alien

The ocean fooled scientists with this “alien egg.” Almost three years later, we have the answer

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Although we try to learn a lot of information about the space that surrounds us, the reality is that there is still a lot to know here on Earth. This is what we evidenced in August 2023 when the Seascape Alaska 5 expedition, at more than 3,200 meters deep in the Gulf of Alaska, found a shiny golden hemisphere and with a hole in the center. And the question was clear: how did he get there? Many questions. When these findings were seen live, the researchers themselves joked that it looked like the beginning of a horror movie, and social networks did not hesitate to dub it the “alien egg.” The problem here is that the scientific community had no idea what that artifact was doing attached to a rock on the seabed. But three years later this mystery has been solved. It’s not alien. After being extracted from the seabed, the enigmatic specimen was sent to the laboratories of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where a research team set to work to determine what it was. And to the disappointment of many, it is not a specimen that came from outside our planet. The results, published a few days agorelate how the researchers decided to extract and sequence the mitochondrial DNA from the tissue and, from this, they crossed it with the large databases of genomes that are already known and in this way they ruled out that it was not a marine sponge, a bacterial biofilm and it was not an egg either. What was it? Here the genetic code pointed directly to a species that was cataloged in 2006 as Relicanthus daphneae and of which, if we look for a photograph, we will be surprised to see a kind of giant anemone of the depths with tentacles that can measure more than two meters. And this makes us wonder: why did the Alaskan specimen look like a smooth, golden sphere? And here the research team points out that the golden orb found in the deep sea was not an animal itself, but a “cuticular relic.” What exactly is it? In other words, these are the remains of the base or “foot” that this anemone uses to anchor itself to the rocks of the seabed, resisting the strong abyssal currents. In this way, when the anemone dies, it detaches or moves; this fleshy and resistant base is left behind. And the hole? This was a point that greatly worried researchers in 2023, but the reality is that it was not the hatching mark of a creature, but rather it is simply a natural tear in this residual tissue. The curious thing here is that this find also fits with another similar specimen collected in 2021, confirming that this golden “mold” is a common trace of the species after its death. Images | NOAA In Xataka | We have drilled the seabed at a depth of 2,500 meters. And we have found things we didn’t think were possible

