Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known
Founder: Joseph Barone
Contributors: crookedindifference, bumerangue, propagandery, rocketmagic, rostenbach
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Intellligent Alien Life Could Resemble Earth’s Extinct Dinosaurs
New scientific research raises the possibility that advanced versions of T. rex and other dinosaurs — monstrous creatures with the intelligence and cunning of humans — may be the life forms that evolved on other planets in the universe. “We would be better off not meeting them,” concludes the study, let by noted scientist Ronald Breslow, Ph.D. The study focuses on the century-old mystery of why the building blocks of terrestrial amino acids (which make up proteins), sugars, and the genetic materials DNA and RNA exist mainly in one orientation or shape.
Universe expansion is slowing down, new study says
A new research, published at the Classical and Quantum Gravity journal, says the universe’s expansion is apparently decelarating - in opposition to what present theories on Dark Energy say.
The study was developed by Brazilian astronomer Antônio Cândido de Camargo Guimarães, at Universidade de São Paulo, in Brazil.
Guimarães says that the still accelarating expansion of the universe has been a consensus for ten years, after the observation os supernovas 1a explosions. To understand the expansion, scientists established the Lambda-CDM model - which is based on the existence of Dark Energy: a mysterious force that occupies 70% of the universe (the rest would be 26% Dark Matter and 4% matter).
The astronomer used a cosmographic approach to study the expansion, avoiding any model that takes Dark Energy as a certainty: a method based on supernovas speed of withdrawal.
Thus, Guimarães concluded that the expansion still happening, but in a slower pace than present theories preach. This conclusion brings new light over universe expansion and what we used to know about it may not be 100% right.
The research is available here.
Weird! Our Universe May Be a ‘Multiverse,’ Scientists Say
Is our universe just one of many? While the concept is bizarre, it’s a real possibility, according to scientists who have devised the first test to investigate the idea. The potential that we live in a multiverse arises from a theory called eternal inflation, which posits thatshortly after the Big Bang that formed the universe, space-time expanded at different rates in different places, giving rise to bubble universes that may function with their own separate laws of physics.
A Universe Not Made For Us - Carl Sagan Tribute Series, Part 1.
Asteroid Deflection: What If a Huge Asteroid Was Going to Slam Into Earth?
So you think global warming is a big problem? What could happen if a 25-million-ton chunk of rock slammed into Earth?
APOD: Powers of Ten
Credit & Copyright: Charles & Ray Eames (Eames Office)
Explanation: How different does the universe look on small, medium, and large scales? The most famous short science film of its generation gives breathtaking comparisons. That film, Powers of Ten, originally created in the 1960s, has now been officially posted to YouTube and embedded above. Please click the above arrow to see the nine minute movie for yourself. From a picnic blanket near Chicago out past the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, every ten seconds the film pans out to show a square a factor of ten times larger on each side. The video then reverses, panning back in a factor of ten every two seconds and ends up inside a single proton. The Powers of Ten sequence is actually based on the book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke in 1957, as is a similar but mostly animated film Cosmic Zoom that was also created in the late 1960s. The changing perspectives are so enthralling and educational that sections have been recreated using more modern computerized techniques, including the first few minutes of the movie Contact, and in a short digital video called The Known Universe created last year for the American Museum of Natural History. Ray and husband Charles, the film’s creators, were known as quite visionary spirits and even invented their own popular chair.
Cosmicomics is a book of short stories by Italian writer Italo Calvino (picture above) first published in 1965. Each story takes a scientific “fact” (though sometimes a falsehood by today’s understanding), and builds an imaginative story around it. An always extant being called Qfwfq narrates all of the stories save two, each of which is a memory of an event in the history of the universe.
The best known story is probably the first, The Distance of the Moon, which takes the fact that the moon used to be much closer to the earth, and builds it into a romantic story about two men and one woman in a tribe of people who used to jump up onto the moon when it passed overhead.
Other Cosmicomics stories:
At Daybreak — Life before matter condenses.
A Sign in Space — The idea that the galaxy slowly revolves becomes a story about a being who is desperate to leave behind some unique sign of his existence.
All at One Point — The fact that all matter and creation used to exist in a single point. “Naturally, we were all there — old Qfwfq said — where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?”
We Have to Wait At Least 200 More Years for Interstellar Travel
Sorry folks, it looks like only our grandkid’s grandkid’s grandkids will be able to take advantage of interstellar travel. Why so long? Because a NASA scientist says it’ll take at least 200 years to obtain enough energy to make the journey.
What’s Better Than Finding Aliens? Finding Other Universes
A team of astronomers at London’s University College think they’ve done just that: found evidence of other universes, whole other realms that might have radically different physical laws and where dogs meow and cats front mysterious-cat hardcore bands.
Remember those weird circles Roger Penrose and co. found last month (or announced last month, anyhow) in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation? It’s a pretty remarkable find: possibly “fossils” of a pre-this universe universe in the form of imprints in the CMB. (Though, other teams have since disputed the Penrose findings.)
In any case, the University College team has determined another possibility for that weirdness in the CMB: bruises.
Meaning, we may have detected impact zones between our universe and four others. It has to do with a different perspective of how the universe—and beyond—behaves. Penrose and co. are thinking that it bangs and shrinks and bangs and shrinks an infinite number of times. It’s not among the more accepted theories.
This London group, as detailed in a new paper, is going from the perspective of the eternal, or inflationary, universe, which starts from a bang and just keeps going and everything dies and goes dark, and we live for eternity in a universe of absolute nothing. There is still stuff in that universe forever, but without energy, it’s pretty null; eternal, but a rather cold and dark sort of eternal. (There’s also a theory that in this universe, time just eventually stops altogether.)
So in this universe that expands forever and eventually burns out there’s a period right after the Big Bang of really intense inflation where everything is expanding and cooling at different rates (dictated by quantum fluctuations maybe, but that’s for another time). Those differences translate into basically small bubbles in the expansion of the universe that break off into their own universe. We’re one of these bubbles in a near-endless supply.
And, apparently, we bumped into four others.
So, what now? Who’s right? No one really. Until we get better data from the Plank spacecraft, which is taking better pictures of the CMB as we speak, all of this is just speculation. Which doesn’t make it less juicy.
Source: motherboard.tv.
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