If you could travel instantly to anywhere in the universe, where would you go?

Tech Insider recently spoke with NASA's deputy administrator Dava Newman and we asked her the same question.

Instead of a distant exoplanet or an exotic moon, Newman picked somewhere surprisingly close to home.

"Mars is my number one answer," Newman said.

There are a lot of good reasons to go to Mars. We could learn a ton about the solar system and our own planet. The mission would drive technological innovation several leaps forward. We might even discover microbial life hiding below the Martian surface.

It'll be a huge challenge, but Newman thinks the agency is "up to the task."

Indeed, for the last few years NASA has adamantly declared that it's on a "Journey to Mars."

Newman said that journey includes three phases: learning about how space affects the human body from experiments on the International Space Station, testing out a giant new rocket and space capsule and proving they work while orbiting between the Earth and the moon, and eventually using that launch system to send humans all the way to Mars.

It sounds like a logical progression, but it's a plan without a price tag or a specific timeline. Most reports NASA has released about its journey to Mars are just strategic overviews and nonspecific.

John Sommerer, a space scientist who has helped review NASA's human spaceflight progress, recently criticized the Mars plan during a House space subcommittee hearing on Feb. 3.

"While sending humans to Mars, and returning them safely to the Earth, may be technically feasible, it is an extraordinarily challenging goal, from physiological, technical, and programmatic standpoints," Sommerer said. "Because of this extreme difficulty, it is only with unprecedented cumulative investment, and, frankly, unprecedented discipline in development, testing, execution, and leadership, that this enterprise is likely to be successful."

It seems NASA isn't quite on that level yet. Sommerer contributed to a 2014 review that found NASA would need 20 to 40 years and half a trillion dollars to pull off a manned mission to Mars.

NASA got a slight raise for its 2016 budget ($19.3 billion), but the proposed budget for next year is $3 million less than that. The budget decrease doesn't bode well for the future of human spaceflight. If you multiply $19 billion by 20 years, you come up very short of half a trillion dollars.

It's also the president's job to guide NASA, so next year when a new president takes office, he or she might choose to direct NASA somewhere other than Mars.

Mars is possible, but until we see some solid numbers, reasonable timeline, and administrative support, it's doubtful if NASA will be the one to get us there.

Private spaceflight companies like SpaceX are starting to plan their own Mars missions. And with a steady source of funding and support, they might just beat NASA to it.

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The space race isn't over yet. China is set to explore the moon in 2018.

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This fall, a collaboration led by the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh, and the United Kingdom Astronomical Technology Center will send a string of text messages into space that all answer the same, simple question:

"How will our present environmental interactions shape the future?"

By submitting a response, "participants will be contributing to ongoing dialogue concerning how our civilization collectively perceives its role within shaping the future of the environment," collaboration leaders describe on the project's website.

Appropriately, the collaboration calls this cultural experiment "A Simple Response to an Elemental Message."

When it comes time to transmit, the collaboration will convert the responses into radio waves, and then fire them toward the North Star, Polaris — located 434 light years away, which means it will take that long for the message to reach its destination.

While humans have transmitted radio signals into space before, this is one of the most elaborate projects to date, at least according to psychologist Douglas Vakoch, who is the president of an organization that advocates deliberate attempts to make contact, called METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and is not part of the collaboration.

"'While it might be confusing for an alien to understand a stream of text messages that switches between Portuguese, Arabic, Mandarin, and a handful of other languages, for the Earth-based participant, it’s a significant advance over past projects that relied on English-only messages," Vakoch told Business Insider.

Why transmit to Polaris?

Polaris was once a key reference point for navigators like Ferdinand Magellan and it still guides star gazers today.

Therefore it holds a nostalgic and cultural appeal for humanity, according to project coordinator and graduate arts students at the University of Edinburgh, Paul Quast.

In fact, this isn't the first time that humans have transmitted radio signals toward Polaris:

"In 2008, NASA celebrated is fiftieth anniversary by broadcasting the song 'Across the Universe,' targeting the same star," Vakoch said. "Any aliens hearing 'A Simple Response' will have listened to the Beatles just eight years earlier."

