Life in the Universe: Focusing the Search

Scientists have found at least a dozen planets where life might exist. They're learning more about biosignatures: signs of life.

1. Understanding Life's Limits
   • "...An Enormous Quantity of Creatures of Every Kind..."
   • "...So Much We Still Don't Understand"
2. A Growing Catalog of Known Worlds
3. Earth-Sized Planets: Billions of Them
4. Searching the Sky: Frustration and Vindication

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Life on Other Worlds: Imagined

(From "Quatermass and the Pit," via Tales of Future Past, used w/o permission)
('That's odd: he doesn't look German.')

Some science fiction movies strayed from the man-in-a-rubber-suit style of space alien. But most extraterrestrials in the movies look at least vaguely human.

I don't mind, since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Last Starfighter," and "Spaced Invaders" are entertainment: not documentaries.

If there's life on other worlds, the biggest critters may look like the plants and animals we're familiar with. I think there's something to the argument that there are only so many ways that an animal can swim, crawl, walk, or fly.

On the other hand, we may find places where the locals think we have too few eyes: and too many arms.


(From Nobu Tamura, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

Perceptions

If we meet intelligent extraterrestrial life: I'm pretty sure that at least a few humans will be very, very upset.

If we do have neighbors, I'm also pretty sure that at least a few folks here on Earth are going to insist that the space aliens are not people.

Judging from the difficulty we've had convincing everyone that loving God, loving our neighbor, and seeing everyone as our neighbor, is a good idea, some may never accept the notion that someone can look different, and be a person. And that's another topic. (Matthew 5:43-44; Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10:25-30; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1825)

We may be alone in the universe. But if we are not, I don't see why a self-aware creature; able to decide whether to act, or not act; and able to communicate; should not be seen as a "person."

Defining "Persons"

The Catechism of the Catholic Church's glossary says that a human person is "a unity of spirit and matter, soul and body, capable of knowledge, self–possession, and freedom, who can enter into communion with other persons—and with God."¹

As a Catholic, I have to recognize that not all persons are human: which doesn't mean that we "believe in" space aliens.

For starters, God is three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is also one, the Trinity. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 189-191, 232-260)

Angels are persons, too: beings of pure spirit, with no bodies. They "are personal and immortal creatures," with "intelligence and will." But angels are not human. Not even close. (Catechism, 328-330)

Would I Baptize an Extraterrestrial?

I'm not authorized to perform baptisms, so: no, I would not. I wouldn't baptize anyone, since I'm not a deacon, priest, or bishop. (Code of Canon Law; Book IV, Part I; Title I; Chapter II; 861-863)

Bear in mind that I speak with the full authority of some guy with a blog. I do not speak for the Church. My speculation about people who are not human is just that: speculation. I don't intend, or want, to anticipate what the Holy See's decisions. I am in solidarity with Rome, and want to stay that way.

However, I don't see why someone whose ancestors lived on another planet couldn't be baptized: provided that the space alien wanted to be baptized, understood what being a Christian involves, and had shown that he/she/it embraced our faith.

Persons and Pangolins

The real question is, who can be baptized? The rules for adults are pretty basic. The person must have shown an intention to be baptized; been taught what being a Christian means; and acted as if what was taught is true. Regretting past misdeeds helps. Canon law puts it a bit more formally.²

Not all adults can be baptized. An adult pangolin can't be baptized: no matter how nice the pangolin is. That's because pangolins are not people

They are also odd-looking critters, and that's yet another topic.

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1. Understanding Life's Limits

(From NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech, via Space.com, used w/o permission.)
"The artist's concept depicts Kepler-69c, a planet 1.7 times the size of Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, located about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus."

"Studies of Extreme Earth Life Can Aid Search for Alien Lifeforms, Scientists Say"
Elizabeth Howell, Space.com (March 27, 2014)

"Until we understand the limits of life, it will be difficult to determine if alien planets can host any living beings, scientists say.

"By studying Earth-bound 'extremophiles' — microbes that survive in harsh conditions, such as hot and acid-filled ocean vents — scientists can understand the limits of temperature, pressure and acidity that support life on Earth more fully. These finding[s] may also be applied to other planets.

"These life-supporting parameters could be revised, however, if a new extremophile is discovered or biology is different on another world, John Baross, a researcher at the University of Washington who focuses on these microbes said March 17...."

Scientists have found life 'as we know it' in very unexpected places, including near-boiling water around hydrothermal vents and under glaciers. One microcritter, Deinococcus radiodurans, endures cold, dehydration, vacuum, acid, and extreme radiation.

I've mentioned speculation about life 'not as we know it' before. It's possible, although perhaps unlikely, that we'll find critters whose biochemistry is fluorocarbon in sulfur, lipid in  hydrogen, or something else. (March 7, 2014)

"...An Enormous Quantity of Creatures of Every Kind..."

This Space.com article dragged in the weary old 'religion against science' shibboleth: with the inevitable mention of Galileo.

It's true that Galileo was placed under house arrest: but the issue wasn't his assertion that Earth went around the Sun.

What got Galileo in trouble was his refusal to present the heliocentric theory as an interesting idea: not a fact.

As it turns out, Galileo was right about Earth going around the Sun: but it was a new, and unproven, idea. It didn't help that Galileo took St. Augustine's position, that poetry isn't science. Not that science as we know it existed in the fourth century, and that's yet again another topic.

Someone with a less abrasive personality than Galileo's might have received a lighter sentence, and I've been over this before. (October 26, 2009)

The good news is that Elizabeth Howell paid attention to what happened at the convention.

"...The Vatican Observatory has made its own contributions to astronomy, pointed out José Funes, its current director. The 19th-century director Angelo Secchi was one of the first scientists to authoritatively say that the sun is a star, Funes said.

"Secchi, like scientists today, also mused on the possibility of life beyond Earth, a theme that Vatican scientists discussed at the conference, Funes added, putting a passage from Secchi's 1870 book, 'Le Soleil' (The Sun) on the screen.

" 'What to think of these stars without any doubt similar to our sun,' the passage read, 'destined like the sun to keep alive an enormous quantity of creatures of every kind?'..."
(Elizabeth Howell Space.com)

"...So Much We Still Don't Understand"

(From www.nocutnews.co.kr/news/528141, used w/o permission.)
"One extreme species, the Thermococcus microbe, can survive on so little energy that until now the chemical reaction it uses wasn't thought able to sustain life. These organisms were found living near deep-sea hydrothermal vents...."
(Space.com)

"...'This is very much a discovery-based science, and there is so much we still don't understand,' Baross said during the Search for Life Beyond the Solar System conference in Tucson, Ariz.

"One emerging field of research examines microbes living in a low carbon and energy environment, like the parts of the ocean below where sunlight can reach through the waters. Considering slower evolution over millions of years in these reaches is a 'totally new ballgame' for alien planet researchers, Baross said....

