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Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is facing an unpalatable truth

Hili: This is not the right world.
A: We do not have any other.

Hili: To nie jest właściwy świat.
Ja: Nie mamy innego.

Most people will think of a dry arid landscape when they think of Mars. When seen from orbit, dry river channels and lake-beds can be seen along with mineral deposits thought to be the created in the presence of liquid water. A team of researches now suggest that liquid carbon dioxide could also explain the features seen. On Earth, a process known as carbon sequestration liquefies CO2 which is buried underground. There are a number of mechanisms that could explain the liquid CO2 underground the researchers suggest.

Mars is often referred to as the ‘red planet’ due to its visual appearance. It’s the fourth planet from the Sun and has been a real focus for exploration and research for decades. The red colour is caused by iron oxide (rust) on its surface which can often be lifted up into the atmosphere by the Martian winds giving stunning pink skies. It’s just over half the size of the Earth, has a thin atmosphere mostly made of carbon dioxide and a surface composed of deserts and volcanoes like Olympus Mons. One of the key focusses of the exploration on Mars has been to establish whether the conditions are suitable for life, have been suitable in the past or whether liquid water exists on the surface. 

A full-disk view of Mars, courtesy of VMC. Credit: ESA

The presence of dry riverbeds and lake beds points to a surface that had liquid flowing long ago. Quite what that liquid is has been the cause for debate. Observations of minerals from orbit and from more direct analysis on the surface, suggest that the liquid was just water. However a team of researchers have published a paper in Nature Geoscience that suggests otherwise. They explain that water is only one of two possible liquids that could have existed on ancient Mars. The other is liquid carbon dioxide or CO2. Given the atmospheric conditions it may have been more likely and easier for CO2 in the atmosphere to condense into a liquid than for surface ice to melt into water. 

A topographic image of an area of anceint riverbeds on Mars. Created with data from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera on the Mars Express Orbiter. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/ESA_Multimedia/Copyright_Notice_Images

It has been the general consensus that the minerals point to liquid water. The paper suggests that processes like carbon sequestration, liquid CO2 buried underground can alter the composition of minerals even faster than water can. Lead author Michael Hecht, research scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory said “Understanding how sufficient liquid water was able to flow on early Mars to explain the morphology and mineralogy we see today is probably the greatest unsettled question of Mars science. There is likely no one right answer, and we are merely suggesting another possible piece of the puzzle.”

Image of the Martian atmosphere and surface obtained by the Viking 1 orbiter in June 1976. (Credit: NASA/Viking 1)

The paper explores our current understanding of the Martian atmosphere and combine it with the carbon sequestration research to conclude that the processes do support the evidence and mineralogy seen on Mars. They note however that this proposal does not suggest all Martian surface liquid was CO2 but rather there could have been a combination of the two.

They explain that liquid CO2 on the surface of Mars could exist as a stable surface liquid, as melted CO2 under CO2 ice or in subsurface reservoirs. Which actually took place would have dependent entirely on the distribution of CO2 at the time and the surface conditions too. The paper acknowledges that further testing is required under more realistic Martian conditions to test whether the same processes still occur. 

Source : Liquid on Mars was not necessarily all water

The post Other Liquids Could Be Forming Minerals on Mars appeared first on Universe Today.

In a surprise discovery, researchers found a new way to generate quantum entanglement for particles of light, which could make building quantum information networks easier

Iridium-based catalysts are needed to produce hydrogen using water electrolysis. Now, a team has shown that the newly developed P2X catalyst, which requires only a quarter of the Iridium, is as efficient and stable over time as the best commercial catalyst. Measurements at BESSY II have now revealed how the special chemical environment in the P2X catalyst during electrolysis promotes the oxygen evolution reaction during water splitting.

A research group has developed an innovative pesticide delivery system called nanopesticides. These tiny technologies could change how we use pesticides.

A team of scientists has created a new shape-changing polymer that could transform how future soft materials are constructed.

A team of scientists has created a new shape-changing polymer that could transform how future soft materials are constructed.

Researchers have developed a novel device that couples magnetic fields and kirigami design principles to remotely control the movement of a flexible dimpled surface, allowing it to manipulate objects without actually grasping them -- making it useful for lifting and moving items such as fragile objects, gels or liquids. The technology has potential for use in confined spaces, where robotic arms or similar tools aren't an option.

