[The idea also has serious problems with it. It might be impractical. But it is an interesting line of thinking. Jan]

Humans are trying to reach Mars, but a trip on board a spacecraft will cost a lot of money and time, besides tackling several other logistical matters, such as how to battle harmful levels of radiation. Researchers from Ukraine have come up with an innovative way to travel to the red planet – hitchhike your way to a planet on an asteroid.

Asteroids zoom past several planets in the universe and the scientists see it as a solution the cosmos already presents to humans who wish to travel between planets. So why not hop on them to reach Mars?

A trip to Mars will have a huge effect on the physical health of astronauts. It is around 225 million km away from Earth and a journey to and fro will take about three years. This means prolonged exposure to radiation and microgravity, leading to loss of muscles and bone density. Returning to Earth’s gravity will likely become impossible and heart issues are also likely to crop up.

AS Kasianchuk and VM Reshetnyk from the National University of Kyiv in Ukraine, authors of the paper, analysed the orbit of more than 35,000 near-Earth asteroids to understand the possibility of making successive approaches to pairs of planets Earth–Venus and Earth-Mars within a time range of 2020 to 2120.

They say asteroids can be used as interplanetary busses which will prove to be a much faster mode of transport between the planets. The researchers estimate the trips might even be completed within as soon as 180 days.

Several asteroids have been shortlisted
They have zeroed in on 120 candidates for Earth-Mars, Earth-Venus, Mars-Earth, Venus-Earth, and even Mars-Venus and Venus-Mars trips.

If the idea works out, it cancels out the need for creating a spacecraft to carry humans to other planers. However, a technological solution would still be needed to protect one against radiation.

The list of asteroids that can potentially help with planet-hopping will only grow since near-Earth objects are regularly discovered. NASA’s NEO Surveyor mission will prove to be of crucial help in this area as it is working to find more than 90 per cent of all NEOs larger than 140 metres in diameter.

Experts believe the right asteroid can prove extremely useful in the cosmic journey. Astronauts can possibly use it as a fuel station and seek shelter under features like caves to shield themselves from radiation.

Source: https://www.wionews.com/trending/humans-can-hitch-a-ride-to-mars-on-board-an-asteroid-ukrainian-scientists-say-771624

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwqY3Y5FvPo

While such organisms may or may not exist in the universe, the research has important implications for future human endeavors in space.

What if we dropped the "terrestrial" from "extraterrestrial"? Scientists recently explored the intriguing possibility that alien life may not need a planet to support itself.

At first glance, planets seem like the ideal locations to find life. After all, the only known place life is known to exist is Earth’s surface. And Earth is pretty nice. Our planet has a deep gravitational well that keeps everything in place and a thick atmosphere that keeps surface temperatures in the right ranges to maintain liquid water. We have an abundance of elements like carbon and oxygen to form the building blocks of biological organisms. And we have plenty of sunlight beaming at us, providing an essentially limitless source of free energy.

It’s from this basic setup that we organize our searches for life elsewhere in the universe. Sure, there might be exotic environments or crazy chemistries involved, but we still assume that life exists on planets because planets are so naturally suited to life as we know it.

In a recent pre-paper accepted for publication in the journal Astrobiology, researchers challenge this basic assumption by asking if it’s possible to construct an environment that allows life to thrive without a planet.

This idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. In fact, we already have an example of creatures living in space without a planet: the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Those astronauts require tremendous amounts of Earth-based resources to be constantly shuttled to them, but humans are incredibly complex creatures.

Perhaps simpler organisms could manage it on their own. At least one known organism, the tiny water-dwelling tardigrades, are able to survive in the vacuum of space.

Any community of organisms in space needs to tackle several challenges. First, it needs to maintain an interior pressure against the vacuum of space. So a space-based colony would need to form a membrane or shell. Thankfully, this isn’t that big of a deal; it’s the same pressure difference as that between the surface of water and a depth of about 30 feet (10 meters). Many organisms, both microscopic and macroscopic, can handle these differences with ease.

The next challenge is to maintain a warm enough temperature for liquid water. Earth achieves this through the atmosphere’s greenhouse effect, which won’t be an option for a smaller biological space colony. The authors point to existing organisms, like the Saharan silver ant (Cataglyphis bombycina), that can regulate their internal temperatures by varying which wavelengths of light they absorb and which they reflect — in essence, creating a greenhouse effect without an atmosphere. So the outer membrane of a free-floating colony of organisms would have to achieve the same selective abilities.

Next, they would have to overcome the loss of lightweight elements. Planets maintain their elements through the sheer force of gravity, but an organic colony would struggle with this. Even optimistically, a colony would lose lightweight elements over the course of tens of thousands of years, so it would have to find ways to replenish itself.

Lastly, the biological colony would have to be positioned within the habitable zone of its star, to access as much sunlight as possible. As for other resources, like carbon or oxygen, the colony would have to start with a steady supply, like an asteroid, and then transition to a closed-loop recycling system among its various components to sustain itself over the long term.

Putting this all together, the researchers paint the portrait of an organism, or colony of organisms, floating freely in space. This structure could be up to 330 feet (100m) across, and it would be contained by a thin, hard, transparent shell. This shell would stabilize its interior water to the right pressure and temperature and allow it to maintain a greenhouse effect.

While such organisms may or may not exist in the universe, the research has important implications for future human endeavors in space. Whereas we currently construct habitats with metal and supply our stations with air, food and water transported from Earth, future habitats may use bioengineered materials to create self-sustaining ecosystems.

