Space and astronomy news
Time to talk about my favorite topic: aliens.
We’ve covered the Fermi Paradox many times over several articles on Universe Today. This is the idea that the Universe is huge, and old, and the ingredients of life are everywhere. Life could and should have have appeared many times across the galaxy, but it’s really strange that we haven’t found any evidence for them yet.
Continue reading “What If We Do Find Aliens?”
What if it were possible to observe the fundamental building blocks upon which the Universe is based? Not a problem! All you would need is a massive particle accelerator, an underground facility large enough to cross a border between two countries, and the ability to accelerate particles to the point where they annihilate each other – releasing energy and mass which you could then observe with a series of special monitors.
Well, as luck would have it, such a facility already exists, and is known as the CERN Large Hardron Collider (LHC), also known as the CERN Particle Accelerator. Measuring roughly 27 kilometers in circumference and located deep beneath the surface near Geneva, Switzerland, it is the largest particle accelerator in the world. And since CERN flipped the switch, the LHC has shed some serious light on some deeper mysteries of the Universe.
Colliders, by definition, are a type of a particle accelerator that rely on two directed beams of particles. Particles are accelerated in these instruments to very high kinetic energies and then made to collide with each other. The byproducts of these collisions are then analyzed by scientists in order ascertain the structure of the subatomic world and the laws which govern it.
The purpose of colliders is to simulate the kind of high-energy collisions to produce particle byproducts that would otherwise not exist in nature. What’s more, these sorts of particle byproducts decay after very short period of time, and are are therefor difficult or near-impossible to study under normal conditions.
The term hadron refers to composite particles composed of quarks that are held together by the strong nuclear force, one of the four forces governing particle interaction (the others being weak nuclear force, electromagnetism and gravity). The best-known hadrons are baryons – protons and neutrons – but also include mesons and unstable particles composed of one quark and one antiquark.
The LHC operates by accelerating two beams of “hadrons” – either protons or lead ions – in opposite directions around its circular apparatus. The hadrons then collide after they’ve achieved very high levels of energy, and the resulting particles are analyzed and studied. It is the largest high-energy accelerator in the world, measuring 27 km (17 mi) in circumference and at a depth of 50 to 175 m (164 to 574 ft).
The tunnel which houses the collider is 3.8-meters (12 ft) wide, and was previously used to house the Large Electron-Positron Collider (which operated between 1989 and 2000). This tunnel contains two adjacent parallel beamlines that intersect at four points, each containing a beam that travels in opposite directions around the ring. The beam is controlled by 1,232 dipole magnets while 392 quadrupole magnets are used to keep the beams focused.
About 10,000 superconducting magnets are used in total, which are kept at an operational temperature of -271.25 °C (-456.25 °F) – which is just shy of absolute zero – by approximately 96 tonnes of liquid helium-4. This also makes the LHC the largest cryogenic facility in the world.
When conducting proton collisions, the process begins with the linear particle accelerator (LINAC 2). After the LINAC 2 increases the energy of the protons, these particles are then injected into the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB), which accelerates them to high speeds.
They are then injected into the Proton Synchrotron (PS), and then onto the Super Proton Synchrtron (SPS), where they are sped up even further before being injected into the main accelerator. Once there, the proton bunches are accumulated and accelerated to their peak energy over a period of 20 minutes. Last, they are circulated for a period of 5 to 24 hours, during which time collisions occur at the four intersection points.
During shorter running periods, heavy-ion collisions (typically lead ions) are included the program. The lead ions are first accelerated by the linear accelerator LINAC 3, and the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) is used as an ion storage and cooler unit. The ions are then further accelerated by the PS and SPS before being injected into LHC ring.
While protons and lead ions are being collided, seven detectors are used to scan for their byproducts. These include the A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS (ATLAS) experiment and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), which are both general purpose detectors designed to see many different types of subatomic particles.
Then there are the more specific A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) and Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) detectors. Whereas ALICE is a heavy-ion detector that studies strongly-interacting matter at extreme energy densities, the LHCb records the decay of particles and attempts to filter b and anti-b quarks from the products of their decay.
Then there are the three small and highly-specialized detectors – the TOTal Elastic and diffractive cross section Measurement (TOTEM) experiment, which measures total cross section, elastic scattering, and diffractive processes; the Monopole & Exotics Detector (MoEDAL), which searches magnetic monopoles or massive (pseudo-)stable charged particles; and the Large Hadron Collider forward (LHCf) that monitor for astroparticles (aka. cosmic rays).
CERN, which stands for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (or European Council for Nuclear Research in English) was established on Sept 29th, 1954, by twelve western European signatory nations. The council’s main purpose was to oversee the creation of a particle physics laboratory in Geneva where nuclear studies would be conducted.
Soon after its creation, the laboratory went beyond this and began conducting high-energy physics research as well. It has also grown to include twenty European member states: France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, the UK, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Israel.
Construction of the LHC was approved in 1995 and was initially intended to be completed by 2005. However, cost overruns, budget cuts, and various engineering difficulties pushed the completion date to April of 2007. The LHC first went online on September 10th, 2008, but initial testing was delayed for 14 months following an accident that caused extensive damage to many of the collider’s key components (such as the superconducting magnets).
On November 20th, 2009, the LHC was brought back online and its First Run ran from 2010 to 2013. During this run, it collided two opposing particle beams of protons and lead nuclei at energies of 4 teraelectronvolts (4 TeV) and 2.76 TeV per nucleon, respectively. The main purpose of the LHC is to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang when collisions between high-energy particles was taking place.
During its First Run, the LHCs discoveries included a particle thought to be the long sought-after Higgs Boson, which was announced on July 4th, 2012. This particle, which gives other particles mass, is a key part of the Standard Model of physics. Due to its high mass and elusive nature, the existence of this particle was based solely in theory and had never been previously observed.
The discovery of the Higgs Boson and the ongoing operation of the LHC has also allowed researchers to investigate physics beyond the Standard Model. This has included tests concerning supersymmetry theory. The results show that certain types of particle decay are less common than some forms of supersymmetry predict, but could still match the predictions of other versions of supersymmetry theory.
