Sinister Security: Alien Worlds

Astronomers Reveal, THOUSANDS Of Alien Worlds May Lurk BEYOND Pluto!

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An incredible new animation reveals the sheer number of alien worlds that may exist beyond the orbit of Pluto. The astronomer who compiled the data has said that it only illustrates a few dwarf planets hidden in the outermost reaches of our solar system.

Officially speaking, our solar system has eight ‘cosmic members’: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. However, beyond Neptune we have all-star ‘dwarf planet Pluto. Now, astronomers suggest that Pluto is one of the many worlds located in the region called the Kuiper Belt.

The animation first spotted in a Reddit post by user Nobilitie, and later shared by the Business insider is in fact a recording of a ‘physics-based’ simulator gamer called “Universe Sandbox 2,” according to Dan Dixon, the creator, and director of the software.

Each of the orbits—depicted as whitish rings—represent an object. The countless rings located beyond the eight inner rings are attributed to dwarf planets like Pluto.

According to a post on Reddit, the orbits of the dwarf planet candidates were based on a constantly updated list of celestial objects.

Interestingly, this fascinating list is maintained by Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology.

“It’s a nice illustration of what is out there,” Brown wrote in an email to Business Insider. “The striking difference between the orderly giant planets and the randomness of the dwarf planets is quite apparent.”

Mike Brown is the man behind the discovery of Eris, a celestial object that is 27 percent more massive than Pluto. Curiously, it was the discovery of Eris that degraded Pluto from a planet to a Dwarf planet.

As reported by the Business Insider, Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and five others meet Brown’s “near certainty” criteria — in other words, they’re definitely dwarf planets and not comets or other astronomical objects. Thirty are “highly likely” to be dwarf planets, 75 are “likely,” and nearly 850 are “probably” or “possibly” dwarf planets.

As the mind-bending animation illustrates, alien worlds orbiting our sun beyond Pluto may number in thousands.

Mike brown, together with Konstantin Batygin discovered evidence of a massive object—nearly the size of Neptune—beyond the orbit of Pluto. This celestial body has been referred to as Planet X, or planet nine. The scientific duo from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena argue that Planet Nine orbits the sun every 15,000 years.

This alien world—which has still not been observed directly—has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles).

According to Caltech, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.

However, not only could there be a massive alien world beyond Neptune and Pluto, Brown estimates there may be thousands of dwarf planets out there.

“As you can see from the illustration, some of them are on exceedingly elliptical orbits. Those guys are going to spend most of their time at the outer edge of their orbit, so they’re hard to see,” Brown said.

“There might be a factor of ~5 more of those objects that we don’t know about.”

Redefining the meaning of Planet

According to Professor Brown, Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and five others meet Brown’s ‘near certainty’ criteria, meaning they are definitely dwarf planets as opposed to large comets or other objects. This means that there are thirty objects that are ‘highly likely’ to be dwarf planets, 75 are ‘likely,’ and almost 850 are labeled ‘probably’ or ‘possibly’ dwarf planets.

An illustration of Pluto’s orbit is shown in yellow. The dots beyond it are Kuiper Belt objects. NASA

Furthermore, Professor Brown indicates that half of the belt’s potential dwarf planets have yet to be discovered, taking their total number to around 2,000.

Discovering all of the supposed worlds is a tough task.

Brown doesn’t think spacecraft like the New Horizons—which is

now exploring the Kuiper Belt—will discover most of those missing worlds.

“The fact that there are so many of these things out there really shows that the future of their exploration is going to mostly rely on telescopes,” he said.

Scientists are currently trying to agree on a new system so that planets are classified by their size, whereas moons, dwarf planet, and planets are labeled based on their orbits of one another, reports the Daily Mail.

Scientists have proposed that if a celestial object is large enough, and it isn’t releasing hot gasses like our sun, then it is a planet. However, large groups of astronomers must first agree on the new definition before it is accepted worldwide.

