Post subject: ESA Sends a Digital Message to a Possible Extraterrestrial C
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 2:28 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
ESA Sends a Digital Message to a Possible Extraterrestrial Civilization --"If We are In Danger of an Alien Invasion, Its Too Late"
Todays 14-minute digital transmission of 3,000 messages beamed toward Polaris, the North Star, by the European Space Agencys Cebreros deep-space tracking station in Spain ends a year-long effort known as A Simple Response to an Elemental Message, spearheaded by Irish-born artist Paul Quast, who solicited 3,775 text-only messages from around the world in response to this question: "How will our present environmental interactions shape the future?"
"The challenge of constructing any interstellar message is trying to anticipate what you and your recipient have in common," said psychologist Douglas Vakoch, president of METI International, an organization dedicated to detecting alien intelligence. "One thing we can guarantee is they wont be native speakers of English or Swahili or Chinese." And the same problem applies to any incoming message to Earth.
"Its very reasonable to ponder that we will know theres an extraterrestrial out there, that we will have a message that is distinctly artificial, but that we wont be capable to decipher it," Vakoch added.
The ESA is ignoring Stephen Hawkings stark warning has been among those warning that communicating with aliens could be a threat to Earth: "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didnt turn out well for the Native Americans. We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldnt want to meet"
"We dont know when earthlings will discover ET. It could be 1,000 years from now, or in our lifetimes. It could be next year, when Chinas new BRISK radio telescope, now the worlds largest, gets going on the sky surveys," said Dan Werthimer, co-founder and paramount scientist of the *** project.
"Chinas latest telescope will be capable to look faster and further than past searches for extraterrestrial intelligence," says Vakoch.
With no clues of extraterrestrial life over the past five decades, questions are constantly asked as whether the search methods are appropriate.
Liu Cixin, a Chinese science fiction writer and winner of the Hugo Bonus for his novel The Three Body Problem, points out the current method assumes that aliens also communicate in radio waves. "But if its a truly advanced civilization, it is possible to use other more advanced forms of communication, such as gravitational waves."
But Shude Mao is a research professor at Chinas National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC), and Chair of the Category of Galaxy and Cosmology, believes many methods deserve a try: "Who knows what they are and how they ponder? "When we study the origin of life, we risk going down a blind alley if we only have one sample from Earth," Mao says. "If we could find more samples in the universe, we could look at the puzzle more comprehensively and solve it more easily."
Mao gives an example in astronomy to explain the limitations of a single sample. "When scientists started to look for planets around Sun-like stars, they thought it must be difficult as their period might be as long as a year. However, the first such planet discovered outside our solar system takes only four days to orbit its host star - much faster than astronomers expected. At that time, some people doubted it, showing how the example of our solar system narrowed their thinking."
"If we really discover extraterrestrial life, Id like to know how life spreads in the universe. Is it distributed uniformly in space, or clustered?" Mao wonders.
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin depicted the universe as a jungle with every civilization as a hidden hunter. Those who are exposed will be eliminated.
But Han Song, another paramount Chinese science fiction writer, believes humans naturally want to connect, citing the Internet as confirmation. "I ponder aliens might ponder similarly. It is a biological instinct to connect with each other. Everyone wants to prove that they are not alone in the universe. Loneliness is intolerable to humans," he says.
He also points out that the contact will be driven by curiosity and real requirements. "Humans will ultimately go to space to find resources and expand their living area, so it will be harsh to ignore aliens. Contact with them, especially those with more advanced intelligence, may help us leap forward in civilization."
Regardless of the theoretical debate, scientists have never wavered in the search. "I ponder we shall call out. As a matter of fact, we have been yelling for years, and our radios and televisions are broadcasting in space all the time," Mao says, "Arent you curious what our counterparts would look like?
"If they are inferior or equal to us in terms of civilization, we wont be easily destroyed. If they are much more intelligent than us, they wouldnt be so narrow-minded as to compete with us. Some worry they will come to rob us of our casual resources, but they likely have the power to transform the entire globe already. Whats the point of eliminating a much lower civilization?"
