Showing all posts about science
No sign of extraterrestrial life? Blame it on bad space weather
18 March 2026
In the search for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, astronomers, and organisations like SETI, often seek out narrowband radio signals.
Space is full of radio signals, most of them broadband, which usually occur naturally. Neutron stars are but one generator of such signals. Narrowband radio transmissions, on the other hand, are somewhat more likely to be created by an intelligent civilisation. On Earth, for instance, TV transmissions and mobile phones, are among sources of narrowband radio signals.
It makes sense then to look out for such signals in deep space. But some recent research conducted by SETI suggests narrowband radio signals may be disrupted by chaotic flows of ionised gas, and other sources of turbulence in the cosmos:
A new study by researchers at the SETI Institute suggests stellar “space weather” could make radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence harder to detect. Stellar activity and plasma turbulence near a transmitting planet can broaden an otherwise ultra-narrow signal, spreading its power across more frequencies and making it more difficult to detect in traditional narrowband searches.
We keep coming up with explanations to account for the apparent absence of intelligent extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe. Now we’re blaming the weather.
The smart money says there is intelligent life somewhere in the cosmos, but it may not be all that common, nor particularly close to us. There’s a lot of space out there, beyond the solar system.
The size of the galaxy, to say nothing of the universe, is something many of us struggle to comprehend. Even if humanity possessed the means to travel at speeds close to the velocity of light, it would take over four years just to reach Proxima Centauri, the star presently closest to the Sun.
To visit the centre of our galaxy, the journey would take over twenty-five thousand years.
That’s not insignificant. In fact, twenty-five thousand light years constitutes a vast amount of space. An alien civilisation could be tucked in there somewhere, but it might take thousands of years for evidence of their presence to become apparent.
On paper, the chances of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life are better than even.
There are potentially millions, if not more, of exoplanets with environments conducive to complex life in the Milky Way galaxy alone. And if intelligent life can take hold on Earth, it can surely take hold elsewhere. But there are those who think intelligent life on Earth is a fluke, and a lot of things had to go the right way, over a period of billions of years, for this to happen.
Bad “weather” in deep space may well be playing a part in concealing the presence of extraterrestrial technological civilisations. But their scarcity, and extreme distance — potentially tens of thousands of light years — from Earth, probably better explains why there is no sign, yet, of anyone else.
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Vision loss in some people is being attributed to their tattoos
19 February 2026
Jacinta Bowler writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):
The condition, known as tattoo-associated uveitis, can lead to permanent vision loss, glaucoma, and patients requiring immunosuppressants for the rest of their life.
While rare, the condition can set in several years after getting a tattoo. In one case, decades had passed before the person began experiencing vision loss.
Most people seeking tattoos doubtless know about the risk of infection, or allergic reactions, but few would expect their vision to be impacted, particularly years after the event.
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Elon Musk says a city-size Moon base could be built in ten years
11 February 2026
Elon Musk, in his capacity as CEO of SpaceX, wants to build a “self-growing” city on the Moon. He thinks the task will take about ten years to complete.
Establishing a permanent base on the Moon seems like a worthwhile goal, but is not without significant challenges, as Aakash Gupta writes:
The unsolved problems are real. Lunar dust is electrostatically charged and sharp as broken glass. It shreds seals, clogs machinery, and embeds in lung tissue. Nobody has a long-duration fix. Radiation on the surface runs 200x Earth’s dose. Regolith shelters and water shielding help but add enormous construction overhead. The 14-day night drops temperatures to -173°C and kills all solar power, and the only flight-ready nuclear reactors produce 1-10 kW, far below what a growing base demands. What years of 1/6 gravity do to human bone density and cardiovascular systems is completely unknown.
I would like to wave away these difficulties by uttering something like “nothing ventured, nothing gained”, but fear I would somewhat be oversimplifying matters.
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current affairs, science, space exploration
Artemis astronauts take smartphones to the Moon, Instagram goes interplanetary (sort of)
7 February 2026
Jared Isaacman, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator, writing on X/Twitter:
NASA astronauts will soon fly with the latest smartphones, beginning with Crew-12 and Artemis II. We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and video with the world.
