Daily Archives: April 30, 2023

How Extremophiles Work

As we talked about in class a few weeks ago, Extremophiles are living things that flourish under challenging conditions.They are amazing because they can endure situations that would be fatal to the majority of other life forms. They originate from Archaea, Eubacteria, and Eukarya, the three branches of the three-domain categorization scheme. Extremophiles have caused […] Continue reading

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The Fermi Paradox

A possible solution to the Fermi Paradox? The Fermi Paradox attempts to answer the question about extraterrestrial life that so many humans have thought about for centuries. Enrico Fermi a physicist, in 1950, while discussing extraterrestrial life he began to wonder if aliens did in fact exist then how have they not expanded throughout the […] Continue reading

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The History and Future of the Universe: A Time Scale

If you’d like to feel the crushing weight of existential dread as we approach the end of this course, and for me, the end of my time at Vanderbilt, I have just the video for you! It’s a YouTube video called “Age of Universe: Time in Perspective,” and it uses a time-to-volume comparison in order […] Continue reading

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Dragonfly: Quadcopter on Titan

After the recent rocket launch in preparation for the Artemis mission, I decided to look into the other space exploration projects currently underway. One that stuck out to me is the Dragonfly mission. After the landing of Huygens, a space probe sent from Cassini, in 2005, astronomers have desired a more advanced exploration of Titan. […] Continue reading

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Could We Even Communicate With Aliens If We Found Them?

After learning about the Golden Record, Arecibo message, and other ways astronomers have attempted to communicate with extraterrestrial life (if it is out there), I can’t help but think this outreach is very limited to civilizations that communicate in exactly the same way as we do. This seems unlikely to me, given the extreme diversity […] Continue reading

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