Tag: NASA

Artificial Intelligence and Mars

NASA hasn’t landed humans on Mars yet. But thanks to robotic missions, scientists now know more about the planet’s surface than they did when the movie, The Martian, was released.

Our human knowledge is constantly growing. In many, many directions. Here is a fascinating (well it is to me!) article from The Conversation.

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A decade after the release of ‘The Martian’ and a decade out from the world it envisions, a planetary scientist checks in on real-life Mars exploration

‘The Martian’ protagonist Mark Watney contemplates his ordeal. 20th Century Fox

Ari Koeppel, Dartmouth College

Andy Weir’s bestselling story “The Martian” predicts that by 2035 NASA will have landed humans on Mars three times, perfected return-to-Earth flight systems and collaborated with the China National Space Administration. We are now 10 years past the Hollywood adaptation’s 2015 release and 10 years shy of its fictional timeline. At this midpoint, Mars exploration looks a bit different than how it was portrayed in “The Martian,” with both more discoveries and more controversy.

As a planetary geologist who works with NASA missions to study Mars, I follow exploration science and policy closely. In 2010, the U.S. National Space Policy set goals for human missions to Mars in the 2030s. But in 2017, the White House Space Policy Directive 1 shifted NASA’s focus toward returning first to the Moon under what would become the Artemis program.

Although concepts for crewed missions to Mars have gained popularity, NASA’s actual plans for landing humans on Mars remain fragile. Notably, over the last 10 years, it has been robotic, rather than crewed, missions that have propelled discovery and the human imagination forward.

A diagram showing the steps from lunar missions to Mars missions. The steps in the current scope are labeled 'Human presence on Moon,' 'Practice for Mars Exploration Demo' and 'Demo exploration framework on Mars.' The partial scope step is labeled 'Human presence on Mars.'
NASA’s 2023 Moon to Mars Strategy and Objectives Development document lays out the steps the agency was shooting for at the time, to go first to the Moon, and from there to Mars. NASA

Robotic discoveries

Since 2015, satellites and rovers have reshaped scientists’ understanding of Mars. They have revealed countless insights into how its climate has changed over time.

As Earth’s neighbor, climate shifts on Mars also reflect solar system processes affecting Earth at a time when life was first taking hold. Thus, Mars has become a focal point for investigating the age old questions of “where do we come from?” and “are we alone?”

The Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have driven dozens of miles studying layered rock formations that serve as a record of Mars’ past. By studying sedimentary layers – rock formations stacked like layers of a cake – planetary geologists have pieced together a vivid tale of environmental change that dwarfs what Earth is currently experiencing.

Mars was once a world of erupting volcanoes, glaciers, lakes and flowing rivers – an environment not unlike early Earth. Then its core cooled, its magnetic field faltered and its atmosphere drifted away. The planet’s exposed surface has retained signs of those processes ever since in the form of landscape patterns, sequences of layered sediment and mineral mixtures.

Rock shelves layered on top of each other, shown from above.
Layered sedimentary rocks exposed within the craters of Arabia Terra, Mars, recording ancient surface processes. Photo from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Arabia Terra

One focus of scientific investigation over the last 10 years is particularly relevant to the setting of “The Martian” but fails to receive mention in the story. To reach his best chance of survival, protagonist Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, must cross a vast, dusty and crater-pocked region of Mars known as Arabia Terra.

In 2022 and 2023, I, along with colleagues at Northern Arizona University and Johns Hopkins University, published detailed analyses of the layered materials there using imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey satellites.

By using infrared imagery and measuring the dimensions of surface features, we linked multiple layered deposits to the same episodes of formation and learned more about the widespread crumbling nature of the terrain seen there today. Because water tends to cement rock tightly together, that loose material indicates that around 3.5 billion years ago, that area had a drying climate.

To make the discussions about this area easier, we even worked with the International Astronomical Union to name a few previously unnamed craters that were mentioned in the story. For example, one that Watney would have driven right by is now named Kozova Crater, after a town in Ukraine.

More to explore

Despite rapid advances in Mars science, many unknowns remain. Scientists still aren’t sure of the precise ages, atmospheric conditions and possible signatures of life associated with each of the different rock types observed on the surface.

For instance, the Perseverance rover recently drilled into and analyzed a unique set of rocks hosting organic – that is, carbon-based – compounds. Organic compounds serve as the building blocks of life, but more detailed analysis is required to determine whether these specific rocks once hosted microbial life.

