NASA found Balls of Plastic on Mars (UPDATE: It’s a hoax)
[update] It’s a hoax, sorry. Meh. (Also: Die Merkus-Wasser-Story stimmt, die Plastikstory nicht.)
Gestern hat die NASA bekanntgegeben, dass sie Wassereis an den Polarkappen des Merkur gefunden haben: New Data Show Mercury Almost Certainly Has Buried Ice at Its North Pole. Finde ich fast langweilig, ich denke, dass Wasser ziemlich häufig auf anderen Planeten – oder besser: Brocken im Weltall – vorkommt.
Aber diese Meldung hier finde ich spannend: Curiosity untersucht grade eine Ansammlung kleiner Kügelchen und die sind aus Plastik. Plastik! Noch wichtiger: Das Mars-Plastik ist genau solches, das nur mit dem Einsatz von Petrochemikalien geformt werden kann, was stark auf Öl auf dem Mars hindeutet und dieses Öl ist bislang nur bekannt als Fossil ehemaligen Lebens und das wiederum heisst: Plastikkügelchen auf dem Mars könnten der Beweis dafür sein, dass es mal Leben auf dem Mars gab. Whoa!
The small spheres at Matijevic Hill have different composition and internal structure made completely of plastic. Curiosity’s science team is evaluating a range of possibilities for how they formed. The spheres are up to about an eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter.
Last week Curiosity was able to use its SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) device to confirm the discovery. A robotic arm with a complex system of Spectral Analysis devices was able to vaporize and identify gasses from the sample, concluding that it is in fact plastic. How plastic formed or ended up on the Martian surface is quite an exciting mystery that sparks many questions. The type of plastic sampled as we know so far can only be formed using petrochemicals, meaning not only that there could possibly be a source of oil on the Red Planet, but that somehow it got turned into plastic. Even more interesting is that oil or petrochemicals used to create this type of plastic are only known to come from ancient fossilized organic materials, such as zooplankton and algae, which geochemical processes convert into oil pointing to the earthshaking evidence that there was once life on mars.
Interactive Drake Equation: How many alien Civilizations exist?
Schicke Spielerei von BBC Future: Eine interaktive Visualisierung der Drake-Gleichung zur Berechnung der Anzahl der fortgeschrittenen und intelligenten Zivilisationen in unserer Galaxis.
Today, we live in an age of exploration, where robots on Mars and planet-hunting telescopes are beginning to allow us to edge closer to an answer. While we wait to establish contact, one technique we can use back on Earth is an equation that American astronomer Frank Drake formulated in the 1960s to calculate the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations may exist in the Milky Way galaxy.
It is not a rigorous equation, offering a wide range of possible answers. Instead it is more a tool used to help understand how many worlds might be out there and how those estimates change as missions like Kepler, a telescope that is currently searching for Earth-like planets, begin to discover more about our universe. Until ground-based observations, space telescopes and planet-roving robots uncover any tell-tale signs of life, what better way to speculate on how many intelligent alien civilizations may exist than to explore the universe with our interactive version of the equation.
Liquid Water on Mars? Maybe not.
Die Nasa hat heute bekanntgegeben, dass sie schwarze Schlieren auf dem Mars beobachtet, die in Sommer und Frühling einen Krater herunterfließen. Das ist cool, aber auch schon alles. io9 macht daraus eine Bestätigung von fließendem Wasser, was ziemlicher Bullshit ist. Dem ganzen Gawker-Kram kann man halt nicht weiter glauben, als man eine Website werfen kann.
NASA: „Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars’ southern hemisphere. “The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water,” said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson. “
Ich lese solche Meldungen noch dazu vor dem Hintergrund der massiven Kürzungen im Raumfahrtprogramm und dem Druck, unter dem die NASA deshalb steht. Da macht sich fließendes Wasser auf dem Mars natürlich besser, als „unidentifizierte Substanz schwarzer Färbung, die die Hänge runterdingst und die alles sein könnte, vor allem da die Daten die Spektralsignatur der spekulierten Salze oder gar Wasser nicht hergeben“. I’m sorry to tell you that, I know I suck.
Aus einem recht ernüchternden Interview mit Mark Lemmon,„ a planetary scientist at Texas A&M University who participates in day-to-day operations of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars“:
The paper posits that water exists on Mars today. How convincing is the evidence?
The paper is suggestive of liquid water, but the team has not found the smoking gun. A spectral signature of water or of the salts that are speculated would be a key step.Prior to this publication, what was the thinking in the planetary science community on the possibility of present-day water on Mars existing?
