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Arecibo Observatory is shutting down — here are some of the most groundbreaking discoveries it inspired, including one that led to a Nobel Prize

<br /><br /><ul><li>The world’s <keyword id="3689181" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="largest-radio-telescope">largest radio telescope</keyword> is now fully operational.<br /></li><li>Located and built in China, the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) was making discoveries even before hitting its full stride.<br /></li><li>It’s also the world’s most sensitive telescope and some believe could even lead to the detection of extraterrestrial life.<br /></li></ul>China’s first told the world about its the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in 2016. It was built but still needed testing. Four eyes down the line, China’s ‘Sky Eye’ is now fully operational. <br /><br />It is one of the largest and most sensitive radio telescopes in the world. Located in a natural depression in Guizhou, it cost China nearly $170 billion to set up. <br /><br />Compared to the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico, now the second-largest radio telescope in the world, FAST is 195 meters bigger and 2.5 times more sensitive. <br /><br />China’s official state-run press agency, <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/11/c_138696973.htm">Xinhua</a>, reports that the radio telescope is capable of receiving a maximum of 38 GB of information per second.<br /><br />“FAST has expanded four times the volume of the space range that radio telescopes can effectively explore, which means that scientists can discover more unknown stars, cosmic phenomena and laws of the universe, or even detect extraterrestrial life,” Li Kejia from Peking University, told Xinhua.<br /><br /><strong>FAST was making discoveries even before it was fully operational<br /></strong>Scientists are hoping that FAST’s enhanced sensitivity will help them measure extremely low-frequency gravitational waves — for the first time.<br /><br />Even before it was fully up and running, the telescope was fulfilling its scientific goals.<br /><br />A year into testing, in August 2017, the China National Space Administration reported that FAST has detected its first pulsar — electromagnetic radiation beaming from the poles of neutron stars rotating really fast — a discovery confirmed by the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia.<br /><br />Over the next two years, FAST has been able to detect up to 102 pulsars. Xinhua points out that this is more than the total number of pulsars detected during the same time period by researchers in Europe and the US combined.<br /><br />Here’s what FAST plans to do now that it’s fully up and running:<br /><br /><ol><li>Large scale hydrogen survey<br /></li><li>Pulsar observations<br /></li><li>Leading the international Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) network<br /></li><li>Detect interstellar communication signal<br /></li><li>Pulsar timing array<br /></li><li>Perform two sky surveys</li></ol><br /><strong>See also:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/picture-of-largest-number-of-galaxies-ever-captured-by-meerkat-telescope/articleshow/72863857.cms">It took one massive telescope 130 hours to capture tens of thousands of galaxies in a single image</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/scientists-predict-a-star-thats-slowly-been-getting-brighter-over-the-past-decades-will-explode-in-2083/articleshow/73138295.cms">A star set to explode in 2083 will be the brightest object in Earth's sky as it dies</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/isro-project-netra-will-track-space-debris-and-hostile-missiles/articleshow/71286808.cms">India's new space warning system will also keep an eye out for hostile missiles</a><br /></strong>

China's largest radio telescope is now fully operational and hoping to find aliens

<ul class="summary-list"><li>On the same day that China collected lunar rocks in a groundbreaking <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> mission, a critical US telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in <keyword id="124657" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Puerto-Rico">Puerto Rico</keyword> collapsed.</li><li>The observatory, built in 1963, was a beacon for US astronomical research, lasted through natural disasters, and inspired generations of Puerto Rican researchers. </li><li>China's successful accomplishment with the <keyword id="2568446" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Change-5">Chang'e-5</keyword> probe is the first time since the 1970s that lunar samples have been collected, and if the spacecraft returns to Earth safely in mid-December, will mark a massive step forward in space exploration. </li></ul><p>On Tuesday, the United States and China experienced vastly different events in the world of space exploration and observation.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/arecibo-radio-telescope-destruction-collapse-failure-puerto-rico-cable-breaks-2020-12">Arecibo Observatory,</a> a colossal telescope located in Puerto Rico, collapsed after deteriorating sharply since August. The Arecibo Observatory had been operating as a center for astronomical observations for 57 years. </p><p>Meanwhile, far from the Earth's atmosphere, the unmanned <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-landed-change-spacecraft-moon-rock-lunar-samples-2020-12">Chang'e-5 probe,</a> a Chinese spacecraft, landed on the moon to bring lunar materials back to Earth for the first time in almost 50 years, the Chinese government announced.</p><p>China's moon landing and retrieval of lunar rocks mark the first time a country has acquired sample materials from the moon since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976, <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/luna-24/in-depth/">according to NASA.</a> </p><p>US astronauts in NASA's Apollo program last retrieved over 800 pounds of lunar samples between 1969 and 1972. </p><p>The two separate events on the same day show the stark contrast between China's recent investment in space exploration and research and the US's space efforts, which often have shifting budgets and priorities.</p><p>As <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/moon-missions-why-astronauts-have-not-returned-2018-7">Business Insider</a> previously reported, there are myriad roadblocks to the US going back to the moon, including the cost of space exploration and priorities shifting with each new presidential administration.</p><p>China's moon program began roughly a decade ago with a <a href="https://www.space.com/43199-chang-e-program.html">$180 million investment</a> and with orbiter launches in 2007 and 2008. According to a 2019 report from Fortune, while the US still spends the most on space exploration, China's <a href="https://fortune.com/longform/space-program-spending-by-country/">spending has increased 349% over 15 years.</a></p><div type="image" title="China National Space Administration" height="2500" width="2500" msid="79526962" hostid="261"></div><p>The Chang'e-5 spacecraft which landed will eventually dock with the rest of the spacecraft remaining in orbit, and from there the samples will head back to Earth in the orbiter. If all remaining steps proceed smoothly, the samples will land in mid-December in the Inner Mongolia region.</p><p>In Puerto Rico, the observatory's suspended telescope fell about 450 feet and crashed into the observatory's reflector dish on Tuesday morning, according to the US National <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Foundation.</p><p>Built in the 1960s, the observatory was initially funded by the US Department of Defense and is now overseen by the National Science Foundation and the University of Central Florida. The telescope made key scientific discoveries, such as tracking asteroids headed towards the Earth, and helped with research leading to a Nobel prize. It was also one of the iconic backdrops of the James Bond movie, "Goldeneye."</p><p>Puerto Rican meteorologist Ada Monzón <a href="https://www.elvocero.com/escenario/ada-monz-n-llora-al-anunciar-colapso-del-observatorio-de-arecibo/article_2ca0dcac-33de-11eb-a529-97ad5a8fcbce.html">cried on air</a> Tuesday announcing the fall of the telescope. November marked a tragic end not only to the observatory's structure but also to the observatory's potential uses in the future, as the NSF announced plans to <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301674">decommission the observatory</a>, prior to the collapse. </p>