The in-development Mars Sample Return mission aims to address these basic outstanding questions by delivering the first-ever unaltered fragments of another world to Earth. The Perseverance rover is already caching rock and soil samples, including ones hosting organic compounds, in sealed tubes. A future lander will then need to pick up and launch the caches back to Earth.

Sampling Mars rocks could tell scientists more about the red planet’s past, and whether it could have hosted life.

Once home, researchers can examine these materials with instruments orders of magnitude more sensitive than anything that could be flown on a spacecraft. Scientists stand to learn far more about the habitability, geologic history and presence of any signs of life on Mars through the sample return campaign than by sending humans to the surface.

This perspective is why NASA, the European Space Agency and others have invested some US$30 billion in robotic Mars exploration since the 1960s. The payoff has been staggering: That work has triggered rapid technological advances in robotics, telecommunications and materials science. For example, Mars mission technology has led to better sutures for heart surgery and cars that can drive themselves.

It has also bolstered the status of NASA and the U.S. as bastions of modern exploration and technology; and it has inspired millions of students to take an interest in scientific fields.

The Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter on the Martian surface, with the rover's camera moving to look down at Ingenuity.
A selfie from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover with the Ingenuity helicopter, taken with the rover’s extendable arm on April 6, 2021. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Calling the red planet home?

Colonizing Mars has a seductive appeal. It’s hard not to cheer for the indomitable human spirit while watching Watney battle dust storms, oxygen shortages and food scarcity over 140 million miles from rescue.

Much of the momentum toward colonizing Mars is now tied to SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk, whose stated mission to make humanity a “multi-planetary species” has become a sort of rallying cry. But while Mars colonization is romantic on paper, it is extremely difficult to actually carry out, and many critics have questioned the viability of a Mars habitation as a refuge far from Earth.

Now, with NASA potentially facing a nearly 50% reduction to its science budget, the U.S. risks dissolving its planetary science and robotic operations portfolio altogether, including sample return.

Nonetheless, President Donald Trump and Musk have pushed for human space exploration to somehow continue to progress, despite those proposed cuts – effectively sidelining the robotic, science-driven programs that have underpinned all of Mars exploration to date.

Yet, it is these programs that have yielded humanity’s richest insights into the red planet and given both scientists and storytellers like Andy Weir the foundation to imagine what it must be like to stand on Mars’ surface at all.

Ari Koeppel, Postdoctoral Scientist in Earth and Planetary Science, Dartmouth College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Nothing to add from yours truly except to say that this quote is highly relevant: “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine

(And this was the result of me looking online for quotes and coming across 50 quotes from USA Today.)

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Thirty-Seven

Just a single image today!

That of 50 years ago.

In other words when Apollo 8 was in Lunar Orbit and William Anders, who died on June 7th, aged 90, captured Earth-rise.

This iconic picture shows Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon.

Image credit: NASA

What a photograph!

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Thirty-Four

A change from our dear dogs.

I really hope you enjoy these as much as we have!

There is quite a long introduction but it helps enormously in explaining the background to the photographs.

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This image is released as part of the Early Release Observations from ESA’s Euclid space mission. All data from these initial observations are made public on 23 May 2024 – including a handful of unprecedented new views of the nearby Universe.

The Dorado Group of galaxies is one of the richest galaxy groups in the southern hemisphere. Here, Euclid captures signs of galaxies evolving and merging ‘in action’, with beautiful tidal tails and shells visible as a result of ongoing interactions. As Dorado is a lot younger than other clusters (like Fornax), several of its constituent galaxies are still forming stars and remain in the stage of interacting with one another, while others show signs of having merged relatively recently. In size, it sits between larger galaxy clusters and smaller galaxy groups, making it a useful and fascinating object to study with Euclid.

This dataset is enabling scientists to study how galaxies evolve and collide over time in order to improve our models of cosmic history and understand how galaxies form within halos of dark matter, with this new image being a true testament to Euclid’s immense versatility. A wide array of galaxies is visible here, from very bright to very faint. Thanks to Euclid’s unique combination of large field-of-view and high spatial resolution, for the first time we can use the same instrument and observations to deeply study tiny (small objects the size of star clusters), wider (the central parts of a galaxy) and extended (tidal merger tails) features over a large part of the sky.

