Abstract The concept of extraterrestrial life is one that never fails to inspire and amaze – influencing countless movies, books, and stories. We live in an age in which technological advancements have enabled us to seek signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos. The Fermi Paradox seeks to answer the apparent deficiency of extraterrestrial life. …
The possibility of extraterrestrial life has been discussed for centuries, in both scientific and fictitious work. But it wasn’t until 1992 that the first exoplanet (planet outside of our solar system) was detected, and 2001 that the first exoplanet in a habitable zone was detected [1]. This makes exoplanetology and astrobiology relatively new fields of …
An influential scientist and astronaut – Sally Ride – was born on May 26, 1951. As a child, she had a great passion for tennis and intended to become a professional athlete in the future. She was also an avid reader. Upon graduating from the private Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, she started …
Introduction Did you know that a mere 5% of the universe consists of normal matter? This includes the atoms which make up all visible objects, ranging from cars and living organisms to even planets and stars. The other 95% contains dark energy and dark matter 1. But what exactly do we mean by these two …
Jan J. Eldridge is a theoretical astrophysicist and associate professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She obtained her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Cambridge. Afterwards, she completed post-doctorates at Queen’s University Belfast and the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and started working at the University of Auckland in 2011. …
Imagine a 4-dimensional object… Unfortunately, you soon realise that you can’t. But why? Our brains are not hardwired to picture anything beyond 3 dimensions. Life on Earth only goes until the 3rd dimension. The human brain cannot imagine something that it has never been exposed to (such as the 4th dimension). It would be like envisioning …
