Showing all posts about science
Could a super-Earth called Hestia be better than planet Earth?
30 May 2026
You won’t find Hestia, a super-Earth planet, on any of the charts, for this is a body imagined by Kurzgesagt. But Hestia, on paper at least, is a super-Earth in more ways than one.
No polar regions are present, ditto continents, though there are a multitude of medium size island land masses. The planet also sports shallow oceans, and an atmosphere far denser than Earth.
Combined, these conditions make Hestia an ideal spawning ground for all manner of complex lifeforms, including, possibly, intelligent life.
This would-be super-Earth also orbits in the habitable zone of an orange-dwarf star. The Sun meanwhile is a yellow-dwarf. Proxima Centauri, the next nearest star to Earth, is a red-dwarf.
Orange-dwarfs represent — at face value at least — a happy balance between the two. They are usually highly stable, and boast long lifespans, up to seventy-billon years, compared to about ten billion for stars such as the Sun.
A planet particularly conducive to life, hosted by a stable, long-lived star, increases the likelihood of intelligent life coming into being. Red dwarfs also have long lives, upwards of one trillion years, but that doesn’t always make them the ideal host for potentially life bearing planets.
Hestia also comes with four moons. Imagine a night sky adorned by not one, but four moons? What more could anyone want in a planet?
While such a place might make for an ideal life-friendly environment, it probably wouldn’t be suitable for humans. The surface gravity of a super-Earth can be up to three time that experienced on Earth. We might be able to adapt that sort of force, but it would be heavy going.
Multiple moons might also pose problems, depending on their proximity. If they are too close, the host planet may see more boisterous ocean tides, and increased seismic and volcanic activity.
Then there’s the matter of Hestia’s thirty-six hour day, something that might take some getting used to. But, if we’re trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, planets like Hestia, orbiting in the habitable zones of orange-dwarf stars, are what we should looking out for.
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astronomy, exoplanets, science
British study finds individuals mostly responsible for ill health in later life
30 May 2026
Amelia Hill, writing for The Guardian:
Individuals bear at least 80% of the responsibility for their ill health in old age, according to a report aimed at challenging the belief that physical decline is either inevitable or primarily the responsibility of the state.
This finding is from the Oxford Longevity Project, conducted in the United Kingdom.
Eighty-percent sounds high to me, considering people are not always in control of the circumstances they might find themselves in.
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The Vanishing Wild, a book by Justine E. Hausheer
23 May 2026
The Vanishing Wild, written by Queensland based science writer and photographer Justine E. Hausheer, was published recently. It was the introduction to the book’s subject that caught my eye:
Australia is a country celebrated for its wildlife, yet native species are in crisis. In the last 200 years, Australia has lost more biodiversity than any other developed nation.
That is not an impressive achievement. What on earth are going here in Australia?
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Australia, books, environment, nature, science
Dust busters will be needed to keep Moon bases free of dust
20 April 2026
From the European Space Agency (ESA) blog:
The “lunar hay fever”, as NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt described it during the Apollo 17 mission created symptoms in all 12 people who have stepped on the Moon. From sneezing to nasal congestion, in some cases it took days for the reactions to fade. Inside the spacecraft, the dust smelt like burnt gunpowder.
What a headache insignificant specks of dust will pose for the planners of future lunar bases. Airlocks will need to be designed so they keep Moon dust well away from the inhabitants of a base.
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astronomy, science, space exploration
Artemis II returns safely to Earth despite heat shield concerns
13 April 2026
Splashdown occurred at about ten o’clock in the morning in my part of the world. I had been dreading the fiery re-entry phase of the flight, after a number of commentators expressed doubts as to the integrity of the return vehicle’s heat shield. Thankfully all was well in the end.
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astronomy, science, space exploration
Say nothing to Houston: decades old bug found in Apollo guidance system code
9 April 2026
JUXT, a software consultancy based in the United Kingdom, report discovering a bug in the code of the Apollo Guidance Computer, nearly fifty-four years after the last Apollo Moon flight:
The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) is one of the most scrutinised codebases in history. Thousands of developers have read it. Academics have published papers on its reliability. Emulators run it instruction by instruction. We found a bug in it that had been missed for fifty-seven years: a resource lock in the gyro control code that leaks on an error path, silently disabling the guidance platform’s ability to realign.
The guidance systems were installed in both the command module, and lunar module (the vessel that landed on the Moon), of the Apollo craft.
Thankfully, the bug didn’t manifest itself during the Apollo missions. There’s enough happening during a flight to the Moon without wanting to worry about patches for software bugs.
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science, space exploration, technology
Forget artificial intelligence, aliens may usurp humanity instead
8 April 2026
When people are in competition, they work harder if the game seems winnable, and decrease effort if they think they’ll lose. It’s implied that because humans are so far behind aliens, we are uncompetitive and so should put in less effort.
