Weird Rocks on Mars

 Perhaps you have seen videos or pictures of rocks very carefully stacked as an artistic work. They may even look impossibly balanced. 

Balanced Rocks. Wikipedia.

    Or you may have seen so-called balancing rocks, with one huge boulder precariously sitting on a tiny point on top of another large boulder. These terrestrial balancing boulders weren’t created by humans, but rather by wind and water erosion.

Balancing rocks formed by erosion. Nevada Traveler

Scientists studying the images and data sent back by the Perseverance rover on Mars found an unusual sight. It appears to be three or four rocks neatly stacked one on top of the other. It rather resembles a hamburger with an oversized patty or an undersized bun. The patty in the middle looks as if it broke because the bun was too small. The rocks fit together so perfectly that they look as if they were stacked by human hands. Scientists attribute the stacked appearance to wind erosion of a single rock. Some say it looks more like water erosion, but there hasn’t been any surface water on Mars for perhaps 3 billion years.

Staxcked rocks on Mars. NASA/JPL/Cal Tech

This find by Perseverance isn’t the only weird rock discovered on the surface of Mars. Perseverance photographed a rock with stripes or striations on it. It looks to the scientists studying the images and data from the rover to be volcanic in origin. It appears to have fallen from a layer of similar rock farther up the slopes of Jezero crater that Perseverance has been exploring since it landed. Athanasios Klidaras, a PhD student in planetary science at Purdue University, wrote in a statement on NASA's Science website, "Our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, but early interpretations are that igneous and/or metamorphic processes could have created its stripes."

Stripped rock on Mars. NASA/JPL/Cal Tech

One of the stranger rocks Perseverance imaged the researchers nicknamed "St. Pauls Bay." It is covered with hundreds of millimeter-sized, dark grey spheres. Some of them have tiny pinholes in them. Scientists believe these spheres to be concretions formed by the interaction of groundwater circulating through pores in the rock. It is also possible they were formed by volcanic activity. "Each of these formation mechanisms would have vastly different implications for the evolution of these rocks, so the team is working hard to determine their context and origin," the mission team said in the statement. "Placing these features in geologic context will be critical for understanding their origin and determining their significance for the geological history of the Jezero crater rim and beyond."

Studded rock on Mars. NASA/JPL/Cal Tech

While Perseverance’s main job is to look for evidence of past life on Mars, which it has yet to find, it is finding that the environment was once, long ago, conducive to life. It may yet find fossilized bacterial remains like those we have found on our planet.

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. After it is published there, I post that same column to my blog page.

This is reprinted with permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

Surprising Things We Have Launched to Space

 We have sent a lot of stuff to space. Along with more than 640 people, we’ve launched numerous non-human astronauts to space, including dozens of primates, over 30 Soviet dogs, mice, cats, jelly fish, tortoises, fish, and spiders. In 1947, the U.S. launched a group of fruit flies on a suborbital flight using a captured German V-2 rocket to study the effects of radiation. While they didn’t go into orbit, they were the first living things to reach space. We humans have launched more than 25,000 satellites into Earth orbit or beyond. Of those, nearly 17,000 still remain in orbit, but only around 14,200 remain operational.

Ham, the chimpanzee, launched in 1961. Credit NASA

All the above were launched to study the feasibility and safety of space flight or to study the effects of long-term weightlessness. But along with animals and humans, plus communication and weather satellites, Earth resources, and other scientific satellites, we have launched a few stranger items into space.

Several space missions have included small pieces of the Wright Flyer, the first airplane. On one such space flight, bits of the plane rode with Apollo 11 to the Moon’s surface. Those missions demonstrated how human flight has come full circle.

Several companies now offer “space burials,” sending cremated remains into space. Elysium Space is one of several such companies. With them, you can launch a small portion of one’s remains sealed in a small capsule. They offer such services as a “Shooting Star” memorial in which the remains are released into orbit where the small capsule falls back to earth, burning up like a shooting star. Or you might opt for a “Lunar Memorial” in which the remains are delivered to the Moon’s surface. In 1997, the first space burial involved sending remains of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, to enjoy the final frontier. Elysium claims the remains of more than 640 people have flown in space.

Tesla launched Elon Musk’s personal cherry red Tesla Roadster with a dummy astronaut sitting at the wheel in 2018. The car with “Starman” was sent into a solar orbit that took it out to the distance of Mars, and it still floats out there.

