Everything Science

Category: Space

  • Where are the aliens? – Fermi Paradox

    Ancient Greek philosophers Democritus and Epicurus theorized the universe to be the result of a chance jostling of atoms and regarded it as highly likely that there were other worlds out there and that they were inhabited. Epicurus’ disciple Metrodorus of Chios considered the idea of our “world” being the only one as unlikely as “if a single ear of wheat grew on a vast plain.” As the Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius put it: “Nothing in the universe is unique and alone and therefore in other regions there must be other earths inhabited by different tribes of men and breeds of beasts.”

    Such logical philosophy should be able to manifest and in some way, prove the existence of “different tribes of men” on “other earths” and such but this isn’t the case. Going by theoretical calculations, it’s basically impossible that other extraterrestrial life doesn’t exist somewhere in the universe. But how can that be? With the universe being such an expansive open space, how is it possible that there isn’t any other forms of life around?

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    That question brings up the Fermi Paradox. The paradox in which shows the absence of other forms of life despite the highly likelihood of life existing on any given planet able to sustain life.

    Quite frankly, humans have terrorized Earth to have our way of our life. Even though it may not be intentional, we wipe out around 150 species every single day. It’s just a byproduct of how we like to run things.

    But this also brings up another issue. Should we even be looking for aliens? Every species will do whatever it takes to ensure the survival and safety of their own kind. Even if we are able to find life on other planets, it should be taken into consideration that aliens may have similar thoughts and mindsets to us, this raises another problem as well.

    The planet Proxima D, circling the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri is an earth-like exoplanet having the possibility to possess liquid water. This planet is our next best bet to find life. The vast distance between extraterrestrial civilizations will mean an ineffective speed of communication. Even at the speed of light, it will take 4.2 years for radio waves to reach this planet.

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    Being unable to properly communicate in a common language and being unable to know their true intentions will lead to a lot of tension. It is scary how favorable the first strike advantage is in this situation. Rendering a civilization immobile may be the best decision when facing such life or death situation.

    It maybe that aliens don’t exist at all or maybe that they do. For now, we should just lay back and watch the stars in the sky. And enjoy the space and universe that we live in.

    Sources:
    Space.com. 2022. Fermi Paradox: Where are the aliens? | Space. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.html. [Accessed 17 April 2022].

    Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. 2022. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – Scientific American. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-search-for-extraterre/#. [Accessed 17 April 2022].

    Quora Contributor. 2022. When did humans first consider the possibility of alien life?. [ONLINE] Available at: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/08/when-did-humans-first-consider-the-possibility-of-alien-life.html. [Accessed 17 April 2022].

    YouTube. 2022. Why We Should NOT Look For Aliens – The Dark Forest – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE&t=590s. [Accessed 17 April 2022].

    YouTube. 2022. The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens? (1/2) – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNhhvQGsMEc. [Accessed 17 April 2022].

    YouTube. 2022. The Fermi Paradox II — Solutions and Ideas – Where Are All The Aliens? – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fQkVqno-uI. [Accessed 17 April 2022].

    YouTube. 2022. What Do Alien Civilizations Look Like? The Kardashev Scale – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhFK5_Nx9xY&t=628s. [Accessed 17 April 2022].

    media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com. 2022. No page title. [ONLINE] Available at: https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1240w,f_auto,q_auto:best/newscms/2018_01/2280531/180103-ufo-illustration-mn-1015.jpg. [Accessed 17 April 2022].

  • Neutron Stars

    A neutron star is created when a massive star, 8 or higher times the mass of our sun exhausts its supply of hydrogen and can no longer maintain hydrostatic equilibrium. Stars are able to stay stable due to an opposition of forces. While gravity attempts to crush the star, this pressure also causes fuel to fuse into heavier elements and release energy. Subsequently, the central region of the star, or also known as the core, gets compressed by the entire weight of all the matter above it when all fuel fuses into iron, which is the final stage and cannot be fused into heavier elements.

    This pressure is so great that protons and electrons fuse into neutrons and thus, what remains is called a neutron star is made from 95% neutrons and 5% protons.

    Neutron stars are one of the most bizarre bodies in the universe. Their density is unmatched except for black holes of course, as one cubic centimeter of neutron star matter would be able to fit all 7.7 billion of Earth’s human inhabitants. All that matter compressed into the size roughly of a sugar cube. That’s a god damn lot of pressure.

    The magnetic field of a neutron star can reach 1 billion gauss, or 1 quadrillion times stronger the magnetic field of the Earth. Neutron stars spin many times per second and can be observed from this. Pulses are created from their unmatched magnetic field in the form of radio waves. Neutron stars observed in this manner are the best known type of star, called a radio pulsar. Approximately, 2000 are known of in the Milky Way.

    It has been recently discovered and confirmed that neutron star to neutron star collisions or kilonova explosions are the favored source of heavy elements such as gold, uranium and platinum. Regular stars can only fuse elements up to iron as conditions aren’t extreme enough and obviously the elements you are using to view this article came from somewhere .One of these explosions could produce up to 100 Earths’ worth of pure precious metals in an instant. Talk about efficiency.

    Not only can these majestic stars be of interest and use to us but they could possibly uncover the origins and secrets of the universe. The environment in the core of a neutron star is so extreme that the rules of nuclear physics change.