"...Finding alien life will be a complex task, other scientists pointed out. Perhaps extraterrestrials will require a 'wet' planet like Earth and a 'dry' planet like Mars to pass material back and forth, biochemist Steven Benner of The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in Florida said.

"Benner suggested that it might be easier for organisms to come alive in a dry environment, but that it would take water to make sustained life possible.

"Other researchers, meanwhile, are trying to better understand the parameters of life by creating synthetic lifeforms to see how they will behave in different environments...."
(Elizabeth Howell Space.com)

"Creating synthetic organisms" does not end well, in the movies: as demonstrated in "Son of Frankenstein," "Eve of Destruction," and "Splice."

'Tampering with things man was not supposed to know' is what we're supposed to do, though. Pursuing truth isn't the problem: being stupid, greedy, or careless, is. (Catechism, 2292-2296)

Making "synthetic organisms" goes back a long way. Somewhere between 15,000 and 33,000 years back, we decided that wolves would make good hunting companions: after a few modifications.

Not long after that, we started tweaking plants. All that's changed over the millennia are details in how we modify organisms:

• "Spears, Dogs, and Artificial Organisms"
  (November 22, 2013)
• " 'A Boy and His Mutant Wolf' "
  (August 8, 2013)

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2. A Growing Catalog of Known Worlds

(From PHL @ UPR Arecibo, via Space.com, used w/o permission.)
(July 29, 2013)

"Exoplanet tally soars above 1,000"
Melissa Hogenboom, BBC News (October 22, 2013)

"The number of observed exoplanets - worlds circling distant stars - has passed 1,000.

"Of these, 12 could be habitable - orbiting at a distance where it is neither 'too hot' nor 'too cold' for water to be liquid on the surface.

"The planets are given away by tiny dips in light as they pass in front of their stars or through gravitational 'tugs' on the star from an orbiting world.

"These new worlds are listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.

"The tally now stands at 1,010 new exoplanets, bolstered by 11 new finds from the UK's Wide Angle Search for Planets (Wasp).

"Abel Mendez of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, said that although the number has rapidly increased in recent years, due to a lack of funding this figure is much lower than it could be...."

What impresses me isn't that more than a thousand planets exist. It's that we have, so far, found more than a thousand in the tiny fraction of the Milky Way galaxy we've checked out.

More will almost certainly be confirmed. The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia added another 702 'possibles' to its list on March 6, 2014.

• "List of nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidates"
  Wikipedia
• The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
  exoplanet team
• SIMBAD Astronomical Database
  CDS, Strasbourg, France
• NASA Exoplanet Archive
  California Institute of Technology, NASA

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3. Earth-Sized Planets: Billions of Them

"At Least One in Six Stars Has an Earth-sized Planet"
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (January 7, 2013)

"...A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there.

"Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the analysis today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif. A paper detailing the research has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal....

"...They found that 17 percent of stars have a planet 0.8 - 1.25 times the size of Earth in an orbit of 85 days or less. About one-fourth of stars have a super-Earth (1.25 - 2 times the size of Earth) in an orbit of 150 days or less. (Larger planets can be detected at greater distances more easily.) The same fraction of stars has a mini-Neptune (2 - 4 times Earth) in orbits up to 250 days long...."

Divvying up this galaxy's 17,000,000,000 Earth-sized planets, everyone living today would get roughly two and a half worlds. That's a lot of real estate.

Earth-size doesn't mean Earth-like. Venus is almost exactly the size of Earth, 94.99% Earth's diameter, but is hot as a self-cleaning oven at the surface, with a crushing atmosphere and clouds of sulfuric acid.

Even so, a few of the Earth-sized planets we've discovered are in their star's Goldilocks zone, warm enough for liquid water: but not too hot.


There's more to life than liquid water, of course. We need a particular set of chemicals: which are nowhere near as unique to Earth as some thought.

We've found adenine and guanine in a meteorite. Maybe the Solar system is the only place in the universe where these chemical modules in DNA drift through space: but that doesn't seem likely.

We've learned that our sun is brighter than about 85% of the Milky Way's stars: but apart from that isn't unusual. There are millions of other stars like it. Make that billions.

Earth may be the only planet where life exists: today. But it looks like we'll find places with everything we need to plant life throughout the galaxy.

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4. Searching the Sky: Frustration and Vindication

(From NASA, used w/o permission.)
"Artist's concepts of Terrestral Planet Finder-Coronograph (left) and Terrestrial Planet Finder-Interferometer missions."

"In Hunt for Alien Planets, Frustration Lingers Over Canceled Missions"
Leslie Mullen, Space.com (June 6, 2011)

"Geoff Marcy is mad.

"Not mad as in 'crazy,' although many scientists thought he was nuts when he first started hunting for planets orbiting far-distant stars over 20 years ago.

"Now that over 500 exoplanets have been detected and the Kepler space telescope has over 1,200 candidate planets waiting to be confirmed, Marcy's dedication and hard work (and his sanity) have been vindicated...."

Like Geoff Marcy, I'm frustrated that the Terrestrial Planet Finder missions were cancelled. But NASA launched the Kepler observatory, and CNES/ESA's CoRoT mission found exoplanets. I'm confident that there will be more: and we're still going through data gathered in these missions.

Maybe now that folks know there are destinations in the stars, research and development of a practical Alcubierre warp drive will speed up. And that's — another topic. (May 24, 2013)

Related posts:

• "The Oldest Known Heart; Tweaking Bacteria; and Looking for Life in the Universe"
  (April 11, 2014)
  Particularly
  • Still Looking for Life in the Universe
• "DNA Components, an Asteroid, and Life on a Wobbling World"
  (February 21, 2014)
  Particularly
  • Getting a Grip About "Class M" Planets
• "Kepler-69c and Habitable Zones; The Great Martian Land Rush"
  (October 25, 2013)
  Particularly
  • Found: 1,100 Exoplanets
• "Life in the Universe, God, and Getting a Grip"
  (October 17, 2013)
• "Three Es: Exoplanets, Exobiology, and Evolution"
  (October 4, 2013)
  Particularly
  • Science and Me
  • Life in the Universe?

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¹ Definition of a human person:

"PERSON, HUMAN: The human individual, made in the image of God; not some thing but some one, a unity of spirit and matter, soul and body, capable of knowledge, self–possession, and freedom, who can enter into communion with other persons—and with God (357, 362; cf. 1700). The human person needs to live in society, which is a group of persons bound together organically by a principle of unity that goes beyond each one of them (1879)."
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, Glossary)

² Requirements for adult baptism:

"For an adult to be baptized, the person must have manifested the intention to receive baptism, have been instructed sufficiently about the truths of the faith and Christian obligations, and have been tested in the Christian life through the catechumenate. The adult is also to be urged to have sorrow for personal sins."
(Code of Canon Law; Book IV, Part I, The Sacraments; Title I, Baptism; Chapter III, Those to be Baptized; 865)

Fish, Extremophiles, and the Emperor's New Clothes

We're learning more about life's limits, learning that there's more to learn and re-learning very old lessons. Proverbs 20:17, and all that.