With the help of a new experiment, researchers have succeeded in confirming a ten-year-old theoretical study, which connects one of the most fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics -- the complementarity principle -- with information theory. Their study provides a piece of the puzzle for understanding future quantum communication, metrology, and cryptography.

With the help of a new experiment, researchers have succeeded in confirming a ten-year-old theoretical study, which connects one of the most fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics -- the complementarity principle -- with information theory. Their study provides a piece of the puzzle for understanding future quantum communication, metrology, and cryptography.

In fields ranging from immunology and ecology to economics and thermodynamics, multi-scale complex systems are ubiquitous. They are also notoriously difficult to model. Conventional approaches take either a bottom-up or top-down approach. But in disturbed systems, such as a post-fire forest ecosystem or a society in a pandemic, these unidirectional models can't capture the interactions between the small-scale behaviors and the system-level properties. Scientists have worked to resolve this challenge by building a hybrid method that links bottom-up behaviors and top-down causation in a single theory.

In fields ranging from immunology and ecology to economics and thermodynamics, multi-scale complex systems are ubiquitous. They are also notoriously difficult to model. Conventional approaches take either a bottom-up or top-down approach. But in disturbed systems, such as a post-fire forest ecosystem or a society in a pandemic, these unidirectional models can't capture the interactions between the small-scale behaviors and the system-level properties. Scientists have worked to resolve this challenge by building a hybrid method that links bottom-up behaviors and top-down causation in a single theory.

As a new President of the United States is elected, the NASA administrator role is usually reviewed. With the election of Trump, a new administrator has been chosen, Jared Isaacman. He is a billionaire entrepreneur, an experienced jet pilot and has himself completed to private flights to space. He was also the first to complete a spacewalk during the Polaris Dawn mission. Isaacman replaces the outgoing administrator Bill Nelson, a former space shuttle astronaut and senator. 

Jared Isaacman was born on 11 February 1983. At 41, he is probably most well known for commanding the Inspiration 4 mission, the first all civilian spaceflight. He is also well known for initiating the Polaris Program to push forward private space exploration. It was during the Polaris Dawn mission that Isaacman became the first private astronaut to successfully undertake a spacewalk. As a skilled pilot he holds a number of aviation records including having circumnavigated the world in a light jet.

The Polaris Dawn crew (left to right): Anna Menon, Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, and Sarah Gillis. Credit: Polaris Program/John Kraus

His wealth of experience that means Isaacman is well placed to drive NASA forward as it continues partnering with private companies like SpaceX. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Isaacman to serve as NASA’s administrator and, if confirmed, will be the first person to run the agency that has experience in command of a space mission. 

Previously Isaacman founded the Shift4 Payment financial technology company. He launched the company at the age of 16 and led the organisation into a multibillion dollar success. Clearly having aptitude in the technology sector, Isaacman soon showed his ability manage large organisations, something he can take to his new role managing NASA’s wide ranging portfolio. 

Like all who take on the administrator role, Isaacman has a vision for NASA. He is keen to drive forward public-private collaboration and global partnerships as a cornerstone to NASA’s mission. Pledging to ensure NASA remains at the forefront of technological development and discovery. The nomination comes at a key point for NASA as the Artemis mission ramps up toward its Moon landings. 

Artist’s rendering of the Starship HLS on the Moon’s surface. NASA has contracted with SpaceX to provide the lunar landing system. Credit: SpaceX

As part of the announcement on TruthSocial.Com, Trump said “Jared’s passion for space, his astronaut experience, dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe and advancing the new space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new era.“

Even though President-elect Trump has nominated Isaacman, his appointment has to be confirmed by the Senate. If successful he will lead NASA’s 18,000 employees and $25 billion budget! Certainly not a job for the faint hearted. 

Source : Jared Isaacman’s X Feed

The post Jared Isaacman is Trump’s Choice for NASA Administrator appeared first on Universe Today.

The Artemis moon landings are delayed again due to technical difficulties. This time, the problem is with the Orion spacecraft heat shield. NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced that the new landing dates are in April of 2026 for Artemis II and sometime in 2027 for the first human landing during the Artemis III mission.

The difficulties the Artemis program faces stem from the complexity of the hardware and trajectories needed to take astronauts to the Moon according to Nelson. “The Artemis campaign is the most daring, technically challenging, collaborative, international endeavor humanity has ever set out to do,” said Nelson. He pointed out that the mission has made a lot of progress. However, there’s more work to be done, in particular on the Orion life support systems. Artemis II is next up in early 2026. It will be a test flight to demonstrate the viability of all the systems, said Nelson. “We need to get this next test flight right. That’s how the Artemis campaign succeeds.”