Vakoch recently led a similar collaboration called "Earth Speaks," which asked people from around the world to submit messages, photos, and sounds that they would want to send to an extraterrestrial civilization. There are no plans, as of right now, to send those messages into space, Vakoch said.

Interestingly, Vakoch's project and "A Simple Response" have something in common:

"One of the strongest themes we see in 'Earth Speaks' is a concern with our current environmental crisis," he said. "In answering the question 'How will our present environmental interactions shape the future?' we need to reflect on what it will take to sustain Earth’s civilization in the coming centuries. That can only be a good thing."

You can learn more about "A Simple Response" and even submit your own answers by clicking here.

READ MORE: NASA just released a jaw-dropping 360 degree photo that makes you feel like you're on Mars

SEE ALSO: The two most important discoveries that completely transformed our view of ET in the universe

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NOW WATCH: Scientists just discovered 883 galaxies that have been hiding in plain sight

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is known for building awesome Mars-exploring robots and spacecraft that sends back data from billions of miles away, but you don't necessarily need to go inside the restricted labs to see something cool.

You can just take a stroll through the parking lot.

There are around 5,500 people working at JPL most days, and with plenty of NASA stickers gracing car bumpers, many are proud of their work. But I found one employee who takes that to the next level.

The back of this car looks like just a bunch of random bumper stickers, but it actually tells a story of science and exploration. It tells of a researcher's life story, intertwined with some of the most brilliant space discoveries of the last few decades.

There are Texas A&M stickers abound, and judging by sticker claims alone, it's a safe bet that this former Aggie studied meteorology and atmospheric sciences. And if the number of stickers represent programs the car owner was involved in, I count roughly seven different missions this sticker lover worked on.

There's a sticker for Juno, the spacecraft that'll start sending us high-resolution photos back from Jupiter in July.

On the left bumper, there's a sticker for Ares I-X, a prototype launch system developed for launching astronauts into space once the Space Shuttle was retired.

To its right, a sticker for STS-130, the 2010 shuttle mission that delivered the cupola to the International Space Station, providing sweeping 360-degree views.

"I can do this," one sticker reads. "It ain't rocket surgery." Another on the right bumper asks, "Have you hugged a rocket scientist today?"

But perhaps the most exciting, and incredibly unique stickers, mention Mars. There's a sticker for the Mars Science Laboratory, or what we know as the Curiosity rover. "My other vehicle zaps rocks on Mars!" another boasts.

Obviously there's no way to know whether this employee is working on all these programs (Though I can't imagine anyone but a quirky scientist researching sand particles on Mars slapping stickers like "If found, return to Mars" on their car).

But we can take away an important lesson in one sticker positioned above the license plate. Much like robotic spacecraft explored the Moon long before Neil Armstrong set foot on it, the same goes for Mars. Today it's the Curiosity rover sending back incredible photos, but tomorrow, humans will be stepping on Mars, and building so much more.

It's Mars or Bust.

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The scientific world is still reeling over the first ever detection of ripples in the fabric of space-time, called gravitational waves.

Albert Einstein predicted their existence 100 years ago but never believed we'd actually detect the waves. So right now if you hang around physicists, who can't contain their excitement, you're bound to hear some profound scientific poetry.

One scientist from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment, which announced the detection of gravitational waves on February 11, shared what is perhaps the most beautiful and poignant description Tech Insider has heard so far.

Physicist Szabi Marka, a LIGO collaborator based at Columbia University, gushed about the coming scientific revolution to a crowded Columbia lecture hall in New York.

"The skies will never be the same," Marka told the audience, mainly physics students. "Gravitational waves will let us listen to the music of the cosmos."

Marka's use of the word "listen" is no accident.

Sound travels as waves, and so does a gravitational wave. Except instead of air or water or some other matter, gravitational waves move through a medium that permits everything in it — you, me, the Earth, the stars — to exist at all.

What's more, when something calamitous happens in outer space, like the truly awesome collision of two black holes, the waves warp space as they pass by. Until September 2015, when LIGO first recorded this "music," it was entirely out of reach of humankind.