When it comes to photos from the Artemis flights, expect copious selfies from both deep-space and the Lunar surface.
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photography, science, smartphones, space exploration
Universe to astronomers: I am stranger than you imagine
4 December 2025
Kurzgesagt making sense of a non-sensical universe:
For decades, we’ve had a beautiful theory of the cosmos. One that explained how the universe began, what it’s made of, and how it’s supposed to behave. It matched our observations astonishingly well and made us feel like we’d almost deciphered the cosmic code. But in the last few years, as our telescopes got better and our data sharper, cracks started to appear. Strange mismatches between what the theory predicted and what we actually saw.
British astronomer Arthur Eddington wrote in a book published in 1927, saying: “not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” He was riffing on the words of compatriot scientist J. B. S. Haldane, who wrote, also in 1927: “now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
Stranger. Queerer. Take your pick.
These people nailed the nature of the universe one hundred years ago, with a fraction of the knowledge we have today. And what we know now will likely only represent a mere fraction what we’ll know in another one-hundred years. I think it’s a little too soon to say we’ve figured out the universe.
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Too complicated for algorithms: the universe cannot be a simulation
3 November 2025
The bus I’m on arrives at an interchange stop but a minute late and misses the connecting service which left a minute earlier than scheduled. The bean grinder at the cafe breaks down just as I arrive.
The door phone at a friend’s apartment is on the blink, and I’m in a phone black spot and unable to call them. The internet connection drops mid way through a bank transaction, and refuses to reconnect for several minutes, leaving me wondering whether the payment went through or not.
A micro-tear in my water bottle partly soaks the contents of my day bag. A succession of late-evening (no less) traffic delays sees us reach the supermarket a minute after closing time. My laptop crashes as I open the lid to resume a session. This is what happened one day.
They’re all minor irritations, but were pretty much consecutive. Of course it was a run of bad luck, yet occasions like these are enough to make me think the universe is a simulation, I’m a Sim, and am being cruelly manipulated by player of the game that is the universe we live in.
I need no longer think that though. An international team of researchers, lead by Dr Mir Faizal of Canada’s University of British Columbia, have found the universe is, in essence, too complicated an entity to be the product of a computer generated simulation:
Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, go beyond simply suggesting that we’re not living in a simulated world like The Matrix. They prove something far more profound: the universe is built on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm.
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NASA plans to send four people around the Moon in 2026
8 October 2025
The astronauts, who may depart as soon as February 2026, will not land on the Moon though.
Their flight sounds like it will be similar to Apollo 8 in 1968, which yielded this incredible photo, taken by William Anders. The Artemis program will potentially pave the way for a longer term human presence on the Moon, which is a worthwhile goal.
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astronomy, science, space exploration
A loophole for surviving the heat-death of the universe, or a noose?
3 October 2025
The people at Kurzgesagt are pretty clued-up. They must learn a lot, about everything really, in their line of work. As a result of this ceaseless learning, they might have found a way, for whatever lifeforms are still present, to evade the eventual heat-death of the universe.
Although still conjecture, this is how the universe might “end”, in trillions of years hence. Long after the last star has stopped shining, long after the last black hole has finally disintegrated.
Under this scenario, the universe won’t, or isn’t expected to, collapse in on itself. Seemingly the cosmos will continue expanding forever, as a dark, cold, void.
This, however, appears to the ideal environment for eternal life. In short, a civilisation Kurzgesagt calls the Noxans, will harvest vast amounts of energy from their galaxy, or what’s left of it. This will be stored in a massive battery bank, which the Noxans will draw off for untold trillions of years.
Untold trillions of years, but not forever. This near eternal life, however, won’t be living as we know it.
The temperature in the universe at this stage will be barely an iota above zero degrees on the Kelvin (K) scale. For reference water freezes at about two-hundred-and-seventy degrees on the Kelvin scale. Zero degrees K, or absolute zero, will be pretty cold. Too cold to even play ice-hockey.
