Space resources and advances... plus aliens & ufos, oh my!

Okay SPAAAACE-time. To the chagrin of those trying to destroy our confidence, we keep doing fine and wonderful things! 

Let's begin with my own milestone... after 12 years in the funnest gig ever, I just attended (in Houston) my last Symposium for NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC) - as a member of the External Council watching (and critiquing!) presentations about some of the coolest (and often weird) just-barely-plausible projects that NASA has deemed worthy of small-scale seed grant support.

Cool stuff! Look up the wide range of bold concepts, from several revolutionary kinds of space telescope to Venus gliders that move through the thick haze like manta rays. Or propelling spacecraft by firing fuel pellets at em, from behind! Or several kinds of stimulated isotope nuclear rockets, safer and cheaper than other nukes, but also much faster than chemical ones. From Mars habitats built of algae to a portable pharmacy that might make any drug on demand.

 You can either read up on past projects or catch the Symposium recorded free, at the NIAC site.  

== How asteroids may offer wealth - or threats.... ==

NASA just launched the Psyche spacecraft aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket - on its journey to the unique metal-rich asteroid, Psyche. Data from this mission could advance plans for future asteroid mining. Headlines that Psyche is worth "quadrillions of dollars" of course neglect the fact that - after a few measly thousands of tons of gold and platinum harvested to Earth - prices would collapse and you'd be using gold foil to wrap sandwiches. (Now, I wonder which parties here on Earth would not like their mines to go obsolete? And hence pushed for the silly-useless"Artemis" distraction-"race" to re-do Apollo footprint stunts on a vast plain of useless, poison lunar dust?)

The first asteroid sample has been returned to Earth; the sample capsule from the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu was retrieved after landing in the Utah desert. Samples are being analyzed at the Johnson Space Center.

Meanwhile, the asteroid-defense foundation, B612 – helping track potentially devastating rocks out there - has launched the Schweickart Prize - honoring Apollo 9 & Skylab astronaut Rusty Schweickart’s contributions to space exploration and planetary defense across a 60-year career. The $10,000 award aims to stimulate graduate student contributions to planetary defense and advancement of humanity's cosmic journey, safeguarding our transition into the wider cosmos. Awardees will also receive a museum-quality meteorite. Not just technical advances qualify! Also in fields of policy and education about this existential purpose.

 And if that weren't enough... almost daily we get incredible wonders from the utterly intricate James Webb and its partner telescopes, in space and on Earth, some of them mentioned in my last posting about space.

And meanwhile, recovery (with stunning pinpoint accuracy) of perfect asteroid samples, brought back across (literally) a billion miles? The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers doing dazzling Mars science accompanied by a spectacular little helicopter? And that's just marvels we've accomplished in Space!

There's far, far more down here on Earth. Making pessimism kinda... well... one of the dumber attitudes even remotely possible.

== Fermi Redux. I stand by prevalence of Life! Just not folks with starships ==

First. Way fun stuff by John Michael Godier about the most isolated human tribe on Earth… the Sentinelese… and whether they exist in a version of the “Zoo Hypothesis” for the Fermi Paradox. Of course, Isaac Arthur has probaly 30+ videos dissecting the same topic in great detail... that I don't always agree-with!  But certainly fascinating riffs!

An interesting and cogent video about the Fermi Paradox by charismatic astrophysicist David Kipping is informative and entertaining. Alas, it is also… ultimately… deeply wrongheaded.

Oh, surely something is depressing the observability of interstellar (IS) civilizations… and as I stated in my 1983 paper – the first that really tried to appraise the range of ‘fermi proposals’ to explain the Great Silence – there are dozens of possibilities, ranging to “They are out there, just hard to notice.”

This fellow’s argument is that LIFE may be the key factor and that the existence of living material on Earth might be the statistical fluke. He goes on, claiming we have no idea what f(L) in the Drake equation must be. And he does poke at some logical fallacies that eager folks often lean upon, to support their faith in Otherness.

Still, while that his claim of “we don’t know F(L)” is true, his ‘hence life on Earth is likely a fluke’ is unsupportable.

In fact, ever since the Miller-Orgel-Urey or MOU experiments of the 60s, each successive stage of self-assembly of organic molecules toward life-like complexity has fallen in the laboratory with rapidity, each being lab-emulated within the next five years or so. Step by step by step, we have not found a next-level of complexity or pre-life that would be statistically hard for a planet-ocean-organic-soup to achieve. Oh, sure, that proves nothing. The next one beyond our horizon might turn out to be the truly hard and rare one! The one that leaves Earth to be uniquely and lucky!

