Will the first Earthly organism on Titan be a super-fly?

Earth and Titan. Soon to both be inhabited by fruitflies?
Earth and Titan. Soon to both be inhabited by fruitflies? Via The Encyclopedia of Space

And what’s weirder, will this super-fruitfly be bred by an artist, rather than a scientist? Very much art meets science.

The air pressure on Titan is fifty percent higher than on Earth so I used a bicycle pump and pressure gauge to increase the pressure in the chamber to 1.5bar. That was probably the most authentic recreation of the conditions. Titan is a frosty -190 degrees but it would have been pointless exposing flies to that temperature as they would all die. Instead the idea is to use freezer elements to take down the temperature a few degrees at a time and try to selectively breed for resistance to low temperatures. The radioactive element from a smoke alarm simulated the radiation found on the moon and a series of UV LEDs represented the harsh UV rays that rain down.

Continue reading “Will the first Earthly organism on Titan be a super-fly?”

Will the first Earthly organism on Titan be a super-fly?
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A cloaked ship the size of Mercury? That’s the BEST explanation?

I want you to watch this video with the sound off, ignore the title on top, watch it a bunch of times, and figure out what you think is going on. Hold that thought. Then play it again, stop brain-filtering the title (if you can manage this trick, tell me how!), then compare notes.

Continue reading “A cloaked ship the size of Mercury? That’s the BEST explanation?”

A cloaked ship the size of Mercury? That’s the BEST explanation?

NASA: Vesta may have had flowing lava and volcanoes

A video from NASA’s ScienceCast explaining what the Dawn mission probe has discovered while orbiting the distant asteroid — it may be the smallest terrestrial “planet” discovered, given that it might well have had flowing lava and volcanoes. For a mundane hunk of rock very far away, it sure had a surprisingly interesting past.

I love this stuff.

NASA: Vesta may have had flowing lava and volcanoes

Kepler confirms: Super-earth found in star’s habitable zone!

A milestone find by the Kepler mission: a planet a little over twice the size of Earth, situated in the Goldilocks zone of its star where liquid water can exist at the surface. Which by extension means that, if this planet is terrestrial and has water, there’s the possibility of life as we know it.
Continue reading “Kepler confirms: Super-earth found in star’s habitable zone!”

Kepler confirms: Super-earth found in star’s habitable zone!

Life may not depend on planet having a large moon

Via Universe Today, some news regarding the long-held belief that a stable axial tilt requires a large enough moon to provide stabilization — a study suggests it’s less necessary than previously believed.

Ever since a study conducted back in 1993, it has been proposed that in order for a planet to support more complex life, it would be most advantageous for that planet to have a large moon orbiting it, much like the Earth’s moon. Our moon helps to stabilize the Earth’s rotational axis against perturbations caused by the gravitational influence of Jupiter. Without that stabilizing force, there would be huge climate fluctuations caused by the tilt of Earth’s axis swinging between about 0 and 85 degrees.

But now that belief is being called into question thanks to newer research, which may mean that the number of planets capable of supporting complex life could be even higher than previously thought.

Anything that widens the scope of potential planets where life might have arisen is welcome news. We’re finding new exoplanets every damn day nowadays, so the search for extraterrestrial life-harboring planets is simply a matter of time, I’m willing to wager.

Life may not depend on planet having a large moon

RCimT: some space porn!

Via Astronomy Picture of the Day, my premier space porn site, comes this amazing time-lapse video shot from the International Space Station.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Some random other links below the fold.
Continue reading “RCimT: some space porn!”

RCimT: some space porn!

Alien Nation: exopolitics espoused by The Canadian

The Canadian is really getting under my skin with its nonsense. First it was antivax scaremongering, now it’s conspiracy theories about a secret alien shadow government.

Why do our efforts as humans beings to affirm our quality-of-life seem to have been frustrated? If you asked yourself, your friends, neighbours, family members and others, you might find out some basic generalities. As humans, we prefer peace to war. We prefer to have our rights protected, rather than subverted. We tend to prefer to have our environment protected rather than destroyed. We tend to also prefer a caring society rather than to have a “survival of the fittest society” in which people who are not financially successful, are basically left to rot.

Our environment is being destroyed; war rages despite our desires for peace; and people are being left to rot in our communities, and globally. In Canada, for example, virtually 100% of Canadians polled wanted aboriginal treaty rights settled. Yet, in a supposedly developed democracy as Canada, there seems to be no hope for such a settlement. Why?

Dr. Michael Salla and his colleagues suggest that the apparent alien values which seem to be controlling humanity’s governance are literally ‘alien’. According to Dr. Salla, Earth’s problems can be tracked to an “unacknowledged extraterrestrial presence”, and that reality forms a major challenge in the public grasping political challenges for the affirmation of human quality-of-living on Earth.

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Alien Nation: exopolitics espoused by The Canadian