1. High-Pressure Fish
   • No Fish Beyond This Point?
   • More to Learn
2. Finding Life
• Extremophiles
• Life as We Know It: And Otherwise, Maybe
3. Grand-Sounding Claptrap
   • All the Gibberish That's Fit to Print
   • "... Free From any Dependence on ... Objective Truth ..."

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Empty Looms and Faulty Generalizations

(From Vilhelm Pedersen, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

Maybe you know the story: "two rogues, calling themselves weavers," tell a vain emperor that they've got special cloth, and will make the emperor the finest clothes.

They explain that the cloth can't be seen by anyone who "was unfit for the office he held, or who was extraordinarily simple in character."

The emperor gave these "weavers" large sums of money, so they could start work immediately.

"...So the two pretended weavers set up two looms, and affected to work very busily, though in reality they did nothing at all. They asked for the most delicate silk and the purest gold thread; put both into their own knapsacks; and then continued their pretended work at the empty looms until late at night...."
("The Emperor's New Clothes," Hans Christian Andersen, via Project Gutenberg)

The emperor says that he sees the cloth, since he didn't want to seem unfit for office. His ministers pretend to see the cloth, too.

Finally, a child who hadn't learned the importance of ignoring reality says: "But the Emperor has nothing at all on!"

If someone said Hans Christian Andersen's story shows that emperors always get duped, that would be one sort of faulty generalization: making a sweeping assumption from too little data.

Assuming that a few examples are typical is easy, and may partly explain why so many folks take it for granted that religious people are crazy; or science is a fraud; or religion is at war with science.

Some scientists have deliberately lied, more have made whacking great mistakes. But that doesn't show that all scientists are frauds or fools: or that science is bogus.

Hoaxes, even popular ones, don't last forever. Given time, someone's going to notice a disconnect between objective reality and what the emperor wants to believe.

Dawson's Dawn-Man, the Piltdown Man — or — the Importance of Being British

(From John Cooke, via WikiMedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
("Dawson's dawn-man," before the hoax was exposed: a group portrait by John Cooke, 1915.)

The Piltdown Man, or "Dawson's dawn-man," had a pretty good run: from December of 1912,  to November of 1953.

I gather that the hoax lasted so long partly because so many folks desperately wanted to believe that the first man came from a prehistoric Merrie olde England.

It didn't hurt that Dawson's Piltdown Man, with an ape-like jaw and not-quite-human-size brain, looked like the missing link some scientists had imagined.

Not everyone thought that Charles Dawson's "discovery" made sense. The Royal College of Surgeons, using copies of the skull fragments Dawson had, put them together: and found that the brain was about the size of a modern human.

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That —

As it turns out, the Royal College of Surgeons were right. The part of "Piltdown Man" they reconstructed was from a human skull: someone who had lived in the medieval era.

The lower jaw came from a Sarawak orangutan that had died about five centuries previously. The bones looked older than they were, since they'd been stained with an iron solution and chromic acid.

The teeth really were fossils: from a chimpanzee. Microscopic file marks hint that someone had whittled them down to look like they'd come from a critter with a human diet.

The Piltdown Man hoax did quite a bit of damage: encouraging scientists to look for more evidence of an early human who had never existed, wasting time and effort in discussion of the fraud.

Some folks who don't like science, or want an 17th century Calvinist to be right about humanity's origins, love the Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax encourages the notion that scientists are liars. Never mind that scientists exposed the fraud.

Then there's Nebraska Man and the Cardiff giant, and those are other topics.

Archaeoraptor Angst

Dust is still settling from a more recent forgery, Archaeoraptor: which, again, scientists exposed as a fraud.

National Geographic announced Archaeoraptor as a "missing link" in October of 1999. A few months later, the magazine issued a press release saying that the fossil might be a composite.

They'd gotten it right the second time. Archaeoraptor really is a fossil: three, actually. The head and upper body are from Yanornis; a bird; the tail comes from a Microraptor; the legs and feet are from a third, still-unidentified, animal.

Besides wasting time with another fraud, the Archaeoraptor scandal involves illegal export of fossils from China. And, of course, the usual folks can use it as "proof" that scientists lie, and evolution is a fake.

Studying the Universe

I'm not terribly surprised that some professors decided to try passing computer-generated nonsense text as scholarly papers.

What's remarkable is that more than a hundred have been found so far: all published by outfits that should have known better. I'll get back to that.

Folks who want science to be a lie will probably add this scandal to their list of arguments: along with the Piltdown Man and a few other high-profile hoaxes.

Me? I'll go on, worshiping God and learning about this wonder-filled creation.

The universe is beautiful, good, and there for us to study. Honest research cannot hurt faith, because faith comes from God; God is making the universe; God is truth; and truth cannot contradict truth. (Genesis 1:1-2:9; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 31-32, 105-108, 159, 279, 282-289, 301, 341)


(image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Bottom line? Truth is important. (Exodus 20:16; Deuteronomy 5:20; Psalms 119:90; John 14:6; 1 Timothy 2:4; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 159-160; 2464-2503)

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1. High-Pressure Fish

(From Oceanlab, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
"At more than 7,000m down, these snailfish are among the deepest fish known to science"

"Fishy molecule 'sets depth limit' "
Jonathan Amos, BBC News (March 3, 2014)

"Scientists say it is unlikely that any fish can survive in the oceans deeper than about 8,200 metres.

"No fish has ever been seen living beyond this limit, but the researchers point to good physiological reasons why it should not be possible, also.

"It rests on the particular molecular mechanism they use in their tissues to withstand crushing pressures.

"To go deeper would require fish to evolve some other mechanism, the team tells the journal PNAS.

"The all-important molecule is a so-called osmolyte called trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO). It is what gives fish their 'fishy smell'.

"TMAO acts to stabilize the proteins fish use to build and maintain their cells.

"Without its presence, the proteins would be distorted by the high pressures found at depth and stop functioning...."

Molecules have shapes which make a difference in how they act: like the benzene ring. Depending on who you listen to, a scientist who was trying to understand how benzene works daydreamed about a snake biting its tail, or dancing monkeys, and that's another topic.

An osmolyte is a compound affecting osmosis.

No Fish Beyond This Point?

These scientists noticed that fish species living at different depths had different amounts of TMAO. The deeper the species, the more TMAO. They plotted a curve from several species, then tested hadal snailfish from the bottom of the Kermadec Trench. The animals, living more than 7,000 meters below sea level, had as much TMAO as predicted on the curve.

