#especially of like views from exoplanets' surfaces

[tanadrin]

why is all paleoart so stiff and boring? like is it just 90% of what you see is cheap stuff commissioned to illustrate grade-school textbooks. or what? there's gotta be some paleoartists out there just killing it.

[multiversetravelingjournalist]

Murder Drones AU Idea

As I have watched all six episodes of murder drones (and have watched other people's reactions to all six episodes of Murder Drones afterwards) and have seen that the next two episodes will be released in fall, I have been amusing myself with an AU of sorts to pass the time and play around with the setting and characters. who knows somewhere along the way I might just wreck everything. lol.

Without further ado, here is what I have so far:

There exists an OC, his surname is Cavendish. (he's a holdover from a fanfic I did. "Was that necessary?" over on AO3 *shameless self-plug. *) A sort of majority shareholder of JC Jenson. He is considered unusual for his way of treating drones in general. that is to say objectively better (I hope). Not willing to brutalize them, never throwing them away even if it was convenient, and entrusting them with tasks that make use of their autonomy (whatever those may be). he also is injured with burn scars from a house fire years ago. married with a daughter and baby son, the former two who are in comas from said house fire and are watched over by his estate's medical drones (I just find the idea of these little ones dressed in retro-nurse outfits while doing their work to be adorable).

The Elliot family - which Tessa comes from - are also a major shareholder in the company. them and the Cavendishes have been rivals for as long as anyone could remember. especially with their current members wildly differing views on drone treatment. Tessa James Elliot is technically the shareholder now that her parents have met a no doubt grisly end.

I imagine JC Jenson *in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE* to be like the British empire, If Britain at the time got hit with a meteor shower, rendering it uninhabitable. even today the interstellar company is still consolidating from its loss of the Earth HQ (which I like to call "JC Jenson Earth"). part of that consolidation is the security of assets on the other exoplanets. which includes the research on and against the program-entity that caused their cradle world's destruction.

As per the British Empire comparison, style, architecture, and aesthetics in general has taken inspiration from the era. mixed in along with cassette futurism, retro-futurism, space-western (more on that later), basically anything pre-20th century. (this is me expanding upon the spooky Victorian mansion and fashion in the flashbacks to be a sort of retro-wave movement). There are still advanced technology holograms, flying cars, etc. they are just blended in with everything else. perhaps this retro-futurism is popular with the upper-classes (aka The Rich).

Copper-9 still blows up. however, due to reasons explained below, the Disassembly Drones aren't sent in. This allows for the Drones to spread and develop their own civilizations on the surface. and boy are they diverse. aside from most of them replicating their human makers, there are also...

nomadic Mad Max-esque tribes that traverse a giant irradiated frozen lake. they are territorial and aggressive. fighting with harpoons, spears, IEDs, etc. dressed in scraps of bone, fabric, metal, and drone scraps. driving a myriad of vehicles that include snow mobiles and a half track.

Winter Cow-drones. IDK I just think the paradox of leather cowboy hats contrasting with the frozen wasteland looked cool. maybe they travel in caravans and are a more peaceful version of the above group.

Underground dwelling drone cannibals. Synthetic Morlocks if you will. Roaming and developing the underground facilities of the planet and occasionally coming to the surface to "collect new parts". (All this because I want there to be more Alices).

Earth is technically still inhabitable in some places. but is now an eldritch hell world with the presence of the Absolute Solver. reclamation was considered a lost cause.

That's most of the setting I came up with. there is also a bit of a story brewing among all this. When The Copper-9 incident happened, JC Jenson immediately knew the cause and wanted to deal with it as quickly as possible. However, Cavendish (told you we'd talk about him) the ever curious about drones' potential nipped that idea in the bud - much to everyone's frustration - instead wanting to observe the behaviors of them now that their masters are gone.

The other shareholders really wanted to send in the Disassembly Drones. after some back and forth, Cavendish volunteered to go there himself to monitor the situation. a sort of jab at how everyone views him and his sympathetic views. "I am giving you all the chance to finally be rid of me" is what he is telling them. begrudgingly, the board allows him and any companions of his choosing - with some restrictions - to accompany him.

Tessa is one of those restrictions, but Cavendish knew she wanted to go to the planet... for some reason. so he does some creative string-pulling to get her accepted as a technician. along with the Murder crew, the five head off for Copper-9. (I like to think that the lag time gives the drones plenty to develop into the societies that I described above). After that it's a day-to-day story of discovery and exploration with what action I can currently come up with. things come up like Cavendish being aware of what Absolute Solver is and such.

There is also this idea I just had about Cavendish naming his son as his stand-in shareholder. but seeing as he is like ten years old, appoints his personal drones as a sort of regent. basically, he all but appoints one of his drones as shareholder of a company made up of drone abusers. and everyone is aware of this. yet they are powerless to find fault in his logic and begrudgingly allow the regent to figuratively sit among them.

If you have read this far. first off thanks. second off, if you want to engage more on this sort of story/setting, hit me up, I have nothing better to do at the moment.

Till next time... ;).

[myfeeds]

A surprise chemical find by ALMA may help detect and confirm protoplanets

HD 169142 is a young star located in the constellation Sagittarius that is of significant interest to astronomers due to the presence of its large, dust- and gas-rich circumstellar disk that is viewed nearly face-on. Several protoplanet candidates have been identified over the last decade, and earlier this year, scientists at the University of Liège and Monash University confirmed that one such candidate — HD 169142 b — is, in fact, a giant Jupiter-like protoplanet. The discoveries revealed in a new analysis of archival data from ALMA — an international collaboration in which the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a member — may now make it easier for scientists to detect, confirm, and ultimately characterize, protoplanets forming around young stars. “When we looked at HD 169142 and its disk at submillimeter wavelengths, we identified several compelling chemical signatures of this recently-confirmed gas giant protoplanet,” said Charles Law, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and the lead author of the new study. “We now have confirmation that we can use chemical signatures to figure out what kinds of planets there might be forming in the disks around young stars.” The team focused on the HD 169142 system because they believed that the presence of the HD 169142 b giant protoplanet was likely to be accompanied by detectable chemical signatures, and they were right. Law’s team detected carbon monoxide (both 12CO and its isotopologue 13CO) and sulfur monoxide (SO), which had previously been detected and were thought to be associated with protoplanets in other disks. But for the first time, the team also detected silicon monosulfide (SiS). This came as a surprise because in order for SiS emission to be detectable by ALMA, silicates must be released from nearby dust grains in massive shock waves caused by gas traveling at high velocities, a behavior typically resulting from outflows that are driven by giant protoplanets. “SiS was a molecule that we had never seen before in a protoplanetary disk, let alone in the vicinity of a giant protoplanet,” Law said. “The detection of SiS emission popped out at us because it means that this protoplanet must be producing powerful shock waves in the surrounding gas.” With this new chemical approach for detecting young protoplanets, scientists may be opening a new window on the Universe and deepening their understanding of exoplanets. Protoplanets, especially those that are still embedded in their parental circumstellar disks such as in the HD 169142 system, provide a direct connection with the known exoplanet population. “There’s a huge diversity in exoplanets and by using chemical signatures observed with ALMA, this gives us a new way to understand how different protoplanets develop over time and ultimately connect their properties to that of exoplanetary systems,” said Law. “In addition to providing a new tool for planet-hunting with ALMA, this discovery opens up a lot of exciting chemistry that we’ve never seen before. As we continue to survey more disks around young stars, we will inevitably find other interesting but unanticipated molecules, just like SiS. Discoveries such as this imply that we are only just scratching the surface of the true chemical diversity associated with protoplanetary settings.” The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a major facility of the National Science Foundation (NSF) operated under a cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

[pastelfeatheredmask]

Constellation - Clear Waters

Title: Clear Waters

Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia

Characters: Aizawa Shouta, Shirakumo Oboro, Yamada Hizashi, mentioned Kayama Nemuri

Summary: A snippet of a day in the life of an unorthodox crew of space explorers. A field expedition on a largely-unexplored exoplanet. Their ship lands near the ocean, which means the fin folk of the crew get to go swimming.

(a piece of my space au, shared for MerMay!)

-----

“How’s the water, Shou?”

“Just wait a moment for the results.” Shouta scowled at an array of glass beakers and small bottles of chemicals in front of him. “You’re so impatient.”

Oboro stretched his arms behind his head from where he lounged on a rock, his starry purple tail hanging down into the water. White frills fluttered down and floated on the surface, almost hiding the crystal-clear view to the corals below. “I think it tastes kind of salty.”

Shouta shot him a glare. “Your taste buds are not an accurate judgment of the chemical composition of a large body of liquid. I don’t want Hizashi to get chemical burns, especially not on his gills, just because we didn’t make sure it was absolutely safe.”

“Okay, okay!” Oboro laughed. “I get it! I’m just saying, Nemuri’s probably already down there finding all sorts of cool stuff at the bottom.”

“Well, just remember that I can’t go too deep,” Hizashi said with a chuckle, checking his wetsuit one more time and adjusting the edges where it was cut out to allow the gills on his torso to have unobstructed access to the water. “I’m not indestructible like you two are.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Oboro looked up at the periwinkle sky, the clouds few and far between. “I’ll grab you a shiny rock or something, how’s that sound?”

“I’d love that,” Shouta stated in the flattest tone possible. He clicked his pen and started writing down results when it looked like the liquid in the beakers had stopped changing color.

Tide pools dotted the rocky coast, and a steep chasm of water yawned right against the rocks, serving as the perfect diving spot for the more marine-inclined members of their crew. It was incredible luck to find somewhere so ideal for seaside research.

“The pH is seven, and looks like there’s not enough of anything that would irritate your gills. A little high in calcium, but functionally, it’s water. Maybe seawater. I wasn’t testing for sodium.”

