Red Shift

Red Shift

The astronomer Halton Arp has found enigmatic and disturbing cases where a galaxy and a quasar, or a pair of galaxies, that are in apparent physical association have very different red shifts.

Occasionally there seems to be a bridge of gas and dust and stars connecting them. If the red shift is due to the expansion of the universe, very different red shifts imply very different distances But two galaxies that are physically connected can hardly also be greatly separated from each other – in some cases by a billion light years. Skeptics say that the association is purely statistical: that, for example, a nearby bright galaxy and a much more distant quasar, each having very different red shifts and very different speeds of recession, are merely accidentally aligned along the line of sight; that they have no real physical association.

Such statistical alignments must happen by chance every now and then. The debate centers on whether the number of coincidences is more than would be expected by chance.

The red shift is not the only evidence of the Big Bang. Image: © Elena

Arp points to other cases in which a galaxy with a small red shift is flanked by two quasars of large and almost identical red shifts. He believes the quasars are not at cosmological distances, but instead are being ejected, left and right, by the “foreground” galaxy; and that the red shifts are the result of some as yet unfathomed mechanism. Skeptics argue coincidental alignment and the conventional Hubble-Humason interpretation of the red shift.

If Arp is right, the exotic mechanisms proposed to explain the energy source of distant quasars – supernova chain reaction, supermassive black holes and the like – would prove unnecessary. Quasars need not then be very distant. But some other exotic mechanisms will be required to explain the red shift. In either case, something very strange is going on in the depths of space.

In fact the apparent recession of the galaxies, which the red shift interpreted through the Doppler effect, is not the only evidence of the Big Bang. Independent and quite persuasive evidence derives from the cosmic black body background radiation, the faint static of radio waves coming quite uniformly from all directions in the Cosmos and just the intensity expected in our epoch from the now substantially cooled radiation of the Big Bang.

Light is also a wave. The closer together the waves of sound or light are, the higher the frequency or pitch; the farther apart the waves are, the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves, moving them, from our point of view, to a lower pitch and producing the characteristic sound with which we are all familiar. If, however, the car were racing toward us, the sound waves would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased and we would hear a high-pitched wail. If we knew what the ordinary pitch of the horn was when the car was at rest, we could deduce its speed blindfolded, from the change in pitch.

Encyclopaedia Galactica - Earth

Encyclopaedia Galactica – Earth

« What are you? From where did you come? I have never seen anything like you?” The Creator Raven looked at Man and was surprises to find that this strange new being ws so much like himself (An Eskimo creation myth).

The author of Neptune… has made it impossible for us to have any communication from this earth with the other great bodies of the universe, in our present state; and it is highly possible that he has likewise cut off all communication betwixt the serve, in all of them, enough to raise our curiosity, but not to satisfy it…

It does not appear to be suitable to the wisdom that shines throughout all nature, to suppose that we should see so far, and have our curiosity, so much raised… only to be disappointed at the end… This, therefore, naturally leads us to consider our present state as only the dawn or beginning or our existence, and as a state of preparation or probation for father advancement…

(Colin Maclaurin, 1748)

Yes, we have launched a few ships to the stars, from Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2 to some others… They are all backward and primitive craft, moving, compared to the immense interstellar distances, with the slowness of a race in a dream….

Summary of a newly emerged technical civilization from the Encyclopaedia Galactica (entry by Jon Lomberg and Carl Sagan)

Civilisation type: 1.0J

Society Code: 4G4 (call themselves Humanity)

Star: G2V, r = 9.844 kpc,0 – 00.05`24“, R = 206 28 49.

I believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening… (Megan Jorgensen, quots). Image : © Elena

Planet: Third, a = 1.5X 10(13) cm, M= 6×10 (27) g, R=6.4×10(8) cm, p=8,6×10(4)s, P= 3.2×10(7)s.

Extraplanetary colonies: none.

Planet age: 1.45×10(17) s.

First locally initiated contact: 1.21×10(9) s ago.

Receipt first galactic nested code: application pending.

Biology: C, N, O, S, H2O, P04.

Deoxyribonucleic acid.

No genetic prosthesis.

Mobile heterotrophs, symbionts with photosynthetic autotrophs. Surface dwellers, monospecific, polychromatic 02 breathers. Fe-chelated tetrapyroles in circulatory fluid. Sexual mammals. m – 7×10(4) g, t – 2×10(9) s.

Genomes: 4×10(9).

Technology: exponentiating/fossil fuels/nuclear weapons/ organized warfare/environmental pollution.

Culture: more than 200 nation states, about 6 global powers; cultural and technological homogeneity underway.

Prepartum/postpartum: 0.21 (18).

Individual/communal: 0.31 (17).

Artisticétechnological: 0.14 (11).

Probability of survival (per 100 yr): 40%.

