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Astrophotography is a challenging art. Beyond the usual skill set of understanding things such as light exposure, color balance, and the quirks of your kit, there is the fact that stars are faint and they move.

Technically, the stars don’t move; the Earth rotates. But to capture a faint object, you need a long exposure time. Typically, from a few seconds to half a minute, depending on the level of detail you want to capture. In thirty seconds, the sky will shift by more than a tenth of a degree. That might not seem like much, but it’s enough to make the stars blur ever so slightly. Many astrophotographers take multiple images and stack them for even greater detail, which would blur things even more. It can create an interesting effect, but it doesn’t give you a panorama of pinpoint stars.

The motion blur of starlight used to create a rain of stars. Credit: Diana Juncher/ESO

Fortunately, there is plenty of off-the-shelf equipment you can get to account for motion blur. There are tracking motors you can mount to your camera that move your frame in time with the Earth’s rotation. They are incredibly precise so that you can capture image after image for hours, and your camera will always be perfectly aligned with the sky. If you make your images into a movie, the stars will remain fixed while the Earth rotates beneath them.

Of course, most astrophotographers have the same limitations of almost everyone. We are bound to the Earth and can only view the stars through our blanket of sky. If we could rise above the atmosphere, we would have an unburdened view of the heavens. A sky filled with uncountable, untwinkling stars. While astronauts often talk about this wondrous sight, photographs of stars from orbit are often less than spectacular. That’s because of how difficult astrophotography is in space, and it all comes back to motion blur.

Most astrophotography is done from the International Space Station (ISS). Since the ISS is in a relatively low orbit, it travels around the Earth once every 90 minutes. This means the stars appear to drift at a rate 16 times faster than they do on Earth. A 30-second exposure on the ISS has greater motion blur than an eight minute exposure on Earth. Because of this, most photographs from the ISS either have blurry stars or only capture the brightest stars.

Don Pettit’s Homemade Orbital Sidereal Tracker. Credit: Don Pettit

Ideally, an astronaut astrophotographer would bring along a camera mount similar to the ones used on Earth. But the market demand for such a mount is tiny, so you can’t just buy one from your local camera store. You have to make your own, which is precisely what astronaut Don Pettit did. Working with colleagues from RIT, he created a camera tracker that shifts by 0.064 degrees per second and can be adjusted give or take 5%. With this mount, Don has been able to capture 30-second exposures with almost no motion blur. His images rival some of the best Earth-based images, but he takes them from space!

The detail of his photographs is unprecedented. In the image above, for example, you can see the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and not just as fuzzy patches in the sky. You can see individual stars within the clouds. The image also gives an excellent view of an effect known as airglow. Molecules in the upper atmosphere are ionized by sunlight and cosmic rays, which means this layer always has a faint glow to it. No matter how skilled a terrestrial astrophotographer is, their images will always have a bit of this glow.

Airglow from different molecules in the upper atmosphere. Credit: NASA/annotations by Alex Rivest

But not Don Pettit. He’s currently on the ISS, capturing outstanding photographs as a side hobby from his day job. If you want to see more of his work, check him out on Reddit, where he posts under the username astro_pettit.

The post Astronaut Don Pettit is Serious, He Rigged up Astrophotography Gear on the ISS appeared first on Universe Today.

Small robots directed by magnetic fields can cooperatively lift heavy objects, form floating rafts and push through clogs. They may one day deliver drugs within the human body

Electronics made using diamond-based chips would have many advantages, but have been hard to make – a new technique involving sticky tape could change that

Researchers have tried to work out how fast Australopithecus afarensis could run by creating a 3D digital robot of the ancient hominin

UPDATE: The site to which I refer below disappeared for a while this morning, and then reappeared.  So the post right below still links to the right places:

Simon Fraser University in British Columbia recently adopted a policy of institutional neutrality.  But its latest endeavor shows that it’s still in the thrall of wokeness, for it’s launched a policy of “decolonizing and indigenizing” STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).  Nothing good can come of their effort, for, as you see, it can mean only the adoption of indigenous “ways of knowing” in the sciences.  There are several pages on the site, which was sent to me by a member of the Simon Fraser community. Click on the screenshot below to go to the “welcome” page and its links.  The small print in the headline says this:

Welcome to the Decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM (DISTEM) Website, dedicated to decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM at Simon Fraser University (SFU)!

This website, originally designed to support STEM faculty, is a valuable tool for anyone committed to the decolonization of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to decolonize and indigenize our teaching. Click the link to go to the web site. Most of the pages are just a bit of text and links to other sites or to the home pages of the authors.

