The New Space Race

 NASA has plans to return to the Moon, first with a space station orbiting it and soon after that a permanently manned lunar research facility. China also plans to establish a permanent research station on the Moon. India is preparing for a second lunar landing with the eventual goal of a manned presence in the near future.

Our natural satellite is a treasure trove of valuable minerals. Nations that develop lunar mining capabilities will gain access to important resources. One such lunar resource you might not immediately think of is Helium 3. Normal helium contains two protons and two neutrons in its nucleus. Helium 3 has only one neutron. Why would this be important? That isotope of helium is extremely significant in the production of non-polluting energy.

Currently, our primary source of non-renewable energy on Earth comes from burning fossil fuels which releases copious amounts of carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming. The process also releases a lot of sulfur which combines with water to create sulfuric acid, acidifying our lakes and oceans and leading to the possible extinction of numerous species. The acid rain leaches minerals from the soil that trees and other plants need for proper growth. The particulates that fossil fuel burning puts in the air are a major health risk for all animals, including us humans.

Many countries also rely on nuclear power plants for energy production. These plants rely on nuclear fission, the splitting of uranium and plutonium atoms to generate energy, but also generate tons of radioactive waste materials for which we currently have no safe disposal methods.

So what does the Moon have to do with all of this? Helium 3. With no atmosphere or magnetic field to protect it from the harsh solar wind, the Moon’s surface is bombarded with charged particles, and helium 3 is one product of this. The surface of our Moon has an abundance of it. Helium 3 can be used in fusion reactors to make clean, pollution-free energy, the same process that powers our sun. Scientists have recently figured out how to create fusion reactors that deliver more energy than it takes to power them, giving us the promise of almost unlimited energy production that won’t destroy our forests or threaten extinction.

Artists conception of Lunar Helium-3 mining. Credit ESA

We’ve found a lot of water in the form of ice at the south pole of the Moon. Water can be used for drinking, oxygen for breathing, and rocket fuel. It is much easier to blast off from the Moon than it is from Earth due to the Moon’s weaker gravity. That gives us an easier stepping stone to explore the solar system. Easier and cheaper access to space allows us greater opportunity to explore the asteroid belt.

One goal of space exploration is to mine asteroids for rare minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, and nickel, all important for creating electronic devices like smartphones, computers, and batteries that can store electrical energy and power vehicles that don’t burn fossil fuels. Asteroids also contain copious amounts of iron, silver, gold, and platinum, all valuable in modern society.

There are, of course, a tremendous number of scientific reasons for having a lunar base. The Moon itself still holds many secrets for us to discover. The relative ease of access to space from the Moon provides scientists the opportunity to study our solar system in great detail. Telescopes located on the Moon’s far side give us the chance to study the cosmos without interference from Earthly sources of radio noise and light pollution, not to mention the huge and growing number of satellites in orbit around Earth that interfere with astronomical studies.

Our Moon holds many riches, both economic and scientific, making it a goal to create a permanently manned scientific colony there. That is the new space race.

 

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.

Can't Afford Musk's Rocket Flight? Try Space Perspective!

 A few dozen very wealthy people have flown to space on ships operated by private spaceflight companies. Two companies, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin take paying customers above the Karmen Line, 62 miles high, which defines the start of space. Passengers experience brief moments of weightlessness and enjoy an equally brief view of space and our spherical planet below them before plunging back down to Earth. Neither of these two companies takes passengers on orbital flights around Earth. The entire flight takes a matter of minutes, and these passengers pay as much as $25M for the experience. The private passengers must undergo a few days of training for the experience.

While all those spaceflight passengers claim the experience to be well worth the price, that’s not something ordinary people like you and I can afford. But a much cheaper option is about to become available. A company called Space Perspective expects to launch the maiden passenger voyage of its Spaceship Neptune later this year. It’s not a typical rocket. A balloon will carry a lavish, spherical passenger cabin 20 miles high. It won’t technically reach space, but the company claims the view is very similar to the suborbital flights. Passengers will experience the blackness of space and see the curvature of our planet below, but will not experience weightlessness.

Artist's illustration of Spaceship Neptune high in the atmosphere. Credit: Space Perspective

The first Spaceship Neptune capsule, named Excelsior, will have plenty of room to move around in. A company post on social media says “Spaceship Neptune will have the largest windows ever flown to space and a spherical design that allows for the roomiest interior of any human spaceflight capsule ever made" The 16-foot diameter cabin has rows of padded seats facing the multiple giant windows, 5 feet high by nearly 2 feet wide. The capsule even includes a bar station and a bathroom.

