An Australian mechanic is about to become a published scientific author after he contributed to the discovery of a four-planet solar system during a crowdsourced astronomy event.
Andrew Grey, a 26-year-old from Darwin, took part in the Stargazers Live event broadcast over three nights on the ABC this week.
Astronomers have found evidence for a hot and steamy atmosphere around an Earth-like planet that circles a red dwarf star in the southern sky.
The discovery marks one of the first times that scientists have spotted an atmosphere around a small, rocky world and brings them one step closer to the goal of finding life elsewhere in the universe.
The planet, which lies 39 light years away in the constellation of Vela, is not considered to be habitable itself, but astronomers regard it as a prime candidate for honing the instruments and techniques they will need to detect the existence of alien life on more hospitable worlds.
Not just one, but seven Earth-size planets that could potentially harbor life have been identified orbiting a tiny star not too far away, offering the first realistic opportunity to search for signs of alien life outside the solar system.
The planets orbit a dwarf star named Trappist-1, about 40 light-years, or 235 trillion miles, from Earth. That is quite close in cosmic terms, and by happy accident, the orientation of the orbits of the seven planets allows them to be studied in great detail.
Alien life could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics.
By Caleb Scharf
Illustration by Tianhua Mao
Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke was being uncharacteristically unambitious. He once pointed out that any sufficiently advanced technology is going to be indistinguishable from magic. If you dropped in on a bunch of Paleolithic farmers with your iPhone and a pair of sneakers, you’d undoubtedly seem pretty magical. But the contrast is only middling: The farmers would still recognize you as basically like them, and before long they’d be taking selfies. But what if life has moved so far on that it doesn’t just appear magical, but appears like physics?
When we look for living things beyond Earth, we look for places where liquid water can exist. Our cells are surrounded by a flexible envelope of specialized lipids and filled with mostly-water and so are the cells of the living things that we have encountered so far. What if that isn’t the only way to build a cell?
Above are two spheres. The top one is a fresh computer model from a team at Cornell University who have made a hypothetical cell membrane out of nitrogen compounds that they’re calling an azotosome. What makes it different is that it doesn’t freeze even at extreme temperatures, say, -292°C. It behaves very much like our own cell membranes, and has shown itself to be quite resilient and flexible in simulations.
And where might you find the right nitrogen compounds and conditions like these? Look to the other sphere: Titan, one of Saturn’s largest moons. It’s surprisingly hospitable for somewhere so cold, having oceans of ethane and methane, a thick atmosphere and even weather of sorts. The research group says not to expect little green men though, maybe think closer to bacteria and virus-like particles. It’s life, but not at all as we know it.
I floop-floopian LOVE this guy’s stuff, so much…His designs give me chills in a way I’ve felt on only a handful of occasions since first reading EXPEDITION over 25 years ago.The most abstracted of his creations approach the level of otherworldliness I associate with true “aliens”–organisms generated independently by biotic processes occurring on a remote world in total isolation from terrestrial evolution. Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair!
I floop-floopian LOVE this guy’s stuff, so much…His designs give me chills in a way I’ve felt on only a handful of occasions since first reading EXPEDITION over 25 years ago.The most abstracted of his creations approach the level of otherworldliness I associate with true “aliens”–organisms generated independently by biotic processes occurring on a remote world in total isolation from terrestrial evolution. Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair!
In July of 2015, the world was stunned to learn that Pluto, a tiny, distant dot that some didn’t even consider a planet, was a dynamic, complex, and beautiful world. It’s still geologically active, it has an atmosphere, and it may have an ocean buried under its icy surface.
All of this is now known thanks to New Horizons, a probe that launched in 2006 to complete the tour of the solar system. But for scientists in pursuit of Pluto’s secrets since the late 1980s, it was a long wait. The mission faced political hurdles, budget battles, technical challenges, and near-disaster even as it was days away from speeding past Pluto.
Alan Stern, the mission’s dogged principal investigator, and astrobiologist David Grinspoon talk about the decades-long effort to visit Pluto, the little space probe that could, and what’s left to explore in the far reaches of the solar system. Listen to the interview here.
Photo by Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC)
“Maybe we’re on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there - the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we’re on Mars because we have to be, because there’s a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we’ve been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to, is Mars. But whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.”
Finding life on Mars has captured the imagination of generations, but experts still aren’t sure what exactly we’re looking for. The Danakil Depression in Ethiopia, with a landscape of boiling pools of water and mounds of salt and sulfur that itself seems extraterrestrial, might offer some clues. Despite being one of the lowest, hottest and driest places on Earth, the region is host to extremophiles–– microbes that thrive in these inhospitable conditions.