Scientists are also using Euclid observations of the Dorado Group to answer questions that previously could only be explored using painstakingly small snippets of data. This includes compiling a full list of the individual clusters of stars (globular clusters) around the galaxies seen here. Once we know where these clusters are, we can use them to trace how the galaxies formed and study their history and contents. Scientists will also use these data to hunt for new dwarf galaxies around the Group, as it did previously with the Perseus cluster.

The Dorado Group lies 62 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado.

All images are: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi

Composite image of five astronomical views, three at the top, two at the bottom. All are dotted with stars and galaxies against a black background. Striking features are three bright glowing structures in the first image. The second image has an orange veil-like structure spanning across. In the third we see a stunning spiral galaxy with many arms. The fourth image features light from galaxies lying behind a bright cluster distorted into arcs. And the fifth image shows a variety of galaxies in all shapes and sizes

An elongated bright cloudy ellipse, tilted at a 45-degree angle in front a black background dotted with small white stars and galaxies. Above the ellipse floats a smaller, cloudy ellipsoid.

A dark orange filamentary structure seems to enclose stars. Centrally, three bright star-forming regions shine brightly through the orange veil in a traffic-light like formation.

The image shows hundreds of stars, some brighter than others. The stars seem to light up their cloud-like surroundings in purple. A darker structure spans the image in an arch from upper left to bottom right. The bottom of this arch runs into dense clouds forming the darkest part of the image.

This breathtaking image features Messier 78 (the central and brightest region), a vibrant nursery of star formation enveloped in a shroud of interstellar dust. This image is unprecedented – it is the first shot of this young star-forming region at this width and depth.

Today, (May 23rd, 2024) ESA’s Euclid space mission releases five unprecedented new views of the Universe. The never-before-seen images demonstrate Euclid’s ability to unravel the secrets of the cosmos and enable scientists to hunt for rogue planets, use lensed galaxies to study mysterious matter, and explore the evolution of the Universe.

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Fabulous. It is an example of just how clever the science is getting!

I can only look at these images in awe. For example, Messier 78 is part of the Orion constellation, has a radius of five light-years, and is only 1,600 light-years from Planet Earth. (Using the figure from below of the distance of a single light-year, that puts Messier 78 as 1,600 times 6 trillion miles from our planet or 9,600 trillion miles.)

And in case you forgot it, one light year is:

The light-year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the total distance that a beam of light, moving in a straight line, travels in one year. To obtain an idea of the size of a light-year, take the circumference of the earth (24,900 miles), lay it out in a straight line, multiply the length of the line by 7.5 (the corresponding distance is one light-second), then place 31.6 million similar lines end to end. The resulting distance is almost 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles!

The expansion of the Universe

I am reproducing a recent article published by The Conversation.

It is a reflection of the latest research undertaken by NASA, it is beyond fascinating!

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The universe is expanding faster than theory predicts – physicists are searching for new ideas that might explain the mismatch

The James Webb Space Telescope’s deep field image shows a universe full of sparkling galaxies. NASA/STScI

Ryan Keeley, University of California, Merced

Astronomers have known for decades that the universe is expanding. When they use telescopes to observe faraway galaxies, they see that these galaxies are moving away from Earth.

To astronomers, the wavelength of light a galaxy emits is longer the faster the galaxy is moving away from us. The farther away the galaxy is, the more its light has shifted toward the longer wavelengths on the red side of the spectrum – so the higher the “redshift.”

Because the speed of light is finite, fast, but not infinitely fast, seeing something far away means we’re looking at the thing how it looked in the past. With distant, high-redshift galaxies, we’re seeing the galaxy when the universe was in a younger state. So “high redshift” corresponds to the early times in the universe, and “low redshift” corresponds to the late times in the universe.

But as astronomers have studied these distances, they’ve learned that the universe is not just expanding – its rate of expansion is accelerating. And that expansion rate is even faster than the leading theory predicts it should be, leaving cosmologists like me puzzled and looking for new explanations.

Dark energy and a cosmological constant

Scientists call the source of this acceleration dark energy. We’re not quite sure what drives dark energy or how it works, but we think its behavior could be explained by a cosmological constant, which is a property of spacetime that contributes to the expansion of the universe.

