How Other Objects in the Solar System Effect Earth's Habitability

Jupiter is by far the most influential planet gravitationally speaking in our solar system, which makes sense, because it is the biggest.  It is constantly redirecting asteroids and comets one way or another, and you could make the argument that this helps or hurts the Earth.  Overall, Jupiter's effects on Earth probably balance out to being neutral.  But what if Jupiter had formed somewhere else in the solar system?  Would Earth still be habitable if it was much closer, or much further away?  The answer is interesting, but not for the reasons that I thought.

One of the most interesting things in that article is how the Moon influences Earth.  I've watched completely reputable shows and heard quite a bit about how the Moon is so important to maintaining our climate, and without it, Earth probably wouldn't even be habitable.  The idea that a large moon is key to life is a big tenet of the Rare Earth Hypothesis.  But according to this article, a planet without a large moon should remain stable for much longer than the Earth is going to with its moon.  If the Moon suddenly disappeared today, it would wreak havoc on Earth, but if the Moon had never been there, the problem of sudden destabilization wouldn't be present.

This whole business got scientists thinking about how big planets could help or hurt the habitability of habitable planets in the inner solar system.  So, scientists began running simulations on Jupiter, the only planet that has a really noticeable gravitational effect on Earth.  They brought in closer, they brought further away, they gave it an eccentric orbit, but for the most part, Earth's orbit and axis remained about the same.  There are some interesting implications to this study, for instance, it shows that compact solar systems are less likely to host habitable worlds because gravity would imbalance a small world quicker.  It also gives credence to the idea that solar system formation is a chaotic one, and that the places planets end up is as much up to chance as it is to physics.

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Orion Spacecraft Moving to Testing

Hopefully this will one day become more than just an artist's rendition.

Right now, and for the near future, the United States has no means of getting people into space.  Hopefully this will change in the near future as the Space Launch System and the Orion space capsule move into the testing stage.  The space shuttle was a worthy experiment, but an unsuccessful one.  The whole point of a reusable spacecraft was to reduce costs, but launching the shuttle was very expensive.  And while it was useful, it couldn't go very far.  What we need is a new heavy lift rocket capable of sending people not into low Earth orbit, but out into the solar system.  That is the ultimate goal of this new program, and I am looking forward to 2021, which is when manned flights are projected to begin. 

I don't know if the asteroid capture mission will be undertaken by an Orion ship, but of all the potential missions NASA could do, that's the one I want to see the most.  Actually catching an asteroid and bringing back to be studied would be an incredible feat of technology, and of tremendous value to science.  Of course, I'm in favor of anything that brings the wonder of space exploration closer to the average person.  Space is our future, we should get used to it.

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Alien Life Will Be Difficult to Find

It will be a long time before we find life like this.

We are very near the point, technologically speaking, where mankind will be able to find life on another world, whether on a far-off exoplanet or within our own solar system.  However, actually finding it will be a formidable challenge.  The problem is simple, and best said in my favorite book, "Space is big.  You won't believe just how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.  I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Even looking for life within our solar system is difficult.  Take Europa.  There's an ocean underneath the icy surface that very likely hosts some sort of life.  However, there's no guarantee that life inhabits the entire ocean, and since scientists predict that Europa probably has even more water than Earth, we might not even find life on our first visit, which is looking like it will happen in about ten years.  We've been looking for life on Mars for years now, and we haven't gotten anywhere with that either.  We can't even say that life on Mars is unlikely, because we've explored so little of the planet, and life could be hiding in so many places.  So, even though the technology is there, actually finding life may take a while.  It's important to be patient with this sort of science.

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Urine Isn't Sterile, After All

This is practical and ground-breaking news right here.  Turns out that you may want to wash your hands after you pee.  I know I usually don't, unless I'm in a public place where hand-touching may occur.  Turns out the test they used to reach the conclusion that urine was sterile may not have been as scientifically rigorous as you might have hoped.  This is a great reminder that nothing is permanent, even in science.  The most basic facts you think you know could turn out to be completely wrong.  Free inquiry is important, just in case the facts are wrong, somebody needs to able to get to the real truth.

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Colorado River Reaches the Ocean

Colorado River delta in Mexico

For the first time in 16 years, the Colorado River has managed to flow into the Gulf of Cortez.  This is big news, because for the past 50 years, it has been rare for the Colorado to actually get to the sea.  Increased water needs from a rapidly growing population will do that, and since the Colorado is really the only river of note in that portion of the country, it was inevitable that it was going to get sucked dry.

