Space News There is a lot of news lately about our solar system, planets and space in general. Space news is generally something most of us are interested in. It is no secret scientists are putting a lot of effort into contacting alien life lately. I am not so sure this is a good idea and neither do some scientists including the famous recently deceased British physicist Stephen Hawking. The reason for this is Earth’s history shows us what happens when more advanced races contact others which are not as advanced. It never seems to turn out well for the less advanced race. The scientists advocating the contact believe advanced races will be benevolent toward us, but there is absolutely no proof this is true. I think we should stop trying to make contact and carry on with our exploration of space, and if we happen to meet aliens we try and make the best of it. Recently an astronomer came up with a new idea in the search for alien life. He believes aliens have probably left evidence they exist in different places in our solar system. He is suggesting we search the solar system first, instead of trying to find life anywhere in our galaxy or even other galaxies. There is some merit to this idea, because if we happened to find indications of life which were light years away, we could not reach it anyway at this stage in our development. This same astronomer is said to think the Oumuamua object which came into our solar system, is an interstellar probe. To refresh your memory that is the object which was said to come from perhaps even another galaxy. It was cylinder shaped. The astronomer is from Harvard University so he certainly has to have his opinions respected, although this doesn’t mean he is right in this instance. Could there be traces of objects left behind by alien life? There have been claims of ruins on Mars, buildings on the Moon and even structures on some asteroids. Has gold been found on Mars? There are a lot of rocks the Curiosity rover has come across which are interesting to NASA. They want to investigate them, which will take time. Recently they discovered one which was very shiny and metallic looking. It looked like a big gold nugget. The Curiosity rover had two parts to its electronic brain. When Part A was giving NASA problems, they switched to Part B. It is said they switched back. While this has nothing to do with the golden rock, I thought it was an interesting fact. Back to the rock, NASA is going to investigate it, they believe it could be a meteor which crashed into the planet. Could there be meteors out there which are mostly gold? Who knows, but I do know space is a big place and we discovered an exoplanet which we believe is made of diamonds. NASA is claiming they are going back to the moon in a big way. They claim this feat may take place in 2019. This time NASA is saying we are going to build infrastructure to allow repeated visits to the moon. This will entail building what is known as a gateway space station which will orbit the earth every six days. Supposedly this will allow easy access to the moon. NASA claims the reason this took so long to start was although it was hawked by prior administrations there was not much interest in it by congress. They also claim the NASA budget is far smaller in real dollars than it was when we went to the moon. It seems there might be a chance eventually a base would be built on the moon which compares to the bases we have built in Antarctica. Sometimes using satellites which study the earth rather than for exploring space produces unexpected results. The European Space Agency has released information about a continent it recently discovered. The continent is roughly about a mile below Antarctica. This landmass was never seen before. It is said Gondwana, a supercontinent which had formed had Antarctica as part of it. Up to 55 million years ago scientists claim Antarctica and Australia were linked together. There was also a link found between Antarctica and India. The Hubble telescope data was being examined when scientists found something unexpected. It seems a mysterious infrared signal was found shooting across space. The signal seems to be coming from an area near a neutron star. I find this interesting, because scientists have been talking about using lasers to send out signals from earth to let any alien beings who might exist who were within the range of the lasers to know we are an intelligent race living on earth. Could this signal also be one which is being sent out by aliens to alert others of their existence? The signal is coming from about 800 light years away. Scientists don’t believe the infrared signal is coming from the neutron star however, because the signal is so powerful the star would not be able to create it. There have been a lot of exoplanets discovered lately, many hundreds of them. One which is a planet being called a Super-Earth has been discovered orbiting a neighboring star that is only 6 light years away, which means when we finally get the means to travel out of the solar system it could be one of the first exoplanets we explore. The planet is said to be about 3.2 times heavier than the earth. The planet is known as Barnard’s Star b. So far it is the second nearest exoplanet to the earth at the time of this writing. There is one hitch and it is the planet which is closer to its sun than we are to ours receives only about 2% of the stars heat so it is extremely cold. Scientists are saying it is too cold for life to exist, but you never know about life. It is believed water or gas would be frozen if it exists. In 2018 scientists saw something which was thought to be impossible. They were observing a supermassive black hole named Markarian 335, when to their surprise they saw something exiting it. We all know scientists have been saying for years nothing could ever exit a black hole, not even light because the gravity is too strong. Yet there it was, a massive pulse of X-ray energy being blasted out of the black hole’s corona which had also been launched away from the black hole. This is one for the books and scientists are yet to figure this out.
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