Category Archives: astrobiology

astrobiology, Mars, Uwingu

Exploring the Universe

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It Begins Here at Home, Part I

Mars-like Places Here on Earth

Earth's limb from space. Courtesy NASA.

Life here on Earth is pretty fascinating. There are so many different kinds of life, and so many different places it can thrive, from the oceans to the mountaintops to the deserts. We can probably be forgiven (us humans) for thinking that Earth is just about the only place where it can do so. That’s understandable… we once thought we were the pinnacle of creation and that Earth was ours to do with what we wanted. And, our planet bears the scars of activities engendered by that kind of thinking.

But, we’re wising up and figuring out that life can exist in all kinds of places and they don’t have to be on our planet. Take Mars, for example. If you’ve been following any of the Mars missions put on or near the planet by any of several countries over the past few decades, you can’t have missed how much some of its landscapes remind us of places here on Earth.

Mars in all its glory. Courtesy STScI/NASA.

Places where life exists on our planet. Some of them are pretty darned inhospitable places to us as humans, but perfectly acceptable paradises for other forms of life.  Take the Antarctic, for example, or the relentlessly hot salt pans in Tunisia, or the Rio Tinto where the environment is corrosively acidic. In all these places, life can be found.  These, and other spots such as the Utah desert, Devon Island in the Arctic, and the volcanic slopes of Mauna Kea in Hawai’i are among the many places where scientists do research to understand the conditions where life can flourish.

For Mars, scientists visit all kinds of places to study “Mars analogs”, those places that seem Mars-like here on Earth. Groups such as the Centro de Astrobiologica in Madrid range around the planet doing cutting-edge research on life’s origins and ability to withstand conditions that would give humans second thoughts about living in such areas.

I’ve often flown over the deserts of the southwest U.S. and thought to myself, “take away the plants, chill down the atmosphere, and this place could be Mars”.  Same with Hawai’i, where I did some graduate field study in Mars analog conditions. So, it’s natural to me that our home planet would help us understand more about places like Mars. And, in the reverse, that Mars may very well help us understand how life on our own planet evolved and adapted. It’s an ongoing planetary exploration story that’s going on right here on the home planet. Stay tuned!

Research Begins Here at Home, Too.

Final Day for Crowdsourcing Research Fund Drive

Uwingu, crowd-sourced science research.

Speaking of research here at home, the final countdown has begun for Uwingu’s fundraising campaign over at Indiegogo. The deadline for contributions is midnight tonight (Monday, September 24th) Pacific Daylight Time.

This project is the brain-child of my friend Alan Stern and several well-known planetary scientists and outreach educators.  They’ve banded together to create a cool project that will help fund ongoing science research that isn’t being funded today due to budget shortfalls in the U.S.  They’ll also be funding outreach projects to help bring the next generation of scientists up to speed as they proceed through elementary, high school and college.

It’s an admirable effort and I’ve donated to the cause because I am a science outreach type myself and I can see what the Uwingu folks are trying to do is of great intrinsic value.  Plus, the money’s spent right here on Earth, helping us grow our understanding of the cosmos.

If you’ve got the cost of a trip to your favorite coffee shop available, or can spare the equivalent of a couple of movie tickets or a computer game or even more, consider sending it to Uwingu. You’ll be eligible for some cool perks, although the best one will be simply the satisfaction of knowing you made a difference in science research.  THAT’s seriously cool.

I heard from co-founder Alan Stern that he’s going to be on Coast-to-Coast from 10 p.m. to midnight (PDT) tonight during the final countdown to the campaign’s end, sharing his insights with everyone about science research and how important it is to all of us. So, it could get pretty exciting at the last moment!

 

astrobiology, exoplanets, exploration, extrasolar planets, GJ 1214b, life, mono lake, NASA

Arsenic-Eating Life and New Planets

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Scientists Study Places Where Life Thrives…

and where it May Someday Exist

Judging by the uproar over the past few days in the blog-o-sphere and comment-o-sphere, you’d think that NASA was announcing that life had been discovered on Mars or Titan or any number of other unlikely places.  What I’ve seen in idle speculation and comments on blogs, FaceBook, and even on some news sites,  leads me to wonder if there’s any intelligent life left on the Web. I mean, come on.  There’s been some pretty irresponsible commentary by all kinds of people (including journalists, bloggers, and some scientists) and it’s really taking away from the wonderfulness of the actual discoveries.  Well, let’s take a look at the REAL stories and see what all the fuss is about.

Arsenic-processing bacteria like those growing in Mono Lake, California. Courtesy NASA.

The first, being talked about today, is the finding that some bacteria that live in Mono Lake in California appear to eat and apparently thrive on arsenic — a chemical that is usually toxic to life.  This finding is based on laboratory studies of these bacteria. In such a setting, not only can these buggers eat the stuff, but they appear to have evolved enough to be able to chemically alter it and incorporate it into their DNA. The lead researcher, Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon at the U.S. Geological Survey, put it pretty well: “”We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we’ve found is a microbe doing something new — building parts of itself out of arsenic,” she said. “If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?”

Bugs eating arsenic?  That result is going to have a huge impact on other areas of research into life and its processes, including the study of Earth’s evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation and Earth system research.  To put it simply, this has implications for understanding the chemical environments that life can exist and thrive in.  Essentially, this NASA-funded research is changing our very basic knowledge about what kinds of life forms we have on this planet, and where they can exist and thrive.

Now, this is a far cry from breathless claims that NASA was going to announce life on Mars and all the other shouting that we’ve been seeing on the Web and in the press the past couple of days. Those are the usual claims, and I find them wearisome when they come without any proof or understanding of the actual science being reported.

On the other hand, this report is REAL science being shared by real scientists who have been out the field doing what science does best: examining, studying, and understanding what’s right in front of us. It’s exciting. It’s different. And, it’s going to spur other scientists to study the results and extend them into other areas.  But it’s not little green life forms holding up their middle fingers and saying, “Take me to your arsenic.” Quite the opposite: the little life forms seem to have found their arsenic and said, “We’re happy here, thank you very much.”

You can also read more about this fascinating biological discovery at Science’s web site, the journal that is publishing the story of the arsenic-loving critters.

Artist's conception of the super-Earth planet GJ 1214b. Courtesy ESO.

The second discovery this week that has implications for life is the revelation by astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile of a super-Earth exoplanet (i.e. a semi-Earthlike planet bigger than Earth) that has what appears to be a water-rich atmosphere.   This water could be in the form of steam, or wet clouds or hazes.  GJ 1214b has a radius of about 2.6 times that of the Earth and is about 6.5 times as massive. Its host star is a small faint star about 40 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus. You can read more details here.

Of course, as soon as news of this discovery came out, I began to see speculation about life being discovered on that planet.  Not just in news sites, but all around the web-o-sphere and by commentators who should have known better.  I hate to be a wet blanket (so to speak), but the presence of water does NOT equal the presence of life. It DOES mean, however, that the environment on that planet could be conducive to the formation of life that depends on water.  And, that’s pretty darned cool.  Still, no actual discovery of life has happened there… yet.

I think that this tells us, more than ever, that the conditions for life do exist “out there” and that the formation of planets where life could form and exist is not limited to our own solar system.  It’s not surprising to find these planets — eventually we were bound to. Coupled with the astrobiology discovery announced today, it tells ME that this universe is complex, fascinating, and always ready to hand us a surprise or two!