Making a safe return through Earth’s atmosphere is a vital part of the mission. After Orion came back from its Artemis 1 mission in November 2022, engineers noticed issues with the heat shield. They figured out that gases generated inside the heat shield didn’t vent properly. That caused cracks in the shield and triggered an investigation. The decision to delay the Artemis II test flight came after that investigation. This allows NASA engineers to work with the heat shield currently attached to the Orion capsule for the April 2026 flight. In addition, they’re studying the re-entry process to avoid future problems with the shield.

Artemis II to the Moon

As we all know, the Artemis program will allow long-term exploration of the Moon. The April 2026 mission is a test flight that will orbit, but not land, and then return to Earth. The idea is to test all the spacecraft’s systems with astronauts on board.

The Orion spacecraft is the crew’s living quarters and lab, all in one. It’s built to carry four astronauts from Earth to space and ultimately to the Moon. It makes sense that this “home away from home” has to be shielded from pretty much anything that space—and Earth’s atmosphere—can throw at the capsule. This includes the ultrahot trip through our atmosphere on the return trip. At times, Orion experiences temperatures up to 2700 C (5000 F), which could harm the capsule if not for the shielding. So, the shield is a life-saver.

The heat shield retrieved after the Artemis 1 test flight to the Moon. Crews inspected it to understand what caused it to char. Courtesy: NASA.

When Orion first encountered the heat shield problem, engineers determined that heating rates increased during the spaceship’s planned “dips” into the atmosphere. It was performing a skip guidance entry technique. Heat built up inside the heat shield’s material and gases accumulated. Eventually, that cracked areas in the outer layer of the shield and blew some of it off to space. It turns out that if astronauts had been aboard, they would not have been affected. However, now that engineers understand what occurred, they can enhance the heat shield material to make sure it doesn’t happen again. In addition, the mission plan will be altered to change how far the capsule flies between atmospheric re-entry and eventual landing.

Upgrading Mission Plans

The extended time until the April 2026 and mid-2027 Artemis missions will allow improvements to the capsule and launch systems. For example, engineers can give more attention to environmental and life support systems. This is particularly important for the Artemis III mission. It will launch on top of a Space Launch System rocket into Earth orbit. Once there, the mission will perform a translunar injection to send it to lunar space.

Not only will it carry astronauts to the Moon, but they will land in the south polar region using a SpaceX landing system. That 30-day mission will require at least two crew members to spend a week at the pole collecting samples, doing site photography, and measuring conditions there.

This image shows nine candidate landing regions for NASA’s Artemis III mission, with each region containing multiple potential sites for the first crewed landing on the Moon in more than 50 years. The background image of the lunar South Pole terrain within the nine regions is a mosaic of LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) WAC (Wide Angle Camera) images. Credit: NASA

Artemis III will be the first time anyone has set foot on the Moon since the last Apollo mission in December 1972. The entire Artemis program aims at providing long-term habitation and study of Earth’s nearest neighbor in space. To that end, NASA has been studying several interesting landing spots at the pole.

Eventually, there will be an orbiting lunar station, plus habitats on the surface and regular trips between. NASA and other agencies expect that lunar explorers will be spending their time studying the surface and geology of the Moon, plus determining what resources are available for long-term exploration and habitation. However, given the pace of the program, those next developments probably won’t take place until the 2030s.

For More Information

NASA Identifies Cause of Artemis I Orion Heat Shield Chart Loss
As Artemis Moves Forward, NASA Picks SpaceX to Land Next Americans on Moon
Artemis II
Artemis III: NASA’s First Human Mission to the Lunar South Pole

The post NASA Pushes Human Moon Landing Back to 2027 appeared first on Universe Today.

A resurgence of the screwworm parasite in Central America could have a devastating impact on livestock farming, and poses a threat to humans and wildlife too

The most recent Oxford Union debate was both odious and raucous, and you can read about it in a piece by Niall Ferguson at The Free Press (archived here).  An excerpt:

Something is rotten in the state of Britain. It was epitomized by a recent [Nov. 28] event at the Oxford Union, the 201-year-old debating society that is such a distinctive and admirable part of Oxford life. It was at the Union that, 40 years ago, I spoke as freely (and indeed as irresponsibly) as I ever have, discovering in the process that I was not cut out for politics. It was there that I saw great debaters of the past, present, and future.