In May of 2011, it was reported that quark–gluon plasma (theoretically, the densest matter besides black holes) had been created in the LHC. On November 19th, 2014, the LHCb experiment announced the discovery of two new heavy subatomic particles, both of which were baryons composed of one bottom, one down, and one strange quark. The LHCb collaboration also observed multiple exotic hadrons during the first run, possibly pentaquarks or tetraquarks.
Since 2015, the LHC has been conducting its Second Run. In that time, it has been dedicated to confirming the detection of the Higgs Boson, and making further investigations into supersymmetry theory and the existence of exotic particles at higher-energy levels.
In the coming years, the LHC is scheduled for a series of upgrades to ensure that it does not suffer from diminished returns. In 2017-18, the LHC is scheduled to undergo an upgrade that will increase its collision energy to 14 TeV. In addition, after 2022, the ATLAS detector is to receive an upgrade designed to increase the likelihood of it detecting rare processes, known as the High Luminosity LHC.
The collaborative research effort known as the LHC Accelerator Research Program (LARP) is currently conducting research into how to upgrade the LHC further. Foremost among these are increases in the beam current and the modification of the two high-luminosity interaction regions, and the ATLAS and CMS detectors.
Who knows what the LHC will discover between now and the day when they finally turn the power off? With luck, it will shed more light on the deeper mysteries of the Universe, which could include the deep structure of space and time, the intersection of quantum mechanics and general relativity, the relationship between matter and antimatter, and the existence of “Dark Matter”.
We have written many articles about CERN and the LHC for Universe Today. Here’s What is the Higgs Boson?, The Hype Machine Deflates After CERN Data Shows No New Particle, BICEP2 All Over Again? Researchers Place Higgs Boson Discovery in Doubt, Two New Subatomic Particles Found, Is a New Particle about to be Announced?, Physicists Maybe, Just Maybe, Confirm the Possible Discovery of 5th Force of Nature.
If you’d like more info on the Large Hadron Collider, check out the LHC Homepage, and here’s a link to the CERN website.
Astronomy Cast also has some episodes on the subject. Listen here, Episode 69: The Large Hadron Collider and The Search for the Higgs Boson and Episode 392: The Standard Model – Intro.
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It’s that time again! This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Pamela Hoffman at the Everyday Spacer blog.
Click here to read Carnival of Space #484.
Continue reading “Carnival of Space #484”
Welcome back to our series on Settling the Solar System! Today, we take a look at the largest of the Jovian Moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto!
In 1610, Galileo Galilei became the first astronomer to discover the large moons of Jupiter, using a telescope of his own design. As time passed, these moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto – would collectively come to be referred to as the Galilean Moons, in honor of their discoverer. And with the birth of space exploration, what we’ve come to know about these satellites has fascinated and inspired us.
For example, ever since the Pioneer and Voyager probes passed through the system decades ago, scientists have suspected that moons like Europa might be our best bet for finding life in our Solar System beyond Earth. And because of the presence of water ice, interior oceans, minerals, and organic molecules, it has been speculated that humanity might establish colonies on one or more of these worlds someday.
The concept of a colonized Jovian system is featured in many science fiction publications. For instance, Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Farmer in the Sky (1953) centers on a teenage boy and his family moving to Ganymede. The moon is in the process of being terraformed in the story, and farmers are being recruited to help turn it into an agricultural colony.
In the course of the story, it is mentioned that there are also efforts to introduce an atmosphere on Callisto. Many of his Heinlein’s other novels include passing mentions of a colony on Ganymede, including The Rolling Stones (1952), Double Star (1956), I Will Fear No Evil (1970), and the posthumously-written Variable Star (2006).
In 1954, Poul Anderson published a novella titled The Snows of Ganymede (1954). In this story, a party of terraformers visits a settlement on Ganymede called X, which was established two centuries earlier by a group of American religious fanatics.
In Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey series, the moon of Europa plays a central role. In 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) an ancient race of advanced aliens are turning the moon into a habitable body by converting Jupiter into a second sun. The warmth of this dwarf star (Lucifer) causes the surface ice on Europa to melt, and the life forms that are evolving underneath are able to emerge.
In 2061: Odyssey Three, Clarke also mentions how Lucifer’s warmth has caused Ganymede’s surface to partially sublimate, creating a large equatorial lake. Isaac Asimov also used the moons of Jupiter in his stories. In the short stories “Not Final!” (1941) and “Victory ‘Unintentional'” (1942), a conflict arises between humans living on Ganymede and the inhabitants of Jupiter.
In Philip K. Dick’s short-story The Mold of Yancy (1955), Callisto is home to a colony where the people conform to the dictates of Yancy, a public commentator who speaks to them via public broadcasts. In Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix (1985), Europa is inhabited by a faction of genetically-engineered posthumans that are vying for control of the Solar System.
Alastair Reynolds’s short story “A Spy in Europa” depicts colonies built on the underside of Europa’s icy surface. Meanwhile, a race of genetically-altered humans (called the “Denizens”) are created to live in the subsurface ocean, close to the core-mantle boundary where hydrothermal vents keep the water warm and the native life forms live.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels Galileo’s Dream (2009) and 2312 (2012) feature colonies on Io, where settlements are adapted to deal with the volcanically active, hostile surface. The former novel is partly set on Callisto, where a massive city called Valhalla is built around the concentric rings of the moon’s giant crater (also mentioned in 2312).
In Robinson’s The Memory of Whiteness (1985), the protagonists visit Europa, which hosts large human colonies who live around pools of melted ice. And in his novel Blue Mars (1996), Robinson makes a passing description of a flourishing colony on Callisto.
Since the Voyager probes passed through the Jovian system, several proposals have been made for crewed missions to Jupiter’s moons and even the creation of settlements. For instance, in 1994, the private spaceflight venture known as the Artemis Project was established with the intent of colonizing the Moon in the 21st century.
However, in 1997, they also drafted plans to colonize Europa, which called for igloos to be established on the surface. These would serve as based for scientists who then drill down into the Europan ice crust and explore the sub-surface ocean. This plan also discussed the possible use of “air pockets” in the ice sheet for long-term human habitation.
In 2003, NASA produced a study called Revolutionary Concepts for Human Outer Planet Exploration (HOPE) which addressed future exploration of the Solar System. Because of its distance from Jupiter, and therefore low exposure to radiation, the target destination in this study was the moon Callisto.
