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If you ever find yourself at a cocktail party of astrophysicists and don't know what to say, try this: "But what about the angular momentum?" No matter what the topic of conversation, you'll be guaranteed to sound erudite. Nearly every field of astronomy, from galaxy formation to star formation, has an "angular momentum problem." Nothing in the cosmos ever seems to spin or orbit at the rate it should. The moon is no exception. It is the flywheel to end all flywheels; if its orbital angular momentum were transferred to Earth's axial rotation, our planet would come close to spinning ...

While the truth might be out there, technological aliens don't seem to be — at least not yet. New results from the most comprehensive Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program ever undertaken — which surveyed 1,327 nearby stars for signals from intelligent beings — have turned up empty. "There's certainly nothing out there glaringly obvious," ... lead author of a paper about the results, which were published in The Astrophysical Journal, told Live Science. "There's no amazingly advanced civilizations trying to contact us with incredibly powerful transmitters." While the team didn't find anything this time around, Price said that there...

In the scientific community, there is still a great deal of energy devoted to “listening” for evidence or hints of intelligent, extraterrestrial civilizations out among the stars. Most of you are probably familiar with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and their decades of work in this field. They’re still at it and, in fact, are upping their game with a new generation of laser sensors. These projects drew fresh attention after the discovery of Tabby’s Star and the frantic speculation over whether or not some ancient civilization had built a Dyson Sphere around their own sun. This has led...

Exoplanet Census Suggests Earth Is Special after All A new tally proposes that roughly 700 quintillion terrestrial exoplanets are likely to exist across the observable universe--most vastly different from Earth By Shannon Hall on February 19, 2016 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Email Print Share via Google+Stumble Upon NASA/ESA/ESO Advertisement More than 400 years ago Renaissance scientist Nicolaus Copernicus reduced us to near nothingness by showing that our planet is not the center of the solar system. With every subsequent scientific revolution, most other privileged positions in the universe humans might have held dear have been...

THE recent announcement by a team of astronomers that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy has further fueled the speculation, popular even among many distinguished scientists, that the universe is teeming with life.The astronomer Geoffrey W. Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, an experienced planet hunter and co-author of the study that generated the finding, said that it “represents one great leap toward the possibility of life, including intelligent life, in the universe.” But “possibility” is not the same as likelihood. If a planet is to be inhabited rather than merely habitable,...

Earth's flora is responsible for the glaciers and rivers that have created this planet's distinctive landscapeAstronomers are finding lots of exoplanets that are orbiting stars like the sun, significantly raising the odds that we will find a similar world. But if we do, the chance that the surface of that planet will look like ours is very small, thanks to an unlikely culprit: plants. We all know how Earth's landscape came about, right? Oceans and land masses formed, mountains rose, and precipitation washed over its surface; rivers weathered bare rock to create soil and plants took root. Well, new research...

I was watching this program about the moon and the important role it plays on stabilizing earth. One of the things it does is keep it from wobbling all over the place. It keeps the earth fairly balanced, but every now and then the planet tilts 5 degrees up or down causing massive climatic changes. The last tilt turned what we now know as the Sahara desert from a lush green forest with rivers into the pile of sand it is today. So I'm thinking ok.. we have these tilts every now and then let's not forget solar flares +...

Moons like the Earth's - which are formed in catastrophic collisions - are extremely rare in the Universe, a study by US astronomers suggests. The Moon was created when an object as big as the planet Mars smacked into the Earth billions of years ago. The impact hurled debris into orbit, some of which eventually consolidated to form our Moon. The Astrophysical Journal reports that just 5-10% of planetary systems in the Universe have moons created this way.

The moon formed after a nasty planetary collision with young Earth, yet it looks odd next to its watery orbital neighbor. Turns out it really is odd: Only about one in every 10 to 20 solar systems may harbor a similar moon. New observations made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stellar dust clouds suggest that moons like Earth's are—at most—in only 5 to 10 percent of planetary systems. "When a moon forms from a violent collision, dust should be blasted everywhere," said Nadya Gorlova, an astronomer at the University of Florida in Gainesville who analyzed the telescope data in...

Our solar system may be unique after all, despite the discovery of at least 120 other systems with planets, astronomers said on Wednesday. All the other solar systems that have been found have big, gassy planets circling too close to their stars to allow them to be anything like Earth or its fellow planets, the British and U.S.-based researchers said. If that is the case, Earth-like planets will be very rare, the astronomers write in the latest issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Maybe these other extrasolar systems ... contain only the giant planets," said Mario...

Without the Moon, there would have been no life on Earth. Four billion years ago, when life began, the Moon orbited much closer to us than it does now, causing massive tides to ebb and flow every few hours. These tides caused dramatic fluctuations in salinity around coastlines which could have driven the evolution of early DNA-like biomolecules. This hypothesis, which is the work of Richard Lathe, a molecular biologist at Pieta Research in Edinburgh, UK, also suggests that life could not have begun on Mars. According to one theory for the origin of life, self-replicating molecules such as DNA...

