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New tool helps interpret future searches for life on exoplanets

Is there life on a distant planet? One way astronomers are trying to find out is by analyzing the light that is scattered off a planet’s atmosphere. Some of that light, which originates from the stars it orbits, has interacted with its atmosphere, and provides important clues to the gases it contains. If gases like oxygen, methane or ozone are detected, that could indicate the presence of living organisms. Such gases are known as biosignatures. A team of scientists from EPFL and Tor Vergata University of Rome has developed a statistical model that can help astronomers interpret the results of the search for these “signs of life.” Their research has just been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Since the first exoplanet—a planet that orbits a star other than the sun—was discovered 25 years ago, over 4,300 more have been identified. And the list is still growing: a new one is discovered every two or three days. Around 200 of the exoplanets found so far are telluric, meaning they consist mainly of rocks, like the Earth. While that’s not the only requirement for a planet to be able to host life—it also needs to have water and be a certain distance from its sun—it is one criterion that astronomers are using to focus their search.

In the coming years, the use of gas spectroscopy to detect biosignatures in ’ atmospheres will become an increasingly important element of astronomy. Many research programs are already under way in this area, such as for the CHEOPS exoplanet-hunting satellite, which went into orbit in December 2019, and the James-Webb optical telescope, scheduled to be launched in October 2021.

Philosophical Insights on Universal Consciousness and Evolving Phenomenal Mind

The Universe or any other phenomenon or entity contained therein is not objectively real but subjectively real. Patterns of information emerging from the ultimate code are what is more fundamental than particles of matter or space-time continuum itself all of which is levels below the Code. Nature behaves quantum code-theoretically at all levels. It’s hierarchies of quantum networks all the way down and all the way up. Being part of hierarchical quantum neural networks, a conscious observer system possesses a strange quality: collapsing quantum states of entangled conscious entities and having a privileged interpretation of that. From this perspective, entangled conscious agents would be a mirror conscious environment, whereas the quantum observer would be a central node of the entangled network.


“If we accept that the material universe as we know it is not a mechanical system but a virtual reality created by Absolute Consciousness through an infinitely complex orchestration of experiences, what are the practical consequences of this insight?” –Stanislav Grof

Just like absolute idealism, solipsism certainly defies our common sense but the deeper layer of truth is not what first meets the eye. Here’s what Richard Conn Henry and Stephen Palmquist write in their paper “An Experimental Test of Non-local Realism” (2007): “Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.” One can extend their line of reasoning by arriving at pantheistic solipsism as a likely revelation to ponder about.

Our minds operate in the domains of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and supersubjectivity. In the domain of intersubjectivity, minds create a reality by sharing “mindspace,” i.e. shared belief systems and ways of communication, minds then inhabit the reality which they have created. At the level of your individual mind, i.e. local consciousness, you play a multi-level virtual reality game of life but we all invariably converge at the Omega Singularity by forging our own discrete pathways to the ultimate divine. As you’re reading this right now, you’re now in your own subjective reality tunnel leading to the Source and back where you’re now all of which is definable as a parallel evolutionary feedback process within non-local holistic consciousness patterning this virtual multiverse.

Iconic observatory seen in James Bond film goes dark after massive telescope found mysteriously broken

Aside from tracking asteroids that could endanger the planet, the telescope played a major role in the “SETI” program — the search for intelligent life. It was notably used by astronomer Carl Sagan to send an interstellar message.

Earlier this week, the facility was forced to close down after a cable supporting a metal platform above the telescope fell, tearing a 100-foot gash in its giant reflector dish.

“The cable didn’t really break in the sense of a cable kind of snapping, but it just sort of slipped from its socket, which is you know, an even weirder condition,” Arecibo Observatory Director Francisco Cordova told CBS News’ Jeff Glor.

Why the Smallest Aliens are the Deadliest- Space Viruses (ft. Guilty Crown)

Oftentimes, when we think about aliens, we think about little green men with powerful lasers. However, what if I were to tell you that alien microbes — or space viruses- were the deadliest kind of alien?