There’s — somehow — an idea, published on Marginal Revolution, that technologically advanced extraterrestrials have placed alien drone probes, which evade detection, across the solar system. These devices — if they exist — are apparently keeping an eye on what’s happening on Earth.
I even double checked the date the article was posted: Saturday 4 April 2026. So it wasn’t some sort of April Fool’s caper. On the other hand of course, Artemis II was on the way to the Moon by then.
The question though, what should we do if there are surveillance probes within the solar system? And who knows, maybe aliens are watching us. Maybe extraterrestrials indeed exist — there’s surely at least one intelligent alien civilisation somewhere in the universe — and they’ve found us.
But why they don’t make their presence known puzzles me. All those UAP sightings over the last several decades have somewhat given the show away, have they not? Let’s see you, not your incredible interstellar-space travel capable vessels.
But if we don’t want extraterrestrials to wipe us out, or simply stop us travelling beyond the limits of the solar system — things they may want to do — we need to lift our game. Work harder. Be more ambitious. Even if we remain uncompetitive in comparison. We also all need to work together.
If that’s possible. And if it’s not, I think that’s why they call it the great filter.
What a situation to be in.
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Fears the Artemis II heat shield may not be safe
1 April 2026
On the eve of the launch of NASA‘s Artemis II ten-day Moon flyby mission, Maciej Cegłowski warns that the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft and command module, which the crew will use to return to Earth’s surface, is not safe:
In a nutshell, Camarda argues that NASA is demonstrating the same dysfunction that led to the Columbia and Challenger disasters. Faced with an unexpected engineering failure, it has built toy models to convince itself that the conclusion it wants to reach (it’s safe to fly) are supported by evidence. These toy models are not grounded in physics, but because they appear to be quantitative, they create a false sense of security and understanding, an epistemic fig leaf for management to hide behind.
Cegłowski is not alone, and concerns about the re-entry vessel’s heat shield have been widely flagged in recent weeks. At this late stage in proceedings it can only be hoped NASA’s assurances that the heat shield is safe can be taken at face value.
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astronomy, science, space exploration
No sign of extraterrestrial life? Blame it on bad space weather
18 March 2026
In the search for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, astronomers, and organisations like SETI, often seek out narrowband radio signals.
Space is full of radio signals, most of them broadband, which usually occur naturally. Neutron stars are but one generator of such signals. Narrowband radio transmissions, on the other hand, are somewhat more likely to be created by an intelligent civilisation. On Earth, for instance, TV transmissions and mobile phones, are among sources of narrowband radio signals.
It makes sense then to look out for such signals in deep space. But some recent research conducted by SETI suggests narrowband radio signals may be disrupted by chaotic flows of ionised gas, and other sources of turbulence in the cosmos:
A new study by researchers at the SETI Institute suggests stellar “space weather” could make radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence harder to detect. Stellar activity and plasma turbulence near a transmitting planet can broaden an otherwise ultra-narrow signal, spreading its power across more frequencies and making it more difficult to detect in traditional narrowband searches.
We keep coming up with explanations to account for the apparent absence of intelligent extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe. Now we’re blaming the weather.
The smart money says there is intelligent life somewhere in the cosmos, but it may not be all that common, nor particularly close to us. There’s a lot of space out there, beyond the solar system.
The size of the galaxy, to say nothing of the universe, is something many of us struggle to comprehend. Even if humanity possessed the means to travel at speeds close to the velocity of light, it would take over four years just to reach Proxima Centauri, the star presently closest to the Sun.
To visit the centre of our galaxy, the journey would take over twenty-five thousand years.
That’s not insignificant. In fact, twenty-five thousand light years constitutes a vast amount of space. An alien civilisation could be tucked in there somewhere, but it might take thousands of years for evidence of their presence to become apparent.
On paper, the chances of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life are better than even.
There are potentially millions, if not more, of exoplanets with environments conducive to complex life in the Milky Way galaxy alone. And if intelligent life can take hold on Earth, it can surely take hold elsewhere. But there are those who think intelligent life on Earth is a fluke, and a lot of things had to go the right way, over a period of billions of years, for this to happen.
Bad “weather” in deep space may well be playing a part in concealing the presence of extraterrestrial technological civilisations. But their scarcity, and extreme distance — potentially tens of thousands of light years — from Earth, probably better explains why there is no sign, yet, of anyone else.
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Vision loss in some people is being attributed to their tattoos
19 February 2026
Jacinta Bowler writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):
The condition, known as tattoo-associated uveitis, can lead to permanent vision loss, glaucoma, and patients requiring immunosuppressants for the rest of their life.
While rare, the condition can set in several years after getting a tattoo. In one case, decades had passed before the person began experiencing vision loss.
Most people seeking tattoos doubtless know about the risk of infection, or allergic reactions, but few would expect their vision to be impacted, particularly years after the event.
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