Unfortunately, this was not a natural occurrence.  It was all part of a project to artificially flood the river in order to restore the Colorado's delta in Mexico.  Actually, the fact that water reached the ocean is good news, it means that the potential for restoration in the delta area is even greater than anticipated.  This project will continue to allow a smaller flow of water into the delta for the next three years, which will also help to restore plant and bird life in the area.

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Confirmed: A Certain Kind of Big Star Explodes Like All the Other Big Stars

Our sun is not a small star, but there are plenty of stars that are bigger than it.  However, stars do have an upper limit to the size they can grow.  Stars with more than 20 solar masses are very uncommon, but Wolf-Rayet stars are very rare, even in this very small subset of stars.  A Wolf-Rayet star is a massive star that is unusually hot, which causes intense solar winds.  This cause the star to eject material at an extremely high rate, losing the mass of the Earth to space every year, a billion times higher than what the sun does.  There are only a few hundred known Wolf-Rayet stars, and we were unsure of how they died.  It would make sense that they went supernova, like all the other stars that are a bit more massive than the sun, but because we know of so few and the unique way they die, we've never actually witnessed a Wolf-Rayet star go supernova.  Until now.

Astronomers were able to focus on supernova SN 2013cu mere hours after it was discovered, and this allowed the observation of ionized particles around the exploding star, a phenomenon that only lasts about a day.  This is important because it allowed astronomers to accurately identify what the material surrounding the star actually was, and in this case, this material almost certainly came from a Wolf-Rayet star.  This means that scientists can now say that Wolf-Rayet stars do go supernova like other stars of comparable size.  This seems like a no-brainer, but we weren't entirely sure.  Confirmation is important in science.

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Kepler Is Back

The Kepler Telescope has been our primary exoplanet hunting tool since its launch in 2009, but last May, it developed a problem.  The satellite has four stabilizing reaction wheels, and while it can operate with only three of them, it cannot operate with only two, and that is precisely what happened.  However, NASA has approved a new mission for Kepler that would not require three reaction wheels.  This new mission, called K2, involves using pressure from solar radiation to help stabilize the craft.  The new target area is much bigger than before and is located along the same plane as the Earth.

It's too bad that Kepler won't be able to complete its survey of the original search area, it's going to take many years for scientists to sift through the data, point their telescopes at potential planets, and actually confirm that what Kepler saw were actually planets.  But, so long as Kepler remains in its current state, we can now look at a completely new section of the sky, and find even more planets. 

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Cosmos Episode 11 Thoughts

We're getting down towards the end of the series, and the discussion is starting to get a bit more serious.  Tonight, the show was about the persistence of life, and the pursuit of all life to attain immortality.  Life would simply not work if it was not able to weather the harshest of conditions or do whatever it takes to survive.

Life on Earth has taken many routes to ensure its own survival.  There are bacteria that can survive the vacuum of space and being frozen in ice for millions of years.  If these organisms can handle these conditions, would it not be unreasonable that life could have migrated here from somewhere else, or that Earth itself has colonized another world with our own life?  There are bacteria with extraordinary abilities that go unused on Earth, so why have them at all, if they evolved on Earth?  It's an interesting thought, although I am still in favor of life on Earth being native to Earth.  I'm just not sure if bacteria really could make the journey in between worlds like that.

I think there was a missed opportunity when Tyson discussed dandelions and the adaptation their seeds possess, floating on the wind for hundreds of miles to settle new and unknown areas.  The dandelion was a very important symbol in the original Cosmos for that reason, the Ship of the Imagination was a dandelion seed.  I guess since they already quoted the original show before, they didn't want too many references in one episode.  It would have been nice though.

When it comes to achieving immortality, humanity has an advantage.  We invented writing, we have a way to permanently preserve our thoughts, our feelings, our history for all time.  We can learn from past mistakes, we are endlessly adaptable, and of course, we are intelligent.  Humanity has so many things going for it, there is no good reason for our species not to endure indefinitely.  Sometimes now, it does feel like we are permanently sabotaging ourselves, and the worst part is that we know we're doing it.  Maybe this time will seem better when viewing it through the eyes of history, and many things have improved dramatically.  It just feels like we could do better.

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Is the Great Red Spot Disappearing?