(For appraisal of every variety of "Gaia Hypothesis -- weak, medium, strong and hyper-strong(!) see my novel EARTH, which should have a new edition out, in January!)

Still, the steady series of easy steps beyond MOU cannot be ignored. It has meaning in arranging a general sense of how the universe is trending, in her revelations, via science.

Things start getting more interesting when Kipping finally gets to an actual issue with “life started quickly” on this planet. That would certainly seem to imply it happened easily! He wriggles kinda cleverly, to anthropically dismiss that argument, in a way that’s both cute and…

…and also BS, since there are many other stars that have longer lifespans than ours while still not too dissimilar to Sol.  A G5 star will last twice as long without differing in any (likely to be) crucial ways.

And this leaves out the real reason why life pretty much has to be all over the place. The fact that almost every star you see in the sky – even binaries or multiples or unstable flare stars – whatever - likely has planets, including several Europa-type bodies nearby with liquid water oceans covered by ice roofs. 

Moreover, each new solar system apparently begins with trillions of icy comets, which start off (likely) with molten, salty, electrified interiors. That is a lot of test tubes for biogenesis!

And let’s not even get started on panspermia.

Sound like I disagree with Dr. Kipping? In fact, I’m not disagreeing with his overall notion that Interstellar civilizations may be rare! What’s very hard to support is his focus on F(L) as the likeliest culprit.

In fact, let me flip and say I do believe that it is very plausibly arguable that the number of extant high tech civilizations is low! Because, while F(L) seems (tentatively) likely to be high - F(I) and F(c) very likely are low!  In fact, my top-ranked “fermi” is that human level sapience has evolved in this galaxy only occasionally, tech civ even more rarely...

... and tech civilizations that escape the lobotomizing trap of feudalism - (the ubiquitous historical failure mode that is rearing up - yet again as we speak - to destroy us) - are probably nearly nonexistent.

That is where we are very likely a fluke. At least it ranks way up there on my list.

== As for those freaking UFOs? ==

Yeah yeah. Twice every decade since I was a child, these manias have recurred, always the same insipid nonsense and the same absolute paucvity of anything remotely plausible. Well... see my posting:

What's really up with UAPs/UFOs?

Grrr. even if they were 'real', we still oughta snub the nasty things!

More marvels from space

We can only repair both Earth and society if we regain confidence that we're capable citizens of a flawed-but-great ... and getting-greater ... civilization. And so, let's start with --

Gorgeous planetary art by Van God. Seriously, your neighbors who yearn for apocalypse, ask them how can it not be the creator's intent that we go forth and appreciate such glory? And ever-greater sights and knowledge across the sea of stars? Yours is the folk that does all this, with competence and skill and awe.

And joy. Those trying to demoralize us will fail.

Remember Oumuamua?  The  mysterious space rock, first spotted in 2017, plunged into our solar system from interstellar space, flung around the sun and sped onward, captivating us with its strange shape, so like that of Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rama.” Moreover, in a sci-fi-ish twist, it’s been accelerating!

Okay, okay, don’t get in a twist. The tiny acceleration fits what we’d expect from gas puffing out of the sun-warmed end of a comet.   ‘Oumuamua was indeed comet-like, it was just coated in a thick layer of carbon-rich grime that insulated the space rock’s icy heart. The rock’s exit from our neighborhood has settled most astronomers’ minds.'

Okay, unavoidable brag time. The entire theory of insulating dust or other layers atop comets, limiting or delaying their heating and outgassing, is mine. My doctoral dissertation “Three Models of Dust Layers on Cometary Nuclei.”  Indeed, many of what we call asteroids may be choked-off short period comets, which would be great news. So much yummy water, within fairly easy reach. Vastly easier than dragging smidgeons from the bottom of the dusty old moon’s gravity well. (And we've found nothing else of value, down there.) Hey. Just sayin’.

Movin' on... Mathematica guru Stephen Wolfram offers a series of way-cool (if long!) essays on: (1) looking back fifty years to what the movie 2001 got wonderfully right… and interestingly wrong. (My own essay on such matters is here.)