Dr. Felipe Gómez Gómez of the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, who is working on isolating and studying these bacteria, believes learning to identify life in extreme environments here on Earth is the key to identifying any alien life that might be out there.
“What is life? What are the limits of life? Scientists don’t agree on what is life,” Dr. Gómez said. “If we find life on Mars, would we be able to recognize it? We don’t know.”
These organisms might also provide insight into how potential life-forms might survive in the sparse environment of Mars. From the article:
These simple organisms can survive with a “very small battery,” and were probably among the first bacteria on Earth, Dr. Gómez said. “That is what makes them so interesting from an astrobiological point of view.”
Organisms such as chemolithotrophs don’t require traditional means of sustenance like light and organic compounds and instead use inorganic compounds such as sulfide, hydrogen and ammonia as energy sources. Though they might be a far cry from little green men with antennae, they could offer us a more realistic idea of what to expect if and when we finally make “first contact”.
NASA Is Planning A Mission To Europa, One of the Best Candidates For Alien Life!
During a live stream earlier today, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden outlined the space agency’s healthy US$18.5 billion budget for the 2016 financial year - half a billion dollars more than expected.
But what was really exciting about the announcement was that Bolden also explained that US$100 million of that would go towards planning for a mission to Europa - Jupiter’s fourth largest moon.
The long-awaited news was met with plenty of applause on Twitter, and for good reason - Europa is one of the Solar System’s prime candidates for harbouring extraterrestrial life. And yet, up until now, we’ve paid relatively little attention to the moon.
As one of Jupiter’s 63 known satellites, Europa is only a little bit smaller than our own Moon, with a diameter of 3,120 km. But what makes it really compelling to astrobiologists is that, beneath its icy surface lies a huge, liquid ocean, completely covering its rocky core.
As astronomer Phil Plait explained over at his Bad Astronomy blog on Slate in November last year, this water is estimated to be salty, and also around 100 km thick - up to 10 times deeper than Earth’s oceans. In fact, telescope observations and data on the moon, gathered by passing spacecraft, suggest that Europa may hold two to three times more liquid water than Earth.
And where there’s liquid water, there’s often life, which makes it a very tantalising place to explore.
Thevideo below, produced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory last year explains brilliantly just why the moon is such an exciting prospect.
As the narrator, astrobiologist Kevin Hand, explains, usually Europa’s distance from the Sun would mean that all its liquid would be frozen. But because Europa is orbitting Jupiter, it has a strong tidal tug, and all of that energy is converted into mechanical energy. That mechanical energy becomes friction and then heat, which allows the H2O on the moon to stay liquid - not just at the moment, but for much of the history of the Solar System, researchers estimate.
This tidal energy, excitingly, may also cause Europa’s ocean to interact with the rocks on the sea floor, astrobiologists predict, and may have triggered hydrothermal vents, which could not just provide the building blocks for life, but also the energy for life.
But until recently, we haven’t had the proven robotic technology needed to explore beneath the moon’s icy cap. Now, it seems, the time is finally right.
Of course, there’s no word yet on exactly what NASA’s mission will entail, and with only US$100 million allocated to the project, it seems as though the 2016 fiscal year won’t involve much more than planning. But it’s still hugely exciting news.
AsPlait explained back in November (with freakish foresight):
“I will not be surprised in the least if, for the next fiscal year budget, NASA asks for a Europa mission, including something as dramatic and unprecedented and as some hardware that can penetrate the ice and take a peek into Europa’s dark, briny depths … This is something I think NASA should be doing: Pushing the frontier, doing what only a national space agency can do. This would be a huge undertaking, and one that would fire up the public imagination like nothing before it since Apollo.”
You can see the full breakdown of NASA’s budget here
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has safely landed on our red neighbour. These are the first pictures that it sent back to Earth, moments after making contact! They were taken with the Perseverance’s Hazard cameras. In the next few days it will send more images that are higher quality.
With the main mission objective of astrobiology, Perseverance hopes to help answer the age old question- has there ever been life on Mars?
What do you think? Are we alone in the universe? Send me a message and let me know what you think!