The plan called for operations to begin in 2045. These would begin with the creation of a base on Callisto, where science teams would be able to teleoperate a robotic submarine that would be used to explore Europa’s internal ocean. These science teams would also excavate surface samples near their landing site on Callisto.
Last, but not least, the expedition to Callisto would establish a reusable surface habitat where water ice could be harvested and converted into rocket fuel. This base could therefore serve as a resupply base for all future exploitation missions in the Jovian system.
Also in 2003, NASA reported that a manned mission to Callisto might be possible in the 2040s. According to a joint-study released by the Glenn Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, this mission would rely on a ship equipped with Nuclear-Electric Propulsion (NEP) and artificial gravity, which would transport a crew on a 5-year mission to Callisto to establish a base.
In his book Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization (1999), Robert Zubrin advocated mining the atmospheres of the outer planets – including Jupiter – to obtain Helium-3 fuel. A base on one or more of the Galilean moons would be necessary for this. NASA has also speculated on this, citing how it could yield limitless supplies of fuel for fusion reactors here on Earth and anywhere else in the Solar System where colonies exist.
In the 2000s, the Lifeboat Foundation – a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of humanity – was established. In 2012, they released a study titled “Colonizing Jupiter’s Moons: An Assessment of Our Options and Alternatives“, which considered the colonization of the Galilean moons as a potential alternative to colonies on the Moon or Mars.
In October of 2012, Elon Musk unveiled his concept for an Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT), which was central to his long-term goal of colonizing Mars. At the time, Musk stated that the first unmanned flight of the Mars transport spacecraft would take place in 2022, followed by the first manned MCT mission departing in 2024.
In September 2016, during the 2016 International Astronautical Congress, Musk revealed further details of his plan, which included the design for an Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) and estimated costs. This system, which was originally intended to transport settlers to Mars, had evolved in its role to transport human beings to more distant locations in the Solar System – including Europa and other Jovian moons.
Establishing colonies on the Galilean moons has many potential benefits for humanity. For one, the Jovian system is incredibly rich in terms of volatiles – which include water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia ices – as well as organic molecules. In addition, it is believed that Jupiter’s moons also contain massive amounts of liquid water.
For example, volume estimates placed on Europa’s interior ocean suggest that it may contain as much as 3 × 1018 m3 – three quadrillion cubic kilometers, or 719.7 trillion cubic miles – of water. This is slightly more than twice the combined volume of all of Earth’s oceans. In addition, colonies on the moons of Jupiter could enable missions to Jupiter itself, where hydrogen and helium-3 could be harvested as nuclear fuel.
Colonies established on Europa and Ganymede would also allow for multiple exploration missions to be mounted to the interior oceans that these moons are believed to have. Given that these oceans are also thought to be some of the most likely locations for extra-terrestrial life in our Solar System, the ability to examine them up close would be a boon for scientific research.
Colonies on the moons of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto would also facilitate missions farther out into the Solar System. These colonies could serve as stopover points and resupply bases for missions heading to and from the Cronian system (Saturn’s system of moons) where additional resources could be harvested.
In short, colonies in the Jovian system would provide humanity with access to abundant resources and immense research opportunities. The chance to grow as a species, and become a post-scarcity one at that, are there; assuming that all the challenges can be overcome.
And of course, these challenges are great in size and many in number. They include, but are not limited to, radiation, the long-term effects of lower gravity, transportation issues, lack of infrastructure, and of course, the sheer cost involved. Considering the hazard radiation poses to exploration, it is appropriate to deal with this aspect first.
Io and Europa, being the closest Galileans to Jupiter, receive the most radiation of any of these moons. This is made worse by the fact that neither have a protective magnetic field and very tenuous atmospheres. As such, Io’s surface receives an average of about 3,600 rems per day, while Europa receives about 540 per day.
For comparison, people here on Earth are exposed to less than 1 rem a day (0.62 for those living in developed nations). Exposure to 500 rems a day is likely to be fatal, and exposure to roughly 75 in a period of a few days is enough to cause severe health problems and radiation poisoning.
Ganymede is the only Galilean moon (and only non-gas giant body other than Earth) to have a magnetosphere. However, it is still overpowered by Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field. On average, the moon receives about 8 rads of radiation per day, which is the equivalent of what the surface of Mars is exposed to in an average year.
Only Callisto is far enough from Jupiter that it is not dominated by its magnetic environment. Here, radiation levels only reach about 0.01 rems per day, just a fraction of what we are exposed to here on Earth. However, its distance from Jupiter means that it experiences its fair share of problems as well (not the least of which is a lack of tidal heating in its interior).
Another major issue is the long-term effects the lower gravity on these moons would have on human health. On the Galilean moons, the surface gravity ranges from 0.126 g (for Callisto ) to 0.183 g (for Io). This is comparable to the Moon (0.1654 g), but substantially less than Mars (0.376 g). And while the effects of low-g are not well-understood, it is known that the long-term effect of microgravity include loss of bone density and muscle degeneration.
Compared to other potential locations for colonization, the Jovian system is also very far from Earth. As such, transporting crews and all the heavy equipment necessary to build a colony would be very time-consuming, as would missions where resources were being transported to and from the Jovian moons.
To give you a sense of how long it would take, let’s consider some actual missions to Jupiter. The first spacecraft to travel from Earth to Jupiter was NASA’s Pioneer 10 probe, which launched on March 3rd, 1972, and reached the Jupiter system on December 3, 1973 – 640 days (1.75 or years) of flight time.
Pioneer 11 made the trip in 606 days, but like its predecessor, it was simply passing through the system on its way to the Outer planets. Similarly, the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, which were also passing through the system, took 546 days and 688 days, respectively. For direct missions, like the Galileo probe and the recent Juno mission, the travel time was even longer.
In the case of Galileo, the probe left Earth on October 18th, 1989, and arrived at Jupiter on December 7th, 1995. In other words, it took 6 years, 1 month, and 19 days to make it to Jupiter from Earth without flying by. Juno, on the other hand, launched from Earth on Aug. 5th, 2011, and achieved orbit around Jupiter on July 5th, 2016 – 1796 days, or just under 5 years.
