Extraterrestrials: Where Are They?

Where Are They?

Enrico Fermi was a brilliant Italian physicist who is known to the public as the man who led the team that first harnessed nuclear power under Stagg Field in Chicago on December 2, 1942. His impact in physics was actually much broader than that, and he has been honored (among many other tributes) by posthumously lending his name to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. America's preeminent laboratory for studying the basic building blocks of the universe. In addition to sheer brilliance, Fermi had a gift for trying to ge at the bottom line, using simple estimators. Physicists call “a Fermi Problem” a question that is easy to ask, hard to know definitively, but able to be estimated by thinking it through. The most repeated example of a Fermi Problem is “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?” By knowing the number of people in the city and then estimating how many households have a piano, how long a piano holds its tune, how long it takes to tune a piano, and the length of a work week, you can come up with a reasonable estimated answer (current estimate, about 125).

Fermi lived in an elite academic world – an active mind surrounded by others of similar caliber. They would talk about all manner of things, looking at them from every angle, trying to get at the truth. From a casual lunchtime conversation, one of the most famous questions involving extraterrestrials was asked. The story goes something like this.

One summer day in 1950, Enrico Fermi was visiting the Los Alamos Laboratory, which had been the secret government facility at which much of the first nuclear weapons had been developed. He and three companions one of who was Edward Teller, were on their way to lunch. They were talking about a cartoon seen in the May 20 issue of The New Yorker, which explained a recent spate of thefts and trash cans in New York City as being perpetrated by Aliens taking them into their flying saucers. (The UFO mania of the late 1940s was still fresh in the public's mind). The conversation then meandered to Teller and Fermi bantering back and forth over the chances of mankind exceeding the speed of light in the next decade, with Teller suggesting a chance in a million and Fermi guessing 10%. During the stroll, the numbers changed as they intellectually fenced.

After sitting down to lunch, the conversation went in a different direction, with Fermi sitting there quietly. Fermi then suddenly burst out, saying “Where is everybody?” to general laughter, as they all instantly understood that he was talking about extraterrestrials.

The premise of Fermi's paradox is the following. The Milky Way is about 13 billion years old and contains between 200 and 400 billion stars. Our own sun is only a little over 4 billion years old, suggesting that there have been stars around for a very long time. If Aliens are common in the galaxy, there has been plenty of time for them to have evolved – perhaps hundreds of millions of years or more before humanity – and have visited Earth. So where are they?

To figure out what sorts of data are needed, it is helpful to have a guiding paradigm. Photo by Elena.

While Fermi's outburst in the origin of the paradox, the question was revisited in 1975 by Michael Hart (leading some to call this the Fermi-Hart Paradox). Hart published “An Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrial Life on Earth” in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. In this article, he explored some of the reasons why we hadn't contacted yet, from reasons of simple disinterest of the Aliens to either colonize the galaxy or to contact us to the idea that the Earth is being treated as a nature preserve. Perhaps some form of Star Trek's Prime Directive applies, whereby civilizations are not contacted until they develop the capability for interstellar travel. These kinds of explanations were offered in The Day the Earth Stood Still and, of course, Star Trek. What Hart was able to show was that technology wasn't the problem. Taking some simple assumptions, Hart showed that a civilization that sent out two craft traveling at 10% of the speed of light to nearby stars and then spent a few hundred years developing infrastructure to build another pair of slow-moving starships could completely populate the Milky Way in just a couple of millions years.

If intelligent extraterrestrial life is even slightly common in the galaxy and only a few species have mankind's curiosity and exploratory nature, it seems that we would know by now that we are not alone. Hard concluded that it was a distinct possibility that mankind might well be one of the earliest-developing intelligent species in the galaxy. In short, The X-Files tagline “We are not alone” could well be gravely incorrect.

Of course, the answer to the question is unknown and hence the reason why the term “paradox” is applied to it. Another Steven Webb explored the question in his delightful 2002 book If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens, Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee's 2003 book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe is equally enjoyable, and this book takes the position that it is difficult for a planet to develop intelligent life. The book describes the many ways in which planetary disaster can interrupt the development of sentient life on a planet.

No matter how carefully thought out, arguments of the sorts advanced in these books and others like them must defer to data.

Given the fact that there are stars that are billion of years older than the sun, it seems impossible that we should not not have been visited before. Photo by Elena.

Astronomy for the Astrologer

Astronomy and Astrology

Astronomy for the Astrologer

Are the zodiacal signs real heavenly bodies? Are there other bodies in our solar system that we should know about?

One of the most common and constant complains from the astrological fraternity is that astronomers simply will not even try to understand them. The astrologers assert that the astronomers refuse to examine their evidence. For the most part, astronomers refuse to reply, though in the past some of them have shucked their cloak of dignified silence and made boobs of themselves by trying to disprove statistically “astrological tenets” that no reasonable astrologer ever held in the first place. Thus Dr. J. Allen Hynek, associated with UFO research in the press, upon hearing that astrologers linked Mercury with intellectual activity, set to work with scientific thoroughness and showed there was no significant correlation between a high I.Q. and a strong Mercury position in the horoscope. But then, on the other hand, what astrological theorist ever claimed that there was?

The contention by astrologers that astronomers refuse to review their claims is, to a great extent, true. But there is something to be said for the astronomers, too. To them, the universe contemplated by the astrologer is as much out of date as the physiology known to Hippocrates and Galen. There can be no real objection to looking at the Earth as the center of the solar system, considering the fact that Albert Einstein postulated that what is seen by an observer is, in a relative sense, true for him. But astrologers must ever remember that their view-point is no more than relative and that astronomers are quite justified in asserting that practically no astrologer knows even the rudiments of astronomy.

