NASA's "ET Eyes" - Piercing the Mysteries of the Universe (A Weekend Feature)

 

“Our personal window on the Universe is terribly small within a stunnng range of wavelengths. With our eyes we see wavelengths between 0.00004 and 0.00008 of a centimeter (where, not so oddly, the Sun and stars emit most of their energy). The human visual spectrum from violet to red is but one octave on an imaginary electromagnetic piano with a keyboard hundreds of kilometers long.”

James Kaler, astronomer and author of “Heavens Gate: From Killer Stars to the Seeds of Life, How We are Connected to the Universe.”

The image below is an infrared photo of M82 is a remarkable galaxy of peculiar type in constellation Ursa Major. It is usually classified as irregular, though probably a distorted disk galaxy, and famous for its heavy star-forming activity, thus a prototype member of the class of starbursting galaxies. In the infrared light, M82 is the brightest galaxy in the sky; it exhibits a so-called infrared excess, being much brighter at infrared wavelengths than in the visible part of the spectrum. Over 100 young globular clusters have been discovered in M82 with the Hubble Space Telescope. Their formation is probably another effect triggered by a tidal encounter with M81 between 50 and several 100 million years ago.

Much of what you see above is outside our human visual band, our eyes cannot register wave photons no matter how powerful they may be. Longer that the visual wavelength limit -up to about a millimeter-lies the infrared. At the short end is violet, with orange, yellow, green, blue and hundreds of overlapping shades. Longer waves, into kilometer-wavelengths toward the unknown end are what we call “radio.”

Shorter than the visual limit are the ultrviolet -all running in the vacuum at the speed of light. At less than a percent of the wavelength of visual light are X rays, and at a factor of 100 smaller are the deadly gamma rays.

One of the great acheivements of modern astronomy is the entersion of “human sight” -opening the electromagnetic spectrum to our view and discovery beginning in the 1930s with radio estronomy and ending with NASA’s great fleet of space observatories and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST, formerly GLAST), working to unveil the mysteries of the high-energy universe. Launched into orbit on June 11, FGST studies the most energetic particles of light, observing physical processes far beyond the capabilities of earthbound laboratories..

A composite of our Milky Way’s core is compsed of images from the Hubble Space Telescope in near-infrared light, the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory in X-ray light. A mosaic of vast star fields is visible, along with dense star clusters, long filaments of gas and dust, expanding supernova remnants, and the energetic surroundings of what likely is our Galaxy’s central black hole. 

Casey Kazan

Source: NASA/Hubble

The Eerie Silence: Should We Be Sending Messages Into Space? (A Weekend Feature)

If we should pick up signals
from alien civilizations, Stephen Hawking, our century’s Einstein, warns: “we should have be wary of
answering back, until we have evolved” a bit further. Meeting a more
advanced civilization, at our present stage,’ Hawking says “might be a
bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don’t
think they were better off for it.”

Mankind has always been driven by
contradictory drives.  The relentless curiosity that pushes us forward
and is directly responsible for our progress from caves to  cities. 
The fear of change that tells us “hang on, these caves/cities are
really nice, we don’t want to risk losing them.”  There isn’t any
greater potential threat to the status quo than the discovery of
extraterrestrial life, which is why some people would prefer we didn’t
try.

After a half-century of scanning the skies for intelligent extraterrestrial life, astronomers have little to report but an eerie silence, eerie because many scientists are convinced that the universe is teeming with life. The problem could be that we’ve been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way. At this week’s conference at London’s prestigious Royal Society, Paul Davies, astrophysicist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, discussed a new roadmap for the future of SETI, arguing that we need to be far more expansive in our efforts, by questioning existing ideas of what form an alien intelligence might take, how it might try to communicate with us, and how we should respond if we ever do make contact.