On the same day China landed a probe on the moon, the US's massive telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Scientists might have discovered the first signs of the gravitational-wave background: a sea of ripples in space-time reverberating throughout the universe.</li><li><keyword id="6417558" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="albert-einstein">Albert Einstein</keyword> first predicted the existence of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-wave-experiment-ligo-cracked-einstein-mystery-2020-11">gravitational waves</a>. They have recently been detected following violent collisions of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-collision-gravitational-waves-reveal-impossible-black-hole-2020-9">black holes</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-waves-new-class-of-collision-neutron-stars-2020-1">neutron stars</a>.</li><li>By monitoring dead stars throughout our galaxy, scientists found a signal that could be a steady thrum of <keyword id="1860685" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="gravitational-waves">gravitational waves</keyword> radiating from distant galaxies as supermassive <keyword id="4740034" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="black-holes">black holes</keyword> collide.</li></ul><p>Scientists may be on the brink of discovering a new phenomenon reverberating throughout the cosmos: a steady thrum of ripples in space-time.</p><p>Albert Einstein first predicted that colliding massive objects like black holes would create such ripples, called gravitational waves. But he thought that the noise and vibrations on Earth would prevent us from ever being able to detect these waves. In that aspect, Einstein was wrong. One of the most remarkable experiments in history - the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (<keyword id="6562538" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="ligo">LIGO</keyword>) - detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015.</p><p>Those waves came from two black holes that crashed 1.3 billion light-years away, sending out ripples that eventually traveled through our planet and registered in LIGO's giant, L-shaped detectors in Washington and Louisiana. Three researchers who helped conceive of the experiment earned a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2017-nobel-prize-in-physics-gravitational-waves-kip-thorne-rainer-weiss-barry-barish-2017-10">Nobel Prize in physics</a>.</p><p>Since that first discovery, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gravitational-wave-experiment-ligo-cracked-einstein-mystery-2020-11">LIGO and its Italian counterpart, Virgo, have detected likely gravitational waves at least 50 times</a>, from various combinations of black holes and neutron stars colliding.</p><p>But these are just the most obvious instances of gravitational waves - violent bursts of radiation from some of the most massive collisions in the universe. Theoretically, the cosmos should also be vibrating with a constant low-level hum of gravitational waves reverberating from merging galaxies across the universe.</p><div type="image" title="galaxies collide collision hubble spiral galaxy" height="789" width="1052" msid="80254183" hostid="261"></div><p>Scientists think that the center of every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole that's millions or even billions of times more massive than the colliding objects that LIGO and Virgo have detected. These supermassive black holes should merge when galaxies crash into each other and slowly become one. The hypothetical hum from that activity throughout the universe is referred to as the "gravitational-wave background," or GWB.</p><p>But nobody has discovered definitive evidence of it yet.</p><p>That's where the new research comes in. Astrophysicists at the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) have detected what may be the first signs of this background radiation in space-time. Their <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/abd401/meta?casa_token=wqZzq-jPzq8AAAAA:D_REFgAAunFS0KcNWM6IJ_Pa4BqyvK_gn1PpYgHuxiJWqYwo9DUXfEuvAUszVkQXkXtQzEBIoxocsXggfwE">research was published</a> in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.</p><p>"These enticing first hints of a gravitational-wave background suggest that supermassive black holes likely do merge, and that we are bobbing in a sea of gravitational waves rippling from supermassive black hole mergers in galaxies across the universe," Julie Comerford, an astrophysicist on the NANOGrav team and an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2021/01/11/gravitational-waves">press release</a>.</p><h2>A gravitational-wave observatory the size of our galaxy</h2><div type="image" title="nanograv gravitational waves pulsar observatory galaxy" height="1134" width="1512" msid="80254188" hostid="261"></div><p>To search for the gravitational-wave background, the NANOGrav researchers sought to imitate LIGO on a much larger scale.</p><p>LIGO works by shooting out a laser beam and splitting it in two. The light then travels down the detector's two 2.5-mile-long arms. The beams bounce off mirrors at the ends of those arms and converge back near the beam splitter, where they should cancel each other out. But when a gravitational wave comes through, it warps space-time - making one tube slightly longer and the other shorter for a brief moment. As a result, the two beams return to the splitter at different times, resulting in flashes of light.</p><p>NANOGrav works in a similar way. But instead of mirrors, it uses millisecond pulsars: extremely dense dead stars that spin rapidly, sending a burst of light towards Earth every millisecond. Their precise timekeeping rivals an atomic clock, so these celestial objects are ideal for detecting changes in the fabric of space-time.</p><p>Just as LIGO researchers detect gravitational waves by measuring changes in the arrival times of light beams, NANOGrav researchers do so by measuring variations in the arrival times of light from pulsars throughout the galaxy. As gravitational waves move through the cosmos, they squeeze or stretch the distance that this light travels to reach Earth, changing its arrival time by just a few hundred nanoseconds. Some pulsars' lights arrive a little sooner than would be expected, while others arrive a little later.</p><p>"We actually create a galaxy-sized gravitational wave detector within our own Milky Way," Joseph Simon, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the lead author of the new paper, said in a press conference at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society.</p><p>This method is called a "<keyword id="76971" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Pulsar">pulsar</keyword> timing array."</p><p>Since the distance between Earth and each of these pulsars is far larger than the length of LIGO's arms, NANOGrav could detect low-frequency gravitational waves that come from faraway mergers of supermassive objects. Unlike the brief outbursts that LIGO detects, these low-frequency waves could be continuously passing through Earth for years or even decades at a time.</p><p>By simply monitoring the pulsars' lights for a collective, simultaneous shift in timing, scientists should be able to identify the moment when a gravitational wave arrives or leaves our vicinity.</p><p>To watch pulsars in this way, NANOGrav used the National <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Foundation's Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-earth-lost-when-the-arecibo-telescope-collapsed-2020-12">Arecibo Observatory</a> in Puerto Rico.</p><div type="image" title="arecibo radio antenna observatory puerto rico overhead view 20050805 naic national science foundation nsf" height="1109" width="1479" msid="80254190" hostid="261"></div><p>But after two major cable breaks, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/arecibo-radio-telescope-destruction-collapse-failure-puerto-rico-cable-breaks-2020-12">the Arecibo telescope collapsed on itself</a> in December. Its 900-ton platform crashed into the dish below, shattering its panels with no hope of recovery. The researchers were using Arecibo until its first cable failure in August.</p><p>"This is, of course, a major loss for our project," Paul Demorest, a NANOGrav scientist who works at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, said at the AAS meeting.</p><div type="image" title="arecibo observatory damage radio telescope receiver platform" height="3640" width="4860" msid="80254193" hostid="261"></div><h2>'Oh my God, there's actually something here'</h2><p>In analyzing data from 45 pulsars - each one observed for at least three years - NANOGrav researchers discovered a coinciding shift in the timing of the pulsars' light. They think this may be the gravitational-wave background.</p><p>"We walked through each of the pulsars one by one. I think we were all expecting to find a few that were the screwy ones throwing off our data," Simon said in the release. "But then we got through them all, and we said, 'Oh my God, there's actually something here.'"</p><p>The signal is more powerful at lower frequencies, which is what the researchers expect to see in the gravitational-wave background. But to be confident that they've truly discovered this new phenomenon, they need to analyze more data - some of which they've already collected - to make sure the trend holds across datasets.</p><p>"We have this really significant evidence for a common signal. However, we can't quite say what it is yet," Simon said. </p><p>NANOGrav is now working with two pulsar timing array projects in Europe and Australia to see if they have similar signals in their data.</p><p>Demorest thinks NANOGrav may get definitive evidence that this is the gravitational-wave background within the next year. Simon said it would probably take longer than that to analyze the data, though.</p><p>In addition to analyzing new data, Demorest said, NANOGrav will work on expanding its array to include more pulsars and use more sensitive telescopes - ones that haven't even been built yet. Eventually, the scientists hope to pinpoint and study the supermassive black holes that are sending out gravitational ripples.</p><p>"Being able to detect the gravitational-wave background will be a huge step but that's really only step one," Simon said. "Step two is pinpointing what causes those waves and discovering what they can tell us about the universe."</p>