In these times, advanced astrologers and cosmobiologists are accumulating more and more evidence to support most of the claims made for their ancient science. One particularly important discovery is the one suggesting that forces originating outside of the solar system can have an effect upon chemical substances found in human cellular issue. Evidence such as this is lost upon the astrologer who has no understanding of the cosmos as viewed by an astronomer. This article intended for the astrologer who wants to get up-to-date of what science knows about the physical universe he uses as the basis for his interpretations.

Although the Earth creates an elliptical path around the Sun as far as our solar system is concerned, in relation to the galaxy its actual path is something like that of a corkscrew. This means that at certain seasons of the year, the Sun tends to be between the Earth and the sources of Energy which arise in the galaxy.  Since the blocking effect of the Sun is constant from one year to another, it means that the rate of chemical reactions of the type referred to will vary according to different seasons of the year. It is thought that this may be the fundamental basis for astrology.

If the Sun has such an effect, it is quite likely that the planets do also, perhaps by creating a turbulence in whatever field of energy is being emitted in the Milky Way. That such turbulence exists is evidenced by the fact that RCA Communications has for years been using planetary positions to compute the effect upon their international network.

Most serious astrologers long ago gave up the idea that the planets exert any direct influence on mundane events, but the exact rationale of astrology has remained somewhat of a mystery. For some time, consideration was given to Jung’s theory of synchronism, that is that two events may be related by time instead of causality. With the discoveries now being made, however, it seems that the nature of astrological forces resembles a field effect. By this is meant a situation where two bodies have an effect upon one another, not by virtue of their inherent qualities, but because of the nature of the field in which they exist. In the gravitational theory proposed by Einstein, for instance, two bodies are attracted to one another, not because of their own natures, but because their time-space field makes attraction the path of least resistance for them.

Astrologers used to play big role throughout the history of mankind. Photo by Elena.

To see how this works, take a sheet of cloth and suspend it by its four corners so it is approximately flat. Now put two steel marbles on it. No matter where you place them they will be attracted towards one another. This attraction is due to the depression which they make in the sheet, not because of any direct effect of the marbles upon one another.

Field effect astrology – if we may coin a term – would depend upon an analogous phenomenon. Assume a field of energy originating in our galaxy that has a profound effect upon certain chemicals in the human system. From time to time during the year, the Earth is exposed to varying strengths of that energy due to the shielding effect of the Sun. At the same time, the field is further modified by the presence of planetary bodies orbiting the Sun. In total, the astrological effect is caused not by the action of the planets upon the Earth but by field turbulences of which they serve as signals.

Aside from the astrological effect, there are also astronomical effects, and these can be attributed to the influence of other bodies in the solar system. A well-known instance of this is the sunspot cycle with its period of eleven years. Sunspots are fields of turbulence on the surface of the Sun. Their appearance is accompanied by the emission of large quantities of radiation. It has been shown time and time again the as the level of that energy increases, the Earth’s population as a whole begins to get more and more anxious.

During periods of radiation increase, there is a correlative increase in the number of riots, homicides, and wars. Communications are disturbed. The rate of plant and animal growth is altered. The sunspots increase to their maximum in 11 years. At the end of that time they suddenly subside and begin once more to increase again. There is some evidence that the sunspot cycle may be associated with Jupiter’s period of revolution around the Sun. If this is true, there is another direct effect to be considered.

There is a direct influence of the Moon upon the Earth. It is common knowledge that it causes tides in the oceans. What is not so well known is that it also causes tides on land surfaces as well. The point on Earth directly under the Moon is pulled upwards to a distance of two feet.

Though research at Northwestern University has shown that there is a correlation between the Moon’s phases and certain events in the life cycles of lower animals, there is still considerable debate about its direct effect upon humans. There is a body of empiric knowledge based upon reports of police and fire departments as well as mental hospitals and saloon managers that the Full Moon coincides with a period of aberrant sociological phenomena. So far there is disagreement among researchers who have conducted scientific inquiries into this. There has been at least one report that female admissions to mental hospitals reach their peak on the Full Moon; male admissions peak on the New Moon.

It would appear that phenomena correlating with human behaviour fall into two distinct groups. In the one, there is a direct astronomical influence as in the case of the Sun and Moon. In the other, there is the field effect in an energy stream which is occasioned by planetary positions and the position of the Earth with reference to the source of that energy in the galaxy.

The vernal equinox point, that is where the Sun crosses the equator on its way north is the point at which the zodiac begins. For this reason it is known as the first point of Aries. From this point the zodiac is divided into 12 signs of 30 degrees each.

As you probably know, the constellation that identified the original signs of the zodiac have shifted out of the positions that the held back during the days when astrology was becoming formalized, a period around the second century B.C. This is sometimes advanced as an argument against traditional astrology. Actually it is not. It is quite apparent that it is the division of the ecliptic into 12 equal signs that is important. The fact that certain constellations served to identify those signs a couple of thousand years ago was merely a matter of labelling. As a matter of fact, , we are not even certain at what time the constellation of Aries actually coincided with the segment  of ecliptic now known by that name. Estimates of the exact time made by both astronomers and astrologers range from 317 B.C to 321 A.D. Probably the figure determined by Cyril Fagan – 220 A.D. – is most nearly correct for the time at which the first point of the constellation coincided with the first point of Aries on the fixed or ecliptic zodiac. Since the first point moves backwards, this would mark the time that it was on the verge of moving into Pisces. It will, according to this calculation, move into Aquarius in about 300 years.

Can Astrologers predict the future? Illustration by Elena.

Measuring Positions in the Sky

The Earth turns on its axis at a regular rate, on revolution per day. For convenience geographers divided the Earth into 360 divisions along the equator. Those are called degrees of longitude pass by given point in 24 hours. This is at the rate of 15 degrees per hour or one degree every four minutes.