Albert Einstein originally came up with this constant – he marked it with a lambda in his theory of general relativity. With a cosmological constant, as the universe expands, the energy density of the cosmological constant stays the same.

Imagine a box full of particles. If the volume of the box increases, the density of particles would decrease as they spread out to take up all the space in the box. Now imagine the same box, but as the volume increases, the density of the particles stays the same.

It doesn’t seem intuitive, right? That the energy density of the cosmological constant does not decrease as the universe expands is, of course, very weird, but this property helps explain the accelerating universe.

A standard model of cosmology

Right now, the leading theory, or standard model, of cosmology is called “Lambda CDM.” Lambda denotes the cosmological constant describing dark energy, and CDM stands for cold dark matter. This model describes both the acceleration of the universe in its late stages as well as the expansion rate in its early days.

Specifically, the Lambda CDM explains observations of the cosmic microwave background, which is the afterglow of microwave radiation from when the universe was in a “hot, dense state” about 300,000 years after the Big Bang. Observations using the Planck satellite, which measures the cosmic microwave background, led scientists to create the Lambda CDM model.

Fitting the Lambda CDM model to the cosmic microwave background allows physicists to predict the value of the Hubble constant, which isn’t actually a constant but a measurement describing the universe’s current expansion rate.

But the Lambda CDM model isn’t perfect. The expansion rate scientists have calculated by measuring distances to galaxies, and the expansion rate as described in Lambda CDM using observations of the cosmic microwave background, don’t line up. Astrophysicists call that disagreement the Hubble tension.

An illustration showing the progression of the Universe's expansion after the Big Bang. The Universe is depicted as a cylindrical funnel with labels along the bottom showing the first stars, the development of planets, and now the dark energy acceleration
The universe is expanding faster than predicted by popular models in cosmology. NASA

The Hubble tension

Over the past few years, I’ve been researching ways to explain this Hubble tension. The tension may be indicating that the Lambda CDM model is incomplete and physicists should modify their model, or it could indicate that it’s time for researchers to come up with new ideas about how the universe works. And new ideas are always the most exciting things for a physicist.

One way to explain the Hubble tension is to modify the Lambda CDM model by changing the expansion rate at low redshift, at late times in the universe. Modifying the model like this can help physicists predict what sort of physical phenomena might be causing the Hubble tension.

For instance, maybe dark energy is not a cosmological constant but instead the result of gravity working in new ways. If this is the case, dark energy would evolve as the universe expands – and the cosmic microwave background, which shows what the universe looked like only a few years after its creation, would have a different prediction for the Hubble constant.

But, my team’s latest research has found that physicists can’t explain the Hubble tension just by changing the expansion rate in the late universe – this whole class of solutions falls short.

Developing new models

To study what types of solutions could explain the Hubble tension, we developed statistical tools that enabled us to test the viability of the entire class of models that change the expansion rate in the late universe. These statistical tools are very flexible, and we used them to match or mimic different models that could potentially fit observations of the universe’s expansion rate and might offer a solution to the Hubble tension.

The models we tested include evolving dark energy models, where dark energy acts differently at different times in the universe. We also tested interacting dark energy-dark matter models, where dark energy interacts with dark matter, and modified gravity models, where gravity acts differently at different times in the universe.

But none of these could fully explain the Hubble tension. These results suggest that physicists should study the early universe to understand the source of the tension.

Ryan Keeley, Postdoctoral Scholar in Physics, University of California, Merced

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Ryan Keeley explains it above. Hopefully most of you who read this understand the physics involved. Ryan has a website here.

As I said at the start it is beyond fascinating! In the truest sense, out of this world!

OSIRIS-REx report

I just find this incredible!

Firstly, I am simply going to post three YouTube videos of this amazing feat by NASA.

The first by Associated Press at less than two minutes:

And the next two from NASA with the second at just over an hour long:

and the third at over three hours long:

Then I am going to republish, hopefully with permission, an article from Nature that further explains what has just happened:

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Special delivery! Biggest-ever haul of asteroid dust and rock returns to Earth

Samples collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission excite scientists with their potential to reveal secrets of the Solar System.

The OSIRIS-REx sample capsule, which contains pieces of the asteroid Bennu, landed safely in the Utah desert on 24 September. Credit: Keegan Barber/NASA via Getty

Dugway Proving Ground, Utah

A saucer-shaped capsule parachuted down gently in the Utah desert today, after a years-long journey through space. Its cargo is a precious collection of rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu — the first time NASA has ever brought pieces of this type of celestial object back to Earth.

