Post subject: China Launches New Long-March 5 Heavy Rocket --"Sets th
Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 5:08 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
China Launches New Long-March 5 Heavy Rocket --"Sets the Stage for Manned Space Station and Moon Base"
China has launched its new Long March-5 heavy rocket yesterday, state media said, sending its payload into orbit in the countrys latest step in advancing its space exploration program and setting the stage to for a permanent manned space station and exploring the moon and Mars. The two-stage rockets ability to put 25 tons of payload into low-Earth orbit and 14 tons to geostationary transfer orbit gives it a carrying capacity 2.5 times larger than previous models. "With the heavy-lift carrier rocket, China can build a permanent manned space station and explore the moon and Mars," the Xinhua news agency confirmed.
The launch comes after China began its longest manned space mission last month, sending two astronauts to spend a month aboard a space laboratory that is part of a broader allot to have a permanent manned space station in service around 2022.
The rocket, larger than previous versions of Chinas Long-March carrier rockets, blasted off on Thursday night from a pad in the southern province of Hainan, state news agency Xinhua said, a launch intended to substantiate its plan and performance.
"Its successful launch has propelled China to the forefront of the world in terms of rocket carrying capacity, and marks a milestone in Chinas transition from a major player in space to a major power in space," Xinhua cited the ruling Communist Partys Central Committee and powerful Central Military Commission as saying in a letter.
Advancing Chinas space program is a priority for Beijing, which insists it is for peaceful purposes.
The U.S. Defense Department has highlighted Chinas increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing other nations using space-based assets in a crisis.
Despite its space programs advancements for military, commercial and scientific purposes, China is still playing catch-up to established space powers the United States and Russia.
Chinas Jade Rabbit moon rover landed on the moon in late 2013 to great national fanfare, but soon suffered severe technical difficulties.
The rover and the Change 3 probe that carried it there were the first "soft landing" on the moon since 1976. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had accomplished the feat earlier.
In August 2016, the Chinese government has unveiled plans to build a permanently manned radar station on the moon to monitor Earth. The project was launched earlier this year and received funding from the National Casual Science Foundation of China.
The proposed facility, which may include quarters for astronauts and a powerful radar antenna array at least 50 meters high, could monitor wider areas of our planet than existing satellites, according to scientists involved in the study.
The base, which would be used for scientific research and defense monitoring, could also produce more powerful and clearer images of earth as the high-frequency microwaves emitted by the radar station could not only penetrate cloud, but also the earths surface, allowing it to monitor areas on land, under the sea and underground.
Paramount space scientists in China have joined the radar station project. The team held a two-day brainstorming session at the Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing in July. Those taking part included Yan Jun, the director of the National Astronomical Observatories; Professor Lin Yangting, a planetary researcher whose team discovered evidence of coal-like carbon in an asteroid; and senior scientists from Chinas unmanned lunar exploration missions. The team leader is Professor Guo Huadong, a top radar technology expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Guo initially proposed the moon-based radar station in a research paper in the journal Science China Earth Sciences three years ago, suggesting that the moon had numerous advantages over satellites or a space station as an earth observation platform, including stability and the unlimited durability of any complex on the lunar surface.
The data collected by lunar radar would help with a wide anger of scientific research issues such as monitoring extreme weather conditions, global earthquake activity, agricultural production and the collapse of the polar ice caps, he wrote. To generate high fervor radio beams that could reach earth, the radar station would need an enormous amount of power so a solar or nuclear power plant would have to be built, Guo said in the paper.
The radar would generate at least 1.4 gigabytes of data each second, a volume far exceeding the bandwidth of current long-distance space communications technology, but this would not be a problem if the station was manned by astronauts who could process the information on site, he added.
