The Implications of Cosmic Silence | University of Arkansas
http://news.uark.edu/articles/39255/the-implications-of-cosmic-silence

The universe is incomprehensibly vast, with billions of other planets circling billions of other stars.
The potential for intelligent life to exist somewhere out there should be enormous.

So, where is everybody?

That’s the Fermi paradox in a nutshell. Daniel Whitmire, a retired astrophysicist who teaches mathematics
at the University of Arkansas, once thought the cosmic silence indicated we as a species lagged far behind.

“I taught astronomy for 37 years,” said Whitmire. “I used to tell my students that by statistics, we have
to be the dumbest guys in the galaxy. After all we have only been technological for about 100 years while
other civilizations could be more technologically advanced than us by millions or billions of years.”

Recently, however, he’s changed his mind. By applying a statistical concept called the principle of mediocrity –
the idea that in the absence of any evidence to the contrary we should consider ourselves typical, rather than
atypical – Whitmire has concluded that instead of lagging behind, our species may be average. That’s not good news.

In a paper published Aug. 3 in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Whitmire argues that if we are typical,
it follows that species such as ours go extinct soon after attaining technological knowledge.

The argument is based on two observations: We are the first technological species to evolve on Earth, and we are
early in our technological development. (He defines “technological” as a biological species that has developed
electronic devices and can significantly alter the planet.)

The first observation seems obvious, but as Whitmire notes in his paper, researchers believe the Earth should be
habitable for animal life at least a billion years into the future. Based on how long it took proto-primates to
evolve into a technological species, that leaves enough time for it to happen again up to 23 times. On that time
scale, there could have been others before us, but there’s nothing in the geologic record to indicate we weren’t
the first. “We’d leave a heck of a fingerprint if we disappeared overnight,” Whitmire noted.

http://realdanielwhitmire.wixsite.com/home/copy-of-astrobiology-1

New observations reveal Crab Nebula's polarised emissions for first time | KTH
https://www.kth.se/...-observations-reveal-crab-nebula-s-polarised-emissions-for-first-time-1.746056

The researchers' observations of polarised X-rays from the Crab Nebula and Pulsar, published today in Scientific Reports, may help
explain sudden flares in the Crab’s X-ray intensity, as well as provide new data for modeling – and understanding – the nebula.

The polarisation of Crab X-rays reveals how and where they are produced in the extreme environment of the nebula, says Mark Pearce,
Professor of Physics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and lead author of the study.

“Our measurements indicate that the X-rays come from an organized region in the vicinity of the pulsar at the centre of the nebula,"
Pearce says. "Electrons gyrating around magnetic field lines in this region produce the X-rays. The measurements are made in an unexplored
energy range, so they provide new information which will help to solve the puzzle of how high energy radiation is generated.”

Space in Images - 2017 - 08 - Asteroid 2012 TC4 will fly past Earth in October 2017
http://www.esa.int/...einimages/Images/2017/08/Asteroid_2012_TC4_will_fly_past_Earth_in_October_2017

A small asteroid flying past Earth on 12 October will provide scientists with a valuable opportunity to learn more about its orbit and
composition. The campaign will exercise the international network of observatories and research organisations working on planetary defence.

Astronomers recently spotted asteroid 2012 TC4 under a collaboration between ESA and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to locate faint
objects that might strike Earth. This is the first observation since 2012, when the asteroid was discovered by the Pan-STARRS observatory in
Hawaii. It was found this time by ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

The original observations revealed the asteroid’s next approach to our vicinity would be in October 2017 but its orbit meant that it could
not be tracked during the last five years, leaving astronomers unsure on how close it would come.

The new observations reveal it will miss Earth by 44 000 km. While it remains visible, astronomers will study the 15–30 m object in as much
detail as possible, such as obtaining information on its composition.

NASA Selects Proposals to Study Galaxies, Stars, Planets
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-proposals-to-study-galaxies-stars-planets

NASA has selected six astrophysics Explorers Program proposals for concept studies. The proposed missions would study gamma-ray and X-ray emissions
from clusters of galaxies and neutron star systems, as well as infrared emissions from galaxies in the early universe and atmospheres of exoplanets,
which are planets outside of our solar system.

The selected proposals, three Medium-Class Explorers missions and three Explorers Missions of Opportunity, call for focused scientific investigations
and developments of instruments that fill the scientific gaps between the agency’s larger missions.

“The Explorers Program brings out some of the most creative ideas for missions to help unravel the mysteries of the universe,” said Thomas Zurbuchen,
associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The program has resulted in great missions that have returned
transformational science, and these selections promise to continue that tradition.”