Liquid Water on Mars

Liquid Water on Mars

To carry liquid water from the melting polar caps to the equatorial regions of Mars, the melting surface and subsurface ice would be transported by a great canal network. This is precisely what Percivall Lowell, a hundred years ago, mistakenly proposed was in fact happening on Mars. Lowell and Wallace both understood that the comparative inhospitability of Mars was due to the scarcity of water.If only a network of canals existed, the lack would be remedied and the habitability of Mars would become plausible.

Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions. Others, like Schiaparelly had already observed something like the canals; they were called canali before Lowell began his lifelong love affair with Mars. Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred, and there are few notions more stirring than the idea of a neighboring planet inhabited by intelligent beings.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant as any star. (Gilbert K. Chesterton). Illustration : © Elena

Radio Astronomy

Radio Astronomy

In the future there will be designated interstellar objectives, and sooner or later our spacecraft will have human crews. In the Milky Way Galaxy there must be many planets millions of years older than Earth, and some that are billions of years older. Should we not have been visited?In all the billions of years since the origin of our planet, has there not been even once a strange craft from a distant civilization surveying our world from above, and slowly settling down to the surface to be observed by iridescent dragonflies, incurious reptiles, screeching primates or wondering humans. The idea is natural enough It has occurred to everyone who has contemplated, even casually, the question of intelligent life in the universe. But has it happened in fact? The critical issue is the quality of the purported evidence, rigorously and sceptically scrutinized – not what sounds plausible, not the unsubstantiated testimony of one or two self-professed eyewitnesses.

By this standard there are no compelling cases of extraterrestrial visitation, despite all the claims about UFO’s and astronauts which sometimes make it seem that our planet is awash in uninvited guests. I wish it were otherwise. There is something irresistible about the discovery of even a token, perhaps a complex inscription, but, best by far, a key to the understanding of an alien and exotic civilization. It is an appeal we humans have felt before.

Radio Astronomy. If we receive a message from an extraterrestrial civilisation, how could it possibly be understood? Image: Enchanted World Beautiful Elf with Pink Hair © Elena

Anyway, we do not expect an advanced technical civilisation on any other planet in our solar system. If one were only a little behind us – 10, 000 years, say – it would have no advanced technology at all. If it were only s little ahead of us – we who are already exploring the solar system – its representatives should by now be here. To communicate with other civilisations, we require a method adequate not merely for interplanetary distances but for interstellar distances. Ideally, the method should be inexpensive, so that a huge amount of information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is rendered possible; and obvious, so any technological civilisation, no matter what its evolutionary plan, will discover it early. Surprisingly, there is such a method it is called radio astronomy.

Rare Elements

Rare Elements

Some of the rarer elements are generated in the supernova explosion itself. We have relatively abundant gold and uranium on Earth only because many supernova explosions had occurred just before the solar system formed. Other planetary systems may have somewhat different amounts of our rare elements. Are there planets where the inhabitants proudly display pendants of niobium and bracelets of protactinium, while gold is a laboratory curiosity? Would our lives be improved if gold and uranium were as obscure and unimportant on Earth as praseodymium?

The origin and evolution of life are connected in the most intimate way with the origin and evolution of the stars. First: The very matter of which we are composed, the atoms that make life possible, were generated long ago and far away in giant red stars. The relative abundance of the chemical elements found in the Cosmos matches the relative abundance of atoms generated in stars as well as to leave little doubt that red giants and supernovae are the ovens and crucibles in which matter has been forged.

Rare Elements. The evolution of life on Earth is driven by the spectacular death of distant, massive suns. Image: © Elena

The Sun is a second – or third – generation star. All the matter in it, all the matter you see around you, has been through one or two previous cycles of stellar alchemy. Second: The existence of certain varieties of heavy atoms on the Earth suggests that there was a nearby supernova explosion shortly before the solar system was formed. But this is unlikely before the solar system was formed. Bu this is unlikely to be a mere coincidence; more likely, the shock wave produced by the supernova compressed interstellar gas and dust and triggered the condensation of the solar system. Third: When the Sun turned on, its ultraviolet radiation poured into the atmosphere of the Earth; its warmth generated lighting; and these energy sources sparked the complex organic molecules that led to the origin of life. Fourth: Life on Earth runs almost exclusively on sunlight. Plants gather the photons and convert solar to chemical energy. Animals parasitize the plants. Farming is simply the methodical harvesting of sunlight, using plants as grudging intermediaries. We are, almost all of us, solar-powered. Finally, the hereditary changes called mutations provide the raw material for evolution. Mutations, from which nature selects its new inventory of life forms, are produced in part by cosmic rays – high-energy particles ejected almost at the speed of light in supernovae explosions. The evolution of life on Earth is driven in part by the spectacular death of distant, massive suns.