Guo gave no precise predict on costs for the project, but cautioned it would be very expensive. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Many researchers interviewed by the South China Morning Post, however, expressed scepticism about the scheme, arguing it was a waste of money, time and human resources. Its a lunatic idea, said one mainland space scientist informed of the project, but not directly involved. The cost of building such as a large scale facility on the moon would be higher than filling the sky with a constellation of spy satellites, which could do the same job at only a fraction of the cost, said the scientist, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Either the radar has to be extremely powerful, or the antenna extremely large, otherwise it wont be capable to pick up the radio waves bouncing back from the Earth, said Professor Zhou Yiguo, a radar technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is an distinctive subject of research, but whether its advantage over satellite constellations can adjust the high cost and risk will need careful evaluation.
The lunar radar project comes as China shows signs of wanting to play a paramount role in a renewed race to the moon, according to some space experts.
The plan of a giant rocket the same size as the Saturn V in the US Apollo missions will be completed by 2020 to pave way for large scale activities in space including a manned moon landing, according to a scientific and technological innovation allot announced by the central government earlier this month.
The Daily Galaxy via Xinhua, South China Morning Post, and Reuters
Post subject: Mysterious "Pinging" Sound Detected Coming from Se
Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 8:30 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Mysterious "Pinging" Sound Detected Coming from Seafloor of Remote Canadian Territory --"Wildlife has Vanished"
In what sounds like the opening chapter of a science-fiction bestseller, a mysterious "pinging" noise has been detected coming from the sea floor of Canadas most remote northern territory. The sound has been heard throughout Fury and Hecla strait, a channel of water in the Nunavut region, the newest, largest, northernmost, and least populous territory of Canada. Observers noticed a decline in sea mammals in the area over the summer and have attributed the scarcity to the strange noise, which has been described as a ping or a hum and is reportedly audible coming through the hulls of boats.
Members of the Legislative Assembly, who represent the area, noted the disappearance of wildlife. MLA George Qualut told CBC News That passage is a migratory route for bowhead whales, and also bearded seals and ringed seals. There would be so many in that exacting area. This summer there was none.
Speculation over the source of the noise has included Baffinland Iron Mines Corporations mining activity to the thrift labor of Greenpeace. Both organisations have denied any involvement, according to CBC News.
The Canadian Department of National Defence is also investigating, as detailed by a spokesperson in a statement to CBC who said that the Canadian Armed Forces are taking the appropriate steps to actively investigate the situation.
The Daily Galaxy via Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Time.com
Post subject: "Colossal Wave of Stars" --Tsunami Observed Crashi
Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:01 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
"Colossal Wave of Stars" --Tsunami Observed Crashing Through a Spiral Galaxy
What we observe in this galaxy is very much like a massive ocean wave barreling toward shore until it interacts with the shallows, causing it to lose momentum and dump all of its water and sand on the beach, said Bruce Elmegreen, a scientist with IBMs T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered a tsunami of stars and gas that is crashing midway through the disk of a spiral galaxy known as IC 2163. This colossal wave of material which was triggered when IC 2163 recently sideswiped another spiral galaxy dubbed NGC 2207 produced dazzling arcs of intense star formation that resemble a pair of eyelids.
Although galaxy collisions of this type are not uncommon, only a few galaxies with eye-like, or ocular, structures are known to exist, said Michele Kaufman, an astronomer formerly with The Ohio State University in Columbus and lead author on a paper published today in the Astrophysical Journal.
Kaufman and her colleagues note that the paucity of similar features in the observable universe is likely due to their ephemeral nature. Galactic eyelids last only a few tens of millions of years, which is incredibly brief in the lifespan of a galaxy. Finding one in such a newly formed state gives us an exceptional opportunity to study what happens when one galaxy grazes another, said Kaufman.
The interacting pair of galaxies resides approximately 114 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Canis Major. These galaxies brushed past each other scraping the edges of their outer spiral arms -- in what is likely the first encounter of an eventual merger.
Using ALMAs remarkable sensitivity and resolution, the astronomers made the most detailed measurements ever of the motion of carbon monoxide gas in the galaxys narrow eyelid features. Carbon monoxide is a tracer of molecular gas, which is the fuel for star formation.
The data reveal that the gas in the outer portion of IC 2163s eyelids is racing inward at speeds in excess of 100 kilometers a second. This gas, however, quickly decelerates and its motion becomes more chaotic, eventually changing trajectory and aligning itself with the rotation of the galaxy rather than continuing its pell-mell rush toward the center.
