NASA’s NExSS Project to Lead the Way for the Search for Alien Life

Posted on April 28, 2015 by agiantchicken
Now wouldn’t that be a cool place to visit!

NASA is currently assembling a group that it plans to call the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), which will be a group of specialists from various scientific fields in hopes to study the nature of exoplanets and figure out if some might be suitable for life. Currently the project has garnered support among planetary and climate scientists as well as traditional physicists and astronomers. Such research is still relatively new, having only first begun in 1995, and only began serious expansion following the launch of the Kepler Space Telescope. Among the four kinds of scientists the project hopes to attract include astrophysicists, heliophysicists, Earth, and planetary scientists, with each group responsible for its own subfield of research. With the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope  in 2018, NExSS is hoping to further expand upon currently exoplanet research, and hopefully come up with an answer to the age-old question, “Are we alone?”

Read more here.


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Necessities of life

Posted on April 28, 2015 by bryancm1

In looking at what planets can sustain life, one requirement always includes liquid water. From this we can narrow down our searches to a solar system’s habitable zone, which is the region surrounding a star capable of supporting liquid water.

But are we limiting ourselves too much in our searches? What if life was capable of developing without this basic requirement? A team of researchers attempted to design a hypothetical cell capable of surviving without liquid water. They used Titan as their guinea pig environment (attesting to Titan’s hyperproductivity of complex organic molecules) and developed a cell they dubbed the “azotosome” composed of nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon. This azotosome could operate at cryogenic temperatures (Titan’s surface temperature being -290 degrees Fahrenheit) in a similar manner to how our hydro-operated cell members operate at room temperature.

We thus far only have proof that life evolves on planets with liquid water. Thus, perhaps it is in our best interest to limit our searches. But if these studies suggest this as a possibility, it could open up many more worlds as potential homes for extraterrestrial life.

Model of an Azotosome

Pic2Source: Motherboard


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Terraforming Mars

Posted on April 28, 2015 by bryancm1

Everyone seems so caught up on finding extraterrestrial life. I think rather than focus on finding others, carving out our own “space footprint” seems so much more exciting.

If you’ve seen the 2013 Superman reboot Man of Steel, you would have been introduced to the concept of terraforming. The remnants of the Kryptonian race wish to terraform Earth to mirror Krypton – at the cost of human life. Terraforming is the process of deliberately modifying a planet’s atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to the biosphere of Earth to make it habitable by Earth-like life (or in the above case, more Krypton-like).

But terraforming isn’t just something we see in sci-fi films. Some scientists believe that the technology exists today to make this a possibility – barring extreme time and monetary constraints. The most popular planets of discussion include Mars and Venus. The video below looks at the various theories on how best to approach terraforming Mars, starting with constructing an atmosphere, developing a magnetosphere to retain that atmosphere, then seeding Mars to prepare the biosphere for human life.

Source: DNews


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Stellar classification

Posted on April 28, 2015 by newbeelity

The stellar classification classifies stars based on their spectral characteristics. When passing through a prism, light from a star will be split into a spectrum displaying rainbow of colors interspersed with absorption lines. The strength of each line indicates the abundance of a specific ion. The abundance of different ions varies with the temperature of the photosphere. The classification of a star is giving an estimated value of the temperature of photosphere.

Most stars can be classified under the Morgan-Keenan system using letters O, B, A, F, G, K, M. O type stands for the hottest and M type stands for the coolest. In each class, stars are also subdivided into a sequence from 0-9, while 0 being the hottest and 9 being the coolest. The MK system has been expanded because some stars cannot fit in the classical system, e.g. D for white dwarfs and C for carbon stars.

In the MK system a luminosity class is also added to the spectral class using Roman numerals. This is based on the width of certain absorption lines in the star’s spectrum. Luminosity class 0 or Ia+ stars for hypergiants, class I stars for supergiants, class II for bright giants, class III for regular giants, class IV for sub-giants, class V for main-sequence stars, class sd for sub-dwarfs, and class D for white dwarfs.

550px-H-R_diagram.svg


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Silicon based life

Posted on April 27, 2015 by newbeelity

The silicon atom has been discussed as the basis for an alternative biochemistry system, since silicon is in the same group of periodical table as carbon and shares many chemical properties with carbon.

As silicone-based chemicals are much more stable than equivalent hydrocarbons in a sulfuric-acid-rich environment that is found in many locations in the universe, there might be silicon-based life existing. In addition, polysilanols, the silicon compounds corresponding to sugars, are soluble in nitrogen, which means that they could get involved in very low temperature biochemistry.

However, in the interstellar medium, fewer compounds are found based on silicon, and some of them even include carbon. Moreover, the cosmic abundance of carbon to silicon is 10 to 1, suggesting that it is more likely to have carbon based life rather than silicon based life. Also, for Earth-like planets, silicon is not suited for biochemistry.


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What Will We Find?

Posted on April 27, 2015 by lukegchapman

I am most interested in two things: finding another planet that we can exist on, and finding life. I am aware that neither of these two events may happen in my life time but after taking ASTR 201 at Vanderbilt I am very excited to read about the advances that our world makes in these two areas. We have already found places that life could exist or maybe has existed within our universe, just not the life that we all hoped for. It blows my mind that a moon of another planet, such as Titan, could possibly have microscopic life below the surface or living in the methane lakes and water there. I think that after we have found planets that could be home to life, we are then going to have to start looking at moons and have a Star Wars- like approach to this, where anywhere can be home to life and that some moons can definitely be places were living creatures exist. Hopefully there will be someone willing to give up a large portion of their life to travel to another place and try to establish a civilization on another planet.