But I never saw anything like the events of November 28.

The motion for debate was in itself a provocation: “This House Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” But what was truly shocking was the conduct of the president of the Union, an Egyptian student named Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, who appears to have abused his position by openly siding with those proposing the motion and treating the opposing speakers with contempt.

According to the broadcaster, Jonathan Sacerdoti, who was arguing for Israel’s side, Osman-Mowafy canceled the traditional pre-debate group photographs, but posed alone for private photos with the anti-Israel team. During the debate, the pro-Israel speakers were repeatedly heckled by the crowd. At one point, a young woman stood up and screamed at Sacerdoti: “Liar! Fuck you, the genocidal motherfucker!”

Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a senior Hamas leader who defected to Israel, who was arguing alongside Sacerdoti, was met with jeering derision and cries of “traitor” and “prostitute” (in Arabic). Yousef asked the audience to indicate by a show of hands how many of them would have reported prior knowledge of the October 7, 2023, atrocities to Israel. Not even a quarter of the crowd raised their hands.

For the other side, Miko Peled, an Israeli general’s son turned radical anti-Zionist, described the murders, rapes, and kidnappings of October 7 as “acts of heroism.” The Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, who has equated Zionism with genocide, began his speech by announcing that there was “no room for debate” and ended it by walking out of the chamber. The motion passed by 278 in favor to 59 against.

I have been looking for videos of this debate online, but the bad news is that so far only one short segment has appeared. The good news, though, is that it features the eloquent, brave, and whip-smart Natasha Hausdorff, lawyer and legal director of the UK Lawyers for Israel.

Reader “Bat” sent me the link, but also his take on the video below, which you should watch. His words:

The future Mrs PCC(E) really gave them what for at that shameful Oxford Union debate last week. Here is a video of her full 21-minute speech during which she shows no intimidation and, with a light wave of the hand in several instances, ignores the catcalls of the heavily anti-Israel audience. Though originally scheduled for 15 minutes, she makes it explicitly clear that she will take an extra five minutes as the anti-Israel speakers did when also ignoring the house rules earlier. She ignores the gavel of the Union debate judge several times and speaks for a full 21 minutes. A lovely performance in very hostile territory. 

It is clear that Hausdorff is passionate and terribly angry at the views of her opponents, but her anger is manifested only in her manner of speech, for she keeps decorum throughout. Pity that the same can’t be said of the audience or the judge.

I will add one personal comment, directed at those who on these shores also accuse Israel of “genocide”.  If Israel wanted to kill off all the Gazans—and there are two million of them—it would already be a fait accompli. All it would take would be a series of massive airstrikes and heavy-handed urban warfare directly targeting civilians.  But that is not happening

Instead, Israel has taken care, as far as possible, to avoid killing noncombatants. It warns civilians of airstrikes in advance, sets up humanitarian zones, sends in thousands of tons of food, and, at risk to IDF soldiers’ own lives, tries to target only members of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.  Is this the act of people bent on genocide?

Since the terrorists use civilians as human shields (Hamas boasts of this!), a large toll of noncombatants is the sad but inevitable result of the terrorists’ cynical tactics.  What about those tunnels under hospitals and schools? Nobody can deny this—except for those who want the state of Israel gone, and its Jews with it.

Those miscreants who accuse Israel of genocide also, and inevitably, fail to mention the explicit genocide of Palestinian terrorists. The first Hamas charter, the teaching of martyrdom and Jew-killing to Palestinian children, and, of course, the endless terrorism enacted against Israeli citizens since 1948—all of these speak of the terrorists’ desire to make the Middle East Judenrein.

No, the real genocide is never mentioned, for it is seen in both the words and actions of Palestinian terrorists and their sympathizers. Instead, the accusation of genocide gets turned against its very victims: the Israelis and now the Jews of other countries (the latest incident was in Australia). I have nothing but contempt for those who ignore these facts.

But I fear I am just repeating what Ms. Hausdorff said above. Listen for yourself.

Sometimes in science you have to step back and take another look at underlying assumptions. Sometimes its necessary when progress stalls. One of the foundational questions of our day concerns the Fermi Paradox, the contradiction between what seems to be a high probability of extraterrestrial life and the total lack of evidence that it exists.

What assumptions underlie the paradox?

