Blog 7: Extremophiles

Posted on May 4, 2021 by mattj3

Extremophiles are organisms that thrive within severe abiotic environments while maintaining the ability to grow and reproduce. These organisms inhabit areas of extreme temperature, pressure, salinity, acidity, and radiation, surviving through environmentally defined adaptations. Extremophilic organisms are based within both prokaryotic and eukaryotic life, meaning their existence ranges throughout all domains of life. Through the research of such organisms, insights are observed from each environmentally refined adaptation, leading to a deeper understanding of biological function and the range of environmental conditions under which life can survive. Extremophiles are further subdivided into categories based on the environment they exist in. These include thermophiles and psychrophile (characterising extreme warm and cold temperatures), barophiles (high pressure levels), halophiles (extreme salinity), and acidophiles (or conditions with high acidic ph values).

Image of H. pylori

Helicobacter pylori is an example of an extremophile, specifically an acidophile, meaning it thrives in extremely acidic environments. H. pylori is a bacteria that inhabits the high acidic conditions of the stomach. This microbiota secretes the enzyme urease that protects to organisms from the stomach’s hydrochloric acid.

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Aliens in Pop Culture

Posted on May 4, 2021 by bellagoodnight

Picture an alien. What did you think it looked like? Maybe you thought of a small green creature with a big head and big eyes, or maybe you thought of ET or one of the people from Avatar or Jar Jar Binks. No matter what you thought of, your picture was likely influenced by pop culture in some way because we don’t really know what aliens look like. Sure, maybe they will have some similar features to us because through evolution, it may be useful on most planets to have hands, but overall, we don’t have any concrete information on what aliens could look like.

So why do they often look so similar or familiar in pop culture? Part of the answer lies in the technical side of things. In movies and television, aliens may have 2 legs, 2 arms, and a head because that is what is going to be easiest with a human actor. They can add all sorts of prosthetics but because it is a person playing a role, there are some restrictions on how they will look or move. Now, there is able to be a bit more creativity because of the capabilities of CGI technology! It is really amazing what can be computer generated for movies, but still even these more monstrous or unique aliens often have a sense of familiarity. This is in part due to the fact that people must get inspiration from somewhere, and it often comes from nature, including weird animals like goblin sharks. People are limited by things we know, and making a new alien is no exception.

Another reason aliens are often somewhat humanoid or familiar in pop culture is because you want an audience to relate to the creature in some way a lot of the time. If it is too far disconnected from anything we know here on Earth, people won’t have the same empathetic connection that is necessary for making an audience care about your characters.

Picture of famous pop culture aliens

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A New Hope (For Alien Life)

Posted on May 4, 2021 by connorrobbwilcox
Life finds a way in the universe

Astronomy 2110 has been a real pleasure of a class to attend. Not only have I learned so much about Earth, but also about the rest of the solar system. I have discovered the secrets of our planet, the planets that are our neighbors, and our incredible star that I would have never known if I dismissed taking this course. However, ironically what has most excited me was what we learned the least about because it was at the very end of the class. These topics were the the worlds that could be habitable and the possibility of life outside of Earth.

I learned that there are worlds in our solar system that you might not think are habitable but could be. These are Pluto and the moons of the Jovian planets, including Europa of Jupiter and Titan and Enceladus of Saturn. These worlds are geologically active, meaning they have surface features constantly being reformed by volcanoes, tectonics, changes in temperature, and weather. Titan for instance, has volcanoes but instead of having regular lava, they may spew water ice, hydrocarbons or a variety of other materials into Titan’s thick atmosphere. Enceladus has tectonics, different types of terrain, and geysers of salty ice grains, water vapor, and organic compounds. Europa too has an atmosphere made of mostly oxygen and water vapor, and a possible ocean beneath its icy surface, with hydrothermal vents. But the most strange and mysterious is Pluto. It has a very small size yet it has mountain ranges and internal heat, meaning it is somehow active. Because of such geological activity, there is a possibility, if only a small one, of life on each of these worlds, which is incredibly exciting. This can be very promising for finding extraterrestrial life outside of our solar system. With nearly 4,400 exoplanets discovered already, there must be some type of life out in the rest of the universe, and I can’t wait until we find it.

