Astronomers have made a sweet discovery: simple sugar molecules floating in the gas around a star some 400 light-years away, suggesting the possibility of life on other planets.
The discovery doesn't prove that life has developed elsewhere in the universe—but it implies that there is no reason it could not. It shows that the carbon-rich molecules that are the building blocks of life can be present even before planets have begun forming.
Scientists use the term "sugar" to loosely refer to organic molecules known as carbohydrates, which are made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.
Earlier research had theorised that certain minerals detected on the surface of the Red Planet indicated the presence of clay formed when water weathered surface rock some 3.7 billion years ago.
This would also have meant the planet was warmer and wetter then, boosting chances that it could have nurtured life forms.
But new research by a team from France and the United States said the minerals, including iron and magnesium, may instead have been deposited by water-rich lava, a mixture of molten and part-molten rock beneath Earth's surface.
It is a mathamatical certainty there is all kinds of life out there.
No it isn't. Other kinds of life out there is a possibility, not a certainty. If I flip a coin 9 times, and all 9 times it comes up heads, it doesn't mean the 10th coin toss will be heads as well. The odds are still 50:50.
Using more than four years of data, astronomers using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-meter telescope at ESO’s (European Southern Observatory) La Silla Observatory in Chile have reported the discovery of a slightly larger than Earth-mass planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B. This is the first discovery of a planet in our closest neighbor system of stars, and the least massive exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun.
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Colossal magnetized fountains of gamma-ray-emitting gas are spewing from the center of our Milky Way galaxy:
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The amount of magnetic energy contained in these geyser-like outflows "corresponds to the energy liberated by about a million supernova explosions — that is a lot!" says study lead author Ettore Carretti, an astrophysicist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia.
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These outflows are about 100 million years old, and apparently spew mostly from supernovas within the compact 650-light-year-wide area surrounding the supermassive black hole at the core of the Milky Way. Supernovas are the most powerful exploding stars in the universe, bright enough to momentarily outshine their entire galaxies.
(depiction of the magnetic outflows from the Milky Way's center the researchers detected)
No it isn't. Other kinds of life out there is a possibility, not a certainty. If I flip a coin 9 times, and all 9 times it comes up heads, it doesn't mean the 10th coin toss will be heads as well. The odds are still 50:50.
You would have to flip your coin about a million times and have it come up heads every time to get remotely close to the odds of other life out there. I don't think you have the foggiest clue how freakin big the universe is.
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Originally Posted by dissentowner
You would have to flip your coin about a million times and have it come up heads every time to get remotely close to the odds of other life out there. I don't think you have the foggiest clue how freakin big the universe is.
Ahhh, that doesn't make sense.
You're saying that the universe is so huge that the chance of life is basically 0?
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