The endeavor seems serious, for this is part of the rationale:

To understand the importance of such systems in the decolonization of library classification, it is essential to explore Ashley’s work with the Indigenous Curriculum Resource Centre (ICRC) and her adaptation of the Brian Deer Classification System (BDCS). Most importantly, classification and categorization systems need to shift away from Western-European knowledge systems to prioritizing Indigenous ways of knowing and being, which are community focused. For example, a shift in language from “Indigenous Peoples – History and Culture” to “Indigenous Peoples – Communities,” moves the narrative away from historicizing Indigenous peoples toward their power, knowledge, and contemporary contributions. Not only does this shift place Indigenous Peoples and communities at the centre, but all other surrounding categories move outward to reflect their relationality to these communities and Indigenous knowledge. Such shifts in thinking and doing are crucial for STEM faculty and students to learn and apply. We strongly encourage you to follow the links provided above to gain a deeper understanding of these vital concepts and how we can all further decolonize our minds.

Note that the program is not designed to bring more indigenous people into science—though that may be one of its aims—but to CENTER the contributions “Indigenous Peoples and Communities” in teaching the content of science, at the same time “moving all other surrounding categories outward.”

Some of the aims from the Project History:

One of the major concerns faculty shared was that they lack the time and resources necessary to learn about and then implement these processes, both personally and professionally. This issue was exasperated because information and resources related to decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM, as well as teaching and learning, are dispersed and disconnected both online and off, which can be overwhelming for faculty, particularly those just beginning their decolonizing journeys. Thus, the DISTEM Website originally aimed to meet faculty needs by creating a central online living archive of relevant and varied resources focused on decolonizing and Indigenizing STEM, both generally and regarding teaching and learning, in postsecondary institutions.

As I always say, if there is indigenous knowledge that is part of STEM, then by all means incorporate it into STEM, for I seriously doubt that there is enough empirical knowledge in American northwest tribes to constitute a substantial moiety of modern science. Like the indigenous “knowledge” of New Zealand, it will consist largely of trial-and-error methods that the locals developed for subsistence: how, when, and where to catch fish, collect berries, build canoes, and the like.  Indigenous knowledge is not a toolkit like modern science—a toolkit for finding answers that incorporates hypothesis-testing, experiments, statistics, blind testing, pervasive doubt, and so out. Rather, indigenous knowledge is a set of facts acquired independently of that tookit. But yes, there may be some indigenous knowledge there, but seriously, why would Simon Fraser make a whole program out of centering science on it.

You know why: they are displaying their virtue by sacralizing the practices of the indigenous people.  But those people descended from other people who crossed over the Bering Strait about 15,000 years ago, and those people had their own knowledge. It’s bizarre to center the “knowledge” of tribes who flourished before modern science began, but again, that’s what you have to do if you want to show your virtue. And it’s too bad for science—and for Simon Fraser.

If you have any interest in scrolling around these pages, the person who sent this to me says this: The “Prototype” page is the resource. The coloured circles and the orbiting dots are links – click one to make the dots stand still and get a pop-up with some text and a link to a resource. They are amazingly bad. I picked one from “Animals” and one from “Creation Stories”, and got links to old essays by the queer theorist Kim Tallbear. Not a scientist, and not writing about or engaging with science. The “Creation Stories” link is full of old tropes about the racism of human population genetics research. Ho hum. Here’s what the prototype page looks like (click to go to it). The rings are labeled, from the outside in, “Indigenous Influence/Contributions to Non-Indigenous Society,” “Elders,” “Family Life and Parenting,” “Sexuality and Relationships,” “Gender Roles and Gender Identity,” “Children and Youth,” “Social Structures—Kinship, Clans, Families,” “Indigenous Identity”, and, in the center, “Roles and Relationships.” You know already that this is a sociological resource having almost nothing to do with STEM.

If you click on the green dot in the “Gender Roles and Gender Identity” site, for instance, you get one reference and its summary:

Two Spirit Garrett, M. T., & Barret, B. (2003). Two Spirit: Counseling Native American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual People. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 31(2), 131–142. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1912.2003.tb00538.x

The cultural world of the Two Spirit, the traditional role of Native individuals believed to possess both male and female spirit, is explored in both “old ways” and current-day experiences. Cultural beliefs and meanings around sexual identity are discussed from a Native perspective with recommendations for counseling Two Spirit clients.  (A Spanish translation follows.)