“So it’s safe! Come on, Hizashi, let’s go!” Oboro pushed himself off the rock, diving with a splash.

Shouta tore his eyes away from his notebook to watch Oboro’s ruffled fins bloom like a cloud in the water, before a strong tail broke through the curtain, kicking to propel him farther and deeper through the crystal sheen.

“Guess that’s my cue.”

With a grin, Hizashi pulled his goggles over his eyes and took off in a run for the water. He leaped off a rock with a “Whoop!” and a clean splash.

He broke the surface to take one last breath of air through his mouth. Hizashi had no beautiful tail with which to tackle the waters, but he had legs, and he used them to kick off a rock and speed after Oboro’s shrinking form, his blond hair tied up in a ponytail and streaming behind him.

Shouta watched them for as long as they remained in view, Oboro’s bioluminescent patterns like a fading underwater lantern. After a few minutes, the water surface settled to the gentle lapping glass clarity of before. For an ocean coastline, it was calm and clear, without froth or harsh waves; they had arrived at a perfect day.

He finished recording the water test results in his notebook, and then he began dumping out the water to put away the supplies. If he really trusted Oboro’s observation on how salty this water was, he’d have to find another source of potable water for the group.

[astroprog]

Clouds drifting across your field of view are the amateur astronomy equivalent of the binocular jumpscare trope

You know when characters in fiction get surprised when they’re looking for an enemy through binoculars or whatever and then they pop up really really close? That’s basically what it feels like when you’re engrossed in observing and you don’t notice weather happening

The technical term for this kind of thing is ‘occultation’ - when a close object moves in front of a further away object. When the moon is new or waxing and the edge (or limb) facing the direction it appears to be traveling in across the sky is in darkness, it can be really cool to watch the stars be extinguished as the moon moves across the sky and snuffs them out. Especially cool is when the moon only grazes a star, and you can see it flickering on and off as the mountains and valleys of the lunar surface pass between the star and us. Stars occulted by the moon at its widest point will appear again on the other side about an hour later.

Stuff disappearing in an eyepiece when you don’t expect it to is terrifying though. Like??? Where did it go?? I had NGC 2392, the Eskimo Nebula, centered in my eyepiece at high power the other night. It was there, and then it just... wasn’t. What’s blocking the light? An alien spacecraft? A giant asteroid heading straight for Earth? If it’s a star, have I just discovered some kind of dyson-sphere-like structure cutting off the light? An impossibly big exoplanet? Has some unknown force caused that region of space to just instantaneously cease to be however many lightyears it is away years ago and the evidence is only just reaching us now???

And then you look up from the eyepiece, and... it’s just clouds.

Crisis averted,, time to head in for the night!

[spaceexp]

NASA’s Exoplanet-Hunting Mission Catches a Natural Comet Outburst in Unprecedented Detail

NASA - Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) logo. Dec. 3, 2019 Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers at the University of Maryland (UMD), in College Park, Maryland, have captured a clear start-to-finish image sequence of an explosive emission of dust, ice and gases during the close approach of comet 46P/Wirtanen in late 2018. This is the most complete and detailed observation to date of the formation and dissipation of a naturally-occurring comet outburst. The team members reported their results in the November 22 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “TESS spends nearly a month at a time imaging one portion of the sky. With no day or night breaks and no atmospheric interference, we have a very uniform, long-duration set of observations,” said Tony Farnham, a research scientist in the UMD Department of Astronomy and the lead author of the research paper. “As comets orbit the Sun, they can pass through TESS’ field of view. Wirtanen was a high priority for us because of its close approach in late 2018, so we decided to use its appearance in the TESS images as a test case to see what we could get out of it. We did so and were very surprised!” “While TESS is a powerhouse for discovering planets orbiting nearby, bright stars, its observing strategy enables so much exciting additional science,” said TESS project scientist Padi Boyd of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Since the TESS data are rapidly made public through NASA’s Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST), it’s exciting to see scientists identifying which data are of interest to them, and then doing all kinds of additional serendipitous science beyond exoplanets.”

Animation above: This animation shows an explosive outburst of dust, ice and gases from comet 46P/Wirtanen that occurred on September 26, 2018 and dissipated over the next 20 days. The images, from NASA’s TESS spacecraft, were taken every three hours during the first three days of the outburst. Animation Credits: Farnham et al./NASA. Normal comet activity is driven by sunlight vaporizing the ices near the surface of the nucleus, and the outflowing gases drag dust off the nucleus to form the coma. However, many comets are known to experience occasional spontaneous outbursts that can significantly, but temporarily increase the comet's activity. It is not currently known what causes outbursts, but they are related to the conditions on the comet's surface. A number of potential trigger mechanisms have been proposed, including a thermal event, in which a heat wave penetrates into a pocket of highly volatile ices, causing the ice to rapidly vaporize and produce an explosion of activity, and a mechanical event, where a cliff collapses, exposing fresh ice to direct sunlight. Thus, studies of the outburst behavior, especially in the early brightening stages that are difficult to capture, can help us understand the physical and thermal properties of the comet. Although Wirtanen came closest to Earth on December 16, 2018, the outburst occurred earlier in its approach, beginning on September 26, 2018. The initial brightening of the outburst occurred in two distinct phases, with an hour-long flash followed by a more gradual second stage that continued to grow brighter for another 8 hours. This second stage was likely caused by the gradual spreading of comet dust from the outburst, which causes the dust cloud to reflect more sunlight overall. After reaching peak brightness, the comet faded gradually over a period of more than two weeks. Because TESS takes detailed, composite images every 30 minutes, the team was able to view each phase in exquisite detail. “With 20 days’ worth of very frequent images, we were able to assess changes in brightness very easily. That’s what TESS was designed for, to perform its primary job as an exoplanet surveyor,” Farnham said. “We can’t predict when comet outbursts will happen. But even if we somehow had the opportunity to schedule these observations, we couldn’t have done any better in terms of timing. The outburst happened mere days after the observations started.” The team has generated a rough estimate of how much material may have been ejected in the outburst, about one million kilograms (2.2 million pounds), which could have left a crater on the comet of around 20 meters (about 65 feet) across. Further analysis of the estimated particle sizes in the dust tail may help improve this estimate. Observing more comets will also help to determine whether multi-stage brightening is rare or commonplace in comet outbursts.

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or Tess. Image Credit: NASA

TESS has also detected for the first time Wirtanen’s dust trail. Unlike a comet’s tail—the spray of gas and fine dust that follows behind a comet, growing as it approaches the sun—a comet’s trail is a field of larger debris that traces the comet’s orbital path as it travels around the sun. Unlike a tail, which changes direction as it is blown by the solar wind, the orientation of the trail stays more or less constant over time. “The trail more closely follows the orbit of the comet, while the tail is offset from it, as it gets pushed around by the sun’s radiation pressure. What’s significant about the trail is that it contains the largest material,” said Michael Kelley, an associate research scientist in the UMD Department of Astronomy and a co-author of the research paper. “Tail dust is very fine, a lot like smoke. But trail dust is much larger—more like sand and pebbles. We think comets lose most of their mass through their dust trails. When the Earth runs into a comet’s dust trail, we get meteor showers.” While the current study describes initial results, Farnham, Kelley and their colleagues look forward to further analyses of Wirtanen, as well as other comets in TESS’ field of view. “We also don’t know what causes natural outbursts and that’s ultimately what we want to find,” Farnham said. “There are at least four other comets in the same area of the sky where TESS made these observations, with a total of about 50 comets expected in the first two years’ worth of TESS data. There’s a lot that can come of these data.” TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission. Related links: The Astrophysical Journal Letters: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab564d UMD Department of Astronomy: https://www.astro.umd.edu/ NASA’s Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST): https://archive.stsci.edu/ Exoplanets: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/ TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite): http://www.nasa.gov/tess Animation (mentioned), Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Lynn Jenner/GSFC/Claire Andreoli/University of Maryland/Matthew Wright. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

[scifigeneration]

NASA's TESS spacecraft is finding hundreds of exoplanets – and is poised to find thousands more

by Daniel Apai and Benjamin Rackham

This artist’s impression shows a view of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system. ESO/M. Kornmesser

Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets – known as exoplanets – may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earth’s. Some may even harbor life. Over 99% of these alien worlds remain undiscovered — but this is about to change.

With NASA’s new exoplanet-hunter space telescope TESS, the all-sky search is on for possibly habitable planets close to our solar system. TESS — orbiting Earth every 13.7 days — and ground-based telescopes are poised to find hundreds of planets over the next few years. This could transform astronomers’ understanding of alien worlds around us and provide targets to scan with next-generation telescopes for signatures of life. In just over a year, TESS has identified more than 1,200 planetary candidates, 29 of which astronomers have already confirmed as planets. Given TESS’s unique ability to simultaneously search tens of thousands of stars for planets, the mission is expected to yield over 10,000 new worlds.

These are exciting times for astronomers and, especially, for those of us exploring exoplanets. We are members of the planet-hunting Project EDEN, which also supports TESS’s work. We use telescopes on the ground and in space to find exoplanets to understand their properties and potential for harboring life.

Undiscovered worlds all around us

Worlds around us await discovery. Take, for example, Proxima Centauri, an unassuming, faint red star, invisible without a telescope. It is one of over a hundred billion or so such stars within our galaxy, unremarkable except for its status as our next-door neighbor. Orbiting Proxima is a fascinating but mysterious world, called Proxmia b, discovered only in 2016.

