A Second Moon

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, NASA astronauts brought 842 pounds of rock and soil from the Moon to Earth. In addition to those samples, scientists have found more than 370 meteorites known to have come from the Moon, weighing a total of 489 pounds.

That’s impressive, but what if astronauts could bring the entire moon back to Earth?

Not that Moon. The other one.

On February 15^th, astronomers with the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona announced the discovery of a new moon orbiting Earth. Kacper Wierzchos, one of the astronomers who made the discovery, posted several images of the object, designated 2020 CD3. Analysis of its orbit indicated that Earth’s gravity captured it three years ago when it was a small asteroid orbiting the sun. It’s tiny, only 6 to 12 feet in diameter. While it is too small to see without a large telescope, it is also small enough to be captured in a ship and returned to Earth. It is a captured asteroid and studying its makeup goes a long way to helping us better understand the origin of our solar system.

2020 CD3 Image credit: Kacper Wierzchos, Catalina Sky Survey, NASA

Wierzchos said of the discovery “It's a big deal, as out of approximately one million known asteroids, this is just the second asteroid known to orbit Earth (after 2006 RH120, which was also discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey).”

2006 RH120 eventually left Earth orbit after only nine months due to gravitational tugs and radiation pressure from the sun. 2020 CD3 will likely also leave Earth orbit eventually, but there is currently no evidence that solar radiation pressure is affecting its orbit. And it has already been a second moon for three years. So perhaps it will stick around for a while.

The Catalina Sky Survey’s mission is to hunt for and catalog all near-Earth asteroids that may pose an impact risk to Earth. While 2020 CD3 would not be a significant risk to Earth on impact, due to its small size, discovering that it is now Earth’s second moon may be even more exciting.

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 by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.

How to Write a Bestselling Book

It seems like EVERYONE wants to write a book. When acquaintances, friends, or family members find out I’m a writer, they often describe, sometimes in long-winded detail, the book they want to write. Then, inevitably, they ask for tips on creating their great American novel.

I wrote a book about things that fall from the sky. The first chapter dealt with weather phenomena. Now, as a scientist, an astrophysicist by degree, I actually have a fair understanding of how weather works. After all, it’s just physics applied to the atmosphere. But, as so many writers do, I wanted to check to see if I incorrectly explained anything weather-wise, so I sent it to a well-known, local meteorologist. I explained that I was writing a children’s book (I had already published four at that time) and asked if she would go over the chapter dealing with meteorology. She emailed me back gushing about the children’s book SHE wanted to write. That was four years ago, and she still hasn’t written that book. (And, by the way, she never responded to what I asked her, to verify my meteorological science.)

Many of my writer friends tell me similar stories: friends wanting help in writing the book that they’re certain will be the next New York Times best-seller. Essentially they are asking for a ten- minute description (or four-text chain, or quick email exchange) on how to write a great novel.

That, of course, is impossible. The best way to learn to write a great book is to read a lot and write a lot. In fact, the great science fiction writer Ray Bradbury once said about becoming a good writer, “Write a thousand words a day and in three years you will be a writer.” That’s a million words! That’s the equivalent of 10-20 full-length novels.

That is a bit of exaggeration. I honestly don’t know of any writer who wrote and threw away 15 novels before becoming a best-selling author.

Ray Bradbury’s advice, however, is sound in this sense: almost no one is born being a best-selling writer. Like any craft or skill, one must hone it over a long period of time with practice and failures to become excellent at it.

But I can, and do, tell people who ask me how to become a novelist that there are some skills they must learn to do well.

First, learn grammar and spelling, or use a good grammar checker and a spell checker. When Word, or whatever word processor you use, underlines a word you’ve written, it means something. It never ceases to amaze me when I judge various writing contest entries how many people ignore those and have misspellings, improper punctuation, or simply bad grammar. Editors will reject such books, and, even if you self-publish with no editing, readers will reject such books.

Second, and I can’t state this strongly enough, AVOID PASSIVE VERB CONSTRUCTION. When you use words like be, have, had, is, was, were, are, did, do, can, etc., your writing is weak. Using passive verbs TELLS the reader what happens in the story instead of SHOWING the reader how the story unfolds through actions, dialogue, and character responses to situations. And, along the same lines, avoid overuse of adverbs, all those –ly words many beginning writers use in abundance. Like passive verbs, they tell the reader what the characters think instead of showing.

Third, make sure you know everything about your two most important characters: your protagonist and your antagonist. What does the protagonist want? Why does s/he want it? What obstacles can prevent him/her from achieving the desired goal? How is the antagonist able to thwart the protagonist, and why does he/she want to? Remember also that an all-good hero or an all-bad villain is unrealistic. Those are 2-dimensional, cardboard-cutout characters. Even though the villain may be quite evil, he/she might still feed a stray dog.

And, along the same lines, KNOW YOUR STORY. What happens in the course of the story to hinder the protagonist? What is the climax and why is it a virtual do-or-die circumstance? How is the hero changed by the entire chain of events? If there is no change and growth by the hero, you don’t have a story, you have a vignette that ultimately makes no difference in the end. The reader will feel cheated by that book.

Hundreds of books exist which describe everything that goes into making a great novel, and this short blog can’t begin to cover everything a novice writer needs to learn. But those are by far the most common mistakes I see wanna-be writers make.

I also add a fourth “must” for new writers. Join a writers club and/or a critique group. Go to writer’s workshops and conferences. You need the lessons you get from the workshops and conferences and the critical reviews you receive from your critique group.

Read. Read books in the genre or genres you want to write. Read books about writing. Hell, read the newspaper. Those writers have to write every day and they eventually get quite proficient. That’s why a surprising number of great authors began their careers as journalists.