A significant part of NASA’s mission involves educating and exciting kids about space. NASA knows kids like dinosaurs, so in 1985, they launched some bones from a Maiasaur (“Good Mother”) dinosaur to be used for school educational programs. That was the first of multiple dinosaur fossils launched to space. Objects flown in space can sell to collectors for huge amounts of money, so some dinosaur fossils were simply flown to create a greater selling price.

Lego makes popular kid’s building block toys. NASA sent a Lego set to the International Space Station, hoping that such missions will inspire kids to consider fields in aerospace engineering.

Over the years, astronauts have smuggled object with them on space flights. Alan Shepard, Apollo 14 commander, smuggled 3 golf balls and a six iron club head modified to attach to a sample scoop handle. The first ball was barely hit and rolled into a small, nearby crater, the first lunar hole in one. The second was a better hit. Shepard claimed it went for “miles and miles” in the reduced lunar gravity, although subsequent analysis of the video by NASA engineers found it actually traveled a mere 40 yards. I’ve had shorter tee shots in my very short golfing career.

Scott Kelly in a gorilla costume onboard the ISS. Credit Scott Kelly

During astronaut Scott Kelly’s year-long mission on the ISS in 2016, his twin brother Mark secretly sent a gorilla suit on a cargo resupply mission. Scott wore it while chasing crewmates through the station. Videos of him cavorting as a gorilla are still available on the internet.

Who knows what strange object some space agency will next send to space?

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. After it is published there, I post that same column to my blog page.

This is reprinted with permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Awards

 Every year, NASA offers preliminary funding to several unusual projects. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program “nurtures visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions with the creation of breakthroughs – radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts.” Some of the past NIAC award-winning ideas that became a reality include the Ingenuity helicopter now flying on Mars and Cubesats, small one-foot cube satellites that can use smartphones as the onboard computers. You’ve always heard how powerful of a computer your iPhone is! Other funded NIAC proposals include such diverse projects as the 3-D printing of biomaterials such as arrays of cells and a proposal to use the sun as a gravitational lens to study exoplanet surfaces. One idea proposes using bacteria and fungi brought from Earth plus known gases and soil materials on Mars to create bioengineered building materials. This dramatically reduces the weight needed to be sent to Mars to create safe habitats for future Martian astronauts.

NASA awarded 13 new NIAC awards in 2023 for projects beginning this year. The two most exciting for me are a Venus Sample Return mission and sending a cluster of microsatellites to study the nearest exoplanet.

Over four decades ago, the Soviet Union landed multiple Venera probes on Venus. But conditions on Venus quickly overwhelmed them. Surface temperatures reach nearly 900 degrees, hot enough to melt lead. Atmospheric pressure is ninety times that on Earth. Although each of the 10 landers provided valuable information about the planet, the longest-lasting probe, Venera 12, only lasted 110 minutes.

One NIAC award went to a team that wants to use the high-temperature technology developed for probes that study the sun up close plus an innovative rocket engine design that can use fuel created from the gasses in the Venusian atmosphere to return samples from the surface of the planet. Venus may once have been much like Earth, but the runaway greenhouse conditions turned it into a hellish environment. This mission might allow us to better understand the conditions on Venus before that change.

The surface of Venus from Venera 13. Credit Russian Science Academy

The closest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years, 25 trillion miles, distant. Using our current fastest rocket technology, it would take us more than 50,000 years to reach it. A roughly Earth-sized planet, Proxima Centauri B, orbits the star. One NIAC award went to a group to study the feasibility of sending thousands of tiny spacecraft to study that planet. They plan to power them using a 100-gigawatt laser beamed at the swarm from Earth. The tiny crafts would work together creating the equivalent of a giant dish antenna to send signals back to Earth. They estimate the trip would take only 20 years and data returned at the speed of light requires only 4.2 years.

The nano-spacecraft would take 20 years to reach Alpha Centauri. Credit Breakthrough Starshot

Only a handful of NIAC awards lead to actual NASA missions. I hope these two come to full fruition.

 

NASA's Plan for a Permanent Lunar Colony

 If NASA’s current timeline works out, we will send astronauts to land on the Moon by 2026. One of their main tasks will be to set the foundation for a permanent lunar colony. The previous six lunar landing missions landed not far from the Moon’s equator. That isn’t the best location for the first lunar colony.

