Filed under: ISS, Music, NASA, Predictions, Religion, Science Fiction, Space, Violence, YouTube
This is from the end of Chapter Three, set on a space station in Earth orbit:
There was a knot of perhaps 15 people, all facing one another around a bunch of tables shoved together. They finished their song, and clapping was heard throughout the atrium.
Jon smiled at Gates, explained. “Spacers. Crew off those two ships docked outside. Choral music has become something of a tradition the last few years, and each ship usually can field a fairly good ensemble of at least a half-dozen singers.”
“Huh. I had no idea.”
Another song started, this time with more voices. “C’mon, let’s go on down there.”
Why do I post this? Because of this wonderful clip:
Not choral music, but flute as an accompaniment to a song. The provenance of her flutes is impressive in itself. But the fact that we’re seeing a highly-trained, wonderfully intelligent person in orbit doing this just really makes my day . . . and re-affirms my faith in humanity overall.
It is sometimes easy to be cynical and depressed at the things we do.
This makes up for it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, BoingBoing, Fermi's Paradox, Music, NASA, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech
Lee Billings, a science writer I was not previously aware of, has a really nice little introduction over at BoingBoing on the topic of searching for exoplanets capable of supporting life. Here’s a bit:
I’m admittedly biased (just look at my Twitter feed—it’s clear what my interests are), but my argument rests on facts: The research architectures and observational capabilities required to find Earth-like planets in our region of the galaxy, and determine whether or not some of them harbor life, are already reasonably well-defined. Public interest in (if not knowledge of) the search for alien life is high, and nearly universal. And, in comparison to tasks like finding the Higgs boson, establishing the precise nature of dark energy, or experimentally validating string theory, completing much (though not all!) of this “planetary census” simply isn’t that expensive.
* * *
What if we are cosmically alone, on a planet as anomalously unlikely and fertile as a fruit tree flourishing in an arid wasteland, or a flower blooming in a desert? What if worlds like ours are common as grains of sand? Does the universe hum and throb with life, or does eternal silence and sterility reign outside of our small planet? The truth is, no one really knows. But that will soon change. And when it does, this knowledge can only fill our lives, our world, and our future with more excitement, mystery, and awe.
Interesting metaphor – the flower blooming in a desert. And exactly the same one I use in the beginning of Communion of Dreams for exactly the same reason. Obviously, the man is brilliant.
OK, to be a little more serious here, I just thought people might want to know about this fellow, since he is going to be reporting on the results of the Kepler mission over the next couple of weeks.
Jim Downey
*Gratuitous Pink Floyd reference.
Sometimes you just need to look up. This is one of those days for me. So here is some amazing slow-motion footage of a shuttle launch. It really gets going about the 2:30 mark.
Enjoy.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Brave New World, Buzz Aldrin, Carl Zimmer, Comics, Government, io9, movies, NASA, Neil Armstrong, Phil Plait, PZ Myers, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space
Today’s xkcd sums things up pretty well, I think: the actual discovery was cool, but the hype made it feel anticlimatic.
Above and beyond what this says about our press being driven by ASTOUNDING!! news and the failure to get even basic science stories right (with some very obvious and excellent exceptions), consider just what was behind the hype: excitement at the prospect of non-terrestrial life of any sort being discovered.
The initial speculation that NASA had proof of life on Titan swept like electronic fire around the world. It wasn’t just science fiction geeks. Or actual biologists. Or space buffs. It was pretty much the whole world, though some had more fun with it than others.
Why did this capture the imaginations of so many people? Easy: we’re hungry for this news, and have been for decades. It’s not just the countless science fiction books and movies which have fed this hunger (mine included) – it is also the very real science behind the search for extra-terrestrial life (or intelligence). Proof of the existence of life beyond our planet would likely be considered one of the most important discoveries in the history of mankind, and the announcement of such a discovery would be a turning point bigger than even the first time that humans walked on the Moon.