An experiment that reaches across our galaxy has detected the first signs of a possible 'sea' of ripples in space-time

<br /><ul><li>Asteroid 1998 OR2 is scheduled to make its close approach to Earth on April 29 (April 30 IST).<br /></li><li>You don’t need to leave your house or even own a telescope to watch the event.<br /></li><li>Here’s a list of streams where you can tune in to watch the asteroid live as it flies past the planet.<br /></li></ul>The biggest asteroid of the year, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/the-biggest-asteroid-of-the-year-will-zoom-past-earth-this-week-adhering-to-social-distancing-and-even-wearing-a-mask/articleshow/75399097.cms">Asteroid 1998 OR2</a>, is scheduled to fly past the Earth on April 29 — but it will be during the wee hours of the morning in India on April 30. Not only is it the <keyword id="9126209" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="biggest-asteroid-of-2020">biggest asteroid of 2020</keyword>, but also one of the biggest ones to zoom past the planet this decade.<br /><br />The good news is that you don’t have to be an expert astronomer or scientist in order to catch the action live. In fact, you don’t even need to own a telescope. <br /><br />A number of observatories are offering to stream the event live so that you don’t even have to leave the house to watch Asteroid 1998 OR 2 as it makes its close approach to Earth. <br /><br /><strong>Here’s a list of live streams where you can watch the event happen:</strong><br /><br /><strong>1. The Virtual Telescope Project<br /></strong>The Virtual Telescope Project in Italy will be tracking the asteroid in real-time and the live stream will kick off at 12:00 am on April 30 IST.<br /><br /><div type="javascript" title="Custom" contenttype="Video"><cdata><![CDATA[]]></cdata></div><br /><strong>2. Slooh<br /></strong>Slooh will broadcast a live telescope view of Asteroid 1998 OR2’s approach that will kick off at 4:30am IST on April 30, which is an house before the asteroid will be at its closest point to Earth. You can tune in directly on their <a href="https://www.slooh.com/shows/video-viewer/650">official website</a> or watch via their YouTube page.<br /><br /><div type="javascript" title="Custom" contenttype="Video"><cdata><![CDATA[]]></cdata></div><br />The webcast is free for all. However, they are hosting a ‘star party’ on Zoom for their paid subscribers where astronomers will answer any burgeoning questions about the asteroid event.<br /><br />Before you settle in to watch the celestial event, you can learn more about it from the National Aeronautics and Space Agency’s (NASA) seminar on 1998 OR2, where they answered the common questions that people have about close approaches, asteroid and, specifically, about what’s going to happen at 1998 OR2 blows past the planet at 31,320 kilometres per hour.<br /><br /><div type="javascript" title="Custom" contenttype="Video"><cdata><![CDATA[]]></cdata></div><br />The asteroid has been classified as ‘potentially hazardous’ by the Centre of Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). This is because it’s bigger than 140 meters in size and will be under 8 million kilometres from Earth, which is enough to cause ‘global effects’ if it were to crash into the planet. <br /><br />Some even believe that the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/the-biggest-asteroid-of-the-year-will-zoom-past-earth-this-week-adhering-to-social-distancing-and-even-wearing-a-mask/articleshow/75399097.cms">asteroid knows that there’s an ongoing pandemic</a> on the ground, which is why even though it will be 6.3 million kilometres away— 16 times further away than the Moon — it will be wearing what ‘looks like’ a mask, according to to the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.<br /><br />The asteroid’s visit on April 29 will be the closest that it has been to the planet since its discovery on 24 July 1988 by NEAT at Haleakala. The only time that it will be any close will be on 16 April 2079, according to NASA’s <a href="https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=52768;old=0;orb=0;cov=0;log=0;cad=1#cad">estimates</a>.<br /><br /><strong>See also:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/the-biggest-asteroid-of-the-year-will-zoom-past-earth-this-week-adhering-to-social-distancing-and-even-wearing-a-mask/articleshow/75399097.cms">The biggest asteroid of 2020 will zoom past Earth on April 29 — adhering to 'social distancing' and even wearing a mask</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/the-10-biggest-asteroids-that-pose-a-threat-to-earth-in-2020/articleshow/73054066.cms">The 10 biggest asteroids that pose a threat to Earth in 2020</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasa-caught-a-comet-from-another-solar-system-sweating-bullets-at-it-approached-the-sun/articleshow/75420891.cms">NASA caught an interstellar comet sweating bullets as it approached the sun</a></strong><br />

Here’s how you can watch the biggest asteroid of 2020 live as it zooms past the Earth