The particular degree on which you are situated is called your meridian. It is also the highest point that the Sun will reach any day. This is the location of the medium coeli (M.C) or Midheaven. The meridian passes through the zenith or the point in the sky directly over your head. The zenith is always the same number of degrees above the equator which gives them their ship’s latitude.

Sometimes astrologers become confused over the difference between celestial latitude – the distance the body is above or below the ecliptic – and declination. Declination is the number of degrees a body is above or below the celestial equator. The celestial equator is an imaginary line that runs across the heavens directly above the Earth’s equator. If you stand on the Earth’s equator, your zenith is located on the celestial equator.

Another method of measuring positions in the sky is by their hour angle. We saw that the Earth moved at the rate of one degree every four minutes. For us, that means that the heavenly bodies seem to move over our heads at the same rate. We can locate a body by saying how long it will take to reach our meridian or by how long it has been since it passed our meridian.

For instance, let us say that a body is located 15 degrees to the east of our meridian. We know that at the rate of four minutes for each degree, it will take 4 times 15 minutes or one hour to come to our meridian. Thus we say that the body has an hour angle of one hour east. If it had passed the meridian and was 15 degrees away, we would say it was one hour west.

Still one more way of locating celestial bodies is by their right ascension. This term, obscure to most astrologers, means no more than the number of degrees measured east from the first point of Aries to the meridian on which a body lies. This measurement is taken along the celestial equator, however, and not the zodiac or ecliptic. Thus is does not always agree with zodiacal measurement. For instance, a body at 15 degrees of Taurus would be 45 degrees away from the first point of Aries if measured on the ecliptic, but its right ascension, along the celestial equator, would vary with the time of year. Some astrologers use tables of the Sun’s apparent right ascension in progressing horoscopes; they feel that the Sun’s movement in right ascension for one day gives a better correlation with a year of life than does the standard “one-degree” method.

Has astrology anything to do with the real world? Illustration: Megan Jorgensen.

Life in the Cosmos

Life in the Cosmos

There must be many different environments suitable for life in a given planetary system. Once life originates, it tends to be very adaptable and tenacious.

In the Solar system there are several bodies that may be suitable for life of some art: the Earth certainly (if we all live in a real world and not in a computer simulation), and perhaps Mars, Titan and Jupiter.

There is evidence that planets are a frequent accompaniment of star formation. We can see this evidence in the satellite systems of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, which are like miniature solar systems. Theories of the origin of the planets are based on this premise and studies of double stars confirm it. We can also observe accretion disks around stars and find the evidence in some preliminary investigations of gravitational perturbations of nearby stars.

Thus many, perhaps even most stars in our universe must have planets.

But what about life? All experiments show that under the most common cosmic conditions the molecular basis of life is readily made, the building blocks of molecules able to make copies of themselves.

We step now on less certain ground: there may be impediments in the evolution of the genetic code, although we think this unlikely over billions of years of primeval chemistry.

On the one hand, many individually unlikely steps had to occur in biological evolution and human history for our present intelligence and technology to develop. There must be many quite different pathways to an advanced civilization of specified capabilities.

On the Earth we must consider the apparent difficulty in the evolution of large organisms represented by the Cambrian explosion. Thus let us suggest that only one percent of planets on which life arises eventually produce a technical civilization.

The conclusion in interesting enough: the total number of planets in the Milky Way only on which life has arisen at least once may be a hundred billion inhabited worlds. And we repeat that we speak about the Milky Way only. That in itself is a remarkable conclusion. But we are not yet finished. One percent of plants where a technical civilization has developed, give us the total number of one billion “civilized” worlds.

Obviously, this estimate represents some middle ground among the varying scientific opinions.  Some think that the equivalent of the step from the emergence of trilobites to the domestication of fire goes like a shot in all planetary systems. Some other think that even given ten of fifteen billion years, the evolution of even ten technical civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy is unlikely.

Anyway, this is not a subject on which we can do much experimentation as long as our investigations are limited to a single planet. Our estimation about a billion planets on which technical civilizations have arisen at least once is rather speculative. It is very different from saying that there are a billion planets on which technical civilizations now exist. For this, we must know much more about Cosmos.

How many technical civilizations exist in the Universe? We know for sure about only one by now. Image : Megan Jorgensen.

Super Earth

Planet KOI-172.02 - Super Earth

KOI-172.02, which stands for Kepler Object of Interest, is a super Earth-size planet, meaning it has a radius 1.5-2 times the size of the Earth. While that may seem insignificant, it means that its mass is much more than that of the Earth, resulting in different properties such as a thicker gaseous atmosphere. It has been described as the most similar to our home planet yet.

The Kepler Mission, launched by NASA in March 2009, was specifically designed to survey a portion in our region of the Milky Way Galaxy to discover Earth-sized planets near the habitable zone, and to determine realistically how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. The habitable zone is the region around a star where water might exist on the surface of a planet which provide favorable conditions for life.

The mission is designed to detect orbiting planets as they pass in front of their stars, causing a small decrease in the star’s brightness.

The Kepler Spacecraft and photometer, used to observe the stars, orbits the sun each year trailing behind the Earth. This spacecraft has found over 2,500 planets.

Kepler found planets by looking at just one large region of the Milky Way in the constellations Lyra and Cygnus. This region of space was picked due to certain limiting constraints; an environment rich in stars as well as one that can be continuously viewed and monitored throughout the mission “without obstruction of the Sun to the regions at any point of the spacecraft’s orbit”, say Dr. Howell, Deputy Project Scientist of the Kepler Mission at Ames.