There has also been controversy recently over attempts to contact
intelligent aliens, where instead of hiding in the corner and listening
real hard, some astronomers beamed intense directional messages up up
and away. Critics decried these actions as dangerous, though their
fears reveal more about us than any eventual ETs.  They assume that
they would be similar to humanity, so their first response to finding a
more primitive culture would be to exploit the hell out of it.  While
such a fate might be pleasingly ironic (for anyone who isn’t human, at
least), others contend that any species that can make the journey here
has advanced to a point where their goals are rather higher-minded than
“Shoot us”.

Dr Alexander Zaitzev, of the Institute of Radio Engineering and
Electronics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, doesn’t think much of
these worries either way.  A proponent of METI (Messaging to
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), in a recent paper he shows that the
odds of one of the METI messages being detected is a millionth of that
due to powerful radar pulses regularly used in astronomical
investigation.  Though whether writing a paper saying “This METI thing
we’re doing has only a tiny chance of working” is overall a good idea
remains to be seen.  An important point is that METI represents an
intentional will to make contact, rather than the accidental alien
interception of some random radiation from Earth - the difference
between saying “Hello!” and just being a suspicious strange noise late
at night.

Most of the objections to contacting aliens are weak under close
examination.  We can’t suddenly decide to hide after fifty years of
pumping electromagnetic radiation into space without rhyme or reason -
in fact, we’d better hope that an advanced civilization doesn’t catch
an episode of “American Idol” and just vaporize us outright.

Then there’s the assumption that aliens would have the same kind of
technology we do - despite the extremely obvious fact that our
technology can’t actually get to other exo planets.  Any attempt to mask
radio emissions will likely look like cavemen closing their eyes to
hide from satellite imaging.

The simple fact is that certain people have always opposed progress
while other, better people have driven it.  “Experts” decried boiled
water as unhealthy compared the vital stuff straight from the river,
cursed antibiotics as a temporary placebo, and confidently declared
that computers were nothing but expensive toys.  As an intelligent
species we must make every effort to contact anyone (or thing) we can.

Edited and Reposted for commentary by Luke McKinney.

Related Galaxy posts:

Stephen Hawking: Why Isn’t the Milky Way “Crawling With Self-Designing Mechanical or Biological Life?”

Stephen Hawking: “Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution”
Stephen Hawking: “Asteroid Impacts Biggest Threat to Intelligent Life in the Galaxy”

"The Human Camera" -Scientists Explore One of the World's Most Extraordinary Brains

A Daily Galaxy post, The Importance of Being Forgetful,
featured the built-in neural process of forgetting, which discussed why
the average human brain is equipped with the ability to filter through
seemingly irrelevant details. While the average person may not have
vast memory resources, it appears to be an evolutionary trade-off that
allows the majority of us to focus on the most relevant facts.

However,
some of the most incredible minds on Earth lack this ability to filter
irrelevant facts, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that to a
savant, the irrelevant IS relevant, and incredibly so. Somehow their
brains are able to store and access incredible loads of information,
even perceiving and relating to this information in an entirely
different way.

Stephen
Wiltshire is considered an autistic savant. He has an ability which can
certainly be described as a "super power". Sometimes referred to as the
"human camera", Wilshire has the unnerving ability to draw exact
replicas of intricate structures, buildings and landscapes—virtually
anything he lays eyes on—after a quick glance. Without taking notes or
drawing rough sketches, Wiltshire methodically replicates what his eyes
have seen down to the exact number of windows in tall skyscrapers.

While
watching a video (see link below) of Stephen drawing Rome, it almost
seems as if he is a character straight from NBC's popular TV series
Heroes—born with a superhuman ability. Like many other savants,
Wiltshire's mind is a mystery. He did not speak his first words,
"pencil" and "paper" until he was five years old. Savants like
Wiltshire seem to have been born fundamentally different.

Imagine
being able to learn one of the most difficult languages on Earth,
Icelandic, in just 7 days. Well known Savant, Daniel Tammet, makes is
look easy. His extraordinary abilities are linked to synesthesia. He
"feels" numbers in terms of texture, shape and color. Some scientists
believe that the epileptic seizures he suffered as a small child, which
nearly ended his life, somehow unlocked the door to an incredible
ability that may be inherent in all humans.

