Lifeboat Foundation

The barren, dusty Red Planet was not always a lifeless mess. In fact, scientists have often theorized that Mars was once covered in vast waterways. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that may be the case, too. However, new research involving that evidence suggests that it might not have been water that left those marks after all and that the chance of finding life on Mars is actually much slimmer than we hoped.

Mars is by far the planet that humanity has explored the most, with several rovers now having made their way across the barren surface of our neighboring planet. One of the key missions with those rovers has always been to find signs of life, or signs that life once existed on Mars. We’ve come close a couple of times, with some theorizing that NASA accidentally killed the only Martian life we’ve ever discovered on the planet.

Through it all, though, the hope that our chances to find life on Mars were high has relied on one key thing: the existence of water in Mars’s past. However, that watery past we believe the planet had may not have been as long or as extensive as we thought. New evidence suggests that places we thought had been carved out by water flowing through them could have actually been created by explosively evaporating carbon dioxide ice.

Use code isaacarthur at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan: https://incogni.com/isaacarthur.
Life is incredibly complicated, but for most of Earth’s history it was much simpler. Is it possible the Universe is full of planets with very simple life, and complex organisms are rare?

Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net.
Join Nebula: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur.
Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur.
Support us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a…
Facebook Group: / 1583992725237264
Reddit: / isaacarthur.
Twitter: / isaac_a_arthur on Twitter and RT our future content.
SFIA Discord Server: / discord.

Continue reading “The Fermi Paradox: Rare Complexity” »

Robotic exoskeletons designed to help humans with walking or physically demanding work have been the stuff of sci-fi lore for decades. Remember Ellen Ripley in that Power Loader in “Alien”? Or the crazy mobile platform George McFly wore in 2015 in “Back to the Future, Part II” because he threw his back out?

Step into the enigmatic realm of neutron stars, where the universe showcases its extremes. This documentary-style video guides you through the life and legacy of neutron stars, the dense remnants left by supernovae, the explosive deaths of massive stars. We delve into the heart of these cosmic enigmas, exploring how they compress more mass than the sun into a sphere just kilometers across, resulting in densities and gravitational fields almost beyond comprehension. Discover the peculiarities of neutron star phenomena, such as pulsars that beam radio waves across the cosmos and magnetars with magnetic fields trillion times stronger than Earth’s.

Researchers have discovered significant amounts of water vapor in the disc around the young star HL Tauri, suggesting the presence of water where planets are forming. This breakthrough, enabled by the ALMA telescope in Chile, marks the first time astronomers have been able to quantify water vapor in a cool, stable disc conducive to planet formation. The findings could have profound implications for our understanding of how planets, particularly those capable of hosting life, are formed. (Artist’s concept.) Credit: SciTechDaily.com.

Researchers have found water vapor in the disc around a young star exactly where planets may be forming.

Continue reading “Unlocking the Cosmic Recipe for Planet Formation” »

Liftoff occurred at 5:05 p.m. ET (2205 GMT).

Inherited memory was a popular theory in the past, inspiring stories like Frank Herbert’s Dune, but could it be possible with alien biologies or cybernetic civilizations, and what is it? Music Courtesy of: Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator

A new study into life on Mars has forced scientists to change what we thought we know about the Red Planet.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is helping scientists uncover how planets form by advancing understanding of their birthplaces and the circumstellar disks surrounding young stars.

In a paper published in The Astronomical Journal, a team of scientists, led by Naman Bajaj of the University of Arizona and including Dr. Uma Gorti at the SETI Institute, images for the first time winds from an old planet-forming disk (still very young relative to the sun) which is actively dispersing its gas content. The disk has been imaged before, but winds from old disks haven’t. Our knowing when the gas disperses is important, as it constrains the time left for nascent planets to consume the gas from their surroundings.

At the heart of this discovery is the observation of TCha, a young star (relative to the sun) enveloped by an eroding disk notable for its vast dust gap, approximately 30 astronomical units in radius. For the first time, astronomers have imaged the dispersing gas (aka winds) using the four lines of the noble gases neon (Ne) and argon (Ar), one of which is the first detection in a planet-forming disk. The images of [Ne II] show that the wind is coming from an extended region of the disk.