Over the course of the mission, the Kepler spacecraft measures the variations in brightness, using the photometer, of 150.000 stars every 30 minutes, searching for tiny dips in the light output that occurs whenever a potential planet passes or “transits” in front of its star. Depending on the planet’s orbit and the type of star it orbits, this effect can last anywhere between an hour to about half a day.

Transits are only seen when a star’s planetary system is perfectly aligned with our line of sight, so if all the orbits are randomly distributed, as it should be, then Kepler – even if every star had a planet – would only see 1% of those stars having transits.

This is called “transit method” and is Kepler’s principal method in finding planets.

Regardless, the data received from the spacecraft is extensive in its own merit. Dozens of thousands of transit-like signals were analyzed and potential new planets were identified. Since not all variations in brightness necessarily represent a transit of a potential planet, there exist false positives. For example, there exist stars much like our Sun which can vary in brightness themselves. Such temporary phenomenon include “Sunspots” which create visible dark spots caused by intense magnetic activity. For that reason, the discovery of a planet is confirmed by observing a minimum of three transits.

Why three transits constitute a candidate planet? According to Dr. Alan Gould, co-investigator of the Kepler mission, the need for three transits explains as follows: Three transits are required for planet discovery by the transit method mainly because that is the minimum to assure that there is in fact a planet. One transit gives only the barest indication that a planet exists and an extremely rough idea at best of what the period of the planet might be. Two transits would pinpoint the period of the planet pretty pretty precisely, by virtue of the time between transits and allow accurate prediction of when the next transit is expected to occur. Actual observation of the third transit confirms the prediction and hence helps confirm the planet discovery”.

This would mean planets that are Earth-like and orbit around a star like our sun (every year) would take at least 3 years to get the three transits needed to be confirmed by Kepler to be a candidate planet. Once the planet candidate has been observed, it is then given the designation of KOI – Kepler Object of Interest). In terms of this new Super-Earth candidate KOI-172.02, it was the 172nd candidate in their running list of candidates to see if it really is a planet and has the right kind of star.

For the KOI-172.02 in particular, the 4 transit signals acquired by Kepler indicate that the planet orbits its star around every 243 days. We also know a lot about the star which KOI-172.02 orbits, which is very similar to our sum, but slightly smaller and colder.

The nominal mission of Kepler was 3.5 years, ending October 2012. Then it was in what NASA calls the extended mission. The next couple of years, Kepler started providing many more planets around stars like the sun that are much more like the Earth.

We have begun to contemplate our origins. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

Another Space-Time

Another Space-Time? - Pulsars

Ticking and blinking like a cosmic metronome, pulsars keep far better time than the most accurate ordinary clock, and anyone can see the beam of this cosmic lighthouse flash once each rotation of any planet (astronomers wonder how the sky would look from the surface of a planet rotating around a pulsar).

Long-term timing or the radio pulse rate of some pulsars suggests that these objects may have one or more small planetary companions. It is conceivable thus that a planet could survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar. Or a pulsar may have captured a planet at a later time.

If you could somehow survive the gravitational tides and radiation flux trying to land on a pulsar, it is just possible that you might emerge in another part of space-time – somewhere else in space, somewhen else in time. Might gravity tunnels provide a kind of interstellar or intergalactic subway, permitting us to travel to inaccessible places much more rapidly than we could in the ordinary way? Can pulsars serve as time machines, carrying us to the remote past or the distant future? The fact that such ideas are being discussed even semi-seriously shows how surreal the universe may be.

Such worm holes in space, a little like those in an apple, have been suggested by physicists and astronomers, although these phenomena have by no means been proved to exist.

May be, it’s for better, because we must be the most backward technical society in the Galaxy. Any society still more backward would not have radio astronomy at all. If the doleful experiences of cultural conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been destroyed, perhaps with some passing admiration expressed for Shakespeare, Bach and Vermeer.

But this has not happened. Perhaps alien intentions are uncompromisingly benign. Or might it be, despite all the pretensions about UFOs and ancient astronauts, that our civilization has not yet been discovered?

On one hand, if even a small fraction of technical civilizations learn to live with themselves and with weapons of mass destruction, there should now be an enormous number of advanced civilizations in the Galaxy. We already have slow interstellar flight, and think fast interstellar flight a possible goal for the human species. On the other hand, there is no credible evidence for the Earth being visited, now or ever. Is this not a contradiction? Pulsars, what role do they play in this? Will we ever know the answer?

Why are they not here, on Earth? May another space-time dimension play a role in this enigma? Image: © Megan Jorgensen.

Cosmology

Cosmology

Eventually we would discover the nature of other civilizations. There would be many of them, each composed of organisms astonishingly different from anything on the Earth.

Each one of these civilizations would view the surrounding universe somewhat differently. They would be interested in things we never thought of. They would have different social functions and culture.  By comparing our knowledge with theirs, we would grow immeasurably. And with our newly acquired information sorted into a computer memory, we would be able to see which sort of civilization lived where in the Galaxy.

Imagine a huge galactic computer, a repository, more or less up-to-date, of information on the nature and activities of all the civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy, a great library of life in the Cosmos. Perhaps among the contents of the Encyclopaedia Galactica will be a set of summaries of such civilizations, the information enigmatic, tantalizing, evocative – even after we succeed in translating it.

Taking as much time as we wished, we would decide to reply. We would transmit some information about ourselves – may be just the basic at first – as the start of a long interstellar dialogue which we would begin but which, because of the vast distances of interstellar space and the finite velocity of light, would be continued by our remote descendants. And someday, on a planet of some far distant star, a being very different from any of us would request a printout from the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica and acquire a little information about the newest society to join the community of galactic civilizations.

Any account of cosmic evolution makes it clear that all the creature of the galaxies, are beings to be cherished. Image © Megan Jorgensen.

