#biosignatures

[uapro]

Today in Strangeness:

On the night of February 24, 1942, the 'Battle of Los Angeles' took place. Eyewitness reports of an unknown object or objects over Los Angeles, California, triggered a massive anti-aircraft artillery barrage. A photo posted in the LA Times showed nine beams of light converging on an aerial object.

[jtem]

Bio Signatures discovered on planet 124 light years away

The planet is K2-18b.

"Bio Signatures" are compounds in the atmosphere which we would expect life to produce. Pretty much all of them have natural sources, but it's also extremely unlikely that life would not produce any of them.

Things like oxygen and methane like to react, leave the atmosphere, so they need replenishing. They are far from the only Bio Signatures but they do a fine job of illustrating the point...

There's also such a thing as "Techno Signatures," which would be things we would expect an industrial society to put into the atmosphere... pollution.

[gwarden123]

Beware of Biosignatures - Sixty Symbols

[jcmarchi]

Earth sciences isn’t just for Earth - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/earth-sciences-isnt-just-for-earth-technology-org/

Earth sciences isn’t just for Earth - Technology Org

W. Bruce Banerdt dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Space fascinated him as a young boy, and the thought of rockets and satellites surging through the universe sparked curiosity and excitement.

Saturn’s moon Titan could harbor life, and USC Dornsife’s Maya Yanez is helping NASA’s JPL look for it. Image credit: NASA

But Banerdt’s academic career pushed in other directions. He earned an undergraduate degree in physics in 1975 followed by a PhD in geological sciences in 1983, both from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and he seemed tethered to studying the history, nature, materials and processes of Earth, not outer space. That is until a graduate school colleague mentioned a summer internship studying the moon at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

“To use the skills and knowledge I had acquired in physics and geology but in connection to space, well, it seemed too good to be true,” Banerdt says.

At JPL, Banerdt discovered Earth scientists played a significant role in understanding planets beyond our own, a mission Banerdt himself embraced with an inquisitive and enterprising spirit as an intern and, later, as a research scientist. Over a 45-year career at JPL, Banerdt worked extensively on projects investigating Mars while also contributing to efforts exploring Venus and Jupiter’s satellites.

As it turns out, space exploration isn’t merely the domain of pioneering astronauts like Neil Armstrong ’70 or James Lovell ’61, or the bailiwick of those at NASA or SpaceX. Banerdt, in fact, is among a number of USC Dornsife-connected Earth scientists — faculty, students and alumni among them — expanding human understanding of the solar system and laboring to unpack its many mysteries.

Trojans exploring the universe

Like Banerdt, Maya Yanez developed an early fascination with outer space. Holding an undergraduate degree in astronomy, the Los Angeles native is now a fifth-year PhD candidate in USC Dornsife’s Department of Earth Sciences and a former JPL intern.

Yanez’s doctoral studies focus on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and, by some metrics at least, the solar system’s most Earth-like body. Titan is also one of only six places in the entire universe on which humans have landed a robot. In studying Titan’s current conditions, Yanez inspects similarities between where Titan is today and where the Earth might have been eons ago.

“We don’t know what we’re going to find, but everything — the data and the observations we make — informs our next steps, future projects, instrumentation and studies as well as the goals we’re setting for our next mission,” says Yanez, who works in the lab of Jan Amend, professor of Earth sciences and biological sciences.

The overarching goal, Yanez continues, is to better understand the habitability of Titan, the solar system’s only other world with stable liquids on its surface.

“In Earth, we have one example of life we have poked, prodded and studied, and we can use that to explore how life evolved elsewhere,” she says.

Many other USC-affiliated Earth scientists are similarly researching outer space.

Two USC Dornsife alumni, Laurie Barge ’09 and Scott Perl ’19, for instance, lead JPL’s Origins and Habitability Lab. Barge, Perl and their team of astrobiologists continue exploring the origin of life on Earth as well as if, and how, life could have started on other worlds. The lab also investigates how Earthly life persists amid extreme environments and the geochemical processes that make a planet habitable.

Professor of Earth Sciences Frank Corsetti, meanwhile, is a geologist who studies biosignatures, or signs of life. Corsetti’s research, heavily fueled by funding from NASA, aims to understand the evolution of life on Earth as well as the necessary parameters to create and sustain life. His work informs the search for clues and patterns of potential biosignatures on Mars.

And Banerdt capped his JPL career by directing the center’s Mars InSight Mission, which included designing, building and landing a seismometer on Mars. The instrument measured quakes and vibrations on Mars’s surface, offering rich insights into the basic building blocks of Earth’s closest planetary neighbor to help scientists develop theories and craft future experiments.