Individuals
have been known to develop extraordinary abilities much later in life,
or after severe brain trauma. Alonzo Clemons, for example, developed an
incredible talent, which appears to have emerged directly following a
head injury as a child. He can see a fleeting image (on a television
screen for example) of any animal, and in less than 20 minutes sculpt a
perfect replica of that animal in three-dimensional accuracy. The wax
animal is correct in each and every detail, down to each fiber and
muscle.

Similarly,
Orlando Serrell did not possess any unusual skills until he was struck
by a baseball on the left side of his head on August 17, 1979 when he
was ten years old. Serrell suffered from a long headache, but after the
headache ended, Orlando inexplicably had the ability to perform
calendrical calculations of amazing complexity. He can also recall
details of his life, like the weather, where he was, and what he was
doing every day since the day that baseball hit his head.

Because
of cases like these, some scientists believe that the potential to
express multiple super-abilities is a universal trait, but is obscured
by the normal functioning intellect. In the case of some savants, it is
believed that damage to the brain has somehow disrupted normal
functioning and therefore allows the brain to express these incredible
skills and abilities. Various researchers have noted how many
"disabled" individuals are simultaneously "superabled" through some
little understood phenomenon. 

Mind
expert Allan Snyder of the University of Sydney and director of Centre
for the Mind, is certain that all people have these latent super
abilities, but only some are able to express them through
"malfunctions" of overriding brain functions.

“They are exceptional in that they can tap in and somehow we can’t. They have privileged access,” said Snyder.

So,
if all of us have latent super-abilities, is it possible to activate
them permanently, or at least periodically, without compromising normal
brain functioning? Probably, say the Australian scientists who used
transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily switch off the frontal
temporal lobe of volunteers.  Afterwards the subjects showed an
immediate improvement in calendar calculating, naming the day of the
week of any recent history event, and in their artistic abilities. Of
course these were just the abilities tested. Scientists do not know all
of the latent abilities that humans may possess.

It
has been predicted that more advanced neurological studies may someday
discover how to allow "Regular" people to tap into the incredible
latent powers of their own mind, and thereby unleashing some of the
"superhuman" potential in all of us.

Posted by Rebecca Sato.

Videos:

Stephen Wiltshire draws Rome
Stephen draws Tokyo 

David Tammet
Video: Tammet demonstrates his mathematical genius
David Tammet interview with David Letterman

Related post: The Importance of Being Forgetful
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/06/the_importance_.html

Is DNA a Fossil of the Origin of Life? Two Leading Scientists Say "Yes"

“In some sense, the genetic code is a fossil or perhaps an echo of the origin of life, just as the cosmic microwave background is a sort of echo of the Big Bang. And its form points to a process very different from today’s Darwinian evolution.” 

Carl Woese -Microbiologist

What if a process Darwin never wrote about, and never even dreamed ofl, has been controlling the evolution of life throughout most of the Earth’s history and altered the evolutionary process itself? What if it turns out that there is a “time machine” that biologists can use to look back towards the origin of life?

Microbiologist Carl Woese and physicist Nigel Goldenfeld both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, argue that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection applies only to a recent phase of life on Earth; that a process of horizontal evolution led to the rise of the genetic code.

In 1977, Woese took the world of evolutionary biology by storm when his analysis of the genetic machinery involved in gene expression revealed an entirely new limb of the tree of life -the archaea, a group of single-celled microbes as distinct from bacteria genetically as both archaea and bacteria are from eukaryotes. Archaea saw an unprecedented amount of study since Woese's revolutionary discovery, especially because of their ability to live in extreme habitats. Such "extremophiles" are often found in at deep undersea vents and living in geysers with temperatures frequently rising up to 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) . 

