Large volcanic eruption may have caused the first mass extinction | Science Bulletin
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/13088.html

Researchers in the USA and Japan say they may have found the cause of the first mass extinction of life.

There have been five mass extinctions since the divergent evolution of early animals 600 -450 million years ago.
The cause of the third and fourth was volcanic activity, while an asteroid impact led to the fifth. But triggers
of the first and second mass extinctions had, until now, been unknown.

‘Styrofoam’ Planet May Help Solve Mystery of Giant Planets | News Article | Lehigh University
https://www1.lehigh.edu/...s/%E2%80%98styrofoam%E2%80%99-planet-may-help-solve-mystery-giant-planets

Fifth-graders making Styrofoam models of the solar system may have the right idea. Lehigh researchers have discovered a new planet
orbiting a star 320 light years from Earth that has the density of Styrofoam. This “puffy planet” outside our solar system may help
solve the long-standing mystery of the existence of a population of highly inflated giant planets.

“It is highly inflated, so that while it’s only a fifth as massive as Jupiter, it is nearly 40 percent larger, making it about as
dense as Styrofoam, with an extraordinarily thick atmosphere,” said Joshua Pepper, astronomer and assistant professor of physics
at Lehigh, who led the study with researchers from Vanderbilt University and Ohio State University, along with researchers at
universities and observatories and amateur astronomers around the world.

The research, “KELT-11b: A Highly Inflated Sub-Saturn Exoplanet Transiting the V+8 Subgiant HD 93396,”
is published in The Astronomical Journal.

The planet, called KELT-11b, is an extreme version of a gas planet, like Jupiter or Saturn, but is orbiting very close to its host
star in an orbit that lasts less than five days. The star, KELT-11, has started using up its nuclear fuel and is evolving into
a red giant, so the planet will be engulfed by its star and will not survive the next hundred million years.

XENON1T, the most sensitive detector on Earth searching for WIMP dark matter, releases its first result

This is how scientists behind XENON1T, now the most sensitive dark matter experiment world-wide, hosted in the INFN Laboratori
Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy, commented on their first result from a short 30-day run presented today to the scientific community.

Despite the shortness of the 30-day science run the sensitivity of XENON1T has already overcome that of any other experiment in the field,
probing un-explored dark matter territory. “WIMPs did not show up in this first search with XENON1T, but we also did not expect them so soon!”
says Elena Aprile, Professor at Columbia University and spokesperson of the project. “The best news is that the experiment continues to accumulate
excellent data which will allow us to test quite soon the WIMP hypothesis in a region of mass and cross-section with normal atoms as never before.
A new phase in the race to detect dark matter with ultra-low background massive detectors on Earth has just began with XENON1T. We are proud
to be at the forefront of the race with this amazing detector, the first of its kind.”

XENON1T, the most sensitive detector on Earth searching for WIMP dark matter, releases its first result | The XENON Experiment
https://science.purdue.edu/xenon1t/?p=813

Juno Scientists Prepare for Fifth Science Pass of Jupiter
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/juno-scientists-prepare-for-fifth-science-pass-of-jupiter

NASA's Juno spacecraft will make its fifth science flyby over Jupiter's mysterious cloud tops on Thursday, May 18.
At the time of perijove (defined as the point in Juno’s orbit when it is closest to the planet's center), the spacecraft
will have logged 102 million kilometers in Jupiter’s orbit and will be about 3 500 kilometers above the planet's cloud tops.

Budoucí infra devítimetr ve vesmíru
ORIGINS Space Telescope
http://origins.ipac.caltech.edu/

How Cool is That? Exploring the Low-Temperature Universe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYw2mkoMQ_c

Stunning 4K Space Telescope Ultra HD Time lapse Compilation : ESO Astronomy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqUgqGdkrzI

Detecting Photosynthesis on Exoplanets
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=37767

Breakthrough Discuss 2017 - SETI observations of Proxima b
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAC_SttPBE0

ALMA Eyes Icy Ring Around Young Planetary System
http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-room/1165-alma-eyes-icy-ring-around-young-planetary-system

An international team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)
has made the first complete millimeter-wavelength image of the ring of dusty debris surrounding
the young star Fomalhaut. This remarkably well-defined band of rubble and gas is likely the result
of exocomets smashing together near the outer edges of a planetary system 25 light-years from Earth.
Observations Suggest Chemical Kinship to Comets in Our Own Solar System.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/hubble-spots-moon-around-third-largest-dwarf-planet

The combined power of three space observatories, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, has helped astronomers uncover a moon
orbiting the third largest dwarf planet, catalogued as 2007 OR10. The pair resides in the frigid outskirts of our solar system
called the Kuiper Belt, a realm of icy debris left over from our solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.

With this discovery, most of the known dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt larger than 600 miles across have companions.
These bodies provide insight into how moons formed in the young solar system.

The Future of SETI w/ Ground-Based Telescopes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy-HlhWLS4A


Where are we in our search for extraterrestrial life? What is the future and how will ground-based telescopes help?