The 2018 motion picture Clara “tells the story of an exoplanetary astronomer who makes a momentous discovery.” This AAS article by the film’s science advisors discusses how to simulate an object in another star’s L1 point. Ooooh. sci fi that’s nerdy!

== Solar System marvels ==

Thirteen years of data from the Cassini Mission have allowed NASA to create a globe of Titan that strips away the obscuring clouds and haze.  Fantastic.

Is Pluto made of a billion comets?  Scientists have found an intriguing consistency between the estimated amount of nitrogen inside a plutonian glacier and the amount that would be expected if Pluto was formed by the agglomeration of roughly a billion comets or other Kuiper Belt objects, only chemically modified by liquid water, perhaps even in a subsurface ocean.

One of the most exciting discoveries of the last 30 years has been learning there’s more than one moon in our system with a ice-roofed ocean. There may be more than a dozen, including Pluto!  Meaning such roofed water worlds are likely to abound everywhere in the universe. Which makes the next news awesome:  

“Using data collected by NASA’s late-great Cassini space probe, scientists have detected traces of complex organic molecules seeping out from Enceladus’ ice-covered ocean. It’s yet another sign that this intriguing Saturnian moon has what it takes to sustain life.”

“The newly confirmed organic molecules feature masses above 200 atomic units, which is more than 10 times heavier than methane. These molecules contain aromatic structures (ring-shaped, flat molecules) with possible cross chains of hydrocarbons. The source of these complex organics could be of a non-biological or biological nature, but the exact origin has not been determined.”  There is a small chance the molecules might have come from passing comets (nu?) But more likely from vents releasing showers of sub-ice water from the seas of Enceledus.

Listen in.... Eerie plasma wave chatter between Saturn and its ice-roofed, ocean moon. Researchers compressed 16 minutes of plasma exchange between Saturn and Enceladus into 29 seconds of audio for human ears.

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover-lab will go beyond the capabilities of the current Opportunity probe in many ways. In one added feature, it will drill and dig up soil samples to put in over 30 tubes and will then drop them at various points. Now Airbus and the European Space Agency have announced plans of a “fetch rover,’ which could head to the planet in 2026. If it lands and operates successfully, it will seek these cached samples, autonomously drive to their location, and store them. It will also have to be able to plot its driving route on its own every single day, saving on the high cost of maintaining a large support team of humans on Earth. Once it has “proceeded to the route,” it will have a guide map already created by Mars 2020.

“It could take the vehicle around 150 days to collect all the canisters Mars 2020 leaves behind. Then it has to find the rocket it landed with, hand off the sample tubes, then back off and film the rocket blasting off to rendezvous with an orbiter to bring the samples back to Earth.”

Complicated, ambitious and worthy of a mighty, wonderful civilization, of which you should be proud. Assertively, adamantly and - yes - even aggressively proud. This stuff is significant even theologically. And I mean that, literally.

== Looking toward asteroids ==

Japan’s space mission Hayabusa 2 is now close to the Ryugu asteroid with hopes to then return samples of the type C asteroid, containing traces of water and organic material. The press is kvelling over it’s shape, like an 8-sided D&D die.

Many asteroids appear to have similar orbits and compositions. Perhaps each "asteroid family" formed when a collision shattered a planet-size body into many fragments. Nearly every meteorite that falls onto Earth may ultimately come from a half dozen or so lost worlds that splintered apart soon after the birth of the solar system.

Speaking of asteroids, the Dawn probe has lowered its orbit around Ceres from 220 to 22 miles, delivering stunning images, including the dwarf planet's Bright Patches.

A peculiar asteroid 2015 BZ509 with a retrograde orbit was apparently captured by proto-Jupiter from the interstellar medium 4.5 billion years in the past.

== Beyond the solar system ==

Astronomers have made a bold prediction: "In 2022, give or take a year, a pair of stars will merge and explode, becoming one of the brightest objects in the sky for a short period.” The binary pair’s the speed of the orbit was gradually getting faster and faster, implying the stars are getting closer together. Calculations suggest the pair will explode as a “red nova”— caused by a binary merging—in about 5 years’ time.

Three young protoplanetary suns have been found to have dust rich in nanodiamonds.  Yes, that’s nano… diamonds.

Fantastic new image of the Galactic Center taken by the new, South African radio telescope! All still consistent with Gregory Benford's Galactic Center series.

And while we're down there... Too cool. Each time I look at this time-lapse of stars orbiting the black hole at the center of the galaxy, I go “gosh.”
That’s a lie. Sometimes I go Wow or Dang! Or “I’m as proud as heck.”