This has nothing to do with STEM.

In one respect this seems harmless, because there’s no way in tarnation for this stuff to really make its way into STEM. But in other ways it’s not harmless, as it warps scholarship, pretends that sociology or ideology is hard science, and makes a mockery of true STEM.

Poor Simon Fraser. In the end they are not decolonizing of indigenizing science, but sacralizing Native Americans.

Quantum computing hardware has been progressing rapidly in recent years – and quantum software is following

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “rooted,” is a good one, and comes with this note:

#ffffff to be precise. [JAC: this refers to the color white]

A reminder of the UK parliament’s proposed definition of Islamophobia:

Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.

Jesus is right on the money, but Mo is wrong in saying Jesus is an “old white guy” (he was supposedly around 33 when he was crucified.

We’ve already seen the success of the Ingenuity probe on Mars. The first aircraft to fly on another world set off on its maiden voyage in April 2021 and has now completed 72 flights. Now a team of engineers are taking the idea one step further and investigating ways that drones can be released from satellites in orbit and explore the atmosphere without having to land. The results are positive and suggest this could be a cost effective way to explore alien atmospheres. 

The idea of using drones on alien worlds has been enticing engineers and planetary explorers for a few years now. They’re lightweight and versatile and an excellent cost effective way to study the atmosphere of the planets. Orbiters and rovers have been visiting the planets for decades now but drones can explore in ways rovers and orbiters cannot. Not only will they be useful to study atmospheric effects but they will be able to reach inaccessible surface areas providing imagery to inform potential future land based study. 

Illustration of Perseverance on Mars

Perhaps one of the most famous, indeed the only successful planetary drone to date is the Ingenuity drone which was part of the Perseverance rover mission. It was able to demonstrate that controlled flight in the Martian atmosphere was possible, could hunt out possible landing sites for future missions and direct ground based exploration. It’s iconic large wingspan was needed due to the rarefied atmosphere on Mars requiring larger rotor blades to generate the required lift. Ingenuity was originally planned as a technology demonstration mission but it soon became a useful tool in the Perseverance mission arsenal. 

Ingenuity helicopter

NASA engineers are very aware of the benefits of drone technology and so a team of engineers and researchers from the Armstrong Flight Research Center in California have been taking the idea of small drones one step further. The research was part of the Center Innovation Fund award from 2023 and began as the team developed three atmospheric probe models. The models were all the same, measuring 71 cm from top to bottom, one for visual demonstration, the other two for research and technology readiness. 

Their first launch on 1 August didn’t go to plan with a failure in the release mechanism. The team reviewed everything from the lifting aircraft, the release mechanism and even the probe design itself to identify improvements. The team were finally able to conduct flights with their new atmospheric probe after it was released from a quad rotor remotely piloted aircraft on 22 October 2024. 

The flights were conducted above the Rogers Dry Lake near in California with designs informed by previous NASA instrumentation designed for lifting and transportation. The test flights were aiming to prove the shape of the probe worked. The team now want to release the probe from a higher altitude, ultimately hoping to be able to release it from a satellite in orbit around a planet. 

The next steps are to review photos and videos from the flight to identify further improvements before another probe is built. Once they have probed the flight technology, instrumentation will be added to facilitate data gathering and recording. If all goes to plan then the team hope to be chosen for a mission to one of the planets, be released in orbit and then dive into the atmosphere under controlled flight to learn more about the environment. 

Source : Atmospheric Probe Shows Promise in Test Flight

The post Drone Test Flights Are Being Tested for Flights on Alien Worlds appeared first on Universe Today.

Today we have some underwater photos from reader Peter Klaver. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

My friends and I did 5 days of scuba diving from San Pedro in Belize. The coral reefs there are beautiful and are home to many animals.

The large animals we saw most often were nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum):

They are quite tame and if we spotted them lying on the sea floor, we could move in quite close to them:

The other type of sharks we saw were reef sharks:

There were lobsters:

And turtles. I’m not 100% sure, but I thin this is a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas):

There were rays of wildly varying size. This was a larger one:

And there were these almost entirely white fish whose name I don’t know:

Since the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1992, thousands more have been discovered. 40 light years away, one such system of exoplanets was discovered orbiting a star known as Trappist-1. Studies using the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed that one of the planets, Trappist-1 b has a crust that seems to be changing. Geological activity and weathering are a likely cause and if the latter, it suggests the exoplanet has an atmosphere too. 

