Video: The Dark Forest

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Yol Gezer from Pixabay.

And now for something really different. If you are tired of national politics, maybe its time to talk about the extinction of all life in our solar system. Just for a change of topic, of course.

The Cool Worlds Lab has an interesting video titled “Why I Don’t Buy The Dark Forest Hypothesis” that picks apart this idea that technologically advanced species throughout the galaxy are hiding from one another out of the fear that once detected they may be destroyed. You may remember the term Dark Forest from a book of the same title by Chinese writer Liu Cixin.

Its a good discussion of the hypothesis, with plenty of diagrams mapping out a civilization’s decision to either reply to, ignore, or attack a newly discovered civilization trying to communicate.

I don’t want to spoil everything, but the bottom line is that it is probably too late for us to worry about this anyway. First, we have already sent out plenty of electronic messages as well as messages intended for alien civilizations. But more importantly, the James Webb Space Telescope is showing us that a silent civilization on a distant exoplanet can still be detected as we investigate that exoplanet’s atmosphere. So if a dangerous distant civilizations was seeking out other planets with life that it could destroy, the Earth has been telegraphing life for more than 3.5 billion years.

Check it out and learn more about the hypothesis and the arguments for and against it.

Space Quote: Oops – Sorry About All That Excitement About K2-18b

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): An artist’s illustration showing a possible K2-18b. (ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser)

“We found the data we have so far is much too noisy for the proof that would be needed to make that claim…There’s just not enough certainty to say one way or the other.”

–Statement by Rafael Luque, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago, regarding stories last month about the possible detection of life on exoplanet K2-18b. New analysis from the University of Chicago calls into question the interpretation of the scientific data, and also notes that other factors could account for what was initially detected. A lot of this debate is better explained in a recent video from Cool Worlds Lab titled “The K2-18b Video You’ve Been Waiting For.”

Space Stories: SPHEREx Starts Mapping, Studying an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere, and Explosive Diamonds

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) observatory. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Engadget: “NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Has Begun its Mission to Map the Entire Sky in 3D“

A space observatory designed to map the entire sky over a period of two years to further our understanding of the early universe has started snapping images. SPHEREx, which launched in early March, got started with its observations this past week after over a month of setup procedures and system checks, according to NASA. The space telescope will complete about 14.5 orbits of Earth per day, capturing roughly 3,600 images daily and observing the sky in an unprecedented 102 wavelengths of infrared light. Its observations will eventually be combined to create four “all-sky” maps.

—Sci.News: “Webb Determines Atmospheric Makeup of Sub-Neptune TOI-421b“

Sub-Neptunes are high-occurrence exoplanets that have no solar system analog. Much smaller than gas giants and typically cooler than hot-Jupiter exoplanets, these worlds were extremely challenging to observe before the launch of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Many of sub-Neptunes appear to be very highly obscured by clouds and hazes, which have made it impossible to determine their atmospheric makeup. Now, astronomers using Webb have captured the transmission spectrum of the sub-Neptune TOI-421b and uncovered the chemical fingerprints of its atmosphere.

—Study Finds: “A Star 30,000 Light-Years Away May Have Forged The Gold In Your Jewelry“

The gold in your wedding ring may have come from a star’s explosive death. For decades, scientists have hunted for the factories that produce the universe’s heaviest elements, and now they’ve found an unexpected one: magnetar giant flares, cosmic explosions that release more energy in a millisecond than our Sun does in 100,000 years. Researchers have confirmed that these titanic blasts create the elements that make up our jewelry, electronics, and even our bodies.

Tatooine-like Exoplanet Spotted by Astronomers

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): A binary sunset on Tatooine. (Disney/Lucasfilm)

With the Star Wars series Andor back for a second season, it is only appropriate that astronomers believe they found a Tatooine-like exoplanet. You may remember Tatooine as the planet where Luke Skywalker spent his youth.

The exoplanet is located about 120 light-years away and orbits two brown dwarfs (also called failed stars because they failed to ignite like a regular star and therefore have low luminosity). As noted below, binary star exoplanets have been found in the past, so this is not unprecedented.

Here is the abstract from the study, Evidence for a Polar Circumbinary Exoplanet Orbiting a Pair of Eclipsing Brown Dwarfs, if you want to read more:

One notable example of exoplanet diversity is the population of circumbinary planets, which orbit around both stars of a binary star system. There are, so far, only 16 known circumbinary exoplanets, all of which lie in the same orbital plane as the host binary. Suggestions indicate that circumbinary planets could also exist on orbits highly inclined to the binary, close to 90°, polar orbits. No such planets have been found yet, but polar circumbinary gas and debris discs have been observed, and if these were to form planets, then those would be left on a polar orbit. We report strong evidence for a polar circumbinary exoplanet, which orbits a close pair of brown dwarfs that are on an eccentric orbit. We use radial velocities to measure a retrograde apsidal precession for the binary and show that this can only be attributed to the presence of a polar planet.

Of course, the Tatooine in Star Wars was in a galaxy far, far away. Hence, this are not the exoplanet you are looking for.

Study Findings: Four Sub-Earth Planets Orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Conceptual art showing Barnard’s Star from the surface of one of its four orbiting planets. (Illustration by International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor/J. Pollard)

The Astrophysical Journal Letters abstract of the study findings:

Barnard’s Star is an old, single M dwarf star that comprises the second-closest extrasolar system. It has a long history of claimed planet detections from both radial velocities and astrometry. However, none of these claimed detections have so far withstood further scrutiny. Continuing this story, extreme precision radial velocity measurements from the ESPRESSO instrument have recently been used to identify four new sub-Earth-mass planet candidates around Barnard’s Star. We present here 112 radial velocities of Barnard’s Star from the MAROON-X instrument that were obtained independently to search for planets around this compelling object.

Citation: Ritvik Basant et al. Four sub-Earth planets orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO. ApJL 982 L1 (2025).
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/adb8d5

Study-related stories:

The University of Chicago

SciTechDaily

Astronomy Magazine