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Monster from the Deep

Posted on May 4, 2021 by zhengjs1

Extremophiles are definitely some of the most persistent living beings. These microorganisms are able to survive in conditions regarding temperature, acidity, and/or chemical concentration beyond extreme that would prove fatal to almost all carbon-based life on Earth. While many extremophiles prove to look nightmarish, one type of extremophiles might give the others a run for their money: Pompeii worms.

Image of a Pompeii Worm (Source)

Alvinella pompejana, more commonly known as Pompeii worms, are deep-sea polychaetes that can reach up to five inches in length and survive in tubes located near hydrothermal vents along the Pacific seafloor. The areas around these hydrothermal vents are beyond hot, with water from the deep inside the vent spewing out at temperatures as high as 350°C (662°F). With the ability to withstand these scorching hot temperatures, Pompeii worms are given the title of being the most heat-tolerant complex animal on Earth! Through research and experimentation, scientists discovered that the tails of these worms can rest in temperatures as high as 80°C while the head comes outside the tube to breathe in more comfortable temperatures of around 22°C. However, these worms have additional adaptations that help them to endure such harsh temperatures like their symbiotic relationship with chemosynthetic bacteria. These colonies of bacteria live on back of Pompeii worms, forming a hair-like covering up to one centimeter thick. While the worms secrete mucus from tiny back glands to feed the bacteria, the bacteria provide protection in the form of insulation. Even though scientists have researched a great deal on Pompeii worms to understand their evolutionary history, there is still a lot more left to uncover about these creatures and their functioning.

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The Fermi Paradox

Posted on May 4, 2021 by hunterspiveyastr
Video from Kurzgesagt on YouTube

If you were to ask different people what one of their biggest questions about our universe is, it’s pretty believable to think that one of the most common questions would be “Do aliens exist?”. This question is especially important in that it’s a question that no one really knows the answer to; whether or not life exists out in other solar systems on other planets has yet to be seen. Because of this, humanity has taken to thought exercises and estimates to try and figure out the probability that other intelligent life may exist. Equations like the Drake Equation have been used for these purposes and, depending on how optimistic you are, can predict anywhere from dozens to hundreds of thousands of intelligent alien civilizations just within our galaxy alone. These really can be some of the best estimates we have, but almost all of them predict a non-zero number. Given this, an interesting paradox arises. Given that there are likely other intelligent civilizations out there, and seeing as they would have had ample time to colonize the entire galaxy by now, where are all the aliens at? This paradox, the Fermi Paradox, is yet another issue we don’t know the answer to yet. However, many solutions have been proposed. Some think that there must be some Great Filter, which wipes out all intelligent life before they can reach a point in which they colonize the galaxy. Others believe that there could be a “no contact” protocol among intelligent civilizations, stating that humans shouldn’t be contacted before we’ve reached a certain stage of development. Whatever the case, it seems that we may not know for sure until we either meet this “Great Filter” or are directly contacted by another civilization.

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Junk in space: how do we deal with it?

Posted on May 4, 2021 by allyworthington

Junk floating through space, affectionately known as space junk, is dangerous to spacecraft and satellites, for obvious reasons. A team in Australia wants to use laser technology to track and destroy it.

Adaptive optics is the technology that helps telescopes see stars without a twinkle, attributed to the Earth’s atmosphere. Adaptive optics sharpens images of objects in space that may otherwise appear like an oval of light. It does this by projecting an image of the star using a laser, and then calculating how exactly the Earth’s atmosphere is distorting the light—finally, correcting itself and showing the correct image to the viewer.