It's hard to imagine Jupiter without its iconic storm, which, next to Saturn's rings, is the most well-known feature in the solar system.  But, observations have shown that the Great Red Spot is shrinking.  Right now, it's only 10,000 miles across, and not even two Earths could fit in that distance, let alone the three we always here about.  This storm has been around for as long as we've been able to observe it, it's difficult to imagine the planet with that big swirling storm.  How will elementary school kids be able to draw Jupiter without a Great Red Spot?  Maybe this is only a temporary thing, maybe it will get better.  Then again, storms can't last forever, even on a gas giant.  Maybe the Great Red Spot is seeing its final days.

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Is It Worth Talking About Multiverses?

Recent data has shown considerable evidence in favor of the Big Bang and inflation.  This data can also be seen as supporting evidence for the multiverse theory.  We all sort of know about the multiverse, the theory that says that there is a potentially infinite number of universes out there, playing out every possible scenario.  It's an interesting idea, but unfortunately, as far as we know, that's all it will ever be, just an idea.  That's the issue this article is facing.  Can we even formulate theories on other universes, since in principle we can never actually detect or observe any visible effects from them?

Now, talking about other universes is okay if a theory that adequately explains our universe requires their existence.  That's what the big deal is about with this new data, because part of inflation theories is that many universes should exist.  And it's also okay to talk about something that we can't actually detect, like quarks.  We've never definitively found one, but the behavior of other subatomic particles supports their existence.  But something about the multiverse just doesn't sit right with me.  Maybe I've just heard too many people going on about how this universe could all be a dream, or a simulation.  Well, maybe it is, but there's nothing we can do about it, nothing we can do to affect it, no way to even know if this universe is real or not, so unless somebody finds some strange way of detecting other universes, I just don't see the point of talking about them.  The article does a very good job of discussing the topic, it really is worth the read. 


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Cosmos Episode 10 Thoughts

I didn't get a chance to watch this week's episode when it was new, but I have finally gotten around to it, and it was a good one.  This episode was all about one person, and this series has been at its best whenever it's done that.  Michael Faraday isn't exactly an obscure figure, but considering his contributions to science, he really doesn't get the attention he deserves.

Faraday was a major figure in 19th century science, but unlike most of the other scientists in England during the time, he did not come from privileged means.  Faraday never even made it past elementary school.  He started working when he was 13, and in one of life's moments of luck, he started working in a bookstore.  Here, he read all about electricity, a curiosity at this time, and became absolutely fascinated with it.  He began attending lectures by Humphrey Davy, a scientific superstar of the day, and took diligent notes on these lectures.  He sent these notes to Davy, who remembered them when he temporarily lost his eyesight in a failed experiment.  He hired Faraday as a secretary for his experiments, but more importantly, he allowed Faraday to tinker with the equipment himself.  Davy probably didn't expect anything from Faraday, but this does serve a valuable lesson.  It doesn't matter if you believe if someone can change the world, but if you give them the means to do so, they just might surprise you.

Faraday's efforts are all the more impressive when you consider the fact that he dealt with memory loss and depression for most of his life.  When presented with such adversity, there are a select few who take it as a challenge, and bring their minds to new heights.  Faraday was one of these people, and even as his mind betrayed him, he accomplished more and more.  Despite all of this, Faraday still had limitations, and he knew it.  He was no mathematician, he had barely any formal education.  But when James Clerk Maxwell delivered a book to Faraday's desk, providing him with all the equations he needed to prove his theories, he embraced Maxwell and his work, providing Maxwell with a huge boost.  Maxwell would become an enormously influential scientist, and another man who perhaps does not get as much credit in the history books as he should.  Newton and Einstein are justly famous for their work on gravity, but compared to Faraday and Maxwell's work with electromagnetism, there is no practical comparison.  Electromagnetism runs the modern world, it unites us all.  Sure, we can see gravity acting every day, but outside of a classroom, how often do we apply Einstein's laws, or even Newton's.  But, as Tyson made clear, without Faraday, the very devices you're reading this on and that we all depend on would not be possible.

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The First Sibling of the Sun Discovered

The Sun did not form by itself.  It was created alongside thousands of other stars in a vast nebula which long ago dispersed, with all of the stars created inside scattering across the galaxy.  It's been 4.5 billion years, these stars have had a long time to wander away, and detecting stars that formed within the same nebula as the Sun is a difficult task.  You have to take into account the chemical composition and orbital trajectories over the past 4 billion years.  Despite the difficulty, and despite the fact that this discovery happened much earlier than expected, astronomers have found our first solar sibling.