Scientists know surprisingly little about Proxima b. Astronomers name the first planet discovered in a system “b”. This planet has never been seen with human eyes or by a telescope. But we know it exists due to its gravitational pull on its host star, which makes the star wobble ever so slightly. This slight wobble was found in measurements collected by a large, international group of astronomers from data taken with multiple ground-based telescopes. Proxima b very likely has a rocky composition similar to Earth’s, but higher mass. It receives about the same amount of heat as Earth receives from the Sun.

And that is what makes this planet so exciting: It lies in the “habitable” zone and just might have properties similar to Earth’s, like a surface, liquid water, and — who knows? — maybe even an atmosphere bearing the telltale chemical signs of life.

NASA’s TESS mission launched in April 2018 to hunt for other broadly Earth-sized planets, but with a different method. TESS is looking for rare dimming events that happen when planets pass in front of their host stars, blocking some starlight. These transit events indicate not only the presence of the planets, but also their sizes and orbits.

Finding a new transiting exoplanet is a big deal for astronomers like us because, unlike those found through stellar wobbles, worlds seen transiting can be studied further to determine their densities and atmospheric compositions.

By measuring the depth of the dip in brightness and knowing the size of the star, scientists can determine the size or radius of the planet. NASA Ames

Red dwarf suns

For us, the most exciting exoplanets are the smallest ones, which TESS can detect when they orbit small stars called red dwarfs – stars with masses less than half the mass of our Sun.

Each of these systems is unique. For example, LP 791-18 is a red dwarf star 86 light-years from Earth around which TESS found two worlds. The first is a “super-Earth,” a planet larger than Earth but probably still mostly rocky, and the second is a “mini-Neptune,” a planet smaller than Neptune but gas- and ice-rich. Neither of these planets have counterparts in our solar system.

Among astronomers’ current favorites of the new broadly Earth-sized planets is LHS 3884b, a scorching “hot Earth” that orbits its sun so quickly that on it you could celebrate your birthday every 11 hours.

Artist’s impression of an exoplanet transiting a red dwarf star. ESO/L. Calçada

No Earth-like worlds yet

But how Earth-like are Earth-sized planets? The promise of finding nearby worlds for detailed studies is already paying off. A team of astronomers observed the hot super-Earth LHS 3884b with the Hubble Space Telescope and found the planet to be a horrible vacation spot, without even an atmosphere. It is just a bare rock with temperatures ranging from over 700 C (1300 Fahrenheit) at noon to near absolute zero (-460 Fahrenheit) at midnight.

The TESS mission was initially funded for two years. But the spacecraft is in excellent shape and NASA recently extended the mission through 2022, doubling the time TESS will have to scan nearby, bright stars for transits.

However, finding exoplanets around the coolest stars — those with temperatures less than about 2700 C (4900 F) — will still be a challenge due to their extreme faintness. Since ultracool dwarfs provide our best opportunity to find and study exoplanets with sizes and temperatures similar to Earth’s, other focused planet searches are picking up where TESS leaves off.

Illustration of TESS, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The worlds TESS can’t find

In May 2016, a Belgian-led group announced the discovery of a planetary system around the ultracool dwarf they christened TRAPPIST-1. The discovery of the seven transiting Earth-sized exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system was groundbreaking.

It also demonstrated how small telescopes — relative to the powerful behemoths of our age — can still make transformational discoveries. With patience and persistence, the TRAPPIST telescope scanned nearby faint, red dwarf stars from its high-mountain perch in the Atacama desert for small, telltale dips in their brightnesses. Eventually, it spotted transits in the data for the red dwarf TRAPPIST-1, which — although just 41 light-years away — is too faint for TESS’s four 10-cm (4-inch) diameter lenses. Its Earth-sized worlds would have remained undiscovered had the TRAPPIST team’s larger telescope not found them.

Two projects have upped up the game in the search for exo-Earth candidates around nearby red dwarfs. The SPECULOOS team installed four robotic telescopes – also in the Atacama desert – and one in the Northern Hemisphere. Our Exoearth Discovery and Exploration Network – Project EDEN – uses nine telescopes in Arizona, Italy, Spain and Taiwan to observe red dwarf stars continuously.

The SPECULOOS and EDEN telescopes are much larger than TESS’s small lenses and can find planets around stars too faint for TESS to study, including some of the transiting Earth-sized planets closest to us.

This artist’s concept shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like, based on available data about the planets’ diameters, masses and distances from the host star, as of February 2018. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The decade of new worlds

The next decade is likely to be remembered as the time when we opened our eyes to the incredible diversity of other worlds. TESS is likely to find between 10,000 and 15,000 exoplanet candidates by 2025. By 2030, the European Space Agency’s GAIA and PLATO missions are expected to find another 20,000-35,000 planets. GAIA will look for stellar wobbles introduced by planets, while PLATO will search for planetary transits as TESS does.

However, even among the thousands of planets that will soon be found, the exoplanets closest to our solar system will remain special. Many of these worlds can be studied in great detail – including the search for signs of life. Discoveries of the nearest worlds also represent major steps in humanity’s progress in exploring the universe we live in. After mapping our own planet and then the solar system, we now turn to nearby planetary systems. Perhaps one day Proxima b or another nearby world astronomers have yet to find will be the target for interstellar probes, like Project Starshot, or even crewed starships. But first we’ve got to put these worlds on the map.

Timeline of discoveries of exoplanetary systems within 50 lightyears of the Sun. Credit: Project EDEN/ Daniel Apai and Benjamin Rackham.

About The Authors:

Daniel Apai is an Associate Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona and Benjamin Rackham is a 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This article is republished from our content partners over at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

[waldbrown]

How an Astrophysicist Can Shake Up Design Thinking: Using a Scientist to Argue an Artist’s Perspective

A discussion surrounding William Gaver’s “What Should We Expect from Research through Design?” (2012) is both timely: there are important questions raised around the framing of design research; and timeless: embodied in the effort to expand our conception of research-through-design is an enduring rift between the arts and the hard sciences, to put it bluntly. 

Early on, Gaver hints at a complaint that the diversity of approaches to research through design is seen as a “sign of inadequate standards or a lack of cumulative progress in the field,” arguing that  it is instead a necessary facet for generative work. With a particular focus on the area of human-computer interaction (HCI or CHI), Gaver points out that the world of research through design is seen as unorganized, lacking a documented system of precedent and practice. He quotes the following from a panel on “Quality control: A panel on the critique and criticism of design research”: “Research through design, it is said, 'lacks clear expectations and standards for what constitutes "good" design research', and thus would benefit from 'some actionable metrics for bringing rigor in critique of design research'.” 

The frustrations seem to emerge from a familiarity with the hard sciences and technical sciences. Whereas the humanities tend to embrace an open discussion on research methods, particularly those concerning generative practices, this is not the case with mechanical engineering, for example, where there would be a well-established history of methods and best practices that any aspiring engineer would need to be familiar with, even if their current method diverged from the precedent. Yet in the relatively more emergent area of HCI, where many designers pride themselves in an interdisciplinary approach including computer science, art, media studies, engineering and even the territories of cognitive science, anthropology, and sociology, it seems a difficult task to establish a rigid form of standards. Rather than view this as an obstacle to generative work, Gaver sees it as necessary:

Overall, I suggest that the design research community should be wary of impulses towards convergence and standardisation, and instead take pride in its aptitude for exploring and speculating, particularising and diversifying, and - especially - its ability to manifest the results in the form of new, conceptually rich artefacts.

This reminds me of a not-so-ordinary example from astrophysics. I’ve taken a couple astrophysics seminars, one a general paper-sharing class and the other a semester-long investigation of exoplanet research, and noticed a couple significant differences in the behavior and practice of astrophysics PhD students compared to those I most often come across in my media arts department: (1) Research is lab-based and includes three to four authors, rather than just one, and (2)There is a strong emphasis on empirical approaches to both knowledge and methods. Essentially, astrophysicists are closely building on the recent work of others in the field, rather than the more dramatic, “creative” departures anticipated in media arts.

I was reminded, however, of one prominent astrophysicist who stands out as different. The research of Avi Loeb, chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University, is regarded as provocative (to an annoying degree, as the postdoc leading one of our discussions pointed out). Loeb is one of the lead researchers on the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, a $5+ billion project to send a gram-sized object through interstellar space to Earth’s nearest star (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri, including a fly-by of Earth-like planet Proxima Centauri b after which the object would transmit information back to Earth. A break from the traditional idea of sending larger spacecraft, manned or unmanned, to the star system, this project’s tiny object would be propelled by laser from the Earth’s surface using light sails. Doing so would allow it to reach relativistic speeds 15-20% the speed of light, reaching the Proxima Centauri system in 20-30 years and sending a message back in an additional four years; for most involved in the project, they would witness a communication from the star system within their lifetime. Given the speculative nature of this project, as well as its radical approach to conventional space vessel size and the overall long scale of time involved for the completion of the mission, Loeb and others may be viewed as “wasting time,” a potential critique of any researcher-by-design not conforming to a set of best practices and convention, as many would have them do.

But Loeb’s provocation doesn’t stop there. There is a strong sense of imagination, perhaps even ludos, in the way Loeb routinely challenges new discoveries in the realm of astrophysics. The recent passage through our solar system of interstellar object Ouomuamua, a cigar-shaped object with properties of an asteroid and a comet, raised many questions about the object’s origin. Loeb famously published a paper speculating that the object was some form of light sail from another civilization. 

While Loeb is by no means known as a designer, his playful attitude towards research, which he centers around speculation and the testing of unconventional ideas, seems to be one of the characteristics criticized by those arguing for an adoption of design standards within HCI. Yet many physicists would agree that the energy Loeb’s curiosity injects into the discourse around interstellar travel might be just the sort of thing needed for the next major technical breakthrough.