The Mars InSight lander explored the red planet, partially guided by USC Dornsife Earth sciences alum Bruce Banerdt. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“It’s almost like doing an MRI of Mars,” says Banerdt, who likened InSight to scientists’ early 20th-century examinations of the Earth’s interior. “The composition and structure of a planet’s interior affects the surface environment of that planet, which is what makes life possible or impossible there.”

Earth scientists looking beyond the planet

While Earth scientists often focus on pressing global challenges like sustainability, water resources, climate change and natural resources, Corsetti and others say taking Earth sciences to outer space isn’t as wild or disconnected as it might initially seem. Studying the Earth — its origins, its environment and its materials — extends human knowledge of the solar system in powerful ways.

“When you step back 10 million miles, you realize Earth is just a planet, like many other planets, orbiting the sun,” says Banerdt, who retired from JPL last summer. “The same tools we use to study Earth can be used to study other planets and, similarly, we can use the study of other planets to inform our understanding of Earth.”

Such efforts position Earth’s inhabitants to address one of humanity’s most burning questions: Are we alone? Society can only begin to answer that question by first understanding how life evolved on Earth. Thereafter, Earth scientists can leverage their toolkits, like processes for chemical analysis, and instruments such as robotic rovers, particle detectors and spectrographs to develop greater clarity.

“Maybe we won’t find the evidence, but at least we can constrain what is possible, which is scientific progress,” Corsetti says.

It’s an undeniably energizing pursuit for Earth scientists like Yanez, who recalls looking up into the nighttime sky as a child and wondering about life beyond the planet.

“We have no idea what we don’t know,” she says. “To begin to use what we know to understand what we don’t know is super exciting to me, and I’m constantly being surprised because there are so many firsts left in space to discover.”

Source: USC

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[jingszo]

Quoting respected members of the scientific community that included UK astrophysicists Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Becky Smethurst, as well as astronaut Tim Peake, all of whom seemed to strongly allude to a discovery currently still on the path toward peer review

“I think we are going to get a paper that claims to have strong evidence for a biosignature in an exoplanet’s atmosphere very, very soon,” Smethurst was quoted saying. “Let’s just say it’s on my bingo card for 2024.”

Peake had been even less ambiguous while speaking during a CNBC interview in the first days of the new year, where he said the prospects that alien life might have been discovered were looking increasingly good.

“Potentially, the James Webb telescope may have already found [it],” though also emphasizing that nothing conclusive had been released yet since scientists involved in the prospective discovery “don’t want to release or confirm those results until they can be entirely sure,” though adding cryptically that “we found a planet that seems to be giving off strong signals of biological life.”

In other words, if these observations are what they appear to be, then it seems like there’s a good chance that we may already be on course for a tremendous discovery this year; one that could potentially offer the most convincing evidence to date that life may exist on worlds beyond our own.

[wayti-blog]

"NASA has announced the first detection of possible biosignatures in a rock on the surface of Mars. The rock contains the first martian organic matter to be detected by the Perseverance rover, as well as curious discolored spots that could indicate the past activity of microorganisms."

"Since landing in Jezero crater a few years ago, Perseverance has traversed a series of rocks formed nearly four billion years before present. Mars back then was far more habitable than the cold, dry, toxic red planet of today.

There were thousands of rivers and lakes, a thick atmosphere, and comfortable temperatures and chemical conditions for life. Many of the rocks in Jezero are sedimentary: mud, silt and sand dumped by a river flowing into a lake.

The new discovery concerns one of these rocks. Informally named "Cheyava Falls" (a waterfall in Arizona), it is a small reddish block of what looks like a mudstone, enriched with organic molecules. The rock is also laced with parallel white veins. Between the veins are millimeter-scale whitish spots with dark rims. For an astrobiologist, all these features are intriguing."

continue reading

[chowadoe]

compilation of ideas/shenanigans/comics me @valenrepetto and i had fun brewing between her sonadow fankid, Sofi and my metamy kid, Dusty :^D 🌀🌬️🌹

put the metamy kid with the sonic kid they said....the Amy part that wants Sonic and the Metal part that wants to /be/ Sonic surely won't result in anything bad....... ..... ...

(Dusty keeps the fact Metal Sonic is his dad a secret, because it'd be bad if the town knew he came from a villain.. a villain that would copy/replicate the biosignatures of others to build himself into the ultimate weapon at that. sorry for accidentally Scarlet Letter-ing you Amy)

[coursechosen]

tag dump

[neonshadows9000]

Two tropes I love are TimKon Clone Baby AUs and Tim being of Asian descent, so what if we combine them?