But the Noxans will not be particularly active. Their digital avatars, which is all that will remain of them, will spend their waking hours engaged only in thought.
They will need to slumber to conserve resources. But this off-time will aid in cooling them down further, in turn reducing their power needs, in turn extending the life of their batteries. Didn’t the Noxans do well, surviving trillions upon trillions of years after the universe’s heat-death?
Kurzgesagt calls their method a loophole, but it seems more like a noose to me.
I’m curious as to what sort of material the battery banks, and whatever structure the Noxans will “reside” in, are made of. How will these endure for eternity without repair or replacement?
But sitting around in an ice-box until the battery goes flat doesn’t seem like fun. There has to be a better way for a civilisation to live forever. And maybe there is.
The Noxans, it should be pointed out, are what’s called a Type III civilisation on the Kardashev scale. This means they’re able to harness all the energy within a galaxy.
In comparison, Type I civilisations control all the energy on their planet, Type II their solar system. Humanity might be considered a zero-point-seven civilisation. But when Nikolai Kardashev, a Soviet astronomer, draw up his scale in 1964, he did not venture beyond Type III.
Other people though, including Hungarian academic Zoltan Galántai, speculate the existence of Type IIII, and even V civilisations, may be possible.
A Type IIII civilisation would have all the energy of the universe at its disposal. Type V entities meanwhile could probably create a whole new universe in which to live. This seems like a better plan for the Noxans. If they’ve made it as far up the scale as III, they could push on higher.
Reaching the ultimate top level, in this case V, would be a challenge, as I’m sure any gamer could tell you. But if the Noxans start now, with potentially many, many, trillions of years in front of them, I’m sure they could do it.
Eventually freezing to death in a glorified refrigerator seems like an absurd idea in comparison.
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V Sagittae nova might outshine Antares, Betelgeuse supernovas
29 September 2025
A binary stellar system consisting of a Wolf–Rayet (WR) star, and a larger main sequence star, known as V Sagittae, are predicted to erupt in a massive explosion, possibly before the end of the century*.
Presently the WR body is furiously feeding on the substance of its nearby companion. The stars orbit each other about every twelve hours, and are gradually drawing closer together.
When both collide, they will explode as a nova.
The remnant of the nova explosion will be visible from Earth during the day, so fierce will the event be. V Sagittae is ten-thousand light years away from Earth, so we will be well clear of the blast zone.
Two red giant stars, Antares and Betelgeuse, being about five-hundred-and-fifty, and six-hundred-and-forty light years respectively away, will explode as supernovas eventually.
Astronomers think Antares may last at least another one-million years, while they give Betelgeuse about one-hundred-thousand years.
My money has been on Antares going first, but that looks like a real outside chance. Instead, I will, where possible, keep my eyes on the Sagitta constellation, where V Sagittae is located.
* I’m not sure if the nova/explosion has already occurred and becomes visible before the end of the century, or the actual explosion takes place then, meaning it won’t be visible for ten-thousand years.
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A planet might orbit Alpha Centauri A: send Chrysalis there instead
21 August 2025
The planet’s existence — orbiting Alpha Centauri A, part of the nearest stellar system to the Sun — has not yet been confirmed. If there though, the body would be situated within Alpha Centauri A’s (AKA Rigil Kentaurus) habitable zone, a star similar to our Sun.
That could be a more “Earth-like” planet, certainly more so than any planets orbiting the third member of the Alpha Centauri trinary: red dwarf star Proxima Centauri.
If anyone is serious about sending a sixty-kilometre long, multi-generational spaceship, named Chrysalis, on a four-hundred year, one-way, journey to Alpha Centauri, then the would-be planet hosted by Alpha Centauri A would be a more sensible destination.
Once, that is, the planet is confirmed to exist, in-fact resides in Alpha Centauri A’s habitable zone, and is truly “Earth-like”, not just some rock with a slight atmosphere, and a bit of liquid water.
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