And, it should be noted, these were uncrewed missions, which involved only a robotic probe and not a vessel large enough to accommodate large crews, supplies and heavy equipment. As a result, colony ships would have to be much larger and heavier, and would require advanced propulsion systems – like nuclear-thermal/nuclear-electric engines – to ensure they made the trip in a reasonable amount of time.
Missions to and from the Jovian moons would also require bases between Earth and Jupiter in order to provide refueling and resupplying, and cut down on the costs of individual missions. This would mean that permanent outposts would need to be established on the Moon, Mars, and most likely in the Asteroid Belt before any missions to Jupiter’s moons were considered feasible or cost-effective.
These last two challenges raise the issue of cost. Between building ships that have the ability to make the trip to Jupiter in a fair amount of time, established the bases needed to support them, and the cost of establishing the colonies themselves, the colonization of the Jovian moons would be incredibly expensive! Combined with the hazards of doing so, one has to wonder if its even worth it.
On the other hand, in the context of space exploration and colonization, the idea of establishing permanent human outposts on Jupiter’s moons makes sense. All of the challenges can be addressed, provided the proper precautions are taken and the right kind of resources are committed. And while it will have to wait until after similar colonies/bases are established on the Moon and Mars, it is not a bad idea as far as “next steps” go.
With colonies on any of the Galilean moons, humanity will have a foothold in the outer Solar System, a stopover point for future missions to Saturn and beyond, and access to abundant resources. Again, it all comes down to how much we are willing to spend.
We have written many interesting articles on colonization here at Universe Today. Here’s Why Colonize the Moon First?, How Do We Colonize Mercury?, How Do We Colonize Venus?, Colonizing Venus with Floating Cities, Will We Ever Colonize Mars?, and The Definitive Guide to Terraforming.
Astronomy Cast also has some interesting episodes on the subject. Check out Episode 95: Humans to Mars, Part 2 – Colonists, Episode 115: The Moon, Part 3 – Return to the Moon, Episode 381: Hollowing Asteroids in Science Fiction.
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A reprieve from Global Warming? A hiatus? That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But in this case, a hiatus is not quite what it seems.
Everybody knows that global warming is partly caused by human activities, largely our use of fossil fuels. We understand how it works and we fear for the future. But there’s been a slowdown in the global mean surface temperature increase between 1998 to 2013. We haven’t lowered our emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) significantly during that time, so what happened?
A new multi-institutional study involving NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Institute, and others, concludes that Earth’s oceans have absorbed the heat. So instead of the global mean surface temperature rising at a steady rate, the oceans have taken on the job as global heat sink. But what’s the significance of this?
“The hiatus period gives scientists an opportunity to understand uncertainties in how climate systems are measured, as well as to fill in the gap in what scientists know.” -Xiao-Hai Yan, University of Delaware, Newark
In terms of the on-going rise in the temperature of the globe, the hiatus is not that significant. But in terms of the science of global warming, and how well we understand it, the hiatus gives scientists an opportunity.
The new paper, titled “The Global Warming Hiatus: Slowdown or Redistribution?” grew out of the U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CLIVAR) panel session at the 2015 American Geophysical Union fall meeting. From those discussions, scientists reached consensus on three key points:
The paper is a reminder that climate science is complex, and that the oceans play a big part in global warming. As Yan says, “To better monitor Earth’s energy budget and its consequences, the ocean is most important to consider because the amount of heat it can store is extremely large when compared to the land or atmospheric capacity.”
“…”arguably, ocean heat content — from the surface to the seafloor — might be a more appropriate measure of how much our planet is warming.” – from the paper “The Global Warming Hiatus: Slowdown or Redistribution?”
The team behind this new research suggests that saying there’s been a hiatus in global warming is confusing. They suggest “global warming hiatus” be replaced with “global surface warming slowdown.”
There’s a danger in calling it a “global warming hiatus.” Those opposed to climate change and who think it’s a hoax can use that term to discredit climate science. They’ll claim that the “hiatus” shows we don’t understand climate change and the Earth may have stopped warming. But in any case, it’s the long-term trend—change over the course of a century or more—that defines “global warming,” not the change from year to year or even decade to decade.
There’s much more to learn about the oceans’ role in global warming. Research shows that some ocean areas absorb heat much faster than others. But whatever the fine detail of it is, there is broad agreement in the scientific community that the global surface warming slowdown was caused by an increased uptake of heat energy by the world’s oceans.
NASA uses a lot of tools to monitor the Earth’s temperature. For an interesting look at the Earth’s vital signs, check out Nasa’s Eyes. This easy to use visualization tool lets you take a closer look at the Earth’s temperature, CO2 levels, soil moisture levels, sea levels, and other things.
Perhaps the most important question we can possible ask is, “are we alone in the Universe?”.
And so far, the answer has been, “I don’t know”. I mean, it’s a huge Universe, with hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, and now we learn there are trillions of galaxies in the Universe.
Is there life closer to home? What about in the Solar System? There are a few existing places we could look for life close to home. Really any place in the Solar System where there’s liquid water. Wherever we find water on Earth, we find life, so it make sense to search for places with liquid water in the Solar System.
I know, I know, life could take all kinds of wonderful forms. Enlightened beings of pure energy, living among us right now. Or maybe space whales on Titan that swim through lakes of ammonia. Beep boop silicon robot lifeforms that calculate the wasted potential of our lives.
Sure, we could search for those things, and we will. Later. We haven’t even got this basic problem done yet. Earth water life? Check! Other water life? No idea.
It turns out, water’s everywhere in the Solar System. In comets and asteroids, on the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, especially Europa or Enceladus. Or you could look for life on Mars.
Mars is similar to Earth in many ways, however, it’s smaller, has less gravity, a thinner atmosphere. And unfortunately, it’s bone dry. There are vast polar caps of water ice, but they’re frozen solid. There appears to be briny liquid water underneath the surface, and it occasionally spurts out onto the surface. Because it’s close and relatively easy to explore, it’s been the place scientists have gone looking for past or current life.
Researchers tried to answer the question with NASA’s twin Viking Landers, which touched down in 1976. The landers were both equipped with three biology experiments. The researchers weren’t kidding around, they were going to nail this question: is there life on Mars?