In his grief induced, sleep deprived spiral Tim manages to produce a viable embryo and conks out right after confirming that it has no detectable defects and will not terminate if he takes his eyes off it.

When he wakes up he realizes how fucked up this whole situation is but by then accelerated aging has already grown the child to be visible with the naked eye and Tim can't bring himself to abort it despite the moral concerns and ramifications of keeping it. It's not Kon, he knows that, but it's the closest he has to him so he decides to let incubation progress and deal with the consequences.

He stops the accelerated growing to give himself more time organising how he's going to mange this and so he can tell the relevant people beforehand instead of just turning up with a child. But then Bruce dies, or so everyone thinks, and Tim leaves to get him back himself when it becomes clear that he can't rely on anyone to help.

His search for Bruce works on a different time schedule driven by desparation and recklessness because he needs to get back to the child as fast as humanly possible. This causes him to take more risks and be less forgiving in his actions and he manages to gather enough evidence sooner. He sends the information to the JL and makes sure to prevent Ra's from continuing the fight in Gotham before getting the kid and dropping off the grid, letting everyone else make their own assumptions on what happened to him. Their actions when he confided in them about his theory had shown him that he can't trust them anymore, so he leaves.

He rushes to prepare his departure with the now born baby and leaves for his mother's childhood home in the Philippines. He'd visited it a few times with his mother and once with Kon but nobody else knows about it. (What Tim doesn't know is that in his haste to disappear he forgot to erase the simplest thing.)

Tim raises the child there, learning more about his own heritage and meeting estranged family members along the way.

He's using tech to disguise himself, appearance and biosignatures, from both the Justice League and the remains of Ra's empire, with Tam and Pru keeping him up to date on significant happenings respectively.

Meanwhile Dick has been worrying about Tim, which is only amplified when Bruce comes back and Tim doesn't, when Bruce asks about him and Dick doesn't have an answer, when Kon and Bart return with grandiose tales of the future to no best friend to tell them to.

Bruce starts searching for Tim during his recovery and Cassie catches Kon and Bart up to everything that happened between their deaths and Tim's disappearance.

They notice she's holding back on telling them something and she reluctantly shares how she caught him trying to clone Kon. Kon, overwhelmed and disturbed by the news, leaves them to process by himself. When he's calmed down and rationalised that he doesn't have the whole story, since Tim isn't here to tell it, he goes to the lab to look for... anything, really. A notebook, a diary, something that can tell him what Tim was thinking.

He finds the lab empty, all notes and cloning equipment destroyed. But on the computer he finds evidence that Tim was here after he disappeared, and that the cloning was successful.

So Kon is sure that Tim is out there, that he's with a child and that he went of his own accord. Where would Tim go, avoiding everyone that would search for him? That could be anywhere!

But does the child, his child, change his decision making? Kon can think of one place, far enough to not raise unwelcome memories of what he's leaving behind, sentimental enough to want to introduce his child to and secret enough that only one other living person knows about it. Or no other, considering that Tim was gone before he could find out that Kon's alive from anyone in the community and the news isn't public yet.

Kon flies to the home Tim had shown him once and finds it lived in. Toys and food and clothes and pictures all over the place. But no Tim and no baby. So Kon waits.

Tim comes back a few hours later, child in tow, from visiting his great aunt and uncle who he has started visiting regularly to learn about his family's history and share about his and his mother's lives in America. They're slowly starting to not need his cousins to translate anymore as Tim is learning enough Filipino to make up for their limited English.

The sight that greets Tim when he rounds corner is Kon tracing the pictures that Tim has taken and hung up since moving here.

Tim bursts into tears as he sees Kon, who himself startles, at Tim's entrance. They have a long, tearful reunion before Kon asks about the kid and Tim explains everything.

In the end Kon isn't happy about what happened but he sees the difference in how Clark and Luthor treat him to how Tim loves the child. He sees how Tim regrets hurting Kon with his actions and how what he did was not out of greed but out of grief.

Kon visits often after that, getting introduced to Tim's extended family and Tam and Pru. He eventually brings up letting other people know and Tim's apprehensive but lets Kon bring Bart the next time. Bart who is ecstatic at being an uncle and will definitely spoil the kid rotten. Together they manage to convince Tim to give telling other people a try, not necessarily about the kid or his location but at least that he's alive.