The problem is water. Water is necessary for astronauts, not only for drinking but also for oxygen and fuel. While water can be cooked out of lunar rocks, that process is slow and quite expensive. But water, or at least ice, does exist on the Moon. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) discovered it in the permanently shadowed craters at the Moon’s South Pole.

Cold Traps for Ice at Moon's South Pole. Credit NASA, KARI, Arizona State University

Deep craters there form “cold traps.” Comets and asteroids that contain water have crashed into the Moon for billions of years. Most of that water gets incorporated into the rocks or boiled away by the Moon’s 250-degree daytime temperature. But some wanders around the moon and ends up in these deep craters that never see sunlight. Over the eons, ice has accumulated in vast quantities in the cold traps there.

While NASA knew there was ice at the Moon’s South Pole, they needed detailed maps of exactly where the ice was located. That information has now been provided by South Korea Research Institute’s Danuri spacecraft. Among other instruments it carries is ShadowCam, a camera that is 200 times more sensitive than those aboard LRO. It can see even in very dark areas of the Moon in the dim light reflected by lunar mountains at the South Pole that stick up high enough to catch some sunlight in an otherwise dark region. Its images reveal the deep, dark craters where lunar ice hides from the heat of the sun.

These are prime sites for a lunar colony. Like Earth’s poles, the Moon’s South Pole receives continuous sunlight as the sun circles just above the horizon for months at a time. This allows the colony to collect solar energy for the colony located at the cold traps to provide the electricity needed to support a colony on the Moon.

The longest any Apollo astronauts stayed on the Moon in the 1970s was just under 75 hours. A permanent colony allows scientists to study the Moon for days or weeks at a time.

This will be our first step towards colonizing the Moon. Even on the hottest parts of the Moon, lava tubes, caves created by erupting volcanoes, can provide shelter. These locations will protect lunar residents from the heat of the day and -200 degree nights on the Moon. Some of these lava tubes are large enough to support whole cities.

Sooner than you might expect, the reality of people living on the Moon will catch up with science fiction.

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. After it is published there, I post that same column to my blog page.

 

This is reprinted with permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

 

James Webb Telescope Ready to Change Our Knowledge of the Universe

 Our most amazing astronomical photos come from the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble launched into space to bring us these detailed photos that have changed our understanding of the universe over 30 years ago. Hubble’s successor is the James Webb Space Telescope, now fully deployed. The JWST stands poised to change our perspective of the universe yet again. JWST has a much greater collecting area than Hubble and a more sensitive detector.

Hublle Space Telescope's collecting mirror compared to JWST's main mirror. Credit NASA

The JWST may change our understanding of our place in the cosmos by studying extrasolar planets, planets orbiting other stars. On Earth, plants cover much of our land surface. NASA launched the Galileo mission to Jupiter in 1989. On the way there, the spacecraft took a look back at Earth and detected our planet, vegetation red edge (VRE) biosignature, the mixture of red and infrared light reflected by plants, a signal JWST could observe from exoplanets.

Any exoplanet that bears life will likely have large areas covered with forest- and prairie-like plants just as on Earth. JWST possesses the capability to detect the VRE signal from such planets. While extensive plant cover won’t necessarily indicate the presence of intelligent life, it proves that life on those planets has evolved beyond the simple, single-celled forms that alone populated Earth for a billion years.

JWST’s detectors are sensitive enough to identify another tell-tale sign of life on alien planets. When a planet moves in front of its star, the starlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere, if it has one, allows the telescope to determine what gasses make up that atmosphere. Oxygen is a very reactive element. It is easily used up in chemical processes, such as combining with iron-bearing rock to turn it red, which is common on Earth. Our planet maintains a large supply of oxygen in our atmosphere because it is constantly replenished by photosynthesizing plants.

Methane is also a gas that can’t remain long in a planet’s atmosphere. On Earth, many forms of life give off methane. Think of cows burping. So, if a planet has a steady supply of methane in its atmosphere that likely indicates the presence of life.

JWST’s greatest contribution to our understanding of the universe will undoubtedly come from detailed images of astronomical objects and phenomena, just as with Hubble. But finding proof of extraterrestrial life may well be the most exciting discovery made by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

How Might the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life Affect Religions?

 Many of my columns focused on the likelihood of extraterrestrial life. Not necessarily intelligent aliens, but more likely microbial life. I’ve covered such topics as the discovery of planets around other stars, the chemistry necessary to support life, and where we have found it. I’ve talked about Earth creatures that can survive long stretches of time in space, like the hardy tardigrades.