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-GSFC_20171208_Archive_e000210.html">NASA/ESA/K. Noll (STScI)</a></span></p><p class="caption">When a star like our sun dies, it casts off its outer layers of gas, leaving only the hot core behind. A burned-out star, called a white dwarf, is the white dot in the center of this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Astronomers have discovered that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-new-asteroid-missions-2017-1">dead planets stripped down to their cores</a> can send out radio "broadcasts" for up to a billion years.</li><li>They plan to listen for these broadcasts with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/8-of-the-worlds-coolest-telescopes-observing-the-universe-2016-7">telescopes</a> on Earth in order to find dead planets orbiting distant "white dwarf" stars.</li><li>Our sun will explode and become a white dwarf in 5 billion years. Studying dead planets can tell scientists what <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bleak-future-of-the-sun-can-be-seen-dying-star-2019-8">the sun's death</a> will do to our solar system. </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Astronomers are planning a hunt for the relics of long-dead planets.</p><p>They just found a big clue in that search: The cores of dead planets can "broadcast" radio waves for up to a billion years, according to a new <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/488/1/153/5521913#137533317">study</a> published by the Royal Astronomical Society.</p><p>The waves are caused by interactions between a dead planet's core and the magnetic field of its dead star, known as a white dwarf. After a star explodes, it often strips the surrounding planets of their atmospheres and outer layers, leaving just the metallic inner core. That metal conducts electricity, creating a circuit between the planet core and the dead star that produces radiation in the form of radio waves.</p><p>Scientists have known for decades that these planetary remains can emit radio waves. But this is the first research to establish a lifetime for those broadcasts - and it reveals that the signals last long enough for researchers on Earth to detect and study them.</p><p>Alexander Wolszczan and Dimitri Veras, the scientists who made this discovery, next want to point huge telescopes at white dwarf stars to listen for the radio broadcasts of undiscovered dead planets.</p><p>"Nobody has ever found just the bare core of a major planet before, nor a major planet only through monitoring magnetic signatures, nor a major planet around a white dwarf," Wolszczan said in a <a href="https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/dead-planets-can-broadcast-billion-years">press release</a>. "Therefore, a discovery here would represent 'firsts' in three different senses for planetary systems."</p><h2>Broadcasts from dead planets</h2><p>Wolszczan, an astronomy professor at Penn State University, used radio waves to detect the <a href="https://futurism.com/the-first-exoplanet-was-discovered-25-years-ago-today">first ever confirmed planet outside our solar system</a> in the 1990s.</p><p>For the recent study, he wanted to determine how long radio broadcasts from dead planet cores can last. So he and Veras created computer simulations of the entire range of magnetic fields and electrical conductivities observed in white dwarf stars.</p><p>Their results suggested that the metal cores of dead planets can emit radio waves for over 100 million years, and sometimes as long as a billion years.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTBfNQXSbJo">Linda Elkins-Tanton/YouTube</a></span></p><p class="caption">An artist's rendering of NASA's Psyche spacecraft approaching a giant metal asteroid that scientists think is the core of a dead planet.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Stars die because they eventually burn through their reserves of hydrogen and helium. That fuel creates internal pressure that keeps a star's size and shape consistent, but once there's nothing left to burn, the star succumbs to gravity. Its core contracts, sending out a wave of energy that pushes its external layers outward. As the star loses mass, its gravity weakens until it explodes and expels its outer layers into space.</p><p>The star's hot, dense core gets left behind - that's the phase at which it becomes a white dwarf.</p><p>The explosion takes out nearby planets, blasting many to dust and tearing others to shreds. At most, a planet's inner core will remain in orbit around its dead star.</p><p>"For a core to have reached that stage, it would have been violently stripped of its atmosphere and mantle at some point and then thrown towards the white dwarf," Veras said in the <a href="https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/dead-planets-can-broadcast-billion-years">press release</a>.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://images.nasa.gov/details-PIA22084.html">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span></p><p class="caption">An artist's concept shows an exoplanet and debris orbiting a white dwarf star.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Our sun will die, too</h2><p>In about <a href="https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/dwarfs1.html">5 billion years</a>, our sun will burn through its hydrogen core and begin the billion-year process of dying, during which it will engulf Earth before going out with a bang.</p><p>So finding and studying the faraway remains of dead planets from the past could help scientists learn about the eventual fate of our own planet.</p><p>"Such a core might also provide a glimpse into our own distant future, and how the solar system will eventually evolve," Veras said.</p><p>The researchers plan to use the results of their paper to request observational time at ground-based telescopes like Arecibo in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. They've already identified the best white dwarf stars to investigate.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?id=tag%3Areuters.com%2C2002%3Anewsml_PBEAHUKQEDA%3A1772628138&amp;search=all%3Agreen%20bank%20telescope">Ho New/Reuters/NRAO/AUI-Handout/Feature/Space Quiet</a></span></p><p class="caption">The radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia is so big that the Statue of Liberty could lay on its white observing surface with room to spare. July 22, 2002.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>"Given the existing evidence for a presence of planetary debris around many of them, we think that our chances for exciting discoveries are quite good," Wolszczan said.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-proxima-centauri-b-exoplanet-inhabitable-dead-zone-2017-2">NASA just dashed our dreams of ever moving to this Earth-sized exoplanet</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Dead planets can 'broadcast' for up to a billion years, and they could tell astronomers what will happen after our sun blows up