So — that means that animals can't live deeper than these fish?

More to Learn

Some fish have been dredged up from greater depths than this study's snailfish: but none have been observed swimming in the deepest parts of Earth's ocean.

"...But extending that line forwards moves TMAO concentrations to a point where they would inhibit cell function, at about 8,000-8,500m's depth.

"Life's limits

" 'We know that if TMAO is too high, it makes proteins so stable they can't work,' explained Prof Yancey.

" 'The myosin protein in muscle, for example, needs to flex for muscles to move, and too much TMAO would stop this happening.'..."
(Jonathan Amos, BBC News)

Single celled critters, like archaea, bacteria, and foraminifera, live in deeper places: like the Marianas Trench. So do animals like sea anemones and sea cucumbers. Amphipods, crustaceans with a remarkable tolerance for pressure, and for compression and decompression.

It may help that these crustaceans seem to have five osmolytes, where fish only have two.

Since some animals can live at depths that apparently would kill fish, why can't fish?

The authors of this study think that maybe it's because fish haven't had time to evolve pressure-resistant cells.

Crustaceans like amphipods have probably been around since the Carboniferous, a third of a billion years ago; both sea cucumbers and sea anemones date back to the Middle Cambrian, about a half-billion years back.

But fish, with and without jaws, go back to the Cambrian, too. It looks like we still have more to learn: which is no surprise.

More:

• "Marine fish may be biochemically constrained from inhabiting the deepest ocean depths"
  Paul H. Yanceya, Mackenzie E. Gerringera, Jeffrey C. Drazenb, Ashley A. Rowdenc, Alan Jamiesond; Edited by George N. Somero, Stanford University, Pacific Grove, CA; PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (received for review November 23, 2013; approved February 7, 2014)
• "Structure of Organic Molecules"
  Chemwiki, UC Davis, California

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2. Finding Life

(From BBC, used w/o permission.)

"The last place on Earth… without life"
Rachel Nuwer, BBC (March 3, 2014)

"In the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, it looks as if nothing could ever survive. It is one of the driest places in the world, and some sections of the Mars-like expanse can go 50 years without feeling a drop of rain. As poet Alonso de Ercilla put it in 1569: 'Towards Atacama, near the deserted coast, you see a land without men, where there is not a bird, not a beast, nor a tree, nor any vegetation.'

"Yet Atacama is not devoid of life. Microorganisms called endoliths have found a way to cling on, by hiding themselves inside the pores of rocks, where there's just enough water to survive. 'They support a whole community of organisms that eat the byproducts of their metabolism,' says Jocelyne DiRuggiero, a microbiologist at Johns Hopkins University. 'And they're all just sitting right there in the rocks – it's quite fascinating.'

"Life, it seems, has an incredible knack for finding ways to persist. Indeed, microorganisms have been around for nearly four billion years, giving them ample time to adapt to some of the most extreme conditions in the natural world. But are there places left on Earth so harsh that they are rendered sterile?..."

Heat around sea hydrothermal vents, where water temperature is 122° centigrade (252° Fahrenheit), would kill a human, and many other plants or animals.

According the Rachel Nuwer, most scientists put 150° centigrade, or 302° Fahrenheit, as an upper limit for life. That's the point where proteins start breaking down, so we probably won't find anything living in those hydrothermal vents.

Extremophiles

(From Philippe Crassous/SPL, via BBC, used w/o permission.)
"A deep ocean worm, which lives on the edge of a hot 'black smoker' vent on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. ... feeds off mineral-eating bacteria...."

"...This means that microorganisms can thrive around hydrothermal vents, but not directly within them, where temperatures can reach up to 464C (867F). The same is true for the interior of an active volcano on land. 'I really think temperature is the most hostile parameter,' says Helena Santos, a microbial physiologist at the New University of Lisbon and president of the International Society for Extremophiles. When things get hot enough, she says, 'It's impossible – everything is destroyed.'

"High pressure, by contrast, appears to be less of a problem for life. This means that heat rather than depth probably limits how far below the surface of the Earth life occurs. The centre of the Earth's 6,000C (10,800F) temperature certainly precludes all life, although the depth at which the cut-off occurs is still under investigation. One microorganism called Desulforudis audaxviator was discovered nearly two miles (3.2km) below the Earth's surface, in a South African gold mine. It has not been in contact with the surface for potentially millions of years, and survives by siphoning nutrients from rocks undergoing radioactive decay...."
(Rachel Nuwer, BBC)

That deep sea worm reminds me of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's grotesque cartoon characters, and that's another topic.

Some extremophiles, critters that live in extreme environments, live in Siberian permafrost, where "normal" temperatures are -10° centigrade (14° Fahrenheit); or in a hypersaline subglacial Antarctic lake where the water is -20° centigrade (-4 Fahrenheit).

Some microbes live in radioactive waste, some depend on arsenic, mercury, or other heavy metals to survive: and some live with cyanide. The hot springs of Kamchatka, Russia, are home to microbes that need sulphur or carbon monoxide.

Researchers found traces of microbes in Antarctica's Don Juan Pond, but aren't sure if the critters were living there, or got blown in from elsewhere. Salinity in Don Juan Pond is 40%, compared to the Dead Sea's 33%: so we may have found an environment that's too salty for life.

Then again, maybe not.

Life as We Know It: And Otherwise, Maybe

Back in the '60s, a former professor at Boston University put together a pretty good argument for life chemistries that might plausibly work in temperatures ranging from near red-hot to near absolute zero:

• Fluorosilicone in fluorosilicone
• Fluorocarbon in sulfur
• Nucleic acid/protein (O) in water
• Nucleic acid/protein (N) in ammonia
• Lipid in methane
• Lipid in hydrogen
  ("View from a Height" Isaac Asimov (1963), Lancer Books (p. 63))

Isaac Asimov's grasp of ecology and physics was a trifle shaky, at least in his fiction: but this time he was speculating in his professional field, chemistry.

I think he's probably right: that life-as-we-know-it isn't necessarily the only sort. We're #3 on that list, by the way.
(Adapted from Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 24, 2010))

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3. Grand-Sounding Claptrap

"Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers"
Conference proceedings removed from subscription databases after scientist reveals that they were computer-generated. Richard Van Noorden, Nature (February 25, 2014)

"The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.

"Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers...."

Apparently the erudite-sounding drivel was good enough to get past a peer-review process.

This is a serious problem, both for the reputation of the publications that blundered: and for honest scientists whose papers were pushed out of the publications to make room for the claptrap.

All the Gibberish That's Fit to Print

(From FoxNews.com, used w/o permission.)

"Over 100 published science journal articles just gibberish"
Maxim Lott, FoxNews.com (March 1, 2014)

"Do scientific papers ever seem like unreadable gibberish to you? Well, sometimes they really are.