In 1993, French astronomer Jacques Laskar ran a series of calculations indicating that the gravity of the Moon is vital to stabilizing the tilt of our planet. Earth's obliquity, as this tilt is technically known as, has huge repercussions for climate. Laskar argued that should Earth's obliquity wander over hundreds of thousands of years, it would cause environmental chaos by creating a climate too variable for complex life to develop in relative peace. So his argument goes, we should feel remarkably lucky to have such a large moon on our doorstep, as no other terrestrial planet in our solar system...

Conspiracy theorists will readily tell you that the U.S. military is hiding alien corpses in a secret facility in the Nevada desert. But paleontologist and University of Washington geology professor Peter Ward thinks that scientists should be looking for a different type of alien life on earth: alien microbes. Ward is the author of several popular books about astrobiology, including the controversial Rare Earth, co-authored with Donald Brownlee. In his latest book, Life as We Do Not Know It, Ward addresses an issue often avoided by astrobiologists. Although all known life on Earth has a similar DNA-based chemistry, life found...

The Originsof the World and Mankind An Attempt to Reconcilethe Biblical Account with Scientific Discoveries Bishop Alexander (Mileant)Translated by Karyn and Michael Grigoriev. Edited by Natalia Semyanko If you are knowledgeable in the issues discussed in this article, please share your comments with us. Also please let us know of any typos and mistakes in this preliminary version. Thank you! Bishop Alexander: alexander_mileant@msn.com . To read the full version with comments, download the document file. Content: 1. Introduction. 2. Two Revelations. 3. Science’s "Chapter One" Problem. 4. Insects on an Interplanetary Ship. 5. Faith and Knowledge. 6. The Issue of Miracles. 7. The...

Earth-like worlds circling stars in orbital zones suitable for life may be few and far between in the cosmos, according to new research. In the first comprehensive study of extrasolar planetary systems, astronomers have shown that in most of them it would not be possible to keep an Earth-like world in orbit around a star so that it was neither too hot nor too cold for life. In general, other planetary systems fall into two types: those with Jupiter-like worlds circling close to their parent star, and those with more distant Jupiters in elliptical orbits. In both systems, maintaining an...

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02a.html A Universe Of Life: Maybe Not by Karl Hill Las Cruces - Jan 7, 2002 This vast universe surely holds plenty of worlds where life can flourish, right? Don't bet on it, says New Mexico State University physicist Slava Solomatov. The more scientists learn about the conditions that make life possible on Earth, the more they realize how complex those factors are -- and how a relatively small change in one condition or another could have rendered the planet uninhabitable, Solomatov said. "It's a very finely tuned system," he said. "Some of the factors are well known, but we ...

Nigh? The end of the world is already here By John von Radowitz 14 January 2003 The end of the world is not merely nigh – it has already begun. Earth has started the process of turning into a burnt-out cinder that will eventually be swallowed by the Sun, say the astrobiologists Donald Brownlee and Peter Ward of the University of Washington. They calculate that Earth's "day in the sun" has reached 4.30am, corresponding to its age of 4.5 billion years. By 5am the billion-year reign of animals and plants will have ended. At 8am the oceans will vaporise. At...

In its 4.5 billion years, Earth has evolved from its hot, violent birth to the celebrated watery blue planet that stands out in pictures from space. But in a new book, two noted University of Washington astrobiologists say the planet already has begun the long process of devolving into a burned-out cinder, eventually to be swallowed by the sun. By their reckoning, Earth's "day in the sun" has reached 4:30 a.m., corresponding to its 4.5 billion-year age. By 5 a.m., the 1 billion-year reign of animals and plants will come to an end. At 8 a.m. the oceans will vaporize....

Are We Alone?Our recent success on Mars leaves us no reason to think otherwise--and reason to ponder what makes the earth unique. By: Jay W. Richards & Guillermo Gonzalez The American Spectator May 1, 2004 The American taxpayers recently footed the bill for a risky $800 million NASA mission. The good news? It worked. In January, two NASA landers bounced to their destinations and released their rovers Spirit and Opportunity to prowl the Martian landscape. These remarkable little robots were not searching for archaeological ruins or strange, black monoliths but something much less exotic--the fingerprints of water in liquid form....

Imagine the blue marble of Earth turning white, as the glaciers advance, sea levels drop, harbors turn to meadows, and "snouts of ice" a third of a mile high bulldoze the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Scientists have been saying for some time that Earth is doomed, that the dying sun will balloon out and embrace the planet in the ultimate global warming -- but the incineration is at least 7 billion years away, and first, it's going to get very, very cold. At least two scientists have concluded that the Earth is already on the downward slope, its biological heyday millions...