So Tim starts video calls with Bruce and Dick and Cassie, telling them that he's fine but that he won't come home, talking about what happened and how each of them hurt because of it. Eventually he'll let Kon take him for a visit in person. Eventually he'll tell them about his son, scared and hopeful, and they'll tell him that they'd love to meet him. Eventually he introduces them and watches everyone coo and baby talk to him.

Eventually Tim's anxiety about seeing them will turn into excitement and his son will grow up knowing his family in the Philippines and his family in America.

[meowcats734]

This article is about the rogue planet. For the mythological figure, see Icarus (mythology). For other uses, see Icarus (disambiguation).

Icarus was an icy rogue planet discovered in 2024. It is thought to have been ejected from its unknown home star 2.6 billion years ago. From early 2071 to late 2075, Icarus was present in the solar system, and was often visible to the naked eye. Of the lifeforms endemic to Icarus, only four hundred and seven species—an estimated .000005%—were documented by scientists. Of Icarus’ sapient lifeforms, only one living Singer (Icarus Sapiens) has been successfully returned to Earth.

Initially, interest in Icarus was predominantly limited to the scientific community once it was announced in 2025 that Icarus would not directly threaten Earth as it passed through the solar system. However, after the 2031 CLARITY mission, when liquid water and potential biosignatures were first detected beneath Icarus’ cryosphere, funding towards the exploration of Icarus rose significantly.

First Contact

Before the 2052 Daedalus landing site was established, popular consensus was that the first alien lifeforms humanity met would be technologically superior. However, the first Singer settlement discovered by the Daedalus crewed submersible was a tribal society formed within the decaying corpse of a Large-bodied Tenor (Mellifluus Civitas). The settlement, best translated as “Distortion of Sound in Warm, Rising Water”, was chosen due to its proximity to the Daedalus drill site; gas bubbles in the body caused by decomposition allowed Distortion to float approximately two kilometers above the surface of the ocean floor.

Although initial protocol for the Daedalus crew was to avoid contact, the crew did not anticipate the precision and sensitivity of Singer echolocation, and were swiftly detected. Despite initial concerns of conflict, with the assistance of the Daedalus AI’s linguistic analysis, tentative contact was established. By 2053, the Daedalus crew had established a basic understanding of Singer biology and the culture of Distortion.

The largest barrier to communication was the nature of Singer language. The primary Singer sense was their echolocation; as they evolved sapience, Singers learned to communicate by mimicking the sounds they heard when echolocating certain objects. Several Singer “words” well-known to popular culture include: the sound of a pod of Singers migrating (lit. “family”); the faint echoes produced by calling into empty water (lit. “loneliness”); and the high-pitched hum of the Daedalus propellers (lit. “impotent gods”).

The Massacre of Worms

Of utmost importance was successfully communicating to the Singers that Icarus was on a collision course with the Sun, and would be entirely destroyed by 2076. Even in 2053, the ice sheet which covered Icarus was already beginning to sublimate under the increased temperature. As there existed no word for fire, sun, or stars in the Singer language, a warning that their world would soon decay (lit. the sound of flesh devoured by worms, growing louder and coming from all directions) was transmitted to the citizens of Distortion of Sound in Warm, Rising Water.

In what is now known as the Massacre of Worms, the entirety of the Singer village immediately attempted to attack the Daedalus submersible. At the time, the mechanism by which Singers communicated was still poorly understood, but interviews and brain scans of the Last Singer have confirmed that Icarus Sapiens experience a species-wide condition similar to human synesthesia. In order to convert the feedback from their echolocation into useable information about their spatial environment, Singers evolved the ability to “see” sounds as hallucinated physical objects. As such, every word spoken by a Singer produces a corresponding illusory image in the mind of every Singer who hears it. Unfortunately, the warning delivered by the Daedalus submersible manifested as an imploding sphere of rotting flesh centered on the village of Distortion, and was interpreted as an attack. The Daedalus submersible sustained little damage, but out of fear that the Distortion villagers would sour relations with other Singer societies, released hypochlorous acid clouds to calm the attackers; it was believed that high concentrations of hypochlorous acid would cause the Singers to become lethargic and contented, as if they had recently consumed a filling meal. Unfortunately, due to a poor understanding of Singer biochemical sexual dimorphism, the chemicals released resulted in the deaths of nearly half of the Distortion villagers.

Through great difficulty, it was conveyed to the surviving Distortion villagers that the Massacre of Worms was a mistake, but the remaining Singers refused further contact with the Daedalus crew. Although a second attempt to halt the spread of negative rumors in Singer society was considered, the disastrous failure of the first attempt caused no action to be taken.

