Science Megathread

[Associate Justice PiT]

Neptune has a new moon

     That reminds me, there are many dim objects in space that astronomers have yet to seriously examine. Many of the closest stars to us (Proxima Centauri, Barnard's Star, Wolf 359) are much too dim to be seen with the naked eye. The possibility for new objects of interest in our immediate vicinity is an ever present one.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Neptune has a new moon

     That reminds me, there are many dim objects in space that astronomers have yet to seriously examine. Many of the closest stars to us (Proxima Centauri, Barnard's Star, Wolf 359) are much too dim to be seen with the naked eye. The possibility for new objects of interest in our immediate vicinity is an ever present one.

And, speaking of that, this was on my FB news feed this morning.  Two guys at the U. of Louisiana Lafayette are hypothesizing that there is a planet in the Ort Cloud four times the size of Jupiter.  If that is the case, the story below says, it may have been a planet (or "dark clunker" star?) that escaped a nearby star system and was captured by ours.  It seems one major hitch in the hypothesis is that, if something that size was in the Ort Cloud, it would have major effects on commit paths through there, but that hasn't been observed.  The astrophysicists defending the theory will release their paper next year, so it should be interesting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/14/tyche-hidden-planet_n_823028.html

     That's interesting. For a while now, people have hypothesized the existence of a brown or red dwarf hiding in the far reaches of the Solar system. The hypothesis was advanced to help explain an observed periodicity in extinction rates. Funny enough, one of the people involved was a guy that I had as a professor last year.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Be nice if we could stickie this thread somewhere.

I was just now cleaning out some old emails and found this: Dolphins likely have the longest and most expansive memory of any non-human species. They are like us in so many ways, yet they live in the water and communicate by clicks and tones. Which are thus far indecipherable. Like humans, their brains are very large and very complex when considering the size of their bodies. Freedom Species!

Here's a fascinating snippet:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'd like to know more about that. Did they understand that they were "tidying up" or would that concept be alien to them?

Evidence of three and a half billion year old microbes found in western Australia's Dresser Formation. Fantastic find.

It would seem life was just itching to start once the earth cooled enough.  That's why space exploration is so important.  It is a distinct possibility that life could exist on other worlds in our solar system.

I totally agree, and there is the possibility that that intelligent life will be like whales and never build a radio to talk back to us!

If we can figure out how to go into water and not get wet and go into space and not get whatever complex process that is... an intelligent marine species could easily evolve a way to communicate outside of water!

     By complex process, could you perchance be referring to suffocation?