Dazzling eyelid-like features bursting with stars in galaxy IC 2163 formed from a tsunami of stars triggered by a glancing collision with galaxy NGC 2207 (a potion of its spiral arm is shown on right side of image). ALMA image of carbon monoxide (orange), which revealed motion of the gas in these features, is shown on top of Hubble image (blue) of the galaxy. Credit: M. Kaufman; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
Not only do we find a rapid deceleration of the gas as it moves from the outer to the inner edge of the eyelids, but we also measure that the more rapidly it decelerates, the denser the molecular gas becomes, said Kaufman. This direct measurement of compression shows how the encounter between the two galaxies drives gas to pile up, spawn new star clusters and form these dazzling eyelid features.
Tsunami of Stars and Gas Produces Dazzling Eye-shaped Feature in Galaxy
Annotated image showing dazzling eyelid-like features bursting with stars in galaxy IC 2163 formed from a tsunami of stars triggered by a glancing collision with galaxy NGC 2207 (a potion of its spiral arm is shown on right side of image). ALMA image of carbon monoxide (orange), which revealed motion of the gas in these features, is shown on top of Hubble image (blue) of the galaxy. Credit: M. Kaufman; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
Computer models predict that such eyelid-like features could evolve if galaxies interacted in a very specific manner. "This evidence for a strong shock in the eyelids is terrific. Its all very well to have a theory and simulations suggesting it should be true, but real observational evidence is great," said Curtis Struck, a professor of astrophysics at Iowa State University in Ames and co-author on the paper.
ALMA showed us that the velocities of the molecular gas in the eyelids are on the right track with the predictions we get from computer models, said Kaufman. This critical test of encounter simulations was not possible before.
Astronomers believe that such collisions between galaxies were common in the early universe when galaxies were closer together. At that time, however, galactic disks were generally clumpy and irregular, so other processes likely overwhelmed the formation of similar eyelid features.
The authors continue to study this galaxy pair and currently are comparing the properties (e.g., locations, ages, and masses) of the star clusters previously observed with NASAs Hubble Space Telescope with the properties of the molecular clouds observed with ALMA. They hope to better understand the differences between molecular clouds and star clusters in the eyelids and those elsewhere in the galaxy pair.
Post subject: The Cosmic Ballot! NASA Astronauts Vote from the Internation
Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2016 2:02 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
The Cosmic Ballot! NASA Astronauts Vote from the International Space Station
Heres the ultimate absentee ballot! For NASA astronauts, home is Houston when theyre not circling the globe. a 1997 Texas law allows U.S. astronauts to vote from space. A secure electronic ballot is forwarded to the astronauts by Mission Manage in Houston and returned by email to the county clerk. ABC News reports ts that Astronaut Shane Kimbrough has cast this vote from the International Space Station. Before launch last month, Kimbrough told reporters that astronauts are pretty much apolitical. But Kimbrough added hell be glad to welcome the new president, whoever that is.
Post subject: Radical New Theory of Gravity --"An Emergent Phenomenon
Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2016 5:24 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Radical New Theory of Gravity --"An Emergent Phenomenon, Not a Basic Force of the Universe"
A new theory of gravity might explain the curious motions of stars in galaxies. Emergent gravity, as the new theory is called, predicts the exact same deviation of motions that is usually explained by invoking dark matter.
Erik Verlinde, renowned expert in string theory at the University of Amsterdam and the Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics, published a new research paper today in which he expands his groundbreaking views on the mood of gravity.
In 2010, Erik Verlinde surprised the world with a completely new theory of gravity. According to Verlinde, gravity is not a basic force of mood, but an emergent phenomenon. In the same way that temperature arises from the movement of microscopic particles, gravity emerges from the changes of basic bits of information, stored in the very structure of spacetime.
In his 2010 article (On the origin of gravity and the laws of Newton), Verlinde showed how Newtons illustrious second law, which describes how apples fall from trees and satellites stay in orbit, can be derived from these underlying microscopic building blocks.