No telescope that detects light of any wavelength — radio, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, or gamma — could have detected such an event.

"Imagine that you can touch, you can smell, you can taste, you can see, and one day, one day you can hear. That day is a glorious day," Marka said. "You can appreciate Beethoven … Your life will never be the same again. This is what happened to us. This is what happened to us as a community."

Marka finished: "From today, we can hear the cosmos. We can see the unseen."

Many researchers, like Marka, told us the discovery of gravitational waves is just the beginning of a revolution in science. It's such a radically new paradigm that the detection itself brought with it a (growing) list of firsts.

"We're humans, we're curious, and on a quest to understand such weird things that are a big part of our universe," Kip Thorne, a physicist at Caltech and a cofounder of LIGO, told Tech Insider. "It's a quest that's part of dream of humanity that goes back to a child's earliest days."

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NOW WATCH: Here’s what the first gravitational waves ever detected sound like

Right now, we’re staring hard at a small section of the sky, to see if we can detect any planets that may be habitable.

The Kepler Spacecraft is focused on a tiny patch of sky in our Milky Way galaxy, hoping to detect planets as they transit in front of their stars.

But if alien astronomers are doing the same, and detect Earth transiting in front of the Sun, how habitable would Earth appear?

You might think, because, well, here we are, that the Earth would look 100% habitable from a distant location.

But that’s not the case.

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I’ve always liked the idea that Jupiter has acted like a protector to its little brother, Earth.

That it has used its massive gravitational pull to divert asteroids and comets from a collision course with Earth.

Maybe Jupiter even felt bad when one got through, and doomed the dinosaurs to extinction. But a new study has cast this idea into doubt.

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NOW WATCH: This simple sideline test can detect brain injuries in football players

If you've ever wondered what it might be like to be inside of a giant crater on Mars, then check out this incredible footage NASA released this week from its Curiosity Mars rover.

The video below is interactive, making the experience more realistic than simply looking at a picture. Just click on the video and drag your mouse across the screen to scan the Martian landscape like never before. (We recommend you select the highest quality available from the settings option in the lower right.)

What you're seeing here is a brand new landscape unlike anything the Curiosity rover has encountered before during its time inside of Gale Crater, which is 96 miles wide. The region is called Bagnold Dunes, which is just one of the many areas on Mars covered with vast, active sand dunes.

Right now, Curiosity is scooping sand from a nearby mound, called Namib Dune (shown below), which is between 13 to 17 feet tall:

To the right of Namib Dune, you can see Mount Sharp in the distance. The Bagnold Dunes are located on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, which is a mountain at the center of Gale Crater.

Mount Sharp is about three miles high with channels etched along its face, which scientists suspect were carved by flowing water at some point in Mars' distant past.

And if you look closely at the shot below, you'll see a line straight down the middle that connects the two halves of the panorama. It's easier to see if you look into the distance at the rim of Gale Crater, shown below.

Most of the photos from Curiosity are actually a mosaic of tens of individual shots that scientists then stitch together into, what looks like, one amazing photo.

Stitching photos together takes time and effort, but, as you can see, it's absolutely worth it.

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NOW WATCH: NASA's Spirit Mars rover found mysterious growths on Mars that could be the biggest discovery in science

"We have perhaps two more decades before the inevitable contamination of Mars." That's a quote from Emily Lakdawalla, senior editor of The Planetary Society in a recent Washington Post article. Our microbes could be a big issue in the discovery of life on the red planet. 

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When Jill Tarter, co-founder of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, devoted her life to the search for aliens in the early '80s, she was part of a hopeful minority amid a collective of skeptics.

As the years pressed on, however, scientists made two key discoveries that changed everything:

"There have been two phenomenal game changers during my career," Tarter told Business Insider. "[The discovery of] extremophiles and exoplanets. And they both inspired to make the universe appear, perhaps, more bio-friendly than when I was a graduate student."