Black Holes

Black Holes

When the gravity is very high, nothing, not even light, can get out. Such a place is called a black hole.  It is called black because no light can escape from it, but we can’t know what effect causes the light trapped down there. Well, things may be attractively well-li on the inside.

Enigmatically indifferent to its surroundings, a black hole a kind of cosmic Cheshire cat. Indeed, when the gravity and density become sufficiently high, the black hole winks out and disappears from our universe. That is why it is called black: no light can escape from it.

However, even if a black hole is invisible from the outside, its gravitational presence is palpable. If, on an interstellar voyage, astronauts are not paying attention, they can find themselves drawn into this stellar corps irrevocably, their bodies stretched into a long, thin thread. But the matter accreting into a disk surrounding the black hole would be sight worth remembering, in the unlikely case that the crew survived the trip.

Black holes were first thought of by the English astronomer John Mitchell in 1783. But the idea seemed so bizarre that it was generally ignored until quite recently. Then, to the astonishment of many, evidence was actually found for the existence of black holes in space: the Earth’s atmosphere is opaque to X-rays.

To determine whether astronomical objects emit such short wavelengths of light, an X-ray telescope must be carried aloft. The first X-ray observatory was an admirably international effort, orbited by the United States from an Italian launch platform in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya and named Uhuru, the Swajili word for “freedom”.

In 1971, Uhuru discovered a remarkably bright X-ray source in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan, flickering on and off a thousand times a second. The source, called Cygnus X-1, must therefore be very small. Whatever the reason for the flicker, information on when to turn on and off can cross Cyg X-1, no faster than the speed of light, 300, 000 km/sec. Thus Cyg X-1 can be no larger than 300,000 km/sec X 1/10000 sec = 300 kilometers across. Something the size of an asteroid is a brilliant, blinking source of X-rays, visible over interstellar distances.

Cyg X-1, a mysterious brilliant, blinking source of X-rays, visible over interstellar distances. What does it hide from us? Image: © Megan Jorgensen.

Cosmic Drama

The Fate of the Solar System

A supernova can be brighter than the combined radiance of all the other stars in the galaxy within which it is embedded.

Planets near stars much more massive than the Sun will be melted and frizzled by their sun when it becomes an erupting supernova, since these massive stars with higher temperatures and pressure run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, and their lifetimes are thus much shorter than the Sun’s.  In fact, a star tens of times more massive than the Sun can stably convert hydrogen to helium for only a short period of time – less than few millions years before moving on to more exotic nuclear reactions. All those massive blue-white supergiant stars in Orion are destined in the next few million years to become supernovae.

The essential preliminary to a supernova explosion is the generation of a massive iron core. Under enormous pressure, the free electrons in the stellar interior are melted with protons of the iron nuclei, the equal and opposite electrical charges canceling each other out;  the inside of the star is turned into a giant atomic nucleus, occupying a much smaller volume than the precursor electrons and iron nuclei.

A silicon fusion occurs and the core implodes violently, the exterior rebounds and a supernova explosion results.

On massive stars thus there is not enough time for the evolution of advanced forms of life on any accompanying planets. There will be not any beings there that could see their star become a supernova. Indeed, if intelligent beings live long enough to understand supernovae, their star is unlikely to become one.

The awesome supernovae explosion ejects into space most of the matter of the precursor star - residual hydrogen, helium, carbon, silicon, iron, uranium… Remaining is a core of hot neutrons, bound together by nuclear forces. This core is a single atomic nucleus with very heavy atomic weight. It becomes a neutron star thirty kilometers across: a rapidly rotating, tiny, shrunken, dense, withered stellar fragment. As the core of a massive red giant star collapses to form such a neutron star, it spins faster. The neutron star at the center of the Crab Nebula is an immense atomic nucleus, about the size of Manhattan, spinning thirty times a second. Its powerful magnetic field, amplified during the collapse, traps charges particles rather as the much tinier magnetic field emit beamed radiation not only at radio frequencies but in visible light as well. However, the fate of the inner solar system as the Sun becomes a red giant is grim enough.

Many stars in the Orion Constellation will become supernovae - a continuing cosmic fireworks in the constellation of the hunter. Image: © Megan Jorgensen.

Neutron Star

Neutron Star

Neutron star matter weighs about the same as an ordinary mountain per teaspoonful – so much that if you had a piece of neutron star and let it go (hum… you could hardly do otherwise), it might pass effortlessly through the Earth like a falling stone through air, carving a hole for itself completely through our planet and emerging out the other side – perhaps in China.

If a peace of neutron star matter were dropped from nearby space, with the Earth rotating beneath it as it fell, it would plunge repeatedly through, punching hundreds of thousands of holes before friction with the interior of our planet stopped the motion.

Let’s imagine: people there might be out for a stroll, minding their own business, when a tiny lump of neutron star plummets out of the ground, hovers for a moment, and then returns beneath the Earth, providing at least a diversion from the routine of the day.

Before it comes to rest at the center of the Earth, the inside of our planet might look briefly like a Swiss cheese until the subterranean flow of rock and metal healed the wounds.

Large lumps of neutron star matter are unknown on Earth. But small lumps are everywhere. The awesome power of the neutron star is lurking in the nucleus of every atom, hidden in every teacup and dormouse, every breath of air, every apple pie. The neutron star teaches us respect for the commonplace.

A star like the Sun will end its days, as we know, as a red giant and then a white dwarf. A collapsing star twice as massive as the Sun will become a supernova and then a neutron star. But a massive star, left, after its supernova phase, with, say, five times the Sun’s mass, has an even more remarkable fate reserved for it – its gravity will turn it into a black hole.