Termination of the Daedalus Mission

Swiftly following the Massacre of Worms came a breakthrough in solar magnetohydrodynamics, and with it, the alarming discovery that the collision of Icarus with the sun would cause a solar storm, which would deal trillions of dollars of damage to the economy. Negative press surrounding the Daedalus crew, as well as the importance of hardening the global power grid against the solar flare, caused funding for the Daedalus expedition to be cut, and the mission slated to end in 2060.

In an effort to preserve as much of Icaran life and culture as possible, the Daedalus crew attempted to make contact with and offer salvation to as many diverse Singer settlements as they could. At the peak of their efforts, in 2059, they had made contact with nineteen different Singer settlements around the planet, and although the Daedalus crew’s claims of planetary destruction were met with widespread skepticism, sixteen of them agreed to send representative Singers back to Earth. Unfortunately, four weeks before the launch date, when the Singer representatives were brought together, hitherto-unknown cultural conflicts between the Singer settlements the Daedalus crew had contacted caused the Singers to devolve into physical combat. A still-shoddy understanding of Singer biology led to the Daedalus crew being unable to save most of the Singers injured in the brawl. In the end, only one Singer survived the destruction of Icarus.

See also:

National Icaran Zoo

Icarus in popular culture

Consumption of Icaran lifeforms by country

Death of the Last Singer

(psst, I write more stuff here!)

[witchofthesouls]

How are the mornings between Tarn and the wife?

Because Tarn is Tarn and his headspace is very weird, he didn't develop a sex addiction... he developed one for intimacy instead.

While many things changed with your inclusion, the most crucial parts hadn't. Tarn begins his cycle by reciting the passages of Megatron's works that speak to him or the next Listed the most beneath his Lord's cold visage immortalized in glorious pieces. He still does it, but in the comfort of the berth, where he includes the newsparks in the exercise.

He does it quietly inside in mind, careful not to stir you or the clutches. The first trio had tumbled their way back to the shared quarters, curling up between you and him, encased in the nest of sheets and padding, purring in their sleep at Tarn's return and your presence.

The second clutch is tiny. More head and tank with stumpy limbs and swaddled in Vos' newest pieces that feature hooks and bloody gears. They sleep nestled above inside a hollowed space that once served as a datapad rest and a charging point that's been repurposed to a controlled cradle. Under the carving of Megatron's stony expression and your knife-sharp observation.

Tarn is well-aware of what the other Decepticons are saying, and they can't be further from the truth. You're not a soft individual. You're a vicious one, and you turn that ferocity onto yourself.

In the wetlands where the third clutch was sparked, you bared your spark the same way you bared your teeth: possessive with brutal efficiency. Tearing through the induced heat with the same intensity as you tear through Deadzone's corpse or refined Overlord's downfall.

You have never known peace. Whatever softness that isn't part of the natural reaction of your swelling protoform during carriage, you had to incise it from your scarred spark. Gentleness is a lost word to you. It's buried beneath so much Energon and violence that you need to claw it out from nightmares to raise the sparklings with a softer touch.

The sparklings are open and guileless with a trust that leaves him floundering at times. Small and completely reliant on others, on him.

You never held it against Tarn. Instead, you guide his hands on how to hold and care for them and guide his field on how to modulate the newsparks' rapid tempo into something more slow and easy without overwhelming them.

Tarn's habsuite has become more sacred than a Primal temple, graced by an intimacy greater than any physical joinery or scent marking. Beneath the aroma of newborn metal, sparking fuel, faint ozone and bodily fluids, and the tang of polish and oil, all of his personal belongings have the echoes of the little family imprinted upon them.

After the Overlord incident, Tarn now works his way through the cupboard to ensure each sheet and cover, every blanket and pillow had been utilized by you and the clutches long enough to lock in the unique biosignatures.

Everyone knows that he burnt the last berth with all the articles due to Overlord's and your Energon upon them. Tarn never spoke about how much he loathed how Overlord destroyed the biosignatures, engulfing it all under the Phase Sixer's field until all was left was sadistic bloodlust, your feverish triumph, and the second clutch's confused terror at the forced emergence.

(Quietly and only his spark, he mourns that he doesn't have anything that's been touched by both carriages. Nothing will have the little tinges of both clutches' development within your frame and biosignature.)

