A false color image of Venus taken in ultraviolet light by Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft, revealing patterns in the planet's cloud layers.
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On March 1, 2020, humanity's only spacecraft orbiting Venus—Japan's Akatsuki—saw a mysterious flash in the planet's alien skies. The flicker could provide crucial evidence in a 40-year quest to answer a perplexing planetary puzzle: Is there lightning on this cloud-shrouded world?
Lightning is found all over the solar system. Spacecraft have detected extraterrestrial lightning strikes in the clouds of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Cloaked in thick clouds, "we expect there to be lightning on Venus" as well, says Noam Izenberg , a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins University and deputy chair of the Venus Exploration Analysis Group.
And here's another article:
2020: At Least It Was Good For Space Exploration? : Short Wave : NPR
A SpaceX Falcon9 rocket, with the Crew Dragon capsule attached, lifts off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39-A. Chris O'Meara/AP hide caption
Between the pandemic, protests, the recession — the list goes on — there was big space news in 2020. And there was a lot of it! To round it up, Maddie chats with NPR science correspondents Nell Greenfieldboyce and Geoff Brumfiel .
For even more space and other science content, follow Nell and Geoff on Twitter at @nell_sci_npr and @gbrumfiel . Send terrestrial and extraterrestrial inquiries to the show at shortwave@npr.org .
How many alien civilizations are out there? A new galactic survey holds a clue.
This artist's concept depicts Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone—a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface.
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Here's a good sign for alien hunters: More than 300 million worlds with similar conditions to Earth are scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. A new analysis concludes that roughly half of the galaxy's sunlike stars host rocky worlds in habitable zones where liquid water could pool or flow over the planets' surfaces.
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This may worth something:
Do aliens exist? Technosignatures may hold new clues : NewsCenter
"My hope is that, using this grant, we will quantify new ways to probe signs of alien technological civilizations that are similar or much more advanced to our own," says Loeb, the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard.
The researchers will begin the project by looking at two possible technosignatures that might indicate technological activity on another planet:
The information will be gathered in an online library of technosignatures that astrophysicists will be able to use as a comparative tool when gathering data to answer the question, do aliens exist.
Happening on Twitter
The flicker could provide crucial evidence in a 40-year quest to answer a perplexing planetary puzzle: Is there lig… https://t.co/mAlP59mWYJ NatGeo (from Global) Mon Dec 28 15:08:03 +0000 2020
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