a controversial play with multiple camera angles."

As an added bonus, the results announced today also seem to confirm Einstein's general theory of relativity. "'It's never been proved right on the scale of the observable universe,' Spergel said."

"Although we think of black holes as somehow threatening, in the sense that if you get too close to one you are in trouble, they may have had a role in helping galaxies to form -- not just our own, but all galaxies." German astronomers believe they have discovered a black hole right in the center of our Milky Way. "According to Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit."

And, if that wasn't heady enough news to wrap one's mind around, see also this article on loop quantum cosmology (LQC) and "The Big Bounce." "LQC has been tantalising physicists since 2003 with the idea that our universe could conceivably have emerged from the collapse of a previous universe. Now the theory is poised to make predictions we can actually test. If they are verified, the big bang will give way to a big bounce and we will finally know the quantum structure of space-time. Instead of a universe that emerged from a point of infinite density, we will have one that recycles, possibly through an eternal series of expansions and contractions, with no beginning and no end." (Both links via Dangerous Meta.)

"It's really a generation that we've been looking forward to this moment, and the moments that will come after it in particular. September 10 is a demarcation between finishing the construction and starting to turn it on, but the excitement will only continue to grow." A Quantum Leap Forward, or the End of Days? (Answer: The former.) Over on the border of France and Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider --- the giant, multi-billion-dollar particle accelerator decades in the making -- gets ready for its first big test on Wednesday (as does its accompanying "Grid".) "The collider will recreate the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, when there was a hot 'soup' of tiny particles called quarks and gluons, to look at how the universe evolved, said John Harris, U.S. coordinator for ALICE, a detector specialized to analyze that question."

"'This is a landmark discovery because it implies that solar system analogs may be very common, at least scaled-down versions,' said Sara Seager, an extra-solar planet expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. '...We are on an inexorable path to finding other Earths.'" Astronomers find a solar system not unlike our own 5,000 light years away. "We are seeing the emergence of a new planet-finding technique -- one that opens up an entirely new capability for planet finding. It is more powerful than we ever thought possible."

"It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions."

In today's NYT, Dennis Overbye attempts to explain the Boltzmann Brain problem, a theoretical puzzle causing consternation among cosmologists. “'It is part of a much bigger set of questions about how to think about probabilities in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur, does occur, infinitely many times,' said Leonard Susskind of Stanford, a co-author of a paper in 2002 that helped set off the debate. Or as Andrei Linde, another Stanford theorist given to colorful language, loosely characterized the possibility of a replica of your own brain forming out in space sometime, 'How do you compute the probability to be reincarnated to the probability of being born?'”

Um, yeah. The graphic sorta helps explain what may be going on: Minute fluctuations in the universe's general move towards entropy create random pockets of order, some of which could hypothetically organize as floating brains, or pocket universes or whales and flowerpots too, I suppose. Or something like that...Now my brain hurts.

"...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." Scientists at NASA catch a glimpse of cosmic devastation on a galactic scale, as a "death star galaxy," fueled by a black hole, destroys its neighbor with a beam of radiation. "The telescope images show the bully galaxy shooting a stream of deadly radiation particles into the lower section of the other galaxy, which is about one-tenth its size...Tens of millions of stars, including those with orbiting planets, are likely in the path of the deadly jet...If Earth were in the way -- and it's not -- the high-energy particles and radiation of the jet would in a matter of months strip away the planet's protective ozone layer and compress the protective magnetosphere." And what does that mean? "'You would basically render extinct all surface forms of life,' Tyson said. 'But it may be that subterranean life is...immune to this kind of violence in the universe.'" You heard the man...start digging.