Exoplanets are planets that orbit around other stars. In every way they vary in size, composition and distance from their star. Finding them is quite a tricky undertaking and there are a number of different approaches that are used. Since the first discovery, over 5,000 exoplanets have been found and now of course, the hunt is on to find planets that could sustain life. Likely candidates would be orbiting their host star in a region known as the habitable zone where the temperature is just right for a life sustaining world to evolve. 

This illustration shows what the hot rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b could look like. A new method can help determine what rocky exoplanets might have large reservoirs of subsurface water. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)

There are three exoplanets in the Trappist-1 system that orbit the star within the habitable zone; Trappist-1e, f and g. The star is a cool dwarf star in the constellation of Aquarius and was identified as being a host of exoplanets in 2017. The discoveries were made using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The system was named after the Transiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST.)

The Spitzer Space Telescope observatory trails behind Earth as it orbits the Sun. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Commissariat aux Énergies Atomiques (CEA) in Paris have been studying Trappist-1b. They have been using the Mid-Infrared Imager of the James Webb Space Telescope to measure thermal radiation from the exoplanet. Their findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Previous studies concluded that Trappist-1b was a dark rocky planet that and no atmosphere. The new study has turned this conclusion on its head. 

The measurements found by the team revealed something else. They found a world with a surface composed of largely unchanged material. Typically the surface of a world with no atmosphere is weathered by radiation and peppered with impacts from meteorites. The study found that the surface materials is around 1,000 years old, much younger than the planet itself which is thought to be several billion years old. 

The team postulate that this could indicate volcanic activity or plate tectonics since the planet has sufficient size to still retain internal heat from its formation. It’s also possible that the observations reveal a thick atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide. The observations suggested at first that there was no layer of carbon dioxide since they found no evidence of thermal radiation absorption. They ran models however to show that atmospheric haze can reverse the temperature profile of a carbon dioxide rich atmosphere. Typically the ground is the warmest region but in the case of Trappist-1b, it may be that the atmosphere absorbs radiation, this heats the upper layers which radiates the infrared energy itself. A similar process is seen on Saturn’s moon Titan. 

Fortunately, the alignment of the planetary system means that it passes directly in front of the star so that spectroscopic observations and the dimming of starlight as the planet passes in front can reveal the profile of the atmosphere. Further studies are now underway to explore this and take further observations to conclude the nature of the atmosphere around Trappist-1b. 

Source : Does the exoplanet Trappist-1 b have an atmosphere after all?

The post One of the Most Interesting Exoplanets Just Got Even More Interesting! appeared first on Universe Today.

We have been giving a lot of attention to RFK Jr recently, with good reason. He is poised to be put in charge of the federal institutions that regulate health and medicine. This is beyond problematic, as he has a long list of antiscience opinions. Part of the problem is that he lacks topic expertise (he is not a health care professional […]

The post RFK Jr On Obesity first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Reinforcement Learning, an artificial intelligence approach, has the potential to guide physicians in designing sequential treatment strategies for better patient outcomes but requires significant improvements before it can be applied in clinical settings, finds a new study.

A new study offers hope for people who are blind or have low vision (pBLV) through an innovative navigation system that was tested using virtual reality. The system, which combines vibrational and sound feedback, aims to help users navigate complex real-world environments more safely and effectively.

A team of researchers has created an innovative drug delivery system with outstanding potential to improve drug development.

A future where lightweight car parts can be made with a 3D printer is here, thanks to multi-material additive manufacturing research.

A new material for high density data storage can be erased and recycled in a more efficient and sustainable way, providing a potential alternative to hard disk drives, solid-state drives and flash memory in future. The low-cost polymer stores data as 'dents', making a miniscule code in patterns, with the indents just nanometers in size -- promising to store more data than typical hard disk drives.

Another advance has been made by experts in nano-scale chemistry to propel further development of sustainable and efficient generation of hydrogen from water using solar power. Experts have now identified a novel solar cell process to potentially use in future technologies for photocatalytic water splitting in green hydrogen production.

Microgravity is known to alter the muscles, bones, the immune system and cogni tion, but little is known about its specific impact on the brain. To discover how brain cells respond to microgravity, scientists sent tiny clumps of stem-cell derived brain cells called 'organoids' to the International Space Station.

Even if you knew nothing about astronomy, you’d understand that exploding stars are forceful and consequential events. How could they not be? Supernovae play a pivotal role in the Universe with their energetic, destructive demises.