And after you’ve done all that, start on your million words. It may not take you that many, but we all need goals.

Origin of Life on Earth: The Phosphate Problem

Biologists currently don’t know where or how life began on Earth, but they do have plenty of theories. They have a pretty good idea of what chemicals are required to create life. Five elements are critical for all life on our planet: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Of course, many other elements come into play, but the basic structures in our cells absolutely demand these five. While all exist in our environment, they need to be highly concentrated relative to the environment in general for life to take hold. So much of the investigation into the genesis of life focuses on how to concentrate these elements.

The first, widely-accepted notion suggested that life began in tidal pools at the ocean’s edge. As tides moved out, pools of water left behind concentrated chemicals when the water evaporated. This idea held sway for many years. In the late 1970s, scientists discovered hydrothermal vents on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. These are locations where seawater seeped into Earth’s interior, became super-heated, and came back out through volcano-like vents. The hot water leached minerals out of the rock as it returned to the ocean.

This seemed to many to be even more plausible. But one puzzle still remained. Neither scenario seemed to provide the needed concentration of phosphorus. As Jonathan Toner, a University of Washington research assistant professor of Earth and space sciences described it, "For 50 years, what's called 'the phosphate problem,' has plagued studies on the origin of life.” He led a research team that studied alkaline lakes for a possible solution to the ‘phosphate problem.’ These form in low-lying areas where water collects via drainage from dry environments, often in volcanic regions, like Mono Lake in California.

Mono Lake, California. Credit U. S. Geological Survey

Typically, carbonate combines with and traps phosphorus, but in these alkaline environments, carbonate also combines with calcium which would otherwise lock-up phosphorus, too. The net result is a phosphorus concentration high enough to support life on Earth. Once again, origin-of-life theories have come back to the idea of bodies of surface water as the starting point for life on our 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.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

Help Find the Next Asteroid Threat to Earth

According to NASA’s Asteroid Fast Facts page, a lot of space material lands on Earth every year. From the NASA page:

“Every day, Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons of dust and sand-sized particles.

“About once a year, an automobile-sized asteroid hits Earth's atmosphere, creates an impressive fireball and burns up before reaching the surface.

Every 2,000 years or so, a meteoroid the size of a football field hits Earth and causes significant damage to the area.”

Image Credit NASA

When is the next one coming? No one knows. But NASA and other organizations worldwide constantly watch out for possible impactors from space. Even so, some escape discovery until they hit. In 2013, a small asteroid, about the size of a six-story building, entered our atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russian. It exploded with a blast more powerful than the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The blast shattered glass in buildings all over the city and caused injuries to more than 1,200 people. It was so bright that scientists estimate it briefly outshone the sun. We had no warning of this event. No one saw it coming.

Many telescopes automatically search the night sky for incoming asteroids, for one with Earth in its sights. But scientists need your help finding them. You may be the one to spot the next one that threatens Earth.

Image Credit NASA

An organization called Zooniverse (https://www.zooniverse.org/projects) currently has 108 projects where anyone, even you, can help scientists make new discoveries. I have written about Zooniverse before, but they have added quite a few new projects since then and more are added every year. You can find them at www.zooniverse.org.

The project to help find potentially dangerous asteroid is at www.zooniverse.org/projects/sandorkruk/hubble-asteroid-hunter. As with all the Zooniverse projects, you get a brief tutorial on what to look for and how to identify a target. Then you are presented with a series of photos. Using what you learned in the tutorial, you identify potential asteroid targets. Once identified, the project scientists analyze the photo to calculate the asteroid’s path to determine if Earth is in the way.

If saving the Earth from asteroid impacts isn’t your cup of tea, look through all of their projects. It’s likely one or several of the others will pique your interest.

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 https://oklahoman.com/.

Did NASA Already Find Martian Life?

In 1992, astronomers discovered three objects roughly the size of Earth orbiting another star, the first known exoplanets. No one expected life on those objects because the star was a pulsar, the remains of a star that blew up as a supernova, and the “planets” had actually formed from the debris of that explosion.

Three years later, astronomers found the first true exoplanets orbiting the sun-like star 51 Pegasi. Now, the NASA Exoplanet Archive lists 4113 confirmed exoplanets with more than 3600 exoplanet candidates awaiting confirmation. Astronomers believe that we have only touched the tip of the exoplanet iceberg. Data suggests that our Milky Way galaxy alone contains some two hundred billion planets. As of now, there’s no solid evidence suggesting that life exists on any of them.

But some scientists believe that we already found life on another planet, one much closer to home. In 1976, NASA landed twin spacecraft on Mars, Viking 1 and 2. Each included automated laboratories designed to search for microscopic life on the Red Planet.

Both craft, which landed 4000 miles apart, included a simple test called the Labeled Release experiment. It added a nutrient broth to a small amount of Martian soil and checked to see if any metabolic byproducts, like carbon dioxide, were released. Every test by both landers reported positive results. However, the other experiments on both landers found no organic chemicals, which seemed to preclude any lifeforms. Since then, most scientists decided that some odd chemistry in the Martian soil falsely mimicked those life signs.

Viking Lander, credit NASA

But not all scientists. Gilbert Levin was the principal investigator for the Labeled Release experiment for both landers. In a recent article in Scientific American, he wrote “The Viking LR (experiment) sought to detect and monitor ongoing metabolism, a very simple and fail-proof indicator of living microorganisms. Several thousand runs were made, both before and after Viking, with terrestrial soils and microbial cultures, both in the laboratory and in extreme natural environments. No false positive or false negative result was ever obtained. This strongly supports the reliability of the LR Mars data.”

It may be decades or centuries before we confirm life on an exoplanet, if we ever do. But we may have already discovered life on another planet, right next door.

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.