Tarter is one of the world's leading experts on the search for ET, and while you might not know her by name, she has a rather large reputation. Namely, her work throughout the '80s and '90s as the director of the Center for SETI Research caught the attention of the late astronomer Carl Sagan, who drew strongly from Tarter's life for the main character in his sci-fi book "Contact." The book was later adapted into the 1997 film where actress Jodie Foster basically plays Tarter.

"Extremophiles and exoplanets make this question — 'Is there life, and indeed, is there intelligent life out there?' — far more possible, and exciting, and timely," she said.

A love for the extreme

Extremophiles are a class of bacteria that — as their name implies — survive under extreme environments, such as hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Pacific.

Down there, no sunlight penetrates and pressures swell to over 200 times greater than on the surface.

Adding to that, vents spew intoxicating, sulfurous black smoke into broiling waters that are between 660 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite these horrendous conditions, hydrothermal vents host entire ecosystems of extremophiles, some of which are super-simple life-forms, which some scientists suspect could be close descendants of the first single-celled life on Earth, and thus, where life began.

"Microbes are now getting the respect they deserve," Tarter said. "Evolution has allowed them to make themselves adapt to the most amazing conditions."

While these conditions are abnormal by Earth's standards, planetary scientists have found evidence to suggest that hydrothermal vents are common within our solar system.

In 2015, for example, scientists announced that they had detected sulfur-rich compounds in Saturn's E rings. This ring is special because it's made up of material spat out by Saturn's tiny, water-rich moon, Enceladus.

The amount and type of compounds they found convinced scientists that there's likely a collection of these potentially life-spawning hydrothermal vents at the bottoms of Enceladus' underground ocean.

Could there be life down there? That is a serious question that planetary scientists and astrobiologists are considering — something they would have never done 30 years ago.

Whole new worlds

The prospect of discovering microbes on Enceladus is exciting, but it's not what gets Tarter pumped for the future — that goes to the hunt for intelligent beings, like us, living on a twin Earth floating off in space in some distant planetary system.

When the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, it opened the door to an entire new field of astronomy. Since then, astronomers have discovered nearly 2,000 exoplanets and suspect there could be billions more.

"When I started this, we had nine planets in our solar system," Tarter said. "But we now know that there are more planets out there than stars, and this is a profound conclusion that's come only in the last decade."

At first, technology was only sensitive to spotting extremely large exoplanets — many times greater than Jupiter. But as the field grew, technology improved, making it possible to point out smaller, more Earth like planets that could have the right conditions for life to develop, thrive, and eventually evolve into intelligent beings.

Just last year, for example, scientists reported the discovery of the most Earth-like planet, located 1400 light-years from Earth. The scientists estimated that the planet had been around for about 6 billion years — plenty of time for life to arise and grow.

"There's potentially a lot more habitable real estate out there than when I began," Tarter said. "And so I think we should explore it."

RELATED: The 12 most compelling scientific findings that suggest aliens are real

SEE ALSO: Awe-inspiring quotes from Carl Sagan reveal how we are fundamentally connected to the Cosmos

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NOW WATCH: Scientists just discovered 883 galaxies that have been hiding in plain sight

Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916.

Here's his original hand-written logic (on left), which the genius later converted into a typed manuscript (on right):

This remarkably preserved piece of history is kept at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Albert Einstein Archives, which contains about 55,000 items of Einstein's works, over the course of his lifetime.

In fact, Albert Einstein was one of the university's first Board of Governors — an influential member who helps run a university — and left all of his personal papers, as well as the copyright to them, to the university in his Will.

Here, the curator for Einstein's archives, Roni Grosz, points to one of the critical equations from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which predicts that two celestial bodies in orbit will generate invisible ripples in spacetime that experts call gravitational waves:

On Feb. 11, 2016 an international collaboration of scientists working with theLaser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced that 100 years after Einstein's prediction, they had successfully detected gravitational waves for the first time.

That same day, curator Grosz dug up Einstein's original manuscripts for gravitational waves, and posed for the camera in celebration of the momentous achievement:

The LIGO team's discovery not only confirms Einstein's prediction, but it also opens a new way to study the universe.