[sciencespies]

The most common stars in our galaxy may be more habitable than we thought

https://sciencespies.com/space/the-most-common-stars-in-our-galaxy-may-be-more-habitable-than-we-thought/

The most common stars in our galaxy may be more habitable than we thought

Red dwarf stars are the most common kind of star in our neighbourhood, and probably in the Milky Way. Because of that, many of the Earth-like and potentially life-supporting exoplanets we’ve detected are in orbit around red dwarfs. The problem is that red dwarfs can exhibit intense flaring behaviour, much more energetic than our relatively placid Sun.

So what does that mean for the potential of those exoplanets to actually support life?

Most life on Earth, and likely on other worlds, relies on stellar energy to survive. The Sun has been the engine for life on Earth since the first cells reproduced. But sometimes, like all stars, the Sun acts up and emits flares.

Sometimes it emits extremely energetic flares. The powerful magnetic energy in the Sun’s atmosphere becomes unstable, and an enormous amount of energy is released. If it’s released towards Earth, it can cause problems. It can lead to disruptions in radio communications and even blackouts.

But in terms of flaring activity, the Sun is relatively weak compared to some other stars. Some stars, especially red dwarfs, can flare frequently and violently. A team of researchers studied how flaring activity affects the atmosphere and potential for life on Earth-like planets orbiting low-mass stars, including M-type stars, K-type stars, and G-type stars.

Art of a flaring red dwarf star, orbited by an exoplanet. (NASA/ESA/G. Bacon/STScI)

The new study is called “Persistence of flare-driven atmospheric chemistry on rocky habitable zone worlds“. The lead author is Howard Chen, a PhD student at Northwestern University. The paper is published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“Our Sun is more of a gentle giant,” said Allison Youngblood, an astronomer at the University of Colorado at Boulder and co-author of the study.

“It’s older and not as active as younger and smaller stars. Earth also has a strong magnetic field, which deflects the Sun’s damaging winds.”

That helps explain why Earth is positively “rippling with life” as Carl Sagan described our planet. But for planets orbiting low-mass stars like red dwarfs (M-dwarfs) the situation is much different.

We know that solar flares and associated coronal mass ejections can be very damaging to the prospects of life on unprotected exoplanets. The authors write in their introduction that “[s]tellar activity – which includes stellar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and stellar proton events (SPEs) – has a profound influence on a planet’s habitability, primarily via its effect on atmospheric ozone.”

A single flare here and there over time doesn’t have much effect. But many red dwarfs exhibit more frequent and prolonged flaring.

“We compared the atmospheric chemistry of planets experiencing frequent flares with planets experiencing no flares. The long-term atmospheric chemistry is very different,” said Northwestern’s Howard Chen, the study’s first author, in a press release.

“Continuous flares actually drive a planet’s atmospheric composition into a new chemical equilibrium.”

One of the things the team looked at was ozone, and the effect flares have on it. Here on Earth, our ozone layer helps protects us from the Sun’s UV radiation. But extreme flaring activity on red dwarfs can destroy ozone in the atmosphere of planets orbiting close to it.

When ozone levels drop, a planet is less protected from UV radiation coming from its star. Powerful UV radiation can diminish the possibility of life.

In their study, the team used models to help understand flaring and its effects on exoplanet atmospheres. They used flaring data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and long-term exoplanet climate data from other studies. They found some cases where ozone persisted, despite flaring.

“We’ve found that stellar flares might not preclude the existence of life,” added Daniel Horton, the study’s senior author. “In some cases, flaring doesn’t erode all of the atmospheric ozone. Surface life might still have a fighting chance.”

(Chen et al, Nature Astronomy, 2020)

IMAGE: This figure from the study shows global-mean vertical profiles of atmospheric species on a simulated planet around a Sun-like G-type star. From left to right are the mixing ratios for ozone, nitrous oxide, nitric acid, and water vapour.

Planets that can support life, at least potentially, can be in a tough spot. They must be close enough to their stars to prevent their water from freezing, but not too close or they’re too hot. But this dance with proximity can expose them to the powerful flares.

Red dwarfs are smaller and cooler than our Sun, so that means the habitable zone for any planets orbiting them is smaller and much closer to the star than Earth is to the Sun. That not only exposes them to flares but leads to planets being tidally locked to their stars.

The combination of flaring and tidal-locking can be bad for life’s prospects. Earth’s rotation generates its protective magnetosphere, but tidally-locked planets can’t generate one and are largely unprotected from stellar UV radiation.

“We studied planets orbiting within the habitable zones of M and K dwarf stars – the most common stars in the universe,” Horton said.

“Habitable zones around these stars are narrower because the stars are smaller and less powerful than stars like our Sun. On the flip side, M and K dwarf stars are thought to have more frequent flaring activity than our Sun, and their tidally locked planets are unlikely to have magnetic fields helping deflect their stellar winds.”

(Chen et al, 2020)

IMAGE: This figure from the study shows how repeated stellar flaring can alter the atmospheric gases in a simulated Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star.

There’s a more positive side to this study as well. The team found that flaring activity can actually help the search for life.

The flares can make it easier to detect some gases which are biomarkers. In this case, they found energy from flaring can highlight the presence of gases like nitric acid, nitrous dioxide, and nitrous oxide, which can all be indicators of living processes.

(Chen et al, 2020)

IMAGE: This figure from the study shows how repeated stellar flaring can affect the atmospheric chemistry on a modelled Earth-like planet around a K-type star. Note the raised levels of detectable NO, a potential bio-marker.

“Space weather events are typically viewed as a detriment to habitability,” Chen said.

“But our study quantitatively showed that some space weather can actually help us detect signatures of important gases that might signify biological processes.”

But only some. In other cases, their work showed that flaring can destroy potential biosignatures from anoxic life.

“Although we report the 3D effects of stellar flares on oxidizing atmospheres, strong flares could have other unexpected impacts on atmospheres with reducing conditions. For instance, hydrogen oxide species derived from stellar flares could destroy key anoxic biosignatures such as methane, dimethyl sulfide and carbonyl sulfide, thereby suppressing their spectroscopic features,” the authors report.

Another interesting result of this study concerns exoplanet magnetospheres. They find that hyperflares may help reveal the nature and extent of magnetospheres.

“More speculatively, proton events during hyperflares may reveal the existence of planetary-scale magnetic fields by highlighting particular regions of the planet. By identifying nitrogen- or hydrogen oxide-emitting flux fingerprints during magnetic storms and/or auroral precipitation events, one may be able to determine the geometric extent of exoplanetary magnetospheres.”

(Chen et al, 2020)

IMAGE: Hyperflares might help us understand the extent of exoplanet magnetospheres by identifying the extent of nitrogen oxide flux fingerprints.

Other recent research has suggested that exoplanets subjected to flaring, especially around red dwarf stars, are not great locations to search for life. The flaring activity is too detrimental. But this study shows that there’s more complexity to the situation.

Overall it shows that flaring could help us detect biosignatures in some cases. It also shows that while flaring can disrupt exoplanet atmospheres, in many cases they return to normal. It’s also a fact that low-mass stars live much longer than stars like our Sun, meaning there’s more time for life to develop on their planets.

This new work highlights how complicated the search for life is, and how many variables are involved. And it contains at least one surprise. Whereas flaring has been largely considered detrimental to exoplanet habitability, the fact that it may help detect biosignatures means there’s more going on than expected.

This research required cooperation from scientists across many disciplines. It relied on climate scientists, astronomers, observers and theorists, and of course, exoplanet scientists.

“This project was a result of fantastic collective team effort,” said Eric T. Wolf, a planetary scientist at CU Boulder and a co-author of the study.

“Our work highlights the benefits of interdisciplinary efforts when investigating conditions on extrasolar planets.”

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

#Space

[sciencenewser]

NASA Scientists Discover Planet 'Most Similar to Earth'

NASA Scientists Discover Planet 'Most Similar to Earth' found a planet almost a similar size as Earth that circles in its star's livable zone, where fluid water could exist on its surface, another examination said. The nearness of fluid water likewise demonstrates the planet could bolster life. This recently discovered world, Kepler-1649c, is 300 light-years from Earth and circles a star that is around one-fourth the size of our sun. Exciting that out of all the 2,000 or more exoplanets that have been found utilizing perceptions from the Kepler Space Telescope, this world is generally like Earth both in size and evaluated temperature, NASA said. Utilizing reanalyzed information from NASA's Kepler space telescope, a group of researchers has found an Earth-size exoplanet circling in its star's tenable zone—the region around a star where a rough planet could bolster fluid water. Out of all the exoplanets found by Kepler, this inaccessible world—found 300 light-years from Earth—is generally like Earth in size and assessed temperature, as per an examination distributed in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Researchers found this planet, called Kepler-1649c when glancing through old perceptions from Kepler, which the office resigned in 2018.

The Kepler-1649c planet is outside of our close planetary system.