Extending his previous labor and labor done by others, Verlinde now shows how to understand the curious behavior of stars in galaxies without adding the puzzling dark matter.
The outer regions of galaxies, like our own Milky Way, rotate much faster around the center than can be accounted for by the quantity of ordinary matter like stars, planets and interstellar gasses.
Something else has to produce the required amount of gravitational force, so physicists proposed the existence of dark matter. Dark matter seems to dominate our universe, comprising more than 80 percent of all matter. Hitherto, the alleged dark matter particles have never been oberved, despite many efforts to detect them.
According to Erik Verlinde, there is no need to augment a mysterious dark matter particle to the theory.
In a new paper, which appeared today on the ArXiv preprint server, Verlinde shows how his theory of gravity accurately predicts the velocities by which the stars rotate around the center of the Milky Way, as well as the motion of stars inside other galaxies.
"We have evidence that this new belief of gravity actually agrees with the observations, " says Verlinde. "At large scales, it seems, gravity just doesnt behave the way Einsteins theory predicts."
At first glance, Verlindes theory presents features similar to modified theories of gravity like MOND (modified Newtonian Dynamics, Mordehai Milgrom). However, where MOND tunes the theory to agree the observations, Verlindes theory starts from first principles. "A totally different starting point," according to Verlinde.
One of the ingredients in Verlindes theory is an adaptation of the holographic principle, introduced by his tutor Gerard t Hooft (Nobel Prize 1999, Utrecht University) and Leonard Susskind (Stanford University).
According to the holographic principle, all the information in the entire universe can be described on a giant imaginary sphere around it. Verlinde now shows that this idea is not quite correctpart of the information in our universe is contained in space itself.
This extra information is required to describe that other dark component of the universe: Dark energy, which is believed to be responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe.
Investigating the effects of this additional information on ordinary matter, Verlinde comes to a stunning conclusion. Whereas ordinary gravity can be encoded using the information on the imaginary sphere around the universe, as he showed in his 2010 labor, the result of the additional information in the bulk of space is a force that nicely matches that attributed to dark matter.
Gravity is in dire need of new approaches like the one by Verlinde, since it doesnt blend well with quantum physics. Both theories, crown jewels of 20th century physics, cannot be true at the same time. The problems arise in extreme conditions: near black holes, or during the Big Bang.
"Many theoretical physicists like me are working on a revision of the theory, and some major advancements have been made," says Verlinde. "We might be standing on the brink of a new scientific revolution that will radically change our views on the very mood of space, time and gravity."
The Daily Galaxy via Delta Institute for Theoretical Physics
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Post subject: "New Natural Law of the Cosmos" --Challenges Curre
Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2016 8:38 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
"New Casual Law of the Cosmos" --Challenges Current Theories of Dark Matter
A team led by Case Western Reserve University researchers has found a distinctive new relationship in spiral and irregular galaxies: the acceleration oberved in rotation curves tightly correlates with the gravitational acceleration expected from the visible mass only. In a paper accepted for publication by the journal Physical Review Letters and posted on the preprint website arXiv, the astronomers argue that the relation theyve found is tantamount to a new casual law.
"The casual inference is that this law stems from a universal force such as a modification of gravity like MOND, the hypothesis of Modified Newtonian Dynamics proposed by Israeli physicist Moti Milgrom," says Stacy McGaugh, chair of the Department of Astronomy at Case Western Reserve. "But it could also be something in the mood of dark matter like the superfluid dark matter proposed by Justin Khoury," McGaugh said. "Most importantly, whatever theory you want to build has to reproduce this."
"The standard model of cosmology is remarkably successful at explaining just about everything we notice in the universe," said Arthur Kosowsky, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved but reviewed the research."But if there is a single observation which keeps me awake at night worrying that we might have something essentially wrong, this is it."
