A Sense of Place

How Will Our Choice of Future Homes Change Us?

Humans evolved to live on this planet — heck, we have been evolving along WITH this planet ever since our species showed up. (And, as some point out, we’re changing our planet, and not always for the good.) Now we’re looking out to other worlds, mostly just trying to find other “places” in the galaxy, and wondering if any of those places might have life.  It’s pretty clear that there’s nothing quite like us in the solar system — although the jury’s still out on whether or  not places like Mars, or Titan, or Europa (for example) have (or had) some kinds of microbial life.

Searching out planets is a tall order. Finding one that has life is a taller one. And, finding one that could support our kind of life — well, that’s probably an even taller one. We have to have certain needs met — water, a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, food (or places to make/grow/synthesize it) and a relative radiation-safe environment — in order to survive. If all those fall into place, then we can populate and grow.

The way terraforming might change Mars. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

I often wonder what future humans will be like. If our species becomes more space-faring than it is now — I think that we’ll be divided into interesting groups. There will be the lunar inhabitants — adapting to and raising their children in the lunar gravity and environment.  As many science fiction writers have pointed out in prosaic detail, the Lunarians will probably be unable to spend more than a small amount of time in Earth’s gravity and atmosphere once they’ve adapted to the Moon.  What will their politics be?  Will they look down on Earthers as “dirt huggers”?

And, what about the future Martians?  Separated from Earth by a multi-month journey, they will essentially be on their own to forge their own future and culture.  The next generations of lunarians and Martians will not ever be able to set foot on their home world surfaces without massive life-support units. That’s gotta change a person’s psychology quite a bit!

Say that the future Martians manage to terraform Mars, and maybe turn it more Earthlike — I have to wonder: will they WANT to?  It’s a multi-multi-generational task — and the first generations of Martians could grow to love their planet just the way it is.  Terraforming might come to be viewed as nasty as our current attempts to Veneriform Earth (via human-caused global warming).

Even farther out, humans might find ways to live and work on Ganymede or Europa. (Sure there are lots of obstacles and dangers, but if they can find a way, they will.)  What kind of humans will those Ganymedeans and Europans become?  Will Earthers recognize them after some generations of change?

And, what will be the social, cultural, and psychological evolutions that star-faring humans under go as they undertake multi-generational trips to other stars in search of new worlds far beyond the Sun’s influence?  Once they find those worlds, will the be “people of Earth” reaching out? Or, will their lives on the surfaces of those distant places, under the light of different suns be so totally different from ours that the place where they plant their feet, their food and their families define who and what they are?  What they think, believe, and do?  Is our sense of humanity tied to one place? Or many?

HST Grabs the Spot Light!

Closeup of New Dark Spot on Jupiter as seen by HST

HST's view of the new impact site on Jupiter. Courtesy NASA, ESA, H. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), and the Jupiter Impact Team (Click to embiggen.)

Talk about a target of opportunity!  The venerable Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been in the middle of recommissioning after the successful refurbishing mission.  Not to miss the potentially new science in the drama unfolding on Jupiter after the recent impact, Space Telescope Science Institute director Matt Mountain allocated discretionary time to a team of astronomers led by Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

The Hubble picture, taken on 23 July, is the sharpest visible-light picture taken of the feature and is Hubble’s first science observation following its repair and upgrade in May. Observations were taken with Hubble’s new camera, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

Hubble’s view shows a lumpiness in the debris plume left behind by the impact. This is caused by turbulence in Jupiter’s atmosphere. For scale, the spot as seen in this image is about twice the length of the whole of Europe. The object that did the nasty deed to Jupiter was probably about the size of several football fields, and the force of the explosion was thousands of times more powerful than whatever it was that created the Tunguska incident in June 1908.  That’s pretty darned powerful!  For more information about the HST images, visit here. You’ll find more images and interviews with the scientists involved.

Welcome to a Martian Landscape

Mars Express Images a Valley on Mars

A Mars Express 3D "ortho-image" of a region near Ma'adim vallis, one of the largest canyons on Mars. Courtesy European Space Agency. (Click to embiggen.)

It’s a great day in the solar system — there are telescopes aimed at Jupiter to follow the aftermath of the recent collision into the southern polar region; instruments are monitoring solar activity, Cassini continues to show us the wonders of the Saturn system, Mercury is still being mapped, the Moon is under heavy study, and the news and images from landers and mappers at Mars continues to flow our way.  Now, if we just had PEOPLE on Mars!  Well, when the first Marsnauts DO get there, they’ll have great images like this one from Mars Express to study.

Where is this place? It’s near one of the largest canyons on Mars — a giant rift called Ma’adim Vallis. This area lies between the Tharsis volcanic region of Tharsis (and its four large volcanoes) and the Hellas Planitia impact basin.

There’s quite a lot of interesting terrain here and a little planetary science interpretation tells an interesting story. The canyon itself is 20 kilometers wide and 2 kilometers deep. It begins in the southern highlands close to the a region called the “dichotomy boundary” that divides the cratered highlands on Mars and the nearby lowland plains. The canyon ends in Gusev crater, where the Spirit Rover is currently exploring.

The region near Ma'adim Vallis, as seen by Mars Express. (Click to embiggen.)

The image you see here covers a region of Mars about the size of the island of Cyprus on Earth.  There’s a sharp boundary is visible that divides dark material to the west and light material to the east. This probably the edge of a basaltic lava flow. Wrinkle ridges are clearly visible on the surface of the lava flow and they probably formed as the rock was compressed by tectonic action after the lava was laid down.

The crater in the north part of the image is about 20 kilometers across and seems to be partly filled with lava deposits that flowed in after the crater formed.  The smaller crater at the southern edge of the larger crater must have formed later because it has an ejecta blanket that may have formed from material rich in water ice that was blasted out during the impact.

A 200-kilometer-long linear feature divides the image almost in half. This is probably a trough that formed when the Tharsis volcanic region was active. That activity caused the whole area to “lift up” — and that had to have created a lot of stress in the crust.  The typical way that surface crusts deal with stress is to break into pieces. Hence, you get fracture zones, and the creation of troughs and other broken terrain like you see here.

Images like these are fascinating for a lot of reasons. First, they’re another world — one that we’re learning a LOT about as our robot explorers send back more images and data. Second, they’re from a world that we hope humans will visit very soon. Third, those regions look so very familiar because we see places like them on Earth — and we know how they formed on Earth, so that helps us understand how they work on Mars. Finally, they’re just darned cool!  Not a very scientific-sounding reason, but hey — science IS cool.  And so is studying other planets!