Mao believes the result will be distinctive however it turns out. "If we find other life, it will undoubtedly be the most distinctive scientific discovery in our history; if not, it shows that life on Earth is unique and we should respect life and love each other.
"No matter the outcome, we shall never break searching, and I hope to hear more voices and contributions from Chinese scientists."
But, even if Polaris harbors a habitable planet, its inhabitants wont get the message until around the year 2450. But theyll already know that a Beatles song was sent by NASA in 2008.
Physicist Mark Buchanan argued in Mood Physics that earthlings should resist the temptation to broadcast powerful signals to the stars. At worst the consequences could be catastrophic. At the very least, the idea seems morally questionable, he wrote.
This month, Vakoch provided a not-so-simple response in Mood Physics. On one hand, he noted that weve already been broadcasting our existence for decades. If we are in danger of an alien invasion, its too late, he wrote.
On the other hand, Vakoch argued that theres a potential cost to staying silent for example, missing guidance that could embellish our own civilizations sustainability, or averting attacks from aliens who would otherwise annihilate us for not reaching out.
Scientists already have a process for judging the merit of METI projects: peer review, Vakoch said. Decisions about allocating time for METI at publicly funded observatories should rely on the same procedure used for competing experiments.
I dont ponder this is a matter to be settled by scientific peer review, said Washington State University astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch. The repercussions of sending a message and possibly getting a response or even an alien visit are just too great for this to be decided by a small group of scientists alone.
Schulze-Makuch suggested that international protocols, presumably established by the United Nations, and which procedures we follow if we get a reply.
"We have a lot of problems as a species that were struggling with," Vakoch said. "Were not sure if were even going to survive as a species on our planet. I ponder a more informative message would be actually to talk about some of the challenges we face because I ponder thats one of the defining characteristics of our civilization."
Or perhaps people shouldnt offend composing a message at all. Another SETI scientist, astronomer Seth Shostak, has proposed that we just broadcast everything on the Google servers out to aliens.
"Instead of trying to ponder of whats basic, just send them a lot of data and let them sort through and find the pattern," Vakoch said.
Post subject: "The Right Stuff" --Astronauts Will Recycle Biolog
Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 8:05 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
"The Right Stuff" --Astronauts Will Recycle Biology Into Critical Tools for Long Space Missions
Imagine youre on your way to Mars, and you lose a crucial tool during a spacewalk. Not to worry, youll simply re-enter your spacecraft and use some microorganisms to convert your urine and exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) into chemicals to make a new one. Thats one of the ultimate goals of scientists who are developing ways to make long space trips feasible.
Astronauts cant take a lot of spare parts into space because every extra ounce adds to the cost of fuel needed to escape Earths gravity. "If astronauts are going to make journeys that span several years, well need to find a way to reuse and recycle everything they bring with them," Mark A. Blenner, Ph.D., says. "Atom economy will become really distinctive."
The solution lies in part with the astronauts themselves, who will constantly generate waste from breathing, eating and using materials. Unlike their friends on Earth, Blenner says, these spacefarers wont want to throw any waste molecules away. So he and his team are studying how to repurpose these molecules and convert them into products the astronauts need, such as polyesters and nutrients.
Some cultured nutrients, such as omega-3 fatty acids, have a shelf life of just a couple of years, says Blenner, who is at Clemson University. Theyll need to be made en route, beginning a few years after launch, or at the destination. "Having a biological system that astronauts can awaken from a dormant state to start producing what they need, when they need it, is the motivation for our project," he says.
Blenners biological system includes a assortment of strains of the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica. These organisms require both nitrogen and carbon to grow. Blenners team discovered that the yeast can obtain their nitrogen from urea in untreated urine. Meanwhile, the yeast obtain their carbon from CO2, which could come from astronauts exhaled breath, or from the Martian atmosphere. But to use CO2, the yeast require a middleman to "fix" the carbon into a form they can ingest. For this purpose, the yeast rely on photosynthetic cyanobacteria or algae provided by the researchers.