Adaptive Optics, via Scientific American

A version of this technology is being used to track space junk, and it’s currently mounted on an Australian telescope. Eventually, we will be able to use lasers to maneuver space jump and blow it out of orbit—probably a relief for those with vesting interests in spacecraft!

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Extraterrestrial Existence

Posted on May 4, 2021 by allyworthington

Shouldn’t Earth have been visited by extraterrestrials already?

Enrico Fermi, a physicist from Italy, asked the same question in 1950 and sparked a wonderful conversation in the field of astronomy and astrobiology. In 1975, Michael Hart published “An Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth,” noting that the lack of intelligent life from the outer galaxies on Earth may indicate that there are no other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Perhaps more notable, Hart created four arguments to comment on the Fermi Paradox:

  1. A physical difficulty is preventing extraterrestrials from visiting us
  2. Extraterrestrials consciously avoided us
  3. Our advanced civilizations are too young for extraterrestrials to have visited us
  4. Extraterrestrials have visited us in the past
Enrico Fermi, via Wikipedia

The debate on the existence of extraterrestrial life in our galaxy is ongoing, especially with the discovery of various exoplanets. I would imagine the debate will continue forever, until we are inevitably (in my opinion) contacted by extraterrestrials.

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Life on Europa?

Posted on May 4, 2021 by connorrobbwilcox
Europa

There is life in all forms throughout the world. Even in the most remote places with the most extreme conditions we have seen life not only survive but thrive. This makes us wonder, could there be life on possible habitable worlds? NASA put this to the test by conducting an infrared (IR) signature of one of these worlds, Europa. They found some pretty interesting results.

There’s life on Europa! Well not exactly, as we don’t know for sure, and it’s not the life in terms of what we normally think. We haven’t visited its surface, so we have no real idea of what’s down there, but NASA has done testing and compared it to the IR signatures of microorganisms living in hot water vents. They found them to be remarkably similar. These extremophiles would live in the possible ocean underneath the icy surface, in hydrothermal vents just like the ones on Earth. By subjecting them to the same conditions as on Europa, they found two extremophiles, Deinococcus radiodurans and Sulfolobus shibatae, have the possibility to not only live but thrive on Europa. This is really interesting for us to think about. Could that mean that life on Europa could evolve into something more? We may never know until we try and get there. For more on the surface and life of Europa, check out this video from NASA: Hubble’s Images of Possible Plumes on Europa

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Life on Earth

Posted on May 4, 2021 by lauryn28
Image Source

In my last blog post I would like to discuss some of the things I’ve found most interesting in the course of the semester. As this class has come to an end, I’ve found myself more and more astounded by how our Solar System formed than ever before, specifically the ability of Earth to sustain life. It seems that so many things had so go right for life to flourish on Earth including our moon, size, magnetic field, geology, and the presence of the gas giants. It seems that Earth has the perfect combination of events that make life a possibility. This has made me wonder more if other life forms really do exist as they too would have to have a similar set up. However, the sheer size of the universe and immense number of stars on the other hand hints that there are millions of possibly Earth-like planets that would inhabit life. I find this contrast extremely interesting and it makes me very excited to read about future research that is done to find life in our galaxy and beyond.

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The Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter

Posted on May 4, 2021 by lauryn28

According to Kardashev scale, proposed by astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, there are three types of civilizations. Type I has the ability to use the energy of their planet, Type II can use the energy of their host star and Type III can access an amount of power comparable to an entire galaxy. Based on the extremely large number of Earth-like stars in the universe it is estimated that there should be at least 1000 Type III civilizations. However if that is the case, why have humans on Earth had no known interaction with alien life forms? This is what can be defined as the Fermi Paradox.

There are many interesting theories that attempt to explain this paradox, one of the most popular being The Great Filter. This theory states that some cataclysmic event will always stop life from developing further. It moreover sates that Earth is behind the Great Filter instead of in front and such an event is inventible in Earth’s future. Scientists who support this theory claim that “no news is good news” as finding life in our galaxy would imply that the great filter is ahead of us.

Image source

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