"This fascinating, far off world gives us considerably more noteworthy expectation that a subsequent Earth lies among the stars, holding back to be discovered," said Thomas Zurbuchen, partner head of NASA's science crucial in Washington, D.C. In spite of the fact that NASA said that there are different exoplanets evaluated to be nearer to Earth in size – and others might be nearer to Earth in temperature – there is no other exoplanet that is nearer to Earth in both of these qualities that additionally lies in the tenable zone of its framework. This recently uncovered world is just 1.06 occasions bigger than our own planet. Likewise, the measure of starlight it gets from its host star is 75% of the measure of light Earth gets from our sun – which means the exoplanet's temperature might be like our planet's, too. While past quests with a PC calculation misidentified it, scientists checking on Kepler information investigated the signature and remembered it as a planet. This recently uncovered world is just 1.06 occasions bigger than our own planet. Additionally, the measure of starlight it gets from its host star is 75 percent of the measure of light the Earth gets from our Sun—which means the exoplanet's temperature might be like our planet's too. Yet, in contrast to Earth, it circles a red diminutive person. This kind of star is known for outstanding flare-ups that may make a planet's situation trying for any potential life. "This captivating, removed world gives us significantly more noteworthy expectation that a subsequent Earth lies among the stars, holding back to be discovered," said Thomas Zurbuchen, partner chairman of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

credit- thesun.co.uk "The information assembled by missions like Kepler and our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will keep on yielding astonishing revelations as the science network refines its capacities to search for promising planets quite a long time after year." There is still a lot of that is obscure about Kepler-1649c, including its climate, which could influence the planet's temperature. Current counts of the planet's size have critical safety buffers, as do all qualities in cosmology when examining objects so distant. Rough planets circling red midgets are of specific astrobiological intrigue. Notwithstanding, astrobiologists will require considerably more data about this planet so as to check whether it is promising for life as we probably am aware it. In any case, in light of what is known, Kepler-1649c is particularly captivating for researchers searching for universes with conceivably livable conditions. There are different exoplanets evaluated to be nearer to Earth in size, for example, TRAPPIST-1f and, by certain counts, Teegarden c. Others might be nearer to Earth in temperature, for example, TRAPPIST-1d and TOI 700d. In any case, there is no other exoplanet that is viewed as nearer to Earth in both of these qualities that additionally lies in the tenable zone of its framework. However, in contrast to Earth, it circles a red midget. Despite the fact that none have been seen right now, sort of star is known for excellent flare-ups that may make a planet's domain trying for any potential life. Researchers found this planet when glancing through old perceptions from the Kepler Space Telescope, which the office resigned in 2018. (In spite of the fact that NASA's Kepler strategic in 2018 when it came up short on fuel, researchers are as yet making revelations as they keep on looking at the data that Kepler sent back to Earth.) "The more information we get, the more signs we see highlighting the idea that conceivably livable and Earth-size exoplanets are basic around these sorts of stars," said study lead creator Andrew Vanderburg, an analyst at the University of Texas at Austin. "With red diminutive people wherever around our system, and these little, conceivably livable and rough planets around them, the possibility one of them isn't excessively unique in relation to our Earth looks somewhat more splendid," he said.

The new examination was distributed Wednesday About Most Similar to Earth

Kepler-1649c circles its little red small star so intently that a year on Kepler-1649c is identical to just 19.5 Earth days. "Out of all the mislabeled planets we've recouped, this current one's especially energizing - not on the grounds that it's in the livable zone and Earth-size, but since of how it may collaborate with this neighboring planet," said Andrew Vanderburg, a specialist at the University of Texas at Austin and first creator on the paper. "On the off chance that we hadn't investigated the calculation's work by hand, we would have missed it." Read the full article

[fireinclined]

capella worldbuilding

capella’s closing off

about 47 years before capella’s destruction, the coup on ioavis occurred, which lead to it becoming a condemned planet. at the same time, there was a revolution on capella itself, as the government was nearing the end of what is called the “capellan cycle.” capellans have embraced the idea that no government remains uncorrupted forever, and so every 500-750 years, a revolution will take place where the old government will be torn down and a new one will be put in its place. however, the revolution failed, but was incredibly destructive, and it was this and the events on ioavis that led to capella pulling back all of it’s ships from wherever they were. no one was allowed to leave capella, and no one was allowed to come into it. this had a lot of effects on the rest of the galaxy, considering capella was like. a galactic superpower. the economy of pyrrah collapsed since capella wasn’t trading with them anymore, the situation on ioavis deteriorated more and more…and so on. a lot of people felt that this decision was not only unjust but also a betrayal of capellan values- they eat, breath, and sleep exploration, and to trap them on one planet? it was against everything capella stood for.

the language

the capellan language is just song. the vocabulary and grammar is easy enough to learn but the musical aspect makes it super hard to learn, because if you’re a half step off a note, then you’ve either changed the meaning entirely, or you’re saying with a very different tone that what you intended. because music is tied to phrases, instrumental capellan music can be used to suggest certain phrases or ideas. this could be used to communicate as well in a pinch. instead of speaking, one can whistle a tune and imply a certain phrase or command

what planet capella would be in real life

we humans know capella as kepler-442b! it’s an exoplanet orbiting kepler-442, which is located in the lyra constellation! it’s a k-type main-sequence star, which is actually really good, because they emit less ultra-violet radiation that harms dna and stuff.

the gravity on kepler-442b is 30% stronger than that of earth’s, which jives nicely with how capella has stronger gravity than earth’s. the temperature on kepler-442b is 233K, or −40 °C; −40 °F. which…admittedly that’s very low, even for how cold i wanted capella to be, but…i’ll take what i can get. another thing that irks me is that kepler-442b was discovered/identified as a planet that might be able to sustain life in january of 2015, and the way i write it, cassandra already knows about what humans call capella when she gets there.

ANOTHER thing that doesn’t match up is the distance from earth- in “in the morning” and perhaps even on this blog, i’ve said that capella is 10,000 light years from earth. kepler-442b is only 1,120 light years away. but this is something i can easily change- the important thing about capella’s distance from earth is that it has to be far enough away so that capellans really don’t give a shit about earth, and that it has to be greater than 30 years or so, so that capella is still visible from earth when cassandra gets there.

biological differences from humans

second eyelids- they’re to protect the eyes but also allow the capellan to see through it

four lungs, and larger chest cavity in general. ribs round out in the back a bit

more muscle mass

bones have a smaller radius and are denser

capellans can just barely float in water, since they are heavier than humans without necessarily being much bigger and their bones are denser. 

they’re fucking giants- cassandra is 6′5 and average height for a capellan. tall for a capellan is 7′5.

their blood is almost rusty looking bc there’s more oxygen in it

can grow back lost teeth

very high tolerance to alcohol 

capellans are very auditory based creatures- for example, hearing is to them what smell is to humans, taste wise. so the food has to be noisy when eaten to taste good

capella’s sun was either smaller or farther away (or both) than earth’s sun, so capellan eyes are more sensitive to  the sun’s rays, and cassandra (and all other capellans) have to use special eyedrops as well as wear sunglasses on particularly sunny days to protect their eyes.

capellan art

capellan art is usually 3d stuff- very rarely do capellans just sit and paint on a normal canvas. this is because of their inclinations! many famous capellan artists utilize their inclinations to create art, or create art based off their inclinations. fire inclined capellans will typically use their powers to melt and shape metal, or do something with pottery. ice inclined capellans will typically make huge ice sculptures- or really small and intricate stuff. they can also freeze off bits of rock- like how potholes are made?- and create sculptures that way.

light inclined capellans usually create huge structures or hanging mobiles made of glass that reflects light just so. and…unfortunately, life inclined capellans get the short end of the stick, since their inclination doesn’t really affect the environment the same way the other three do. however, life inclined capellans get a lot of props for being able to create amazing works without using an inclination.

anyway- this is why cassandra does like sculptures from the renaissance, but not really paintings. the only earth paintings cassandra really enjoys are more abstract ones or very colorful ones. cassandra does adore vincent van gogh, both for his subject matter and the colors and techniques in his paintings. but cassandra has a particular fondness for 3d art because that’s simply what art was on capella.

touch

since i just read a post about touch s.tarvation, i got thinking about capellans and touching. and thinking on how physically affectionate cassandra’s relationships with other capellans are, i’ve come to the conclusion that capellans are just very physically affectionate. like it takes less time for them to feel comfortable being physically affectionate with someone new, and platonic cuddling and kisses are super duper common. sharing a bed is something that’s often done by close friends or roommates, especially for comfort.

surviving off world capellans

it’d be silly if every single capellan in the universe was on capella while it was shut off- there are entire societies descended from capellan explorers on other planets, and when they settled on other planets varies. some groups have diverged pretty heavily from capellans born on capella, and some groups had kids with other species, creating new, hybrid species.

so there are groups of capellans or people descended from capellans sprinkled across the galaxy- cassandra runs into a few of these groups on her travels.

capellan merfolk

after my hc that capellans aren’t the best at floating & considering capellan seas are so stormy…capellans had to work with merfolk to survive on the seas. and i don’t know if i’ve mentioned this here or in my fic, but capellans sailed their seas before they sailed the stars.

capellan merfolk have huge 10 foot long tails and webbed hands with razor sharp claws on the end. they have super sharp teeth and tusks- honestly, capellan merfolk are kinda walrus like? and they have to be! to survive such frigid waters. they have a thick layer of fat to keep them warm, and the most beautiful voices. they originally came up with the capellan language, and taught it to capellans.

capellans and merfolk were very close, with a team of merfolk staying near capellan sailing ships to make sure everything went well, and capellans in turn providing merfolk with things that could only be found on the surface. the two species viewed each other as sisters on capella, and for a very long time, they were tight knit and everything was hunky dory

as capellans started to travel the stars, however…merfolk were left behind. without a lot of modification to capellan ships, merfolk couldn’t be brought on board. more and more, capellans turned away from merfolk  and the sea in favor of the stars.

there are plenty of planets that are completely covered in water, and on those missions, merfolk would be brought along to help however. and maybe a bunch of those merfolk stayed, or merfolk just…left capella. capellan merfolk do still exist on these aquatic planet, but have no real interest in going to new capella.

capellan griffins

capellans do have something akin to a griffin, except instead of being half eagle it is half owl, and is actually (ironically) quite small. it’s about the size of (normal earth) dog, and has snowy white feathers and fur to blend into it’s surroundings. they usually live by lakes and eat fish and small game. griffins, like most capellan birds, will move to be close to capellan people when they make their nests and lay eggs- this is in hopes that the fire inclined capellans will help them keep their eggs warm. because of this age old bond between species, there are huge nesting areas in most capellan cities. huge, glass domes with easy to access entrances for griffins and birds flying in, and a beautiful park inside. capellans are free to walk around and visits, so long as they don’t disturb the animals. fire inclined capellans will frequently volunteer at these parks, though the temperature is usually high enough on it’s own inside. griffins do imprint, so that’s something capellans have to be wary of, lest the griffins imprint on them.

