M.J. Rose

Water is life….?

Credits: AFP

From Futurism,

One of Earth’s Closest Alien Planets Appears to Be An “Ocean World”

The case for Proxima b
“Proxima b’s proximity to Earth — about 4.2 light years away — makes it the nearest exoplanet that is potentially habitable and could contain life. While it may be tidally locked (meaning one side of Proxima b perpetually faces its star as it completes its 11.2 year revolution), Proxima b’s proximity to the star it orbits, the red-dwarf Proxima Centauri, puts it right in the Goldilocks Zone. This means there’s a strong possibility that water exists on this exoplanet.

A team from the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France believes Proxima b may not just contain water; it could be covered in it. “The planet could be an ‘ocean planet’, with an ocean covering its entire surface, and similar water to some icy moons around Jupiter or Saturn,” the team says.

Water = Life
To figure out just how much water may be on Proxima b, the CNRS team used simulations that play with the estimated range of the planet’s radius, between 0.94 and 1.4 times that of the Earth. At the lowest limit, the simulations suggest a dense planet with a metallic core surrounded by a rocky mantle, and surface water of about 0.05% of the planet’s total mass.

With the maximum limit, however, the simulations show the planet’s radius at 8,920 km (5,542.6 miles), with a mass that’s equally divided between a rocky core and surrounding water. “In this case, Proxima b would be covered by a single, liquid ocean 200 km deep,” the researchers explained…”

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YOU GUYS. This is amazing amazing amazing!

A photo discovered in the National Archives shows a woman who resembles Amelia Earhart on a dock in the Marshall Islands. National Archives

From NBC News,

Amelia Earhart May Have Survived Crash-Landing, Newly Discovered Photo Suggests
by Tom Costello and Daniel Arkin

“A newly discovered photograph suggests legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished 80 years ago on a round-the-world flight, survived a crash-landing in the Marshall Islands.

The photo, found in a long-forgotten file in the National Archives, shows a woman who resembles Earhart and a man who appears to be her navigator, Fred Noonan, on a dock. The discovery is featured in a new History channel special, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” that airs Sunday.

Independent analysts told History the photo appears legitimate and undoctored. Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director for the FBI and an NBC News analyst, has studied the photo and feels confident it shows the famed pilot and her navigator…”

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This almost seems too fringe to be true (Nibiru anyone?) — but wow, won’t it be interesting if the Sun really does have a chaos-causing twin out there somewhere?

Image Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Muzerolle, STScI

From Futurism,

Astronomers Discover That Our Sun Likely Had an “Evil” Twin That Killed the Dinosaurs

Scientists believe that most, if not all, sun-like stars are born with a twin. Evidence also suggests that our solar system’s sun’s twin may be responsible for knocking the comet that killed the dinosaurs toward Earth.
“We have long known that the dinosaurs were killed by a catastrophic comet impact with the Earth’s surface but what if there was some foul play afoot? Astronomers have discovered that our sun may have been born with a twin, and an evil one, at that. One hypothesis states that every 27 million years, the evil twin, aptly dubbed Nemesis, returns to wreck havoc on the solar system. They believe that the star lobs a few meteors in our direction as it makes its may through the outer limits of the solar system.

Research has lead scientists to believe that most stars are born with at least one sibling. According to UC Berkeley astronomer Steven Stahler, “We ran a series of statistical models to see if we could account for the relative populations of young single stars and binaries of all separations in the Perseus molecular cloud, and the only model that could reproduce the data was one in which all stars form initially as wide binaries.”…

For the rest, click here.