HD 162826 is 110 light years away, and it isn't a solar twin.  Those are a bit different from solar siblings, as a solar twin is a star which is virtually identical to the Sun, while a solar sibling is a star which formed from the same nebula as the Sun.  HD 162826 is a bit bigger then the Sun, but it has passed all the tests, it was formed from the same nebula at the same time as the Sun was.  This discovery is honestly quite surprising.  First off, we can only accurately determine if a star is a solar sibling if it is within 300 light-years currently, and astronomers put the odds of one being that close pretty low.  So, it is honestly impressive that we were able to find this one star.  It doesn't tell us much, until we can find more, HD 162826 is more of a curiosity, but it does prove that our Sun has siblings, and they are out there.

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A Computer Simulation of the Universe and Its Evolution

A powerful supercomputer has created the most accurate and detailed simulation of the evolution of the universe.  Not the entire universe, but a significant portion of it.  It's remarkable that we were able to simulate something like the universe in such detail.  The simulation isn't perfect, but it's pretty close.  It's pretty cool to watch too.

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Gamma Ray Lasers

There have been a lot of articles in the past few days about global warming.  It is a serious problem, and we should definitely do something about it.  But you know what?  Sometimes I get tired of reading all these gloomy things about how mankind is ruining the planet.  It's important to know, but there are times when you just want to read something light and frivolous.  Like this.

Sure, a gamma ray laser is still theoretical at this point, and they preface things by saying that it would be incredible useful in medical imaging, but let's not make things too practical here.  A gamma ray laser.  Gamma rays, the most intense form of light there is, with a wavelength of a few picometers, smaller than an atom.  The best part about this is the gain medium, or the part that turns the light into a laser beam.  Positronium sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi movie, but it's a real thing, and I wish I was a scientist working on this project so I could say I work with a positronium laser.  Useful and practical?  Maybe.  Incredibly fun-sounding?  Definitely.

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A Miracle Food With The Worst Possible Name

Some people out in California have developed a new product that could replace food and meals.  It's a liquid and consists of all sorts of essential nutrients that we can't live without.  The original contained 35 nutrients, which were all tossed into a blender and came out looking like thick lemonade.  It's an incredible product, but they've given it the worst name.  Not a stupid-sounding name, if you don't know your movie history you probably wouldn't think anything of it.  They've called it Soylent.  Now, if that doesn't ring any bells, let me introduce you to Soylent Green.

Soylent Green is a sci-fi movie from the 1970s where Earth has become incredibly overpopulated and polluted.  People are provided only Soylent Green to eat.  It's advertised as being made from plankton, but it isn't.  It's made from people.  Sure, it's an old movie and I'm sure quite a few people who would buy Soylent have never heard of the movie, but seriously, it's a terrible name.

Okay, so the branding could be better, but if it works, people will overlook the name.  And judging from what the article says, it does work quite well.  There are a couple things missing, but not much.  And with the ingredients available online, anybody can make their own variation.  It's incredibly efficient, and it frees up the consumer to do other things, presumably work.  And that is my biggest problem with this.  It represents a culture that doesn't ever stop, and doesn't want to stop.  It's a culture that doesn't know how to have fun, how to appreciate life, how to slow down and smell the roses.  A culture that efficient loses so much in pursuit of maximum productivity, namely art.  I know this is a science blog, and we owe a lot to scientific pursuit, but a world without art is a world I don't want to live in.  I know it's just a simple meal being lost through Soylent, but it feels like more.  I don't want any part of Soylent, and frankly, I hope it goes away.  I thought the same thing about smart phones back when they first came out, and look how well that turned out.  So, in five years, we'll all be eating Soylent.

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A Galaxy From the Beginning of the Universe

The galaxies are old.  Very old.  All galaxies are like this, but recently, scientists have discovered a galaxy that has remained essentially unchanged from its formation 13 billion years ago.  Unlike all our other knowledge about the formation of galaxies, this galaxy is quite close to Earth.  Segue 1 is a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.  It is incredibly tiny, holding only a thousand or so stars.  Because of this, it is believed that star evolution progressed no further than the first generation of stars born, as the galaxy was unable to develop further.

Spectrograph observations of the few red giants visible to telescopes show a heavy element concentration about 3,000 times less than what our sun has.  There were no heavy elements in the early universe, only hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium.  As a galaxy ages, more and more heavy elements are added to the galaxy via supernova.  Since Segue 1 has so little, it must be both very old and almost completely unchanged from its original state.  This discovery will give astronomers valuable insight into how galaxies formed.