Horizontal evolution is already known to play a huge role in the evolution of microbial genomes, but its consequences have hardly been explored, which according to Woese and Goldenfeld, are profound. Since micro-organisms represented the majority of life on Earth for the billions of years that life has existed, the most ancient and prevalent form of evolution probably wasn’t Darwinian at all.

According to Woese, evolutionary biology took its modern form in the early 20th century with the establishment of the genetic basis of inheritance: Mendel’s genetics combined with Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Biologists call this as the “modern synthesis”, and it has been the basis for all subsequent developments in molecular biology and genetics. 

Woese believes that along the way biologists were seduced into thinking they had found the final truth about all evolution. “Biology built up a facade of mathematics around the juxtaposition of Mendelian genetics with Darwinism. And as a result it neglected to study the most important problem in science - the nature of the evolutionary process.”

Woese argues that nothing in the modern synthesis explains how evolution could have produced the genetic code and the basic genetic machinery used by all organisms, especially the enzymes and structures involved in translating genetic information into proteins. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, presumed that the code was just some “frozen accident”, inherited by all organisms from an early form of life.  Goldenfeld and Kalin Vetsigian, now at Harvard, however, discovered that it is possible for codes and organisms to evolve together cooperatively, especially effectively through horizontal gene transfer.

As the name suggests, horizontal gene transfer involves cells providing genes with each other, rather than having genes develop in distinct lines unique to each organism.  Present day microbes, and presumably early organisms too, use horizontal gene transfer pervasively, in place of sex to mix genes, thereby creating novel combinations of genes that can generate new functionality.  Now it appears that the genetic code evolved this way, very early on in life’s history, even before the root of the tree of life.  In some sense, then, the genetic code is a fossil or perhaps an echo of the origin of life, just as the cosmic microwave background, as Woese points out, is a sort of echo of the Big Bang.

In the past few years, genome studies have demonstrated that DNA flows readily between the chromosomes of microbes and the external world, so an individual microbe may have access to the genes found in the entire microbial population around it, including those of other microbe species.

On the basis of their research, they argue that horizontal gene transfer had to be a dominant factor in the original form of evolution. Evidence for this lies in the genetic code. Though it was discovered in the 1960s, no one had been able to explain how evolution could have made it so exquisitely tuned to resisting errors. Mutations happen in DNA coding all the time, and yet the proteins it produces often remain unaffected by these errors. Darwinian evolution simply cannot explain how such a code could arise. But horizontal gene transfer can, say Woese and Goldenfeld.

“With vertical, Darwinian evolution,” says Goldenfeld, “we found that the code evolution gets stuck and does not find the true optimum.”

For the researchers the conclusion is inescapable: the genetic code must have arisen in an earlier evolutionary phase dominated by horizontal gene transfer.

“It would have acted as an innovation-sharing protocol,” says Goldenfeld, “greatly enhancing the ability of organisms to share genetic innovations that were beneficial.” Following this, a second stage of evolution would have involved rampant horizontal gene transfer, made possible by the shared genetic machinery, and leading to a rapid, exponential rise in the complexity of organisms. This, in turn, would eventually have given way to a third stage of evolution in which genetic transfer became mostly vertical, perhaps because the complexity of organisms reached a threshold requiring a more circumscribed flow of genes to preserve correct function. 

Woese can’t put a date on when the transition to Darwinian evolution happened, but he suspects it occurred at different times in each of the three main branches of the tree of life, with bacteria likely to have changed first.

Early evolution may have proceeded through a series of stages before the Darwinian form emerged. Today, at least in multicellular organisms, Darwinian evolution is dominant but we may still be in for some surprises. “Most of life - the microbial world - is still strongly taking advantage of horizontal gene transfer, but we also know, from studies in the past year, that multicellular organisms do this too,” says Goldenfeld.

 As more genomes are sequenced, ever more incongruous sequences of DNA are turning up. Comparisons of the genomes of various species including a frog, lizard, mouse and bushbaby, for example, indicate that one particular chunk of DNA found in each must have been acquired independently by horizontal gene transfer (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 105, p 17023). “The importance of this for evolution has yet to be seriously considered.”