The capsule ascends at a leisurely 12 miles per hour, taking two hours to reach the final altitude. This gentle liftoff means passengers don’t feel the multiple g-forces from a traditional rocket launch. Passengers then spend two floating near the edge of space followed by a two-hour descent and a gentle splash down in the ocean. A waiting ship gently lifts the capsule onto its deck, and passengers are out within 15 minutes of landing.

Spaceship Neptune's interior with a view of Earth through the windows. Credit: Space Perspective

Spaceship Neptune creators have strong qualifications. The company’s CEOs, Taber MacCallum and Jane Poynter, also co-founded Paragon Space Development Corp. Life support and thermal control systems from Paragon have been included in the designs of every human-rated spacecraft the United States has ever flown.

While Spaceship Neptune won’t reach true outer space, it surpasses a key boundary called the Armstrong line. This is the height at which air pressure is so low that water will boil at normal body temperature.

The $125,000 ticket price is still rather steep for the ordinary person, but far more affordable than the millions of dollars for a suborbital flight. And the two-hour duration at altitude allows for a memorable time, even if you can’t brag about going to space.

Massive Solar Storms Potentially Deadly to Life on Earth

 On September 1, 1859, a solar storm of unprecedented power struck Earth. The large burst of electromagnetic energy sent huge voltage surging through telegraph wires, the only means of long-distance communication at that time. It caused sparking and in some cases melting of the wires. Telegraph equipment throughout Europe and North America became useless; some stations even caught fire. Known as the Carrington event, this is still the most powerful solar storm that ever hit our planet in recorded history.

Coronal Mass Ejection event. Credit NASA and Goddard Spaceflight center

On March 13, 1989, a smaller but still significant solar storm struck. It overwhelmed electrical power stations in eastern Canada, leaving 6 million people without electricity. It even melted power transformers in New Jersey. This event carried a fraction of the energy of the Carrington event, but it showed how vulnerable modern technology is to such solar storms. 

If a solar storm like that responsible for the Carrington event hit us today, damage to Earth’s electrical generation and distribution systems could take weeks or longer to fix. The loss of satellites would disrupt communications and financial systems. Even internet connections would be lost until all the damage could be repaired. Replacing damaged satellites of all kinds would take many years.

A more massive solar storm struck Earth 14,300 years ago. Scientists discovered it by studying tree rings which showed a huge spike in a single year. They discovered a huge spike in radioactive carbon in a single year in tree rings. This radiocarbon data corresponds to an increase in beryllium, a marker of solar activity, found in glacier ice in Greenland from the same timeframe. The energy of this storm dwarfed that of the Carrington event.

Solar storm. Credit NASA

"Extreme solar storms could have huge impacts on Earth,” said Tim Heaton, co-author of the tree-ring study. “Such super storms could permanently damage the transformers in our electricity grids, resulting in huge and widespread blackouts lasting months."

NASA uses multiple spacecraft that constantly monitor the sun looking for solar storms. They analyze these events and, in the case of a civilization-ending solar storm, NASA scientists believe that they could give the planet about 30 minutes' notice before a potentially devastating solar storm hits.

Thirty minutes warning to the end of technology, however briefly, that everything in our lives depends on. Such an event would bring civilization to its knees.

 

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

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

 

Will We Recognize Intelligent Aliens when We Meet Them?

 Science fiction depicts many types of intelligent aliens. Often they are similar to humans, but with different, often bizarre, heads. However, most biologists believe that any aliens are unlikely to resemble humans at all. Life evolves due to the environmental conditions of the planet, and it is extremely unlikely that any other planet will have a geological and environmental history similar to Earth’s. With different conditions, intelligent life on those planets will take different forms compared to us humans.

Grey Aliens. Most commonly described by those who claim to have been abducted by aliens.

image by kjpargeter

But not all scientists agree with that idea. Simon Morris, a paleo-biologist with Cambridge University’s Department of Earth Sciences, believes, researchers that intelligent creatures similar to humans likely exist on many other planets.

Intelligent aliens are not likely to appear humanoid. From Star Trek Voyager

Non-humanoid alien. Created by Abiogenesis

Morris cites the theory of convergent evolution, which says intelligent species everywhere may evolve into something much like us. “One can say with reasonable confidence that the likelihood of something analogous to a human evolving is really pretty high. And given the number of potential planets that we now have good reason to think exist, even if the dice only come up the right way every 1 in 100 throws, that still leads to a very large number of intelligences scattered around, that are likely to be similar to us.”

As an example of this idea, Morris says that flight independently evolved at least four different times on Earth, in pterosaurs, birds, bats, and insects. Eyes, he says, evolved in different species perhaps as many as 40 times.