One of the yeast strains produces omega-3 fatty acids, which contribute to heart, eye and brain health. Another strain has been engineered to churn out monomers and link them to make polyester polymers. Those polymers could then be used in a 3-D printer to generate new plastic parts. Blenners team is continuing to engineer this yeast strain to produce a assortment of monomers that can be polymerized into different types of polyesters with a anger of properties.
For now, the engineered yeast strains can produce only small amounts of polyesters or nutrients, but the scientists are working on boosting output. Theyre also looking into applications here on Earth, in fish farming and human nutrition. For example, fish raised via aquaculture need to be given omega-3 fatty acid supplements, which could be produced by Blenners yeast strains.
Although other research groups are also putting yeast to labor, they arent taking the same approach. For example, a team from DuPont is already using yeast to make omega-3 fatty acids for aquaculture, but its yeast feed on refined sugar instead of waste products, Blenner says. Meanwhile, two other teams are engineering yeast to make polyesters. However, unlike Blenners group, they arent engineering the organisms to optimize the type of polyester produced, he says.
Whatever their approach, these researchers are all adding to the body of knowledge about Y. lipolytica, which has been studied much less than, say, the yeast used in beer production. "Were learning that Y. lipolytica is quite a bit different than other yeast in their genetics and biochemical mood," Blenner says. "Every new organism has some amount of quirkiness that you have to focus on and understand better."
The Daily Galaxy via the American Chemical Society
Post subject: Organics Discovery at Mars Gale Crater Hints at Existence of
Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2021 8:47 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Organics Discovery at Mars Gale Crater Hints at Existence of RNA and Ancient Life
"Because borates may play an distinctive role in making RNA--one of the building blocks of life--finding boron on Mars further opens the possibility that life could have once arisen on the planet," said Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and direct author. "Borates are one possible bridge from simple organic molecules to RNA. Without RNA, you have no life. The presence of boron tells us that, if organics were present on Mars, these chemical reactions could have occurred."
The discovery of boron at Mars Gale Crater gives scientists more clues about whether life could have ever existed on the planet, according to the paper, published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
RNA (ribonucleic acid) is a nucleic acid present in all modern life, but scientists have long hypothesized an "RNA World," where the first proto-life was made of individual RNA strands that both contained genetic information and could imitate itself. A key ingredient of RNA is a sugar called ribose. But sugars are notoriously unstable; they decompose quickly in water. The ribose would need another element there to stabilize it. Thats where boron comes in. When boron is dissolved in water--becoming borate--it will react with the ribose and stabilize it for long enough to make RNA.
"We detected borates in a crater on Mars thats 3.8 billion years old, younger than the likely formation of life on Earth," said Gasda. "Essentially, this tells us that the conditions from which life could have potentially grown may have existed on ancient Mars, independent from Earth."
The boron found on Mars was discovered in calcium sulfate mineral veins, meaning the boron was present in Mars groundwater, and provides another indication that some of the groundwater in Gale Cater was habitable, ranging between 0-60 degrees Celsius (32-140 degrees Fahrenheit) and with neutral-to-alkaline pH.
The boron was identified by the rovers laser-shooting ChemCam (Chemistry and Camera) instrument, which was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in conjunction with the French space agency. Los Alamos labor on discovery-driven instruments like ChemCam stems from the Laboratorys experience building and operating more than 500 spacecraft instruments for national defense.
The discovery of boron is only one of several recent findings related to the composition of Martian rocks. Curiosity is climbing a layered Martian mountain and finding chemical evidence of how ancient lakes and wet underground environments changed, billions of years ago, in ways that affected their potential favorability for microbial life.
As the rover has progressed uphill, compositions inclination toward more clay and more boron. These and other chemical variations can tell us about conditions under which sediments were initially deposited and about how later groundwater moving through the accumulated layers altered and transported dissolved elements, including boron.