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Thousands of worlds may lurk beyond Pluto — and a stunning new animation shows the ones we’ve found

Stunning animation reveals the arching orbits of thousands of planets that may exist just beyond Pluto

Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet

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“There Have Been 10,000 Generations Before Us -- Ours Could Be The First To Discover Extraterrestrial Life” --NASA

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In 1960, the astrophysicist Francis Drake pointed a radio telescope situated in Green Bank, West Virginia, in the direction of two Sun-like stars 11 light years away. His faith: to pick up a signal that would verify gifted life might be out there. Fifty years have departed by since Drake’s pioneering SETI experiment, and we’ve yet to perceive the aliens. But because of a host of discoveries, the idea that life might survive outside Earth now appears more believable than ever. For one, we now know that life can flourish in the most extreme surroundings here on Earth — from deep-sea methane seep and Antarctic sea ice to acidic rivers and our thirstiest deserts.

We’ve also discovered that liquid water isn’t exclusive to our planet. Saturn’s moon “Enceladus” and Jupiter’s moons “Ganymede” and “Europa” have large oceans underneath their icy surfaces. Even Saturn’s largest moon “Titan” could seed some kind of life in its lakes and rivers of methane-ethane. And then there’s the finding of exo-planets, with more than 1800 alien worlds outside our Solar System recognized so far. In fact, astrophysicists think there may be a million and millions of planets in our galaxy alone, one-fifth of which may be like Earth. As Carl Sagan excellently said: “The Universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”

Now some researchers trust the hunt for life outside Earth may well repay in our lifespan. “There have been 10K generations of humans before us. Ours could be the first to know,” said SETI astrophysicist Seth Shostak.

But what can occur once we do? How would we deal with the discovery? And what would be its influence on humanity? This overwhelming question was the focus of a meeting organized last September by the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the Library of Congress. For two days, a group of researchers, historians, philosophers and theologians from round the world discussed how we might prepare for the preordained discovery of life — microbial or intelligent — somewhere else in our Universe. The conference was hosted by Steven J. Dick, the 2nd yearly Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress.

Of course, the influence of discovery will rest on on the specific situation. In a talk titled “Current Approaches to Finding Life Beyond Earth, and What Happens If We Do,” Shostak proposed three ways — or three “horse races” — for discovering life in space. First, we could discover it close, in our Solar System. NASA’s Curiosity Rover is at present studying the Martian surface for clues of past or present life. And “Europa Clipper”, a mission to Jupiter’s icy moon, is now under attention. Second, we could “discover it out” of the atmosphere of an exo-planet, using telescopes to look for gases such as methane and oxygen that might clue at a biosphere. The James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in 2018, will be able to carry out that kind of work.

Discovering life in our Solar System, which possibly would be microbial, might not have as great an impression as hearing from an intellectual civilization far away. We’d have to worry about matters like contamination. We might also find some different biochemistry, maybe exposing new visions about the nature of life. But that type of finding wouldn’t affect us as much as the view of communicating with intellectual life.

Then again it would take hundreds, if not thousands of years for a signal to mobile from side to side, Shostak mentioned. So that third situation would only show us a very few things immediately, such as their locality or what type of star they orbit. However, picking a signal might have other tempting implications about the nature of alien intellect.

Several scientists, including Shostak, put forward the following proposition: “That once a society creates the technology that could put them in touch with the cosmos, they are only a few hundred years away from changing their paradigm from biology to artificial intelligence.” The knowledge is based on the so-called “time scale argument” or “short window observation.” Many scientists forecast we’ll have industrialized a strong A.I by 2050 here on Earth — about a hundred years after the creation of computers, or a hundred and fifty years after the creation of radio connectio. “The point is that, going from creating radios to devising thinking machines is very short — a few centuries at most,” Shostak said. “The leading intelligence in the cosmos may well be non-biological.”

In a talk titled “Alien Minds,” Susan Schneider, a philosophy professor at the University of Connecticut, explained that idea further. The idea of “whole brain emulation” is becoming gradually general among certain scientists, she explained. So are other unbelievable sounding ideas like “mind uploading” and “immortally.” So, to her, a civilization able to radio communicate would probably be “super-intelligent” by the time we hear from them.

According to the "short window observation" concept, a civilization talented of radio communication would possibly have established artificial intelligence by the time we hear from them. She also claimed that alien super-intelligence would be sensible in principle, since the neural code is similar to a computational code, and thoughts could well be inserted in a silicon-based substrate. A silicon-based intelligence would also have wonderful effects for long distance space travel. But again, a repeated theme throughout the conference was to be alert of our anthropocentric tendencies. There’s been a vast gap between microbial life and intelligent life on Earth, and even intelligent life has even progressed on a spectrum.

