Amateur Astronomer Helps Uncover Secrets of Unique Pulsar Binary System - Dunlap Institute
http://www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/...ur-astronomer-helps-uncover-secrets-of-unique-pulsar-binary-system/

A professional astrophysicist and an amateur astronomer have teamed up to reveal surprising details about an unusual millisecond
pulsar (MSP) binary system comprising one of the fastest-spinning pulsars in our Galaxy and its unique companion star.

The Universe Is Flat — Now What?
http://www.space.com/34928-the-universe-is-flat-now-what.html

The universe is flat. But there's a lot of subtlety packed into that innocent-looking statement.
What does it mean for a 3D object to be "flat"? How do we measure the shape of the universe anyway?
Since the universe is flat, is that…it? Is there anything else interesting to say?

Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars | Smart News | Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...rns-are-painted-red-because-of-the-physics-of-dying-stars-58185724/
Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? Here's why. :)

Temná hmota může být ve vesmíru rozložena rovnoměrněji | ESO Česko
http://www.eso.org/public/czechrepublic/news/eso1642/?lang
Pečlivá analýza snímků rozsáhlých oblastí oblohy pořízených dalekohledem VST přinesla překvapivý výsledek

Analýza dat získaných v rámci rozsáhlé přehlídky galaxií, kterou v uplynulých letech prováděl dalekohled ESO/VST pracující na observatoři Paranal v Chile, naznačuje,
že hustota temné hmoty ve vesmíru by mohla být nižší a její rozložení rovnoměrnější, než se dosud myslelo. Mezinárodní tým vědců využil snímky získané v rámci přehlídky
KiDS (Kilo Degree Survey) k výzkumu vlivu gravitačního působení nejrozsáhlejších struktur hmoty ve vesmíru na světlo přicházející od patnácti milionů sledovaných
vzdálených galaxií. Zdá se, že výsledky získané tímto způsobem jsou v rozporu se staršími závěry učiněnými na základě údajů z družice Planck.

Project Starshot: Visiting the Nearest Star Within Our Lifetime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEk93g-niQ8


Up Close at Alpha Centauri
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36734
In early December the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics offered as part of its fall colloquium series a talk by Harvard’s Avi Loeb,
fortunately captured on YouTube as Project Starshot: Visiting the Nearest Star Within Our Lifetime. We’ve looked at Breakthrough Starshot in
many posts on Centauri Dreams, including my reports from the last set of meetings in Palo Alto, but for those new to the concept of using
a laser array to send small, instrumented sails to the Alpha Centauri stars, this video is a fine introduction.

New telescope chip offers clear view of alien planets | ANU
http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/new-telescope-chip-offers-clear-view-of-alien-planets

Scientists have developed a new optical chip for a telescope that enables astronomers to have a clear view of alien planets that may support life.

Seeing a planet outside the solar system which is close to its host sun, similar to Earth, is very difficult with today's standard astronomical
instruments due to the brightness of the sun. Associate Professor Steve Madden from The Australian National University (ANU) said the new chip
removes light from the host sun, allowing astronomers for the first time to take a clear image of the planet.

JO!!
Cassini: Mission to Saturn: Cassini Beams Back First Images from New Orbit
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2975/cassini-beams-back-first-images-from-new-orbit/

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has sent to Earth its first views of Saturn’s atmosphere since beginning the latest phase of its mission.
The new images show scenes from high above Saturn's northern hemisphere, including the planet's intriguing hexagon-shaped jet stream.

Cassini began its new mission phase, called its Ring-Grazing Orbits, on Nov. 30. Each of these weeklong orbits - 20 in all - carries
the spacecraft high above Saturn's northern hemisphere before sending it skimming past the outer edges of the planet's main rings.

No aliens? Astronomer says that's so pessimistic - Futurity
http://www.futurity.org/astronomer-astrobiology-sundial-tattoo-1311082-2/

Woodruff T. Sullivan III—”Woody” for short—is a professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Washington
and co-founder of its astrobiology program. Here, he answers questions about the search for life beyond Earth,
his plan to write a historical biography, and “the world’s first working sundial tattoo.”

Cosmos on Nautilus: Extraterrestrials May Be Robots Without Consciousness
http://cosmos.nautil.us/feature/72/it-may-not-feel-like-anything-to-be-an-alien
Humans may have one thing that advanced aliens don’t: consciousness.

mans are probably not the greatest intelligences in the universe. Earth is a relatively young planet and the oldest civilizations
could be billions of years older than us. But even on Earth, Homo sapiens may not be the most intelligent species for that much longer.

The world Go, chess, and Jeopardy champions are now all AIs. AI is projected to outmode many human professions within the next few decades.
And given the rapid pace of its development, AI may soon advance to artificial general intelligence—intelligence that, like human intelligence,
can combine insights from different topic areas and display flexibility and common sense. From there it is a short leap to superintelligent AI,
which is smarter than humans in every respect, even those that now seem firmly in the human domain, such as scientific reasoning and social skills.
Each of us alive today may be one of the last rungs on the evolutionary ladder that leads from the first living cell to synthetic intelligence.

What we are only beginning to realize is that these two forms of superhuman intelligence—alien and artificial—may not be so distinct. The technological
developments we are witnessing today may have all happened before, elsewhere in the universe. The transition from biological to synthetic intelligence
may be a general pattern, instantiated over and over, throughout the cosmos. The universe’s greatest intelligences may be postbiological, having grown
out of civilizations that were once biological. (This is a view I share with Paul Davies, Steven Dick, Martin Rees, and Seth Shostak, among others.)
To judge from the human experience—the only example we have—the transition from biological to postbiological may take only a few hundred years.