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Well it's not scifi but it's still great. As we predicted in 1985, buckyballs have been found in outer space.
It's not a big surprise, but it's a great 25th anniversary present. Here are the data:
In 1986 Rick Smalley asked me if I thought that c60 could be the primordial nucleation site for planetary coalescence. He theorized that c60 could survive the extreme UV of the interstellar environment. No other molecule could survive to become a nucleation site.
You meant a lot to me. Inherit the Stars was one of the first serious scifi books I read as a teenager. The discovery of a 50,000 year old dead astronaut on the moon was a powerful idea. I also very much liked your book about prejudice in the scientific community: Kicking the Sacred Cow. I hope you get a flyby of Ganymede. You deserve it.
Interesting ideas on creativity from Creatologue.
One of the reasons life survives on Earth is that we have a big brother protecting us from sterilizing events (asteroid bombardment). Jupiter has been a powerful sink for asteroids that would have killed us all. To find alien life in another system we should focus on those systems which have a large planet well outside the habitable zone as seen here. Exoplanets.org has a list of known exoplanets, and it is sortable by the semi-major axis. Click on that column to sort the exoplanets by their distance from the primary.
Jupiter is about 5 astronomical units (AU) from our G-type star. Here are the first 4 likely candidates.
590 light years away near Pavo is HD 190984 , an F8 star with a big planet at 6 AU.
40 ly away is 55 Cancer, a G8 star with a big one at 5.9 AU.
At 85 ly in Libra, HD 134987 is a G8 star with a planet 0.8 Jupiter masses at 5.8 AU.
49ly away mu-Ara is a G3 star with a planet twice the mass of Jupiter at 5.3 AU.
Statistically speaking these are outstanding targets for hosting alien life. A more detailed analysis may preclude one or more of these due to orbital eccentricity, other planets, or binary star systems. But if spontaneous generation of life is common then at least one of these systems hosts alien life.
Speculation about life on Titan or other cold worlds is misguided because the chemical reaction rates are simply too slow. All chemical reactions have a rate. That rate has an exponential dependence on temperature as described by the Arrhenius equation.
rate = A exp (-Ea/kT)
Ea is the activation energy, k is Boltzmann's constant, T is the temperature, A is the pre-exponential factor
Chemical activation energies are best measured in electron-volts or eV. Typical values are between 1 and 3 eV, usually closer to 2.0. The ground temperature on Titan is around 94 oK or -179 oC.
Thus a chemical reaction on Titan would be roughly 73 orders of magnitude slower than the same reaction on Earth (298 oK). So a reaction which takes a microsecond on Earth would require 10^60 years on Titan. (That's 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years).
Pre-exponential factors for chemical reactions have a certain value which represents steric effects. They cannot be 60 orders of magnitude larger because molecular geometry is not that pliable.
Traditional chemical reaction based life is impossible on Titan or any other location where the temperature is so far below 298 oK.
The SETI Institute will host Celebrating Science 2010 Family Science Faire Saturday May 22, 2010. From their announcement: At our Celebrating Science 2010 Family Science Faire, you will have the opportunity to meet SETI Institute scientists and discover what the future holds for SETI and astrobiology. Learn about the SETI Institute's pioneering exploration of life, our solar system, and beyond, including the search for signals from other civilizations.
Your opportunity for hands-on science! We will have fun, interactive activities for youth aged 8-15. They will be able to sign up on a first-come, first-serve basis for educational science-based activities. We will also have fun and creative activities for our younger up-and-coming scientists.
Meet the father of SETI and author of the Drake Equation, Dr. Frank Drake. Visit the gift shop for a Drake Equation t-shirt and ask Dr. Drake himself to sign it!
Hear Seth Shostak speak at 2:45 on "Why Your Grandkids Will Live in Space." Dr. Shostak will be available to autograph his latest book, Confessions of an Alien Hunter.
Interesting article in Science News about SETI: Can you Hear me Now?
Chuck Lasker is writing the "Time Travel Survival Guide" and soliciting contributions. I've decided to deposit a penny in a bank account in the year 1789 and then transfer the gains to his name in 2188. I'll get started on that in 2019.
I watched Timecrimes on Netflix streaming video. It was excellent. It met many of my criteria for a good time travel movie: It had a time machine and they used it several times, there was a time loop and the protagonistic had to work hard to eliminate and prevent any paradoxes.
The middle of the movie was really slow but presented a lot of details which were critical to the ending.
The movie is in Spanish, looks like there will be a new English version in 2011.
Here is my hopeful prediction of Nov 3, 2010, the morning after the 2010 mid-term elections. Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Boehner hold a joint press conference to discuss the stunning results of the elections. 71% of incumbents were voted out of office. Republicans took control of congress with a 235 - 200 majority. 66% of Republican incumbents were voted out of office, 75% of Democratic incumbents lost their seat. Only 114 incumbents were re-elected, and more than half of those won by less than 1%.
Speaker Pelosi takes the podium first.
"Good morning. I've asked Minority Leader Boehner to join me here today so we can jointly address what can only be considered as the most stunning mid-term elections in the history of this great country. With 75% of my fellow Democrats losing their jobs I can only say that this speaks to the core of anger and disgust Americans feel about Congress. Despite overwhelming majority populations many congressional districts held by Democrats for decades will switch hands to a Republican representative next January. Even my own district almost elected an independent, I only won by 0.3% of the vote. When questioned about issues the voters showed strong unhappiness with the scale of the new health care reform bill.
