Good Tuesday morning, everyone.
It appears that Earth-like planets may actually be very common! Hooray for life as we know it… well, sort of.
“THE HIGH ABUNDANCE OF EARTH-SIZED PLANETS APPEARS TO BE A GENERAL FEATURE OF NATURE.”
Moreover, 1 in 5 Milky Way stars hosts potentially life-friendly Earths!
Two links below
Two billion planets in our galaxy may be suitable for life
Now that we have established that it is quite reasonable to assume that as there is a great abundance of life on Earth, that there exists this many, many, many times over throughout the Universe… now we need to talk about something less jovial, and more “joyful” in the sense of Eastern Philosophy.
Consider, the destruction of the Universe.
Galactus, Destroyer of Worlds
No, the end of everything will not come via Galactus. Instead, the end seems to be a part of the very fabric of the Universe. A new paper (never fully conclusive, but that’s the way of science) says that the Higgs field, an ocean of invisible energy which gives particles mass, features and strengths will one day drop into a lower energy state, like water freezing to ice.
“Taken at face value, the result implies that eventually (in 10^100 years or so) an unlucky quantum fluctuation will produce a bubble of a different vacuum, which will then expand at the speed of light, destroying everything.”
If/when this occurs, workings of reality as we know it will be obliterated. Naturally, we would have no warning. Like the snap of a couple celestial fingers, everything will instantly cease to be.
Of course, we shouldn’t be too surprised that everything will one day end… because it appears that one day everything began (“day” may not be the best word).
Ebbs and flows, things come and go… over and over again.
Anyway, we will continue to move the rock up the mountain just as Sisyphus did.
Though the rock will only roll down once it is at the top… we will not accept defeat in the face of this fact. Instead, we will make our meaning, we will find our reasons for pushing it up each time.
And so, in the face of what seems to be inevitable annihilation, we forge on, and India heads to Mars.
Below is the mission plan India’s Mars orbiter
Full-size: http://i.imgur.com/BAlwNDa.jpg
And below the “live” (it has since successfully passed) Launch of PSLV-C25/Mars Orbiter Mission – Live from Sriharikota
A true colour image of volcanic basalt rocks in the Gusev Crater, Mars.
Gusev Crater, Mars.
To finish this post off… just a couple of really neat space shots that caught my attention.
Solar eruption taken by Nasa
Two co-orbiting black holes at the centers of merging galaxies, photographed in x-ray (blue) and radio (pink) light
So, it’s all going to end… but with endings come new beginnings. So, buck up. It’s a beautiful Cosmos (inside and out), and what a better structure to existence than to learn about ourselves over and over, and to learn about the greater structure time and again.
Take care,
– J