Many scientists strongly disagree with that idea. One of those is the late evolutionary biologist Stephen J Gould who found this idea utterly ridiculous. He claims that if you re-ran evolution on Earth, even given the same geological and environmental changes our planet endured, the likelihood of getting humans just like us is vanishingly remote. Since random environmental effects create random sets of genetic mutations, there is almost no possibility of ending up at the same evolutionary point. And imagining this evolution occurring on a distant planet with very different conditions compared to Earth is foolish.

Most scientists agree with Gould. And besides, if all intelligent life were just like, what a boring universe this would be.

  

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.

When the Sky Falls, Duck! Newest Book Release.

 My new book is now available from my publisher's Author Page at http://www.4rvpublishing.com/wayne-harris-wyrick.html. 

This is from the introduction:

            "Chicken Little was right.

"Sometimes, the sky really falls.

"Or, at least, strange stuff falls out of the sky. Much of what reaches the surface of our planet from above may be harmless, ordinary, and expected. Most of it actually comes from the surface of the planet, lifted up by way of the wind or the sun’s heat. And as the old saying says, “What goes up, must come down.” All of what falls during various types of weather comes from the surface of our planet. These materials regularly fall from the sky. Rain, hail, sleet, and snow occur every year all over Earth and we hardly ever think about it.

"But some of what comes down was never on Earth before. This stuff comes from space. It might be in the form of dust, huge rocks, frozen ice balls, or various forms of radiation. While much of that stuff won’t hurt us, some downright deadly stuff also falls from the sky."

                                            The full cover, front and back.

Read about lots of strange stuff that falls from the sky. Some of it you won't believe. The book describes everything from common weather-related stuff like rain, sleet, hail, etc. to animals, golf balls, coins, sugar crystals, and stuff that falls regularly all the way from space. 

You'll never look at the sky the same way again. 

Order it now. Hardback $20.99, paperback $13.99.

 

 

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.

Life Below Earths Ocean Floor Give Scientists Hope for Finding Life on Mars

Ten years ago, scientists from the University of Tokyo, Japan, led an expedition to drill into rock 400 feet below the ocean floor. They have been studying the various rock samples, ranging in age from thirteen million years to 104 million years, ever since. Theses ocean rocks formed when undersea volcanoes spewed out lava which cooled into fractured rock and became buried under ocean sediment. The cracks filled with clays from the ocean floor.

The scientists knew that rocks beneath the surface of dry land were home to bacteria, and they looked for bacteria living in the ocean rocks. After intense study, with some missteps along the way, they finally found dense bacterial colonies, numbering more than 100 billion bacterial cells per cubic inch, living in the clay-filled cracks. This density of bacteria is similar to that found in the human gut. That compares to a paltry 1000 bacteria per cubic inch living in the muddy layers above the rock on the ocean floor.

"I thought it was a dream, seeing such rich microbial life in rocks," said Associate Professor Yohey Suzuki from the University of Tokyo, one of the leaders of the expedition. "Honestly, it was a very unexpected discovery. I was very lucky because I almost gave up."

This finding excites astrobiologists who search for signs of past, or present, life on Mars. Much of Mars was once covered by lakes and oceans, with similar clay minerals. Just as in the Earth study, Martian ocean sediments were eventually covered and compressed into rock at the bottom of those bodies of water.

"Minerals are like a fingerprint for what conditions were present when the clay formed. Neutral to slightly alkaline levels, low temperature, moderate salinity, iron-rich environment, basalt rock -- all of these conditions are shared between the deep ocean and the surface of Mars," said Suzuki.

Mars 2020 Rover Perseverance. Credit NASA

NASA will launch the next Martian rover, Perseverance, in late July or early August. Among other scientific instruments, Perseverance posses a biological testing lab that will search for similar bacterial colonies, living or fossilized, in similar Martian rock that was once the bottom of a Martian sea. The findings of Dr. Suzuki’s team gave NASA scientists the road map for searching for ancient, Martian bacterial colonies that may, perhaps, tell us that Mars was once, possibly still is, a home for 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.

Human-Tardigrade Hybrids May Be the First Earthlings to Visit Mars

Tardigrades, also known as water bears for their cute appearance, are amazingly hearty microscopic creatures. They can survive being frozen, thrown in boiling water, and other extreme conditions that destroy almost all other Earthly lifeforms. In an experiment by the European Space Agency, a batch of tardigrades sat outside of a satellite in the freezing cold vacuum of space for ten days while intense UV and cosmic radiation bombarded them constantly. Most survived.

Earlier this year, an Israeli lunar lander carried thousands of tardigrades on board as a test to see if they are capable of surviving the harsh conditions of the lunar surface. The craft crashed, but these little guys are so tough, scientists believe that many likely survived that crash.

