Astrobiology is a scientific field within the life and environmental sciences that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe by investigating its deterministic conditions and contingent events. As a discipline, astrobiology is founded on the premise that life may exist beyond Earth.
The biosphere, also known as the ecosphere, is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on Earth. The biosphere is virtually a closed system with regard to matter, with minimal inputs and outputs. Regarding energy, it is an open system, with photosynthesis capturing solar energy at a rate of around 100 terawatts. By the most general biophysiological definition, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoiesis or biogenesis, at least some 3.5 billion years ago.
Extraterrestrial life, alien life, or colloquially simply aliens is life which does not originate from Earth. No extraterrestrial life has yet been conclusively detected. Such life might range from simple forms such as prokaryotes to intelligent beings, possibly bringing forth civilizations that might be far more advanced than humanity. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of sapient life elsewhere in the universe. The science of extraterrestrial life is known as astrobiology.
A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in which simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the simulation represents the evolution of the model over time. Another way to distinguish between the terms is to define simulation as experimentation with the help of a model. This definition includes time-independent simulations. Often, computers are used to execute the simulation.
The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laboratory. That agency was dissolved and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 1, 1958. NASA Ames is named in honor of Joseph Sweetman Ames, a physicist and one of the founding members of NACA. At last estimate NASA Ames had over US$3 billion in capital equipment, 2,300 research personnel and a US$860 million annual budget.
A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes. It includes replicating the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they react to applications of flight controls, the effects of other aircraft systems, and how the aircraft reacts to external factors such as air density, turbulence, wind shear, cloud, precipitation, etc. Flight simulation is used for a variety of reasons, including flight training, the design and development of the aircraft itself, and research into aircraft characteristics and control handling qualities.
FlightGear Flight Simulator is a free, open source multi-platform flight simulator developed by the FlightGear project since 1997.
SPICE is a general-purpose, open-source analog electronic circuit simulator. It is a program used in integrated circuit and board-level design to check the integrity of circuit designs and to predict circuit behavior.
Alexander Ivanovich Oparin was a Soviet biochemist notable for his theories about the origin of life, and for his book The Origin of Life.
In planetary astronomy and astrobiology, the Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances.
Driving simulators are used for entertainment as well as in training of driver's education courses taught in educational institutions and private businesses. They are also used for research purposes in the area of human factors and medical research, to monitor driver behavior, performance, and attention and in the car industry to design and evaluate new vehicles or new advanced driver assistance systems.
In computer network research, network simulation is a technique whereby a software program replicates the behavior of a real network. This is achieved by calculating the interactions between the different network entities such as routers, switches, nodes, access points, links, etc. Most simulators use discrete event simulation in which the modeling of systems in which state variables change at discrete points in time. The behavior of the network and the various applications and services it supports can then be observed in a test lab; various attributes of the environment can also be modified in a controlled manner to assess how the network/protocols would behave under different conditions.
The Carnegie Institution of Washington, known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. The institution is headquartered in Washington, D.C. As of June 30, 2020, the Institution's endowment was valued at $926.9 million. In 2018 the expenses for scientific programs and administration were $96.6 million. Eric Isaacs is president of the institution.
In biology, abiogenesis or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process, but the transition from non-life to life has never been observed experimentally.
Universe Sandbox is a series of interactive space sandbox gravity simulator educational software video games. Using Universe Sandbox, users can see the effects of gravity on objects in the universe and run scale simulations of the Solar System, various galaxies or other simulations, while at the same time interacting and maintaining control over gravity, time, and other objects in the universe, such as moons, planets, asteroids, comets, and black holes. The original Universe Sandbox was only available for Windows-based PCs, but an updated version was released for Windows, macOS, and Linux in 2015.
Crosslight Software Inc. is an international company headquartered in greater Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Officially spun off from the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in 1995, it provides Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) tools for semiconductor device and process simulations.
A number of significant scientific events occurred in 2018.
The ISS U.S. National Lab, commonly known as the ISS National Lab, is a U.S. government-funded national laboratory established on 30 December 2005 by the 2005 NASA Authorization Act. With principal research facilities located in the United States Orbital Segment (USOS) of the International Space Station (ISS), the Laboratory conducts research in life sciences, physical sciences, technology development and remote sensing for a broad range of academic, government and commercial users. Of the 270 payloads that the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) has sent to the ISS, 176 have been for commercial companies including Merck & Co., Novartis, Eli Lilly and Company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Honeywell, and Procter & Gamble.
Simulation-to-Flight 1 (STF-1) is a microsatellite built by the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility (IV&V) in Fairmont, West Virginia with the collaboration of the West Virginia Space Grants Consortium and West Virginia University.
The artificial sky is a daylight simulation device that replicates the light coming from the sky dome. An architectural scale model or 1:1 full-scaled aircraft is placed under an artificial sky to predict daylight penetration within buildings or aircraft that subjects to different situations, complex geometries, or heavily obstructed windows. The concept of the artificial sky was derived due to heliodon’s limitation in providing a stable lighting environment for evaluating the diffuse skylight component.