"Some 120 papers published in established scientific journals over the last few years have been found to be frauds, created by nothing more than an automated word generator that puts random, fancy-sounding words together in plausible sentence structures. As a result they have been pulled from the journals that originally published them.

"The fake papers are in the fields of computer science and math and have titles such as 'Application and Research of Smalltalk Harnessing Based on Game-Theoretic Symmetries'; 'An Evaluation of E-Business with Fin'; and 'Simulating Flip-Flop Gates Using Peer-to-Peer Methodologies.' The authors of those papers did not respond to requests for comment from FoxNews.com...."

Those papers weren't submitted by college kids after an evening of beer pong. The authors were professionals: college professors who had presumably sobered up from their undergraduate daze.

In their defense, sort of, the computer scientist Cyril Labbé says that professors are under a lot of pressure to publish. I believe it. "Publish or perish" was an unofficial motto in academia, a half-century back, and I haven't noticed much change in the halls of ivy since.

It's not just professional pride or social pressure. Apparently quite a few colleges and university pay professors on a piecework basis: the more papers a prof pushes out, the higher the prof's pay.

I see how paying someone a set amount for every widget coming off the bench makes sense: providing that there's a widget inspector. For the computer science and math fields, at least, the widget inspector seems to have been sleeping on the job.

"... Free From any Dependence on ... Objective Truth ..."

"...This is not the first time nonsense papers have been published.

"In 1996, as a test, a physics professor submitted a fake paper to the philosophy journal Social Text. His paper argued that gravity is 'postmodern' because it is 'free from any dependence on the concept of objective truth.' Yet it was accepted and published.

"But how could gibberish end up in respectable science papers? The man who discovered the recent frauds said it showed slipping standards among scientists....

"...But he [Cyril Labbé] has no explanation as to why the journals published meaningless papers.

" 'They all should have been evaluated by a peer-review process. I've no explanation for them being here. I guess each of them needs an investigation,' he said.

"The publishers also could not explain it, admitting that the papers 'are all nonsense.'..."
(Maxim Lott, FoxNews.com)

My guess is that these ersatz papers were evaluated by a peer-review process. I'm closing in on retirement age, so most folks working for these learned publications are probably younger than I am.

Although I think that accumulating experience, and perhaps wisdom, is an option as one ages: I don't assume that younger folks are dull-witted.

However, I started college when "relevance" was still in fashion: and checked out when political correctness was in bloom.

I'm not surprised that folks trained to loathe male-dominated hierarchical authoritarian systems of oppression, racism real or imagined, and incidentally some academic skills, let the occasional bit of magniloquent balderdash slip by.

Particularly when it has a nifty title, like these; all of which are nonsense:

• "Application and Research of Smalltalk Harnessing Based on Game-Theoretic Symmetries"
  2009 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
• "Investigation on E-Commerce based on Suffix Trees and Moore's Law"
  2009 International Conference on Environmental Science and Information Application Technology
• "Implementation of Workflow Engine Based on Petri Nets"
  2010 International Conference on e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning
• "An Optimal Method for Assessing Information System Risk Decision-Making on Common"
  2010 Second International Conference on Computer Engineering and Applications
• "Random Archetypes and Their Influences on Networking"
  2012 International Conference on Computer Science and Electronics Engineering
  (From "Articles IEEE have removed from their database")

What's sad is that this news will probably encourage at least some folks who don't like science to assume that all scientists are conniving liars. It's a faulty generalization, but perhaps an understandable one.

More about published gibberish:

• "Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers"
  Richard Van Noorden, Nature (February 25, 2014)
• "Articles IEEE have removed from their database"
  [IEEE: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers[
  newsblog, Nature.com
  (From http://blogs.nature.com/news/files/2014/02/IEEE-wiped-articles.pdf (March 5, 2014))

Related posts:

• Science
  • "Whale Fossils in a Desert, Ancient Zircons, and a Changing World"
    (February 28, 2014)
  • "Science, Faith, and Albertus Magnus"
    (February 23, 2014)
  • "Smallpox, Science, and Silliness"
    (February 12, 2014)
  • "Cave Men, Sea Monsters, Dead Scorpions, and Theoretical Physics"
    (January 31, 2014)
  • "Truth, Toothpicks, Beaks, and God"
    (December 13, 2013)
• Reality
  • "2 + 2 = 4, Therefore … : Getting a Grip about Faith and Science "
    (February 5, 2014)
  • "Nearby Worlds, and a Cosmic Horizon"
    (January 3, 2014)
  • "Seeking Truth, Accepting Vastness"
    (April 2, 2013)
  • "Reason, Evidence, and Searching for Truth"
    (February 3, 2013)
  • "Adam and Eve and All That"
    (May 15, 2012)
• Beliefs
  • "Science, Faith, and Albertus Magnus"
    (February 23, 2014)
  • "Truth Cannot Contradict Truth"
    (October 13, 2013)
  • "Catholics aren't Calvinists"
    (May 7, 2012)
  • " 'Religious People aren't Reasonable?' "
    (December 18, 2011)
  • "Faith and Reason, Religion and Science"
    (March 20, 2009)

Strange New Worlds; Getting a Grip about Space Aliens; and a Fossil Fish

Some walking fish are pests. Some aren't actually fish. One that's been dead for about a third of a billion years had four legs.

1. Meet 'Rosie:' A Fish With Legs, Sort of
   • Tiktaalik Roseae — Fishapod? Amphishimal? Fish With Four-Wheel Drive and Optional Lungs?
2. Weighs as Much as Earth: Not Particularly Earthlike Otherwise
   • Serendipity and: a Mini-Neptune?
3. KOI-314c: a New Class of Planet
4. Kepler-22b and Habitable Zones
   • Still Looking for Life
5. Darwin Glass and Trapped Organics
   • Panspermia: Elephants, No; Microbes, Mabye

In other more-or-less recent news: scientist went looking for extrasolar moons and found a new kind of planet; and some of Tasmania's Darwin Glass may show how life travels between worlds.

But first, why believing in space aliens isn't the same as thinking we may have neighbors.

---

Space Aliens, Elvis, and a Baleful Bat Child

I remember when Elvis sightings and space aliens were common front page news in supermarket checkout lines. Tabloid space aliens seemed obsessed with abducting Earthlings. The bat boy chronicles were a trifle more plausible: my opinion.

Taking my cue from tabloid headlines, most Americans have decided that Elvis really is dead. Dwindling numbers of diehard fans may be a contributing factor, and that's another topic.

Although the full-bore wacko adherent of a UFO religion is probably more common in fiction than in reality, imaginary space aliens have been as important in American culture as Elvis Presley.

Thinking of space aliens in cargo cult terms, expecting ambassadors from the stars to solve all our problems, doesn't make sense. It's as silly as expecting memory-sucking invaders from a dying star to give up after a single botched attack.