Over the coming days, NASA will fly the bits of Bennu to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. There, curators will carefully disassemble the container and begin analysing the chemistry and mineralogy of the pristine samples — which might hold clues to the origins of the Solar System.

“I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve who is just too excited to go to sleep,” says Michelle Thompson, a planetary scientist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and a member of the ‘quick look’ team who will have the first chance to study the rocks.

Space hoover

The material comes from the US$1.2-billion OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) mission, which launched in 2016 and arrived at Bennu in 2018. It spent nearly two years studying the dark-coloured, diamond-shaped asteroid before extending its robotic arm to the rocky surface, blasting it with a puff of gas and collecting the dust and rocks it kicked up. That ‘fist bump’ hoovered up so much material that pieces of rock got jammed in the collection mechanism, allowing some of the smaller pebbles to escape. Watching some of those samples get away was “heart breaking”, says Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who was the first principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Still, the spacecraft managed to collect around 250 grams of rocks and dirt — a large cupful — including several chunks that are at least one centimetre long. It is by far the largest amount of material ever brought back from an asteroid. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had previously collected less than one milligram from the asteroid Itokawa in 2005, and 5.4 grams from the asteroid Ryugu in 2019.

Bringing planetary samples back to Earth allows researchers to use cutting-edge laboratory techniques to study what the rocks are made of. The NASA curation team planned to put the Bennu samples into an atmosphere of pure nitrogen soon after the capsule touched down, to reduce the potential for contamination. That will enable scientists to study the asteroid’s geology and chemistry, preserved all the way back to the formation of the Solar System, more than 4.5 billion years ago. The pristine material hasn’t been altered by passing through Earth’s atmosphere, as happens with meteorites. “The thing that will really be different about this sample is we’ll have that chain of custody of keeping it protected from Earth’s atmosphere,” says Nicole Lunning, the mission’s lead sample curator at the Johnson Space Center.

Precious cargo

Bennu is a carbon-rich asteroid, so the samples might resemble carbon-rich meteorites that have fallen to Earth, Thompson says. The bits collected by OSIRIS-REx probably contain organic compounds — carbon-based molecules found in many meteorites that are the building blocks of many exciting types of chemistry, including those conducive to life. “What I find most fascinating are the nucleobases, the components of the genetic code that make up all life from DNA and RNA,” says Daniel Glavin, the senior scientist for sample return at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. These compounds have been found in meteorites before, but those rocks have not been as pristine as the Bennu samples are expected to be. “We can trust the results, because this stuff is clean,” he says.

NASA curators will work their way through unpacking and studying the dust and pebbles inside OSIRIS-REx’s storage container in the coming weeks. Using nitrogen-filled gloveboxes, technicians will analyse the samples with scanners and other instruments to discern how many rock types were collected, and they will record the samples’ colour, volume and porosity.

Mission specialists prepare the OSIRIS-REx sample capsule for transport to a clean room after its landing in the Utah desert on 24 September.Credit: Keegan Barber/NASA via Getty

The curators will collect up to 100 milligrams for the quick-look team to analyse over the first 72 hours. That initial sample will probably be made up of fine-grained material obtained from the outermost parts of the sample capsule, Thompson says. After that, the team will get a chance to study grains that were picked up by 24 stainless-steel contact pads on the outside of the sample container — which were the first things to actually come into contact with Bennu. It will probably be several weeks before the curators open the heart of the sample container and begin extracting the bulk of the material inside.

Early experiments could include looking at how material that was on the surface of Bennu compares with what came from deeper inside the asteroid, Thompson says. OSIRIS-REx’s robotic arm might have plunged as deep as 40 centimetres under Bennu’s rubbly surface when executing its fist bump.

Work interrupted?

NASA has scheduled a press conference on 11 October to unveil the first scientific results. But its work on the mission could be interrupted if the US government shuts down on 1 October. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have been battling over priorities for funding the federal government in 2024.