There is debate over present-day liquid water, with brines as the suggested way to have a liquid and gullies as one possible expression of the water. But the evidence is, so far, weak. This paper does provide a fresh motivation and a new place to look. Water, of course, is present as vapor and ice around Mars in the atmosphere, surface, and sub-surface.Will this paper move the debate?
Some.
Scientists find evidence of salt water flowing on Mars
Mehr:
New Scientist: Dark streaks on Mars bolster case for liquid water
CNN: Mars may have flowing saltwater, study says
NASA: NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars
Bookmarks for August 3rd: NYC Garbage Art, Hofmanns Potion, Spaceflight Psychology
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared on Vimeo
Retro Future: Space Art Update
Spaceflight Psychology and the New ‘Right Stuff’ | Wired Science | Wired.com
AFP: Icelanders hand in draft of world’s first ‘web’ constitution
Princess Leia Costume Made of Duct Tape
Heather Holliday, Sword Swallower on Vimeo
LEGO Dragon Breathes Actual Fire | Geekosystem
“Space Night – Earth Views” 4-10 komplett online
NYC Garbage, Trashy Art In A Cube From New York City
Hacker stock art – Boing Boing
Mac ‘n’ Cheese on Vimeo: Mac 'n' Cheese is an animated short directed and created by four students at the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands. This roughly two minute animation took about five months to make, and about a bajillion peanut butter sandwiches.Synopsis: When you find yourself running scared and running out of energy, there's only a few options left to outrun your opponent through the southern desert. Stopping at nothing, watch these two guys wear each other out and rip through boundaries hitherto unbroken.
Mona Lisa – 6,239 dot to dot drawing on the Behance Network: I created an A0 poster with dots numbered from 1 to 6,329 and took a time lapse video of myself linking them all up over 9 hours. Here's how it turned out.
The Mission to Get Osama Bin Laden : The New Yorker: What happened that night in Abbottabad.
Essential Mix by Paul Kalkbrenner (30.7.2011) [Mix,Download] | Dressed Like Machines: This Essential Mix is a live set of Kalkbrenner’s own productions and remixes, including tracks from his new album ‘Icke Wieder’.
Hofmann’s Potion (LSD documentary) – YouTube: The documentary delves into the little known early history of the world's most notorious psychedelic.Long before Timothy Leary urged a generation to "turn on, tune in and drop out," lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, was being used by researchers trying to understand the human mind. This documentary is a fascinating look at the story of "acid" before it hit the streets.Featuring interviews with many LSD pioneers, Hofmann's Potion is much more than a simple chronicle of the drug's early days. <br />
With thoughtful interviews, beautiful music and stunning cinematography, it is an invitation to look at LSD, and our world, with a more open, compassionate mind.
The Bible of Western War, Now Featuring Cartoon Animals | Danger Room | Wired.com: On War is Clausewitz’s attempt to distill warfare down to its enduring essentials. Its only equal is Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. If you’ve heard the phrase, “war is politics by other means,” you know the nickel version. If you want to go for the jackpot, stroll over to one of the war colleges or onto any military listserv to hear people debate Clausewitz’s relevance to their pet issue or dispute what he really said like he was Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall.But if you’d like something in between, Fitzgerald’s Clausewitz for Kids blog is slowly recasting On War, section by section, into a lecture series in the Prussian forest, conducted by Hare Clausewitz (get it?), the intense-looking rabbit officer pictured above in Napoleonic-era regalia.
CINEMETRICS: cinemetrics is about measuring and visualizing movie data, in order to reveal the characteristics of films and to create a visual “fingerprint” for them. Information such as the editing structure, color, speech or motion are extracted, analyzed and transformed into graphic representations so that movies can be seen as a whole and easily interpreted or compared side by side.
Christian Groß — SMS to Paper Airplanes: The text messages were filtered and analyzed using PROCESSING. The sender was encoded by the direction of the paper airplane, the length of the message with its size and the amount of positive emotional words with the amounts of folds. Additionally the paper airplanes were divided in two types depending on the length of their text. Finally, the paper airplanes resulting from this construction plan were placed in the room depending on the time when they were sent, as well as their emotional value.
Chicago: The Ferris Bueller high school – YouTube: You can make a strong case for The Blues Brothers as the definitive Chicago film, but Ferris Bueller's Day Off almost seems like a 103-minute commercial from the Chicago Office Of Tourism. That was no accident. Director (and Chicagoan) John Hughes described the film as his "love letter" to the city. He wanted to capture "not just the architecture, but the spirit."
In Test Tube, Hint of Chemicals Coming Alive – NYTimes.com: SAN DIEGO — Here in a laboratory perched on the edge of the continent, researchers are trying to construct Life As We Don’t Know It in a thimbleful of liquid.