It is easy in a time of recession, when money is tight for most people and the government is trying to figure out ways to cut expenditures, to under-value NASA or basic science research. And I am not arguing for this or that ‘big science’ program, per se. But all you have to do is look at what happened this week, to note the wonder and excitement which was launched by the merest possibility of the discovery of life elsewhere, to realize that this kind of knowledge is something that people around the world are waiting for with eager, almost palpable, anticipation. I think it is one of the very best things about humans that this is the case, and it should be encouraged and used.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bad Astronomy, Brave New World, Carl Zimmer, NASA, Phil Plait, Science, Science Fiction
Well, it’s not life on Titan. But it is very damned cool nonetheless:
NASA’s real news: bacterium on Earth that lives off arsenic!
NASA scientists announced today an incredible find: a form of microbe that apparently evolved the ability to use otherwise toxic arsenic in their biochemistry!
To understand just how important this is, let’s turn to an analogy from one of my favorite science writers: Carl Zimmer.
The search for alien life has long been plagued by a philosophical question: what is life? Why is this so vexing? Well, let’s say that you’re hunting for change under your couch so that your four-year-old son can buy an ice cream cone from a truck that’s pulled up outside your house. Your son offers to help.
“What is change?” he asks.
“It’s…” You trail off, realizing that you’re about to get into a full-blown discussion of economics with a sugar-crazed four-year-old. So, instead, you open up your hand and show him a penny, a nickel, a dime. “It’s things like this.”
“Oh–okay!” your son says. He digs away happily. The two of you find lots of interesting things–paper clips, doll shoes, some sort of cracker–which you set aside in a little pile. But you’ve only found seventeen cents in change when the ice cream truck pulls away. Tears ensue.
As you’re tossing the pile of debris into the trash, you notice that there’s a dollar bill in the mix.
“Did you find this?” you ask.
“Yes,” your son sobs.
“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not change. Change is metal. That’s paper.”
OK, I have just broken the usual standards of “fair use” and I hope Carl will forgive me. I’ll compensate by saying that you should go read the whole rest of the post, because it explains far better than I ever could what the full ramifications of this actually are. Seriously – go. I’ll write more tomorrow. Come back then.
Jim Downey
This would be so very cool:
Did NASA Discover Life on One of Saturn’s Moons?
NASA is holding a press conference on Thursday “to discuss an astrobiology finding.” Are they going to announce that they’ve found evidence of extraterrestrial life?Blogger Jason Kottke took a look at NASA’s press release, which touts “an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life” (astrobiology, besides being a cool word, is “the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe”), and decided to investigate further by looking at the participants’ resumes. So who are the participants?
- A geobiologist who’s written about “geology and life on Mars”;
- an oceanographer who’s done extensive work on arsenic-based photosynthesis;
- a biologist examining Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and its similarities to early Earth;
- and an ecologist investigating the “chemistry of environments where life evolves.”
Keep your fingers crossed.
Jim Downey
Hat tip to Jacob for the link! Thanks!
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, NASA, Phil Plait, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech
One of the main technological features of the setting of Communion of Dreams is the Advanced Survey Array – an artificial satellite in orbit around Titan, which is searching for likely planets to colonize in nearby star systems – planets which would be able to sustain Terran life. When I started writing CoD, finding such planets was still very much beyond our current tech – exoplanets of any sort were still just being inferred from other data.
But we’ve come a long way in the last decade. From Phil Plait’s latest blog post on Exoplanets:
Direct imaging of exoplanets is perhaps the newest field in all of astronomy. Ten years ago it didn’t exist, and was something of a dream. Now we have images of seven tiny dots, seven blips of light indicating the presence of mighty planets.
And with the advent of spectroscopy, we’ll learn even more: how hot they are, and what they have in their atmospheres. Eventually, with new technology, new telescopes on space, we’ll be able to split their light ever finer, and who knows? Maybe, one day not too long from now, we’ll see the tell-tale sign of molecular oxygen… the only way we know of to have molecular oxygen in an atmosphere over long periods of time is through biological activity. If we ever see it… that, my friends, will be quite a day indeed.
As I have noted previously, this is one of the dangers in writing near-term SF: that actual technological developments can outstrip what the writer envisions all too easily. We’re still not to the tech of my novel, but we’re further along than I would have guessed. Good thing that the book will soon be in print . . .
Jim Downey
That’s an exchange in today’s Sixty Symbols video, on the subject of asteroids: 
But the point is made clearer as the scientist explains that the threat is unlikely – yet, if we had a major impact, the results would be catastrophic.