You either have an excellent sense of timing or deep awareness for private matters because Tarn finishes the silent deliverances, and you're staring at him with half-lite optics at his bared face. Without a word and careful not to prod the sparklings, you straddle Tarn, sinking upon him with a well practiced motion. You pull the leash taunt, Tarn's vocalizer clicks uselessly, purposely rendered impotent in the fear he damages the bitlets, and he shivers at the stony expression between you and Lord Megatron. Fields still in careful moderation to not jolt the sparklings, but when you place a hand over his neck, digging sharpened talons into the scarring where you bit him. Between the firm possessive touch claim, your clenching valve, and the fresh scent of his own Energon, Tarn can't even whimper as he overloads.

[jcmarchi]

Spying for Signs of Life Among Exoplanet Atmospheres - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/spying-for-signs-of-life-among-exoplanet-atmospheres-technology-org/

Spying for Signs of Life Among Exoplanet Atmospheres - Technology Org

New research suggests that the next generation of advanced telescopes could sharpen the hunt for potential extraterrestrial life by closely scrutinizing the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets. 

Artist’s concept showing a planet amid a field of debris from the apocalyptic aftermath of a violent merger between two stars. The planet Halla may have survived in orbit around the colliding stars. Image credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

Published recently in The Astronomical Journal, a new paper details how a team of astronomers from Ohio State University examined upcoming telescopes’ ability to detect chemical traces of oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane and water on 10 rocky exoplanets. These elements are biosignatures also found in Earth’s atmosphere that can provide key scientific evidence of life.  

The study found that for a pair of these nearby worlds, Proxima Centauri b and GJ 887 b, these telescopes are highly adept at detecting the presence of potential biosignatures. Of the two, findings show that only for Proxima Centauri b would the machines be able to detect carbon dioxide if it were present. Though no exoplanet has been found to twin Earth’s early conditions for life precisely, this work suggests that if examined in greater detail, such unique Super Earths – planets more massive than Earth but smaller than Neptune – could make a suitable target for future research missions. 

To further the search for habitable planets, Huihao Zhang, lead author of the study and a senior in astronomy at Ohio State, and his colleagues also sought to determine the effectiveness of specialized imaging instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) such as the European Extremely Large Telescope, the Thirty-Meter-Telescope and the Giant Magellan Telescope at directly imaging exoplanets. 

“Not every planet is suitable for direct imaging, but that’s why simulations give us a rough idea of what the ELTs would have delivered and the promises they’re meant to hold when they are built,“ said Zhang. 

The direct method of imaging exoplanets involves using a coronagraph or starshade to block a host star’s light, allowing for scientists to capture a faint image of the new world in orbit. But because locating them in this way can be difficult and time-consuming, the researchers aimed to see how well the ELT telescopes might handle the challenge. To do this, they tested each telescope’s instruments’ abilities to differentiate universal background noise from the planetary noise they aimed to capture while detecting biosignatures; called the signal-to-noise ratio, the higher it is, the easier a planet’s wavelength is able to be detected and analyzed. 

Results showed that the direct imaging mode of one of the European ELT’s instruments, called the Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph, performed better for three planets (GJ 887 b, Proxima b and Wolf 1061 c) in discerning the presence of methane, carbon dioxide and water, while its High Angular Resolution Monolithic Optical and Near-infrared Integral field spectrograph instrument could detect methane, carbon dioxide, oxygen and water, but needed a great deal more exposure time.

Additionally, since these conclusions were about instruments that will have to peer through the chemical fog of Earth’s atmosphere to progress the search for cosmic life, they were compared to JWST’s current outer space capabilities, said Zhang. 

“It’s hard to say whether space telescopes are better than ground-based telescopes, because they’re different,” he said. “They have different environments, different locations, and their observations have different influences.”

In this case, findings revealed that while GJ 887 b is one of the most suitable targets for ELT direct imaging as its location and size result in an especially high signal-to-noise ratio, for some transiting planets, such as the TRAPPIST-1 system, JWST’s techniques for studying planetary atmospheres are more suitable for detecting them than direct imaging from the ELTs on Earth. 

But because the study took on a more conservative assumption with the data, Zhang said, the true effectiveness of future astronomical tools could still surprise scientists. And subtle contrasts in performance aside, these powerful technologies serve to widen our understanding of the universe and are meant to complement each other, said Ji Wang, co-author of the study and an assistant professor in astronomy at Ohio State. It’s why studies like this one, that assess the limitations of those technologies, is necessary, he said. 

“The importance of simulation, especially for missions that cost billions of dollars, cannot be stressed enough,” said Wang. “Not only do people have to build the hardware, they also try really hard to simulate the performance and be prepared to achieve those glorious results.”

In all likelihood, as the ELTs won’t be completed until the tail end of the decade, researchers’ next steps will settle around simulating how well future ELT instruments will take to investigating the intricacies of our own planet’s rampant proofs of life. 