volume

how loud you speak is determined at least partly by your air stream, and therefore the more air you can put behind it, the louder you can speak. so capellans, who have four lungs, can speak much, much louder than a human when they needs to.

i’d imagine cassandra already speaks a bit louder than normal, but i’ve always hc’d her as being a naturally loud person. but yes, when cassandra yells, it’s extremely loud and powerful.

the suffix -ndra

-ndra is the orphan’s suffix, but more specifically…its the suffix of the unwanted. only children who are given up at birth, are completely disowned from the family, or choose to cut ALL ties to their families have this suffix.

the reason that the suffix -ndra has a negative connotation to it is because…well, if a kid is born with the suffix -ndra, that means they were given up at birth, and while adults aren’t going to being mean about it- just the opposite, adults regard -ndra kids with a great deal of pity (which boils cassandra’s blood btw)- it’s kids that will tease and bully and make fun of. and this is…sadly frequent.

as they get older, however, the reason why they have the suffix -ndra isn’t so apparent. the other way to receive the suffix -ndra is to be disowned by your family and stripped of your family suffix. you have to REALLY fuck up to be disowned. but anyway- people will start viewing those with the suffix with suspicion. were they born with it, or were they stripped of their family suffix? most capellans with the suffix -ndra will take their partner’s suffix when they get married.

capellan war songs

there is such a thing called capellan war songs, and they work like this- you know you can sing-speak something in capellan only a certain number of ways. it’s a variation or small edits to the same musical phrase. in capellan war songs, what the music that the capellans are singing and the words that they’re saying don’t match up. so the music is what’s really important- they’re using that to suggest a specific phrase, but the words that are coming out of their mouth are inconsequential.

only someone who is fluent in capellan would be able to pick up on this, which is why it works so well when at war with non-capellans. no one wants to learn capellan

singing vs. speaking

capellans, as their language might suggest, adore music. the difference between speaking and singing in capellan in generally found repetition of phrases, and be a lot…smoother than regular speech. there is a particular…emotional component that separates speech from song, and this is generally the biggest factor.   this means that passionate speeches can quickly transform into powerful music if the speaker gets swept up by their emotion, and love confessions are generally considered to be song by default. it should be noted that because capellans are singing anyway, the transition into song isn’t…weird at all to them. it’s completely natural to them.

capellan festivals

at least three holidays celebrating the different inclinations

i say three, because the ice and fire inclinations are largely regarded as two halves of one whole, or at the very least, sister inclinations. they’re celebrated on the same day. 

i feel like this would be on the same level as mother’s day & father’s day? like “it’s time to appreciate your local life/light/fire/ice inclined capellan.”

you just take the time to let them know you appreciate them.

a capellan’s inclination is a huge part of their identity, and the four inclinations are a huge part of capellan culture and society 

a festival in the darkest, coldest part of winter

this is capella at it’s worst, and came about as a way to provide hope and light in the darkest part of the year

it’s four days long, and is a time to come together and share warmth and food and love

note: these are just the barebones. more will be added as i develop them.

not meant to live alone

i don’t think i’ve said this but…capellans aren’t meant to live alone. like humans, capellans are meant to live in groups and rely on each other. cassandra is very much an anomaly with regards to her situation - fire inclined and ice inclined capellans in particular need each other to balance themselves. so the way snowball will damn near give herself hypothermia when she uses her powers without her suit? not supposed to happen. the way cassandra brushes with death every time the center of her inclination shifts? not meant to be that way. their powers are not supposed to put themselves at risk because they are not meant to be living alone.

[shirlleycoyle]

A Weird Chemical on Venus Hints at Possible ‘Presence of Life,’ Study Says

Scientists have detected tantalizing traces of a gas on Venus that may indicate the presence of alien life in its clouds, according to a bombshell study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy.

This discovery of phosphine, a compound produced by some lifeforms on Earth, is “not robust evidence for life” on Venus, emphasized researchers led by Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University.

However, there’s currently no abiotic explanation for the presence of the gas, which means a biotic origin cannot be ruled out at this point.

The presence of phosphine remains “unexplained after exhaustive study” that yielded “no currently known abiotic production routes” in Venus’s atmosphere, clouds, surface, or subsurface, Greaves and her colleagues said in the study.

“Phosphine could originate from unknown photochemistry or geochemistry, or, by analogy with biological production of phosphine on Earth, from the presence of life,” the team added.

Venus is notoriously inhospitable to life on its surface, which is a hellscape of nightmarish proportions. But the environment in the Venusian skies, about 30 to 40 miles above its tortured landscape, is far friendlier, and has been characterized as relatively Earthlike.

For decades, scientists have viewed the complex and mysterious clouds of Venus as a potential habitat for alien life, as well as an excellent testbed for calibrating measurements of exoplanets, which are worlds that orbit other stars.

In keeping with that tradition, Greaves and her colleagues set out to examine Venus in order to establish possible parameters for identifying signs of life, known as biosignatures. The team chose to scan for phosphine, which is produced by both human and microbial activity on Earth, and is thought to be a promising biosignature to search for on exoplanets, according to a 2020 paper in Astrobiology.

The researchers did not anticipate that they would actually sniff out the gas on Venus. Nonetheless, observations with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) and James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii revealed the spectral fingerprints of phosphine, at about 20 parts-per-billion.

“The aim was a benchmark for future developments, but unexpectedly, our initial observations suggested a detectable amount of Venusian phosphine was present,” they report in the study.

Puzzled by the detection, Greaves and her colleagues simulated possible sources of the gas that might arise on Venus without any help from life, including photochemical reactions, weather events like lightning, or outside contributions from meteorites. The team concluded that none of those scenarios adequately explain the presence of the compound on Venus.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that there are alien beasties thriving in the skies above Venus. Venus is woefully unexplored compared to the Moon and Mars, leaving scientists with huge knowledge deficits about its intricate natural processes.

“There are substantial conceptual problems for the idea of life in Venus’s clouds—the environment is extremely dehydrating as well as hyperacidic,” Greaves and her colleagues said.

“[T]o determine whether there is life in the clouds of Venus, substantial modelling and experimentation will be important,” they concluded.

We also might want to think about sending more probes to Venus, especially spacecraft that can scoop up samples of these juicy clouds to return to Earth. Three new missions launched to Mars this summer, including NASA’s life-hunting rover, but Venus may have just as strong a claim to habitability as the red planet.

A Weird Chemical on Venus Hints at Possible ‘Presence of Life,’ Study Says syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[sciencebulletin]