How did life on Earth evolve so quickly from  from early geochemistry. What were the key physical processes that led to self-organization of early metabolism and self-reproducing molecules? 

In taking this approach to the origin of life, the characteristics of the earliest organisms become very important: do they contain clues about the origin of life that we have not yet teased out?  Astronomers have long understood that by studying the farthest galaxies and stars, they are effectively looking back the beginning of time, receiving photons that have been traveling for billions of years. 

If the genetic code has its origins so early on in the evolution of life, then working backwards from the genetic code might make connections with the chemical reactions that must have been important for early life. Many biologists consider the deep sea vents the most plausible location for the origin of life. Furthermore, there is the exciting prospect that similar vents on other worlds, such as the oceans of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, may be the host to extra-terrestrial microbial life.

Casey Kazan via material provided by: 

The Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois.

Additional source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527441.500-horizontal-and-vertical-the-evolution-of-evolution.html?full=true&print=true

http://guava.physics.uiuc.edu/projects/FIBR_overview.html

Are Black Holes Sucking the Heat Out of Universe?

“It’s kind of like your coffee cup cooling down … when your coffee cup reaches the temperature of the room it is in, that’s equilibrium…. The stars, which are burning hydrogen, are like the coffee cup - they’re hot and slowly cooling down….. The question is, when will it end? … And all you can say is we are closer to the heat death than we anticipated.” 

Charles "Charley" H. Lineweaver, professor at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Australian National University 

Australian researchers led by Charley Lineweaver have measured the amount of entropy that exists now in the Universe. They found that the Universe has much less energy available than had been previously measured, which has a potentially long-term scary implication: the Universe aging faster.

Their analysis of the entropy within the universe found that it is about 30 times higher than other projections had previously measured. In other words, according to these researchers, the universe has a thirty times higher entropy number than what was earlier calculated. Entropy is a measure of energy expenditure of any system, such as the Universe. 

The universe began with a low entropy number (low disorder). As the universe ages its entropy number gets higher (higher disorder) as it expends more energy. Thus, the higher entropy number (the more entropy), the more energy has been expended. Entropy is calculated to find out how efficient a system is, such as an engine or a universe, and how quickly the system will run down.

The team is trying to find out how much energy will be available to life forms anywhere in the universe, and where this energy is. The first step in this procedure is to determine the entropy of the universe. 

The measurements by Lineweaver and Egan are based largely on the number of the black holes in the universe, along with their masses, a key to figuring out entropy in the universe, but they considered all contributions to the entropy of the observable universe: stars, star light, the cosmic microwave background. They also made an estimate of the entropy of dark matter.

Lineweaver and team concluded that it's the entropy of super-massive black holes that dominates the entropy of the universe. When they used the new data on the number and size of super-massive black holes, they found that the entropy of the observable universe is about 30 times larger than previous calculations.

Dr. Lineweaver compared their results and its message for life in the universe to a car's gas tank. He states, “It’s a bit like looking at your gas gauge and saying `I thought I had half a gas tank, but I only have a quarter of a tank.”

“But I can’t tell you how many kilometres you can go on that quarter of a tank yet,” Lineweaver added.

Currently, Lineweaver is looking into a measurement on how much longer the universe will be able to support life. However, this figure will be difficult to come up with because astronomers are unsure about how much energy was available at the beginning of the Big Bang.