Tardigrade, also known as a water bear. Credit Shuttercock

Intense radiation remains a major hazard when traveling in space beyond Earth orbit. To go to Mars, for example, astronauts need lots of shielding from cosmic rays, which means lots of weight. And that means a huge launch cost. Astronauts less affected by space radiation can survive with less shielding. And since Mars does not possess an ozone layer to protect against UV radiation or a strong magnetic field to protect against cosmic radiation, life becomes very dangerous for astronauts or colonists there.

NASA plans on sending astronauts to Mars within 15 years. Private companies plan on sending colonists there sooner, perhaps by 2025. We have the technology to get humans to Mars within the next 5-10 years. We may well make the discovery of all time by finding native life there. But can we keep our human Martians safe?

Water bears may hold the answer. Or at least their genes. Scientists studying tardigrades have discovered many of their genetic secrets of survival, and now some have suggested that incorporating tardigrade genes into humans may make it possible for us to survive more easily on Mars or even alien planets.

Would you be willing to become a human-tardigrade hybrid to be the first human on Mars?

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

There are Lots of Earth-like Planets -- How Many are Lifebearing?

Scientists who think about the possibility of extraterrestrial life need data to estimate those possibilities. Because Earth is the one and only known example of a life-bearing planet, it seems logical, therefore, to use ours as a model for life-bearing planets. The first, best place to hunt for alien life would be on planets like Earth

And this is where data is needed. Just how many Earth-like planets exist in our Milky Way galaxy? Fortunately, we have reams of data on planets orbiting other stars from the Kepler space telescope. It spent more than nine and a half years doing nothing but searching for extrasolar planets. It discovered more than 2,600 planets with nearly 3,000 still awaiting confirmation. That’s a lot of data.

One thing astronomers learned from a statistical analysis of that data is that Earth-like planets are rather common. Twenty billion sun-like stars call the Milky Way home, and Kepler teaches us that one in four of them have planets roughly the size of Earth orbiting in the habitable zone, where, as on Earth, liquid water can exist. That’s five billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way. And that’s not even counting the billions of other stars of different sizes than our sun that also possess Earth-sized planets in their habitable zones.

Artist depiction of a habitable exoplanet. Credit NASA-JPL

That sure sounds like the potential exists for a galaxy teeming with life.

Now, astronomers want to check for the actual existence of alien life. We can’t yet send probes to examine those planets. But we can examine the atmosphere of an alien planet for life-supporting gases. According to Eric B. Ford, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, “Scientists are particularly interested in searching for biomarkers – molecules indicative of life – in the atmospheres of roughly Earth-size planets that orbit in the ‘habitable zone’ of sun-like stars.”

With five billion planets to examine, the search might be tedious, but the payoff will be the most amazing scientific discovery ever. And it appears to be only a matter of time before we discover alien life.

The map shows the sky at 10:00 early in the month, 9:00 in the middle of the month, and 8:00 at the end of the month. Map produced using Night Vision star mapping software. 

On or about the first Tuesday of 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.

Where is Everybody?

One summer day in 1950, physicists Enrico Fermi, leader of the team that built the first nuclear reactor, enjoyed lunch with several fellow physicists. Talk turned to recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster than light travel. Referring to aliens, Fermi suddenly blurted out "Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?" This question led to “The Fermi Paradox.”

Simply stated, if (as we now know) our galaxy contains billions of planets, many of them Earth-like, why haven’t we ever encountered any aliens? Earth is young, in cosmic terms. Many solar systems older than Earth exist, some billions of years older. If life existed on any of them, it would take no more than 50 million years to colonize the galaxy with the rocket technology being developed at that time, a blink of the eye in cosmic terms. So, Fermi wondered aloud, where is everybody?

Over the years, other scientists have suggested various answers.

Water is essential to life as we know it. Earth’s water exists on the surface, but for most of the other worlds in our solar system that possess oceans, four moons, the water is locked underground, below a frozen surface. That may be common for life-bearing planets or moons.

Many of the planets we’ve discovered that could have water are classified as super-Earths, planets up to ten times larger than Earth. The gravity of such planets may well make space travel impossible.

Futurist and astronomer Seth Shostak, says that all intelligent aliens may actually be intelligent machines. We ourselves are on the verge of creating such machines and, within a few thousands of years, all intelligence on Earth may be machine-based, not biological.

Some scientists suggest that alien life may be so different from us, we’d never recognize it. Or, perhaps just as we destroy ants without even realizing it when building a house, maybe all other life forms have been eradicated. Or they wiped themselves out with climate change.