Life might survive, and thrive, in a hydrogen world: study

As new and more powerful telescopes blink on in the next few years, astronomers will be able to aim the megascopes at nearby exoplanets, peering into their atmospheres to decipher their composition and to seek signs of extraterrestrial life. But imagine if, in our search, we did encounter alien organisms but failed to recognize them as actual life. That's a prospect that astronomers like Sara Seager hope to avoid. Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science, Physics, and Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, is looking beyond a "terra-centric" view of life and casting a wider net for what kinds of environments beyond our own might actually be habitable. In a paper published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, she and her colleagues have observed in laboratory studies that microbes can survive and thrive in atmospheres that are dominated by hydrogen—an environment that is vastly different from Earth's nitrogen- and oxygen-rich atmosphere. Hydrogen is a much lighter gas than either nitrogen or oxygen, and an atmosphere rich with hydrogen would extend much farther out from a rocky planet. It could therefore be more easily spotted and studied by powerful telescopes, compared to planets with more compact, Earth-like atmospheres. Seager's results show that simple forms of life might inhabit planets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres, suggesting that once next-generation telescopes such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope begin operation, astronomers might want to search first for hydrogen-dominated exoplanets for signs of life. "There's a diversity of habitable worlds out there, and we have confirmed that Earth-based life can survive in hydrogen-rich atmospheres," Seager says. "We should definitely add those kinds of planets to the menu of options when thinking of life on other worlds, and actually trying to find it." Seager's MIT co-authors on the paper are Jingcheng Huang, Janusz Petkowski, and Mihkel Pajusalu. Evolving atmosphere In the early Earth, billions of years ago, the atmosphere looked quite different from the air we breathe today. The infant planet had yet to host oxygen, and was composed of a soup of gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and a very small fraction of hydrogen. Hydrogen gas lingered in the atmosphere for possibly billions of years, until what's known as the Great Oxidation Event, and the gradual accumulation of oxygen. The small amount of hydrogen that remains today is consumed by certain ancient lines of microorganisms, including methanogens—organisms that live in extreme climates such as deep below ice, or within desert soil, and gobble up hydrogen, along with carbon dioxide, to produce methane. Scientists routinely study the activity of methanogens grown in lab conditions with 80 percent hydrogen. But there are very few studies that explore other microbes' tolerance to hydrogen-rich environments. "We wanted to demonstrate that life survives and can grow in an hydrogen atmosphere," Seager says. A hydrogen headspace The team took to the lab to study the viability of two types of microbes in an environment of 100 percent hydrogen. The organisms they chose were the bacteria Escherichia coli, a simple prokaryote, and yeast, a more complex eukaryote, that had not been studied in hydrogen-dominated environments. Both microbes are standard model organisms that scientists have long studied and characterized, which helped the researchers design their experiment and understand their results. What's more, E.coli and yeast can survive with and without oxygen—a benefit for the researchers, as they could prepare their experiments with either organism in open air before transferring them to a hydrogen-rich environment. In their experiments, they separately grew cultures of yeast and E. coli, then injected the cultures with the microbes into separate bottles, filled with a "broth," or nutrient-rich culture that the microbes could feed off. They then flushed out the oxygen-rich air in the bottles and filled the remaining "headspace" with a certain gas of interest, such as a gas of 100 percent hydrogen. They then placed the bottles in an incubator, where they were gently and continuously shaken to promote mixing between the microbes and nutrients. Every hour, a team member collected samples from each bottle and counted the live microbes. They continued to sample for up to 80 hours. Their results represented a classic growth curve: At the beginning of the trial, the microbes grew quickly in number, feeding off the nutrients and populating the culture. Eventually, the number of microbes leveled off. The population, still thriving, was stable, as new microbes continued to grow, replacing those that died off. Seager acknowledges that biologists do not find the results surprising. After all, hydrogen is an inert gas, and as such is not inherently toxic to organisms. "It's not like we filled the headspace with a poison," Seager says. "But seeing is believing, right? If no one's ever studied them, especially eukaryotes, in a hydrogen-dominated environment, you would want to do the experiment to believe it." She also makes clear that the experiment was not designed to show whether microbes can depend on hydrogen as an energy source. Rather, the point was more to demonstrate that a 100 percent hydrogen atmosphere would not harm or kill certain forms of life. "I don't think it occurred to astronomers that there could be life in a hydrogen environment," says Seager, who hopes the study will encourage cross-talk between astronomers and biologists, particularly as the search for habitable planets, and extraterrestrial life, ramps up. A hydrogen world Astronomers are not quite able to study the atmospheres of small, rocky exoplanets with the tools available today. The few, nearby rocky planets they have examined either lack an atmosphere or may simply be too small to detect with currently available telescopes. And while scientists have hypothesized that planets should harbor hydrogen-rich atmospheres, no working telescope has the resolution to spot them. But if next-generation observatories do pick out such hydrogen-dominated terrestrial worlds, Seager's results show that there is a chance that life could thrive within. As for what a rocky, hydrogen-rich planet would look like, she conjures up a comparison with Earth's highest peak, Mt. Everest. Hikers attempting to hike to the summit run out of air, due to the fact that the density of all atmospheres drop off exponentially with height, and based on the dropping off distance for our nitrogen- and oxygen-dominated atmosphere. If a hiker were climbing Everest in an atmosphere dominated by hydrogen—a gas 14 times lighter than nitrogen—she would be able to climb 14 times higher before running out of air. "It's kind of hard to get your head around, but that light gas just makes the atmosphere more expansive," Seager explains. "And for telescopes, the bigger the atmosphere is compared to the backdrop of a planet's star, the easier it is to detect." If scientists ever get the chance to sample such a hydrogen-rich planet, Seager imagines they might discover a surface that is different, but not unrecognizable from our own. "We're imagining if you drill down into the surface, it probably would have hydrogen-rich minerals rather than what we call oxidized ones, and also oceans, as we think all life needs liquid of some kind, and you could probably still see a blue sky," Seager says. "We haven't thought about the entire ecosystem. But it doesn't necessarily have to be a different world." Provided by: Massachusetts Institute of Technology More information: S. Seager et al. Laboratory studies on the viability of life in H2-dominated exoplanet atmospheres. Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1069-4 Image: New research suggests that next-generation telescopes might look first for hydrogen atmospheres, as hydrogen can be a viable, easily detectable biosignature of life. Credit: NASA/JPL Read the full article

[scienceblogtumbler]

Life might survive, and thrive, in a hydrogen world

As new and more powerful telescopes blink on in the next few years, astronomers will be able to aim the megascopes at nearby exoplanets, peering into their atmospheres to decipher their composition and to seek signs of extraterrestrial life. But imagine if, in our search, we did encounter alien organisms but failed to recognize them as actual life.

That’s a prospect that astronomers like Sara Seager hope to avoid. Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science, Physics, and Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, is looking beyond a “terra-centric” view of life and casting a wider net for what kinds of environments beyond our own might actually be habitable.

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, she and her colleagues have observed in laboratory studies that microbes can survive and thrive in atmospheres that are dominated by hydrogen — an environment that is vastly different from Earth’s nitrogen- and oxygen-rich atmosphere.

Hydrogen is a much lighter gas than either nitrogen or oxygen, and an atmosphere rich with hydrogen would extend much farther out from a rocky planet. It could therefore be more easily spotted and studied by powerful telescopes, compared to planets with more compact, Earth-like atmospheres.

Seager’s results show that simple forms of life might inhabit planets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres, suggesting that once next-generation telescopes such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope begin operation, astronomers might want to search first for hydrogen-dominated exoplanets for signs of life.

“There’s a diversity of habitable worlds out there, and we have confirmed that Earth-based life can survive in hydrogen-rich atmospheres,” Seager says. “We should definitely add those kinds of planets to the menu of options when thinking of life on other worlds, and actually trying to find it.”

Seager’s MIT co-authors on the paper are Jingcheng Huang, Janusz Petkowski, and Mihkel Pajusalu.

Evolving atmosphere

In the early Earth, billions of years ago, the atmosphere looked quite different from the air we breathe today. The infant planet had yet to host oxygen, and was composed of a soup of gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and a very small fraction of hydrogen. Hydrogen gas lingered in the atmosphere for possibly billions of years, until what’s known as the Great Oxidation Event, and the gradual accumulation of oxygen.

The small amount of hydrogen that remains today is consumed by certain ancient lines of microorganisms, including methanogens — organisms that live in extreme climates such as deep below ice, or within desert soil, and gobble up hydrogen, along with carbon dioxide, to produce methane.

Scientists routinely study the activity of methanogens grown in lab conditions with 80 percent hydrogen. But there are very few studies that explore other microbes’ tolerance to hydrogen-rich environments.

“We wanted to demonstrate that life survives and can grow in an hydrogen atmosphere,” Seager says.

A hydrogen headspace

The team took to the lab to study the viability of two types of microbes in an environment of 100 percent hydrogen. The organisms they chose were the bacteria Escherichia coli, a simple prokaryote, and yeast, a more complex eukaryote, that had not been studied in hydrogen-dominated environments.

Both microbes are standard model organisms that scientists have long studied and characterized, which helped the researchers design their experiment and understand their results. What’s more, E.coli and yeast can survive with and without oxygen — a benefit for the researchers, as they could prepare their experiments with either organism in open air before transferring them to a hydrogen-rich environment.

In their experiments, they separately grew cultures of yeast and E. coli, then injected the cultures with the microbes into separate bottles, filled with a “broth,” or nutrient-rich culture that the microbes could feed off. They then flushed out the oxygen-rich air in the bottles and filled the remaining “headspace” with a certain gas of interest, such as a gas of 100 percent hydrogen. They then placed the bottles in an incubator, where they were gently and continuously shaken to promote mixing between the microbes and nutrients.

Every hour, a team member collected samples from each bottle and counted the live microbes. They continued to sample for up to 80 hours. Their results represented a classic growth curve: At the beginning of the trial, the microbes grew quickly in number, feeding off the nutrients and populating the culture. Eventually, the number of microbes leveled off. The population, still thriving, was stable, as new microbes continued to grow, replacing those that died off.

Seager acknowledges that biologists do not find the results surprising. After all, hydrogen is an inert gas, and as such is not inherently toxic to organisms.

“It’s not like we filled the headspace with a poison,” Seager says. “But seeing is believing, right? If no one’s ever studied them, especially eukaryotes, in a hydrogen-dominated environment, you would want to do the experiment to believe it.”

She also makes clear that the experiment was not designed to show whether microbes can depend on hydrogen as an energy source. Rather, the point was more to demonstrate that a 100 percent hydrogen atmosphere would not harm or kill  certain forms of life.

“I don’t think it occurred to astronomers that there could be life in a hydrogen environment,” says Seager, who hopes the study will encourage cross-talk between astronomers and biologists, particularly as the search for habitable planets, and extraterrestrial life, ramps up.

A hydrogen world

Astronomers are not quite able to study the atmospheres of small, rocky exoplanets with the tools available today. The few, nearby rocky planets they have examined either lack an atmosphere or may simply be too small to detect with currently available telescopes. And while scientists have hypothesized that planets should harbor hydrogen-rich atmospheres, no working telescope has the resolution to spot them.

But if next-generation observatories do pick out such hydrogen-dominated terrestrial worlds, Seager’s results show that there is a chance that life could thrive within.

As for what a rocky, hydrogen-rich planet would look like, she conjures up a comparison with Earth’s highest peak, Mt. Everest. Hikers attempting to hike to the summit run out of air, due to the fact that the density of all atmospheres drop off exponentially with height, and based on the dropping off distance for our nitrogen- and oxygen-dominated atmosphere. If a hiker were climbing Everest in an atmosphere dominated by hydrogen — a gas 14 times lighter than nitrogen — she would be able to climb 14 times higher before running out of air.

“It’s kind of hard to get your head around, but that light gas just makes the atmosphere more expansive,” Seager explains. “And for telescopes, the bigger the atmosphere is compared to the backdrop of a planet’s star, the easier it is to detect.”

If scientists ever get the chance to sample such a hydrogen-rich planet, Seager imagines they might discover a surface that is different, but not unrecognizable from our own.

“We’re imagining if you drill down into the surface, it probably would have hydrogen-rich minerals rather than what we call oxidized ones, and also oceans, as we think all life needs liquid of some kind, and you could probably still see a blue sky,” Seager says. “We haven’t thought about the entire ecosystem. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a different world.”