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Supercomputer to scan ‘entire sky’ for signs of aliens

Scientists are ramping up their efforts in the search for signs of alien life.

Experts at the SETI Institute, an organization dedicated to tracking extraterrestrial intelligence, are developing state-of-the-art techniques to detect signatures from space that indicate the possibility of extraterrestrial existence.

These so-called “technosignatures” can range from the chemical composition of a planet’s atmosphere, to laser emissions, to structures orbiting other stars, among others, they said.

“Unknown” –Four Never-Before-Seen Circular Objects Detected in Cosmos

Invisible radio signals from the cosmos have revealed previously unknown phenomena from prebiotic molecules in a starburst about 250 million light-years from Earth to the true rotation of Mercury. But the most famous occurred on August 6, 1967, when a squiggly stretch of high-speed recordings occupying less than a quarter-inch of astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s radio-telescope readouts revealed the first sign of something strange — an unknown cosmic mystery.

The minuscule signal appeared over and over again in the same part of the sky and she realized she was looking at a cosmic mystery — a repeating string of radio pulses spaced a bit more than a second apart that were unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. Bell-Burnell had detected the first evidence of a pulsar LGM-1 for Little Green Men. They thought the pulses could possibly be a beacon from an alien source.

Fast forward to today — mysterious circles of radio waves have left astronomers who are part of a pilot survey for a new project called the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) baffled with no idea how they formed, or even how big or far away they are. They don’t seem to match anything that has been seen before in the cosmos. The researchers dubbed them Odd Radio Circles, or ORCs.

Mysterious deep-space flashes repeat every 157 days

Astronomers have discovered an activity cycle in another fast radio burst, potentially unearthing a significant clue about these mysterious deep-space phenomena.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are extragalactic flashes of light that pack a serious wallop, unleashing in a few milliseconds as much energy as Earth’s sun does in a century. Scientists first spotted an FRB in 2007, and the cause of these eruptions remains elusive nearly a decade and a half later; potential explanations range from merging superdense neutron stars to advanced alien civilizations.

NASA plans to return its astronauts in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on Aug. 2

NASA is currently planning to return astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to Earth on board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft in about two weeks, the space agency told CNBC on Friday.

The spacecraft, which the astronauts named Endeavour, is scheduled to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean on Aug. 2 at about 3 p.m. ET, according to NASA’s Johnson Space Center public affairs officer Kyle Herring.

Herring noted that the departure time from the International Space Station “is a bit of a moving target,” but said in an email that the spacecraft is scheduled to un-dock at about 8 p.m. ET on Aug. 1. NASA will look more closely at the weather forecasts for where the spacecraft might splash down after the astronauts perform a spacewalk next week. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine also confirmed those dates.

More Details On NASA’s VERITAS Mission, Which Could Go to Venus

Venus has always been a bit of the odd stepchild in the solar system. It’s similarities to Earth are uncanny: roughly the same size, mass, and distance from the sun. But the development paths the two planets ended up taking were very different, with one being the birthplace of all life as we know it, and the other becoming a cloud-covered, highly pressurized version of hell. That cloud cover, which is partially made up of sulfuric acid, has also given the planet an air of mystery. So much so that astronomers in the early 20th century speculated that there could be dinosaurs roaming about on the surface.

Some of that mystery will melt away if a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory gets a chance to launch their newest idea for a mission to the planet, the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topograph, and Spectroscopy (or VERITAS) mission.

VERITAS, which means “truth” in Latin, will seek to understand several truths about Venus. To do this it will rely, like all NASA missions on the instruments that make up its scientific payload. Since VERITAS is planned as an orbiter rather than a lander, its instrumentation will focus primarily on remote sensing. It will house two primary instruments, the Venus Emissivity Mapper (VEM) and the Venus Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (VISAR). VERITAS will also be able to do some additional science without even needing a stand-alone instrument. In a neat bit of engineering innovation, the telecommunication system that the satellite uses to send data back to Earth will also be used to map the strength of variations in Venus’ gravitational field.

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