In spiral galaxies such as NGC 6946 (shown above), researchers found that a 1-to-1 relationship between the distribution of stars plus gas and the acceleration caused by gravity exists. In the late 1970s, astronomers Vera Rubin and Albert Bosma independently found that spiral galaxies rotate at a nearly constant speed: the velocity of stars and gas inside a galaxy does not decrease with radius, as one would expect from Newtons laws and the distribution of visible matter, but remains approximately constant. Such flat rotation curves are generally attributed to invisible, dark matter surrounding galaxies and providing additional gravitational attraction.
"If you measure the distribution of star light, you know the rotation curve, and vice versa," said McGaugh, direct author of the research. "The finding is consistent among 153 spiral and irregular galaxies, ranging from giant to dwarf, those with massive central bulges or none at all. It is also consistent among those galaxies comprised of mostly stars or mostly gas.
An astrophysicist who reviewed the study said the findings may direct to a new understanding of internal dynamics of galaxies.
"Galaxy rotation curves have traditionally been explained via an ad hoc hypothesis: that galaxies are surrounded by dark matter," said David Merritt, professor of physics and astronomy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the research. "The relation discovered by McGaugh et al. is a serious, and possibly fatal, challenge to this hypothesis, since it shows that rotation curves are precisely determined by the distribution of the normal matter alone. Nothing in the standard cosmological model predicts this, and it is almost impossible to imagine how that model could be modified to explain it, without discarding the dark matter hypothesis completely."
McGaugh and Schombert have been working on this research for a decade and with Lelli the last three years. Near-infrared images collected by NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope during the last five years allowed them to establish the relation and that it persists for all 153 galaxies.
The key is that near-infrared light emitted by stars is far more reliable than optical-light for converting light to mass, Lelli said.
The researchers plotted the radial acceleration observed in rotation curves published by a host of astronomers over the last 30 years against the acceleration predicted from the observed distribution of ordinary matter now in the Spitzer Photometry & Accurate Rotation Curves database McGaughs team created. The two measurements showed a single, extremely tight correlation, even when dark matter is supposed to dominate the gravity.
"There is no intrinsic scatter, which is how far the data differ on average from the mean when plotted on a graph," McGaugh said. "What little scatter is found is consistent with stellar mass-to-light ratios that vary a little from galaxy to galaxy."
Lelli compared the relation to a long-used casual law. "Its like Keplers third law for the solar system: if you measure the distance of each planet from the sun, you get the orbital period, or vice versa" he said. "Here we have something similar for galaxies, with about 3,000 data points."
"In our case, we find a relation between what you see in normal matter in galaxies and what you get in their gravity," McGaugh said. "This is distinctive because it is telling us something basic about how galaxies labor."
Kosowsky said McGaugh and collaborators have steadily refined the spiral galaxy scaling relation for years and called this latest labor a distinctive advance, reducing uncertainty in the mass in normal matter by exploiting infrared observations.
"The result is a scaling relation in the data with no adjustable parameters," Kosowky said. "Throughout the history of physics, unexplained regularities in data have often pointed the way towards new discoveries."
McGaugh and his team are not pressing any theoretical interpretation of their empirical relation at this point.
The Daily Galaxy via Case Western Reserve University
Post subject: StarTalk Radio --"Real Science Behind StarTrek": S
Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2016 1:43 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
StarTalk Radio --"Real Science Behind StarTrek": Search for Civilizations in the Alpha Quadrant to the Galactic Barrier (LISTEN)
Join in on the first StarTalk All-Stars Live!, recorded at StarTalks panel at the Star Trek Mission: New York 50th Anniversary convention. The show features Andrew Fazekas, astronomy journalist and author of Star Trek: The Official Guide to Our Universe: The True Science behind the Starship Voyages. Plus, in her second StarTalk appearance, our newest All-Stars host, Columbia University astrophysicist Summer Ash.
To start, the panel goes where no non-fictional human has gone before: seeking out new life and new civilizations beyond our solar system. Youll find out what the Alpha Quadrant really is, why everyone is so excited about Proxima B, in the goldilocks zone around Proxima Centauri, and why even in Star Trek, and even with warp drive, the USS Enterprise has almost never left the Milky Way. Speaking of warp drive, how might it actually labor? Summer explains how Einsteins theory of gravitation tells us that massive objects warp spacetime, and Charles describes Miguel Alcubierres 1994 paper speculating on how something in an asymmetric bubble could move through space faster than the speed of light.