The proposals were selected based on potential science value and feasibility of development plans. After concept studies and detailed evaluations,
one of each mission type will be selected by 2019 to proceed with construction and launch. The earliest launch date would be in 2022. Medium-Class
Explorer mission costs are capped at $250 million each, excluding the launch vehicle, and Mission of Opportunity costs are capped at $70 million each.

The Fate of Merging Neutron Stars
http://aasnova.org/2017/08/09/the-fate-of-merging-neutron-stars/

When two neutron stars collide, the new object that they make can reveal information about the interior
physics of neutron stars. New theoretical work explores what we should be seeing, and what it can teach us.

So far, the only systems from which we’ve detected gravitational waves are merging black holes. But other
compact-object binaries exist and are expected to merge on observable timescales — in particular, binary
neutron stars. When two neutron stars merge, the resulting object falls into one of three categories:

- a stable neutron star,
- a black hole, or
- a supramassive neutron star, a large neutron star that’s supported by its rotation
but will eventually collapse to a black hole after it loses angular momentum.

Lunar dynamo’s lifetime extended by at least 1 billion years | MIT News
http://news.mit.edu/2017/lunar-dynamo-lifetime-extended-least-1-billion-years-0809

Findings suggest two mechanisms may have powered the moon’s ancient churning, molten core.

New evidence from ancient lunar rocks suggests that an active dynamo once churned within the molten metallic core of the moon,
generating a magnetic field that lasted at least 1 billion years longer than previously thought. Dynamos are natural generators
of magnetic fields around terrestrial bodies, and are powered by the churning of conducting fluids within many stars and planets.

In a paper published today in Science Advances, researchers from MIT and Rutgers University report that a lunar rock collected by
NASA’s Apollo 15 mission exhibits signs that it formed 1 to 2.5 billion years ago in the presence of a relatively weak magnetic
field of about 5 microtesla. That’s around 10 times weaker than Earth’s current magnetic field but still 1,000 times larger than
fields in interplanetary space today.

VIRGO: tady se to nepíše tak kategoricky, příští měsíc má padnout oficiální rozhodnutí, byť zástupci NASA připouštějí, že několikaměsíční odklad JWST neublíží :)
http://www.americaspace.com/2017/08/06/schedule-conflict-may-delay-launch-of-james-webb-space-telescope-to-2019/

VIRGO: tenhle chlapík se obvykle drží při zemi, ale tentokrát přidal pár úvah k možnosti Dyson sphere:
KIC 8462852 Update for 07/15/2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OabY1bKB974

VIRGO:

In this animation, we are at the centre looking out. Each dot is a galaxy that has been mapped by various surveys.
The orange region contains the galaxies the Dark Energy Survey team observed. The sparkling in the long gold regions
are supernova explosions. The empty spaces aren’t truly empty, they are just places we haven’t looked yet. Credit:
Samuel Hinton, University of Queensland.

DES+OzDES, WiggleZ, GAMA, 2dF, 6dF, & SDSS - 3D Galaxy Visualization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_ZQfMWQtsA


What a new map of the universe tells us about dark matter
https://theconversation.com/what-a-new-map-of-the-universe-tells-us-about-dark-matter-82074

Bennu alert! OSIRIS-REx's target asteroid was recently spotted for the first time
since 2013 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Maui. The Minor Planet Center keeps records
of all published observations of Bennu.

IAU Minor Planet Center
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?utf8=%E2%9C%93&object_id=101955

Shape model from radar observations at The Arecibo Observatory, work led by Mike Nolan.

Superbubbles in the Interstellar Medium of the Antennae Galaxies
http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/press/bubbles.html

A team of scientists led by members of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),
have detected and measured a complete "carpet" of expanding bubbles in the interstellar medium of the "Antennae", a pair of galaxies in interaction which will
eventually merge. The work, published in Monthy Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society is based on observations with GHaFaS on the William Herschel Telescope
(WHT). This instrument is capable of making a map of the velocities of a complete galaxy using the emission from the ionized hydrogen in its interstellar medium.

To detect the huge bubbles in the combined galaxy disc, the team has used BUBBLY, a method developed by some of the current authors which has already been published
in the same journal in 2015. These huge bubbles in galaxy discs are caused by the stellar winds and supernova explosions in clusters of very hot very massive stars.
They can range in size from a couple of light years to a thousand light years, depending on the number of stars in the cluster and how massive they are. The larger
ones are often called "superbubbles".