However, the bulk of the relatively short (6:36) vid is just talking about the asteroid belt, and how it is now thought to be a planetary body which failed to form, due to the gravitational effects of the other planets. One good item was discussion of how even though this is the case, the vastness of space is such that the chances of encountering an asteroid while traversing the belt is very remote.
It would have been nice if they talked about project WISE, which was used to detect some 25,000 new asteroids recently. But I suppose it was important that they talked about the 1970s video game “Asteroids”, instead.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Mars, movies, NASA, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Survival, tech
How many times have you seen someone die in space? I mean in science fiction movies. Ignore the mass deaths from some huge battle. Think instead of individual deaths of a crew member on some kind of ship.
OK, and what usually happens with such an individual, post-mortem?
Right, it’s some variation on “burial at sea”. Unless there’s a specific reason why the body is kept for scientific purposes. This just makes sense – there’s a long tradition in many human cultures of burial at sea, for all kinds of practical and superstitious reasons. And while we’re still very much at the beginning of humankind’s ventures in space, we do think of it as akin to traveling the ocean.
So, how do you think NASA is planning on dealing with such an eventuality? Well, Mary Roach has a brief, but very interesting piece up at BoingBoing about a proposal for how to cope with a death on a trip to Mars. Here’s the intro:
The U.S. has plans for a manned visit to Mars by the mid-2030s. The ESA and Russia have sketched out a similar joint mission, and it is claimed that China’s space program has the same objective. Apart from their destination, all these plans share something in common: extraordinary danger for the explorers. What happens if someone dies out there, months away from Earth?
Swedish ecologists Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak and Peter Mäsak are the inventors of an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation and burial, called Promession. The technique entails freezing a body, vibrating it into tiny pieces, and then freeze-drying the pieces, which can then be used as compost to grow a memorial shrub or tree. The pair recently collaborated with NASA and design students in Denmark and Sweden to adapt Promession for use on a Mars mission.
Roach’s article contains illustrations and explanations from the proposal, showing how the system could be adapted for use on a long-term mission to Mars. Technically, it seems very straight-forward. Interestingly, it uses a ‘body bag’ type system similar to what I have in Communion of Dreams .
But I think that the article, and the proposal, show a curious mindset from NASA: they are still very much thinking in terms of being Earth-bound, and doing Earth-bound science, rather than exploration. Because exploration involves inherent risk, whereas in doing science one tries to eliminate risk in order to get dependable, testable data.
A couple of years ago I wrote about a proposal for a “one way” trip to Mars – where the astronaut(s) would accept that they would die on the planet rather than try and return. This hugely simplifies such a trip, since you don’t have to carry all the equipment and fuel needed to get back. Here’s a quote from that original newspaper item:
“When we eliminate the need to launch off Mars, we remove the mission’s most daunting obstacle,” said McLane. And because of a small crew size, the spacecraft could be smaller and the need for consumables and supplies would be decreased, making the mission cheaper and less complicated.
While some might classify this as a suicide mission, McLane feels the concept is completely logical.
“There would be tremendous risk, yes,” said McLane, “but I don’t think that’s guaranteed any more than you would say climbing a mountain alone is a suicide mission. People do dangerous things all the time, and this would be something really unique, to go to Mars. I don’t think there would be any shortage of people willing to volunteer for the mission. Lindbergh was someone who was willing to risk everything because it was worth it. I don’t think it will be hard to find another Lindbergh to go to Mars. That will be the easiest part of this whole program.”
As I said in that previous post, we’re all gonna die – only the manner and timing of our deaths are unknown. I think that McLane is right – there would be a huge number of people willing to volunteer for a ‘one-way’ trip to Mars. But even beyond that, if we’re dedicated to the idea of a return-trip (and there are plenty of good reasons to want to do so) mission, there are still plenty of people who would accept the personal risk and want to be “buried at sea” should they die during such a trip. Why bother with additional specialized equipment and supplies to cope with returning the body of a deceased crew member? Hauling all that extra weight to Mars and back makes no sense at all.
Perhaps, when we have advanced the technology of spaceflight sufficiently, to the point where it is akin to transportation here on Earth now, it’ll make sense to have mechanisms in place to return the bodies of explorers and scientists and military troops. But we have a very long way to go before we get to that point.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 