Thermonuclear reactions in the solar interior support the outer layers of the Sun and postpone for billions of years a catastrophic gravitational collapse.

For white dwarfs, the pressure of the electrons, stripped from their nuclei, holds the star up. For neutron stars, the pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova explosions and other impetuosities with more than several times the Sun’s mass, there are no forces known that can prevent collapse.

The star shrinks incredibly, spins, reddens and disappears. A massive star will shrink until it is the size of a city, the crushing gravity acts irrevocably, and the star slips through a self-generated crack in the space-time continuum and vanishes from our universe.

What if every neutron star is an intelligent being? Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

On the New Stars

On the New Stars

Johannes Kepler published in 1606 a book called De stele Nova, “On the New Star”, in which he wonders if a supernova is the result of some random concatenation of atoms in the heavens. He presents what he says is “… not my own opinion, but my wife’s: Yesterday, when weary with writing, I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me. “It seems then, “I said, “if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of water, vinegar, oil and slices of eggs had been flying about in the air for all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad”. “Yes”, responded my lovely, “but not so nice as this one of mine”.

No supernova explosions have been observed in Milky Way Galaxy since the invention of the telescope. But supernovae are routinely observed in other galaxies.

David Helfand and Knox Long in the December 6, 1979, issue of the British journal Nature say (and we quote): “On 5 March, 1979, an extremely intense burst of hard X-rays and gamma rays was recorded by the nine interplanetary spacecraft of the burst sensor network, and localized by time-of-flight determinations to a position coincident with the supernova remnant N49 in the Large Magellanic Cloud” (the Large Magellanic Cloud, so called because the first inhabitant of the Northern Hemisphere to notice it was Magellan, is a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, 180,000 light-years distant. There is also, as you might expect, a Small Magellanic Cloud).

However, in the same issue of Nature, E. P. Mazets and colleagues of the Ioffe Institute, Leningrad – who observed this source with the gamma-ray burst detector aboard the Venera 11 and 12 spacecraft on their way to land on Venus – argue that what is being seen is a flaring pulsar only a few hundred light-years away.

David Helfand and Knox Long do not insist that the gamma-ray outburst is associated with the supernova remnant. In fact, they charitably considered many alternatives, including the surprising possibility that the source lay within the solar system: Perhaps it is the exhaust of an alien star-ship on its long voyage home!

Anyway a rousing of the stellar fires in “supernova remnant N49” is fact, as simple as we are sure there are such things as supernovae.

I'm quite sure that all the supernovae are exhausts many alien star-ships on its long voyage home. Image: © Megan Jorgensen.

Zodiac

Zodiac

The zodiac is a band of twelve constellations seemingly wrapped around the sky in the apparent annual path of the Sun through the heavens.

The root of the word Zodiac is that for zoo, because the zodiacal constellations, like Hydra or Leo, are mainly fancied to be animals.

In fact, a million years from now, the constellation of Leo will look less like a lion than it does today and perhaps our remote descendants will call it the constellation of the radio telescope – although we can guess that a million years from now the radio telescope will have become more obsolete than the stone spear is now. Anyway, constellations were given the names of the signs and asterisms could be connected in a way that would resemble the sign's name.

Although the zodiac remains the basis of the ecliptic coordinate system in use in astronomy besides the equatorial one, the term and the names of the twelve signs are today mostly associated with horoscopic astrology.

The Zodiac constellations are known to have been in use by the Roman era based on concepts inherited by Hellenistic astronomy from Babylonian astronomy of the Chaldean period (mid-1st millennium BC). Besides the construction of the zodiac is described in Ptolemy's Almagest (2nd century AD).

Babylonian astronomers at some stage during the early 1st millennium BC divided the ecliptic into twelve equal zones of celestial longitude to create the first known celestial coordinate system: a coordinate system that boasts some advantages over modern systems (such as equatorial coordinate system). The Babylonian calendar assigned each month to a sign, beginning with the position of the Sun at vernal equinox, which, at the time, was depicted as the Aries constellation, for which reason the first sign is still called "Aries" even after the vernal equinox has moved away from the Aries constellation due to the slow precession of the Earth's axis of rotation.

Because the division was made into equal arcs, 30º each, they constituted an ideal system of reference for making predictions about a planet's longitude. However, Babylonian techniques of observational measurements were in a rudimentary stage of evolution and it was probably beyond their capacity to define in a precise way the boundary lines between the zodiacal signs in the sky.

The Babylonian star catalogs entered Greek astronomy in the 4th century BC, via Eudoxus of Cnidus and others, but horoscopic astrology first appeared in Ptolemaic Egypt. The Dendera zodiac, a relief dating to ca. 50 BC, is the first known depiction of the classical zodiac of twelve signs.

Planets as seen by Megan Jorgensen. Illustration by Megan Jorgensen.

Under the Greeks, and Ptolemy in particular, whose work Tetrabiblos laid the basis of the astrological traditions, the planets, Houses, and signs of the zodiac were rationalized and their function set down in a way that has changed little to the present day. Capricornus (Goat-horned - the Sea-Goat).

Curiously enough, the Hindu zodiac signs and corresponding Greek signs sound very different, being in Sanskrit and Greek respectively, but their symbols are nearly identical. For example, dhanu means "bow" and corresponds to Sagittarius, the "archer", and kumbha means "water-pitcher" and corresponds to Aquarius, the "water-carrier". The correspondence of signs is taken to suggest the possibility of early interchange of cultural influences. Pisces (the Fishes). 

It is important to distinguish the zodiacal signs from the constellations associated with them, not only because of their drifting apart due to the precession of equinoxes but also because the physical constellations by nature of their varying shapes and forms take up varying widths of the ecliptic. Thus, Virgo takes up fully five times as much ecliptic longitude as Scorpius. Scorpio (the Scorpion).

