Podcast: Should We Be Talking to the Stars (or Exoplanets, to be More Precise)?

Posted on by onespaceman2000

I recommend you tune into another episode from The Planetary Society’s podcast Planetary Radio. In the episode, Space Policy Edition: The Policy Implications of Active SETI, we hear a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of an active SETI program, and whether we can even cease outreach to the neighboring systems given what has already been transmitted and the nature of our world today.

The guest on the episode is Jacob Haqq Misra, Senior Research Investigator at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. He is the author of a new book, Sovereign Mars: Transforming Our Values Through Space Settlement, though his main points related to our SETI program.

For instance, whether or not people support an active or passive SETI program often depends on whether we believe in benevolent or destructive aliens. Of course, the matter is unknowable until it happens, yet fraught with fears based on what we know about ourselves and our own exploration.

The discussion also discussed the presentation of SETI in films, such as Contact, as well as the definition of intelligence itself, be it whales (remember Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home?) or even ChatGPT. And we are already past the point of turning off our “active outreach” given that interested aliens are probably looking for both bio-signatures and techno-signatures, which we are creating without any thought. Astronomers are currently searching for such signatures among the exoplanets, so it would make sense the same type of search is being focused on our solar system.

Plenty of food for thought. Enjoy the show.

Credit: University Press of Kansas

Virgin: Tourism Wins Over Commercial Cargo

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Virgin Galactic

While Virgin Orbit failed back in April, Virgin Galactic is going strong and planning to start its tourism business in August. But first it has a scientific mission later this month.

Here is the word from Virgin Galactic:

While carrying satellites into space is no longer on the menu, bringing scientists to space for work is still part of the plan. But with many individuals willing to pay $450,000 apiece to experience the weightlessness of space, it appears tourism is the winner here.

I am not sure what that says about commercial space stations. Would they be better as floating hotels or casinos? Maybe so, as we learned in an Architectural Digest story late last year titled “A Space Hotel Could Open as Soon as 2025” (see image below).

Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Voyager Station. (Orbital Assembly Corporation)

Are We Too Focused on the Goldilocks Zone?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Saturn’s moon Enceladus. (NASA)

Astronomers peering into the night sky always talk about exoplanets located in the “Goldilocks Zone,” or “Habitable Zone,” similar to the Earth’s location from the sun. But what if that is too limited? What if we should also be focusing on colder regions as well as exomoons?

The new study released this week based on data from NASA’s spacecraft Cassini has found that Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains the ingredients for life as we know it. The study states:

Saturn’s moon Enceladus harbours a global ice-covered water ocean. The Cassini spacecraft investigated the composition of the ocean by analysis of material ejected into space by the moon’s cryovolcanic plume. The analysis of salt-rich ice grains by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer enabled inference of major solutes in the ocean water (Na+, K+, Cl–, HCO3–, CO32–) and its alkaline pH. Phosphorus, the least abundant of the bio-essential elements, has not yet been detected in an ocean beyond Earth. Earlier geochemical modelling studies suggest that phosphate might be scarce in the ocean of Enceladus and other icy ocean worlds. However, more recent modelling of mineral solubilities in Enceladus’s ocean indicates that phosphate could be relatively abundant.

Again, this represents the building blocks of life and it is the first time all these ingredients have been discovered in our solar system outside of Earth. We did not find it on Venus or Mars, two other planets in the Goldilocks Zone. No, it was found in a much colder part of the solar system on a tiny moon.

This discovery certainly mixes up the situation and provides a much broader region for life to appear in other solar systems. It’s not a new idea, but it has more credibility now that we know a little more about our own neighborhood.

Maybe Goldilock’s concerns about something being too cold was not such a problem after all.

Note: It seems James Cameron figured this out years ago. The planet visited in the Avatar movies, Pandora, is portrayed as a moon (or exomoon) in the Alpha Centauri System.

Image (Credit): Pandora and its host  gas giant Polyphemus from the movie Avatar. (20th Century Fox)

Pic of the Week: The ISS Transiting the Sun

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The ISS before the Sun. (Thierry Legault)

This week’s image was taken by French astrophotographer Thierry Legault. It shows the  International Space Station (ISS) transiting the Sun on June 9th. The other three dark objects are sun spots.

At the time this image was taken, two NASA astronauts, Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, were installing a new solar array on the station.

Podcast: Cool Worlds Labs Has Started a Podcast

Posted on by onespaceman2000

In an earlier posting, I noted that the people at Cool Worlds Lab were planning to create a podcast to further share the Lab’s research. Well, that day has come and you can now listen to the first episode with Professor David Kipping interviewing Rebecca Charbonneau, who is a Janksy Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). She is a historian of astronomy who is writing a book on the history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

The conversation covers a number of SETI topics, including a young Carl Sagan’s collaboration with Soviet astronomer I.S. Shklovsky on an English translation of Shklovsky’s book Universe, Life, Intelligence. It was a chance to escape Soviet censors and bring new light to SETI ideas.

It’s a great start to a new series. I look forward to many more podcast episodes in addition to all of the other great media shared by Cool Worlds Labs.

Credit: Emerson-Adams Press