Some of the most powerful events in the universe, like two colliding black holes or a supernova explosion, generate powerful gravitational waves. These events are also some of the most mysterious because astrophysicists don't understand why black holes collide or what triggers a supernova. Gravitational waves could help solve some of these mysteries.

RELATED: The first discovery of 2 colliding black holes just fundamentally changed our perception of the universe

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In December 2015, the European Space Agencylaunched the LISA Pathfinder— a two-ton spacecraft traveling to a "virtual point in space." This two-minute time-lapse covers the three weeks before the launch, and it's a beautiful look at how much work goes into launching a spacecraft.

Credit/Copyrights: Directed by Stephane Corvaja, ESA; Edited by Manuel Pedoussaut, Zetapress; Music: Hubrid-Gravity

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On March 5, an asteroid about 100 feet across will fly close to Earth. But don't worry, experts at NASA's Center for Near Earth Objects Studies say there's no chance of the space rock impacting our planet.

In fact, a person's chance of dying from an asteroid impact are astronomical: 1 in 74,817,414, according to The Economist. The probability of dying from a dog bite or lightning strike is much higher.

Drawing from data collected by The Economist from America's National Safety Council and the National Academies, we made this graphic that puts a healthy perspective on the chances of dying from an asteroid compared to, say, walking. The numbers might surprise you:

READ MORE: NASA just released a jaw-dropping 360 degree photo that makes you feel like you're on Mars

SEE ALSO: Awe-inspiring quotes from Carl Sagan reveal how we are fundamentally connected to the cosmos

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NOW WATCH: Scientists are bashing authorities’ claims that a meteorite killed a bus driver in India

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Nuking an asteroid on its path to annihilating Earth is a terrible idea. Sorry Bruce Willis. 

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Since they're not walking around on the ground under the force of gravity, astronauts don't have to wear shoes in space.

They usually wear socks, with thick Polartec socks layered on top if they get cold.

But Astronaut Scott Kelly, who's spent almost a year in space, said in a Reddit AMA that this made something rather odd happen to his feet.

"The calluses on your feet in space will eventually fall off," he wrote. "So, the bottoms of your feet become very soft like newborn baby feet. But the top of my feet develop rough alligator skin because I use the top of my feet to get around here on space station when using foot rails."

Kelly also said in a Q&A on Tumblr that this foot phenomenon was the "weirdest thing" that had happened to him on the ISS.

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) use foot rails and loops to help hold them steady when they have to do an experiment, or just get a haircut.

When they want to work out, astronauts can strap their feet into sneakers on the exercise equipment.

Astronauts typically only change their socks and underwear every other day, and their shirts and pants every 10 days, according to NASA, since they don't get as dirty in space as we do here on earth.

Astronaut Don Pettit, who's logged over 300 days in space, said the same thing happened to his feet in a 2012 blog post.

"After about two months in orbit your feet molt, and like some reptilian creature the callused skin on the bottom of your foot sheds, leaving soft pink flesh in its place," he wrote. "In the weightless environment, calluses apparently have no use, at least on the bottoms of your feet. However, the tops of your feet become red-rubbed raw and gnarly. And the bottom calluses shed faster than the top calluses can grow. Perpetually raw and hypersensitive, your foot tops can use a bit of padding to ease the pain."

But Pettit found the perfect antidote to his lizard skin, which he called "toe koozies."

He accidentally grabbed a pair of small women's socks one day that only covered the top half of his foot, but they perfectly protected the part that needed it.

"They are the zero-gravity equivalent to flip-flops," he wrote.

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NOW WATCH: An astronaut's stunning photos from space will change the way we see the Earth

Black holes have long been a source of much excitement and intrigue. And interest regarding black holes will surely grow now that gravitational waves have been discovered.

Many of the questions I am asked regard how “true” science fiction concerning black holes might be, and whether worm holes, such as those featured in Stargate, are real or not.

Invariably though, the one item that is almost assured to come up are the largely gruesome ways in which black holes might theoretically affect human beings and the Earth itself.