Maybe we have met the aliens and they are us. The “panspermia hypothesis” says life was seeded on Earth by comets (or alien spacecraft?), making us the very aliens we search for.

Even so, we need to keep looking.

From NASA's search for extraterrestrial life. Credit NASA-HST

On or about the first Tuesday of 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.

Measurements Give New Insight into the Structure of the Lunar Crust

Everyone has seen the full Moon in the night sky. The familiar dark splotches called ‘maria,’ Latin for seas, create patterns on the lunar surface. Some people see a man’s face, the Man in the Moon. Others imagine a frog or a rabbit. Whatever you might picture when you look at the full Moon, the pattern of large, dark areas overlying lighter material is quite obvious. The maria are composed of lava that poured out from asteroid impacts and covered the lighter surface material.

The Lunar Nearside, credit NASA

From Earth, we only see the one side of the Moon, so you might assume this arrangement of maria over lighter material continues on the far side of the Moon. Astronomers assumed that, too, until the Russian Luna 3 spacecraft sent back the first, grainy pictures of the lunar far side in 1959. Although there were a few dark patches, they were quite a bit smaller than the familiar maria of the near side and didn’t cover much of the far side surface.

The Lunar Farside, credit NASA

Subsequent studies of the Moon revealed that the crust on the far side is as much as 10 miles (ca. 16 km) thicker than the near side crust. Because of this, asteroids can’t so easily puncture the far side crust, so fewer and smaller maria formed there. For decades, astronomers puzzled as to what might have caused this. Until recently, the best idea was that we originally had two moons. Very early on, the two collided at low speed on the far side. The material from the smaller impacting moon flowed over that side, creating the thicker crust.

Measurements made by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission in 2012 provided more data, suggesting an impact from an outsider. "The detailed gravity data obtained by GRAIL has given new insight into the structure of the lunar crust underneath the surface," said Meng Hua Zhu, a co-author on the new paper on the subject and a scientist at Macau University of Science and Technology in China. Using computers, the researchers modeled 360 different collisions and compared all the results to what we know about the moon today. The best fit with our Moon suggests that a collision of an object 500-560 miles (ca. 805-901 km) across could have done the trick.

Artists concept of Lunar Farside collision, credit NASA

Luckily for us, there are no other such large objects wandering around near our orbit today.

On or about the first Tuesday of 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.

Diamonds are the Universe's and Earth's Best Friend

On the first Tuesday of 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 form the Oklahoman and newsok.com.

Purveyors of fine jewelry might be salivating over two recent scientific reports. Or perhaps they are worried that the bottom may fall out of the diamond market.

Astronomers study the universe all across the electromagnetic spectrum, from the low frequency radio waves to high energy gamma rays. They can usually identify whatever they find by studying the spectrum, the way it looks at different wavelengths. For decades, astronomers have observed some unknown objects that emit a particular set of frequencies of microwave light, which they refer to as AME. They know it comes from some kind of rapidly spinning nanoparticles, but didn’t know what they were.

Astronomers have long known that a class of organic molecules in space, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), emitted diffuse infrared radiation, and many thought they were also responsible for the AME. A given material can shine in many different wavelength bands.

"Though we know that some type of particle is responsible for this microwave light, its precise source has been a puzzle since it was first detected nearly 20 years ago," said Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University in Wales and lead author on a paper announcing this result in Nature Astronomy.

The new study, led by Greaves, found an IR glow around three star systems that come from nanodiamonds. These stars also emitted AME, leading the astronomers to the realization that the nanodiamonds created both types of radiation. Stars that have PAH IR-radiation don’t also show AME. Stars that do have AME contain about 1000 times Earth’s mass in diamond dust.

Geologists know much about the composition of Earth’s interior, even though we have never been there to study it directly. They gain knowledge of the interior of our planet by analyzing seismic data.  With enough data, they can accurately determine what types of rock or mineral lies at all points beneath the surface of our planet.

A craton is the deepest part of the stable interior of a continent. These extend as far as 200 miles deep into the mantle and represent the oldest existing rock on our planet. By studying the seismic data, scientists estimate that 1-2% of the cratons below each continent consists of diamond. That's according to a new study published by a team of researchers from MIT, Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, and other institutions.

"This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the [geological] scale of things, it's relatively common," said Ulrich Faul, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences who helped write the study. "We can't get at them, but still, there is much more diamond there than we have ever thought before."

The team estimates that more than a quadrillion tons of diamonds exist at the bottom of cratons. As of now, it’s far beyond our technological ability to get them, but in time, some will slowly work their way to the surface. Future jewelers need not worry about their livelihood.