I don't "believe in" space aliens: either as secular saviors or as interstellar anti-nuke activists.

On the other hand, I think it's quite possible that we're not the only people in this universe.

Little Green Men and the Almighty Buck

Believing that something may exist is one thing.

Believing that a creature is divine is idolatry, and strictly against the rules. So is giving pleasure, wealth, or anything that's not God the attention that's intended for God. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2112-2114)

Wealth, health, and pleasure aren't bad by themselves, and that's another topic. (July 28, 2013; April 14, 2013; April 25, 2012)

Imagining that space aliens are gods is daft. Confusing them with angels is a bit of an improvement, but not much.

In a way, imagined space aliens fill a gap left when Anglo-American culture was purged of 'papist' beliefs, starting five centuries back. (September 22, 2011)

Rungs on the Ladder of Creation

The notion that human beings are top dog is fairly new. I've described the ladder of creation before:

God

∞

Angels

Humanity

Animals

Plants

Inanimate matter

Space aliens, if they exist, would be on the same rung of the ladder as we are: below angels and above animals. I'd be astonished if they were exactly as smart as we are, with technology that's no more than a few millennia away from what we've got. I'll get back to that.

Angels are quite real, by the way, which isn't the same as having spirits and bodies: and that's another topic. (Catechism, 326-336) (February 22, 2012)

Getting a Grip About Quantum Field Entanglement and Phlogiston

Three and a half centuries back, phlogiston was a good way to explain how fire works.

Today, quantum field entanglement is a good way to explain what sometimes happens to very small bits of reality.

Scientists learned that phlogiston didn't exist. Oddly enough, Unitarian and scientist Joseph Priestley, who supported the phlogiston theory, also discovered oxygen: which he called dephlogisticated air.

Priestley also thought that understanding the natural world would benefit people, and create Christ's kingdom on Earth.

Priestley was right about the first point: understanding the natural world. We've learned how to cure many diseases, eradicated smallpox, and produce enough food to feed everyone. Getting medical supplies and food to folks who need them is still a challenge.

The notion that science and technology will solve all our problems and bring about Christ's kingdom? That's daft. But the failure of Progress with a capital "P" doesn't mean that we should stop learning. (January 27, 2013; January 16, 2012)

Then as now, folks had trouble sorting out faith and science. Priestley's assumptions about Christianity didn't help.

Quantum field entanglement may be like phlogiston, or not. Either way, we'll discover why 'entangled' particles act the way they do by observing and analyzing this wonder-filled creation.

We'll learn whether or not there's life elsewhere in the universe the same way. This is a big cosmos, though, so it may take us quite a long time.

A Sense of Scale

(From xkcd, used w/o permission.)

Again, I don't "believe in" space aliens: not in the UFO religion sense.

There's almost no evidence that people from other planets exist. One of the very few 'UFO' reports which I think could plausibly involve extraterrestrial intelligence involved damage to a patrol car in northwestern Minnesota.

I do not think this 1979 incident is proof that We Are Not Alone, but it could be the start of a good story. (Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (January 16, 2014))

I'm quite certain that we either share this universe with other rational spirits whose design includes a physical body: or not. Right now, we simply do not know.

Claiming that other worlds cannot exist has been against the rules for Catholics since 1277. I think the same principle applies to saying that God couldn't make more than one set of people for this vast cosmos.

Earth's remarkable lack of space alien analogs to 50 gallon oil drums, six pack rings, and hamburger stands demands an explanation: assuming that we do have neighbors.

I think it's well to remember that this universe has been around for about 13,800,000,000 years, and life on Earth started at least 4,000,000,000 years back.

We've been using fire for at least 1,000,000 years; but started using radio only a bit over 100 years ago.

A thousand, or a million, years from now we may have developed something new.

If our neighbors got started a million years before we did: maybe radio communication is to them what flint knapping is to us. A million years sounds like a long time, but it's less than 1/4000th Earth's age. (Apathetic Lemming of the North (April 20, 2012; October 12, 2010))

If we do meet other people, it will be a wonderful opportunity to compare notes. We'd almost certainly be alike in some ways: and fascinatingly different in others.

Some differences might be in what senses we use to perceive the world. I'm not convinced that all people must be comparatively noisy, gregarious creatures like humans and most other primates.

Earth's last third of a billion years give, I think, a small sampling of how wonderfully varied life can be. There's a great deal for us to learn.

---

1. Meet 'Rosie:' A Fish With Legs, Sort of

(From Kalliopi Monoyios, University of Chicago; via LiveScience; used w/o permission.)
"Scientists investigated fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish known as Tiktaalik roseae, discovered in 2004 in northern Canada's Ellesmere Island, finding they may have evolved rear legs before moving to land."

"Strange Ancient Fish Had Front And Back Legs"
Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience (January 13, 2014)

"The closest known relative of the ancestors of limbed animals such as humans likely evolved the foundation for rear legs even before the move to land, researchers say. This ancestor may have even been able to walk underwater, they added.

"These findings reveal that a key step in the evolution of hind limbs happened in fish, challenging previous theories that such appendages evolved only after the move to land.

"Scientists investigated fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish known as Tiktaalik roseae, discovered in 2004 in northern Canada's Ellesmere Island. Possessing a broad flat head and sharp teeth, Tiktaalik resembled a cross between a fish and a crocodile, growing to a length of 9 feet (2.7 meters) as it hunted for prey in shallow freshwater...."

One of the critters in that picture reminds me of a cartoon character. I think it's the 'smile,' and the way Kalliopi Monoyios portrayed the eyes.

Tiktaalik roseae is a real animal, though, or was. That's a long name, so I'll call it Rosie from here on.

The University of Chicago's Neil Shubin and others studied Rosie fossils from Ellesmere Island.

That real estate is near Earth's north pole these days. It was near the equator 375,000,000 years back: along with the rest of the continent we call North America, a bit west of land that's now Kazakhstan and south China.

Earth's continents have moved quite a bit since then. As I've said before, change happens.



(From scotese.com, used w/o permission.)

Tiktaalik Roseae — Fishapod? Amphishimal? Fish With Four-Wheel Drive and Optional Lungs?

(From Kevin Jiang, The University of Chicago; Model & cast made by Tyler Keillor; via LiveScience; used w/o permission.)
"The newly discovered pelvis of Tiktaalik roseae, pictured here between a life-sized reconstruction (left) and a cast of the skeleton (right), is described in Neil Shubin's inaugural article at PNAS with coauthors Ted Daeschler and Farish A. Jenkins, Jr.. Shubin was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 2011."

"...This ancient creature was undoubtedly a fish, possessing gills, scales and fins. However, it also had features seen in modern tetrapods — four-limbed creatures like amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals — such as a mobile neck and robust ribcage.