The first modern SETI experiment was created by Frank Drake in 1960 with Project Ozma. Over 50 years later, we still
haven't heard a radio signal from an intelligent extraterrestrial species.

What is the future of SETI with ground-based telescopes? What percentage of the radio frequencies have we surveyed?
Are there new developments in AI and data processing on the horizon that will make it easier to search through SETI
data? With new funding sources from the Breakthrough Foundation be the extra funding needed to uncover a SETI signal?

Join Tony Darnell, Dr. Andrew Siemion, Dr. Franck Marchis, Jon Richards and Dr. Svetlana Berdyugina as we delve into
these topics.

https://www.facebook.com/DeepAstronomy/videos/vb.134968529902067/1365379646860943/?type=2&theater

SKA SA presents first Array Release 1.5 images taken with MeerKAT 32 to Minister Naledi Pandor – SKA SA
http://www.ska.ac.za/...st-array-release-1-5-images-taken-with-meerkat-32-to-minister-naledi-pandor/

The Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, delivered the Budget Vote of the Department of Science and Technology in
Parliament on Tuesday, 16 May 2017. Students sponsored by SKA SA and staff members were invited to attend in the gallery. Prior
to the Budget Vote, the Minister embarked on a tour of the exhibition at the Iziko Museum, where SKA SA joined other exhibitors
for the showcase.

During the Minister’s visit to the exhibition, SKA SA Chief Scientist Dr Fernando Camilo and SKA SA Head of Science Commissioning
Dr Sharmila Goedhart, released to the Minister the recent AR1.5 results, images achieved by using various configurations of the 32
antennas currently operational in the Karoo. This milestone of the integration of 32 antennas with single polarisation correlator
was achieved on schedule by the end of March 2017. The 32 antennas are part of the eventual 64 instruments which are being built
at the Losberg site in the Northern Cape.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-mission-uncovers-dance-of-electrons-in-space

You can’t see them, but swarms of electrons are buzzing through the magnetic environment — the magnetosphere — around Earth.
The electrons spiral and dive around the planet in a complex dance dictated by the magnetic and electric fields. When they
penetrate into the magnetosphere close enough to Earth, the high-energy electrons can damage satellites in orbit and trigger
auroras. Scientists with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission study the electrons’ dynamics to better understand
their behavior. A new study, published in Journal of Geophysical Research revealed a bizarre new type of motion exhibited
by these electrons.

Exploring Reconnection - Guide Field Off
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIBG5ZAPwW4

National Optical Astronomy Observatory Press Release: Punching Above Its Weight, a Brown Dwarf Launches a Parsec-Scale Jet
https://www.noao.edu/news/2017/pr1701.php

Astronomers using the SOAR telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory report the discovery of a spectacular extended jet
from a young brown dwarf. With masses too low to sustain hydrogen fusion in their interiors, brown dwarfs occupy the mass range between
stars and giant planets. While young stars are commonly found to launch jets that extend over a light year or more, this is the first
jet with a similar extent detected from a brown dwarf. The result lends new insight into how substellar objects form.

Intrinsically faint, brown dwarfs have been more elusive and difficult to study than stars. Although they are often portrayed as exotic
creatures as a result, brown dwarfs are actually far more numerous in our Galaxy than stars like the Sun. The discovery, accepted for
publication in the Astrophysical Journal, supports the emerging picture that brown dwarfs form similarly to stars.

The image shows the jet, HH 1165, launched by the brown dwarf Mayrit 1701117 in the outer periphery of the 3 million year old sigma Ori
cluster. Traced by emission from singly ionized sulfur, which appears green in the image, the jet extends 0.7 light years (equivalent to
0.2 parsecs) northwest of the brown dwarf. The emission knots along the jet reveal that the mass loss is time variable, probably a result
of episodic accretion onto the brown dwarf. The red nebulosity southeast of the brown dwarf is a reflection nebula that traces the outflow
cavity in the direction of the counterjet.

Our View of the Cosmos Is About to Get a Tremendous Upgrade
https://futurism.com/2-the-way-were-looking-for-alien-life-is-changing/

Nasa's Kepler Telescope has confirmed 3486 exoplanets, 361 of which it considers terrestrial:
how are scientists responding to the question of how to detect life on these promising but distant worlds?

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpViVEO-ymc

https://www.nasa.gov/...re/goddard/2017/nasas-van-allen-probes-spot-man-made-barrier-shrouding-earth

Humans have long been shaping Earth’s landscape, but now scientists know we can shape our near-space environment as well.
A certain type of communications — very low frequency, or VLF, radio communications — have been found to interact with particles
in space, affecting how and where they move. At times, these interactions can create a barrier around Earth against natural high
energy particle radiation in space. These results, part of a comprehensive paper on human-induced space weather, were recently
published in Space Science Reviews.

NASA's Van Allen Probes Find Human-Made Bubble Shrouding Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFYoYUBGw4s