The Fermi Paradox is based on the fact that our galaxy is home to hundreds of billions of stars, with many or even most of them likely hosting multiple planets. The sheer number of planets urges us to conclude that life should be abundant, and that some of this life must have evolved into sentiency like us. Even if only a small percentage become technological space-faring civilizations, there should still be many of them. The paradoxical part is that if this is true, there should be evidence. We should see some indication that they’re out there, or they should’ve even contacted us by now. But we don’t.

There are many proposed solutions to the paradox. The primary one is that life is not abundant and technological civilizations are exceedingly rare. We could be the only one. There’s also the Great Filter solution, which states that some critical step to becoming a spacefaring civilization that spreads throughout the galaxy is unattainable. A natural catastrophe of some sort, our own stupidity and war, the inevitability of an AI singularity taking out a civilization; many solutions to the paradox have been proposed, but we’re left wondering.

Another concept related to the Fermi paradox is the Kardashev Scale. It measures the technological advancements of species from Type 1 to Type 3. A Type 1 civilization can harness all of the energy available on a planet, while a Type 2 civilization can do the same for an entire star. A type 3 civilization on the Kardashev Scale has advanced so far that they can capture all of the energy emitted by an entire galaxy. It’s a framework for thinking about civilizations on extraordinarily long timescales.

Energy consumption is estimated in three types of civilizations defined by the Kardashev scale. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

There’s an underlying assumption to all of this thinking, and in a new research article, researcher Lukáš Likavčan examines them. Likavčan is a researcher at the Center for AI and Culture, NYU Shanghai, and at the Berggruen Institute. The research is titled “The Grass of the Universe: Rethinking Technosphere, Planetary History, and Sustainability with Fermi Paradox.”

The concept of environmental humanities is part of the background in Likavčan’s research. Environmental humanities is an interdisciplinary field in academics that examines the relationships between humans and environment. It combines environmental studies with humanities like history and literature. It criticizes our anthropocentric views of nature and tries to understand how we think about nature, how we represent it, and how we impact ecosystems.

“SETI is not a usual point of departure for environmental humanities,” Likavčan writes. “However, this paper argues that theories originating in this field have direct implications for how we think about viable inhabitation of the Earth. To demonstrate SETI’s impact on environmental humanities, this paper introduces the Fermi paradox as a speculative tool to probe possible trajectories of planetary history, and especially the “Sustainability Solution” proposed by Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum.”

Likavčan is referring to the paper “THE SUSTAINABILITY SOLUTION TO THE FERMI PARADOX,” in which researchers Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum presented an overlooked solution to the paradox. Their sustainability solution states that we don’t see any evidence of ETIs because rapid growth is not a sustainable development pattern. From this perspective, the Kardashev Scale is rendered futile. No civilization will ever use all available energy from its planet, star, or galaxy, because the growth required to reach that level of mastery is unsustainable.

Extraterrestrials in the 1979 movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Are there other technological civilizations out there? What are they like? Do they really expand throughout space? Credit: Columbia Pictures / Alien Wiki

“By positing that exponential growth is not a sustainable development pattern, this solution rules out space-faring civilizations colonizing solar systems or galaxies,” Likavčan writes in regards to the sustainability solution. He elaborates on the solution by re-thinking three underlying concepts: technospheres, planetary history, and sustainability.

Likavčan says that the technosphere is only a transitory layer. It won’t continue to grow until every civilization builds a Dyson sphere around their star to become a Type 2 civ on the Kardashev Scale. That’s simply not sustainable. We’re biased towards that thinking because from our perspective, we’re expanding into space and the future seems bright and almost unlimited. Behind us are centuries of colonial expansions and decades of stunningly rapid technological progress, so it’s almost automatic to think it can continue. But alarm bells are ringing. Continual technological progress may very well be unsustainable.

“As the authors state,” Likavčan writes regarding Haqq-Misra and Baum’s sustainability solution, “the formulation of the Fermi paradox contains a biased presupposition based on the observation of only one planetary community of intelligent species (i.e. humans), which is in turn based on a warped understanding of human history, which assumes that history unfolds in a progressive series of civilizational, colonial expansions.”

A Type II civilization is one that can directly harvest the energy of its star using a Dyson Sphere or something similar. Credit: Fraser Cain (with Midjourney)

In this case, our efforts to detect other civilizations through their technology is unlikely to be successful. “The technosphere is a transitory layer that shall fold back into the biosphere,” Likavčan writes.