In the first experiment, they took soil samples from Mars, mixed in a liquid solution with organic and inorganic compounds, and then measured what chemicals were released. In a second experiment, they put Earth organic compounds into Martian soil, and saw carbon dioxide released. In the third experiment, they heated Martian soil and saw organic material come out of the soil.
Three experiments, and stuff happened in all three. Stuff! Pretty exciting, right? Unfortunately, there were equally plausible non-biological explanations for each of the results. The astrobiology community wasn’t convinced, and they still fight in brutal cage matches to this day. It was ambitious, but inconclusive. The worst kind of conclusive.
Researchers found more inconclusive evidence in 1994. Ugh, there’s that word again. They were studying a meteorite that fell in Antarctica, but came from Mars, based on gas samples taken from inside the rock.
They thought they found evidence of fossilized bacterial life inside the meteorite. But again, there were too many explanations for how the life could have gotten in there from here on Earth. Life found a way… to burrow into a rock from Mars.
NASA learned a powerful lesson from this experience. If they were going to prove life on Mars, they had to go about it carefully and conclusively, building up evidence that had no controversy.
The Spirit and Opportunity Rovers were an example of building up this case cautiously. They were sent to Mars in 2004 to find evidence of water. Not water today, but water in the ancient past. Old water Over the course of several years of exploration, both rovers turned up multiple lines of evidence there was water on the surface of Mars in the ancient past.
They found concretions, tiny pebbles containing iron-rich hematite that forms on Earth in water. They found the mineral gypsum; again, something that’s deposited by water on Earth.
NASA’s Curiosity Rover took this analysis to the next level, arriving in 2012 and searching for evidence that water was on Mars for vast periods of time; long enough for Martian life to evolve.
Once again, Curiosity found multiple lines of evidence that water acted on the surface of Mars. It found an ancient streambed near its landing site, and drilled into rock that showed the region was habitable for long periods of time.
In 2014, NASA turned the focus of its rovers from looking for evidence of water to searching for past evidence of life.
Curiosity found one of the most interesting targets: a strange strange rock formations while it was passing through an ancient riverbed on Mars. While it was examining the Gillespie Lake outcrop in Yellowknife Bay, it photographed sedimentary rock that looks very similar to deposits we see here on Earth. They’re caused by the fossilized mats of bacteria colonies that lived billions of years ago.
Not life today, but life when Mars was warmer and wetter. Still, fossilized life on Mars is better than no life at all. But there might still be life on Mars, right now, today. The best evidence is not on its surface, but in its atmosphere. Several spacecraft have detected trace amounts of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
Methane is a chemical that breaks down quickly in sunlight. If you farted on Mars, the methane from your farts would dissipate in a few hundred years. If spacecraft have detected this methane in the atmosphere, that means there’s some source replenishing those sneaky squeakers. It could be volcanic activity, but it might also be life. There could be microbes hanging on, in the last few places with liquid water, producing methane as a byproduct.
The European ExoMars orbiter just arrived at Mars, and its main job is sniff the Martian atmosphere and get to the bottom of this question.
Are there trace elements mixed in with the methane that means its volcanic in origin? Or did life create it? And if there’s life, where is it located? ExoMars should help us target a location for future study.
NASA is following up Curiosity with a twin rover designed to search for life. The Mars 2020 Rover will be a mobile astrobiology laboratory, capable of scooping up material from the surface of Mars and digesting it, scientifically speaking. It’ll search for the chemicals and structures produced by past life on Mars. It’ll also collect samples for a future sample return mission.
Even if we do discover if there’s life on Mars, it’s entirely possible that we and Martian life are actually related by a common ancestor, that split off billions of years ago. In fact, some astrobiologists think that Mars is a better place for life to have gotten started.
Not the dry husk of a Red Planet that we know today, but a much wetter, warmer version that we now know existed billions of years ago. When the surface of Mars was warm enough for liquid water to form oceans, lakes and rivers. And we now know it was like this for millions of years.
While Earth was still reeling from an early impact by the massive planet that crashed into it, forming the Moon, life on Mars could have gotten started early.
But how could we actually be related? The idea of Panspermia says that life could travel naturally from world to world in the Solar System, purely through the asteroid strikes that were regularly pounding everything in the early days.
Imagine an asteroid smashing into a world like Mars. In the lower gravity of Mars, debris from the impact could be launched into an escape trajectory, free to travel through the Solar System.
We know that bacteria can survive almost indefinitely, freeze dried, and protected from radiation within chunks of space rock. So it’s possible they could make the journey from Mars to Earth, crossing the orbit of our planet.
Even more amazingly, the meteorites that enter the Earth’s atmosphere would protect some of the bacterial inhabitants inside. As the Earth’s atmosphere is thick enough to slow down the descent of the space rocks, the tiny bacterialnauts could survive the entire journey from Mars, through space, to Earth.
If we do find life on Mars, how will we know it’s actually related to us? If Martian life has the similar DNA structure to Earth life, it’s probably related. In fact, we could probably trace the life back to determine the common ancestor, and even figure out when the tiny lifeforms make the journey.
If we do find life on Mars, which is related to us, that just means that life got around the Solar System. It doesn’t help us answer the bigger question about whether there’s life in the larger Universe. In fact, until we actually get a probe out to nearby stars, or receive signals from them, we might never know.
An even more amazing possibility is that it’s not related. That life on Mars arose completely independently. One clue that scientists will be looking for is the way the Martian life’s instructions are encoded. Here on Earth, all life follows “left-handed chirality” for the amino acid building blocks that make up DNA and RNA. But if right-handed amino acids are being used by Martian life, that would mean a completely independent origin of life.
Of course, if the life doesn’t use amino acids or DNA at all, then all bets are off. It’ll be truly alien, using a chemistry that we don’t understand at all.
There are many who believe that Mars isn’t the best place in the Solar System to search for life, that there are other places, like Europa or Enceladus, where there’s a vast amount of liquid water to be explored.
But Mars is close, it’s got a surface you can land on. We know there’s liquid water beneath the surface, and there was water there for a long time in the past. We’ve got the rovers, orbiters and landers on the planet and in the works to get to the bottom of this question. It’s an exciting time to be part of this search.
There is a Twitter-bot that randomly tweets out “NOOOOOOOO Cassini can’t be ending!” (with varying amounts of “O’s”). @CassiniNooo represents the collective sigh of sadness and consternation felt by those of us who can’t believe the the historic and extensive Cassini mission will be over in just a matter of months.