I accept full responsibility for this failure, it's clear that Democrats failed this country. I will not stand for any leadership position in the new Congress. My goal is to mentor the 175 newly elected Democrats as they begin helping this country as quickly as possible."
Minority Leader Boehner now takes the podium.
"I would so much love to brag about our great victory today, we took control of the House and voted out so many Democratic incumbents. But I think only a fool would regard last night's elections as a victory for Republicans. 66% of my colleagues, including myself, were voted out of office last night. Our policies and methods of opposing the health care reform bill were frequently mentioned as reasons for voting for Democrats. We failed the American people and we failed our party. Democrats now control districts with overwhelming Republican majorities. Congress has been devastated, burned to the ground, and remade whole again by the will of the people. As I leave office I can only take a small measure of comfort in thinking about the fresh new faces who will take office in January and restore American confidence in our Congress.
I apologize to everyone for this failure. And I am sure this is a great day for our country."
Wishful thinking. If only people will do it. Please vote your incumbent out of office even if it means voting against your party.
Mysterious radio waves from M82. This started in May of 2009, it turned on in days. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18775-mysterious-radio-waves-emitted-from-nearby-galaxy.html
Be a little hungry, 4 times a day.Drink more water, especially when you want a snack. Take some vitamins, especially D
Read moreJust found the Fermi Paradox website. Good links but I'd like to see more content.
Richard A. Carrigan Jr of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory writes details of a SETI search based upon visual observation of galactic scale artifacts.
Read more"Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in the future, could indicate the presence of life."
If organic molecules are so prevalent where are all the intelligent space-faring aliens ? The lack of evidence for aliens is strong evidence that we are alone, the random evolution of intelligent life is so rare that we are the only ones in the entire galaxy. Note that this is not the same as saying "the random evolution of life is rare". There probably are bacteria in most solar systems.
Don't Panic, "And another thing...." is a new volume in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy written by Eoin Colfer.
Ian Banks new novel Transition is now available as a free podcast on iTunes. This is great news for Banks fans, and for scifi in general. Many thanks to Orbit Books for releasing this as a podcast the same day as the hardcover publication. Now that's a company which understands Web 2.0.
The basic argument of an atheist is "If there is a God then prove it, where is the evidence? I can't see him, I've never seen a miracle, there is no evidence of supernatural powers or beings." Replace those words with aliens and you get the exact same argument. Anyone who argues against the existence of God has to give the exact same arguments against the existence of aliens. I'm in the opposite category, despite my faith I say "There are no aliens in this galaxy, prove me wrong." It's unreasonable to say that even one other intelligent species evolved in our galaxy because that requires wild coincidences about why they aren't here. Some of those coincidences say:
1 They evolved at almost exactly the same time as we did (beating the odds of 13 billion to one)
2 they aren't explorers, they just stayed home, and they never sent out robotic exploration ships
3 they killed themselves (war, suicide, plague) before launching robotic exploration machines
4 they all died because of natural events (asteroids, supernovae, plague) before launching robotic exploration machines
5 their robots came and left before we noticed and left no evidence of their visit, and are probably secretly watching us
6 they have a Prime Directive and they won't visit us until x happens .... and maybe never
Many people confuse the evolution of life with the evolution of intelligent life. They say life evolves easily and that life is everywhere in our galaxy, but they are not talking about intelligent life, they are talking about bacteria. The Rare Earth explanation for the Fermi Paradox is not about planets, it's not about atmospheres, and it's not about bacteria. It's about space faring sentient life. I could not care less if there are bacteria in every stellar system in this galaxy. That is boring and has nothing at all to do with the Fermi Paradox.
The evolution of intelligent life is rare, extremely rare. So rare that the rate per galaxy is well below 1.0 per 13 billion years. If FTL is possible then the Fermi Paradox requires that the rate of evolution of intelligent life is about once in 13 billion years per universe. That means we are alone in the entire universe.
Prove me wrong with evidence, not conjecture. Don't tell me what "we all know to be true" especially all you atheists, because you won't accept that argument for the existence of God.
Work published in 2008 from Israel claims detection of element #122. If true the implications are stunning. The only possible method of generating element 122 is by artificial nucleosynthesis, a technical feat beyond the capability of modern day humans. While subsequent study may have disproven the theory this opens up a new method of proving the existence of aliens. Even a single atom of element 122 (or higher) would be an artifact proving the existence of alien life...
Or time travel, it's always possible that in the future human will make the element and then send back in time either coincidentally or as an actual component of the time machine.
Regular readers of my blog know that I propose there are no aliens anywhere and never have been. So if element 122 is really discovered I claim it's proof of time travel, not aliens.
Scifi pessimists say - we'll never be able to feed 8 billion people. Scifi optimists invent algae which can fix nitrogen from the air, generate fertilizer, and live in a symbiotic relationship with roots of food plants in airborne greenhouses.
Scifi pessimists say - global warming will kill us all.
Scifi optimists invent CO2 scavenging algae which generate carbon nanotube filaments used for building space elevators.
Scifi pessimists say - the sunspots won't come back and we'll all freeze in another ice age.
Scifi optimists invent CO2 storage bins which absorb or release tons of CO2 every day for precision climate control.
Scifi pessimists say the ozone layer will disappear and we'll all fry.
Scifi optimists invent airborne ozone replenishing units staffed by extremely attractive people.
It's too bad there are so few scifi optimists.