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Breakthrough Starshot is Now Looking for the Companies to Build its Laser-Powered Solar Sails to Other Stars In 2015, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner established Breakthrough Initiatives, a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In April of the following year, he and the organization be founded announced the creation of Breakthrough Starshot, a program to create a lightsail-driven “wafercraft” that would make the journey to the nearest star system – Proxima Centauri – within our lifetime. In the latest development, on Wednesday May 23rd, Breakthrough Starshot held an “industry day” to outline their plans for developing the Starshot laser sail. DuringRead More →

Are There Enough Chemicals on Icy Worlds to Support Life? For decades, scientists have believed that there could be life beneath the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Since that time, multiple lines of evidence have emerged that suggest that it is not alone. Indeed, within the Solar System, there are many “ocean worlds” that could potentially host life, including Ceres, Ganymede, Enceladus, Titan, Dione, Triton, and maybe even Pluto. But what if the elements for life as we know it are not abundant enough on these worlds? In a new study, two researchers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics (CfA) sought to determineRead More →

Astro Challenge: Spotting 4 Vesta at its Best for Decades The brave new world of 4 Vesta, courtesy of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA Up for a challenge? Planetary action is certainly heating up this summer: Jupiter passed opposition last month, Saturn does so in June, and Mars reaches favorable viewing next month. And with dazzling Venus in the west and Mercury to joining it starting in late June, we’ll soon have all of the naked eye classical planets in the evening sky. Now, I want to turn your attention towards a potential naked eye object, one you’ve probably never seen: asteroid 4 Vesta. VestaRead More →

Globular Clusters Might not be as Old as Astronomers Thought. Like, Billions of Years Younger Globular clusters have been a source of fascination ever since astronomers first observed them in the 17th century. These spherical collections of stars are among the oldest known stars in the Universe, and can be found in the outer regions of most galaxies. Because of their age and the fact that almost all larger galaxies appear to have them, their role in galactic evolution has remained something of a mystery. Previously, astronomers were of the opinion that globular clusters were some of the earliest stars to have formed in theRead More →

Language in the Cosmos II: Hello There GJ273b The ‘Language in the Cosmos’ symposium Three times in October, 2017 researchers turned a powerful radar telescope near Tromsø, Norway towards an invisibly faint star in the constellation Canis Minor (the small dog) and beamed a coded message into space in an attempt to signal an alien civilization. This new attempt to find other intelligent life in the universe was reported in a presentation at the ‘Language in the Cosmos’ symposium held on May 26 in Los Angeles, California. METI International sponsored the symposium. This organization was founded to promote messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) as aRead More →

Join Fraser and Dr. Paul Sutter to Tour Costa Rica in March, 2019 Got any holiday plans in March, 2019? Why don’t you join me and Dr. Paul Sutter for a trip to Costa Rica. I’ve been to Costa Rica once before, and I was amazed by the amount of wildlife and biodiversity of this amazing country – I can’t wait to go back. In the daytime we saw hummingbirds, toucans, macaws and all kinds of monkeys. At night the jungles come alive with sights and sounds if you’re brave enough to explore them. There’s so much history around every corner, and the night skiesRead More →

An Asteroid was Discovered Just Hours Before it Exploded over Africa On Saturday, June 2nd, skywatchers in Botswana reported an extremely bright fireball in the sky. A 2-meter-sized spacerock smashed into the atmosphere going 17 kilometers per second, disintegrated high in the atmosphere, and briefly lit up the landscape. BREAKING NEWS!! ??An #asteroid just hit Earth’s atmosphere, sparking a fireball over the southern African nation of Botswana at 12:44 p.m. EDT while hurtling down at a whopping 38,000 mph ? That’s 10 miles every second, but don’t worry, it burned up in the atmosphere (phew) pic.twitter.com/T5gGR1OHJN — Link Institute (@LinkObservatory) June 5, 2018 This kindRead More →

Okay, Last Year’s Kilonova Did Probably Create a Black Hole In August of 2017, another major breakthrough occurred when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected waves that were believed to be caused by a neutron star merger. Shortly thereafter, scientists at LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope were able to determine where in the sky this event (known as a kilonova) occurred. This source, known as GW170817/GRB, has been the target of many follow-up surveys since it was believed that the merge could have led to the formation of a black hole. According to a new study by a team thatRead More →