We need to rethink our assumptions about our planetary history, too, according to Likavčan. We assume that what has played out on Earth is “normal” and widespread. The human community on our planet is not a single occurrence. Instead, it plays out everywhere that life evolves on a suitable planet in the right location around a suitable star.

Here Likavčan points to the sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem. In his novel Solaris, one of Lem’s characters says, “Us, we’re common, we’re the grass of the universe, and we take pride in our commonness, that it’s so widespread, and we thought it could encompass everything.” This is the “grass of the Universe” metaphor.

“The metaphor of the “grass of the universe” is central to this paper, as it recognizes the crucial environmental implication of the potential existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe—namely that the history of the human planetary community on Earth is not a singular occurrence, but potentially unfolds throughout the cosmos in many permutations, conditioned by the setting of given star system and the inhabited exoplanet(s),” Likavčan writes.  

We don’t how true this may or may not be, but we can recognize it as an assumption and open our thinking to other possibilities.

The sustainability solution to the Fermi paradox outlined by Haqq-Misra and Baum says that “… human civilization needs to transition to sustainable development in order to avoid collapse.” There seems to be some inherent wisdom in that statement. It may even be axiomatic. But for Likavčan it may not be enough.

Here we encounter the concept of genesity, introduced in a 2022 paper. It goes beyond our notions of habitability, which largely rely on the presence of water, with energy from a star, and including the CHNOPS elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur), deemed critical for life. “Finally, in an effort to be more inclusive of life as we do not know it, we propose tentative criteria for a more general and expansive characterization of habitability that we call genesity,” the authors of the 2022 paper wrote. Genesity is basically life as we do no know it.

This all adds up to a different understanding of advanced civilizations that can somehow survive, including our own if humanity is fortunate. The planet is primary, and any technosphere will have to be harmonious with planetary conditions.

“In this light, the Sustainability Solution to the Fermi Paradox contains a philosophical takeaway: it tells a story of the convergence of the technosphere with the planet’s pre-existing conditions, rather than the story of replacement or dominance,” Likavčan writes.

Instead of humans being primary, or even existing life being primary, it’s planets that are primary. So a technosphere is only sustainable when it expands or strengthens a planet’s genesity. That puts efforts like SETI, and our understanding of our own civilization’s trajectory, in a new light.

“Since the planets assume the central role in this normative framework, this paper proposes to follow innovative moral philosophies, such as planetocentric ethics,” Likavčan explains.

From that perspective, the only successful technosphere is one that folds back into the biosphere, making it very difficult, even impossible, to detect. Does that means it’s time to shut down SETI and any similar future endeavours? Of course not.

It’s about rethinking our underlying assumptions. To do that, Likavčan proposes some avenues for further research.

Antennas of the Very Large Array against the Milky Way. Even with all we’ve learned, we’re still left wondering about many things. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/Jeff Hellerman

We need a better understanding of how technospheres might fold back into biospheres. Not just in our case, but from a wider perspective. We also need to do more work into planetary histories and try to ascertain what parts of ours might be more generic and what parts might not reflect other planets with biospheres at all. Lastly, we still don’t know what life as we don’t know it might look like. Will evolution always produce “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful,” as Darwin said.

Our predicament is that we have so little information to go on. Naturally, we look around us and use our circumstances here on Earth as a springboard.

However, as we go about our business, it’s important to sometimes examine our underlying assumptions, as this paper shows.

The post Advanced Civilizations Could be Indistinguishable from Nature appeared first on Universe Today.

As the Arctic ground thaws due to climate change, trees are struggling to stay upright – and this slows their growth and makes them store less carbon

A team of interdisciplinary scientists has developed flexible fibers with self-healing, light-emitting and magnetic properties. The Scalable Hydrogel-clad Ionotronic Nickel-core Electroluminescent (SHINE) fiber is bendable, emits highly visible light, and can automatically repair itself after being cut, regaining nearly 100 per cent of its original brightness. In addition, the fiber can be powered wirelessly and manipulated physically using magnetic forces.

A team of interdisciplinary scientists has developed flexible fibers with self-healing, light-emitting and magnetic properties. The Scalable Hydrogel-clad Ionotronic Nickel-core Electroluminescent (SHINE) fiber is bendable, emits highly visible light, and can automatically repair itself after being cut, regaining nearly 100 per cent of its original brightness. In addition, the fiber can be powered wirelessly and manipulated physically using magnetic forces.