Astronomy

Thousands light the night sky to the unaided eye, dimmer or brighter, yet seldom a hint of color to make a difference from an overwhelming whiteness. But the starry zoo features a wild variety in sizes, color and life span.

Faced with the unbelievable, we struggle forward on rationality crutches and begin to find answers. Life makes sense, but the mind may be hiding weird surprises, and we are probably not bound to meet aliens. Probably neither should.

Given the right conditions, life started almost immediately; yet the road to complex organisms and to intelligence was probably more arduous and fraught with devastating incidents of which the sky was not absent.

After sniffing well over 99.9% of tentative locations around the Milky Way, a common yet tranquil corner in the Universe, we found a likely place to inhabit. A warm, cozy planet with steady climate driven by a stable star and sizable moon. Now we look to earthly needed features for life ...

Picking off where we left, that is describing which are life compatible environments at the galactic and planetary system scale, we now focus on the Solar system and the Earth Moon subsystem.

It was bound to happen. The issue of extraterrestrial life, or of life in general as it relates to the Universe had to crawl here sooner or later. Tiptoeing around sensitive issues, we plot the journey life and intelligence had to negotiate in this galactic corner, on Earth.

Ask anybody what is a supernova, and chances are a vast majority will respond it goes bang and has to do with astronomy. Supernovas are epitomes of out of this world catastrophe, of unimaginable violence. Yet we all have been - in a distant past - within not one but probably ...

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB's) puzzled astronomers for decades since their discovery by the Vela nuclear test surveillance satellites in the 60's. Scientists think now the mystery has been solved, adding yet another (unlikely) threat to the catastrophes lurking out there.

That black holes are a pain in the neck for astrophysicists is more or less well known. Infinites and zeroes are fine for mathematics but not to be found in Nature, yet a black hole in principle hides an infinite at its center, or that was accepted until now.

Above expectations and beyond budgeted lifetimes, this is what Spirit and Opportunity are accomplishing since the launch of an over 8 month martian surface journey. Bearing the scars of pushing design limits and the harsh martian winter, they keep purring and making science.