Mass, charge, spin

There are three properties of a black hole that are (in principle) measurable: their mass, their spin (or angular momentum) and their overall electronic charge.

Indeed, these are the only three parameters that an outside observer can ever know about since all other information about anything that goes in to making up a black hole is lost.

This is known as the “no hair theorem”. Put simply: no matter how hairy or complex an object you throw in to a black hole, it will get reduced down (or shaved) to its mass, charge and spin.

Of these parameters, mass is arguably the most significant. The very definition of a black hole is that it has its mass concentrated in to a vanishingly small volume – the “singularity”. And it is the mass of the black hole – and the huge gravitational forces that its mass generates – which does the “damage” to nearby objects.

Space spaghetti

One of the best known effects of a nearby black hole has the imaginative title of “Spaghettification”. In brief, if you stray too close to a black hole, then you will stretch out, just like spaghetti.

This effect is caused due to a gravitation gradient across your body. Imagine that you are headed feet first towards a black hole. Since your feet are physically closer to the black hole, they will feel a stronger gravitation pull towards it than your head will. Worse than that, your arms, by virtue of the fact that they’re not at the center of your body, will be attracted in a slightly different (vector) direction than your head is. This will cause parts of the body toward the edges to be brought inwards. The net result is not only an elongation of the body overall, but also a thinning out (or compression) in the middle. Hence, your body or any other object, such as Earth, will start to resemble spaghetti long before it hits the centre of the black hole.

The exact point at which these forces become too much to bear will depend critically on the mass of a black hole. For an “ordinary” black hole that has been produced by the collapse of a high mass star, this could be several hundred kilometers away from the event horizon– the point beyond which no information can escape a black hole. Yet for a supermassive black hole, such as the one thought to reside at the centre of our galaxy, an object could readily sink below the event horizon before becoming spaghetti, at a distance of many tens of thousands of kilometres from its centre. For a distant observer outside the event horizon of the black hole, it would appear that we progressively slow down and then fade away over time.

Bad news for Earth

What would happen, hypothetically, if a black hole appeared out of nowhere next to Earth? The same gravitational effects that produced spaghettification would start to take effect here. The edge of the Earth closest to the black hole would feel a much stronger force than the far side. As such, the doom of the entire planet would be at hand. We would be pulled apart.

Equally, we might not even notice if a truly supermassive black hole swallowed us below its event horizon as everything would appear as it once was, at least for a small period of time. In this case, it could be some time before disaster struck. But don’t lose too much sleep, we’d have to be unfortunate to “hit” a black hole in the first place – and we might live on holographically after the crunch anyway.

Mind the radiation

Interestingly, black holes are not necessarily black. Quasars – objects at the hearts of distant galaxies powered by black holes – are supremely bright. They can readily outshine the rest of their host galaxy combined. Such radiation is generated when the black hole is feasting on new material. To be clear: this material is still outside the event horizon which is why we can still see it. Below the event horizon is where nothing, not even light, can escape. As all the matter piles up from the feast, it will glow. It is this glow that is seen when observers look at quasars.

But this is a problem for anything orbiting (or near) a black hole, as it is very hot indeed. Long before we would be spaghettified, the sheer power of this radiation would fry us.

Life around a black hole

For those who have watched Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar, the prospect of a planet orbiting around a black hole might be an appealing one. For life to thrive, there needs to be a source of energy or a temperature difference. And a black hole can be that source. There’s a catch, though. The black hole needs to have stopped feasting on any material – or it will be emitting too much radiation to support life on any neighboring worlds.

What life would look like on such a world (assuming its not too close to get spaghettified, of course) is another matter. The amount of power received by the planet would probably be tiny compared to what Earth receives from the Sun. And the overall environment of such a planet could be equally bizarre. Indeed, in the creation of Interstellar, Kip Thorne was consulted to ensure the accuracy of the depiction of the black hole featured. These factors do not preclude life, it just makes it a tough prospect and very hard to predict what forms it could take.

