Lifeboat Foundation

WASHINGTON — Space is vast, but it may not be so lonely after all: A study finds the Milky Way is teeming with billions of planets that are about the size of Earth, orbit stars just like our sun, and exist in the Goldilocks zone — not too hot and not too cold for life.

Astronomers using NASA data have calculated for the first time that in our galaxy alone, there are at least 8.8 billion stars with Earth-size planets in the habitable temperature zone.

The study was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Continue reading “8.8 billion habitable Earth-size planets exist in Milky Way alone” »

Michael Watkins discusses the potential for finding alien life, and how to protect it if we do.

Not alone? Kepler and K2 Missions found 9 planets that can be just right for sustaining life. NASA — National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Interesting approach to the topic.

Do aliens exist? Carlo Rovelli, a founder of loop quantum gravity theory and author of the best-selling book “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics,” says it’s an easy question.

“There is so much space up there that it is childish to think that in a peripheral corner of an ordinary galaxy there should be something uniquely special,” he writes. “Life on Earth gives only a small taste of what can happen in the universe.”

Continue reading “A leading physicist says it’s ‘childish’ to think there are no aliens” »

One can hope.

Although it’s likely to be a hope in vain, I’m afraid.

That said, you never know.

Continue reading “Is NASA about to announce that aliens exist?” »

If aliens sent you an encrypted binary message, could you answer? René Heller, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, wants to hear from you.

Last month, Heller posed a hypothetical question as part of the #SETIDecryptChallenge: “Suppose a telescope on Earth receives a series of pulses from a fixed, unresolved source beyond the solar system,” he wrote. “It turns out the pulses carry a message.”

The encrypted message is a vast sea of 0’s and 1’s. You can see it here, but here’s a GIF for your convenience.

Continue reading “This Astrophysicist Posed an Alien Challenge and the Internet Is Racing to Solve It” »

Deep Space Industries and the Luxembourg Government announce partnership to commercialize space resources.

Asteroid mining company Deep Space Industries, together with the Luxembourg Government and the Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI), the national banking institution in Luxembourg, have signed an agreement formalizing their partnership to explore, use, and commercialize space resources as part of Luxembourg’s spaceresources.lu initiative.

The Luxembourg Government will work with Deep Space Industries to co-fund relevant R&D projects that help further develop the technology needed to mine asteroids and build a supply chain of valuable resources in space.

Continue reading “Prospector-X™: An International Mission to Test Technologies for Asteroid Mining” »

An international team of astronomers has discovered three Earth-sized exoplanets, all orbiting the same star just 40 light-years from us, the 16-nation intergovernmental research organization ESO reported on Monday.

The scientists have deemed all three planets potentially habitable, an exciting turn in the hunt for “exoplanets,” a term for planets that orbit a star other than our sun.

And it could bring us closer to finding extraterrestrial life.

Continue reading “3 Newly Discovered Nearby Planets Are a Game Changer in The Hunt For Alien Life” »

In a few years, powerful new telescopes will usher in a search for habitable worlds outside our solar system. And TRAPPIST-1—a dim, tepid star just a smidge larger than Jupiter—is one of the first places we’ll look. It’s only forty light years away, and it’s home to several promising, Earth-sized exoplanets.

Three siblings, described today in the journal Nature, are the first exoplanets ever discovered around an “ultracool dwarf” star. And they’re a jackpot when it comes to the search for alien life. Each planet is similar in size to Earth or Venus and probably rocky. The planets all skirt the edge of the so-called habitable zone. Finally, these potential Earth twins are so close to us that we can begin studying their atmospheres right now.

“This is basically a paradigm shift,” study co-author Julien de Wit told Gizmodo. “If these planets have atmospheres, they really are the best places to look for life.”

Continue reading “This Tiny Star Is Now the Best Place to Hunt for Alien Life” »