Astronomy

A Carnival visitor:

Asteroid to pass between Earth and Moon on Friday
The asteroid, which is between 50 and 130 feet wide, will miss Earth by a distance of 39,000 miles — less than one-fifth the distance between Earth and the Moon.
"On February 4, astronomers using the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) detected two asteroids with orbits that take them between Earth and the Moon this week. Fortunately, neither object’s trajectory presents a threat to Earth.

In fact, the week’s first visiting asteroid — dubbed asteroid 2018 CC — has already completed its closest approach to Earth. The small rocky body zoomed by our planet on Tuesday, February 6, at 3:10 p.m. EST, just 35 minutes before SpaceX launched their Falcon Heavy rocket. Asteroid 2018 CC, which is estimated to be between 50 and 100 feet (15 and 30 meters) wide, came within about 114,000 miles (184,000 kilometers) of Earth.

On the other hand, the potentially more interesting asteroid — named asteroid 2018 CB — will pass by Earth on Friday, February 9, at around 5:30 p.m. EST. With an estimated size of between 50 and 130 feet (15 and 40 meters), this asteroid is not just larger than 2018 CC, but it also passes much closer to our planet. Asteroid 2018 CB will skirt by Earth at a distance of 39,000 miles (64,000 km), bringing it five times closer to us than the Moon. "
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/0...arth-on-friday

Thanks for that, Danik, very interesting.

https://www.universetoday.com/138516...civilizations/

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) continues:

“We searched for signals that are narrow (< 10 Hz) in the frequency domain,” said Margot. “Such signals are technosignatures because natural sources do not emit such narrowband signals… We identified approximately 850,000 candidate signals, of which 19 were of particular interest. Ultimately, none of these signals were attributable to an extraterrestrial source.”

You can read the whole post for the complete picture.

Amazing, DW! The article can be downloaded in pdf. It might interest you and such Litnetters that are comfortable with mathematical data analysis like Yes/No and desirejab.

A SEARCH FOR TECHNOSIGNATURES FROM 14 PLANETARY SYSTEMS IN THE KEPLER
FIELD WITH THE GREEN BANK TELESCOPE AT 1.15{1.73 GHZ
ABSTRACT
"Analysis of Kepler mission data suggests that the Milky Way includes billions of Earth-like planets
in the habitable zone of their host star. Current technology enables the detection of technosignatures
emitted from a large fraction of the Galaxy. We describe a search for technosignatures that is sensitive
to Arecibo-class transmitters located within 450 ly of Earth and transmitters that are 1000 times
more eective than Arecibo within 14 000 ly of Earth. Our observations focused on 14 planetary
systems in the Kepler eld and used the L-band receiver (1.15{1.73 GHz) of the 100 m diameter
Green Bank Telescope. Each source was observed for a total integration time of 5 minutes. We
obtained power spectra at a frequency resolution of 3 Hz and examined narrowband signals with
Doppler drift rates between 9 Hz s��1. We
agged any detection with a signal-to-noise ratio in
excess of 10 as a candidate signal and identied approximately 850 000 candidates. Most (99%) of
these candidate signals were automatically classied as human-generated radio-frequency interference
(RFI). A large fraction (>99%) of the remaining candidate signals were also
agged as anthropogenic
RFI because they have frequencies that overlap those used by global navigation satellite systems,
satellite downlinks, or other interferers detected in heavily polluted regions of the spectrum. All
19 remaining candidate signals were scrutinized and none could be attributed to an extraterrestrial
source.
Keywords: astrobiology|extraterrestrial intelligence|planets and satellites: general
| (stars: planetary systems | techniques: spectroscopic
Corresponding author: Jean-Luc Margot
[email protected]
arXiv:1802.01081v1"

Are we heading in the direction of radiocomunication with ETs?

I have been returning to the question of searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

See https://astronomynow.com/2016/03/03/...-sky-location/

https://www.seti.org
is the website concerned fully with this issue.

The cosmology topic that YesNo started (and that I contributed to some time ago now) is thriving with desiresjab involved. I'm very glad to see this!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dreamwoven

https://www.seti.org
is the website concerned fully with this issue.

---

Artificial or natural intelligence in other planets: its a dream that may come true but Iam not sure wheter we are going to like what we discover.

The cosmology thread seems to be starting to discuss the future of humankind on this planet. This is where cosmology and astronomy appear to be meeting. The 2 posts in astronomy now and universe today the I gave links for above is not a coincidence. The Carl Sagan Center and the CETI Institute - https://www.seti.org/node/647 - are two nodes the come together.

No, I agree with you. We will see, I guess.

I definitely don´t like that information:

Viruses -- lots of them -- are falling from the sky

Date:
February 6, 2018
Source:
University of British Columbia
Summary:
An astonishing number of viruses are circulating around the Earth's atmosphere -- and falling from it -- according to new research. The study marks the first time scientists have quantified the viruses being swept up from the Earth's surface into the free troposphere, beyond Earth's weather systems but below the stratosphere where jet airplanes fly. The viruses can be carried thousands of kilometers there before being deposited back onto the Earth's surface.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0206090650.htm

I wonder what the viruses are, what illnesses they are from. Horrid!

I don´t know if all of them are that harmful. But it seems to me that the idea, that all viruses where generated on earth is changing. That caught my attention in this article.

NASA releases record-breaking photos from beyond Pluto
In two hours, New Horizons smashed a 27-year-old record set by Voyager 1 … twice.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/0...m-beyond-pluto

Yes, these record-breaking images presage the even more record-breaking images that we will see once the next target comes into view in early 2019.