After OSIRIS-REx fist-bumped the asteroid Bennu in 2020, it pulled the collected samples into the spacecraft (left) and stowed them inside its sample-return capsule (right).Credit: NASA/Goddard/Univ. Arizona/Lockheed Martin

If the situation remains in a stalemate by the time the US fiscal year ends on 30 September, then federal agencies, including NASA, might close until an agreement can be reached. If that were to happen while the Bennu sample is at NASA, then “certain steps leading to its highly anticipated analysis will possibly be delayed, but the sample will remain protected and safe”, says Lori Glaze, head of NASA’s planetary sciences division. “The sample waited for more than 4 billion years for humans to study it, and if it takes us a little longer, I think we’ll be okay.”

At least 70% of the Bennu material will be saved for scientists outside NASA and for future generations to study. Furthermore, 4% of the sample will go to the Canadian Space Agency, which helped to build a laser instrument aboard OSIRIS-REx, and 0.5% will go to JAXA in exchange for samples of Ryugu, so that researchers can compare the two asteroids.

Meanwhile, the rest of the OSIRIS spacecraft continues to fly through space after dropping off its sample-return capsule. It is headed to study Apophis, an asteroid with a different, ‘stony’, chemical composition that will whizz dramatically close past Earth in 2029.

Copyright © 2023, Springer Nature Limited

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There we go, my credit to an incredible feat of exploration that, hopefully, will lead to some interesting results over the next few weeks.

The Southern Ring Nebula

Just had to share this incredible vista with you!

The James Webb Space Telescope is amazing. Wikipedia have a long article on the telescope from which one reads (in part):

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope specifically designed to conduct infrared astronomy. Its high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. This enables investigations across many fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as observation of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.

But I want to share with you this video, please watch it now it is just a minute long:

Time to forget about our earthly challenges for just a short time.

And for those that want more here is the home page of the Webb Telescope.

The James Webb telescope

Just astounding!

I was looking for something else on YouTube and came across this 8:56 video of what the James Webb has seen.

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Every Stunning Image Captured By James Webb Space Telescope So Far

21 Jul 2023

The James Webb Space Telescope has completed its first year of science operations. In its first year, the $10-billion infrared space observatory challenged our understanding of the cosmos and showed the universe in a way no other telescope in the past could. In this video, you will find every James Webb Space Telescope image released so far: From the mesmerizing images of the planets of the solar system to the gigantic galaxies seen at the edge of time.

Sunday Discovery Series: https://bit.ly/369kG4p

COSMOS in a Minute Series: https://bit.ly/470VLL8

Music 1: Ambient Piano by LukePN

Music 2: Interstellar by Stereonuts

Created by: Rishabh Nakra

Images: NASA/ESA/JWST

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Not everyone’s cup of tea but for those that cast their eyes to the stars this was astounding!

Why is intelligent life so rare?

Maybe it is because of a ‘Great Filter‘.

Like so many others I read many items online. One of the websites that I follow is the EarthSky site because for a long time I have been interested in space.

So when I saw an article on why intelligent life is so rare in our Milky Way I read it fully. And hoped it would be of interest to others.

Here it is:

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What is the Great Filter, and can we survive it?

Posted by

Kelly Kizer Whitt and Deborah Byrd

November 17, 2022

This graphic depicts intelligent civilizations as stars. The vertical lines represent Great Filters that civilizations do or don’t survive. This graphic depicts Earth’s human population (the yellow “star”) approaching its own Great Filter. How would we surpass it, and keep going? Image via NASA/ arXiv.

What is the Great Filter?

Is intelligent life common, or rare in our Milky Way galaxy? If it’s common, why haven’t we encountered it? While discussing UFOs on a walk to lunch in the year 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi is famously said to have asked, “But where is everybody?” Scientists today call that riddle Fermi’s Paradox. Now a new paper by NASA scientists explores one possible answer to the paradox. The answer may be what’s called the Great Filter.

Economist Robin Hanson first proposed the Great Filter, in the late 1990s. It’s the idea of that – even if life forms abundantly in our Milky Way galaxy – each extraterrestrial civilization ultimately faces some barrier to its own survival. The barrier might come from without (for example, an asteroid striking a planet, and wiping out all life forms). Or it might come from within (for example, all-out nuclear war).

Hanson proposed that a Great Filter might be at work within our Milky Way galaxy. He argued – from what we can see here on Earth – life expands to fill every niche. And so, he argued, we should see signs of intelligent life beyond Earth in nearby star systems, perhaps even in our solar system. But we don’t see this.