Casey Kazan via material provided by Australian National University

The abstract to their paper ("A Larger Estimate of the Entropy of the Universe") is found on the ArXiv.org website

"Will We Discover a Real-World Pandora?" The Law of Probabilities Points to 'Yes' Say World's Leading Experts

 

The law of probabilities backs theories that we are not alone in the Universe, although an encounter with an advanced civilisation may shock our species, scientists at a conference on Extraterrestrial Life starting this week at The Royal Society in London 

What will alien life look like if we find it? Will we be meeting life-forms incredibly similar to ourselves? Or will they be the aggressive aliens of sci-fi films? How do you break news of alien discoveries to the world without creating wide-spread pandemonium? These are just some of the questions that are being discussed. The meeting is not intended to give any conclusion on whether other life exists but give a snapshot of where we are in our quest to find it — and speculate on the impacts of such a discovery on human society.

Several of the world’s leading authities will be discussing the question: Professor Simon Conway Morris FRS a British paleontologist at Cambridge University will predict what extra-terrestrial life might be like and preparing for the worst, Professor Albert A Harrison on what the reality of human responses to extra-terrestrial intelligence might be, and Nobel prize winner Christian de Duve on life as a cosmic imperative.

A line-up of world-leading astronomers, biologists and astrophysicists including SETI founder Dr Frank Drake, principal investigator for the British Beagle 2 Mars lander project Professor Colin Pillinger and Director of the BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science Professor Paul Davies, will be discussing man's search for extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society. 

“There is no firm evidence that life exists elsewhere, but there is a very firm probability (for it),” said Baruch Blumberg, an astrobiologist at the Fox Chance Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

“My clear prediction is that living generations have an excellent chance of seeing extra-terrestrial life being detected,” said Martin Dominik, an astronomer at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

Life on Earth may have been kickstarted thanks to carbon molecules and dust that drift through interstellar space, said Pascale Ehrenfreund, an astrochemist at George Washington University, Washington.

If so, “the basic building blocks of life — at least as recognised on Earth — must be widespread in planetary systems in our Milky Way and other galaxies,” she suggested..

“We don’t even know how life began here on Earth and that being said, we don’t even know how to place our bets on how widespread life is or where to look for it,” Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society, said in an interview. 

New astronomical tools, including powerful orbital telescopes, are exposing “extra-solar” worlds, or planets orbiting other stars, and one of them could eventually be revealed as a potential haven for life, said Blumberg. Since 1995, “more than 400 extrasolar planets have been detected and the number is increasing rapidly,” he said..

If alien life exists, our first discovery is likely to be in microscopic form, which would not be too disconcerting for our civilisation, said Albert Harrison, a social psychologist at the University of California at Davis. It could be as a bacterium found in promising sites in the Solar System such as the sub-soil of Mars, Jupiter’s satellite Europa or on the Saturnian moon Enceladus, which are thought to harbour oceans beneath their icy crust, some hope.

Simon Conway Morris offered a contrasting view. ”My own opinion is that the origin of life is a complete fluke,” he said. “I fear that we are completely alone… there’s nothing (out) there at all, not a thing.”

Should smart aliens want to contact us, he warned,  ”They could be like the Aztecs, just as aggressive and extremely unpleasant,” he said. “If I’m wrong, and the telephone rings, whatever you do, do not pick it up… we might not want to say hello.”

Casey Kazan

Source:

2010 AFP

http://www.physorg.com/news183642293.html

"Was the Universe Created By A Big Bang?" -Several of the World's Leading Cosmologists Say "No"

 

“What banged?” Sean Carroll, CalTech -Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology & Physics

Several of the worlds leading astrophysicists believe there was no Big Bang that brought the universe and time into existence. Before the Big Bang, the standard theory assumes, there was no space, just nothing. Einstein merged the universe into a single entity: not space, not time, but spacetime.

Proponents of branes propose that we are trapped in a thin membrane of space-time embedded in a much larger cosmos from which neither light nor energy -except gravity- can escape or enter and that  that “dark matter” is just the rest of the universe that we can’t see because light can’t escape from or enter into our membrane from the great bulk of the universe. And our membrane may be only one of many, all of which may warp, connect, and collide with one another in as many as 10 dimensions -a new frontier physicists call the “brane world.” Stephen Hawking, among others, envisions brane worlds perculating up out of the void, giving rise to whole new universes.