Is this  the very first direct image of the birth of a planet still forming around a star?

Researchers have tried to catalogue the ordinary matter in the universe—not to be confused with dark matter, or Dark Energy. About 10 percent sits in galaxies, and close to 60 percent is in the diffuse clouds of gas that lie between galaxies. Some predicted that the missing 30 percent of baryons were likely in a web-like pattern in space called the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM).

“Astronomers have found the brightest object ever discovered in the early Universe, 13 billion light-years away - a quasar from a time when our Universe was just seven percent of its current age.” A huge black hole eating massively from one of the earliest galaxies.

And finally... Moon landing fakery! Well, not really. These recovered hi-res images from Apollo 11 help prove the opposite.  But one of the captions is wrong! Image #3 supposedly shows: “The lunar module, after being jettisoned.”  Um wrong! It shows both sections of the LEM together, hence it is pre-landing, undoubtedly taken by Michael Collins as Buzz & Neil began their descent.  Yeah, picky-picky. And we are the civilization that did that. You are mighty beings called competent citizens.  Show it.

It’s ALIVE! And it’s in Outer Spaaaace!

Excitement is building for the New Horizons Mission and its hurried swing past Pluto on July 14.  What a terrific way to celebrate Bastille Day!  Watch this terrific video - Fast and Light to Pluto - about New Horizons, created by the NY Times.

I met Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh when I was 15...

Spread the word about this!  Grab lapels and shout at your co-workers. Get neighborhood kids to watch the encounter on SCI or  NASA TV... and remind them to then stand up, remembering they are members of a civilization that does stuff like this! 

Those of our fellow citizens who cannot feel even a little thrill and pride? Alas, pity such impoverished souls.

And see how the IAU and the New Horizons mission team will come up with names for all the great new features the mission will (we hope) reveal. 

Okay, so there's rough news from space, as well... the latest SpaceX launch failed.  With the take home lesson that space is hard. Hang in there, Elon. If failures didn't happen, it would be a sure-fire clue that we aren't pushing hard enough.

Still, there hasn't been a time like this one -- in humanity's exploration of the universe -- since the early seventies.  Daily, you are being yammered-at by dour cynicism addicts of all kinds -- especially of the "left" and of the "right" -- but pay them no attention.  

Dare. Dare to feel some pride.  

== It's aliiiiive! Sinkholes and “signs of life” on comet 67/P ? ==

surface of comet 67P 

The ESA's Philae lander is alive!  Moreover, beaming science from the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko,  I was at first surprised, since the increased sunshine that roused it back to wakefulness is also making the comet active, with sublimating ice turning into expanding vapor, blowing off dust. In fact, given the comet’s minuscule gravity, I thought the lander might have been - at this point -- also blown tumbling into space. 

Though, now that I think on it, what seemed bad luck, back in November, might instead be fortunate!  According to my doctoral dissertation (1981) activity will wildly vary across a comet's surface, because of accumulated dust layers -- which helps explain 67-P's wildly varied surface features.  (See a blatant sea of dust in the accompanying photo.) This suggests that Philae bounced and plopped into a shaded region where activity is low… and may remain low enough for the little probe to stay put during perihelion passage.  If so, then we may have a monitoring station during that exciting phase.

In fact, fascinating news keeps coming. Like that collapsing sinkholes may be responsible for 200 meter-deep pits on comet 67.  Cameras on Rosetta's OSIRIS instrument have spotted dust jets shooting out of some of the deeper depressions, but those that are more shallow do not seem to be active.

  Scientists “wondered if the pits might have formed as a result of the melting of frozen materials on the comet's surface, also known as sublimation, but computer models nixed this idea as well.  The researchers say that excavating just one of the pits this way would take more than 7,000 years. Although the comet likely formed 4.5 billion years ago, it has only been flying close enough to the sun for sublimation to occur since 1959, when a close encounter with Jupiter changed its orbit.”

Hmm. well, in fact I have an idea about that. And it relates to the other comet-related "news" that media have been raving about.  Chandra Wickramasinghe is a remnant colleague of iconoclast astronomer and sometime science fiction author Fred Hoyle. Chandra does some solid science... but also relentlessly pushes Hoyle's notion of life burgeoning in interplanetary space. “He and colleague Dr Max Wallis, from the University of Cardiff, believe 67P and other comets like it could provide homes for living microbes similar to the “extremophiles” that inhabit the most inhospitable regions of the Earth. Comets may have helped to sow the seeds of life on Earth and possibly other planets such as Mars, they argue.” 