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Cosmos Episode 9 Thoughts

We stayed close to home tonight on Cosmos, traveling in time rather than in space.  But as we heard, while it may be the same planet, there have been many Earths, each very different from our own.  We started off with a lesson about plate tectonics.  Looking back, it seems so obvious that the continents were once connected, the shape of the Atlantic Ocean and the coastline of the Americas against Europe and Africa get noticed by any observant elementary student who is presented with a map.  The first cartographer to make a reasonably accurate map of the world back in the late 16th century noticed the same thing, but his observation remained only speculation, a footnote until the 20th century.  The story of Alfred Wegener is well known, but the story of Marie Tharp and the discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is not, and it was a neat little bit of information.

Next we moved into the distant past, more than 300 million years ago.  This was the Carboniferous period, a time when trees first appeared and giant insects roamed the Earth.  This age is very important in our current time, because way back when, there were no organisms that could digest the lignin in the trees which is what made them grow, so instead of the tree being digested and its contents eventually returned to the environment, it was buried and eventually turned into coal.  We also got a similar story about the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, which was once a shallow tropical sea, full of life.  As things died, they became buried under silt, and eventually turned into oil and gas.  This is the era where we got our fossil fuels.

This episode featured a return to the Hall of Extinction, which we last visited in episode two.  We learned about the Permian extinction, and how the Earth itself seemed to conspire against life.  I think that brought home a valuable lesson. The Earth can support and nurture life, and then for no reason turn against it.  Nature is a powerful force.  We learned all about how plate tectonics has shaped our world, and I thought the story of the Mediterranean Sea was particularly interesting.  I didn't know that it was so young, that it had been so inhospitable before it flooded, and that it was formed so quickly, over a span of just a year or two.  Geologically speaking, that is remarkably quick.

We finished things off tonight with a warning.  Our dependence on fossil fuel is pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate not seen in a very, very long time.  There have been five mass extinctions in Earth's history, could we cause the sixth?  If we're not careful, the Earth could be a much harsher place in the near future.  I hope I'm not being optimistic here, but things are changing for the better.  In ten years, I think we will be much further along in the road to clean energy then we think we will be.  The tides are coming in, the slow march of progress in society is turning towards renewable energy.  There might be plenty of fossil fuel left, but the costs of extracting it will become prohibitive long before they run out.  Through government regulation, start-up energy companies, public opinion, things are slowly but definitely changing.

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For Deer, the Cold War Isn't Over

This is a little article about red deer living near the Czech-German border.  During the Cold War, the border between the two countries was impassible to these deer, and so two separate populations were formed on each side of the border.  The border is completely free now, and has been for more than 20 years, however, the deer remain separated.  The deer simply will not cross the border.

I had to laugh a bit when I read that a scientist had to specify that the deer were not being ideological.  It brought to mind a group of deer standing in a field railing against the spoiled deer bourgeoisie (that word is impossible to spell without looking it up).  Eventually the revolution will come, and all deer will be equal.  It will be a glorious day for all deer everywhere.

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The Search for Dark Matter Soldiers On

It's funny how science works sometimes.  We know quite a bit about dark matter, we know it's out there, we know how much of it there is, we know what its effects are, but we don't know what it is. At the very least, we've narrowed things down a bit.  Theories used to range from subatomic particles to black holes to brown dwarfs, now, scientists are pretty sure it's some sort of subatomic particle.

Of course, that's about all we know right now.  Candidates for dark matter currently include WIMP's, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, sterile neutrinos, and axions.  WIMP's are about 100 times more massive than electrons, only interact through gravity and the weak nuclear force, and do not interact very well with normal matter.  They do interact with each other, destroying each other and emitting gamma rays while doing so.  At least, this is the theory, because scientists haven't actually discovered one yet.  Next we have sterile neutrinos, a type of neutrino that interacts with fewer things than regular neutrinos, which don't interact with much.  According to the theory, sterile neutrinos only interact with gravity.  Again, they're something we're pretty sure exist, but we don't really have any means of detecting them.  All we can do is measure the effects they have.  Finally, there are axions, which should exist according to nuclear physics in high numbers, but once again, we have yet to detect any.  There is a project devoted to finding them, which should have definitive results in a few years if axions exists.

In any event, dark matter is probably made up of a combination of these various particles, not just one of them.  I suppose this is all good news in the search for dark matter, but it would be nice if we were sure even one of the proposed particles actually existed.  All three are theoretical at this point, and that just makes it difficult for me to get particularly excited.  I'm guessing it'll be another ten years at least before scientists are confident enough on the composition of dark matter to say definitively what it is.

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