There are different types of supernovae exploding throughout the Universe, with different progenitors and different remnants. The Zwicky Transient Facility has detected 100,000 supernovae and classified 10,000 of them.

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is a wide-field astronomical survey named after the prolific Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky. In the early 1930s, Zwicky and his colleague Walter Baade coined the term ‘supernova’ to describe the transition of normal main sequence stars into neutron stars. In the 1940s, Zwicky and his colleague developed the modern supernova classification system. The ZTF bears his name because of these and many other scientific contributions. (Zwicky was also a humanitarian and a philosopher.)

The ZTF observes in both optical and infrared and was built to detect transients with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. Transients are objects that change brightness rapidly or objects that move. While supernovae (SN) don’t move, they definitely change brightness rapidly. They can outshine their entire host galaxy for months.

In 2017, the ZTF began its Bright Transient Survey (BTS), an effort dedicated to the search for supernovae (SNe). It’s by far the largest spectroscopic SNe survey ever conducted. The BTS has discovered 100,000 potential SNe, and more than 10,000 of them have been confirmed and classified according to distance, type, rarity, and brightness. These types of astronomical surveys create a rich dataset that will aid researchers well into the future.

“There are trillions of stars in the universe, and about every second, one of them explodes. Reaching 10,000 classifications is amazing, but what we truly should celebrate is the incredible progress we have made in our ability to browse the universe for transients, or objects that change in the sky, and the science our rich data will enable,” said Christoffer Fremling, a staff astronomer at Caltech. Fremling leads the ZTF’s Bright Transient Survey (BTS).

The effort to catalogue supernovae dates back to 2012 when astronomical databases began officially tracking them. Since then, astronomers have detected nearly 16,000 of them, and the ZTF is responsible for more than 10,000 of those detections.

The first documented SNe discovery was in 185 AD when Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a ‘guest star’ in the sky that shone for eight months. In the nearly two millennia since then, we’ve seen many more. 1987 was a watershed year for supernovae science when a massive star exploded in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. Named SN 1987A. it was the first supernova explosion since the telescope was invented. This was also the first direct detection of neutrinos from a supernova, and the detection is considered by many to be the beginning of neutrino astronomy.

A timeline of important events in the history of supernova astronomy. Click to enlarge. Image Credit: ZTF/Caltech/NSF

Each night, the ZTF detects hundreds of thousands of events, including everything from small, simple asteroids in our inner Solar System to powerful gamma-ray bursts in the distant Universe. The ZTF uses a pair of telescopes that act as a kind of ‘triage’ facility for supernovae and transients. The Samuel Oschin Telescope has a 60-megapixel wide field camera that images the visible sky every two nights. Astronomers detect new transient events by subtracting images of the same portion of the sky from subsequent scans.

Then, members of the ZTF team study these images and send the most promising to the other ZTF telescope, the Spectral Energy Distribution Machine (SEDM). This robotic spectrograph operates on the Palomar 60-inch telescope.

“We combine the brightness information from the ZTF camera with the data from the SEDM to correctly identify the origin and type of a transient, a process astronomers call transient classification,” said Yu-Jing Qin, a postdoc at Caltech, who is running much of the daily operations of the BTS survey.

ZTF Detections are also sent to other observatories around the world who can examine transients with other spectroscopic facilities. About 30% of the ZTF transients have been confirmed this way.

ZTF detects so many transients that it’s difficult for astronomers to keep up. In recent years, Caltech has made an effort to develop machine-learning tools that can examine SEDM spectroscopic data, classify the transients, and send them to the Transient Name Server. In 2023, the BTSBot system was employed to help manage the flow of detections.

“Since BTSbot began operation it has found about half of the brightest ZTF supernovae before a human,” said PhD student Nabeel Rehemtulla from Northwestern University, developer of the BTSBot. “For specific types of supernovae, we have automated the entire process and BTSbot has so far performed excellently in over a hundred cases. This is the future of supernova surveys, especially when the Vera Rubin Observatory begins operations.”

Though every supernova discovery is scientifically valuable, there are some highlights among all these detections.

The ZTF has detected thousands of Type 1a supernovae. They occur in binary systems where one star is a white dwarf. The white dwarf draws gas away from its companion and the gas gathers on the white dwarf. Eventually, this causes a supernova explosion. SN 2022qmx is one of these Type 1a supernovae that appeared to be way brighter than it should be. It turns out that an interceding galaxy was gravitationally lensing the SN’s light, making it appear 24 times brighter.

The ZTF is also responsible for detecting the closest and most distant SNe (with help from the JWST).