And next week is the beginning of the end for Cassini.
On November 30, Cassini will begin a phase of the mission that the science team calls “Cassini’s Ring-Grazing Orbits,” as the spacecraft will start skimming past the outer edge of the rings, coming within – at times — 4,850 miles (7,800 kilometers) of the rings.
“The scientific return will be incredible,” Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, told me earlier this year. “We’ll be studying things we just couldn’t do any other place.”
Between November 30, 2016 and April 22, 2017 Cassini will circle high over and under the poles of Saturn, diving every seven days for a total of 20 times through the unexplored region at the outer edge of the main rings.
During the close passes, Cassini’s instruments will attempt to directly sample the icy ring particles and molecules of faint gases that are found close to the rings. Cassini will also capture some of the best high-resolution images of the rings, and garner the best views ever of the small moons Atlas, Pan, Daphnis and Pandora, which orbit near the rings’ outer edges.
During the first two ring-grazing orbits, the spacecraft will pass directly through an extremely faint ring produced by tiny meteors striking the two small moons Janus and Epimetheus. Later ring crossings in March and April will send the spacecraft through the dusty outer reaches of the F ring.
“Even though we’re flying closer to the F ring than we ever have, … there’s very little concern over dust hazard at that range,” said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL.
Of course, the ultimate ‘endgame’ is that Cassini will plunge into Saturn with its “Grand Finale,” ending the mission on September 15, 2017. Since Cassini is running out of fuel, destroying the spacecraft is necessary to ensure “planetary protection,” making sure any potential microbes from Earth that may still be attached to the spacecraft don’t contaminate any of Saturn’s potentially habitable moons.
To prepare for the Grand Finale, Cassini engineers have been slowly adjusting the spacecraft’s orbit since January of this year, doing maneuvers and burns of the engine to bring Cassini into the right orbit so that it can ultimately dive repeatedly through the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings, before making its mission-ending plunge. During some of those final orbits, Cassini will pass as close as 1,012 miles (1,628 kilometers) above the cloudtops of Saturn.
One question for Cassini’s engineering team is how much fuel is actually left in the tank for Cassini’s main engines, which do the majority of the work for orbit adjustments. Each time they’ve used the main engines this past year, the team has held their breath, hoping there is enough fuel.
One final burn of the main engine remains, on December 4. This maneuver is important for fine-tuning the orbit and setting the correct course to enable the remainder of the mission, said Maize.
“This will be the 183rd and last currently planned firing of our main engine,” he said. “Although we could still decide to use the engine again, the plan is to complete the remaining maneuvers using thrusters,” said Maize.
When I visited with Maize and Spilker earlier this year, Spilker wistfully said that they had begun to experience some of the “lasts” of the mission — the final flyby of Enceladus and other moons. And there’s one big “last” coming up: on Nov. 29, 2016, Cassini will come within 6,800 miles (11,000 km) of Titan, the final flyby of this eerily Earthlike but yet totally alien moon.
This final flyby, named Flyby T-125 has two primary goals: Mapmaking of Titan’s surface, and enabling the change in Cassini’s orbit to begin the end of the mission. But it also might be the most daring and thrilling part of Cassini’s nearly 20-year mission.
But still ….. NOOOOOO!
Keep track of Cassini’s latest endeavours at the Cassini website
Back in October, the Cygnus CRS OA-5 mission (aka. the Orbital Sciences CRS Flight 5) rendezvoused with the International Space Station. As part of Orbital ATK craft’s sixth Commercial Resupply mission to the ISS, the unmanned spacecraft spent the past month berthed with the station, delivering 2,268 kg (5,000 pounds) of cargo and experiments and taking on 1,120 kilograms (2,469 pounds) of trash.
As of this Monday, November 21st, the spacecraft – named the “S.S. Alan Poindexter” in honor of the deceased Space Shuttle commander who died in 2012 – separated from the station’s Unity Module, and will spend the next week performing standalone operations. These have included the much-anticipated Spacecraft Fire Experiment 2 (aka. Saffire-II), which is managed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center.
This experiment, which began just five hours after the shuttle detached from the station (and after it conducted an orbit-raising maneuver), involved the Cygnus controllers deliberately starting a fire inside the spacecraft’s pressurized cabin. The purpose of this was to investigate how fuel combustion works and fires grow in a microgravity environment.
How fire behaves in space is one of the least understood hazards facing crewed exploration. Until now, research has been limited, and for obvious reasons. Starting a controlled fire in a microgravity environment, especially when you don’t even know how it will behave, is an extremely risky venture. All previous tests that were carried out were severely restricted in size, and yielded very little information.
In contrast, the uncrewed portion of the Cygnus mission offers NASA scientists a rare opportunity to conduct a microgravity fire test aboard a spacecraft. Not only are they hoping to address how fires can ignite, but also how large they can grow in microgravity, how they may consume materials the spacecraft is built from, and eventually die.
As Jitendra Joshi, the technology integration lead for NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems division, said in an interview with Spaceflight Now, such tests are critical for developing fire countermeasures:
“One of the least understood risks in space is how fire propagates (and) starts. How do you control the fire? How do you detect the fire? All these things. You can’t call 911 like on Earth to come help you.”
In addition to being pressurized, the inside of the Cygnus spacecraft also contained samples of material that are commonly found aboard the ISS. NASA was also sure to include materials that would be included in future tests of the Orion capsule, since such tests are of extreme importance to their “Journey to Mars” and other long-range, long-duration missions.
This was the second experiment conducted as part of the Saffire program, which is managed by NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division, part of the Glenn Research Center. It follows on the heels of the highly successful Saffire-I experiment, which took place in July of 2016. In that experiment, samples of a cotton-fiberglass blend were ignited inside an enclosure aboard a Cygnus vehicle, which consisted of a flow duct and avionics bay.
The samples themselves measured 0.4 meter wide by 1 m long, and were ignited by a hot wire inside an enclosure measuring half a meter wide, 1 meter deep and 1.3 meter long. Prior to this experiment, the largest fire experiment that had ever been conducted in space was about the size of an index card.