Kevin Pimbblet, Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of Hull. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

SEE ALSO: 7 mind-blowing facts about gravitational waves, the 100-year-old prediction just confirmed by scientists

CHECK OUT: A groundbreaking first in astronomy found that black holes can be spotted with backyard telescopes

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NOW WATCH: A nearby black hole is doing something unexpected in the midst of a cataclysmic galaxy collision

On February 15, 2013, many on Earth were watching for news of the approach of an asteroid labeled 2012 DA14.

Suddenly, those watchers – and millions of others around the globe – were startled by news of a superbolide, or super bright meteor, above the region of Chelyabinsk in Russia.

It seemed that day as if the heavens were gunning for us!

The Chelyabinsk meteor exploded at a height of 12 miles (20 km) above Earth, releasing 500 kilotons of energy, approximately 30 times the yield of the nuclear bomb over Hiroshima.

It caused a shock wave that broke windows in six Russian cities and caused some 1,500 people to seek treatment for injuries, mainly from flying glass.

Later, about five tons of meteoritic material reached the ground, including a 1,400-pound (650-kg) meteorite that was recovered by divers from the bottom of Russia’s Lake Chebarkul. Now, three years later – after more than 200 scientific studies – scientists say they’re still looking for the origin the Chelyabinsk superbolide.

They continue to confirm that it was not related to asteroid 2012 DA14. But, since asteroids in space are known to travel in pairs or groups, they want to know if the Russian meteor had a parent body, and if that body is a known object in space.

In other words, what do we know, if anything, about the origin of this cosmic close call?

To figure it out, they first have to determine the orbit of the Chelyabinsk meteor. Among the published studies is a catalog of 960 video recordings, much of it captured by security cameras, traffic cameras, dash cams – which are popular in Russia – as well as manual recordings made with the video cameras and webcams of those who saw it.

These images and diverse scientific data compiled during the event have let scientists calculate the trajectory of meteoroid after it entered Earth’s atmosphere.

And that information helps scientists calculate possible initial orbits for the 19-meter-wide (about 20 yards wide) space rock around the sun, before it struck Earth’s atmosphere.

On same day as the Chelyabinsk meteor – February 15, 2013 – the asteroid 2012 DA14 was still approaching Earth. It ultimately passed about 17,000 miles (27,700 km) above the Earth’s surface, 16 hours after the Chelyabinsk superbolide explosion and the fall of the large meteorite on the Russian Lake Chebarkul.

Could 2012 DA14 have been related to the Chelyabinsk meteor?

At the beginning, it seemed possible to everyone that these two events might be related. But astronomers quickly compared what was known about the orbit of 2012 DA14 with a preliminary orbit for the Chelyabinsk meteor, and quickly said the two looked completely different.

After closer studies of the two objects, they’re now believed to be completely independent and unrelated. In their statement on February 15, 2016, scientists said:

It was a mere, albeit very unusual, coincidence in time of two spectacular cosmic events.

Where in space did the Chelyabinsk superbolide come from? Did it have a parent body, and was that body a known object in space?

The answer is that we don’t yet know for certain, but scientists are still trying to figure it out.

One possibility is the asteroid 2011 EO40, which is known to have frequent close encounters with Venus, the Earth and moon, and Mars. Scientists said in their statement:

The common origin of both celestial objects is a possibility that cannot be discarded using the currently available evidence.

In the course of these studies, the scientists have realized that the Chelyabinsk impactor likely passed a gravitational keyhole on February 15, 1982 during a close encounter with our planet. At the time, the closest distance was about 140,000 miles (224,000 km).

As a result of this close encounter, the initial trajectory of the Chelyabinsk meteoroid was changed into the one that drove the meteoroid to strike the Earth over three decades later.

Bottom line: Scientists are still seeking the origin of the Chelyabinsk meteor, which streaked across skies over Russia on February 15, 2013.

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Sarah Parcak, a space archaeologist who looks for ancient sites with satellite imagery (she's often called the "Indiana Jones from space") just revealed a plan at the 2016 TED conference in Vancouver to let anyone hunt for undiscovered and looted ancient archaeological sites using a computer.