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>A building-size object called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/oumuamua" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Oumuamua</a> flew through the inner solar system in late 2017.</li><li>Telescopes observed the mysterious interloper, but scarce data has left questions open about the object's shape, size, and composition.</li><li>A few astronomers wonder whether it could be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/aliens" target="_blank" rel="noopener">alien</a>, but 'Oumuamua is most likely a "slightly weird" asteroid, comet, or space rock.</li><li>New space missions are being dreamed up to intercept the next interstellar object that visits our solar system.</li></ul><p>In 2016, something roughly the size of a skyscraper emerged from deep space and careened toward the inner solar system.</p><p>The mysterious object flew within about 15 million miles of our planet on October 14.</p><p>But it wasn't until four days later that humanity finally spotted it in telescope data. By then, it was moving away from the sun at a speed of more than 110,000 mph. It took another week for astronomers around the globe to point every tool they could in its direction.</p><p>Astronomers initially called their unprecedented catch "1I/2017 U1," with "I" standing for interstellar - or <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oumuamua-comet-asteroid-object-origin-dwarf-stars-2018-9">from another star system</a>. The object was later dubbed 'Oumuamua, a Hawaiian name that's pronounced "oo moo-uh moo-uh" and means "a messenger from afar, arriving first."</p><p>'Oumuamua remains one of the most significant, confounding, and at times contentious astronomical discoveries in recent memory. Little is definitively known about its composition, weight, shape, or dimensions - it may be a <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/su201842" target="_blank" rel="noopener">3,300-foot-long</a> cigar, a city-block-size pancake, or something in-between.</p><p>"This one's gone forever. We have all the data we're ever going to have about 'Oumuamua," <a href="http://www.physics.nau.edu/~trilling/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">David Trilling</a>, an astronomer at Northern Arizona University who led Spitzer Space Telescope observations of the object, told Business Insider. "Now it's trying to understand if we can tell a story. Do we know what's going on?"</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/alien-signals-search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence-study-2018-10">Smart aliens might live within 33,000 light-years of Earth. A new study explains why we haven't found them yet.</a></em></p><p>Enough doubt surrounds 'Oumuamua that at least one reputable astronomer and a few of his colleagues continue to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/interstellar-comet-asteroid-a2017-u1-evidence-2017-10">speculate about potential alien origins</a>. But nearly all other experts who have studied 'Oumuamua say the aliens hypothesis is extraordinarily unlikely.</p><p>Here's what we know about 'Oumuamua, why it probably isn't alien, and how astronomers are preparing for another interstellar object to unexpectedly sail through our solar system.</p><h2>How astronomers found and measured 'Oumuamua</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Researchers in 1976 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0019-1035(76)90189-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">predicted</a> that other star systems were likely ejecting big asteroids and comets and flinging them toward our solar system, suggesting we could perhaps spot some in the future.</p><p>But the most recent estimate of how often such interstellar vagabonds would pay us a visit (and be detectable) was "bleak," <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aa5c8a">according to the authors of a study</a> published just months before 'Oumuamua was discovered. The odds, in fact, were low enough that practically no one was overtly looking for these space objects.</p><p>Then on October 19, 2017, Robert Weryk, a postdoctoral student at the University of Hawaii, discovered 'Oumuamua somewhat by accident.</p><p>Weryk was perusing a batch of data collected by an observatory called Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) that sits atop a mountain in Maui. The observatory scans the entire sky each night, allowing astronomers to compare fresh data to the previous evening's. Anything that's bright enough to detect and moving will thus <a href="https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1737d/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stand out</a>.</p><p>As Weryk <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/interstellar-space-rock/546371/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told The Atlantic</a> in November 2017, he initially thought the object was a typical asteroid. But after a glance at the previous evening's data, he realized it was unusual.</p><p>"I'd never expected to find something like this," he said.</p><p>Calculating the exact path of 'Oumuamua took about a week. The math showed it was an object from beyond - way, way beyond. Its orbit was "unbound" or loop-less, and it was making a checkmark-shaped trip through the solar system. It had entered from above the plane of the solar system, dipped close to and below the sun, and was exiting out the top.</p><p>This realization prompted Weryk, fellow astronomer Karen Meech, and others to launch a global effort to observe 'Oumuamua with as many powerful telescopes as possible before it vanished. More astronomers eventually followed suit, though with some delay.</p><p>"I was caught off-guard, and I think a lot of astronomers were, too," Trilling said. "It took a while for many of us to think, 'I should go look at it.' The delay was people thinking, 'Naw, it couldn't be from another solar system.'"</p><p>Because of this element of surprise, and the fact that <a href="https://www.eso.org/public/usa/news/eso1737/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">world-class</a> <a href="https://www.gemini.edu/node/12729" target="_blank" rel="noopener">observatories</a> are scheduled months or years ahead, it took a week or more for powerful telescopes to start looking at 'Oumuamua. (Hubble didn't observe it until January 2018, just before the object vanished from sight.)</p><p>No telescope imaged it in photographic detail, though. One observatory was equipped to do so - the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico - but nature had other plans.</p><p>"Unfortunately, the Arecibo Observatory missed the opportunity to determine the actual shape of 'Oumuamua due to Hurricane Maria, really bad timing," Abel Méndez, an astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico, told Business Insider.</p><h2>Is it a comet, asteroid, or something else?</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>The observations that were made suggest 'Oumuamua has a fairly uniform surface, is relatively dark, and has a reddish color (which is not unusual for deep-space objects).</p><p>Lacking any detailed photograph of 'Oumuamua, astronomers resorted to studying its brightness as the next-best method to deduce its shape. This is because any side of an object that faces the sun will reflect light; a longer side tends to reflect more light than a shorter side because it has a greater area. Repeating changes in brightness can also betray the rough dimensions and 3D-motion of a space object.</p><p>Early calculations suggest 'Oumuamua tumbles about once every eight hours and has a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/chasing-oumuamua" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cigar-shape</a>, with a large-to-small-dimension size ratio of roughly ten to one. That is abnormal.</p><p>"The most extreme bodies we know of in the solar system are three-to-one," Trilling said.</p><p>Another peculiarity is that on its way toward interstellar space, 'Oumuamua deviated from its predicted path by about 25,000 miles, according to observations from Hubble.</p><p>If 'Oumuamua were a typical comet, this might explain its change of direction: Comets that drift close to the sun warm up, which causes internal gases to evaporate. The shooting jets of these gases can act like small rocket engines, altering the path an object travels and the way it tumbles.</p><p>In such cases, the evaporating gases form a tail behind the rock. They can also cause big chunks of a comet to break off. But no tail or break-up of 'Oumuamua was definitively seen.</p><p>There was also another surprise from the Spitzer Space Telescope: It did not detect a heat signature. The fact that Spitzer was unable to detect that heat suggests 'Oumuamua is somewhat shinier than a normal object, since less warmth being absorbed means more sunlight is getting bounced away.</p><p>Trilling said "shiny" is relative, though -'Oumuamua could be as dark as "dirty slush" in a gutter, and that would be shinier than expected.</p><p>"We're not talking about a ball of tin foil flying through space," he said.</p><p>However, an extraordinary possibility - an unnatural object - did occur to some researchers, a few of whom chose to test the idea against the limited observations.</p><h2>Why it's probably not aliens - just a 'slightly weird' rock</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p><a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Avi Loeb</a>, the chair of Harvard University's astronomy department, took <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/6-strange-facts-about-the-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the peculiarities</a> of 'Oumuamua as reason to pursue the remote possibility that 'Oumuamua might be alien in origin.</p><p>In December 2017, Loeb directed Breakthrough Listen (an effort to listen for alien signals that Loeb helps run) to point radio antennas <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oumuamua-object-radio-telescope-listens-signals-2017-12">toward 'Oumuamua</a>. No alien communications were detected.</p><p>In October 2018, Loeb and a colleague wondered <a href="https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aaeda8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in a study</a> whether the object might have a more extreme pancake-like shape. Based on mathematical analysis, they suggested it could perhaps be as thin as a sail that could be pushed by light (also called a lightsail), which might also explain the 0.1% change in direction found by Hubble.</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/breakthrough-starshot-laser-beam-power-2018-12">A startup is developing a 100-gigawatt laser to propel a probe to another star system. That may be powerful enough to 'ignite an entire city.'</a></em></p><p>Most recently, Loeb and an undergraduate student published a <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/aafe7c/meta" target="_blank" rel="noopener">brief study</a> suggesting 'Oumuamua might actually have a 50-to-1 size ratio if it's cigar-shaped, or a 20-to-1 ratio if it's more of a pancake.</p><p>Loeb defends his pursuit of the idea as a valid scientific argument, given the data available. In <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/advanced-extraterrestrials-as-an-approximation-to-god/?curator=MediaREDEF" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a blog post at Scientific American</a>, he wrote that humans spotting alien technology "might resemble an imaginary encounter of ancient cave people with a modern cell phone," at first interpreting it as "shiny rock" and not a "communication device."</p><p>However, <a href="https://www.eso.org/~ohainaut/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Olivier Hainaut</a>, an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory, told Business Insider that Loeb's latest paper is based on a misunderstanding of brightness data from <a href="https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aab370" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a study</a> that Hainaut co-authored. Hainaut added that Loeb's conclusions "collapse" when the uncertainty of the data is taken into account. Loeb and a co-author disputed this, claiming the uncertainty is not as great as Hainaut said.</p><p>Many researchers interviewed by Business Insider also noted that because the observations of 'Oumuamua were relatively distant, limited, and filled with gaps, there's not nearly enough data to reasonably make extraordinary claims (which, as Carl Sagan once quipped, require extraordinary evidence).</p><p>Hainaut thinks the object is most likely a "slightly weird" space rock, as does Trilling.</p><p>"All of the evidence is consistent with a rock," Trilling said. "We've never seen an alien spaceship - we have no idea what that evidence would look like. So I think it's just a rock."</p><p>Trilling said he accepts the possibility, however remote, that Loeb and his colleagues' "extreme" ideas could eventually be borne out.</p><p>"I don't have any direct evidence that says it has to be a rock and it cannot an alien spacecraft," he said. "The only way to do that is to go visit it."</p><p>But for now, Trilling explained that it's most logical to side with hundreds of years of astronomical research.</p><h2>How to catch the next 'Oumuamua</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Since 'Oumuamua, astronomers have made adjustments at major observatories to allow for more rapid-turnaround observations of the next rare interstellar object that comes to town.</p><p>"With this one, we were taken fairly by surprise," Hainaut said. "With the next one, we are ready."</p><p>The research community has also reconsidered how often things like 'Oumuamua might visit the solar system. Trilling and others published <a href="https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa9989" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a study</a> suggesting that current observatories may see an interstellar interloper about once every five years. By the mid-2020s - after new telescopes come online that are designed to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/neocam-mission-not-fully-funded-nasa-2017-1">look for Earth-threatening asteroids</a> - they might be spotted at a rate of once per year.</p><p>This, in turn, has led multiple groups of researchers to wonder if a small spacecraft could be readied to chase down another interstellar visitor like 'Oumuamua and study it up-close. Hainaut is part of one of the groups researching that idea.</p><p>"We had a workshop on this in October, and at the beginning of the workshop we said, 'This is impossible.' But after one week of hard work, we realized it's not impossible anymore, it's just difficult," Hainaut said. "Impossible? That's a problem. Difficult? As a first approximation, that just means expensive."</p><p>There's also a chance that, decades from now, a project called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-proxima-centauri-habitable-planet-2016-8">Breakthrough Starshot</a> that Loeb is part of might resolve the question of what 'Oumuamua is and is not.</p><p>Starshot aims to propel <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/breakthrough-starshot-sprite-spacecraft-launch-2017-7">tiny spacecraft</a> to another star system <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/breakthrough-starshot-laser-beam-power-2018-12">with powerful lasers</a>, perhaps at around 20% <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-fast-speed-light-travels-earth-moon-mars-nasa-2019-1">the speed of light</a>. Such robots could also hypothetically be sent to catch up to 'Oumuamua in deep space.</p><p>"The Breakthrough Starshot is extremely interesting. The problem is that the laser technology that is required is far from being ready," Hainaut said. "I hope it will be one day."</p><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(56.25% + 44px)"></div></div><div><div style="position:relative; padding-bottom:calc(56.25% + 44px)"></div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-discover-first-interstellar-object-asteroid-oumuamua-2017-11">Astronomers have discovered a bizarre-looking object that came from outside our solar system</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

