Carnival of Space 196

The Carnival of Space 196 is up at vintage space

Ian ONeill at Discovery news looks at black holes in our modern universe that were created before the Big Bang.

Pre-Big Bang black holes with masses of a few hundred million kilograms to the mass of the sun might have made it through. Black holes of these masses may have been able to retain their structure, keeping them separate from the Big Crunch singularity that is predicted to form. Then, as the Big Bang exploded to life, these black holes slipped into the new universe… our universe.

This is a pretty heady theory, but it’s not the first to suggest some pre-Big Bang artefacts may survive into the modern universe.

In Nov. 2010, British physicist Roger Penrose went on the record to say that it was by his reckoning that there were patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) — the “echo” of the Big Bang. Penrose’s theory is that gravitational waves — “ripples” in spacetime — leaked through from the pre-Big Crunch universe, imprinting the CMBR with detectable rings.

I also looked at the pre-big bang black holes and other research that speculated that advanced civilizations could live inside of the event horizons of black holes

21st Century Waves takes a fresh look at the Rare Earth Hypothesis and the Drake equation.

The Drake Equation was humanity’s first serious attempt to think systematically about advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our Galaxy.

Today there are new data and ideas that illuminate the 3 biggest lingering mysteries involving N: 1) the abundance of Earth-like planets, 2) the origin of life and intelligence, and 3) the typical lifetime of high-tech civilizations.

Richard Gott predicted at the 95% confidence level that our species’ future duration is “between 1/39 and 39 times 200,000 years,” (5100 yrs and 7.8 Myrs).

Centauri Dreams – Gravity Probe B has confirmed two of the most interesting effects predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The geodetic effect, which describes the warping of spacetime due to the mass of the Earth, has been confirmed to an accuracy of 0.28 percent. The frame-dragging effect, in which the Earth’s rotation drags or stirs local spacetime, is confirmed to 19 percent accuracy

Nextbigfuture also provided the writing of Elon Mush on Why the US can beat China.

Elon Musk has an open letter which describes how Spacex keeps its costs low and why they can beat China Bigelow Aerospace (inflatable space stations), Spacex,of Ad Astra Rocket Company (makers of the VASIMR plasma rocket) and few companies like them are leading the way to a new space age.

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