Did the universe’s creator hide a message in the cosmos?

Source: Did the universe’s creator hide a message in the cosmos? 

Did the creator of the universe leave a hidden message in the cosmos for intelligent life? If so, scientists have yet to find it.

A search for a message on “the most cosmic of all billboards, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB),” has failed, a new study finds. The CMB is the oldest light in the universe, visible across all of space. Its microwaves have been traveling since the first atoms formed out of a haze of protons and electrons that filled the universe soon after the Big Bang. They form a background radiation pattern across the whole sky. Physicists have long studied the CMB looking for features that might offer clues about the structure of the universe. Michael Hippke, a self-described “gentleman scientist” affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany, went looking for a sign from a creator in that background radiation. But, either way, he didn’t find one.

 

Mars Regularly Shakes from Quakes, NASA Lander Finds

Source: Mars Regularly Shakes from Quakes, NASA Lander Finds

(Inside Science) — NASA’s InSight lander has detected the first clear signs of quakes on Mars, rumbles from mysterious sources that generate ripples scientists are using to probe the red planet’s hidden

What should we do if a ‘planet-killer’ asteroid takes aim at Earth?

Source: What should we do if a ‘planet-killer’ asteroid takes aim at Earth?

If a giant object looks like it’s going to slam into Earth, humanity has a few options: Hammer it with a spacecraft hard enough to knock it off course, blast it with nuclear weapons, tug on it with a gravity tractor, or even slow it down using concentrated sunlight. 

Ripples in space-time could explain the mystery of why the universe exists

Source: Ripples in space-time could explain the mystery of why the universe exists

A new study may help answer one of the universe’s biggest mysteries: Why is there more matter than antimatter? That answer, in turn, could explain why everything from atoms to black holes exists. 

How dark is the cosmic web?

Source: How dark is the cosmic web?

The universe is permeated by a vast, invisible web, its tendrils weaving through space. But despite organizing the matter we see in space, this dark web is invisible. That’s because it is made up of dark matter, which exerts a gravitational pull but emits no light. 

This is the most violent object in the solar system

Source: This is the most violent object in the solar system

New images reveal that one of the strangest asteroids in the solar system is also the most covered in craters.

Pallas, at 318 miles (512 kilometers) in diameter, is the third-largest asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, accounting for about 7% of the region’s mass. When Pallas was discovered in 1802, it was just the second asteroid ever found, and its discoverer, German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, originally classified it as a planet.

 

Saturn’s weird, Earth-like moon just failed a key test for alien life

Source: Saturn’s weird, Earth-like moon just failed a key test for alien life

Saturn’s most Earth-like moon looks a bit less likely to host life, thanks to quantum mechanics, the weird rules that govern subatomic particles.

Titan, the second largest moon in our solar system after Jupiter’s Ganymede, is unique in two ways that have convinced some researchers that this moon might host extraterrestrial life: It’s the only moon in our solar system with a dense atmosphere, and it’s the only body in space, besides Earth, known to definitely have pools of liquid on its surface. In Titan’s case, those pools are frigid lakes of hydrocarbons, closer to the gasoline in a car than the oceans on Earth. But some researchers have suggested that complex structures could arise in those pools: bubbles with special properties that mimic ingredients found to be necessary for life on our planet.

 

NASA’s Glenn Research Center: Incubator of technologies for flight

Source: NASA’s Glenn Research Center: Incubator of technologies for flight

Driving past Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on Interstate 480 in Ohio, you might notice a giant NASA logo on a white airplane hangar at the southwest edge of the airfield. That’s the biggest building at NASA’s Glenn Research Center (GRC), where scientists and engineers have been developing technologies for flight for eight decades. The center currently employs over 3,000 people operating a world-class array of wind tunnels, vacuum chambers and other research and test equipment, according to the Center’s website.

A galaxy from the early universe grew astonishingly fast, then suddenly stopped

Source: A galaxy from the early universe grew astonishingly fast, then suddenly stopped

Before our universe reached its 1 billionth birthday, an unusual galaxy formed and began whipping up new stars at astounding speeds. Then, a mere 800 million years later, the ultramassive galaxy suddenly fell silent, according to a new study.

Two invisible stars are bending space-time deep in the Milky Way

Source: Two invisible stars are bending space-time deep in the Milky Way

In summer 2016, astronomers watched a star 2,500 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation flash to life as if preparing to explode in a fiery supernova. The next day, however, the star dimmed back to normal again — no fuss, no kaboom. Within a few weeks, the strange cycle repeated itself: The star suddenly brightened, then dimmed again within a day. Over the following year, the cycle occurred again and again, repeating five times within 50