The SETI Institute
We believe we are conducting the most profound search in human history — to know our beginnings and our place among the stars.
Last synced from Twitter 1062d ago
Hubble Spots a Spiral With a Past
NASA 38d 2 tweets
NGC 691, shown in this Hubble image, features intricate details of the galaxy's layers of stars and spiraling arms — which would no doubt amaze astronomer William Herschel, who discovered this galaxy almost 200 years before Hubble launched.
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The SETI Institute This #potw of an archetypal spiral galaxy was captured by / . The subject of this image is known as #NGC691, and it can be found some 120 million light-years from Earth. It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel. 38d
Large exoplanet could have the right conditions for life
University of Cambridge 39d 1 tweets
Astronomers have found an exoplanet more than twice the size of Earth to be potentially habitable, opening the search for life to planets significantly larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.
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The SETI Institute A team from used the mass, radius, and atmospheric data of the #exoplanet K2-18b and determined that it’s possible for the planet to host liquid water at habitable conditions beneath its hydrogen-rich atmosphere. #SETI 39d
Colour in the air
www.eso.org 49d 1 tweets
Colour in the air
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The SETI Institute In the Chilean Atacama Desert, far from the light pollution associated with human activity, is Paranal Observatory. The radiant light visible in the sky is a phenomenon called airglow, which lends a magical appearance to the breathtaking night sky. 49d
Powerful Radio Signal From Deep Space Appears to Be Repeating in a 16-Day Cycle
ScienceAlert 56d 2 tweets
One of the defining characteristics of the mysterious deep-space signals we call fast radio bursts is that they are unpredictable. They belch out across the cosmos without rhyme or reason, with no discernible pattern, making them incredibly hard to s
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The SETI Institute Astronomers have found a #FRB that repeats on a regular cycle. Every 16.35 days, the signal named FRB 180916.J0158+65 follows a similar pattern. For four days, it will spit out a burst or two every hour. Then it falls silent for 12 days. 56d
Images
Esa.int 67d 1 tweets
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The SETI Institute On 21 January, a foreign body crashed to Earth causing a cascade of bright light to trail through the sky. The fleeting flash was a fireball, defined as a meteor brighter than the planet Venus. Credit: Photographer Chris Small while in Bude, England 67d
Hey, maybe the dinosaur-killer asteroid really *did* act alone!
Phil Plait - SYFY WIRE 77d 4 tweets
We're still not really sure what killed the dinosaurs.
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The SETI Institute In a new paper, the evidence points squarely at the asteroid being the root cause of the dinosaur's extinction, with the Deccan Traps being at most a secondary consideration, not really involved with the K-Pg extinction at all. 76d
NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Unexplained Oxygen on Mars
Scientific American 139d 2 tweets
Fluctuating levels of the atmospheric gas, a potential tracer of alien life, have left researchers mystified
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The SETI Institute NASA's Rover Finds Unexplained #Oxygen on #Mars - Fluctuating levels of the atmospheric gas, a potential tracer of alien life, have left researchers mystified: geological, chemical, atmospheric or, perhaps even a biological process. 137d
The Beauty of 22 Degrees
www.eso.org 145d 1 tweets
The Beauty of 22 Degrees
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The SETI Institute This photo was taken high up in the #Atacama Desert. These haloes are formed when light from the Sun or Moon passes through cirrus clouds high up in the Earth’s atmosphere and is refracted, as if through a prism. #potw Credit: B. Tafreshi 145d
A goldilocks zone for planet size
Astrobiology Magazine 175d 1 tweets
In a recent paper, Harvard University researchers described a new, lower size limit for planets to maintain surface liquid water for long periods of time, extending the so-called Habitable or "Goldilocks’’ Zone for small, low-gravity planets.
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The SETI Institute In a recent paper, researchers described a new, lower size limit for planets to maintain surface liquid water for long periods of time, extending the so-called Habitable or “Goldilocks’’ Zone for small, low-gravity planets. 175d
Red Sprite and Bright Meteor - EPOD - a service of USRA
Epod.usra.edu 203d 1 tweets
Photographer: Arnaud Besancon Summary Author: Arnaud Besancon The photo above shows a transient luminescence event (red sprite) and a bright meteor as observed from the summit of Le Grand Ballon (4,672 ft or1,424 m), in the Alsace region of...