A bizarre interstellar object called 'Oumuamua continues to perplex astronomers a year after it vanished. Here's why a few scientists still wonder if it was alien.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oldalien.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Are aliens trying to contact us from outer space?</p><p>That's a question that Antonio Paris, an astronomy professor at St. Petersburg College in Florida, is trying to address. And he's bringing us closer to an answer than we've ever been before.</p><p>It all started in 1977 when Jerry Ehman, a radio astronomer using the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio, picked up a <a href="http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/chasing-ufos/articles/what-is-the-wow-signal/">powerful signal coming from deep space</a>. The signal was 30 times more powerful than the average radiation coming from that area. Ehman excitedly circled the signal in the data and scribbled "Wow!" in red pen. From then on, it was known as the Wow! signal.</p><p>Despite attempts to detect the signal again, it never reappeared, and rumors that it was actually an intercepted <a href="http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/the-wow-signal-130524.htm">alien transmission</a> began to surface.</p><p>In 2012, on the 35th anniversary of the discovery of the Wow! signal, <a href="http://www.space.com/17151-alien-wow-signal-response.html">a concerted effort between National Geographic and Arecibo Observatory</a> even tried to send messages back to the source of the signal. They transmitted a package into space containing more than 10,000 tweets and videos from celebrities, and they're still waiting on a response.</p><h2><strong>A break in the case</strong></h2><p>The mysterious Wow! signal, a longstanding unsolved mystery in the <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> community, caught Paris' attention. Before Paris became a scientist, he told Business Insider, he spent 10 years in military intelligence and another four as a Department of Defense special agent in the Pentagon. When he made the move to astronomy, he carried his investigative impulses with him. It's these impulses that have brought him close to cracking the case.</p><p>Paris had a hunch that the signal was actually a result of natural phenomena, not aliens, as others had speculated. He approached things from a detective's perspective, he said, revisiting the crime scene to pick up new clues. He believed advances in technology made over the past few decades could shine new light on what he referred to as a "cold case," dormant for the past 40 years.</p><p>"I had a description of what the suspects should look like," he said. "I found that there are several comets in the area that match that description."</p><h2><strong>The top suspect<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.universetoday.com/119296/dust-whirls-swirls-and-twirls-at-rosettas-comet/">ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM - CC BY-SA IGO 3.0</a></span></p><p class="caption">A comet passing by might create a signal very similar to the Wow! signal.</p></div><p></p></div></div></strong></h2><p>A subtle trail of scientific clues led Paris to this suspect. Paris knew that every object in the observable universe, from comets to quasars and even our own moon, emits some sort of spectrum of frequencies. These spectra reach Earth, penetrating our atmosphere and raining down on us.</p><p>As comets pass by the sun, ultraviolet light breaks up their frozen water, creating a large cloud of hydrogen gas around them. The frequency of the Wow! signal matches a frequency naturally emitted by hydrogen. This means that comets passing in front of a telescope like the Big Ear would generate a brief signal that might match the Wow! signal.</p><p>When the Wow! signal was first picked up, no one knew these comets existed, so no one had considered this idea.</p><p>Until now.</p><p>But the idea that comets are responsible for this mysterious signal is not without its critics. Some researchers, like <a href="https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Bauer/">James Bauer</a> of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, aren't buying it. <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28747-famous-wow-signal-might-have-been-from-comets-not-aliens/">Bauer told New Scientist</a>that he agrees that the hydrogen from comets can extend quite far, but still thinks the signal won't be strong enough. And the case of the Wow! isn't closed yet. Paris and his colleagues still need to test their hypothesis using something called a radio telescope.</p><p>The radio telescope will pick up spectra signals like a dish for cable TV picks up the signal a satellite emits. If they point the telescope at a specific area, it should be able to pick up the signal and analyze the spectrum to tell them what they're looking at. In this case, Paris would use the telescope to look for the hydrogen line spectrum.</p><p>Paris and his colleagues hope to have their telescope up and running by January 25, 2017, when one of the comets will once again be in the neighborhood of the "Wow" signal again.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20m_radio_telescope_Ny-%C3%85lesund.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p><p class="caption">Paris is hoping to build a radio telescope to help solve the riddle of the Wow! signal.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2><strong>A call to action</strong></h2><p>With the deadline fast approaching, Paris and his colleagues are scrambling to gather the money needed for their experiment. Instead of going through the time and money consuming process of writing grant proposals, Paris and his colleagues decided to <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/wow-experiment">crowdfund their campaign</a>, calling on the public to make contributions to their cause. Since starting campaigns, Paris has raised more than $16,000, and received thousands of emails of support from people looking to get involved.</p><p>"I'm really excited that I've gathered so much support from the community- both from people love and people don't love science," Paris said. "They just want to see if we can finally solve this 40-year-old mystery."</p><p>Paris believes there is no wrong or right answer when it comes to science. Even if the experiment finds that comets are not the culprits in this 40-year-old mystery, removing variables from the equation is still good science. And they would be able to use their new telescope to continue investigating the case.</p><p>"There are no emotions in science," Paris said. "Only phenomena to study."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/science-explains-why-aliens-might-really-exist-2016-4">Here's why aliens might actually exist</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="w3ZXBxeDolmQmCfI8DI7FIZrunatjOe8" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

We're closer than ever to solving the mystery of alien broadcasts coming from deep space

