NASA missions are tracking and studying the rare interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passes through our solar system, with observations from Hubble, Webb, SPHEREx, and others.
The article discusses the search for extraterrestrial life using chemical biosignatures, focusing on the use of telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope to analyze exoplanet atmospheres. It highlights the challenges in interpreting data and the need for robust criteria for identifying true biosignatures, using the example of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) detection on K2-18b.
The James Webb Space Telescope has detected potential life-associated gases (dimethyl sulfide, dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of planet K2-18b, but scientists urge caution and further investigation to rule out non-biological sources. The findings are considered a potentially revolutionary moment in the search for extraterrestrial life.
The Hubble Space Telescope has conducted a comprehensive survey of the Andromeda galaxy, revealing over 200 million stars, though the galaxy's total population is estimated at 1 trillion stars. This survey, combining data from the PHAT and PHAST programs, covers the entire disk of Andromeda and provides insights into its evolutionary history, which differs significantly from the Milky Way. Andromeda appears to have undergone recent star formation and interactions, possibly due to a past collision with another galaxy. These findings will aid future observations by the James Webb and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopes.
The article discusses how modern cosmology, specifically the FLRW metric, can be derived using symmetry considerations, Newtonian Mechanics, and Thermodynamics, without the need for General Relativity.