They suggest that the comet's black hydrocarbon crust, subsurface ice, flat-bottomed craters, and smooth, icy “seas”—are the result of microbial organisms living beneath the comet’s icy surface. (Alas, their credibility has been self-injured by some cult-like ways their Panspermia Zealot followers have behaved, especially at the tendentiously unscientific so-called "Journal of Cosmology.")
 

To be clear, I have no problem at all with pondering a possibility -- that comets may have been reactor vessels that cooked up the original primordial life-stuff.  There was a period in the early solar system when decaying Aluminum 26 from a recent supernova might have internally heated comets in our newly formed solar system, enough to give them liquid interiors protected by ice-cold shells. Think a trillion micro-Europas. That would be one hell of a lot of test tubes and petri dishes! (A possibility elucidated both in my thesis and in a novel Heart of the Comet.)

Indeed, might this account for the "sink-holes" that the Rosetta Probe seems to have found, at comet 67/P? I’ve not yet seen anyone propose that super-ancient vacuoles and chambers thread cometary interiors, left over from those early, liquidy days – a physical possibility, whether or not organic chemistry produced “life.”

On the other hand, Wickramasinghe (as usual) reaches way too far. The dark, quasi-organic dust seen by Philae and Rosetta is far simpler to explain -- as simply the same stuff as we already observe in carbonaceous chondrites. Please, we get plenty of dustfall from old comets and so far, evidence for actual microbes is scant. I lean toward lots of early-days organic chemistry. But existing and active organisms? Meh.

Okay, okay. Clearly I still care about this scientific field… because it’s fascinating!  

Do I miss being a world-class comet guy, who might have been sitting right now in Darmstadt, poring over data as it comes in?  Well… sure.  You guys are to blame. Bribing me to play hookie, living off speculative blather and SciFi. Yeah, that's the ticket. It's your fault.  Sigh.

== And there's more! ==

Like the continuing stunning effectiveness of our two robot labs on the surface of Mars and four orbiting overhead. Want coolness?  Here are images these emissary labs (paid for with pennies each from you taxpayers) took of Comet Siding Spring as it passed by Mars last year, inside the orbit of Phobos!  (Picture a comet passing Earth at just 1/3 the distance to the Moon. I am so jealous.) 

...as we celebrate the Opportunity rover's completion of a "marathon" having traveled 26.2 miles across the Martian surface on our behalf, doing great science all the way, having lasted more than a decade longer than the originally planned 90 day mission. Watch this terrific video showing a time lapse of Opportunity's journey. (Oh and I served on the commission that chose the names "Spirit" and "Opportunity" proposed by one of several thousand school children.) Be proud of your loyal robots!

And NASA has put money into a Europa mission.  Science instruments have just been selected -- to analyze the surface and subsurface ocean of Jupiter's icy moon -- and look for possible clues to life.

Wow.  Uttergloss!  A video animation: Fly-over the dwarf planet Ceres, based on images taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, provides dramatic views of this heavily cratered, mysterious world. Note: YOUR civilization did this.  Just part of the best year in space exploration since the 1970s.

Oh, and we just finished a fabulous orbiter mission to Mercury. And we still have marvelous Cassini, near Saturn and Titan...

Here are some of the latest pics of geological features taken by the DAWN probe, at Ceres. Oh, but there’s no end to fun with “bright patches” (that might be salt, rather than water ice. And now...a 5-mile tall “pyramid” mountain. Take this flyover video! We are SO getting our money’s worth. 

Shall we finish with some cool space miscellany? How about a look at some of the space habitats portrayed in science fiction, from Deep Space 9 to Elysium….are they plausible?

Phil Plait offers up a little allegory about an asteroid heading toward the Earth, and how easy it might be to save ourselves, if not for mistrust of science itself.  And here's hoping you all enjoyed Asteroid Day and decided to support the B612 Foundation!

Did I say we live in fascinating times? It's our mission. We are rising out of kindergarten, at last. Growing up means we're behooved to take more responsibility, for each other and the planet our descendants will inherit.  But it also means recognizing there's a lot more to do, beyond the nursery walls.

Spread the excitement.  And happy Bastille Day.  Allons enfants de la univers...