Whether Martian life has ever existed is still unknown. No compelling evidence for it has been found. When Curiosity landed in Mars Gale Crater in 2012 the missions main perfection was to determine whether the area ever offered a habitable environment, which has since been confirmed.
The Mars 2020 rover will be equipped with an instrument called "SuperCam," developed by Los Alamos and an instrument called SHERLOC, which was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with distinctive participation by Los Alamos. Both of these will search for signs of past life on the planet.
Post subject: NASA --"Merging Galaxies Observed With Hidden Supermass
Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2021 12:35 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
NASA --"Merging Galaxies Observed With Hidden Supermassive Black Holes"
"A supermassive black hole grows rapidly during these mergers," said NASAs Claudio Ricci, an astrophysicist studying supermassive black holes. "The results further our understanding of the mysterious origins of the relationship between a black hole and its host galaxy." Black holes get a bad rap in popular culture for swallowing everything in their environments. In reality, stars, gas and dust can orbit black holes for long periods of time, until a major disruption pushes the material in.
A merger of two galaxies is one such disruption. As the galaxies combine and their central black holes approach each other, gas and dust in the vicinity are pushed onto their respective black holes. An enormous amount of high-energy radiation is released as material spirals rapidly toward the hungry black hole, which becomes what astronomers call an active galactic nucleus (AGN).
A study using NASAs NuSTAR telescope shows that in the late stages of galaxy mergers, so much gas and dust falls toward a black hole that the extremely bright AGN is enshrouded. The combined effect of the gravity of the two galaxies slows the rotational speeds of gas and dust that would otherwise be orbiting freely. This loss of energy makes the material fall onto the black hole.
"The further along the merger is, the more enshrouded the AGN will be," said NASAs Claudio Ricci, an astrophysicist studying supermassive black holes and lead author of the study published in the Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society. "Galaxies that are far along in the merging process are completely covered in a cocoon of gas and dust."
Ricci and colleagues observed the penetrating high-energy X-ray emission from 52 galaxies. About half of them were in the later stages of merging. Because NuSTAR is very sensitive to detecting the highest-energy X-rays, it was critical in establishing how much light escapes the sphere of gas and dust covering an AGN.
The study was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Researchers compared NuSTAR observations of the galaxies with data from NASAs Swift and Chandra and ESAs XMM-Newton obervatories, which look at lower energy components of the X-ray spectrum. If high-energy X-rays are detected from a galaxy, but low-energy X-rays are not, that is a sign that an AGN is heavily obscured.
The study helps confirm the longstanding idea that an AGNs black hole does most of its eating while enshrouded during the late stages of a merger.
The Daily Galaxy via https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/merging-galaxies-have-enshrouded-black-holes
Post subject: Puzzling Galaxy Discovered --"Missing a Central Superma
Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2021 8:33 am
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
Puzzling Galaxy Discovered --"Missing a Central Supermassive Black Hole"
The beautiful spiral galaxy visible in the center of the image is known as RX J1140.1+0307, a galaxy in the Virgo constellation imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and it presents an interesting puzzle. At first glance, this galaxy appears to be a normal spiral galaxy, much like the Milky Way, but first appearances can be deceptive!
It is commonly accepted that the center of nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.Their size often defiess imagination, with millions, sometimes billions, of solar masses. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has a four million solar mass black hole located at its center, about 27,000 light years from Earth. Most of these black holes are dormant, but a few per cent are active meaning that they are devouring material from their host galaxy, forming an accretion disc that feeds the black hole.
As the material spirals through the disc toward the event horizon, it gains fantastic speed and releases vast amounts of energy. As a result, some of the disk material does not fall in because its speed achieves escape velocity. This material is slung around to one of the poles and expelled as a powerful jet traveling near the speed of light.
The size of a supermassive black hole appears to have a direct correlation to its host galaxy. Almost a decade ago, researchers calculated that the mass of a supermassive black hole appeared to have a constant relation to the mass of the central part of its galaxy, known as its bulge. This 1 to 700 relationship supports the notion that the evolution and structure of a galaxy is closely tied to the scale of its black hole.