One of the most important space probes of the century is the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) launched in 2001 to measure the temperature differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiatiion -the 14-billion year old Big Bang’s remnant radiant heat . The anisotropies then in turn are used to measure the universe’s geometry, content, and evolution; and, perhaps most importantly, to test the Big Bang model, and the cosmic inflation theory. WMAP data seem to support a universe that is dominated by dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no supportative data to date for Big Bang theory, although the results aren’t sensitive enough to rule out the pervasive Big Bang/inflation model. 

The influence of gravitaional waves on polarization is different from that of overall energy distribution, so it should be possible to tell from polarization in the WMAP scans whether the variation is coming from contrasting energy density (heat) or gravitational waves that a Big Bang should have produced.

The world’s leading astrophysicists are confidemt that with a sensitive enough probe such as that by the new Planck telescope with its more detailed CMB plots, that they can reduce the level of uncertainty low enough so that they can say definitively whether the gravitational waves that should have been created by the Big Bang as present.

If this next generation Planck Telescope shows that there is no onvious distortions caused by gravity waves, it will rule out the Big Bang plus inflation theory -an add-on theory that explains the phenomenal sudden expansion of space from a tiny point. In it’s place will be new models that support what many leading cosmologists see as our universe to be proved to be one of just many in an eternal cycle of birth and rebirth.

Models of the universe that involve a bouncing brane or a Big Crunch rather than a start from scratch Big Bang predict much smaller gravity waves being produced than would come from a Big Bang. If the universe actually went through cycles of expansion and contraction, it is possible that the uneven distributions in the early post-Big Bang universe that resulted in the formation of galaxies were leftovers from the universe before.

Only gravity can’t exist soley in a specific brane, but wanders where it will, leaking off our brane into what physicists call “the bulk” — the rest of space-time. Brane theory offer an fascinating and plausable explanation for why gravity is such a weakling: Maybe it’s not any weaker than the other forces, but just concentrated somewhere else in the bulk, or on another brane, providing the key to understanding the dark matter that makes up 90 % of our universe.

If our brane is but a small slice of a much larger cosmos, however, the “dark matter” might be nothing but ordinary matter trapped on another brane. Dark matter is no longer some mysterious unknown, but the force at the heart of the brane-brane interaction. With the brane model the universe goes through an eternal cosmic cycle over a vast timescale of attraction, bounce with a spread out bang, springing apart, and expansion until attraction (gravity) takes over again.Such a shadow world, Hawking speculated, might contain “shadow human beings wondering about the mass that seems to be missing from their world.”

Are branes the key to understanding the origin of our universe? “Who knows?” says Sean Carroll. “they will have taught us a useful lesson that we should have known all along, which is that we don’t have a clue to what’s going on.”

Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, creator of the currently accepted model of the Big Bang, said recently “he felt a little like Rip Van Winkle — picking up his head from a long sleep only to notice that the landscape of physics he thought he knew had suddenly, drastically, changed.”

Casey Kazan.

Source Credits:

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/17/science/sci-branes

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327226.000-review-before-the-big-bang-by-brian-clegg.html

Image Credit: http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/stringtheory01.htm

"The Universe Was Not Created By A Big Bang" -Say Several of the World's Leading Cosmologists

 

“What banged?” Sean Carroll, CalTech -Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology & Physics

Several of the worlds leading astrophysicists believe there was no Big Bang that brought the universe and time into existence. Before the Big Bang, the standard theory assumes, there was no space, just nothing. Einstein merged the universe into a single entity: not space, not time, but space time.