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>NASA</span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The funny thing about the discovery of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-potentially-earth-like-planet-around-closest-star-2016-8">Proxima b</a> - the closest planet to our solar system, which is also rocky, Earth-size, and potentially habitable - is that nobody has actually seen it.</p><p>Astronomers know it exists because they've seen its gravity tug on and "wiggle" Proxima Centauri, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">red dwarf star</a> that it orbits.</p><p>But no telescopes in space or on the ground, nor any in serious stages of planning, can directly photograph Proxima b.</p><p>It's very distant at 4.2 light-years away from us. Also, its "year" lasts only 11.2 days - an orbit too tight to pick out a planet from the blinding glare of a star.</p><p>However, a photograph isn't necessary to ask the most important question about Proxima b, a world that Scientific American has (optimistically) deemed "<a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-earth-next-door/">the Earth next door</a>": <strong>Does it have an atmosphere, or is it an airless, barren wasteland like the Moon?</strong></p><p>Two researchers at Harvard believe that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch in 2018, could get the job done in record time, and by merely sampling the star system's light.</p><p>"It would only take a day's worth of observing time," <a href="http://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb">Avi Loeb</a>, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, told Business Insider.</p><p>"With the light we detect, we can ask if this world looks like a bare rock. If it doesn't, there might be an atmosphere, and there might also be an ocean, which life requires," says Loeb, who co-authored <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.07345">a pre-print study on arXiv</a> with <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~lkreidbe/">Laura Kreidberg</a>, a Harvard astronomer who studies exoplanet atmospheres.</p><h2>How to sniff out Proxima b's atmosphere</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://phl.upr.edu/">Planetary Habitability Laboratory/University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo</a></span></p><p class="caption">An artist's depiction of Proxima b.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Proxima b orbits Proxima Centauri in a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/habitable-goldilocks-zone-exoplanets-2015-12">Goldilocks-like habitable zone</a>, where the strength of light is just right to melt water.</p><p>However, its close distance to the star - just 4 million miles away, or roughly 17 times as far as the Earth is from the Moon - comes with a worrisome consequence.</p><p>Astronomers think Proxima b is tidally locked like the Moon, where one side of the world always faces Earth. But instead of always facing the Earth, one side of Proxima b always faces its star: awash in permanent daylight, the other side trapped in an endless cold night.</p><p>If Proxima b does have an atmosphere, though, says Loeb, it'd not only circulate warmth from the day side to the night side, but also prevent the planet's water from boiling off into space.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://rareearth.wikia.com/wiki/File:PlanetWREEL2.jpg">Beau.TheConsortium/Wikia (CC-BY-SA)</a></span></p><p class="caption">What a tidally locked habitable Proxima b might look like, also called an "eyeball Earth." A ring of habitability could exist between the day and night sides.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"We basically asked ourselves, 'what would a tidally locked Earth look like if you put it right next to Proxima Centauri?'" he said. "Clouds, wind, and water make that question complicated," he added, but said you could at least tell if it's a bare rock or is circulating heat using air.</p><p>"On Earth, at least a third of the heat is redistributed by the ocean and atmosphere," Loeb said.</p><p>He believes the trick to ruling out an atmosphere is to focus on infrared light - the same "color" of warm, invisible light that our bodies constantly emit.</p><p>When a rocky planet is warmed up by a star, it absorbs sunlight and re-emits it as infrared light. Yet rocky planets emit a different kind of infrared light than is given off by stars like Proxima Centauri.</p><p>And it just so happens that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is specially designed to observe infrared light.</p><p>So instead of trying to find a tiny planet in a flood of visible light, JWST may only need to hunt for specific wavelengths of infrared light.</p><p>"When we look at the Moon, it shows different phases illuminated by the sun. If you imagine planet going around the star, we'd see different phases of the planet," Loeb said. "Past the star, we'd see its day side. In front of the star, we'd see its dark side. As Proxima b moves around the star over 11.2 days ... we'd see the temperature or 'color' of the planet changing with time."</p><p>If Loeb and Kreidberg's hypothetical observation reveals that the dark side of Proxima b isn't as cold as it should be, that would mean an atmosphere may be hugging the planet - and redistributing warmth to the night side.</p><p>If it doesn't, Proxima b may be a bare, lifeless rock.</p><p>Whatever the results, they'll be crucial: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">Red dwarf stars outnumber all other types of stars in our Milky Way galaxy</a> by four-to-one.</p><p>"Situations like this must be common," Loeb says. "If you turn one stone and find a bug, there must be others around."</p><h2>'It's not something we can guarantee'</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/8053750888/in/photolist-o1ahRu-hKWj3n-dgFzxW-nDZUBi-buGXJx-nE1f3o-ipBCND-fAukHw-paXCw1-ihiisx-hmeHoU-dgZrbH-fsT1h4-onHHNF-fyF1YU-daHEmZ-oq1KCb-eg8Ns6-ehGe21-egeyMN-fz6vXg-dxjECS-drJebW-hSu56B-dk1VSC-hjMKwC-8BFiRP-g99gV9-fzngXL-g99iwq-o8tLcW-otKQup-nQf6B9-bn77mi-ovrXjJ-os6oZN-fDE63T-fz83P6-8ZQwbt-puj7pd-fz7teP-g99p59-i4hNmX-g99NKc-p15fVq-fz75Ck-8BFiQe-ig8PPJ-8RQmBB-eWD9Az">Ball Aerospace</a></span></p><p class="caption">The James Webb Space Telescope's gold-plated mirrors undergo cryogenic testing.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Although Loeb and Kreidberg's research has not yet been peer-reviewed, two leading scientists we contacted said it's "very promising work," "a good study," and "the best proposal on the table so far" - despite a number of uncertainties and hang-ups.</p><p><a href="https://www.princeton.edu/astro/people/faculty/elt/">Ed Turner</a>, an astrophysicist at Princeton University, told Business Insider that the study makes a lot of "ideal" assumptions about Proxima b.</p><p>"We've spent decades trying to figure out our own world's atmosphere, in terms of global warming and climate change. And now we're talking about studying an alien world," said Turner, who has worked with at least seven major observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope. "But the basic idea seems like a good one."</p><p>He said the biggest snag with Loeb and Kreidberg's method is that we don't yet know the inclination or "tilt" of Proxima b's orbit around its star.</p><p>"This assumes we're not looking down on the planet," Turner said. If that's the case - and we can only see its north or south pole - JWST wouldn't get clear day- and night-side views, or the evidence required to prove an atmosphere exists. "It's statistically unlikely, but possible."</p><p>And even if the method does work, Turner noted it couldn't tell you much about the atmosphere. The planet might be cozy like Earth, or a blazing hellhole like Venus (which has <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/venus-temp20110926.html">an atmosphere that's 90 times thicker</a>) - and no one would be the wiser.</p><p><a href="http://jwst.nasa.gov/meet-clampin.html">Mark Clampin</a>, an exoplanet scientist at NASA and a project scientist for JWST, said the idea is "exciting," but emphasized the fact that NASA needs to get the tennis court-size telescope off the ground first.</p><p>"The telescope's instruments were designed in a time when we weren't doing these kinds of observations, so we'd really be pushing the limits of what can be done," Clampin told Business Insider. "We have to understand how the detectors perform in space. Until we can launch and fly JWST, it's not something we can guarantee."</p><p>Nevertheless, Clampin said he is "ready to take a shot at Proxima b with JWST" and that it's now the observatory's "target number-one."</p><p>Both Turner and Loeb said timing is also a legitimate concern, given years of delays with JWST - the telescope was originally supposed to launch in 2011.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.tmt.org/sites/default/files/images/gallery/tmt%20with%20the%20laser%20guide%20star%20at%20night.jpg">TMT</a></span></p><p class="caption">A laser on Thirty Meter Telescope will help the observatory take space-quality images.</p></div><p></p></div></div>If the project sees further delays, monster telescopes like the <a href="http://www.eso.org/public/usa/teles-instr/e-elt/">European Extremely Large Telescope</a> or <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/30-meter-telescope-should-be-built-mauna-kea-2015-8">Thirty Meter Telescope</a> could pick up the slack.</p><p>But no such colossal observatory is slated to open for the next 10 years, give or take a couple of years.</p><p>"JWST could give something we can chew on for a decade, until those telescopes come online," said Loeb.</p><p>Loeb's obsession with Proxima b - and the presence of its atmosphere - goes well beyond your standard flavor of scientific curiosity.</p><p>"I'm trying to encourage my friends to buy property on Proxima b," Loeb said, joking. "[W]e'll either destroy our own planet, or a natural catastrophe like an asteroid will. And if that doesn't [kill us], the sun warming us too much will."</p><p>With the help of Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, he's working on Breakthrough Starshot, a project that hopes to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-proxima-centauri-habitable-planet-2016-8">laser-propel "nanocraft" toward the Proxima Centauri star system</a> sometime in the next 20 to 30 years.</p><p>"A spacecraft equipped with a camera and various filters could take color images of the planet and infer whether it is green (harboring life as we know it), blue (with water oceans on its surface) or just brown (dry rock)," Loeb <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-proxima-centauri-habitable-planet-2016-8">previously told Business Insider</a>.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-oxford-astrophysicists-revelation-why-havent-found-aliens-2016-8">Astrophysicists have an unsettling revelation that could mean we won't find intelligent aliens for at least 1 billion years</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="A3b3I1NTE6OgdmUDxkcazWEAubSODLL6" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The 'Earth next door' may have a breathable atmosphere - and we could find out in just 2 years

