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Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. It is an immediate fact of
everyday experience, yet it presents us with some of the deepest theoretical and
experimental challenges in contemporary physics. Gravity is the weakest of the four
fundamental forces, but, because it is a universal attraction between all forms of
energy, it governs the structure of matter on the largest scales of space and time,
including the structure of the universe itself
From Sagan to Tesla, scientists have long puzzled over how to talk to extraterrestrial intelligence.
For the past 200 years, the problem of interstellar communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence has vexed some of the world’s greatest scientists and mathematicians. Carl Friedrich Gauss, the mathematician and inventor of the heliotrope, suggested using a large array of mirrors; Guglielmo Marconi and Nikola Tesla, pioneers of wireless communication, found a solution in radio waves; and John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, the progenitors of artificial intelligence, wanted to send computers into space as our extraterrestrial envoys.
Scientists say Milky Way’s Sagittarius A* has been more active in recent months. Unseeable and inescapable, black holes already rank among the more sinister phenomena out in the cosmos. So it may come as disconcerting news that the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way appears to be growing hungrier.
Swamp Works is one of the few places in the world with an enormous test bed that mimics the conditions on the lunar surface. Inspired by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, the lab responsible for several major aviation breakthroughs, Swamp Works was designed to bring the same agile spirit to NASA. And it’s where Schuler and about a dozen other researchers are prototyping robots to explore and mine the moon. In particular, they’re testing the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot, or Rassor, a four-wheeled contraption about the size of a motorcycle but only a fraction of the weight.
NASA’s main projected aimed for this year included ” Launching Americans from U.S. soil, sending a new rover to Mars and continuing to prepare for human missions to the Moon are just a few of the things NASA has planned for 2020.“
We hardly think of Extraterrestrial life in terms other than life forms based on Earth, that is, we have a hard and non-flexible definition of life that is based on carbon-based organisms that we seldom look out for other forms of “life”. Extraterrestrial life could be of the form that we have never seen on Earth, made of elements that are not even available on Earth. Or in some cases, as the Labeled release experiment from 1970 showed, we could have Earth-like microbial life. It is always, I believe, wrong to generalize life only based on the only experiences we have had so far.