The zodiacal signs are an abstraction from the physical constellations designed to represent exactly one twelfth of the full circle each, or the longitude traversed by the Sun in about 30.4 days. Aquarius (the Water-Bearer).

Due to the constellation boundaries being redefined in 1930 by the International Astronomical Union, the path of the ecliptic now officially passes through thirteen constellations: the twelve traditional zodiac constellations plus Ophiuchus, the bottom part of which interjects between Scorpio and Sagittarius. Ophiuchus is an anciently recognized constellation, catalogued along with many others in Ptolemy's Almagest, but not historically referred to as a zodiac constellation.

The star. Illustration par Megan Jorgensen.

Murder in the Paradise

The Life and Death of Stars

Most processes occurring in the visible universe involve stars in some way. In fact, all elements, with just a few exceptions, were formed in the nuclear furnaces of stars. This includes the heavier elements such as oxygen and carbon, the main constituents of living organisms (among the exceptions we find lithium, deuterium, helium, hydrogen which were created in the big bang).

Astronomers classify stars using many schemas, including their color, brightness, size, temperature, mass, association with other stars. The system of magnitude of stars introduced by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in the second century AD is still in use today. Hipparchus divided stars by visual brightness from magnitude 1 (brightest) to magnitude 6 (faintest). Each level represents a 2.5-fold change in brightness.

With the arrival of the telescope and later the camera, stars as faint as magnitude 30 became detectable. These stars are four billion times fainter than could be observed with the naked eye.

The modern and most meaningful way of characterizing and analyzing stars is by spectral class. We classify them by the letters OBAFGKM (the famous mnemonic for remembering this sequence is Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me). A star’s spectral class is defined by its characteristics of temperature, size, and density. The hottest and most massive stars are in the O and B classes and typically emit blue to white light. Stars of intermediate temperature and mass range from A- to G-type and emit white to yellow light. The coolest, least massive stars are K- and M-type and emit orange to red light. In fact, two new classes have been added (L and T) to account for the discovery of very low-mass stars.

The lifetime of a star is directly related to its mass. Indeed, stars that are actively fusing hydrogen to helium, such as our Sun, are called main-sequence stars. We know that stars generally spend about 90 percent of their lives on the main sequence. And when stars exhaust their hydrogen fuel, they begin the inevitable process of stellar death.

At the point of “stellar death” in their evolution, stars begin to leave the main sequence.

Thus the most massive stars rapidly use up their fuel and may live only a few million years. This is in contrast to lower-mass stars, such as the Sun, which may enjoy a main-sequence life of over ten billion years.

As a sun-like star exhausts its hydrogen core and begins to die, a new process begins. Helium fuses to carbon and later to oxygen, which will sustain the star for a short period but at the expense of further core collapse, higher core temperatures, and continued surface expansion. The surface of the star, no longer checked by gravity, bloats and cools. At this stage, the star is referred as a red giant and the bloated diameter can exceed ten times that of our Sun. The star begins a futile cycle of further core collapse and surface expansion that can end either passively as a white dwarf surrounded by a planetary nebula or, for more massive stars, in a cataclysmic explosion known as a supernova.

Steller death is an inevitable stage in the evolution of every star. Image by © Megan Jorgensen.

Stars as in Astro

Stars as in Astro

Stars have captivated human attention since times immemorial; popular media phenomena Star Wars and cult-inspiring Star Trek are just two among many proofs.

Further, astrology is the practice of attempting to foretell the future based on the position of the stars, as in the twelve horoscope signs that stem from the belief that a person born under a particular stellar arrangement has a predetermined destiny and personality.  JoJo Savard, a Quebec born television personality of the 1990s, was the first astrologer to gain public recognition in Canada.

In the scientific realm, there are astronomy, astrobiology, astrochemistry and astrophysics. In Quebec, the most prominent are: astronomical professional endeavor Mont Mégantic Observatory (AstroLab of the National Park of Mount Megantic), the non-professional association FAAQ (Fédération des Astronomes Amateurs du Québec), and the astrophysical CRAQ (Centre of Research in Astrophysics of Quebec).

Stars as in Astro. Illustration by Elena.

Due to the impossibility to place a massive gaseous object into empty space and watch it evolve for a million years, astrophysics and astronomy are observational and not experimental sciences. Although physics is indeed a science, debates nonetheless remain. For example, Pluto has recently (circa 2008) lost its planetary status, due to the many “Plutos” in similar elliptical outer orbits. Eris, a planet larger than Pluto, has been discovered and it is expected that similar others will follow in the near future (the Hubble telescopes and the Voyager probes launched in the 1970s have advanced the field tremendously). Similarly, the Moon, essentially a rock, is larger than Pluto and due to the unusual, as compared to other planets, Earth-Satellite proportion, they could be considered as two planets.

Our solar system is part of the Milky Way Galaxy, one star (the Sun) among billions of stars, among billions of galaxies. The closest spiral galaxy to us is Andromeda; the two are expected to collide in billions of years to form a mega-galaxy, as is often the case elsewhere. Now, this is much more impressive when actually drawn to scale, but the order of magnitude (non-exhaustive list) is as follows:

Moon < Earth < Jupiter < Sun < Sirius < Arcturus  < Rigel < Antares < Betelgeuse < Binary Star VV Cephei < Vy Canis Majoris. Which of Betelgeuse or Antares is larger is a matter of argument, but both are the brightest visible red supergiants in Earth’s sky. Vy Canis Majoris, a red hypergiant located in the Canis Majoris constellation in our galaxy, is the most luminous and biggest star known to man. All entries in the above sentence including and following the Sun are stars. The Sun is young; a middle aged star turns into a red giant, and a dying star becomes a white dwarf (extremely dense). After one tries to ponder just how enormous a star like Vy CM is, one goes further by contemplating that of these stellar masses there are trillions. Still, all these stars, planets, comets, gas and other floating materials in the universe comprise only 4.9% of its totality, ¾ of the universe being dark energy (human comprehension largely pending), and the rest dark matter.