Have we inadvertently killed Schrödinger's cat? No, it's much, much worse. Cosmologists at Case Western Reserve and Vanderbilt speculate that mankind may have hastened the end of the universe by observing dark energy in 1998. "[Q]uantum theory says that whenever we observe or measure something, we could stop it decaying due what is what is called the 'quantum Zeno effect,' which suggests that if an 'observer' makes repeated, quick observations of a microscopic object undergoing change, the object can stop changing - just as a watched kettle never boils...Prof Krauss says that the measurement of the light from supernovae in 1998, which provided evidence of dark energy, may have reset the decay of the void to zero -- back to a point when the likelihood of its surviving was falling rapidly. 'In short, we may have snatched away the possibility of long-term survival for our universe and made it more likely it will decay,' says Prof Krauss." D'oh! But wouldn't this presume that at no other place or time in our unfathomably gigantic universe did any other civilization make the same observations? Given the odds of intelligent life out there, that seems unlikely. (And, if you think this all sounds goofy and ridiculous, just wait until we get to the multiverse...)

"Fact:...The density of Saturn is so low that if you were to put it in a giant glass of water it would float." And another pilfered link, which I meant to post last week: Megg of Quiddity points the way to 10 Cool Facts about Space (although, to paraphrase The Smiths, some facts are cooler than others.)

"'We're thrilled to have identified clear signs of water on a planet that is trillions of miles away,' said study leader Giovanna Tinetti of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris in France." Scientists discover clear signs of existing water well outside the solar system at HD 189733b, a Jupiter-ish gas giant in the Vulpecula constellation, 64 light years away. "The researchers found that the planet absorbed starlight in such a way that could only be explained by the presence of water vapor in its atmosphere."

"Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X." The big news today, of course: Astronomers announce the discovery of an earth-like planet, Gliese 581c, at the galactically tiny distance of 120 trillion miles (20.5 light years) away. (For the stargazers, Gliese 581 is a red dwarf "located in the northeastern part of constellation Libra.") Of course, we still don't know if we even have to go that far to find extraterrestrial life -- Europa, Mars, Ganymede, and Callisto all still pose unresolved questions. Nevertheless, it's an exciting moment in our history to discover the first planet far afield that might possibly be inhabited (and inhabitable)...and even more exciting to know that there'll assuredly be many more to come. The stars, our destination!

A faraway Jupiter-like gas planet, HD 209458b, is found (by some) to have water in its atmosphere. I saw this on Blivet on Friday and spent the weekend dreaming about it: If my sleeping brain can be trusted, HD 209458b has winged, eel-like space reptiles cavorting amidst the gaseous clouds there. Alas, my subconscious makes for a lousy exobiologist: "[A] Jupiter-like gaseous planet such as this one, as opposed to a rocky one like Earth, is highly unlikely to harbour any kind of life." Well, damn.

Using the thankfully soon-to-be-refurbished Hubble, astronomers find more evidence of "dark energy" in the early universe working along the lines of Einstein's famous fudge factor, the cosmological constant, to combat a gravitational crunch. "'Dark energy makes us nervous,' said Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the supernova study. 'It fits the data, but it's not what we really expected.'"

The WP takes a gander at the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), which "can see 13 billion years back in time, nearly to the big bang. With its 10-by-11-foot hexagonal mirror -- the largest of its type in the world -- SALT concentrates the faintest, most distant light in the universe. If a candle were to flicker on the moon, SALT could detect it."

After discovering a disk of gas, dust, and rubble orbiting a pulsar, astronomers believe they've figured out how planets are made. "It shows that planet formation is really ubiquitous in the universe. It's a very robust process and can happen in all sorts of unexpected environments."

Using the relatively new technique of gravitational microlensing, astronomers discover their "most Earth-like planet yet", orbiting a star in Sagittarius 20,000 light-years away. While this planet -- currently named OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb -- is likely too cold for habitation, "'we may predict with reasonable probability that microlensing will discover planets with masses like that of Earth at a similar distance from their stars and with comparable surface temperature,' said study co-author Bohdan Paczynski from Princeton University."

"'As you go back in time, the universe is pushing [outward] less and less,' he said. 'At some point, the pressure of dark energy is zero and is exerting no force on the universe. There is no explanation for it.'" New cosmological research announced yesterday further muddles our understanding of the expansion of the early universe and (once again) casts doubt on Einstein's recently resurrected cosmological constant. "Schaefer based his findings on analysis of ultra-bright cosmic explosions called gamma-ray bursts, detected as far as 12.8 billion light-years away. He found that the most distant explosions appeared brighter than they should have been if the universe were accelerating at a constant rate."