"This extinct fish had large forefins and shoulders, elbows and partial wrists, enabling it to support itself on ground. This makes it the best-known example of an intermediate between finned animals and limbed animals marking the evolutionary leap from water to land for vertebrates, or creatures with backbones.

"Prior analyses of other fossils dating from the water-land transition found their back appendages were small and weak compared with their front appendages. This suggested the earliest ancestors of tetrapods perhaps had a 'front-wheel drive' form of locomotion that depended more on their front limbs, and that a 'four-wheel drive' form of locomotion with strong hips and back limbs only developed after tetrapods evolved...."
(Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience)

Researchers had excavated blocks of rock with Rosie's rear limbs back in 2004. They'd focused their attention on other blocks first, since the 'rear blocks' didn't look like they contained much in the way of fossilized bone. Anyway, it takes years to extricate these fragile fossils.

The University of Chicago's home page for Tiktaalik roseae calls the critter a fishapod: but I still like the "Rosie" moniker.

Maybe if more animals like the coelacanth and Rosie had been living near Europe and the Mediterranean, we'd have a name for creatures that aren't quite like other fish, and aren't amphibians, and that's another topic.

These Tiktaalik roseae fossils apparently don't include lungs, but Neil Shubin figures that Rosie could breathe air the way we do.

For one thing, those ribs wouldn't make much sense unless they wrapped around lungs. That makes sense to me. Some animals, like the kiwi and platypus, look odd to someone who grew up in central North America: but their weird appearance comes from practical design considerations.

More about Rosie:

• "Tiktaalik roseae"
  University of Chicago
• "Tiktaalik"
  Wikipedia

---

2. Weighs as Much as Earth: Not Particularly Earthlike Otherwise

(From C. Pulliam & D. Aguilar (CfA), via Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, used w/o permission.)
"KOI-314c, shown in this artist's conception, is the lightest planet to have both its mass and physical size measured. Surprisingly, although the planet weighs the same as Earth, it is 60 percent larger in diameter, meaning that it must have a very thick, gaseous atmosphere. It orbits a dim, red dwarf star (shown at left) about 200 light-years from Earth. KOI-314c interacts gravitationally with another planet, KOI-314b (shown in the background), causing transit timing variations that allow astronomers to measure the masses of both worlds. This serendipitous discovery resulted from analysis as part of the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK) project."

"Newfound Planet is Earth-mass But Gassy"
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics press release (January 6, 2014)

"An international team of astronomers has discovered the first Earth-mass planet that transits, or crosses in front of, its host star. KOI-314c is the lightest planet to have both its mass and physical size measured. Surprisingly, although the planet weighs the same as Earth, it is 60 percent larger in diameter, meaning that it must have a very thick, gaseous atmosphere.

" 'This planet might have the same mass as Earth, but it is certainly not Earth-like,' says David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author of the discovery. 'It proves that there is no clear dividing line between rocky worlds like Earth and fluffier planets like water worlds or gas giants.'...

"...The team gleaned the planet's characteristics using data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. KOI-314c orbits a dim, red dwarf star located approximately 200 light-years away. It circles its star every 23 days. The team estimates its temperature to be 220 degrees Fahrenheit, too hot for life as we know it...."

"Life as we know it" may only exist on Earth. Life of any sort may be strictly limited to the nucleic acid/protein-in-water variety. Or we may discover that most life uses lipids in hydrogen. (October 19, 2012)

Either way, I think KOI-314c shows that we've got a lot more to learn: and that planets about the size of Earth are fairly common. Eventually we may find one with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, oceans, clouds: and life.

Serendipity and: a Mini-Neptune?

"...KOI-314c is only 30 percent denser than water. This suggests that the planet is enveloped by a significant atmosphere of hydrogen and helium hundreds of miles thick. It might have begun life as a mini-Neptune and lost some of its atmospheric gases over time, boiled off by the intense radiation of its star....

"...To weigh KOI-314c, the team relied on a different technique known as transit timing variations (TTV). This method can only be used when more than one planet orbits a star. The two planets tug on each other, slightly changing the times that they transit their star...."
(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics press release)

Basically, the scientists were sorting through Kepler data for a wobbling planet. They were disappointed that KOI-314's data showed a second planet, not a moon: until they realized how little mass KOI-314c had.

Serendipity can be frustrating: but only when folks don't recognize it.

---

3. KOI-314c: a New Class of Planet

(From Geoff Marcy, via Space.com, used w/o permission.)
"Sub-Neptunian planets range in size from about 1.5 to 4 times the size of Earth and have a rocky core and puffy gaseous shell of varying thickness."

"Abundant 'Mini-Neptunes' Form New Class of Alien Planets"
Tanya Lewis, Space.com (January 6, 2014)

"There's a new kind of planet to add to Kepler's cornucopia of alien worlds, and you won't find it in Earth's own solar system.

"Ground-based follow-up observations of planets found by NASA's Kepler spacecraft reveal the masses and densities of 16 new planets ranging between one and four times the size of Earth. Many of the newfound orbs, described here today (Jan. 6) at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, have a rocky core surrounded by a puffed-up envelope of gas, which scientists are calling 'sub-Neptunes' or 'mini-Neptunes.'

" 'This marvelous avalanche of information about the sub-Neptunian planets is telling us about their core-envelope structure, not unlike a peach with its pit and fruit,' study leader Geoff Marcy, a professor of astronomy at University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement...."

Back when I was in high school, some scientists figured that planets were very rare: that the Solar system might be one of a handful of planetary systems, or maybe unique. Others thought that when clouds of gas and dust condense into stars, planets were a common by-product.

Better telescopes, more observations, and the number-crunching power of computers, showed that nebular hypothesis was a very good match with reality. We'd even spotted some 'stellar nurseries.' Evidence was piling up that planetary systems were fairly common.

Scientists were fairly confident that we'd eventually find planets circling other stars. The working assumption was that these planetary systems would be quite a bit like ours: planets in nearly-circular orbits; small, rocky ones near the star; big gassy ones farther out.

Then we started finding extrasolar planets. Some were in nearly-circular orbits, many weren't.

It's easier to find massive planets in tight orbits. They're the ones that make their stars wobble, or are likely to pass between their star and Earth. Scientists started calling them hot Jupiters, roaster planets, epistellar jovians, pegasids, or pegasean planets. I like "roaster planets" myself, but run into the term "hot Jupiters" more often.

Whatever they're called, these planets aren't like anything we'd seen before. Now that they've got more data to work with, scientist are tweaking the nebular hypothesis. The last I heard, there's more work to be done: but it still looks like clouds of gas and dust collapse into stars; quite often with a fascinating variety of planets.

