More than 12 billion years ago, a sea of stars fell into orbit around a baby black hole, and became a galaxy, one of the first.
The formation of this galaxy, and others like it, was a momentous event in cosmic evolution. This galaxy and its brethren helped to clear hydrogen gas left over from the Big Bang, making our universe transparent to light.
This will be especially true in space, which is a hostile place for biological intelligence. The Earth’s biosphere, in which organic life has symbiotically evolved, is not a constraint for advanced AI. Indeed it is far from optimal—interplanetary and interstellar space will be the preferred arena where robotic fabricators will have the grandest scope for construction, and where non-biological “brains” may develop insights as far beyond our imaginings as string theory is for a mouse.
Enter Jason Wright, the Penn State University astronomer suggesting the irregular reading might be a product of orbital megastructures, essentially massive alien satellites. Megastructures, Wright says, would be “very large” — and likely made of very thin materials to offset the constraints imposed by launching and controlling big objects. Wright suggestion was, in a sense, Occam’s Razor reasoning: Astronomical explanations couldn’t account for brightness dropping by a staggering 22 percent. To give a sense of just how extreme that number is, a planet the size of Jupiter would block about 1 percent of light — and planets don’t get much bigger than that.
The high resolution originals allow for some breathtaking edits (above).
The original photos (as seen below) are raw and unprocessed – organized by film magazine.
And it’s even lonelier being stranded on a planet millions of miles from Earth, without communication, adequate food, or much hope of getting back home. That’s the grim prospect Matt Damon’s character faces in “The Martian,” the upcoming film based on the novel by Andy Weir.
Mars is basically a pretty arid place, so it’s pretty astonishing that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was able to spot signs of liquid water on the planet’s surface.
But even more astonishing in a way is that one of the places where signs of water was spotted is a mere 50 kilometers from where NASA’s Curiosity rover has been exploring. After all, Mars is a pretty big planet, and signs of water have been spotted in only a handful of places.
“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water — albeit briny — is flowing today on the surface of Mars.”