The detection of life elsewhere, intelligent or not, would go down as one of the most profound discoveries in human history. I’ve always discussed this in scientific terms. That’s my background and the point of these columns.

Recently, NASA co-sponsored a study at Princeton University's Center for Theological Inquiry with two dozen theologians from many religions who discussed how humans might respond to the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

For centuries, the Catholic Church said that extraterrestrial life, at least intelligent life, couldn’t exist because the Son of God only came to Earth to save God’s creatures. In their minds, that meant only Earth possessed life. In the eyes of the early Church, no planets existed beyond our solar system

Those individuals who disputed the Church’s stance, like Giordano Bruno, faced strong retaliation. Among other “heretical” statements, Bruno said, “In space, there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns...” For this, among other heresies, Bruno was condemned to death in 1600.

We now know of many thousands of planets beyond our solar system, and astronomers believe that number likely exceeds one hundred billion. So how might religions react to the discovery of life out there? Study participant Rev. Dr. Andrew Davison of the University of Cambridge stated wrote in his forthcoming book on the study “Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine,” “The headline findings are that adherents of a range of religious traditions report that they can take the idea in their stride."

NASA takes a new look at Extraterrestrial life 

Credit NASA

Davison also states the nonreligious community tended to "overestimate the challenges that religious people" might face if extraterrestrial life were discovered. A "large number of people would turn to their religious traditions for guidance."

How might you react to such a discovery? At least according to this study, religious folks might have an easier philosophical time digesting it.

 *

The element carbon is ubiquitous on Earth. And, it is the basis of all life on our planet. Carbon, like many elements, comes in multiple forms called isotopes. Carbon has two stable isotopes, carbon-12 and carbon-13. Carbon-12 is by far the more common isotope, but all life on Earth prefers carbon-12, and the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 is higher in biological molecules than in non-biological molecules.

Recently, the Curiosity Rover drilled a hole into the Martian surface and found an enrichment of carbon-12 over carbon-13. Does this mean there’s life on Mars? Not necessarily, but if a scientist found such a discovery in any dirt on Earth, she would certainly assume so.

  

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

Is Anybody Out There? NASA Thinks So.

 Almost daily, someone, somewhere, reports seeing a UFO. Many of those claims are accompanied by shaky or blurry videos. Even the U.S. Navy has released videos from fighter jets of UAP flying objects that the military can’t explain. Yet, despite all of that anecdotal evidence, the majority of astronomers believe that there is not a shred of hard evidence of extraterrestrial visitations. Most astronomers do, however, believe that life does exist in locations other than Earth, perhaps even in our own solar system. Even NASA’s official position is that extraterrestrial life seems almost inevitable, and perhaps it is time we seriously prepare for finding it.

In a new scientific commentary led by NASA’s chief scientist, James Green, the space agency’s researchers believe now is the time to create a framework for reporting evidence of extraterrestrial life. “Our generation could realistically be the one to discover evidence of life beyond Earth,” the team writes. It is quite unlikely, the researchers believe, that a single event or discovery will unambiguously prove the existence of alien life. It is far more likely, they state, that the discovery of such life will be a long-term process with evidence coming in piecemeal. Our ideas and beliefs will likely change as a result of scientific study. “History includes many claims of life detection that later proved incorrect or ambiguous,” the researchers state. We need, they say, to “recast the search for life as a progressive endeavor, where we convey the value of observations that are contextual or suggestive but not definitive and emphasize that false starts and dead ends are an expected part of a healthy scientific process.”

How NASA envisions a possible alien visitation. Image credit: NASA

The researchers want to avoid splashy headlines that prove upon further analysis to be a false discovery of alien life. They feel we need to establish criteria for a “confidence of life detection” (CoLD) scale. The lowest levels of the CoLD scale might be represented by possible identification of plausible biosignatures, signs that an alien planet might be able to support life. Higher levels of the CoLD scale should be reserved for specifically defined measurements of the existence of life. Their goal is to establish a common set of criteria for progressively establishing the existence of alien life.

I suppose the highest level of the CoLD scale might be when an alien spacecraft lands on the White House lawn, or that of some other major world capital, and holds a press conference unequivocally announcing their existence.

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

 

Travelling to Mars? Pick the right flight time.