Lori Marino, a neuroscientist and current director of the Kimela Center for Animal Advocacy, debated as such in a talked titled “The Landscape of Intelligence.” We have a lot to study from other intelligent beings here on Earth (such as dolphins) before even thinking about contacting aliens.

Eventually, the utmost implications might be philosophical. Whether it turns out to be microbial, compound or intelligent, finding life somewhere else will increase fascinating questions about our place in the cosmos. A couple of presentations, by theologian Robin Lovin and Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno, even spoke the potential influence on the world’s religions. But what if we don’t find anything soon, or even at all?

The hunt itself can give us a sense of direction, and help us furnace a planetary characteristics, argued the philosopher Clement Vidal in a talk titled “Silent Impact.” And if we’re really alone, then we should start taking good care of life here on Earth, and consider our duty of colonization, he added. The hunt itself can help us forge a planetary identity, said philosopher Clement Vidal. In the interim, astrobiology can help thin the gap among the sciences and humanities, as many presenters highlighted. And it can be a step to incorporating our knowledge across a wide range of disciplines.

So, how do we get ready for something we know so little about? We do so “by on-going to do good science, but also by understanding that science is not metaphysically neutral,” finished the conference host Steven Dick. “We get ready by continuing to question our suppositions about the nature of life and intelligence.”

Via Astrobio.net

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Kepler-452b 'Earth's Bigger, Older Cousin'

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NASA said that its Kepler spacecraft has spotted "Earth's bigger, older cousin": the first nearly Earth-size planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star similar to our own. Though NASA can't say for sure whether the planet is rocky like ours or has water and air, it's the closest match yet found.

The planet, Kepler-452b, is about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It's about 60% bigger than Earth, NASA says, and is located in its star's habitable zone -- the region where life-sustaining liquid water is possible on the surface of a planet.

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A visitor there would experience gravity about twice that of Earth's, and planetary scientists say the odds of it having a rocky surface are "better than even." While it's a bit farther from its star than Earth is from the sun, its star is brighter, so the planet gets about the same amount of energy from its star as Earth does from the sun. And that sunlight would be very similar to Earth's, Jenkins said.

The planet "almost certainly has an atmosphere," Jenkins said, although scientists can't say what it's made of. But if the assumptions of planetary geologists are correct, he said, Kepler-452b's atmosphere would probably be thicker than Earth's, and it would have active volcanoes.

It takes 385 days for the planet to orbit its star, very similar to Earth's 365-day year, NASA said. And because it's spent so long orbiting in this zone -- 6 billion years -- it's had plenty of time to brew life, Jenkins said.

"That's substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet," he said in a statement.

Before the discovery of this planet, one called Kepler-186f was considered the most Earth-like, according to NASA. That planet, no more than a 10th bigger than Earth, is about 500 light-years away from us. But it gets only about a third of the energy from its star as Earth does from the sun, and noon there would look similar to the evening sky here, NASA says.

The $600 million Kepler mission launched in 2009 with a goal to survey a portion of the Milky Way for habitable planets. From a vantage point 64 million miles from Earth, it scans the light from distant stars, looking for almost imperceptible drops in a star's brightness, suggesting a planet has passed in front of it.

It has discovered more than 1,000 planets. Twelve of those, including Kepler-425b, have been less than twice the size of Earth and in the habitable zones of the stars they orbit.

Missions are being readied to move scientists closer to the goal of finding yet more planets and cataloging their atmospheres and other characteristics.

In 2017, NASA plans to launch a planet-hunting satellite called TESS that will be able to provide scientists with more detail on the size, mass and atmospheres of planets circling distant stars. The next year, the James Webb Space Telescope will go up. That platform, NASA says, will provide astonishing insights into other worlds, including their color, seasonal differences, weather and even the potential presence of vegetation.

Sinister Security

Astronomers Reveal, THOUSANDS Of Alien Worlds May Lurk BEYOND Pluto!

“There Have Been 10,000 Generations Before Us -- Ours Could Be The First To Discover Extraterrestrial Life” --NASA

Kepler-452b 'Earth's Bigger, Older Cousin'

More Alien Worlds! NASA to Announce

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