Seed funding was provided the Templeton Foundation, and the research was, in part, funded by the MIT Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant Program.

source https://scienceblog.com/516098/life-might-survive-and-thrive-in-a-hydrogen-world/

[spaceexp]

Lava or Not, Exoplanet 55 Cancri e Likely to have Atmosphere

NASA - Spitzer Space Telescope patch. November 16, 2017

Image above: The super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cancri e, depicted with its star in this artist's concept, likely has an atmosphere thicker than Earth's but with ingredients that could be similar to those of Earth's atmosphere. Image Credits: NASA/JPL. Twice as big as Earth, the super-Earth 55 Cancri e was thought to have lava flows on its surface. The planet is so close to its star, the same side of the planet always faces the star, such that the planet has permanent day and night sides. Based on a 2016 study using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists speculated that lava would flow freely in lakes on the starlit side and become hardened on the face of perpetual darkness. The lava on the dayside would reflect radiation from the star, contributing to the overall observed temperature of the planet. Now, a deeper analysis of the same Spitzer data finds this planet likely has an atmosphere whose ingredients could be similar to those of Earth's atmosphere, but thicker. Lava lakes directly exposed to space without an atmosphere would create local hot spots of high temperatures, so they are not the best explanation for the Spitzer observations, scientists said. "If there is lava on this planet, it would need to cover the entire surface," said Renyu Hu, astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and co-author of a study published in The Astronomical Journal. "But the lava would be hidden from our view by the thick atmosphere." Using an improved model of how energy would flow throughout the planet and radiate back into space, researchers find that the night side of the planet is not as cool as previously thought. The "cold" side is still quite toasty by Earthly standards, with an average of 2,400 to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,300 to 1,400 Celsius), and the hot side averages 4,200 degrees Fahrenheit (2,300 Celsius). The difference between the hot and cold sides would need to be more extreme if there were no atmosphere. "Scientists have been debating whether this planet has an atmosphere like Earth and Venus, or just a rocky core and no atmosphere, like Mercury. The case for an atmosphere is now stronger than ever," Hu said. Researchers say the atmosphere of this mysterious planet could contain nitrogen, water and even oxygen -- molecules found in our atmosphere, too -- but with much higher temperatures throughout. The density of the planet is also similar to Earth, suggesting that it, too, is rocky. The intense heat from the host star would be far too great to support life, however, and could not maintain liquid water.

Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credits: NASA/JPL

Hu developed a method of studying exoplanet atmospheres and surfaces, and had previously only applied it to sizzling, giant gaseous planets called hot Jupiters. Isabel Angelo, first author of the study and a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, worked on the study as part of her internship at JPL and adapted Hu's model to 55 Cancri e. In a seminar, she heard about 55 Cancri e as a potentially carbon-rich planet, so high in temperature and pressure that its interior could contain a large amount of diamond. "It's an exoplanet whose nature is pretty contested, which I thought was exciting," Angelo said. Spitzer observed 55 Cancri e between June 15 and July 15, 2013, using a camera specially designed for viewing infrared light, which is invisible to human eyes. Infrared light is an indicator of heat energy. By comparing changes in brightness Spitzer observed to the energy flow models, researchers realized an atmosphere with volatile materials could best explain the temperatures. There are many open questions about 55 Cancri e, especially: Why has the atmosphere not been stripped away from the planet, given the perilous radiation environment of the star? "Understanding this planet will help us address larger questions about the evolution of rocky planets," Hu said. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://spitzer.caltech.edu https://www.nasa.gov/spitzer Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Elizabeth Landau. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

[dorcasrempel]

Study: Life might survive, and thrive, in a hydrogen world

As new and more powerful telescopes blink on in the next few years, astronomers will be able to aim the megascopes at nearby exoplanets, peering into their atmospheres to decipher their composition and to seek signs of extraterrestrial life. But imagine if, in our search, we did encounter alien organisms but failed to recognize them as actual life.

That’s a prospect that astronomers like Sara Seager hope to avoid. Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science, Physics, and Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, is looking beyond a “terra-centric” view of life and casting a wider net for what kinds of environments beyond our own might actually be habitable.

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, she and her colleagues have observed in laboratory studies that microbes can survive and thrive in atmospheres that are dominated by hydrogen — an environment that is vastly different from Earth’s nitrogen- and oxygen-rich atmosphere.

Hydrogen is a much lighter gas than either nitrogen or oxygen, and an atmosphere rich with hydrogen would extend much farther out from a rocky planet. It could therefore be more easily spotted and studied by powerful telescopes, compared to planets with more compact, Earth-like atmospheres.

Seager’s results show that simple forms of life might inhabit planets with hydrogen-rich atmospheres, suggesting that once next-generation telescopes such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope begin operation, astronomers might want to search first for hydrogen-dominated exoplanets for signs of life.

“There’s a diversity of habitable worlds out there, and we have confirmed that Earth-based life can survive in hydrogen-rich atmospheres,” Seager says. “We should definitely add those kinds of planets to the menu of options when thinking of life on other worlds, and actually trying to find it.”

Seager’s MIT co-authors on the paper are Jingcheng Huang, Janusz Petkowski, and Mihkel Pajusalu.

Evolving atmosphere

In the early Earth, billions of years ago, the atmosphere looked quite different from the air we breathe today. The infant planet had yet to host oxygen, and was composed of a soup of gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and a very small fraction of hydrogen. Hydrogen gas lingered in the atmosphere for possibly billions of years, until what’s known as the Great Oxidation Event, and the gradual accumulation of oxygen.

The small amount of hydrogen that remains today is consumed by certain ancient lines of microorganisms, including methanogens — organisms that live in extreme climates such as deep below ice, or within desert soil, and gobble up hydrogen, along with carbon dioxide, to produce methane.

Scientists routinely study the activity of methanogens grown in lab conditions with 80 percent hydrogen. But there are very few studies that explore other microbes’ tolerance to hydrogen-rich environments.

“We wanted to demonstrate that life survives and can grow in an hydrogen atmosphere,” Seager says.

A hydrogen headspace

The team took to the lab to study the viability of two types of microbes in an environment of 100 percent hydrogen. The organisms they chose were the bacteria Escherichia coli, a simple prokaryote, and yeast, a more complex eukaryote, that had not been studied in hydrogen-dominated environments.

Both microbes are standard model organisms that scientists have long studied and characterized, which helped the researchers design their experiment and understand their results. What’s more, E.coli and yeast can survive with and without oxygen — a benefit for the researchers, as they could prepare their experiments with either organism in open air before transferring them to a hydrogen-rich environment.

In their experiments, they separately grew cultures of yeast and E. coli, then injected the cultures with the microbes into separate bottles, filled with a “broth,” or nutrient-rich culture that the microbes could feed off. They then flushed out the oxygen-rich air in the bottles and filled the remaining “headspace” with a certain gas of interest, such as a gas of 100 percent hydrogen. They then placed the bottles in an incubator, where they were gently and continuously shaken to promote mixing between the microbes and nutrients.

Every hour, a team member collected samples from each bottle and counted the live microbes. They continued to sample for up to 80 hours. Their results represented a classic growth curve: At the beginning of the trial, the microbes grew quickly in number, feeding off the nutrients and populating the culture. Eventually, the number of microbes leveled off. The population, still thriving, was stable, as new microbes continued to grow, replacing those that died off.

Seager acknowledges that biologists do not find the results surprising. After all, hydrogen is an inert gas, and as such is not inherently toxic to organisms.

“It’s not like we filled the headspace with a poison,” Seager says. “But seeing is believing, right? If no one’s ever studied them, especially eukaryotes, in a hydrogen-dominated environment, you would want to do the experiment to believe it.”

She also makes clear that the experiment was not designed to show whether microbes can depend on hydrogen as an energy source. Rather, the point was more to demonstrate that a 100 percent hydrogen atmosphere would not harm or kill  certain forms of life.

“I don’t think it occurred to astronomers that there could be life in a hydrogen environment,” says Seager, who hopes the study will encourage cross-talk between astronomers and biologists, particularly as the search for habitable planets, and extraterrestrial life, ramps up.

A hydrogen world

Astronomers are not quite able to study the atmospheres of small, rocky exoplanets with the tools available today. The few, nearby rocky planets they have examined either lack an atmosphere or may simply be too small to detect with currently available telescopes. And while scientists have hypothesized that planets should harbor hydrogen-rich atmospheres, no working telescope has the resolution to spot them.

But if next-generation observatories do pick out such hydrogen-dominated terrestrial worlds, Seager’s results show that there is a chance that life could thrive within.  

As for what a rocky, hydrogen-rich planet would look like, she conjures up a comparison with Earth’s highest peak, Mt. Everest. Hikers attempting to hike to the summit run out of air, due to the fact that the density of all atmospheres drop off exponentially with height, and based on the dropping off distance for our nitrogen- and oxygen-dominated atmosphere. If a hiker were climbing Everest in an atmosphere dominated by hydrogen — a gas 14 times lighter than nitrogen — she would be able to climb 14 times higher before running out of air.

“It’s kind of hard to get your head around, but that light gas just makes the atmosphere more expansive,” Seager explains. “And for telescopes, the bigger the atmosphere is compared to the backdrop of a planet’s star, the easier it is to detect.”

If scientists ever get the chance to sample such a hydrogen-rich planet, Seager imagines they might discover a surface that is different, but not unrecognizable from our own.

“We’re imagining if you drill down into the surface, it probably would have hydrogen-rich minerals rather than what we call oxidized ones, and also oceans, as we think all life needs liquid of some kind, and you could probably still see a blue sky,” Seager says. “We haven’t thought about the entire ecosystem. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a different world.”

Seed funding was provided the Templeton Foundation, and the research was, in part, funded by the MIT Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant Program.

Study: Life might survive, and thrive, in a hydrogen world syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/