This is how SETI managed to isolate 100 possible alien technosignatures

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For more than two decades, millions of desktop computers around the world shared their computing power while they were ‘at rest’ with a common goal. This was nothing more than searching for extraterrestrial technological signatures in the noise of the cosmos. Now, the team behind SETI@home has published the final analysis of its dataclosing a fundamental chapter in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. A cosmic funnel. The data analyzed by SETI@home come from observations made over 14 years using the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. During this time, the project operated by collecting data while the telescope was targeted by other astrophysical research. The immense amount of data recorded by this telescope was divided into small packages that were distributed over the Internet using the platform BOINC. In this case, more than five million volunteers lent the computing power of their PC processors to analyze these frequencies in the background with the legendary screensaver in the form of graphics with a latent pulse that crowned some PCs from the 2000s. All this thanks to a collaborative work that I started by installing a small application and giving up part of the processing power. What was seen. The result of all this information was nothing other than statistical outrage. Specifically, more than 12 billion initial detections were identified, and volunteers from there looked for energy spikes, narrowband pulses and signals with repetitive structures over time. The analysis focused on a 2.5 MHz band around the 1.42 GHz frequency, known as the hydrogen transition line, considered the logical “radio channel” for an interstellar civilization. The sieve end. Finding an alien signal in that mountain of data requires, first, discarding our own technological screams that we have in space. The second phase of the project consisted of cleaning those 12 billion detections from radio frequency interference. Aviation radars, television stations or even mobile phones constantly pollute the radio spectrum, not allowing us to see what is in the background. How it was done. The truly interesting thing about this project was how they managed to Separate the wheat from the chaff in a sea of ​​millions of datasince the researchers designed complex algorithms with a very ingenious technique called ‘birdies’. The ‘birdies’ are nothing more than software-simulated alien technosignatures that the team artificially injected into the database. Its importance lies in that they simply serve to test the sensitivity of the system, since if the anti-noise filters erased the ‘birdies’ or failed to group them, it meant that the algorithm was failing, since it would also be eliminating possible data that pointed to extraterrestrial life. The result. In this way, the researchers were able to go from having 12,107,039,965 in their database to selecting 100 specific signals, which is where some type of communication with an extraterrestrial could be found. A titanic cleaning task, and it is where one of the most important points of all this research lies. The role of China. The problem with all this is that the Arecibo radio telescope in December 2020 prevented the original source of the data from being able to verify these findings. Fortunately, the gigantic rFAST adiotelescope in Chinacurrently the largest and most sensitive of its kind in the world, has taken over for the final stage. In this way, with a database of 100 signals and with 23 hours of observation time dedicated to the FAST, the different locations began to be re-observed. And it is not a quick process, since each re-observation at the Chinese telescope lasts about 15 minutes and includes a slow scan with the 19 beams of the FAST receiver. This is fundamental, because the sensitivity obtained in these new measurements is substantially better, reaching between 2.0 and 2.5 times the capacity of the original Arecibo data. The outcome. After all this, the question seems obvious: Does this mean that we have finally contacted an extraterrestrial intelligence? We must be honest and emphatic: no. To date, none of the signals analyzed or reobserved have been shown to be a repeatable or conclusive alien technosignature. However, from a technological and astronomical point of view, SETI@home has been a historic triumph, as it not only democratized computer science and pioneered the immense power of distributed computing for the masses, but it has established an open source framework and new documented sensitivity limits for the future. The use of high-computational birdie injection for end-to-end testing of analysis software is, in fact, a pioneering advance in radio astronomy. Images | SETI@Home Leo_Visions In Xataka | TRAPPIST-1 was the most promising solar system to search for life. Now our joy is in a well

Someone at Harvard suggested that 3I/ATLAS was an alien ship. A new test has revealed to us what it really is

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Without a doubt one of the space objects that has been causing the most sensation in recent months is 3I/ATLAS. Practically everything has been said in recent months, from the fact that it is a simple asteroid that was going to destroy our planet to the fact that it was an alien shipas noted a professor from the prestigious Harvard. But all these ideas have been left in nothing thanks to the last signal that has been interpreted from this object. What he imagined. Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, the third such visitor ever detected, has kept the scientific community (and science fiction fans) in suspense since its discovery in July. The most “far-fetched” speculations, as experts have described them, went so far as to suggest that it could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft, especially when it temporarily disappeared behind the Sun. The sign that explains everything. On October 24, the radio telescope MeerKAT In South Africa, a powerful network of 64 antennas captured the key evidence. This was neither an encrypted message nor a technological transmission from another species, but rather an absorption radio signal caused by hydroxyl molecules. What does it mean. Hydroxyl molecules are the direct result of the ‘breaking’ of a water molecule. This is something that happens when the ice in the nucleus of a comet approaches the Sun and sublimates due to the large amount of energy it absorbs. That is, it automatically goes from solid to gas and this is what we have detected from Earth, as has explained Michael Küppers, scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA). In summary, we are talking about 3I/ATLAS containing ice inside, as happens in comets (and not in extraterrestrial spacecraft). And we are completely sure of this, since these absorption signals are like the molecular DNI, it is unique for each compound. Goodbye speculation. As we have mentioned before, the alien ship theory gained traction when the object hid behind the Sun. Some speculated that it was maneuvering or hiding from our radars. However, on November 4, 3I/ATLAS reappeared exactly where orbital calculations predicted it would be. There were no maneuvers, just physics. Furthermore, it is not the first time it has been detected. Javier Peralta, an expert in planetary atmospheres, recalls that NASA’s Swift space telescope had already observed hydroxyl in the ultraviolet spectrum. MeerKAT’s new detection is crucial because it confirms the same composition in a completely different band of the electromagnetic spectrum: radio. What does the future hold for us? 3I/ATLAS is the third known interstellar visitor, after 1I/’Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. Although its trajectory is too long and it has traveled too long to know which star it comes from. But the important thing is that we are already preparing for what is coming. ESA’s JUICE mission, currently en route to Jupiter, will take new radio measurements from 3I/ATLAS in February 2026. But the big bet is the mission ESA Comet Interceptorwhich will be launched around 2029 and will wait for the next large comet to approach our planet. Cover | POT In Xataka | NASA ignores the Harvard study on an alleged extraterrestrial spacecraft: “it is an interstellar comet”