“We want to see to what extent we can study our atmosphere to exquisite detail and how much information we can extract from it,” said Wang. “Because if we cannot answer habitability questions with Earth’s atmosphere, then there’s no way we can start to answer these questions around other planets.”

Source: Ohio State University

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[ectogeo-rebubbles]

Garashir jealousy because of suspected sloanshir and/or siskarak yespls

1. Sloan breaks into Julian’s quarters to watch him sleep on the regular, which Julian is unaware of. Garak is aware of it though because he planted a sensor in Julian’s quarters after the changeling replacement incident to keep a log of who went in there to help find who took him if he ever got kidnapped again (Julian at the time appreciated the gesture and gave him permission to do so but then probably forgot about it). Garak assumes they are sleeping together, and is hurt that Julian won’t even admit to him that he has a mysterious new lover (he can tell they’re a human but the biosignature doesn’t match anyone registered in the station’s records) even when he tries to indirectly, and then directly, ask him about it. Julian is very insistent that he is not sleeping with anyone. Garak knows he is lying and keeping secrets. Maybe during IAESL, Sisko takes Garak aside and tells him to look out for Julian bc s31 is trying to sink their claws into him: Sloan came to him last night to recruit him for a mission. This is the first Garak has heard of Sloan (no one told him about Inquisition), and with that info Garak finally has a name to put to Julian’s secret lover. His heart shatters and sinks. Another spy, but one for his own people. Of course. That must have been the one thing Garak was missing, the reason their flirtation never went anywhere. He pulls himself together and tells Sisko that he’ll try his best, knowing the futility of it, knowing how entangled Julian already is with Sloan.

2. Julian’s irritability towards Garak in the s6 Defiant arc is because he thinks Garak and Sisko both being stationed on the Starbase instead of the Defiant - and all of the time that they seem to spend together lately - is bc they are fucking, instead of that Starfleet is highly suspicious of Garak (last time he was on the Defiant in particular he went rogue and tried to destroy a planet so like. Valid.) even though they need him to decode Cardassian transmissions and so Sisko has been ordered to keep Garak under close observation and on a tight leash. This scenario overlays perfectly on top of canon in my mind, and lives in my head rent-free always.

[heartbeatsnice]

Your desire to explore alien life is surpassing the capability of your body, and sending robots down just isn't enough. Thankfully, medical technology and nanotechnology have progressed enough to alter your organs, adapting the gravity and atmospheric pressure of most inhabited planets within a day. Just a few days ago, astronomers confirmed that two massive super-Earths 1200 light-years away are inhabited; not just showing biosignatures, but the surface and satellite rings contain unusual amounts of elemental silicon and metals, a sign of advanced technology, perhaps two worlds colonized by aliens we have yet to know. With 5 and 7 times Earth's gravity, your body can adapt to them with a mechanized G-suit, but any moderate physical activity would send your enlarged and strengthened heart slamming violently in your comparatively small chest cavity. While waiting for the data from the probe sent to collect more information from those planets, you can't help but imagine what the aliens there would look like, and how they would think of you when they see you struggling to survive on a planet they have already settled in.

It didn’t take too long but soon enough all the necessary data had been collected. Inputting this into the G-suit, I bring the ship down towards a shoreline by a great lake.

The moment I stepped foot outside, I could already feel the strain of the environment on my body.

The nanobots flowing in my circulatory system would need time to help my heart and lungs adapt but I’ll live.

Or I hope so.

Every step out onto this new planet brought more of the intense gravity down upon my body.

The G-suit is doing its job, protecting me from the brunt, but still I can feel how my enlarged and strong heart pounds inside my ribcage as it tries to adapt to the gravitational forces. It felt like a heavy book was slowly pressing down upon my heart, slowly crushing the chambers sending my heart into overdrive.

Still, I can’t help but be curious. I start to run and this sends my heart into spasms as the gravity and stress puts it through its paces. The heart monitor in the corner of my eye blares, showing my BPM shooting up towards 180 BPM in seconds.

My chest shakes with each pound, like my heart is attempting to punch its way out of my chest like an alien creature, slamming against the sternum.

I skid to a stop but my heart only beats faster shooting to 200 BPM. Shit. I might have overdone it.