Finally, black holes are so dense that even light cannot escape them, which is why we fail to see them since we only perceive objects as photons get reflected from them. A black hole escape velocity is greater than the speed of light; therefore even light gets trapped inside once it reaches the event horizon (the point of no return). Maybe with a telescope from Naturaliste à Québec, the next black hole will be discovered from the province…

Stars as in Astro. Our solar system is part of the Milky Way Galaxy, one star (the Sun) among billions of stars, among billions of galaxies… Photo by Elena.

Pusha - Part II

Pusha Part - II

The second part of pictures of Pusha, the best cat in the World, in the whole Universe, the great Pusha the Feline who knows that he is a lion.

We are all aware of the fact that cats have it all – curiosity, an endless sleep, company, and all, only when they want it. When a cat`s human friend isn't happy, the cat is not happy. Not because the cats care about our mood but because they're are thinking up ways to get even. Anyway, our understanding of cat’s intelligence is far from perfect, but they, the cats, wonder if we are conscious. We accept that they are clever and we like to think that they will treat us well when the day of their Kingdom comes.

The following pictures of small (domestic cat, lynx, bobcat and others) and big (tiger, lion, puma and other animals) felines depict some of these amazing wonders of nature.

All the pictures have been taken by Elena.

Pusha in blue.

Pusha in yellow.

Pusha surprised. Green eyed white cat (breed: Persian Silver Shaded, purebred).

Pusha, the Galaxy special forces soldier.

Domestic cat thinking (breed: Russian Blue). Siberian tiger, largest feline (panthera tigris).

Lovely kitty, up close.

White domestic cat sitting specifically designed cat toy (the 'tree' is found in most animal stores or pet shops). Breed: Persian Silver Shaded.

Members of the feline family have long fascinated the human race. 

Cats being revered as deities in Ancient Egypt represent an additional classic illustration.

Pusha reflecting about the future of the mankind and catkind who must live together and share the responsibility of the destiny of the planet.

Pusha posing as a great politician.

Although unrelated to cats, the name itself of famous American writer Tennessee Williams' play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and the derivative 1958 drama film, are just one example among many.

Pusha looking sideways.

See you, my friends!

Space

Space

Magic, Illusory and Parallel Worlds

Some artwork (images) inspired by space. Scientific information on the subject, as well as real photos taken by telescopes, can be found here.

Aside from the Multiverse physics theory, much of fantasy and science fiction literature and cinema rests on elements from magic or paranormal realms, often taking place expressly in dissimilar, alternate realities. Consequently, the pictures below represent some fictional alternatives, while other thematic images can be found here.

Space has fascinated human kind for millenniums. The Ancient Babylonians, Sumerians, Mayas, Egyptians and other civilizations all mentioned celestial bodies in one way or another. While the Ancient Greeks and Roman believes the gods of the Pantheon resided on top of the Mount Olympus, they still had stories explaining stellar movement. For example, it was believed that Appollo, brother of Artemis, made the Sun get up each and every day in the East and rising in his immense carriage through the sky settle in the West each night.

All below pictures have been taken by Elena.

An artist's rendition of a planet similar to Jupiter with one of its 64 moons (drawing not to scale). Jupiter is a gaseous giant and the proportion is closer to the that of planet Earth compared to Jupiter. 

Space art. Stellar bodies (a star, albeit not a red giant or hypergiant to judge by the scale of surrounding planets, moons and debris). Background stars, galaxies, comets and intergalactic gas omitted from the illustration. What we once called the physical universe, the universe of ordinary experience, is seen to be only a tiny part of a much greater complex.

Man, and in turn, the earth, the solar system and the entire galaxy of stars, shrink almost to nothing. What we once thought was a long period of time in human affairs is seen to be no more than a fleeting moment. In astronomy a million years is as brief as the tick of a cosmic clock.

"Two things fill my mind with ever new and even greater wonder and reverence, the oftener and the longer I allow my mind to dwell on them – the starry heavens above, and the moral law within me.” (Immanuel Kant)

A spaceship looking for a castle from the Middle Ages. Celestial objects (terrestrial and gaseous planets, asteroids and moons or dwarf planets - depending on interpretation and characteristics).

Spaced out, literally. A timely reunion.

Two star sisters, or close friends, casting spells.

A fictional world with wildly colored marble.

Space travel trough distant starfield - artist's impression. Random darkness.

Depending on one's opinion, black holes may be the most interesting elements in the Cosmos. The mystery continues to fail to be completely understood, despite significant progress with telescopes such as Hubble, Voyager and theoretical advances in knowledge.

Astrophysicists and astrobiologists study the stars and life on them, respectively, while astrologists try to predict people's destinies according to stellar positions (an art, not a science, a pseudoscience at best - i.e. horoscopes, believed at one's own risk).

On the scientific side, complex calculations abound and impressive observatories (such as the one in Chile) allow gazing at spectacular views. Likewise, stargazing has been around for a very long time.

Sky at night in a non-starry location (LoL). Obviously, theoretically it is virtually impossible to look upwards on any part of the planet Earth, and not have a star, however distant above. Nonetheless, these can only be seen under certain circumstances and given appropriate conditions (light pollution, technology, distance, locations, clouds and other atmospheric interference, and so on). 

Another galaxy.

Wallpaper Style Fantasy Drawing.

Elf Ears Flower Pixie.