NASA finds alien Lifeform on EARTH!
Die Katze ist aus dem Sack, die NASA hat zwar keine Aliens auf dem Titan gefunden, dafür aber eine völlig neue Form des Lebens im Mono Lake, ein „alkalischer Salzsee in Mono County im zentral-östlichen Teil von Kalifornien.“ (Wikipedia)
Dort haben sie Bakterien gefunden, die aus Arsen bestehen. Eine komplett neue Form des Lebens die mit allem bisher bekannten Leben auf der Erde nichts zu tun hat. Was das für die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Leben auf anderen Planeten bedeutet, muss ich wohl niemanden erklären.
Von Gizmodo:
Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything. […]
All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.
But not this one. This one is completely different. Discovered in the poisonous Mono Lake, California, this bacteria is made of arsenic, something that was thought to be completely impossible.
[update]
Nature: Arsenic-eating microbe may redefine chemistry of life: „Oddball bacterium can survive without one of biology’s essential building blocks.“
New Scientist: Arsenic-eating bacteria point to new life forms: „We could be witnessing the first signs of a “shadow biosphere” – a parallel form of life on Earth with a different biochemistry to all others. Bacteria that grow without phosphorous, one of the six chemical elements thought to be essential for life, have been isolated from California’s Mono Lake. Instead of phosphorous, the bacteria substitute the deadly poison arsenic.“
Discover Mag: Mono Lake bacteria build their DNA using arsenic (and no, this isn’t about aliens) „Phosphorus helps to form the backbone of DNA and it’s a crucial part of ATP, the molecule that acts as a cell’s energy currency. Arsenic sits just below phosphorus in the periodic table. The two elements have such similar properties that arsenic can usurp the place of phosphorus in many chemical reactions. But arsenic is a poor understudy – when it stands in for phosphorus, it produces similar but less stable products. This partially explains why the element is so toxic. But the bacteria of Mono Lake have clearly found a way to cope with this.“
PopSci: NASA’s Newly Discovered Arsenic-Loving Bacteria Are Fascinating, but Not Aliens „This finding essentially tells us that we should ditch these assumptions and broaden our horizons. If a humble Earthling bacteria can subsist on a poisonous chemical, then who knows what might lurk elsewhere in the solar system? We’ll have to recalibrate our mass spectrometers.“
NASA found something in Space
Die NASA hat für den 2. Dezember eine Pressekonferenz anberaumt, in der sie über eine Entdeckung informieren will, „that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.“ Jason Kottke hat ein bisschen recherchiert und alle Beteiligten haben auf die ein oder andere Art mit Astrobiologie zu tun. Mein Tipp: Rudimentäre Lebensform auf Titan. (Aliens! Finally!)
[update] „It’s not that.“ Schade: „I’m sad to quell some of the @kottke-induced excitement about possible extraterrestrial life. I’ve seen the Science paper. It’s not that.“
Life on Titan not really proven, but…
Vor fünf Jahren haben Wissenschaftler eine Theorie aufgestellt, nach der tatsächlich Mikroben auf dem Saturn-Mond Titan leben könnten. Diese Theorie wurde grade nicht nur in einem, sondern in zwei Punkten nachgewiesen bestätigt. Die NASA wiegelt zwar grade noch ab und sagt, es könne sich genauso um natürliche chemische Vorgänge handeln, die benötigen aber ein paar Vorraussetzungen, die auf dem Titan nicht gegeben sind und zumindest der Artikel auf New Scientist hört sich eher danach an, dass Leben auf dem Titan die wahrscheinlichste Erklärung für die gemessenen Phänomene ist.
Macht daraus was ihr wollt…
In 2005, Chris McKay of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field and Heather R Smith of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, calculated that such microbes could eke out an existence by breathing in hydrogen gas and eating the organic molecule acetylene, creating methane in the process.
This would result in a lack of acetylene on Titan and a depletion of hydrogen close to the moon’s surface, where the microbes would live, they said.
Now, measurements from the Cassini spacecraft have borne out these predictions, hinting that life may be present.
Paul Davies, Alien-Kontakter am SETI
Der Guardian hat einen superinteressanten Artikel über Paul Davies, am SETI Vorsitzender der Post-Detection Task Group und sehr wahrscheinlich der Wissenschaftler, der als erster mit Aliens im Kontaktfall kommunizieren würde.
Paul is a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. He lives his life at an incredibly high level of amazingness. He lectures at the Vatican, the Smithsonian, Davos and the UN. He has an asteroid named after him – the Pauldavies Asteroid. He’s a passionate scientific communicator and a grumpy man of enormous intellect.