Is humanity facing a Great Filter?

The authors of the new paper take Hanson’s idea further. They explore the idea that humanity may now be facing a Great Filter. The authors wrote:

We postulate that an existential disaster may lay in wait as our society advances exponentially towards space exploration, acting as the Great Filter: a phenomenon that wipes out civilizations before they can encounter each other … In this article, we propose several possible scenarios, including anthropogenic and natural hazards, both of which can be prevented with reforms in individual, institutional and intrinsic behaviors. We also take into account multiple calamity candidates: nuclear warfare, pathogens and pandemics, artificial intelligence, meteorite impacts, and climate change. 

And they offer solutions, beginning with, as they say:

… a necessary period of introspection, followed by appropriate refinements to properly approach our predicament, and addressing the challenges and methods in which we may be able to mitigate risk to mankind and the nearly 9 million other species on Earth.

In a sense, the authors of the new paper – including lead author Jonathan H. Jiang of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California – are engaging in a “necessary period of introspection” by the act of writing their paper.

And, with their paper, they’re laying out the challenges we’re facing and methods of addressing them.

We’ve already survived some ‘filters’

The scientists point to life’s resilience. Life on Earth has already survived a number of filters in the form of mass extinction events. The Permian-Triassic extinction – aka the Great Dying – occurred 250 million years ago and nearly ended all life on the planet. This extinction event wiped out about 96% of marine life and 70% of land species. The exact cause of the Great Dying is still a matter of study, but some scientists have said it was a combination of warming temperatures and decreasing oxygen.

But these previous filters, or extinction events, have been natural, arising from the evolution of our planet and solar system, including volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts. 

A Great Filter of our own making

But now, clearly, humanity may be facing a Great Filter of our own making, and one that other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy have faced … and failed to withstand. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the technological advancements humans have achieved might ultimately lead to our undoing. Perhaps that’s nature’s way. As the new paper said:

It seems as though nearly every great discovery or invention, while pushing back the borders of our technological ignorance, is all too quickly and easily turned to destructive ends. Examples such as splitting the atom, biomedical innovations and resource extraction and consumption come to mind with disconcerting swiftness. Still, some have suggested artificial intelligence (AI) as yet another factor, which, pending substantial technical hurdles, may yet have its chance to prove friend or foe.

Here’s a look at some of the issues that might compose Earth’s Great Filter.

Unchecked population growth

One of the factors Earth faces, according to the paper, is unchecked population growth. Earth just passed a milestone on November 15, 2022, when it reached 8 billion human inhabitants. The paper said with our current population figures, Earth has experienced:

… an exponential rise from about 1.6 billion [people] at the start of the 20th century.

Technological advancements in farming, energy production and distribution have made such a large population possible on Earth. But, as the paper said, these advancements cannot:

… indefinitely offset the multifaceted stresses imposed by an ever-escalating population.

When will Earth’s human population reach its peak size? Some projections report that education in developing nations might allow Earth’s population to peak at 10 billion in the 2060s. But, of course, no one really knows.

Nuclear war

While warfare has long been a factor of life on Earth, only in the past century has humanity had a weapon that could destroy all nations, not just those participating in a nuclear war. The scientists said the greater the number of democracies in the world, the better our chances for avoiding nuclear war. The scientist also saw other encouraging signs, including:

Peace agreements in the historically troubled Middle East, a vast reduction in nuclear warheads since the height of the Cold War and a wide coalition of nations rallying their support for the besieged in Eastern Europe.

Pathogens and pandemics

The threat of illness and pandemics continues to grow simply because our world is so interconnected. Spreading diseases have a much easier time in our global society. But on the positive side, advancements in medicine have also given us an edge. The scientists said that having current and reliable data is crucial:

… in predicting how future pandemics will spread, how deadly they will be and how quickly and effectively we will be able to leverage our knowledge of the life sciences to counter this manifestation of the Great Filter.

Artificial intelligence

While true artificial intelligence as a separate sentient being is not yet reality, the authors of the paper urge a proactive plan to peacefully share Earth. They project that computer sophistication will one day rival that of the human mind. The scientists said:

As for whether AI would be benign or otherwise, self-imposing a Great Filter of our own invention, that will depend on the evolving nature and disposition of Earth’s first high-tech species.