Youll also hear about the physics of artificial gravity, radio waves and radio astronomy, Voyager 1, detecting gravitational waves and black holes, SETI, first contact and what Charles will be doing on April 5, 2063.
Plus, the panel ponders phasers, transporters, replicators, subspace communication, Class M planets, and some of Star Treks science that has always bothered them: stardates, the galactic barrier, cosmic strings and quantum filaments, gravitons, and why removing excess baryons might not be such a good idea.
Post subject: Stunning Image of Mars Mount Sharp and Gale Crater --NASAs C
Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2016 2:07 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Stunning Image of Mars Mount Sharp and Gale Crater --NASAs Curiosity Mission Destination
The NASA image shows the region around Gale Crater, which Mars Science Laboratorys Curiosity rover is currently exploring. This mosaic is made from Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) images used to pick out distinct surface mineralogies. Here pink indicates wind-blown dust, purple basaltic rocks. Marss surface typically appears grey-green; the blue tones of Gale Craters central Mount Sharp a target for Curiosity suggest distinct rock types there.
In June, NASAs Mars Odyssey reached a milestone of 60,000 orbits since it arrived at the Red Planet in 2001. In those 14 years the orbiter has mapped Mars at high resolution, discovered that water ice is common in the martian subsurface, and provided data and communications support for other Mars missions. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University)
Post subject: This Weeks Most Popular --Stephen Hawking: "I am More C
Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2016 6:01 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
This Weeks Most Popular --Stephen Hawking: "I am More Convinced Than Ever That We are Not Alone"
"As I grow older I am more convinced than ever that we are not alone. After a lifetime of wondering, I am helping to direct a new global effort to find out," Hawking says in the film while exploring Gliese 832c, a planet that lies 16 light-years away and could possibly harbor advanced alien life.
Stephen Hawking warns against our SETI efforts to contact advanced alien civilizations in a new online film called Stephen Hawkings Favorite Places, which shows the famed scientist in a CGI spacecraft called the SS Hawking exploring his favorite destinations in the Universe.
"The Breakthrough Listen project will scan the nearest million stars for signs of life, but I know just the place to start looking. One day we might receive a signal from a planet like Gliese 832c, but we should be wary of answering back. If so, they will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria," he says in the film.
Recently, the the Breakthrough Listen project announced that it is partnering with Chinas new BRISK radio telescope --now the worlds largest --to explore the hypothetical alien megastructure that some speculate is causing a mysterious star known as KIC 8462852 seteep in an outer spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy, some 1,480 light-years from Earth that is acting in ways the worlds astronomy community has never seen before, defying all known explanations. At random intervals, its light dims by as much as 22 percent, and appears to have gotten dramatically darker over the past century.
Penn State and UC Berkeley astronomer Jason Wright has pointed out that these light patterns are similar to what we might expect if aliens built a Dyson Sphere, a megastructure around the star to harvest its energy. But the mystery persists as the search for casual explanations intensify.
Since August 2016, Wright has rounded up and analyzed some of the most common explanations from being an artifact of the instruments, to a solar system cloud, a comet swarm, the interstellar medium or Bok globules, to black holes. Read all of Wrights possible causes in at his fascinating blog, AstroWright.
Hawking often uses the example of Columbus expedition to the Americas to describe what could happen if an advanced civilization gets word of our existence, saying that that initial meeting "didnt turn out so well".
Hawkings warning is rooted in the idea that an alien civilization, especially one orbiting an ancient, dim red dwarf star that can pick up our signals and understand where theyre coming from, has the potential to be billions of years more advanced than us, making us an easy target to overthrow or invade.
Besides offering an ominous warning, the new 25-minute film highlights Hawking exploring other amazing destinations in our galaxy, such as Sagittarius A* a supermassive black hole and our Solar Systems very own Saturn, a planet that Hawking is intrigued by.
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