Parcak won this year's TED Prize, which gives $1 million for recipients to turn a big wish into reality. Her wish: Finding the millions of unknown archaeological sites across the planet by "creating a 21st century army of global explorers."

A professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Parcak is working with the TED Prize team to create an interactive online crowdsourced citizen science platform to find ancient sites and spot looting via satellite images. The platform is set to launch this summer.

Parcak's platform addresses a big global issue. Her team has already mapped 200,000 looting pits in Egypt alone. If we do nothing to stop the problem, she says, all of Egypt's archaeological sites will be looted by 2040. Having help from millions of people across the globe could give a boost to officials and academics who want to prevent further theft.

The platform will first give participants a tutorial on how to evaluate satellite images. Users will then be given a series of images along with general location descriptions (like Southern Iraq). No GPS data is revealed in order to protect the sites.  

Each image represents a 50 meter by 50 meter area of land that has already been pre-processed with algorithms by Parcak and her team. Users will look for tombs, pyramids, buildings, and signs of looting (they are given examples of what looted sites look like — essentially small dark circles).

"As people start marking things, it will populate a backend system. If 50 people in the crowd say they see what they think looks like a tomb at a site, it’s worth it for us to take a look," Parcak said at a briefing before her TED talk. 

Once discoveries and looted sites have been verified, they will be shared with local governments and authorities, who can help protect them. And there's a bonus for virtual explorers who make discoveries: they'll have the opportunity to join archaeologists on digs (via Skype, Google Hangouts, or other online platforms).

Parcak suspects that the platform will reveal a network of "super-pattern detectors" — ordinary people who have an eye for finding ancient sites.

"Everywhere people look with satellite imagery, the scale of what we don’t know surprises us. There are archaeological sites everywhere. The big problem is that we don’t even know the number of known sites in the world. It’s pretty shocking," she says. 

Satellite imaging technology has improved so much in recent years that the possibility for finding unknown sites has become much greater than in the past, according to Parcak. "The resolution of satellites has improved...so we are able to see so much more then even a few years ago. Also, the spectral resolution has improved so we can see even further into the middle infrared, which allows us to see subtle changes in geology," she recently wrote in an email to Tech Insider.

Parcak is hopeful that the platform will inspire a new generation of archaeology enthusiasts. "We hope that around the world this will allow people not only to engage with discovery but to become archaeological activists," she says. 

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Mae Jemison doesn't see technology or engineering holding humans back from exploring outer space. 

She sees something far more fallible getting in the way: humanity itself.

Jemison is the lead researcher on the 100 Year Starship project, a US government-funded study whose main task is drawing up the blueprint for the next 100 years of interstellar travel. It asks tomorrow's most pressing questions today, like: Where are we going? How will we get there? and What will we do once we arrive?

Jemison became the first black female astronaut when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992. She's since become a physician, dancer, actress, and now a futurist. 

At this year's TED Conference, Jemison spoke Tuesday on humans' troubling inability to get along with one another. People of different races, religions, and beliefs can barely exist in the same room with each other, Jemison says. How could we possibly travel to outer space together?

Jemison uses global hunger as an example.

Humanity already produces far more food than the global population needs to survive — about one and a half times more. The problem is waste. Americans alone throw away about 40% of our food.

We have the means to solve global hunger, but we just don't behave in a way that allows that to happen. "It's an issue about sharing," she says.

That's really the heart of 100 Year Starship, she explains. It's not to foster interstellar travel for its own sake. It's to improve life on Earth while we plan for the future.

"Yes, we can talk about food, we talk about things like that," Jemison says. "But it's really how we see each other. How do we commit to long-term projects? How do we invest in a future that we may not see?"

The "starship" in 100 Year Starship is really a shorthand for talking about Earth. We probably have little hope of moving beyond our own home planet to explore others if we can't learn to mobilize the people here first. Any energy we put into future projects without first uniting toward a common goal will only produce better weaponry, Jemison says, rather than helping our species. 

That kind of adversarial mindset is destructive.

"Look at how big this planet is," Jemison says. Total cooperation is a monumental task. "So if you look at a starship, we'd have to think about those things and how do we move them forward."

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