Asteroid and comet impacts

Here’s an extinction event from the past that could still spell our doom in the future. While large impacts are exceedingly rare, there is, as the scientists said:

… a non-zero percentage [of asteroids or comets] which are large enough to survive passage through the atmosphere and, impacting the surface, cause catastrophic destruction to our sensitive biosphere.

The odds of a mass extinction level event in the coming years is vanishingly small. But, over time periods extending into the very distant future, the odds increase toward 100%. Meanwhile, with projects such as the DART mission, and given enough lead time, humanity has a way of defending itself.

Climate change

Climate change has become one of the most studied threats to life on Earth. Because the threats from climate change happen on a slower time scale than, say, the time it takes to launch a nuclear weapon, the efforts to curb these effects have not been as rapid as they could have been. The scientists said:

The major impediment to taking more decisive actions, however, are the challenges imposed by transitioning to non-carbon-based energy sources such as solar, wind, nuclear power. Here again, rapidly advancing technologies in areas such as modularized nuclear power plants and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) are among the best hopes for avoiding slow-motion ensnarement by this lulling but lethal Great Filter.

Avoiding the Great Filter

So you see there’s not just one possible Great Filter for Earth, but many. Any one of them could be our downfall. These scientists are suggesting something that sounds simple on its face, but is (apparently) hard to do. That is, in order to avoid the Great Filter, humans must work together and recognize the big picture. As the paper said:

History has shown that intraspecies competition and, more importantly, collaboration, has led us toward the highest peaks of invention. And yet, we prolong notions that seem to be the antithesis of long-term sustainable growth. Racism, genocide, inequity, sabotage … the list sprawls.

Meanwhile, we continue to look outward, peering at the dark depths between the stars, hoping for a sign that we aren’t alone in the universe. Ultimately, our quest to find life beyond Earth is part of trying to understand life on our planet and where we fit in. As Carl Sagan said:

In the deepest sense, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.

Bottom line: Scientists say the reason we haven’t found intelligent civilizations in the galaxy is that they may not have survived the Great Filter. And they say we may be facing down our own Great Filter.

Source: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2210/2210.10582.pdf

ooOOoo

We are a funny bunch! As was said just a couple of paragraphs ago we humans must work together and recognise the big picture. But we do not!

Why do we not do that?

I wish I knew the answer to that conundrum! Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed the article.

Far, far back in time.

Nasa’s James Webb telescope is awesome beyond words.

The recent launch of this telescope, as a successor to Hubble, can see right back more than 13.5 billion years. The universe was formed 13.78 billion years ago. The reach of the James Webb telescope is therefore 98% (97.96) of the life of the universe. But the superlatives about this telescope are almost never-ending. For example it will, in time, be able to explore the tiny planetary worlds far, far away. We may in time see signs of life, as in water, vegetation, or industrialisation, connected with those planets.

The James Webb is in orbit some million miles away from Earth and will, in fact, be orbiting the sun.

One could go on and on speaking about this achievement but I will resist. I want to share a three things with you.

First the release of this early image and a portion of the associated text:

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Webb’s First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.

Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion years old. This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks. And this is only the beginning. Researchers will continue to use Webb to take longer exposures, revealing more of our vast universe.

Second, why is it named after James E. Webb (1906- 1992)? James Webb was NASA’s second administrator and known for leading Apollo, the series of lunar exploration programs that landed the first humans on the Moon. (A good Q&A is here: https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/faq.html )

Last thing to share is some music! ‘Floating in Heaven’ by Graham Gouldman and Brian May

It is indeed wonderful to be alive at this time!

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

A beautiful example of humans in the supreme invention and deployment of JWST.

(A reminder that Tuesday is a ‘non-doggie’ day.)

JWST is astounding. It will look back to the beginnings of the universe, just 200 million light-years after the Big Bang, or possibly further back in time. Because of the way that the universe stretches out and causes light to go red, as it were, JWST will be searching for images from the cosmos in the infrared.

I recently listened to a 30-minute programme on BBC Sounds. It was a BBC Discovery episode about the JWST. Recorded before the launch it was, nonetheless, a deeply fascinating programme about what JWST will be looking for.

Now the link is here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct1m8t

Please listen to it!

Then there is the NASA website that has many videos about the progress of JWST. I selected this one.

Finally, YouTube also have many videos and I selected this one to share with you.

I feel very grateful to be alive when this is happening.