Some highlights from the ZTF’s 10,000 supernovae. Click the image to enlarge. Image Credit: ZTF/Caltech/NSF

“Back when we started this project, we didn’t know how many astronomers would follow up on our detections,” said Caltech’s Fremling. “To see that so many have is a testament to why we built ZTF: to survey the whole sky for changing objects and share those data as rapidly as possible with astronomers around the world. That’s the purpose of the Transient Name Server (TNS).”

The TNS is where the global astronomical community announces the detection and classification of transients so that work isn’t duplicated. Since 2016, the TNS has handled over 150,000 reported transients and over 15,000 reported supernovae.

“Everything is public in hopes that the community will come together and make the most of it,” said Fremling. “This way, we don’t have, say, 10 telescopes across the world doing the same thing and wasting time.”

Soon, the ZTF will have a powerful partner in time-domain astronomy. The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) should see its first light in the next few months and then begin its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST will also detect transients but is far more sensitive than the ZTF. It’s expected to detect millions of supernovae, and handling all of those detections will require a machine-learning tool similar to the BTSbot.

“The machine learning and AI tools we have developed for ZTF will become essential when the Vera Rubin Observatory begins operations,” said Daniel Perley, an astronomer at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK who developed the search and discovery procedures for the BTS. “We have already planned to work closely with Rubin to transfer our machine learning knowledge and technology,” added Perley.

Astronomical surveys like the ones performed by ZTF and the VRO provide foundational data that researchers will use for years. It’s impossible to know how it will be used in every case or what discoveries it will lead to. Even better, the ZTF and the VRO will overlap.

According to Caltech astronomy professor Mansi Kasliwal, who will lead ZTF in the coming two years, this will be a very important and exciting time in time-domain astronomy.

“The period in 2025 and 2026 when ZTF and Vera Rubin can both operate in tandem is fantastic news for time-domain astronomers,” said Kasliwal. “Combining data from both observatories, astronomers can directly address the physics of why supernovae explode and discover fast and young transients that are inaccessible to ZTF or Rubin alone. I am excited about the future,” added Kasliwal.

The post Zwicky Classifies More Than 10,000 Exploding Stars appeared first on Universe Today.

It seems that we are completely alone in the universe. But simple reasoning suggests that there should be an abundance of alien civilizations. Maybe they’re all out there, but they are keeping their distance. Welcome to the zoo (hypothesis).

The story goes that in the summer of 1950, eminent physicist Enrico Fermi was visiting colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was the initial peak of UFO mania, and naturally the physicists brought it up over lunch. After a short while, Fermi went silent. Later, well after the conversation had turned to other topics, he exclaimed “Where is everybody?”

Everybody knew what he meant. We know that the universe is capable of producing intelligent life. We’re literally living proof of that. But the cosmos tends to not do things just once. If life happened here, it likely also happened elsewhere. In fact, given the extraordinary age of the universe and the incredible number of stars and planetary systems in any given galaxy, the Milky Way should be abuzz with intelligent space-faring civilizations.

Humanity itself is right on the cusp of developing a sustained interplanetary presence, and our species is still in its youth, at least as cosmic reckoning is concerned. We should see evidence for other intelligent species everywhere: radio signals, megastructures, wandering probes, and so on.

But we’ve got nothing. So where is everybody?

Perhaps the strangest possible solution to Fermi’s paradox, as this conundrum came to be known, is known as the zoo hypothesis. In this idea, alien life is indeed common, as is intelligence. There really is no huge barrier to intelligent creatures developing spaceflight capabilities and spreading themselves throughout the galaxy.

But the reason that we don’t see anybody is that they are intentionally hiding themselves from us. Through their sophisticated observations, they can easily tell that we are intelligent ourselves, but also somewhat dangerous. After all, we have peaceful space rockets and dangerous ICBMs. We are just dipping our toes into space, and we may not be exactly trustworthy.

And so the intelligent civilizations of the galaxy are keeping us in a sort of “zoo.” They are masking themselves and their signals, making us think that we’re all alone, largely confined to our own solar system and a few nearby stars.

Once we prove ourselves, the hypothesis goes, we’ll be welcomed into the larger galactic community with open arms (or tentacles).

The zoo hypothesis is, honestly, a little far-fetched. It assumes not only the existence of alien civilizations, but also their motives and intentions. But we ultimately do not know if we are alone in the universe. And there’s only one way to find out.

The post What is the Zoo Hypothesis? appeared first on Universe Today.