This week in science: it came from outer space
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Carl Sagan defined the cosmos as all there ever was and all there ever will be. But we may inhabit only one “universe,” a single space-time that seems to have arisen 13.7 billion years ago by best estimates. And there are reasons to suspect our universeThis week in science: it came from outer space
Carl Sagan defined the cosmos as all there ever was and all there ever will be. But we may inhabit only one “universe,” a single space-time that seems to have arisen 13.7 billion years ago by best estimates. And there are reasons to suspect our universe may be simply one of many, although how that collection might be arranged, how they originate, and what properties they might have individually or collectively could end up being as esoteric and counter-intuitive in its own grand way as quantum physics is on the level of the very, very small. Could other universes also harbor life of any kind? Scientists abroad speculate on that possibility: The word universe used to imply all that exists, but no longer. Today’s cosmologists – scientists who study the biggest of all possible big pictures – now consider the idea that our known universe might be just one of many unknown (and unknowable?) universes. They call this plethora of possible universes the multiverse. Now scientists in the U.K. and Australia have taken an interesting step toward probing the multiverse. Yay for the multiverse! But, how could it be tested? If there’s no way, even in principle, for us to confirm or falsify the idea of other universes—whatever that means—then lifeless or not, other universes could be valid, they could exist, and the idea could still not be a scientific proposition. One could argue therefore, it might be no more real by any objective measure than Sagan’s fire-breathing garage dragon. In the event of a global crash of some sort, wherein humanity’s storehouse of knowledge is greatly reduced or lost altogether, the Arch Foundation will be storing hard copy caches at faraway, safe places like the moon. This post about Jupiter’s ice moon Europa is worth it for the images alone! We’re sending a helicopter to Mars as part of the 2020 Rover mission, and Wired magazine has the design specs and physics behind the revolutionary little chopper. I’m not convinced this is even a real story, but for what it’s worth: Putin’s captured military dolphins don’t care much for Russia: Ukraine has a dolphin army at the Crimean military dolphin centre, trained and ready for deployment. Or at least it did, but after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the dolphins were captured. Ukraine demanded their return, but Russian forces refused. … [T]he dolphins died “patriotically”, refusing to follow orders or eat food provided by the “Russian invaders” and that the hunger strike led to their eventual death. The production of chlorofluorocarbons used as refrigerants was sharply curtailed years ago when it was found they deplete critical ozone in the Earth’s stratosphere. But now, strangely, they’re on the rise again, and no one is ‘fessing up: “Somebody’s cheating,” Durwood Zaelke, founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and an expert on the Montreal Protocol. “There’s some slight possibility there’s an unintentional release, but … they make it clear there’s strong evidence this is actually being produced.” A U.S. observatory in Hawaii found CFC-11 mixed in with other gases that were characteristic of a source coming from somewhere in eastern Asia ... Read more