Category: Discovery

New Research Explains How Life Could Spread To Other Galaxies

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/panspermia-life-spreads-other-galaxies_55ef32bde4b03784e276c971

“Life could spread from host star to host star in a pattern similar to the outbreak of an epidemic.”

Headshot of Chris D'Angelo
Associate Editor, HuffPost Hawaii
Posted: 09/08/2015 09:09 PM EDT

Scientists haven’t yet figured out whether life is capable of surviving the extreme conditions found in space and spreading to other stars — a controversial theory known as panspermia.

However, astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics believe that if panspermia is possible, life would spread out in a characteristic pattern.

Henry Lin, the lead author of new research that has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, compared the phenomenon to the outbreak of an epidemic.

“If there’s a virus, you have a good idea that one of your neighbors will have a virus too,” he told Smithsonian Magazine. “If the Earth is seeding life, or vice versa, there’s a good chance immediate neighbors will also have signs of life.”

<span class='image-component__caption' itemprop="caption"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; background-color: #eeeeee;">In this artist's rendition of the Milky Way galaxy, translucent green "bubbles" mark areas where life has spread beyond its home system to create cosmic oases, a process called panspermia. New research suggests that we could detect panspermia if it is indeed a real phenomenon.</span></span> NASA/JPL/R. Hurt In this artist’s rendition of the Milky Way galaxy, translucent green “bubbles” mark areas where life has spread beyond its home system to create cosmic oases, a process called panspermia. New research suggests that we could detect panspermia if it is indeed a real phenomenon.

The research suggests that there are two ways intelligent life can spread across the universe. The first option is for living things to travel intentionally. The second is through a natural process in which comets and asteroids serve as transfer vehicles for biological matter. (Some scientists believe that meteors are responsible for bringing the first primordial life to Earth.)

If the “seeds” of one living planet reach a habitable planet orbiting a neighboring star, according to the paper, they can take root. Over time, the result of this process would be a series of life-bearing oases dotting the galactic landscape.

“In a sense, the Milky Way galaxy would become infected with pockets of life,” Avi Loeb, the other author of the paper, said in a press release.

Lin and Loeb note in their paper that even if Earth is the only inhabited planet right now, interstellar travel by humans may one day lead to colonization of the galaxy.

“The question that awaits is whether primitive life has already spread efficiently, or whether it will have to wait for ‘intelligent’ life to make the voyage,” they write.

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Read more at:  New Research Explains How Life Could Spread To Other Galaxies

Fastest Star Ever Seen In The Milky Way Is Headed Out Of Our Galaxy

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kJrHLSld3u4
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/hypervelocity-star-escape-our-galaxy_n_6831236.html
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Almost a decade after its discovery, astronomers have learned that a compact star dubbed US 708 is moving faster than any other star ever observed in the Milky Way galaxy.

The record-setting hypervelocity star has been clocked at 746 miles per second, or 2.7 million miles per hour. That’s so fast that astronomers say it will escape the gravity of our galaxy (in 25 million years).

“At that speed, you could travel from Earth to the moon in five minutes,” Dr. Eugene Magnier, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and one of the researchers involved in the discovery, said in a written statement.

The ultra-fast star was first discovered in 2005, Discovery News reported. Then, over the past several years, Magnier and his colleagues used the Keck II and Pan-STARRS1 telescopes in Hawaii to measure the star’s velocity and trajectory.

The observations showed that US 708 — now a helium star — was likely once a red giant in orbit around a massive white dwarf. As the white dwarf stripped US 708 of hydrogen and helium, it exploded in a supernova and sent US 708 flying. (Check out the video above for an animation of the violent event.)

“It’s like if you are riding a swing carousel, where you are connected with a chain, and you cut the chain — then you fly away from the carousel,” Dr. Stephan Geier, a postdoctoral researcher at the European Southern Observatory and a co-author of a paper describing the discovery, told Space.com. “In this case the carousel explodes.”

The paper was published online March 6 in the journal Science.