     NASA sent men to the Moon nine times, with astronauts landing and walking on the lunar surface six times. As of this writing, 49 spacecraft have been launched towards Mars by the U. S and other countries. Twenty-five of those, over half, were total or partial failures. Of the others, some simply passed by, snapping pictures along the way. Some went into orbit, and several sent a lander down to the surface to further study the planet in closer detail. No humans have made the trip to Mars, but NASA and some private space launch companies have plans to do so.

Traveling to Mars is hard. Any one of hundreds of systems could fail. One particularly grave risk exists for humans flying to Mars, even if all the systems work perfectly. Space is full of deadly cosmic radiation. An astronaut flying in an unprotected or poorly protected spacecraft is unlikely to survive the trip.

                                                                        Mars, credit NASA

An international team of space scientists conducted a study to answer two questions: Would cosmic radiation pose too grave a threat to human life on a round trip to Mars? And, could the decision of when to launch such a mission help protect astronauts?

The study concluded that spacecraft ferrying humans to Mars can carry sufficient shielding to protect the astronauts from lower levels of radiation. But for maximum survivability, the timing of the launch is critical.

The cosmic radiation of concern comes from two sources. Our sun emits cosmic rays in the form of the solar wind, radiation that shielding can protect astronauts from. More lethal is the radiation from galaxies, supernovas, and all the other inhabitants of space beyond our solar system. While these outside cosmic rays are deadlier, they can generally be deflected by the sun’s magnetic field. That protective envelope is strongest during solar maximum when the sun has more and larger sunspots.

                                                        Cosmic ray sources, credit NASA

The study suggests that such a roundtrip flight to Mars in a well-shielded craft must take no longer than four years, limiting the exposure to cosmic rays, and must occur during solar maximum when the sun’s activity can help protect the astronauts. The scientists involved in the study conclude, “We estimate that a potential mission to Mars should not exceed approximately 4 years, limiting exposure to cosmic radiation. This study shows that while space radiation imposes strict limitations and presents technological difficulties for the human mission to Mars, such a mission is still viable.”

It’s not too late to sign up for a trip to the Red Planet.

 

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.Oklahoman.com.

A $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 Asteroid.

 

During the mid-19^th century, Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, working at an observatory in Naples, discovered nine asteroids, among his other credits. His fifth asteroid, Psyche, was only the 16^th known. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, Psyche would become one of the most unique and interesting asteroid discoveries.

Analysis of Pysche revealed it to have a radius of slightly over 70 miles, with an average density revealing it to be made of almost solid iron and other metals. Astronomers believe that it might be the metallic core of a planet that never fully developed. Scientists estimated its commercial value at $10,000 quadrillion. That's $10,000 followed by 15 zeroes.  It is one of the most valuable objects in the Asteroid Belt, assuming we could ever mine it.

Artist rendering of Asteroid Psyche, credit NASA

However, a recent analysis of Psyche hints that it may be slightly less valuable. Given Psyche’s size and mass, astronomers had estimated it to be 95% iron and other metals, giving it that high estimated value. However, a recent NASA spacecraft’s visit to another asteroid caused a team of researchers led by University of Arizona undergraduate student David Cantillo to reevaluate that estimated value. University of Arizona scientists lead the science team for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to study another asteroid, Bennu. OSIRIS-REx retrieved a sample from Bennu's surface and is now bringing it back to Earth. Bennu turned out to be a rubble pile. It’s a loose collection of rock and dust held together by gravity but not solid.

As Cantillo’s team assessed the known data on Psyche, they realized that it may also be a rubble pile, and is likely only 82.5% metallic. If true, that would drop its commercial mining value to a “mere” $8700 quadrillion.

I think I’d still stake a claim, if only international law allowed it.

 

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 

This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.

Are We Close to Finding Earth 2?

 

NASA and other space agencies have launched several missions to search for exoplanets, planets that orbit other stars. The Holy Grail of such programs is finding an Earth-like planet orbiting a sun-like star at the right distance to allow liquid water on the surface. Such planets seem to be the most likely candidates to search for life.

While astronomers have yet to find a perfect Earth 2, statistical analysis of NASA’s most successful planet hunter, the Kepler Mission, uncovered some promising data. A study by NASA scientists alongside collaborators from around the world who worked on the Kepler mission came to an exciting conclusion. According to the research, about half the stars similar in temperature to our Sun could have a rocky planet capable of supporting liquid water on its surface.