A telephone near us keeps letting off a loud and unexpected ring, and whenever it does, Paul looks extremely cross and says, “This is terribly annoying.” I can’t help thinking that if the aliens do make contact, his automatic response will be to screw up his face in irritation and yell: “WHAT?”
Neill Blomkamp über Superzivilisationen und Aliens
(Youtube Direktaliens, via /Film)
Neill Blomkamp, Regisseur des fantastischen SciFi-Krachers „District 9“, war zur TEDxVancouver eingeladen. Leider hatte er keine Zeit, also hat er ein Video gedreht und hingeschickt. In dem erzählt er erstmal drei Minuten lang, dass er nicht kommen konnte und worum es in „District 9“ geht und solche Sachen, die man getrost überspringen kann. Danach verknotet er einem zehn Minuten lang das Gehirn par Excellence.
Er erzählt, warum wir keine Aliens finden und was das mit der Kardaschow-Skala zu tun hat, mir der man den technologischen Fortschritt einer Zivilisation misst (wir sind eine Typ 0-Zivilisation). Ich saß nach diesem Video 15 (naja… anderthalb, aber 15 klingt besser) Minuten mit offenen Mund vor dem Monitor, denn so wie es Blomkamp hier beschreibt, wird einem schlagartig klar, dass all die Veränderungen, die wir grade erleben (Internet, Klimawandel, Finanzkrise, Globalisierung) Ausdruck unseres Wechsels in die Typ 1 Zivilisation sind. Ich kannte die Kardaschow-Skala bereits, habe sie aber noch nie historisch so einordnen können. Wer sich auch nur ein bisschen für Futurismus interessiert: Anschaubefehl!
Außerirdische laut Vatikan bibelkonform
Das klingt jetzt alles ziemlich irre, ist aber alles super ernstgemeint: Dass sich die Kirche mit Aliens beschäftigt, ist nix neues. Diese Woche hat der Vatikan zu einer Astrobiologie-Konferenz geladen, auf der Wissenschaftler und Theologen zusammenkamen, um die Frage zu diskutieren, ob Außerirdische denn in Einklang mit der Bibel zu bringen sind. Sie sind, sagen manche. Und zwar weil, das muss man sich auf der Zunge zergehen lassen: Die kreative Freiheit Gottes nicht von Menschen beschränkt werden könne. Also kann er auch Aliens machen. Na klar.
Dass die Entdeckung von außerirdischem Leben religiöse Menschen und vor allem Christen arg in die Bredouille bringen würde, ist anderen superklar. Denn nicht nur heisst es in der Bibel, Gott habe den Menschen nach seinem Abbild geschaffen, womit Aliens eine Freizeitbeschäftigung und Spielereien des angeblichen Schöpfers wären und wenn die sich auf einmal als geistig ebenbürtig oder gar überlegen zeigen würden, dann wäre es auf einmal Essig mit Religion und verwandtes Gedöns. Snip vom Guardian inklusive Papst und Alien:
Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and one of the organisers of the conference, said: “As a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God.
“This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God.”
Not everyone agrees. Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist and author of The Goldilocks Enigma, told The Washington Post that the threat to Christianity is “being downplayed” by Church leaders. He said: “I think the discovery of a second genesis would be of enormous spiritual significance.
“The real threat would come from the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, because if there are beings elsewhere in the universe, then Christians, they’re in this horrible bind.
“They believe that God became incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ in order to save humankind, not dolphins or chimpanzees or little green men on other planets.”
Aliens mathematisch bewiesen
Diese Rechnung habe ich ähnlich auch schon aufgestellt, nur amateurhafter mit dem Faktor Unendlichkeit. Jetzt hat Astrophysiker Duncan Forgan ein Programm geschrieben, dass die bisher bekannten Zahlen zu den uns bekannten Planeten auf die Milchstraße extrapoliert. Voila: rund 40.000 Planeten sind „lebensfähig“, es existieren wahrscheinlich 300 Zivilisationen, die ähnlich entwickelt sind, wie wir. QED.
Er geht auch davon aus, dass wir noch 300 bis 400 Jahre brauchen werden, bis wir (oder sie) Kontakt aufnehmen. Dürfte mit der schon baldigen Mind-Upload-Technologie auch noch von uns erlebbar werden. Hach!
Researchers have calculated that up to 37,964 worlds in our galaxy are hospitable enough to be home to creatures at least as intelligent as ourselves.
Astrophysicist Duncan Forgan created a computer programme that collated all the data on the 330 or so planets known to man and worked out what proportion would have conditions suitable for life.