    The forces operating inside the core of a neutron star can be compared to the universe shortly after the big bang. This basically means that it can act as fossils from the beginning of the universe and time.

    Quark are the true building blocks of the universe. They are only observed in confined groups, as singular quarks have not been studied. If you try to separate them, they resist harder and if energy is used, the quarks use the energy to make new quarks.

    Frankfurt physicists begins, they simulated merging neutron stars and the product of the merger to explore the conditions under which a transition from hadrons to a quark-gluon plasma would take place and how this would affect the corresponding gravitational wave. The result: in a specific, late phase of the life of the merged object a phase transition to the quark-gluon plasma took place and left a clear and characteristic signature on the gravitational-wave signal. (Goethe-Universität, 2022.)

    Professor Luciano Rezzolla from Goethe University is convinced: “Compared to previous simulations, we have discovered a new signature in the gravitational waves that is significantly clearer to detect. If this signature occurs in the gravitational waves that we will receive from future neutron-star mergers, we would have a clear evidence for the creation of quark-gluon plasma in the present universe.” (Goethe-Universität, 2022.)

    A hypothesis is that inside the core, the conditions are so bizarre that quarks “deconfine” into a quark-gluon plasma. This plasma was the only matter to have existed in the first microseconds of the universe as it was also incredibly dense and hot.

    Sources:

    APOD Index – Stars: Neutron Stars . 2022. APOD Index – Stars: Neutron Stars . [ONLINE] Available at: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/neutron_stars.html. [Accessed 11 April 2022].

    philsci-archive.pitt.edu. 2022. No page title. [ONLINE] Available at: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1205/2/gott1f.doc. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    EarthSky | Updates on your cosmos and world. 2022. EarthSky | The 1st microsecond of the Big Bang. [ONLINE] Available at: https://earthsky.org/space/1st-microsecond-of-the-big-bang/#:~:text=We%20have%20studied%20a%20substance,early%20stage%20of%20the%20universe.. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    Imagine the Universe!. 2022. Imagine the Universe!. [ONLINE] Available at: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/neutron_stars1.html#:~:text=Pulsars%20are%20rotating%20neutron%20stars,very%20powerful%20beams%20of%20light.. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    neutron star – NASA Search Results. 2022. neutron star – NASA Search Results. [ONLINE] Available at: https://nasasearch.nasa.gov/search/images?affiliate=nasa&query=neutron+star. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2022. Neutron star collisions are a “goldmine” of heavy elements, study finds | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [ONLINE] Available at: https://news.mit.edu/2021/neutron-star-collisions-goldmine-heavy-elements-1025#:~:text=elements%2C%20study%20finds-,Neutron%20star%20collisions%20are%20a%20%E2%80%9Cgoldmine%E2%80%9D%20of%20heavy%20elements%2C,neutron%20stars%20and%20black%20holes.. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    Sky & Telescope. 2022. What’s Inside Neutron Stars? – Sky & Telescope – Sky & Telescope . [ONLINE] Available at: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/whats-inside-neutron-stars/. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    Encyclopedia Britannica. 2022. neutron star | Definition, Size, Density, Temperature, & Facts | Britannica. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/science/neutron-star. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    Neutron Star | Encyclopedia.com. 2022. Neutron Star | Encyclopedia.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-technology/astronomy-and-space-exploration/astronomy-general/neutron-star#:~:text=and%20gamma%20rays.-,Pulsars,his%20student%20Jocelyn%20Bell%20Burnell.. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    The Independent. 2022. How women in science have been systematically robbed of their ideas | The Independent | The Independent. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/women-science-systematically-robbed-patriarchy-a8718841.html. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    NASA. 2022. NASA. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    NASA. 2022. NASA Mission to Study Neutron Stars, Aid in Deep Space Navigation | NASA. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/new-nasa-mission-to-study-mysterious-neutron-stars-aid-in-deep-space-navigation. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    NASA – Carbon Atmosphere Discovered on Neutron Star . 2022. NASA – Carbon Atmosphere Discovered on Neutron Star . [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/photo09-089.html#:~:text=As%20with%20the%20Earth’s%20atmosphere,hotter%20than%20the%20Earth’s%20atmosphere.. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    Nature. 2022. The golden age of neutron-star physics has arrived. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00590-8. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    NobelPrize.org. 2022. Antony Hewish – Facts – NobelPrize.org. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1974/hewish/facts/. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    Goethe-Universität — Gravitational waves could prove the existence of the quark-gluon plasma. 2022. Goethe-Universität — Gravitational waves could prove the existence of the quark-gluon plasma. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.goethe-university-frankfurt.de/87985890/Gravitational_waves_could_prove_the_existence_of_the_quark_gluon_plasma. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    YouTube. 2022. The Most Dangerous Stuff in the Universe – Strange Stars Explained – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_8yK2kmxoo. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    YouTube. 2022. Neutron Stars – The Most Extreme Things that are not Black Holes – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udFxKZRyQt4. [Accessed 12 April 2022].

    YouTube. 2022. Atoms As Big As Mountains — Neutron Stars Explained – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW3aV7U-aik. [Accessed 12 April 2022].