Podcast: Two Worlds Collide in This Episode

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rending of exoplanet GJ 1132b. (MIT News)

If you are looking for a fun podcast this week, you cannot go wrong with Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Startalk podcast when it hosts Cool Worlds‘ creator David Kipping. The episode, Cosmic Queries – Cool Worlds with David Kipping, covers questions related to exoplanets, exomoons, and more. It is fun to hear the two scientists play off each other.

You will also learn from this podcast that Cool Worlds should be releasing its own podcast in the near future. Its Youtube videos are already a great source of information, so I expect more of the same in these podcasts.

At the end of the podcast, Professor Kipping also mentioned a few upcoming space missions related to exoplanets, including the European PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (Plato) mission in 2026. You can learn more about the mission from this European Space Agency factsheet, which notes:

Does a second Earth exist in the Universe? Planet hunter Plato will focus on the properties of rocky planets orbiting Sun-like stars. In particular, Plato will discover and characterise planets in orbits up to the habitable zone – the ‘goldilocks’ region around a star where the temperature is just right for liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface.

Plato will characterise hundreds of rocky (including Earth twins), icy or giant planets by providing exquisite measurements of their radii (3% precision), masses (better than 10% precision) and ages (10% precision). This will revolutionise our understanding of planet formation and the evolution of planetary systems, as well as the potential habitability of these diverse worlds.

As well as looking at these planets, Plato will analyse their host stars. Using data from the mission, scientists hope to perform stellar seismology, gathering evidence of ‘starquakes’ in the imaged stars. This will give insight into the characteristics and evolution of the stars, improving our understanding of entire planetary systems.

It’s a fun, fact-filled show worth your time.

A Day in Astronomy: The Birth of Kim Stanley Robinson

Posted on by onespaceman2000

On this day in 1952, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson born in Waukegan, Illinois. As a writer, he has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. 

Some of his works include:

  • Mars Trilogy
  • Aurora
  • The Ministry of the Future
  • 2312
  • New York 2140
  • The Years of Rice and Salt
  • Three Californias Triptych

You can learn a lot more about the man and his work at this Kim Stanley Robinson reference site.

You might also enjoy this podcast, Crafting with Ursula : Kim Stanley Robinson on Ambiguous Utopias, where Mr. Robinson discusses his encounters with science fiction author Ursula LeGuin as well as his ideas about utopian novels.

Podcast: A Canadian Rover on the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Picture of the Canadian rover being built and finalized for a trip to the Moon. (Canadensys Aerospace)

I am recommending another episode from The Planetary Society’s podcast Planetary Radio. In the episode, The Canadian Lunar Rover with Peter Visscher, we get to learn more about Canada’s plans to place a rover on the Moon.

The interview is with Peter Visscher, Director of Canadensys West, which is building the rover after receiving a contract from Canadian Space Agency’s Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program. Here is a little more about the rover and the partners on the mission:

The 30-kg lunar rover will be sent to the Moon’s south pole region as early as 2026. The rover will be carrying multiple science payloads from Canada and the US. Canadensys Aerospace is leading a broad team of partners, including NASA Ames Research Center, NGC Aerospace, Maya Heat Transfer Technologies, Nokia, Bubble Technology Industries, Waves in Space, Simon Fraser University, Western University, the University of Winnipeg, l’Université de Sherbrooke, Leap Biosystems, Surrey Satellite Technology, and RF Collins. The team’s scientific investigators are among the leading lunar researchers in Canada and the US and are affiliated with the core team organizations as well as Arizona State University, Planetary Science Institute, and University of Alberta.

The rover will explore the Moon’s South Pole as it searches for water ice. Such ice has already been detected from orbit, but this mission will test the soil in the area where the water was detected. Water on the lunar surface will be of great benefit to future missions on the Moon and elsewhere – it represents not only water itself, but oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel.

The objectives of the mission were recently laid out by the Canadian government:

  • travel on the surface of the Moon to see how the various systems perform;
  • showcase the possible applications, feasibility and performance of a new technology;
  • make scientific measurements that will help determine the amount of hydrogen present in the Moon soil, which is one of the best indicators of water ice while defining at which temperatures it is detected;
  • analyze the lunar soil to better understand the geology of the site; and
  • assess lunar surface radiation to find out how much radiation future astronauts will be exposed to.

The interview in the podcast gives you more background on the project as well as potential plans to provide the rover with its own name.

NASA is working on another rover that it plans to send to the Moon’s surface by 2024 – Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER). I can cover that mission and other lunar missions looking for water in a later post.

Podcast: Assist UCLA with a SETI Project

Posted on by onespaceman2000

I found another episode from The Planetary Society’s podcast Planetary Radio that is worth checking out. In this episode, Are we Alone? The Search for Alien Technosignatures, Professor Jean-Luc Margot and doctoral student Megan Li discuss their project at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to identify signals from other civilizations in the galaxy and then extract information encoded in those extraterrestrial signals. This project, called UCLA SETI, was also the winner of a Planetary Society STEP Grant as well as a NASA grant to conduct this work.

As of last week, a volunteer site was set up to assist the UCLA SETI team with this project. Here is some key information from its website:

We host a citizen science collaboration on Zooniverse. Please consider partnering with us to identify the most interesting signals in our data. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed about our progress. Past issues of our newsletter are available.

Watch a two-minute video about the UCLA SETI course or a 30-minute talk about the search for life in the universe.

The video is actually a 55-minute talks, but the key section related to this project starts at the 23:38 minute mark where the downloaded data is discussed.

This is your chance to identify something that no one has every seen before. Put some of that time you might have spent watching The Ark toward something useful.

Podcast: Capturing Life Off Planet and Here on Earth

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Venus as captured by NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft in February 1974. (NASA)

I recommend checking out Alan Alda’s interview with astronomer Sara Seager in a recent Clear + Vivid podcast episode. MIT Professor Seager has focused her work on exoplanet atmospheres as well as another planet nearby – Venus. In the interview, she discusses her early work as well as her theories about the existence of life in the atmosphere of Venus. She also discusses her involvement with MIT’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Telescope (TESS). 

And while I do not remember it coming up during the interview, Professor Seager is also known for the Seager equation (shown below), which is less demanding than the Drake equation and focuses on any form of life on another planet (without reference to technology).

  • N = the number of planets with detectable signs of life
  • N* = the number of stars observed
  • FQ = the fraction of stars that are quiet
  • FHZ = the fraction of stars with rocky planets in the habitable zone
  • FO = the fraction of stars with observable planets
  • FL = the fraction of planets that have life
  • FS = the fraction of life forms that produce planetary atmospheres with one or more detectable signature gases

But in addition to the science, it was a fascinating discussion about Professor Seager’s life covering the early death of her husband from cancer, her attempts to get her life back on track, and her discovery later in life that she has autism. Most science stories focus on the work, but Mr. Alda has a unique way of drawing out the person in these interviews. It is a great episode, and you can read more about Professor Seager’s life and work in her book The Smallest Lights in the Universe.

Credit: Crown Publishing