DOPR......:((((((

RIP

A universe of 2 trillion galaxies
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-universe-trillion-galaxies.html

An international team of astronomers, led by Christopher Conselice, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Nottingham, have found that the universe contains at least 2 trillion
galaxies, ten times more than previously thought. The team's work, which began with seed-corn funding from the Royal Astronomical Society, appears in the Astrophysical Journal today.

Astronomers have long sought to determine how many galaxies there are in the observable universe, the part of the cosmos where light from distant objects has had time to reach us. Over
the last 20 years scientists have used images from the Hubble Space Telescope to estimate that the universe we can see contains around 100 - 200 billion galaxies. Current astronomical
technology allows us to study just 10% of these galaxies, and the remaining 90% will be only seen once bigger and better telescopes are developed.

Prof Conselice's research is the culmination of 15 years' work, part-funded by a research grant from the Royal Astronomical Society awarded to Aaron Wilkinson, an undergraduate student
at the time. Aaron, now a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, began by performing the initial galaxy-counting analysis, work which was crucial for establishing the feasibility
of the larger-scale study.

Prof Conselice's team then converted pencil beam images of deep space from telescopes around the world, and especially from the Hubble telescope, into 3-D maps. These allowed them to
calculate the density of galaxies as well as the volume of one small region of space after another. This painstaking research enabled the team to establish how many galaxies we have
missed - much like an intergalactic archaeological dig.

The results of this study are based on the measurements of the number of observed galaxies at different epochs – different instances in time - through the universe's history. When Prof
Conselice and his team at Nottingham, in collaboration with scientists from the Leiden Observatory at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the Institute for Astronomy at the University
of Edinburgh, examined how many galaxies there were at a given epoch they found that there were significantly more at earlier times.

It appears that when the universe was only a few billion years old there were ten times as many galaxies in a given volume of space as there are within a similar volume today. Most of
these galaxies were low mass systems with masses similar to those of the satellite galaxies surrounding the Milky Way.

VIRGO: Když se na to tak dívám, ne že bych byl pesimista nebo tak něco, ale pomalu to vypadá, že je čas na nějaké další velké vymírání. Tentokrát by to mohlo být pro změnu s ledem a sněhem, ať to není tak jednotvárné... Když už máme nejvíc zalednění, které bylo pro dané události k dispozici :)

Microbes Could Survive Thin Air of Mars - Astrobiology Magazine
http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/microbes-survive-thin-air-mars/

Microbes that rank among the simplest and most ancient organisms on Earth could survive the extremely thin air of Mars, a new study finds.

The Martian surface is presently cold and dry, but there is plenty of evidence suggesting that rivers, lakes and seas covered the Red Planet
billions of years ago. Since there is life virtually wherever there is liquid water on Earth, scientists have suggested that life might have
evolved on Mars when it was wet, and life could be there even now.

“In all the environments we find here on Earth, there is some sort of microorganism in almost all of them,” said Rebecca Mickol, an astrobiologist
at the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and the lead author of the study. “It’s hard
to believe there aren’t other organisms out there on other planets or moons as well.”

Mickol and her team detailed their findings in the paper, “Low Pressure Tolerance by Methanogens in an Aqueous Environment: Implications for
Subsurface Life on Mars,” which was published in the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres.

SF State astronomer searches for signs of life on Wolf 1061 exoplanet | SF State News
http://news.sfsu.edu/news-story/sf-state-astronomer-searches-signs-life-wolf-1061-exoplanet

SF State astronomer Stephen Kane searches for signs of life in one of the extrasolar systems closest to Earth

Is there anybody out there? The question of whether Earthlings are alone in the universe has puzzled everyone from biologists and physicists
to philosophers and filmmakers. It’s also the driving force behind San Francisco State University astronomer Stephen Kane’s research into
exoplanets — planets that exist outside Earth’s solar system.

As one of the world’s leading “planet hunters,” Kane focuses on finding “habitable zones,” areas where water could exist in a liquid state
on a planet’s surface if there’s sufficient atmospheric pressure. Kane and his team, including former undergraduate student Miranda Waters,
examined the habitable zone on a planetary system 14 light years away. Their findings will appear in the next issue of Astrophysical Journal
in a paper titled “Characterization of the Wolf 1061 Planetary System.”

“The Wolf 1061 system is important because it is so close and that gives other opportunities to do follow-up studies to see if it does indeed
have life,” Kane said.

Úžasná infografika PHL
Earth: Evolution of a Habitable Planet (Animated Poster) - Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo
http://phl.upr.edu/projects/visual-paleo-earth/vpe_globes

Study of microbes reveals new insight about Earth’s geology and carbon cycles | Argonne National Laboratory
http://www.anl.gov/...les/study-microbes-reveals-new-insight-about-earth-s-geology-and-carbon-cycles

Tiny microbes play a big role in cycling carbon and other key elements through our air, water, soil and sediment.
Not only do microbes capture and release carbon, contributing to a cycle that is central to life on Earth, they also
release compounds that can change existing minerals and form new ones — in turn shaping the geology of the world around us.

Grasping the biological, chemical and geological processes microbes engage in is critical to understanding and predicting
global climate, greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient transport and other natural phenomena.

Researchers who study these processes at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have discovered that
these microbial communities are significantly affected by the types of carbon “food” sources available. Their findings,
published in the journal PLOS ONE, reveal that the type of carbon source affects not only the composition and activity
of natural microbial communities, but also in turn the types of mineral products that form in their environment.

A Break in the Search for the Origin of Complex Life – IPSA SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST
https://bioinfonerd.wordpress.com/2017/01/14/a-break-in-the-search-for-the-origin-of-complex-life/
A group of newly discovered microbes, named after Norse gods, may belong to the lineage from which we evolved.

We’re one step closer to identifying the precursors that led to complex organisms (such as multicellular eukaryotes... that’s you and I).
We always knew our primordial ancestors were of the microbe variety. Now, we may have have found them. Meet Asgard archaea...

The Cosmos’ Fine-Tuning Does Not Imply a Fine-Tuner - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus
http://nautil.us/blog/the-cosmos-fine_tuning-does-not-imply-a-fine_tuner

The fine-tuning argument rests on an interesting discovery of physical cosmology that the odds were strongly stacked against life.

XCHAOS: Supr, díky za to info kolem. Roman Tkačenko je úžasný chlapík.

NASA - Venus Landsailing Rover
https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/niac/2012_phase_I_fellows_landis.html

Chybějící telemetrie, ale zřejmě problémy s příjmem na pozemní stanici...