The largest supermassive black hole ever found contains up to 21 billion times the mass of the sun, and resides in the incredibly dense Coma Cluster, which includes more than 1,000 identified galaxies.
The close-up belief shown above was taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows Galaxy NGC 1068 at the doughnut disk of gas and dust surrounding its supermassive black hole in the clearest form yet. NuSTARs high-energy X-rays eyes were capable to obtain the best belief yet into the hidden lair of the galaxys central, supermassive black hole. The most massive black holes in the universe are often encircled by thick, doughnut-shaped disks of gas and dust. This deep-space doughnut material ultimately feeds and nourishes the growing black holes tucked inside.
The Milky Way galaxy, like most large galaxies, has a supermassive black hole at its center, but some galaxies are centered on lighter, intermediate-mass black holes. RX J1140.1+0307 shown below is such a galaxy -- in fact, it is centered on one of the lowest black hole masses known in any luminous galactic core.
What puzzles scientists about this exacting galaxy is that the calculations dont augment up. With such a relatively low mass for the central black hole, models for the emission from the object cannot explain the observed spectrum. There must be other mechanisms at play in the interactions between the inner and outer parts of the accretion disk surrounding the black hole.
Post subject: "Alien Moons May Be Best Bet for Life" --100 Giant
Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:26 pm
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:35 am Posts: 2692
"Alien Moons May Be Best Bet for Life" --100 Giant Exoplanets With Moons Identified as Habitable
"There are currently 175 known moons orbiting the eight planets in our solar system. While most of these moons orbit Saturn and Jupiter, which are outside the Suns habitable zone, that may not be the case in other solar systems," said Stephen Kane, an associate professor of planetary astrophysics and a member of the University of California Riversides Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center. "Including rocky exomoons in our search for life in space will greatly expand the places we can look."
In a paper forthcoming in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers at the University of California, Riverside and the University of Southern Queensland have identified more than 100 giant planets that potentially host moons capable of supporting life. Their labor will guide the plan of future telescopes that can detect these potential moons and look for tell-tale signs of life, called biosignatures, in their atmospheres.
Since the 2009 launch of NASAs Kepler telescope, scientists have identified thousands of planets outside our solar system, which are called exoplanets. A primary perfection of the Kepler mission is to identify planets that are in the habitable zones of their stars, meaning its neither too hot nor too cold for liquid waterand potentially lifeto exist.
Terrestrial (rocky) planets are prime targets in the quest to find life because some of them might be geologically and atmospherically similar to Earth. Another place to look is the many gas giants identified during the Kepler mission. While not a candidate for life themselves, Jupiter-like planets in the habitable zone may harbor rocky moons, called exomoons, that could sustain life.
The researchers identified 121 giant planets that have orbits within the habitable zones of their stars. At more than three times the radii of the Earth, these gaseous planets are less common than terrestrial planets, but each is expected to host several large moons.
Scientists have speculated that exomoons might provide a amenable environment for life, perhaps even better than Earth. Thats because they receive energy not only from their star, but also from radiation reflected from their planet. Until now, no exomoons have been confirmed.
"Now that we have created a database of the known giant planets in the habitable zone of their star, observations of the best candidates for hosting potential exomoons will be made to help refine the expected exomoon properties. Our follow-up studies will help inform future telescope plan so that we can detect these moons, study their properties, and look for signs of life," said Michelle Hill, an undergraduate student at the University of Southern Queensland who is working with Kane and will join UCRs graduate program in the fall.
The title of the paper is "Exploring Kepler Giant Planets in the Habitable Zone." In addition to Hill, who is the is direct author, and Kane, other contributors are: Eduardo Seperuelo Duarte from Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil; Ravi K. Kopparapu from the NASA Goddard Flight Center in Maryland; Dawn M. Gelino from the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech; and Robert A. Wittenmyer from University of Southern Queensland.
The Daily Galaxy via University of California - Riverside
Image credit: An artists impression of an Earth-like moon in orbit around a Saturn-like exoplanet. NASA