INFORMATION

Searching for extraterrestrial intelligence has so far meant primarily focusing on one particular type of signal - and that signal has normally been based on what our own current cutting edge technology is. But what if that’s the wrong way to look for signs of an alien intelligence? What if a resource-conscious civilization decided it was too complicated to send femto-second lasers in high energy bursts out across the universe. A new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, from researchers Dániel Apai, Chia-Lung Lin, and Kevin Wagner, suggest that might actually be what happens, and that we should start looking for long-duration pulsing interstellar beacons. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/vUip7mt via IFTTT

Juno's Microwave Radiometer (MWR) was built peer deep down into Jupiter's massive atmosphere. But during the spacecraft's extended mission, it's been studying the Galilean moons. During two flybys of volcanic Io, the spacecraft its MWR to measure the heat flowing from deep within the moon. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/c0IznMV via IFTTT

When we think of Mars as the “Red Planet”, the image that comes to mind is just that - a lot of red. That comes from the oxidization of the dust and rocks that cover the planet's surface, but there are some instances where the Red Planet still has a few visual tricks up its sleeve. One such trick was recently captured by the European Space Agency’s venerable Mars Express orbiter, which captured what seems to be a set of metallic waves inside a giant impact basin. But on closer inspection, it becomes clear they aren’t liquid metal or some sort of alien architecture, but a manifestation of Mars’ complex environment. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/d8KL2lS via IFTTT

The worlds of the Solar System offer up exciting and (so far) mostly pristine places for planetary scientists to study. As space missions continue to travel to Mars, Europa, asteroids, and other worlds, questions keep coming up about keeping them safe for continued exploration and observations. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/LmU3etN via IFTTT

Combining over 20 years of archival data from Hubble with new data from the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has found the first of the "missing" black holes. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/t8MZYK2 via IFTTT

The collapsing stars Eddington swore couldn't exist turned out to be everywhere, and half a century later the world handed Chandrasekhar his Nobel. How the 1.4 solar mass limit became one of the most important numbers in modern astronomy. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/AXP85kd via IFTTT