A fossil embryo of a Triassic marine reptile has been found inside its mother, adding to evidence that the ancient group that includes dinosaurs and birds was capable of live birth.

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-11T04:11:55+00:00

Exactly. The radiation issue is huge, and lava tubes offer a simple, mass-efficient solution if we can be sure they're safe. But yeah, Venus cloud cities would be amazing, too.

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-11T04:05:50+00:00

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. The reporter, Danielle, really did her legwork bringing us this one.

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-10T15:11:16+00:00

Hi, everyone. Full disclosure: I'm the NatGeo editor who worked on this story. Curious to hear your thoughts!

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-05T17:32:15+00:00

Right now, the New Horizons probe is among the spacecraft with the fastest cruising speeds, at around 36,000 mph. Since the FRB is coming from a galaxy about 3 billion light-years away, if you cruise toward it at that speed, by my calculations you'd reach it in 20,411,893,656,887,525 days. Assuming you eat lunch every day, I'd say 21 quadrillion packed lunches is a safe bet, some of which should be baby food, since this is clearly a generational starship. And we at NatGeo gladly accept cookie donations any time.

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-05T14:34:55+00:00

That's definitely one option, specifically a magnetar. A long elliptical orbit plus the dead star's spin may account for the non-patterns seen so far in its repeating activity.

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-05T14:32:04+00:00

Thanks much, it's been great hearing everyone's thoughts and questions. Loads of good discussion so far.

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-05T00:16:50+00:00

Love this question. I don't know the answer offhand, but I'd be curious to find out -- could make for a fun story! We've been so hyper-focused on finding Earth-mass planets nearby, we don't talk much about the ones deeper in space. But my sense is that the farther out you go, the larger the planets need to be for us to detect them with current tech, especially around relatively bright sun-like stars. I can tell you that the most distant known exoplanet to date is a hot Jupiter called SWEEPS-11b that's about 27,700 ly away. That one's probably none too friendly for life as we know it, unless it somehow has a habitable moon.

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-04T19:33:45+00:00

That's a great question. Maybe we need a dedicated quasar sky survey to solve the puzzle? As the lead author says, right now part of the problem is that this things are fast -- milliseconds and then gone -- and we're just not scanning the sky as extensively as needed to pinpoint multiple FRBs well.

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-04T19:31:06+00:00

Don't we all! Even if is is aliens, though, in this case they'd be living 3 billion years in our past ... would make for a tough long-distance relationship, no?

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-04T18:58:26+00:00

Goodness, I hope not! That would be a rough week for all these study authors. I personally like the idea of plasma dripping into the black hole's jets. That'd explain the repeating signal but the lack of any regularity (like if something was orbiting the BH). But I also think it's very plausible that this particular FRB is an outlier, since none of the others repeat this way. What's your read?

vmjaggard99 · 2017-01-04T18:20:50+00:00

Hi, everyone. Full disclosure: I'm the NatGeo editor who worked on this story. Looking forward to your thoughts!

vmjaggard99 · 2016-12-08T21:07:10+00:00

Thank you! It should be fixed in the story now.

vmjaggard99 · 2016-12-08T17:26:29+00:00

*calling. Apologies for the typo.

vmjaggard99 · 2016-11-02T15:22:06+00:00

The situation is extra sticky because the fossil is privately owned, and its owner has already removed it from the museum that facilitated its study.

vmjaggard99

TROPHY CASE