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Back in April, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner pledged $100 million toward a crazy plan to visit another star system.<p>The mission - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-alpha-centauri-robots-stephen-hawking-yuri-milner-2016-4">Breakthrough Starshot</a> - aims to get this done by propelling teeny, tiny spaceships to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-starshot-laser-robots-work-2016-4/">20% the speed of light</a> with powerful lasers.</p><p>Milner and famed physicist Stephen Hawking initially said their destination would be Alpha Centauri: the nearest star system to Earth, located some 4.37 light-years (25.7 trillion miles) away.</p><p>But as far as anyone knows, Alpha Centauri is bereft of habitable worlds.</p><p>This is precisely why the recent and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-potentially-earth-like-planet-around-closest-star-2016-8">groundbreaking discovery of a nearby planet</a> could switch things up for Starshot.</p><p>Astronomers on Wednesday announced they'd discovered an Earth-like and potentially habitable world, called Proxima b, circling Proxima Centauri - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/red-dwarf-planets-proxima-b-aliens-2016-8">a red dwarf star</a> that's closer than Alpha Centauri by about 1 trillion miles.</p><p>"The discovery ... provides an obvious target for a flyby mission," Avi Loeb, a physicist at Harvard University and a <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/fe201609">Starshot mission advisory committee chair</a>, wrote in an email to Business Insider.</p><p>"A spacecraft equipped with a camera and various filters could take color images of the planet and infer whether it is green (harboring life as we know it), blue (with water oceans on its surface) or just brown (dry rock)," Loeb wrote.</p><p>The team hopes to "achieve a launch in 2-3 decades," says Loeb, and reach Proxima Centauri about 20 years later.</p><p>The photos, meanwhile, would take at least 4.24 years - the distance in light-years from here to the star - to get back to Earth.</p><p>Adding up that timeline, Starshot thinks it could take photos of Proxima b (plus whatever else its nanocraft encounter there) by the year 2060.</p><h2>How to sail to a star</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Milner said in April that Starshot will start out as a $100 million engineering proof-of-concept to design, build, launch, and propel a small fleet of iPhone-size "nanocraft" to Alpha Centauri in about 25 years' time.</p><p>Each nanocraft will contain a tiny spacecraft and a laser-light sail for propulsion. "This is the Silicon valley approach to spaceflight," Milner said.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The hypothetical spacecraft, called StarChip, will be built out of a "gram-scale" silicon wafer that's "carrying cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment, and constituting a fully functional space probe."<p>Moving each StarChip along will be a Lightsail propulsion unit.</p><p>An <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMkWGN1G6Kg">array of powerful lasers called a "beamer"</a> will take aim at the Lightsails, accelerating each nanocraft to more than 134 million mph.</p><h2>'A sense of urgency' to reach Proxima b</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>At this point Starshot already has a prototype for the StarChip (pictured in Milner's hand at the top of this post).</p><p>It's smaller than an iPhone, and it will be backed with cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation, and communication equipment.</p><p>But Loeb said the next 5 to 10 years of the project - and most of the $100 million - will be focused on <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-nanocraft-technology-challenges-2016-4">proving the laser propulsion idea actually works</a>.</p><p>From there they'll work on perfecting the tiny ships, Loeb said, noting that a beamer "could potentially launch hundreds of cheap, gram-scale spacecrafts per year."</p><p>"This will allow us to send a fleet of probes towards Proxima that could relay the images taken back to Earth more easily (from one spacecraft to the next along the line of sight to Proxima)," he said.</p><p>Noting that exisiting telescopes can't photograph the new planet, Loeb added: "The curiosity to know more about the planet (most importantly whether it hosts life) will give the Starshot initiative a sense of urgency."</p><p>Even if Proxima b doesn't support life, Loeb says it's still important to explore the not-so-distant world.</p><p>"The lifetime of Proxima is several trillion years, almost a thousand times longer than the remaining lifetime of the Sun," he said.</p><p>"Hence, a habitable rocky planet around Proxima would be the most natural location to where our civilization could aspire to move after the Sun will die, five billions years from now." (At least one sci-fi author <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/earth-like-planet-proxima-b-colonize-kim-stanley-robinson-aurora-2016-8">thinks this is a horrible idea</a>, though.)</p><h2>A wealthy fan of space exploration</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Milner's fascination with space and <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> runs deep.</p><p>The first man in space was cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin - who Milner <a href="http://time.com/3964238/yuri-milner-breakthrough-listen/">has said</a> he was named after.</p><p>Milner has also spent big money on science initiatives before, <a href="http://time.com/3964238/yuri-milner-breakthrough-listen/">saying he wants to celebrate</a> "intellectual achievement" in the same way we celebrate artistic and athletic prowess.</p><p>The Russian billionaire philanthropist has&#xa0;collaborated with Hawking in the past, too. In July 2015, the two announced a $100 million plan, called "<a href="http://www.techinsider.io/milners-100-million-search-for-aliens-2015-7">Breakthrough Listen</a>," to search the stars for intelligent extraterrestrial life.</p><p>Milner was even working on a PhD in physics before becoming a Silicon Valley investor, where he earned his fortune investing in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, and Groupon.</p><p>Today he funds some of the biggest science prizes out there, including the Breakthrough Prize, which Mark Zuckerberg also supports.</p><p><em>Kevin Loria and Lauren Friedman contributed to this post.</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/starshot-launching-tiny-robots-nearest-star-alpha-centauri-2016-4">How these laser-propelled robots could bring us to a star 25 trillion miles away</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="JwcmtzMjE62UOoiv4Vw4S-kom9OujD1H" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

You Searched For "arecibo telescope discoveries" and got 10 results

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The 'Earth next door' may have a breathable atmosphere - and we could find out in just 2 years

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