It is not an alien ship, but remains of a distant planet

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When astronomers detected a third interstellar object visiting our solar system, they probably did not imagine that it would have an even greater impact than the previous two. The fault was with the first estimates of its size, which had a colossal upper limit of 20 kilometers, which led to several articles by Harvard professor Avi Loeb arguing that it could be “a possibly hostile extraterrestrial probe“. Although the latest observations disprove that it is an alien ship, they open new possibilities. Goodbye to the alien hypothesis. The idea that 3I/ATLAS was a spacecraft was based on a number of apparent anomalies. Avi Loeb argued that its trajectory, unusually aligned with the ecliptic plane of our solar system, its enormous size and its supposed stealth approach were suspicious. It suggested that the object could be performing a maneuver to remain unnoticed while exploring our planets. However, later observations dismantled these arguments one by one. The sharpest image of the comet, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, was devastating for Loeb’s theory. It turned out that we were totally wrong about its size. The real core did not measure 20 km, but between 320 meters and 5.6 kilometers. The initial estimate had been misled by the bright, extensive “coma” of gas and dust surrounding the true core. On the other hand, the behavior of the object, with an asymmetric material ejection and the formation of a dust tail, confirmed that it behaved like a classic comet, and not like a ship with artificial propulsion. But perhaps it is not just any comet, but a very, very interesting one. A piece of exoplanet? According to a new hypothesis, presented in a study pending review3I/ATLAS could be a piece of an extrasolar planet: a “lithified clastic fragment” torn from a sedimentary basin on a distant world that has traveled through the cosmos to reach us. In other words, a rock made up of layers of hardened sediment, similar to those we find on Earth in ancient river or lake beds, but from outside the solar system. Geoscientist Eahsanul Haque’s hypothesis is supported by several previous analyses. On the one hand, the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS suggests that it comes from the thick disk of the Milky Way, a region populated by stars much older than our Sun, up to 7 billion years old. This implies that the object formed in a planetary system with more than enough time to develop complex geological processes, including the liquid water activity necessary to create sedimentary basins. And its size is consistent with the size of large fragments that could be ejected from a planet after a high-speed impact. But wasn’t it a comet? The presence of a comma and a tail does not contradict this idea. Water and other volatiles could have been trapped in the pores of the sedimentary rock. As it approached the Sun, the heat would have caused the sublimation of these ices, generating the observed cometary activity without the main object being a “dirty snowball.” Its spectrum resembles that of D-type asteroids, rich in carbon and silicates2 This composition is compatible with that of terrestrial sedimentary rocks, such as shales or sandstones, which often contain clay and carbonaceous material formed in aqueous processes. All eyes on 3I/ATLAS. The interest in this interstellar traveler has been such that space agencies have mobilized their instruments to study it. The European Space Agency (ESA) targeted its Martian orbiters, ExoMars TGO and Mars Expresstowards the comet during its closest approach to Mars. Although the enormous distance (30 million km) made observation a technical challenge, the images captured the diffuse coma that surrounds it. It is expected that future observations, such as from the Juice probe, which will see it in a more active state after its close pass to the Sun, will reveal more data about its composition. But if 3I/ATLAS has already taught us something, it is the importance that missions such as the Comet Interceptor probe planned by ESA. Without a fixed target, it is designed precisely to wait in space for a long-term target or, with great luck, another interstellar visitor, to then turn on its engines and head towards it. Image | THAT In Xataka | NASA ignores the Harvard study on an alleged extraterrestrial spacecraft: “it is an interstellar comet”

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