Tag: life

Threat to life! NASA scientists identify new stellar danger to planets
25Apr By adminNo Comments
Technology

Threat to life! NASA scientists identify new stellar danger to planets

[ad_1] Astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have identified a new threat to life on planets like Earth: a period during which intense X-rays from exploded stars can affect planets over 100 light-years away.The finding, published recently in The Astrophysical Journal, has implication for the study of planets outside the solar system and their habitability. This threat comes from a supernova's blast wave striking dense gas surrounding the exploded star. When this impact occurs it can produce a large dose of X-rays that reaches an Earth-like planet months to years after the explosion and may last for decades, the researchers said. Such intense exposure may trigger an extinction event on the planet, they said.The study is based on X-ray observati...
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EU lawmakers call for summit to control ‘very powerful’ AI
18Apr By adminNo Comments
Technology

EU lawmakers call for summit to control ‘very powerful’ AI

[ad_1] EU lawmakers urged world leaders on Monday to hold a summit to find ways to control the development of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT, saying they were developing faster than expected.The 12 MEPs, all working on EU legislation on the technology, called on U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to convene the meeting, and said AI firms should be more responsible. The statement came weeks after Twitter owner Elon Musk and more than 1,000 technology figures demanded a six-month pause in the development of systems more powerful than Microsoft-backed OpenAI's latest iteration of ChatGPT, which can mimic humans and create text and images based on prompts. That open letter, published in March by the Future of Life I...
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Scientist says ‘Everyone on Earth will die’ if AI is allowed to be more intelligent
6Apr By adminNo Comments
Technology

Scientist says ‘Everyone on Earth will die’ if AI is allowed to be more intelligent

[ad_1] We are entering an important era of technology — the rise of AI. Artificial intelligence has been among us for a long time, but recent developments have pushed its capabilities and intelligence to a level where it may start to leave humans behind. A prime example of this is OpenAI-build ChatGPT. Based on the GPT-4 language processing model, this AI chatbot is capable of processing vast amounts of data, analyzing it and thereafter generating content. In fact, it can answer just about any question asked of it. But this is just the beginning. An AI researcher has recently claimed that “literally everyone will die” if AI is allowed to grow more intelligent without any checks.Eliezer Yudkowsky, of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California, told The Sun, “Many...
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Asteroid Ryugu discovery suggests where ingredients for life on Earth came from
22Mar By adminNo Comments
Technology

Asteroid Ryugu discovery suggests where ingredients for life on Earth came from

[ad_1] Two organic compounds essential for living organisms have been found in samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu, buttressing the notion that some ingredients crucial for the advent of life arrived on Earth aboard rocks from space billions of years ago.Scientists said on Tuesday they detected uracil and niacin in rocks obtained by the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft from two sites on Ryugu in 2019. Uracil is one of the chemical building blocks for RNA, a molecule carrying directions for building and operating living organisms. Niacin, also called Vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid, is vital for their metabolism. The Ryugu samples, which looked like dark-gray rubble, were transported 155 million miles (250 million km) back to Earth and returned to our planet's surface in ...
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Asteroid impact – What if a planet-killing space rock did crash on Earth?
21Mar By adminNo Comments
Technology

Asteroid impact – What if a planet-killing space rock did crash on Earth?

[ad_1] Whenever asteroids have hit Earth, they have impacted lives, and by doing so, these space rocks have time and again changed the course of history. Although asteroids make close approaches to Earth nearly every day, none of them are big enough to potentially threaten life on Earth. But what if an asteroid, which is capable of ending life, actually hits Earth?Apocalyptic movies like Armageddon or Deep Impact have explored the possibility of a total annihilation of life on Earth. These “What Ifs” of world destruction have always captured the minds of sci-fi geeks. But a real-life impact, such as the one which marked the extinction of dinosaurs, would be much different from the one seen in films. What would happen after the asteroid impact?As soon as the asteroid would hit, dust and...
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Stunning! NASA James Webb Space Telescope snaps RARE sight of a DYING star
16Mar By adminNo Comments
Technology

Stunning! NASA James Webb Space Telescope snaps RARE sight of a DYING star

[ad_1] NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is known for capturing amazing glimpses of the objects in space. Revealing one of the first observations made by the James Webb Telescope, NASA informed that the telescope captured the rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star in the month of June 2022. "The rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star – among the most luminous, most massive, and most briefly detectable stars known – was one of the first observations made by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in June 2022. Webb shows the star, WR 124, in unprecedented detail with its powerful infrared instruments," the US space agency stated.The star is 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta. NASA further explained, massive stars race through their life cycles, and only some of them go through a brief Wol...
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Awesome find! James Webb Telescope discovers building blocks of life in cloud, says NASA
24Jan By adminNo Comments
Technology

Awesome find! James Webb Telescope discovers building blocks of life in cloud, says NASA

[ad_1] NASA astronomers have discovered the fundamental building blocks of life in a dense molecular cloud. Mankind has been in search of potential planets which could support life one day should the need to ever leave Earth arise. Although there are more planets in the Universe than you could ever imagine, they all have one substance missing which makes our Blue Planet so unique – Water, which is the elixir of life behind every living being on planet Earth. Although it is one of the building blocks of life, a habitable planet is made up of several key elements. They are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur, commonly referred to as CHONS.For life to exist, essential molecular ingredients of life are formed in dense molecular clouds which incorporate into planet-forming regio...
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Life on Earth was created by meteorite strikes and gamma rays, claims study
31Dec By adminNo Comments
Technology

Life on Earth was created by meteorite strikes and gamma rays, claims study

[ad_1] Researchers claim that life on Earth could have been sparked by a combination of meteorite strikes and gamma rays. Check the details now. The space agencies across the world have peered deep into space to find another planet where life flourishes and so far we have found nothing. One reason behind it could be that the conditions required to create and sustain life are so rare that it is incredibly difficult to find a similar planet. And this is why scientists have always been fascinated by the question of how life originated on Earth. And if a recent study is to be believed, we are merely a byproduct of meteorites and gamma rays. Yes, life on Earth began when a meteorite, which was infused with gamma rays, struck our planet. Intrigued? Read on.A study was published in the journ...
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How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation
22Nov By adminNo Comments
Technology

How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation

[ad_1] Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve. Physicists have long struggled to explain why the universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve.Why do the physical laws and constants take the very specific values that allow stars, planets and ultimately life to develop? The expansive force of the universe, dark energy, for example, is much weaker than theory suggests it should be – allowing matter to clump together rather than being ripped apart. A common answer is that we live in an infinite multiverse of universes, so we shouldn't be surprised that at least one universe has turned out as ours. But another is that our universe is a computer simulation, with someone (perhaps an advanced alien...
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Life on other planets or space creatures narrowed down
22Oct By adminNo Comments
Technology

Life on other planets or space creatures narrowed down

[ad_1] The most prevalent type of star in the universe, the M dwarf, has an Earth-like planet orbiting it. The most prevalent type of star in the universe, the M dwarf, has an Earth-like planet orbiting it that appears to have no atmosphere at all. This discovery could cause a major shift in the search for life on other planets. This discovery implies that a large number of planets orbiting these stars may also lack atmospheres and, as a result, are unlikely to support life because M-dwarfs are so common. The Astrophysical Journal Letters provides a detailed account of the research that produced the discoveries regarding the GJ 1252b no-atmosphere planet. In a day on Earth, this planet makes two orbits around its star. In addition to being inhospitable, GJ 1252b is significantl...
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