Image Caption/Credit: NASA’s Kepler Planet Finder telescope, credit NASA

"Kepler already told us there were billions of planets, but now we know a good chunk of those planets might be rocky and habitable," said the lead author Steve Bryson, a researcher at NASA's Ames Research. "Though this result is far from a final value, and water on a planet's surface is only one of many factors to support life, it's extremely exciting that we calculated these worlds are this common with such high confidence and precision."

Kepler detected planets by continuously staring at thousands of stars, watching for a tell-tale drop in brightness caused by an orbiting planet crossing in front of a star. Such a method couldn’t detect planetary systems seen more face on, so astronomers had to use statistical methods to extrapolate from the Kepler data to all the other stars in our galaxy. Kepler discovered so many exoplanets from its limited mission that astronomers now believe that more than half of the four billion stars in the Milky planet possess planets, typically more than one.

Using their most conservative estimate, that 7% of all sun-like stars have Earth-like planets, meaning some 300 million exist in our Milky Way alone. Their most likely estimate states that Earth-like planets orbit 50% of sun-like stars, making more than 2 billion Earth-like planets. Since we know of only one planet with life, ours, those planets are the best place to begin to search for alien forms of life.

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.

Any Volunteers to Be the First to Travel Through a Wormhole?

Science fiction has long imagined wormholes as a means of traversing the great distances between the stars in short, by human standard, timespans. Such literary devices allow spaceships, in essence, to cover great distances in hours or days instead of centuries that normal space travel would require. Wormholes connect two points in space in a way that the distance between them through the wormhole is much shorter than the distance between them in normal space, like taking a cosmic shortcut.

General relativity tells us that to make a wormhole requires enormous amounts of negative energy which, according to Einstein’s equations, isn’t possible. But, the other grand realm of physics, quantum mechanics, says not so fast.

In a study titled “Humanly traversable wormholes,” Juan Maldacena of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study and Alexey Milekhin, a graduate of astrophysics student also at Princeton University, claim that we can make such wormholes. They base their calculations on the Randall-Sundrum II model, a theory that postulates a five-dimensional, warped geometry for the universe instead of the one we are familiar with that contains only normal four dimensions. Maldecena and Milekhin claim, using that theory, stable, person-sized wormholes could be created.

                                             Spaceship entering a wormhole. Credit NASA

You have to start, the researchers say, with a black hole that has a large magnetic charge. Such a special wormhole would allow spacefarers to traverse, say, 10,000 lightyears, one-tenth of the way across our galaxy, in a second. The only problem is that to the people at either end of the wormhole, that trip would appear to take 10,000 years, meaning these special wormholes really create shortcuts through time rather than space.

I bet they could still find volunteers willing to take that trip.

  

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com. 

Martian Life, if it Exists, Could Still Be Present Underground

 

Earth sits right in the middle of our sun’s habitable zone, the region where the heat of the star allows liquid water to exist on the surface of a planet. Mars orbits at the outer edge of this zone. Astronomers generally agree that Mars once sported rivers, lakes and, oceans. Mars reached such life-supporting conditions even before Earth. Its smaller size allowed it to cool more quickly from the heat of formation.

But Mars’ smaller size also allowed its core to cool and solidify long ago, killing its magnetic field. Without that magnetic field, solar radiation slowly knocked the atmosphere of Mars into space. Lacking an atmosphere, Mars couldn’t trap the sun’s heat, so it turned cold. Nighttime temperatures routinely drop to near 100 degrees below zero.

But, prior to the loss of its atmosphere, Mars sported conditions that could have supported life. That is no longer true of the surface of Mars. The thin atmosphere can no longer warm the surface of Mars nor protect it from cosmic radiation. Many scientists, including astrophysicist and research scientist Dimitra Atri, from the Center for Space Science at NYU Abu Dhabi, believe that conditions not far below the surface could potentially support life, albeit only at the bacterial level.

In 2022, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos, the Russian space organization, will launch the ExoMars craft, which includes the Rosiland Franklin rover. Atri says that rover will have the ability to detect any such subsurface life on the Red Planet. "It is exciting to contemplate that life could survive in such a harsh environment, as few as two meters (six feet) below the surface of Mars," said Atri. "When the Rosalind Franklin rover onboard the ExoMars mission, equipped with a subsurface drill, is launched in 2022, it will be well-suited to detect extant microbial life."

                           ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover, Credit European Space Agency (ESA).

If we find life on Mars, it will indicate that life forms easily, given that life developed on both planets in our solar system capable of supporting it. That tells astronomers that perhaps many of the tens of billions of Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy likely did, too.

     Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

     This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.

Can Earth-like Exoplanets Actually Support Life?

As of July 4^th, the NASA Exoplanet Archive (https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/) lists 4,183 confirmed exoplanets, planets orbiting other stars, with another 2089 candidate planets awaiting confirmation. NASA and other institutions have only studied a tiny percent of all the stars in our Milky Way. Based on the sample so far, astronomers estimate that planets outnumber stars in our galaxy. That means the Milky Way contains several hundred billion planets.

These exoplanets come in a bewildering variety. Some are Jupiter-sized planets so close to their parent star that the heat from the star evaporates them. Some Earth-sized planets get so hot, they rain liquid metal from their clouds. Most confirmed planets are significantly larger than Earth, but that’s because larger planets are easier to discover than smaller planets. Astronomer estimate that Earth-sized planets number in the billions.

   Most Earth-like Exoplanets, credit NASA

Being the size of Earth doesn’t mean such a planet has life on it. Many factors play into planet habitability. Distance to its parent star determines surface temperature. Too hot or too cold and habitability becomes unlikely. The type of parent star plays a crucial role. Stars smaller than our sun often produce large, dangerous stellar flares.

If Earth is a good example of what conditions necessary for a planet to support life, water is an absolute must. On our planet, where there’s water, life exists, even at the bottom of the ocean, with near-freezing temperatures, in boiling hot springs, or three miles underground in cracks in the rock.

Scientist Lynnae Quick along with several other NASA scientists looked at the likelihood of finding other life-bearing planets. This initial study contained a small sample of only 53 Earth-sized planets. They specifically looked to see if the planets could support surface or subsurface oceans, as is the case with several moons in our own solar system. Of those, they calculated that 30 likely possess such bodies of water, more than half of the planets they analyzed. With a few billion Earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone, that means there might be a lot of life-bearing planets out there. "Forthcoming missions will give us a chance to see whether ocean moons in our solar system could support life,” said Quick.

The study didn’t address the presence of intelligent aliens. There isn’t enough data to decide that. But at least we have some idea of the possibilities now.

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

 This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.

You Can Help NASA as a Citizen scientist

In 2003, NASA launched a pair of twin rovers to Mars. Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of the Red Planet in early 2004. But Spirit became stuck in deep sand in 2010 while Opportunity continued functioning until 2018. Those two were followed by Curiosity, still going strong on the Martian surface. But Curiosity’s wheels became worn down early in its mission due to traveling over a field of tough, sharp rocks.

NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars, credit NASA

Now, NASA is asking for your help in training Curiosity to recognize and avoid terrain that might cause a problem. NASA partnered with the citizen science site Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org). Zooniverse contains dozens of projects that citizen scientists, you, can help with. I have written about Zooniverse in several past columns, but the site is constantly adding new projects at the request of scientists around the world. There are many subjects that researchers need help in ranging from Arts to Language, History, Medicine, and Physics, just to name a few. Once you register on the site, you can join in any of the projects. Some Zooniverse volunteers have made significant discoveries and are even named as collaborators on the scientific papers produced with their help.

 The project that helps Curiosity drive safely is called AI4Mars. Not only will it help Curiosity, it will also teach the next Mars rover, Perseverance, expected to launch in July. For now, Curiosity needs your help as its wheels are already compromised, and NASA doesn’t want it to meet the same fate as Spirit.

Mars Perseverance Rover set for launch in late July 2020, credit NASA

The Zooniverse website describes the AI4Mars project goal: “By participating in this project, you will help improve the rovers’ ability to identify different, sometimes dangerous, terrain - an essential skill for autonomous exploration!

 “Terrain is important to get around on Mars. Spirit got stuck in a sandpit and ended its mission after 7 years of exploring Mars. Opportunity and Curiosity also have experienced getting stuck in sand, although they were able to continue on their missions. Don’t you think it would be nice if the Mars rover could identify dangerous terrain by herself? That is what a team at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is working on using Machine learning – essentially the same technology used by self-driving cars on Earth. To do so, the rover needs training data to learn from.

“We're counting on citizen scientists' help in labeling a set of images captured by Mars rovers so that we collectively create the Solar System's first public benchmark for Martian terrain classification.”

AI4Mars is only one of 96 projects on the Zooniverse site where scientists in all disciplines ask for the help of citizen scientists like yourself. If you have always liked science but thought you just weren’t cut out for it, this is where you can help real scientists do real, important science.

Each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.