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The SETI Institute This photo shows a transient luminescence event ( #redsprite ) and a bright #meteor as observed from the summit of Le Grand Ballon (4,672 ft or 1,424 m), in the Alsace region of France. Credit: Arnaud Besancon 203d
Giant Radio Telescope in China Just Detected Repeating Signals From Across Space
ScienceAlert 210d 1 tweets
Remember the spectacle of that gigantic telescope unveiled in a mountain-ringed valley in China just a few years ago? Well, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) has now picked up a mysterious space signal known as a fast r
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The SETI Institute Here is the Chinese story 210d
Math's Paths | Big Picture Science
Bigpicturescience.org 267d 3 tweets
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The SETI Institute If you bake, you can appreciate math’s transformative properties. Admiring the stackable potato chip is to admire a hyperbolic sheet. There’s no need to fear math - you just need to think outside the cuboid. Listen to : 267d
First image of Einstein's 'spooky' particle action
BBC News 270d 5 tweets
Scientists capture an image of two particles interacting and sharing their physical states for an instant.
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The SETI Institute Scientists have captured the first ever image of a phenomenon Albert Einstein described as "spooky action at a distance". Photo shows a strong form of quantum entanglement, where two particles interact and share physical states for an instant. 269d
“Moon Forming” Circumplanetary Disk Discovered around Young Planet in Distant Star System | ALMA
Almaobservatory.org 271d 2 tweets
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The SETI Institute Astronomers using have made the first-ever observations of a circumplanetary disk, the planet-girding belt of dust and gas that astronomers strongly theorize controls the formation of planets and gives rise to an entire system of moons. 270d
A New Plan for Keeping NASA's Oldest Explorers Going
NASA 274d 3 tweets
To manage Voyager 2's dwindling power supply, engineers recently shut off one instrument's primary heater. So far, the cooled instrument continues to return data.
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The SETI Institute With careful planning and dashes of creativity, engineers have been able to keep 1 and 2 spacecraft flying for nearly 42 years — longer than any other spacecraft in history. Mission engineers are implementing a new plan to manage them. 273d
Breakthrough Initiatives
Breakthroughinitiatives.org 294d 1 tweets
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The SETI Institute Breakthrough Listen releases largest ever #SETI dataset - 1 petabyte of data - into the public archive. Also published are results from over 1000 stars searched at billions of radio frequencies. 294d
APOD: 2019 June 4 - SEIS: Listening for Marsquakes
Apod.nasa.gov 308d 2 tweets
A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.
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The SETI Institute . 2019 June 4: SEIS sits quietly on the Martian surface, taking in some Sun while light clouds are visible over the horizon. In early April, SEIS recorded an unprecedented event that matches what was expected for a #marsquake. 308d
A Magical Solar Eclipse From 1900, Recovered and Instructive
Many Worlds 311d 1 tweets
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The SETI Institute Recovered footage of a 1900 total eclipse of the sun — believed to be the first captured — has been scanned, restored and then reassembled and retimed frame by frame to create a memorable and kind of spooky look at early astronomy. 311d
Jezero Crater, Mars 2020's Landing Site
Jpl.nasa.gov 325d 1 tweets
This image of Jezero Crater on Mars, the landing site for NASAs Mars 2020 mission, was taken by instruments on NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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The SETI Institute Jezero Crater on #Mars, the landing site for #Mars2020 mission. This image was taken by instruments on the MRO. On ancient Mars, water carved channels and transported sediments to form fans and deltas within lake basins. | 325d
A Supercomputer has been Designed to run the World's Largest Radio Telescope
Matt Williams - Universe Today 329d 1 tweets
The Science Data Processor consortium for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) just completed the design work on the supercomputer that will handle all the data it collects.
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The SETI Institute When complete, the will be the largest radio telescope array in the entire world. It will be responsible for gathering an unprecedented amount of data. The “brain” for this massive array will consist of two supercomputers. | 329d