News on ‘goldilocks’ worlds and alien visitors…
What more appropriate breaking news stories for New Worlds?…
Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star just 20 light-years from Earth. The newly discovered planet has a 37-day orbit and, like Earth, is distant enough from the star for liquid water to exist:
First ‘goldilocks zone’ planet reported
In my opinion, we’re still quite a way from finding a ‘real’ Earth-like world, but these findings indicate that
(1) As long suspected, there are LOTS of extra-solar planets
(2) We’re finding them every few days now… it’s only a matter of time.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated (or IS it? ;-}) story, seven former USAF officers are ‘coming out’ and claiming an orchestrated cover-up of credible UFO reports:
Former USAF officers claim cover-up on UFOs
images of a suspected extraterrestrial
It’s long been contended by ‘ufologists’ that UFOs seem to pay particular attention to our nuclear weaponry. These remarkably credible accounts seem to back that up. They’re claiming that UFOs somehow ‘shut down’ U.S. nuke silos! I’m a UFO sceptic, but I admit that this report gives me some pause… (place pregnant pause here)… What I can’t figure out is why ET would give a flying fnord about our nukes. Why should they care if we blow ourselves up? Unless of course, they are extremely altruistic or because they have a vested interest of some kind in this planet’s survival. Hmmmm…
I love this extrasolar stuff. Such a thrill.
Those aliens are a little scary, though.
Comment on September 30, 2010 @ 7:27 am
Bring ‘em on. Can’t be any worse than republicans, can they?
Comment on September 30, 2010 @ 10:27 am
Wikipedia reported that members of a social networking site bought time on a Ukrainian transmitter specifically to beam a hello message to this star system. We are far from confirming habitable conditions there (all the candidate worlds are much larger than our own. The only one that may be under 3 Earth masses is also likely to be tidally locked to the star — perpetual day and perpetual night, with insane turbulence likely in the twilight band if there is a significant atmosphere. Not to mention the star, while relatively dim in a general sense, is especially bright in the x-ray spectrum [not ideal energy for life support from such a nearby stellar source.]) Still, if there is life there, that life is doing its own SETI search in the radio spectrum, and it quickly composes a response to the Ukrainian transmission, we should get that response in 2049.
Comment on September 30, 2010 @ 3:17 pm
Astute comments Demonweed. The NPR article I cited is somewhat murkily written. A clearer one was posted here:
NYT: Planet Gliese 581g
Following your lead, I found this nicely detailed article (perhaps the one to which to refer):
Wikipedia: Gliese 581
On exactly what constitutes a ‘habitable world’, we wade into deep waters… Remember that we have a life-supporting example dataset of exactly ONE. Earth.
A tidally locked world with an atmosphere would thermodynamically indeed create ‘insane’ weather. The very ‘twilight’ regions where the most promising temperatures would exist would be the very ones where this turbulence would be most extreme. I wouldn’t fancy living in a place where F5+ tornadoes and Category 5+ hurricanes were a daily weather ‘feature’! On the other hand, if you lived underground, energy production would be a snap with windmills placed on the surface, but you’d probably be replacing them constantly as they would be blown away regularly!
There is SO much we still don’t know about ‘life’ and what constitutes it in general! There ARE good chemical reasons why Carbon (C) and H2O work so well together to produce long ‘interesting’ chains (polymers). But Silicon (Si) possesses similar valence properties. Could complex ‘microchips’ evolve on a Si-based world? We just don’t KNOW.
Then there is the ‘panspermia’ (somewhat a misnomer) argument championed in the 1960′s by Francis Crick of DNA fame. I never liked this argument because I feel it begs the question. If life on Earth was an import from points unknown, it still doesn’t explain how life BEGAN in the first place. Of course, the Universe doesn’t give a damn about what SkyHarbor ‘likes’ or doesn’t like! ;-}
If when we first encounter ‘alien’ life we find that it uses Carbon-based DNA for genetic data storage and replication, we’ll know that Crick was probably right.
If, on the other hand, we find a completely different method of genetic transmission, we’ll know that life can arise independently in clement conditions…
One thing about alien life that we must bear in mind is that it will be ALIEN! We might not even recognise such organisms as being ‘alive’ at all!
So will alien life look like this?:
Probably NOT… but the image of the he-man space hero racing to the rescue of the fetching and scantily clad space-maiden sure did appeal to generations of teenage boys! (me included ;-})
I’ll close with this delightful Disney offering from 1957 that cleverly lampoons these stereotypes:
Comment on October 1, 2010 @ 2:51 am
Oh, that was just wonderful breakfast goodness! Did you catch the quick cameo from Donald Duck? Great find. Such a bummer we had to kill all those fantastic ideas about Mars by actually sending a camera to take a few pictures. Maybe Gliese 581 can fill in this all important gap?
RUN!!! THE GLIESIANS ARE COMING!!!!!
Comment on October 1, 2010 @ 6:51 am
Actually, I remembered this from childhood… on that Sunday “Disneyland” TV show (predecessor to “The Wonderful World of Disney”). I stumbled over it while searching for an appropriate “Pulp Science Fiction” image (see above).
It was part of a whole 1957 show dedicated to “Mars and Beyond”. Remember “Tomorrowland” and the “Flight to Mars” ride at Disneyland?… I sure do! Disneyland was only a year old and Sputnik I had just been launched when this was first broadcast, so America was very space conscious.
It was posted by some kind soul in 6 parts to YouTube. My only small gripe is that the audio is only on the right channel, but it was mono to start with, so no big deal. The whole show was very good and (obviously) left a deep impression on me (I was 6 in 1957) although naturally I could only see it in B/W at the time.
It holds up extremely well in my opinion, although we’ve certainly learned a lot since then. A great little time capsule! Here’s the link:
Disneyland: “Mars and Beyond”
Check it out!
p.s.: Yes, I noticed Donald Duck… very clever!
Comment on October 1, 2010 @ 11:55 am