The Saffire-II experiment (the second of three proposed fire tests) began just after 18:15 Eastern Time (23:15 UTC ) on November 21st, as the first of nine samples was ignited aboard the craft. This time around, the samples included a cotton-fiberglass blend, Nomex (a flame resistant material used commonly aboard spacecraft), and the same acrylic glass that is used for spacecraft windows.
The nine samples burned for a total of two hours before dying out, and yielded much useful information. As Gary Ruff, Saffire’s project manager, said in a previous NASA press release:
“A spacecraft fire is one of the greatest crew safety concerns for NASA and the international space exploration community. Saffire is all about gaining a better understanding of how fire behaves in space so NASA can develop better materials, technologies and procedures to reduce crew risk and increase space flight safety.”
The third and final experiment for the Spacecraft Fire Experiment series (Saffire-III) is scheduled to take place during the OA-7 mission, which is scheduled to take place in March of 2017. With all three experiments complete, NASA hopes to have accumulated enough data to help guide the selection and construction of future spacecraft, subsystems and instruments.
They also hope that these experiments will help mission planners come up with operational protocols designed to address fires during future crewed missions. These will be especially handy during missions where astronauts don’t have the option of exiting to a docked spacecraft and returning to Earth (as they do aboard the ISS).
The Cygnus craft is now moving on to deploy the four LEMUR CubeSats, which will happen on Friday, November 25th. These CubeSats are part of a growing community of satellites that provide global ship tracking and weather monitoring services.
Following this, Cygnus will remain in orbit for two more days before conducting two burns that will cause it to deorbit and burn up in out atmosphere – which will take place on Sunday, November 27th.
Further Reading: NASA Spaceflight, Spaceflight Now, NASA AES – Saffire
Welcome back to Messier Monday! In our ongoing tribute to the great Tammy Plotner, we take a look at the famous and easily-spotted Dumbbell Nebula. Enjoy!
Back in the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noted the presence of several “nebulous objects” in the night sky. Having originally mistaken them for comets, he began compiling a list of them so that others would not make the same mistake he did. In time, this list would come to include 100 of the most fabulous objects in the night sky.
Known today as the Messier Catalog, this work has come to be viewed as one of the most important milestones in the study of Deep Space Objects. One of these is the famed Dumbbell Nebula – also known as Messier 27, the Apple Core Nebula, and NGC 6853. Because it of its brightness, it is easily viewed with binoculars and amateur telescopes, and was the first planetary Nebula to be discovered by Charles Messier.
This bright planetary nebula is located in the direction of the Vulpecula constellation, at a distance of about 1,360 light years from Earth. Located within the equatorial plane, this nebula is essentially a dying star that has been ejecting a shell of hot gas into space for roughly 48,000 years.
The star responsible is an extremely hot blueish subdwarf star, which emits primarily highly energetic radiation in the non-visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. This energy is absorbed by exciting the nebula’s gas, and then re-emitted by the nebula. Messier 27 particular green glow (hence the nickname “Apple Core Nebula”) is due to the presence of doubly-ionized oxygen in its center, which emits green light at 5007 Angstroms.
For many years I quested to understand the distant and mysterious M27, but no one could answer my questions. I researched it, and learned that it was made up of doubly ionized oxygen. I had hoped that perhaps there was a spectral reason to what I viewed year after year – but still no answer.
Like all amateurs, I became the victim of “aperture fever” and I continued to study M27 with a 12″ telescope, never realizing the answer was right there – I just hadn’t powered up enough. Several years later while studying at the Observatory, I was viewing through a friend’s identical 12″ telescope and, as chance would have it, he was using about twice the magnification that I normally used on the “Dumbbell.”
Imagine my total astonishment as I realized for the very first time that the faint central star had an even fainter companion that made it seem to wink! At smaller apertures or low power, this was not revealed. Still, the eye could “see” a movement within the nebula – the central, radiating star and its companion.
As W.G. Mathews of the University of California put it in his study “Dynamical Evolution of a Model Planetary Nebula”:
“As the gas at the inner edge begins to ionize, the pressure throughout the nebula is equalized by a shock which moves outward through the neutral gas. Later, when about 1/10 of the nebular mass is ionized, a second shock is released from the ionized front, and this shock moves through the neutral shell reaching the outer edge. The density of the HI gas just behind the shock is quite large and the outward gas velocity increases within until it reaches a maximum of 40-80 km per second just behind the shock front. The projected appearance of the nebula during this stage has a double ring structure similar to many observed planetaries.”
R.E. Lupu of John Hopkins has also made studies of motion as well, which they published in a study titled “Discovery of Lyman-alpha Pumped Molecular Hydrogen Emission in the Planetary Nebulae NGC 6853 and NGC 3132“. As they indicated, and found them to “have low surface brightness signatures in the visible and near infrared.”
But, movement or no movement, Messier 27 is known as one of the top “polluters” of the interstellar medium. As Joseph L. Hora ( et al.) of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in his 2008 study “Planetary Nebulae: Exposing the Top Polluters of the ISM“:
“The high mass loss rates of stars in their asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stage of evolution is one of the most important pathways for mass return from stars to the ISM. In the planetary nebulae (PNe) phase, the ejected material is illuminated and can be altered by the UV radiation from the central star. PNe therefore play a significant role in the ISM recycling process and in changing the environment around them…
“A key link in the recycling of material to the Interstellar Medium (ISM) is the phase of stellar evolution from Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) to white dwarf star. When stars are on the AGB, they begin to lose mass at a prodigious rate. The stars on the AGB are relatively cool, and their atmospheres are a fertile environment for the formation of dust and molecules. The material can include molecular hydrogen (H2), silicates, and carbon-rich dust. The star is fouling its immediate neighborhood with these noxious emissions. The star is burning clean hydrogen fuel, but unlike a “green” hydrogen vehicle that outputs nothing except water, the star produces ejecta of various types, some of which have properties similar to that of soot from a gas-burning automobile. A significant fraction of the material returned to the ISM goes through the AGB – PNe pathway, making these stars one of the major sources of pollution of the ISM.