The history of biotechnological intervention on the human body has always been tied to conceptual frameworks of disability and mental health, but certain biases and assumptions have forcibly altered and erased the public awareness of that understanding. As humans move into a future of climate catastrophe, space travel, and constantly shifting understanding s of our place in the world, we will be increasingly confronted with concerns over who will be used as research subjects, concerns over whose stakeholder positions will be acknowledged and preferenced, and concerns over the kinds of changes that human bodies will necessarily undergo as they adapt to their changing environments, be they terrestrial or interstellar. Who will be tested, and how, so that we can better understand what kinds of bodyminds will be “suitable” for our future modes of existence?[1] How will we test the effects of conditions like pregnancy and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in space, and what will happen to our bodies and minds after extended exposure to low light, zero gravity, high-radiation environments, or the increasing warmth and wetness of our home planet?
During the June 2018 “Decolonizing Mars” event at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, several attendees discussed the fact that the bodyminds of disabled folx might be better suited to space life, already being oriented to pushing off of surfaces and orienting themselves to the world in different ways, and that the integration of body and technology wouldn’t be anything new for many people with disabilities. In that context, I submit that cyborgs and space travel are, always have been, and will continue to be about disability and marginalization, but that Western society’s relationship to disabled people has created a situation in which many people do everything they can to conceal that fact from the popular historical narratives about what it means for humans to live and explore. In order to survive and thrive, into the future, humanity will have to carefully and intentionally take this history up, again, and consider the present-day lived experience of those beings—human and otherwise—whose lives are and have been most impacted by the socioethical contexts in which we talk about technology and space.
This paper explores some history and theories about cyborgs—humans with biotechnological interventions which allow them to regulate their own internal bodily process—and how those compare to the realities of how we treat and consider currently-living people who are physically enmeshed with technology. I’ll explore several ways in which the above-listed considerations have been alternately overlooked and taken up by various theorists, and some of the many different strategies and formulations for integrating these theories into what will likely become everyday concerns in the future. In fact, by exploring responses from disabilities studies scholars and artists who have interrogated and problematized the popular vision of cyborgs, the future, and life in space, I will demonstrate that our clearest path toward the future of living with biotechnologies is a reengagement with the everyday lives of disabled and other marginalized persons, today.
SoThe U.S. Transhumanist Party recently released some demographic info on their first 1,000 members, and while they seem to be missing some some rather crucial demographic markers, here, such as age and ethnicity, the gender breakdown is about what you’d expect.
I mention this because back at the end of June I attended the Decolonizing Mars Unconference, at the Library of Congress in D.C. It was the first time I had been in those buildings since I was a small child, and it was for such an amazing reason.
We discussed many topics, all in the interest of considering what it would really mean to travel through space to another planet, and to put humans and human interests there, longterm. Fundamentally, our concern was, is it even possible to do all of this without reproducing the worst elements of the colonialist projects we’ve seen on Earth, thus far, and if so, how do we do that?
Flying pseudoarthropods come in many shapes,the countless micro-habitats and biomes of the Mundodendralis are a great canvas for mother nature. The C-fan, Aemulopterus flabellifera, is one of these creatures. It belongs to a group that lost its middle pair of wings and is more build for mobility than speed. They are also characterized by their modified tails that are used to distract and scare of predators but also to impress the opposite sex in skillful “scarf dances”. Both lateral and the dorsal jaw work together as a sucking pipe while the ventral jaw is actually used as a weapon. The animal feeds in the juice of the largest trees, it is however not powerful enough to pierce the bark of the gigantic lifeforms. Instead they live in symbiosis with a family of cuspipods that usually lives under large branches where they glue themselves to the bark once they reach maturity. At that point both animals depend very much on each other, the Aemulopterusget the surplus of juice from the cuspipods, which even offer places to rest by stretching out some of their legs so that the pseudoarthropods can grab them with their anal trunks. On the other hand the Aemulopterus protect the cuspipods and take care of the reproduction of the immobile creatures by carrying spermatophores between the individuals of their colony.
Different species of these pseudoarthropods and cuspipods have evolved to coexist together, they differ in form of their “beaks”, colors of their tails and the preferred location of their feeding grounds. Some cuspipods even offer a second tread to their protectors by producing a venomous cocktail that the Aemulopteruscan carry and inject with their lower jaw.
Rock Art Draws Scientists to Ancient Lakes|Astrobio.net
Life imitates art. And sometimes science does the same.
Seven thousand year-old rock paintings in the Sahara desert have, somewhat serendipitously, helped uncover evidence of ancient lake beds.
Researchers discovered the mineral remnants of the lake while studying a region well-known for its rock art. The most famous example is the Cave of the Swimmers, which provided a setting in the movie “The English Patient.” The drawings in the cave depict humans that appear to be swimming, floating and diving. And yet this area in southwestern Egypt is one of the driest in the world.
