Next Big Future: Near Term Planet photographing exoplanet telescopes
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/11/near-term-planet-photographing.html

Exoplanets are detected—by measuring the wobble their gravity causes in their host stars, or by noting the slight decline in a star’s brightness
as a planet passes in front of it—yield little detail. Using them, astronomers can infer such basics as a planet’s size, mass and orbit. Occasionally,
they can interrogate starlight that has traversed a planet’s atmosphere about the chemistry of its air.

Timing the Shadow of a Potentially Habitable Extrasolar Planet Paves the Way to Search for Alien Life | NAOJ: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan - English
http://www.nao.ac.jp/en/news/science/2016/20161128-oao.html

A group of researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University of Tokyo, and the Astrobiology Center
among others has observed the transit of a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet known as K2-3d using the MuSCAT instrument on the Okayama
Astrophysical Observatory 188-cm telescope. A transit is a phenomenon in which a planet passes in front of its parent star, blocking a small
amount of light from the star, like a shadow of the planet. While transits have previously been observed for thousands of other extrasolar
planets, K2-3d is important because there is a possibility that it might harbor extraterrestrial life.

By observing its transit precisely using the next generation of telescopes, such as TMT, scientists expect to be able to search the atmosphere
of the planet for molecules related to life, such as oxygen.

How we study space | Playlist | TED.com
http://www.ted.com/playlists/336/how_we_study_space

Theory that challenges Einstein's physics could soon be put to the test
http://phys.org/news/2016-11-theory-einstein-physics.html
Scientists behind a theory that the speed of light is variable - and not constant as Einstein suggested - have made a prediction that could be tested.

Einstein observed that the speed of light remains the same in any situation, and this meant that space and time could be different in different situations.

The assumption that the speed of light is constant, and always has been, underpins many theories in physics, such as Einstein's theory of general relativity.
In particular, it plays a role in models of what happened in the very early universe, seconds after the Big Bang.

But some researchers have suggested that the speed of light could have been much higher in this early universe. Now, one of this theory's originators,
Professor João Magueijo from Imperial College London, working with Dr Niayesh Afshordi at the Perimeter Institute in Canada, has made a prediction that
could be used to test the theory's validity.

Hubble rounds up the first worlds we’ll check for alien life | New Scientist
https://www.newscientist.com/...2113843-hubble-rounds-up-the-first-worlds-well-check-for-alien-life/

The search for alien life is taking a shortcut. The Hubble Space Telescope is set to spend hundreds of hours
over the next year running reconnaissance on a shortlist of worlds to identify those we should scour for life first.

This latest effort aims to take advantage of Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. Set to launch in 2018,
JWST will have unprecedented power to detect the atmospheres of faraway planets for biosignature gases that would suggest
they host living, breathing organisms.

Did comets kick-start life on Earth? (video) | EurekAlert! Science News
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/acs-dck112316.php

The origins of life on Earth are still shrouded in mystery. One compelling possibility is
that comets delivered the building blocks for life eons ago. This week, Speaking of Chemistry
explains the chemistry behind how these icy, lumpy space rocks might have seeded life on Earth.

Did Comets Kickstart Life on Earth? — Speaking of Chemistry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnuldVd99x8

Fireball seen over Galway, Ireland on November 23, 2016 at ~1715UT.
Produce 0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRT6bo0opEM&feature=youtu.be


Fireball trajectory over Ireland based on 61 observations. Nov 23, 2016 ~17:21 UTC.

How to take pictures of exoplanets | The Economist
http://www.economist.com/.../21710789-finding-exoplanets-has-become-routine-next-step-try-photograph
Finding exoplanets has become routine. The next step is to try to photograph them.

X-Ray Background from Early Binaries
http://aasnova.org/2016/11/23/x-ray-background-from-early-binaries/

What impact did X-rays from the first binary star systems have on the universe around them?
A new study suggests this radiation may have played an important role during the reionization of our universe.

Is the universe a sponge? - physicsworld.com
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/2016/nov/24/is-the-universe-a-sponge

Does the large-scale universe look more like meatballs, like Swiss cheese or like a sponge? A meatball universe would be composed of isolated,
disconnected regions of high density embedded in a connected low-density background. The Swiss cheese universe would be precisely the opposite:
low-density isolated voids embedded in a high-density connected background. A sponge is neither of the above or, if you prefer, a compromise
between the two. In a sponge both the low-density and high-density regions are each connected, and ideally both the sponge and its “complement”
(the network of holes) are identical in character, at least from a topological point of view.

Shear brilliance: Computing tackles the mystery of the dark universe
http://phys.org/news/2016-11-brilliance-tackles-mystery-dark-universe.html

Scientists from The University of Manchester working on a revolutionary telescope project have harnessed the power of distributed computing
from the UK's GridPP collaboration to tackle one of the Universe's biggest mysteries – the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

Researchers at The University of Manchester have used resources provided by GridPP – who represent the UK's contribution to the computing grid
used to find the Higgs boson at CERN – to run image processing and machine learning algorithms on thousands of images of galaxies from
the international Dark Energy Survey.

The Manchester team are part of the collaborative project to build the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), a new kind of telescope currently
under construction in Chile and designed to conduct a 10-year survey of the dynamic Universe. LSST will be able to map the entire visible sky.

The Starship in our Future
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36684