“However, these stars are not done with their stellar ejecta yet. Before the slow, massive AGB wind can escape, the star begins a rapid evolution where it contracts and its surface temperature increases. The star starts ejecting a less massive but high velocity wind that crashes into the existing circumstellar material, which can create a shock and a higher density shell. As the stellar temperature increases, the UV flux increases and it ionizes the gas surrounding the central star, and can excite emission from molecules, heat the dust, and even begin to break apart the molecules and dust grains. The objects are then visible as planetary nebulae, exposing their long history of spewing material into the ISM, and further processing the ejecta. There are even reports that the central stars of some PNe may be engaging in nucleosynthesis for purposes of self-enrichment, which can be traced by monitoring the elemental abundances in the nebulae. Clearly, we must assess and understand the processes going on in these objects in order to understand their impact on the ISM, and their influence on future generations of stars.”
So, chances are on July 12th, 1764, when Charles Messier discovered this new and fascinating class of objects, he didn’t really have a clue as to how important his observation would be. From his notes of that night, he reports:
“I have worked on the research of the nebulae, and I have discovered one in the constellation Vulpecula, between the two forepaws, and very near the star of fifth magnitude, the fourteenth of that constellation, according to the catalog of Flamsteed: One sees it well in an ordinary refractor of three feet and a half. I have examined it with a Gregorian telescope which magnified 104 times: it appears in an oval shape; it doesn’t contain any star; its diameter is about 4 minutes of arc. I have compared that nebula with the neighboring star which I have mentioned above [14 Vul]; its right ascension has been concluded at 297d 21′ 41″, and its declination 22d 4′ 0″ north.”
Of course, Sir William Herschel’s own curiosity would get the better of him and although he would never publish his own findings on an object previously cataloged by Messier, he did keep his own private notes. Here is an excerpt from just one of his many observations:
“1782, Sept. 30. My sister discovered this nebula this evening in sweeping for comets; on comparing its place with Messier’s nebulae we find it is his 27. It is very curious with a compound piece; the shape of it though oval as M. [Messier] calls it, is rather divided in two; it is situated among a number of small [faint] stars, but with this compound piece no star is visible in it. I can only make it bear 278. It vanishes with higher powers on account of its feeble light. With 278 the division between the two patches is stronger, because the intermediate faint light vanishes more.”
So where did Messier 27 get its famous moniker? From Sir John Herschel, who wrote: “A most extraordinary object; very bright; an unresolved nebula, shaped something like an hour-glass, filled into an oval outline with a much less dense nebulosity. The central mass may be compared to a vertebra or a dumb-bell. The southern head is denser than the northern. One or two stars seen in it.”
It would be several years, and several more historical astronomers, before the true nature of Messier 27 would even be hinted at. At one level, they understood it to be a nebula – but it wasn’t until 1864 when William Huggins came along and began to decode the mystery:
“It is obvious that the nebulae 37 H IV (NGC 3242), Struve 6 (NGC 6572), 73 H IV (NGC 6826), 1 H IV (NGC 7009), 57 M, 18 H. IV (NGC 7662) and 27 M. can no longer be regarded as aggregations of suns after the order to which our own sun and the fixed stars belong. We have with these objects to do no longer with a special modification only of our own type of suns, but find ourselves in the presence of objects possessing a distinct and peculiar plan of structure. In place of an incandescent solid or liquid body transmitting light of all refrangibilities through an atmosphere which intercepts by absorption a certain number of them, such as our sun appears to be, we must probably regard these objects, or at least their photo-surfaces, as enormous masses of luminous gas or vapour. For it is alone from matter in the gaseous state that light consisting of certain definite refrangibilities only, as is the case with the light of these nebulae, is known to be emitted.”
Whether or not you enjoy M27 as one of the most superb planetary nebula in the night sky (or as a science object) you will 100% agree with the words of of Burnham: “The observer who spends a few moments in quiet contemplation of this nebula will be made aware of direct contact with cosmic things; even the radiation reaching us from the celestial depths is of a type unknown on Earth…”
When you first begin, Messier 27 will seem like such an elusive target – but with a few simple sky “tricks”, it won’t be long until you’ll be finding this spectacular planetary nebula under just about any sky conditions. The hardest part is simply sorting out all the stars in the area to know the right ones to aim at!
The way I found easiest to teach others was to start BIG. The cruciform patterns of the Cygnus and Aquila constellations are easy to recognize and can be seen from even urban locations. Once you’ve identified these two constellations, you’re going smaller by locating Lyra and the tiny kite-shape of Delphinus.
Now you’ve circled the area and the hunt for Vulpecula the Fox begins! What’s that you say? You can’t distinguish Vulpecula’s primary stars from the rest of the field? You’re right. They don’t stand out like they should, and being tempted to simply aim halfway between Albeireo (Beta Cygni) and Alpha Delphini is too much of a span to be accurate. So what are we going to do? Here’s where some patience comes into play.
If you give yourself time, you’ll begin to notice the stars of Sagitta are ever so slightly brighter than the rest of the field stars around it, and it won’t be long until you pick out that arrow pattern. In your mind, measure the distance between Delta and Gamma (the 8 and Y shape on a starfinder map) and then just aim your binoculars or finderscope exactly that same distance due north of Gamma.
You’ll find M27 every time! In average binoculars it will appear as a fuzzy, out of focus large star in a stellar field. In the finderscope, it may not appear at all… But in a telescope? Be prepared to be blown away! And here are the quick facts on the Dumbbell Nebula to help get you started:
Object Name: Messier 27
Alternative Designations: M27, NGC 6853, The Dumbbell Nebula
Object Type: Planetary Nebula
Constellation: Vulpecula
Right Ascension: 19 : 59.6 (h:m)
Declination: +22 : 43 (deg:m)
Distance: 1.25 (kly)
Visual Brightness: 7.4 (mag)
Apparent Dimension: 8.0×5.7 (arc min)
We have written many interesting articles about Messier Objects here at Universe Today. Here’s Tammy Plotner’s Introduction to the Messier Objects, , M1 – The Crab Nebula, M8 – The Lagoon Nebula, and David Dickison’s articles on the 2013 and 2014 Messier Marathons.
Be to sure to check out our complete Messier Catalog. And for more information, check out the SEDS Messier Database.
Sources:
When Elon Musk announced plans to send humans to Mars, he conveniently left out one important aspect. How are we supposed to survive on a place this hostile to life? Seriously, Mars sucks, and it’s going to take some impressive techniques and technologies to make it on the Red Planet.
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