---

4. Kepler-22b and Habitable Zones

"Kepler-22b: Facts About Exoplanet in Habitable Zone"
Elizabeth Howell, Space.com (December 31, 2013)

" Kepler-22b is a planet orbiting in the habitable zone of its sun-like star, Kepler-22, which is located roughly 600 light-years from Earth. With a radius of about 2.4 times that of Earth, astronomers noted after its discovery in 2011 that the planet's temperatures about the same. If the greenhouse effect is the same as well, scientists estimated its surface temperature is a life-friendly 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius).

"Although the planet is larger than Earth, astronomers hailed the discovery as a step to Kepler's goal of discovering Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their respective stars.

" 'We're getting closer and closer to discovering the so-called "Goldilocks planet," ' Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during the 2011 press conference announcing its discovery...."

The old Star Trek series introduced the phrase "class M planet," but the idea of alien worlds with climates like Earth's temperate zone is much older. We may eventually find a planet that's a near-twin to our home: but I suspect that we'll learn that life will thrive in places where we won't.

One of the more intriguing speculations is that Earth may be about as small as a planet can be and still support life.

• "Earth May Not Be a 'Class M' Planet"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 5, 2009)

Still Looking for Life

We know that life can exist on Earth, and has for at least 4,000,000,000 years. Over the last few years we've learned that life on Earth thrives in seemingly-unlikely places like hydrothermal vents, ocean trenches, or permafrost. Some extremophiles not only live without oxygen: they die if exposed to the gas.

Life "as we know it" has endured Earth's periodic glacial epochs, asteroid impacts, and the occasional million-year-long volcanic eruptions. If life began somewhere else, my guess is that it will be just as durable.

We've learned that life as we know it needs liquid water, at least sporadically, chemicals like nitrogen, and an energy gradient. There's good reason to believe that microorganisms from Earth could survive on today's Mars. It's even possible that life started on the next planet out from the sun.

Of the thousand or so extrasolar planets we've spotted so far, a few might, maybe, be warm enough for our sort of life: but not too hot. Whether or not they've got the right chemical mix isn't known.

Here's a quick look at some of the more intriguing known planetary systems.

Kepler-22

(from NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech, used w/o permission.)

Kepler-47

(from NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle, used w/o permission.)

Kepler-62

(from NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle, used w/o permission)

Kepler-69

(NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech, used w/o permission.)

I think it's well to remember that the Kepler observatory's search was limited to a tiny slice of our galaxy. Mission planners had Kepler look down a particularly promising stretch of the Milky Way galaxy: but vast expanses remain.


(Painting by Jon Lomberg, Kepler mission diagram added by NASA, Smithsonian via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.)

---

5. Darwin Glass and Trapped Organics

(From K. Howard, via Astrobiology Magazine, used w/o permission.)
"Samples of Darwin glass range in size and color. White glass make up less than 3 percent of all finds."

"Organics Preserved in Ancient Meteorite-Formed Glass"
(December 16, 2013)

"Scientists have found organics from Earth's swamp trapped inside of glass created by a meteor impact almost a million years ago. The tiny pockets, only micrometers across, contain material such as cellulose and proteins. Though the impact glass was found on Earth, scientists say that similar samples could have been thrown into space by this or other blasts, allowing organics to be transported from one planet to another.

"Impact glass

"Approximately 800,000 years ago, a rock 100 to 160 feet (30 to 50 meters) across crashed down in Western Tasmania, Australia. As it slammed into the Earth, temperatures exceeded 1,700 degrees Celsius (3,100 degrees Fahrenheit), melting rock and creating glass sphericals, as well as a quarter-mile wide hole known as the Darwin Crater...."

Tasmania's Darwin Crater may be what's left of a meteor impact crater, but geologists apparently can't be positive about that. It's a circular depression with a lot of impact glass in the area, and something warped rock strata the way an impact would: so I'm guessing that a meteor hit there.


(From Google Maps, used w/o permission.)
Darwin Crater, Tasmania.

Panspermia: Elephants, No; Microbes, Mabye

(From K. Howard, via Astrobiology Magazine, used w/o permission.)
"Darwin Glass."

"...'The reason the glass is so abundant seems likely to relate to the presence of volatiles like water at the surface when the impact occurred,' lead author Kieren Howard of the City University of New York told Astrobiology by email.

" 'A bit like when water from your spatula drips into a frying pan, having the right amount of water at the surface during impact may have increased the magnitude of the explosion, and the production and dispersal of the melt.'

"In Tasmania, the land was covered by swamps and rainforest, offering sufficient water to create the glass. According to the authors, glass from the Darwin Crater is the most abundant and widely dispersed impact glass on Earth, relative to the crater's size, with glass scattered across 150 square miles (400 square kilometers). In fact, the widespread glass led to the discovery of the crater, which is now filled with younger sediments, in 1972. ..."

What's in the Darwin glass is interesting, since it shows that organic stuff can get embedded in debris which in turn could be thrown out of Earth's atmosphere.

If we find life on Mars, there's going to be a lively discussion over whether it started out on Mars, was carried there by an earlier space probe, or got carried from Earth inside something like this glass.

The idea that life spreads through the universe, carried on debris, is called panspermia. It's far from a crackpot notion. We've learned that an elephant grazing near an asteroid impact couldn't hitch a ride to Mars on debris thrown into space: but microbes might.

More:

• "List of nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidates"
  Wikipedia
• The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
  exoplanet team
• SIMBAD Astronomical Database
  CDS, Strasbourg, France
• NASA Exoplanet Archive
  California Institute of Technology, NASA
• "Evidence That Organic Material Can Survive the Impact of a Meteorite"
  SciTechDaily (November 13, 2013)

Related posts:

• Exoplanets
  • "Dust and Fomalhaut: Learning that There's More to Learn"
    (December 27, 2013)
  • "The Eight-and-a-Half-Hour Year of Kepler 78b, and the Seven Worlds of KIC 11442793"
    (November 1, 2013)
  • "Kepler-69c and Habitable Zones; The Great Martian Land Rush"
    (October 25, 2013)
    Particularly
    • Found: 1,100 Exoplanets
    • Habitable Zones and Kepler-69c: There's More to Learn
  • "Exoplanets and Extraterrestrial Life: The Search Continues"
    (September 6, 2013)
    Particularly
    • Reviewing Kepler
  • "The Three Super-Earths of Gliese 677C; and Unexpected Planets"
    (June 28, 2013)
• Horizons
  • "Old Water, Older Fossils, and Extraterrestrial Etiquette"
    (November 15, 2013)
    Particularly
    • Space Aliens
    • Being Human
  • "Three Es: Exoplanets, Exobiology, and Evolution"
    (October 4, 2013)
    Particularly
    • Life in the Universe?
  • "Time, the Universe, and Space Aliens"
    Apathetic Lemming of the North (April 20, 2012)
    Particularly
    • Do You Believe in Space Aliens?
    • Space Aliens and the Universe
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