The estimate, which took into account factors such as temperature and availability of water and minerals, was then extrapolated across the Milky Way.
Mr Forgan believes that the life forms would not be amoeba wriggling on the end of a microscope but species at least as advanced as humans.
Mr Forgan, who believes it will take 300 to 400 years for us to make contact with our neighbours, said: “I believe the estimate of 361 intelligent civilisations to be the most accurate.
Warum der Mond relativ so groß wie die Sonne ist
Der Mond und die Sonne sind von der Erde aus gesehen genau gleich groß, was bei Sonnenfinsternissen im Diamantring-Effekt führt. (Der Mond ist übrigens nicht überall auf der Erde genauso groß, wie die Sonne, wie man auf diesem Bild einer Sonnenfinsternis sehen kann.) New Scientist hat jetzt jedenfalls ein Special über das „Unknown Solar-System“, darunter behandeln sie genau diese Frage: Warum ist der Mond relativ genauso groß, wie die Sonne?
It is all thanks to a striking coincidence. The sun is about 400 times as wide as the moon, but it is also 400 times further away. The two therefore look the same size in the sky – a unique situation among our solar system’s eight planets and 166 known moons. Earth is also the only planet to harbour life.
[...]
As Earth spins on its own axis, it has a natural tendency to wobble, owing to the varying pull on it from other bodies such as the sun. The unseen hand of the moon’s gravity gently damps that wobble, preventing rotational instabilities which would otherwise have caused dramatic changes in Earth’s climatic zones over time. Such instabilities would have made it much more tricky for life to get started on our planet.
Earth’s position in the “habitable zone” around the sun where liquid water is abundant is undoubtedly the single most important factor in its fecundity. But the presence of a large moon – one large enough to cause total eclipses – might also have been crucial. If so, that has important consequences for the search for life on other planets.
Our Unknown Solar System (via Digg)
Life On Mars… maybe, baby! (UPDATE)
Wie cool wäre das denn bitte? Die NASA hält in einer Stunde eine Pressekonferenz, erwartet wird nichts geringeres als die Nachricht von Leben auf dem Mars. Und das an meinem Geburtstag! Ein fetteres Geschenk könnte mir die Welt nicht machen.
Long story short: Es geht um Methan-Ausstöße, die schon länger von der NASA untersucht werden und die nicht auf Vulkane zurückgeführt werden können (weil es keine aktiven Vulkane auf dem Mars gibt). Jetzt scheinen sie bei diesen Untersuchungen etwas gefunden zu haben und das könnten Mikroorganismen sein, die unter der Oberfläche des Mars leben.
The methane, which was detected alongside water vapour, could have been a waste product from organisms called methanogens living in water beneath underground ice, experts believe.
Professor Colin Pillinger, whose Beagle 2 craft crashed on Mars in 2003 while on a mission to seek signs of life, said the discovery could prove important.
“Methane is a product of biology. For methane to be in Mars’ atmosphere, there has to be a replenishable source,” he told The Sun.
“The most obvious source of methane is organisms. So if you find methane in an atmosphere, you can suspect there is life.
“It’s not proof, but it makes it worth a much closer look.”
Nasa will announce the full results of the study at a briefing in Washington today.
Mars methane discovery hints at presence of life (via Spreeblick)
[update] Die NASA hält sich stark zurück, führt die Methangas-Ausstöße entweder auf geothermische Reaktionen – oder eben Lebensformen zurück, will hier aber keine Wahrscheinlichkeiten aussprechen. Also eher: Meh. Wobei ich immer noch davon überzeugt bin, dass ich noch in diesem Leben die Entdeckung außerirdischen Lebens mitbekommen werde. Die Pressekonferenz läuft noch.
The Stuff of Life on Titan
Titan, the sixth and largest moon of the planet Saturn, is thought to be made largely of ice. Some of that ice may melt during meteor impacts or in underground processes, producing “ice volcanoes” that emit a “lava” containing ammonia mixed with water.
Could tholins formed in Titan’s atmosphere react with liquid water temporarily exposed by meteor impacts or ice volcanoes to produce potentially probiotic complex organic molecules – before the water freezes? Until this year, no one knew.
The White House is Briefed: Phoenix About to Announce “Potential For Life” on Mars
t would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more “provocative” than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface. This news comes just as the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) confirmed experimental evidence for the existence of water in the Mars regolith on Thursday. Whilst NASA scientists are not claiming that life once existed on the Red Planet’s surface, new data appears to indicate the “potential for life” more conclusively than the TEGA water results. Apparently these new results are being kept under wraps until further, more detailed analysis can be carried out, but we are assured that this announcement will be huge…