In my previous blog posts I wrote about finding life on other planets in the universe and making contact with life on other planets and I think that there is not much more to do except wait, I am disappointed to say. We have put a lot out there and now we just have to see if there are any life forms waiting to receive the signal or if there are also civilizations looking to make contact as well. I think the UFO research is fascinating but in order to get answers to the questions about UFOs and other unexplained events that we have experienced over time we must make contact first. Then belief in these subjects will be spurred and we can make more headway because more people will be supportive and interested in the topic. I will always be looking for updates on our quest to find life on other planets and maybe it will be someone from this course that makes that first contact. Who knows. I found this website about alien abductions that explain what is going on with a person after they have possibly been abducted and maybe this has already happened to some of us we just have no idea.

What do you think of when you hear the word alien? What do you think they look like? I immediately think of this movie:

men in black

and I think, they probably look just like us..at least on the outside.


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Alien Contact

Posted on April 27, 2015 by lukegchapman

The first time I heard about alien contact was actually from Scooby Doo and the Alien Invaders. I don’t know if anyone remembers that movie but there was a site in the movie where there were a ton of satellite dishes and they were receiving signals from “the great unknown.” I have always wondered what we were doing to attempt to make contact with possible life forms beyond Earth and I learned from this class that at this point we have sent enough radio signals that if there was something out there they would know we exist. While I was researching this I found an article that talked about just how far back the idea of life on other planets was considered valid and I learned that the ancient Greeks, two thousand years ago, actually considered the possibility of life on other planets. The idea really took off in the 1820’s when a man named Carl Friedrich Gauss first invented something called a heliotrope. He reflected sunlight towards other planets. He was also said to have been responsible for cutting a giant triangle in a forest and planting wheat inside it to make a giant shape visible to alien life forms if they passed by Earth. It was not until 1901 that Nikola Tesla reported that he received a strange signal, which he believed could have been from Mars, on his transmitting tower in Colorado Springs.

And then finally in 1974, which was 150 years after Carl Friedrich Gauss first tried communicating with life forms in space, Frank Drake (yes the Drake equation) transmitted the first actual SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) message using the Arecibo radio telescope picture below. So far everyone in the world is waiting to hear something back and I think in the near future we will find something.

telscope and radar


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Are There Aliens Around Us?

Posted on April 27, 2015 by dungeonastronomy

Have you ever imagined that maybe there are other kind of life forms that living around you every moment but only you are unable to perceive them? The nature has shaped all life on Earth in its distinct way. It offers us vision, olfactory, tactility and so on. However, there might be other kind of life which has totally different formation and perception from us. We cannot see, smell or touch them at all, as they do not exist, but they feel the same as we do. Imagine when you are sitting in the library, typing homework on your laptop, the library is a park in their perception. Kids are playing on the grass in front of you but you just cannot perceive that.

This idea is actually fairly close to the idea of parallel universe(aka multiverse). The only difference is that these universes are not parallel, but coexist and overlap with each other. We perceive the world as molecules, atoms and quarks. However, these “Earthman” can have exactly another kind of particles building the structure of world.

From philosophical view, the view is really the represent the concept of “Cogito, ergo sum”, means “I think, therefore I am”. The coexistence of other creatures is beyond our imagination so people just do not believe it. The unbelievability of certain existence makes us “alone” according to idealism. Maybe we do not need to look up into the sky to find other life neighboring us, they are right here living with us.

00073_002_ujhmYAw1（How aliens perceive the world. Maybe just like how Neo perceive the Matrix!)


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Are Aliens Kind or Brutal?

Posted on April 27, 2015 by dungeonastronomy

British famous physicist Steven Hawking made an announcement in 2010 that it is not wise to seek for extraterrestrial intelligent life spontaneously. Already described in many science fictions that aliens with high technology have used up their own native planet and wanders in the space for new planet to live.

Aliens who can receive and interpret our messages from Earth are very likely to have higher technology than we are. If they are hostile and like the environment of Earth, they can easily take over Earth as their new colony, just as Europeans colonized America during geographic discovery. The invention of radio on Earth is less than a century so our signals from Earth has just travelled a distance less than 100 light years. However, it is still possible that radio signals from Earth travels through a wormhole to a far distance where aliens with high-tech exist. If these aliens are kind and happy to make friends and teach technologies to humans, it is a good ending. However, if these high-tech aliens were not kind, it would be disaster for Earth whether they are hostile or not. Developed extraterrestrial civilizations may know many other alien civilizations and the information of a live planet with low technology would spread between solar systems. It is possible for an alien civilization like to enslave or pet “less advanced” creatures. Homo sapiens may turn into a new “popular pet” throughout galaxies. It would be a nightmare.

Even though aliens are not interested in human, they might interested in our Sun, a relatively young, energetic star with plenty of energy. If these aliens can actively control and use the energy of fusion, they might collect energy from stars such as our Sun. If the energy amount of the Sun decreases, our Earth would be cold as fridge and not proper for living anymore. Now our solar system is holding an equilibrium so any interruptions from aliens can be lethal to life on Earth.15767807dfab7fae9987fda24ec78c085cdedb89


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Europa Report

Posted on April 27, 2015 by conorastr201
europa

Image pulled from a movie review

This past weekend, I watched a movie on Netflix called Europa Report. The movie was a detailed the gripping journey of six people on their trip Europa with the sole mission of confirming or denying the existence of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Not only was this a great, well done film, but it also touched on a lot of the points we talked about in class and read about in chapter 24 of our book. Europa was specifically chosen because of the liquid oceans underneath its icy exterior, they search for microbes in the water being pushed up through cracks, they sent probes don through the ice, the list goes on. I will admit, there may have been a few inaccuracies an inconsistencies throughout the picture, but overall it was far more accurate than your typical Hollywood sci-fi movie.


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