Source: https://www.space.com/does-alien-life-need-a-planet-to-survive?utm_term=AF536F6D-055D-443A-91F7-FD448D0CCA73&lrh=4cd1bd23c622eeb1274411ac3b55b43215b8c098a20f14a3285c9e8ae13a98ca&utm_campaign=58E4DE65-C57F-4CD3-9A5A-609994E2C5A9&utm_medium=email&utm_content=726E1118-D33C-4DAA-BF43-F65E48F8824B&utm_source=SmartBrief

[I have known for a long time that there are LOTS of proofs that we are very rare. I will discuss this one day in a video. Life in the universe like ours might also be extremely rare. We might even be alone. Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Tju7EaSfmM

[It is only in recent years that I learned about the concept of "wandering planets" and "wandering stars". They call them rogue planets and rogue stars. These bodies were expelled from other solar systems and they wander through space. It is one of the creepiest and most dangerous things you can imagine. It is very freaky actually. And it's happened several times to our solar system. One day I'll do a video about this. To me it's the creepiest, weirdest thing I ever heard about in astronomy. It's firmly proven. It happens, and there is a star already on it's way to our solar system and it will mess things up in about 2 – 3 million years! Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB2LgS6U4Cg

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV2wIfDzFMk

[Venus is the closest planet to Earth. It's also the brightest. You can see it easily with the naked eye, and even a small telescope will show its features. Yet you will almost NEVER hear scientists talking about it. And they hardly ever send any satellites there because they would just be DESTROYED. Yet Venus is almost exactly the same size as Earth and very close to Earth and could in theory be Earth's twin – but it's NOT! Instead, it's a HELL! Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRziGUnNlpI&t=1s

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSeXeez5dv8

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxnFge00Vc

Elon Musk has big ambitions to colonize Mars by 2050, and a new scientific discovery could make those dreams a reality.

A team of scientists have proposed an ‘innovative’ way to warm the Red Planet by more than 18 degrees Fahrenheit in just a matter of months, which they believe would be enough to sustain human life.

They proposed injecting large quantities of Martian dust into the atmosphere to improve its ability to trap heat, just like water vapor and carbon dioxide do on Earth.

Shooting about 10 liters of dust, consisting of iron and aluminum, per second for at least a decade could warm the planet from -85F to 86F.

A groundbreaking new discovery suggests that Elon Musk’s dream of terraforming Mars might not be as far-fetched as people think.

Musk himself has said that he plans to use the natural resources on Mars to ‘terraform’ its existing atmosphere and make the planet warmer, wetter and overall more like Earth.

The idea of being stuck in space might sound like the plot of the latest science fiction blockbuster. But it has become a reality for Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore – two unlucky astronauts who are potentially stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) until 2025, despite only expecting to be there for eight days. Although the views might be out of this world, the ISS is far from the ideal destination for an impromptu eight-month trip. With little spare room and zero gravity, even simple tasks like eating or going to the toilet can be extremely difficult. And whether it’s in their phone box-sized bedrooms or on the vacuum-powered toilet, the astronauts aboard the orbiting station can often be cramped, smelly, and uncomfortable.

This study suggests he may be onto something.

‘It’s not that often you get some really quite new, innovative idea for terraforming,’ Colin McInnes, a space engineer at the University of Glasgow not involved with the work, told Science Magazine.

‘The gap between where Mars is and where Mars could be for habitability is narrower than we might think,’ he added.

The researchers’ approach is actually based on the same atmospheric mechanism that’s driving climate change here on Earth: the greenhouse effect.

Currently, Mars’ atmosphere is so thin that heat from the sun easily escapes the planet’s surface.

The microscopic size and spherical shape of Martian dust mean that it isn’t great at absorbing radiation or reflecting heat back down to the surface.
But the research team believes they could use the iron and aluminum in the dust to engineer nine-micrometer-long rods.

That’s roughly twice the size of a Martian dust particle, but smaller than a speck of glitter.

Currently, the surface of Mars is a freezing, barren desert. But scientists have come up with a simple way to warm up the Red Planet.

Terraforming Mars’ atmosphere would bring us one step closer to establishing a human colony on the red planet.

When the researchers tested how their particles would absorb heat radiation and reflect it down to the planet’s surface, they found ‘unexpectedly huge effects,’ Samaneh Ansari, a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University and the study’s lead author, told Science Magazine.

This approach would require about two million tons of particles per year, but manufacturing them would be relatively easy because the ingredients are right there on Mars.

That sets this new approach apart from previous schemes to globally warm the Red Planet.

By comparison, this method would be roughly 5,000 times more efficient, the researchers claimed.

This strategy would still take decades, but it seems logistically easier than any other ideas proposed so far.

Warming up Mars would be a critical first step towards making this planet a suitable home for humans, or any other life form for that matter.

It would free up the little water that’s frozen in polar ice caps beneath the planet’s surface, and make Mars a more suitable place for agriculture and out own bodies.

Mars’ atmosphere is too thin to trap heat at the surface. Scientists want to inject it with engineered dust to make it more insulating.

This is all great news for Musk. But warming up Mars is just one step down a long road he’ll need to travel before he can colonize the Red Planet.

Even with this new atmosphere, humans still wouldn’t be able to breathe the air on Mars because it doesn’t contain enough oxygen.

Plus, the air pressure on Mars is 150 times lower than on Earth, which would cause human blood to boil.

Musk will have to solve these problems and more before he builds a bustling Martian metropolis. But this new research brings him a little bit closer to realizing his dream.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/humans-closer-to-living-on-mars-with-new-theory-to-terraform-planet/ar-AA1oC7jL?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=0d319a90373241dcabc4adfd85339b2f&ei=32