[playedcrowd5610]

The Nemesis Chase - Transformers x Danny Phantom

Summary: Danny books it through the Nemesis with an angry Knockout on his heels

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Notes

Set in a series where Danny finds Starscream one day and decides to start haunting the Decepticons. That's basically all the context you need but if you want more here is the rest of the series:

Haunting the Nemesis

Part 1: Chasing Stars

Part 2: Burning Rubber

Part 3: Adventures of the Decepticons' Pet Ghost Or Tumblr Master List

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This scene was one of the first things I wrote when I started this series, so it may seem somewhat random. You can imagine it placed pretty much anywhere in the series timeline, it doesn't matter where. But I had nowhere else to put it for my posting schedule! So enjoy a fun little crack scene <3

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Danny darted down the long, metallic hallway of the Nemesis, his sneakers barely touching the ground as the sound of angry, stomping steps echoed quickly from behind. 

"Get back here, you pest!" Knockout’s voice called out from behind him, filled with fury.

Danny glanced over his shoulder, laughing to himself as the fuming Knockout pursued him. Knockout had been boasting about himself again, and how much more sophisticated Cybertronains were than Organics. After one too many snide comments, Danny decided to throw one of the tools on the desk he was sitting on at the Con… And maybe he had thrown it with a little too much enthusiasm.

"Aw, come on, Knockout, it’s just a scratch!" Danny called back, smirking to himself as he turned a sharp corner. He could have easily just turned invisible or even just phased out through the floor, but where was the fun in that?

Just ahead, Breakdown was walking down the hallway, looking over a data pad and muttering to himself.  His optics shot up when he heard the commotion as Danny grinned and zipped by him. "Hi, Breakdown! Bye, Breakdown!"  Danny waved as he ran.

Breakdown blinked as Danny sped past, followed moments later by a livid Knockout. The red mech skidded to a halt in front of Breakdown, who raised an optic ridge at him. 

 "Why didn’t you grab him?!" Knockout threw his servo in the general direction where Danny took off.

Breakdown shrugged and tilted his helm to the side. "Why are you trying to kill Danny?" He asked.

Knockout lifted up one of the doors that were attached to his forearms, showing off a fancy new mark that trailed across it. "He scratched my paint!"

Breakdown sighed exasperatedly. "Right. That’s a perfectly good reason to chase a human down. Knockout, I can buff it out when I’m done this.”  He raised his datapad, which was small in his large servo. “There’s no need to kill him."

Knockout shot him a glare. "You’ll never understand the importance of keeping a finish pristine." He took off running again, shouting after Danny. "You’re going to pay for that, Scratch magnet!"

Danny, now several corridors away, zigzagged down another hall, laughing between breaths. He recognized the control center and ran in without a second thought.  The door opened for him instantly. Soundwave had programmed in his biosignature to open the doors for him when he walked up to them because he couldn’t reach the door panels with his tiny human limbs. Speaking of Soundwave – he spotted a familiar tall, thin figure standing at the control panel. 

Danny skidded to a stop, nearly crashing into him. "Hey, Soundwave!”  The mech turned his helm towards the human.  “Uh…Where’s Starscream?"

Soundwave, without saying a word, pointed a long, silent digit down the next hallway.

"Thanks!" Danny flashed a grin and bolted, but not before waving behind him to the mech.

Not a second later, Knockout stormed in, vents running overtime. "Where did he go?"  He demanded, leaning up against the doorframe for a moment's rest.

Soundwave’s visor remained blank, and he went back to his console as if nothing had happened.

Knockout growled, throwing his servos up in defeat. "Ugh, why is everyone so unhelpful today?!"

Meanwhile, Danny rounded the corner and nearly crashed into Starscream, the mech was distracted with a data pad and stepped back when Danny tripped in front of him. Danny righted himself dusting himself off and without missing a beat, he grinned up at the Seeker.

"Hey Screamy, how about a flight?"

Starscream narrowed his optics suspiciously, opening his intake to protest, when he suddenly noticed Knockout barreling toward them, pure irritation on his face.

Starscream let out an exasperated groan dragging his servo down his faceplate. "What have you done this time?"

"No time to explain!" Danny said quickly, hopping in place as Knockout drew closer.

Starscream sighed dramatically but grabbed Danny in one smooth motion, transforming mid-action and launching into the air, soaring through the hallways of the Nemesis. Knockout skidded to a halt just as they flew out of reach for the mech.

"I am going to get him one of these days," Knockout muttered, stomping away. Once he turned the corner he ran into Breakdown again and, without a second thought, he grabbed the larger mech by the transformation seam under his neck into his chest plates and pulled him along behind him. Breakdown made a sound of surprise but decided just to follow his partner anyway.

Soundwave closed out the security camera he had opened on the monitor that he was using to watch the whole ordeal and continued his work.  A very light hint of amusement reflected in his EM field.