Proponents of branes propose that we are trapped in a thin membrane of space-time embedded in a much larger cosmos from which neither light nor energy (except gravity) can escape or enter and that  that “dark matter” is just the rest of the universe that we can’t see because light can’t escape from or enter into our membrane from the great bulk of the universe. And our membrane may be only one of many, all of which may warp, connect, and collide with one another in as many as 10 dimensions -a new frontier physicists call the “brane world.” Stephen Hawking, among others, envisions brane worlds bubbling up out of the void, giving rise to whole new universes

One of the most important space probes of the century is the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) launched in 2001 to measure the temperature differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiatiion -the 14-billion year old Big Bang’s remnant radiant heat . The anisotropies then in turn are used to measure the universe’s geometry, content, and evolution; and, perhaps most importantly, to test the Big Bang model, and the cosmic inflation theory. WMAP data seem to support a universe that is dominated by dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no supportative data to date for Big Bang theory, although the results aren’t sensitive enough to rule out the pervasive Big Bang/inflation model. 

The influence of gravitaional waves on polarization is different from that of overall energy distribution, so it should be possible to tell from polarization in the WMAP scans whether the variation is coming from contrasting energy density (heat) or gravitational waves that a Big Bang should have produced.

The world’s leading astrophysicists are confidemt that with a sensitive enough probe such as that by the new Planck telescope with its more detailed CMB plots, that they can reduce the level of uncertainty low enough so that they can say definitively whether the gravitational waves that should have been created by the Big Bang as present.

If this next generation Planck Telescope shows that there is no onvious distortions caused by gravity waves, it will rule out the Big Bang plus inflation theory -an add-on theory that explains the phenomenal sudden expansion of space from a tiny point. In it’s place will be new models that support what many leading cosmologists see as our universe to be proved to be one of just many in an eternal cycle of birth and rebirth.

Models of the universe that involve a bouncing brane or a Big Crunch rather than a start from scratch Big Bang predict much smaller gravity waves being produced than would come from a Big Bang. If the universe actually went through cycles of expansion and contraction, it is possible that the uneven distributions in the early post-Big Bang universe that resulted in the formation of galaxies were leftovers from the universe before.

Only gravity can’t exist soley in a specific brane, but wanders where it will, leaking off our brane into what physicists call “the bulk” — the rest of space-time. Brane theory offer an fascinating and plausable explanation for why gravity is such a weakling: Maybe it’s not any weaker than the other forces, nut just concentrated somewhere else in the bulk, or on another brane, providing the key to understanding the dark matter that makes up 90 % of our universe.

If our brane is but a small slice of a much larger cosmos, however, the “dark matter” might be nothing but ordinary matter trapped on another brane. Such a shadow world, Hawking speculated, might contain “shadow human beings wondering about the mass that seems to be missing from their world.”

Are branes the key to understanding the origin of our universe? “Who knows?” says Sean Carroll. “they will have taught us a useful lesson that we should have known all along, which is that we don’t have a clue to what’s going on.”

Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, creator of the currently accepted model of the Big Bang, said recently “he felt a little like Rip Van Winkle — picking up his head from a long sleep only to notice that the landscape of physics he thought he knew had suddenly, drastically, changed.”

Casey Kazan.

Source Credits:

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/17/science/sci-branes

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327226.000-review-before-the-big-bang-by-brian-clegg.html

Image Credit: http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/stringtheory01.htm

China Eyes Antarctica: Now Mapping Bottom of the World in Awesome Detail

Chinese scientists have shifted its focus from mapping the moon to completing the world’s first land cover map of the Antarctica at the end of this year. The result will be the most accurate map of the continent ever published.

Using the application of high resolution remote sensing technology, the map will be the first ever to show the distribution of key features on the continent, including sea ice, snow, blue ice, rocks, soil marshes, lakes and ice crevasse. The map is also based on 1,073 images acquired from the U.S. satellite Land sat mainly during the austral summer from 1999 to 2002,according to Cheng Xiao, deputy dean of the College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, in an interview with Xinhua.

“The precision of the map is 15 meters, about 20 times of former Antarctic maps made by other countries,” Cheng said. “It will greatly advance our geographic knowledge of the Antarctica.”

The map will provide not only more accurate ground parameters for scientists to forecast global change or global warming with climate system models, but also important data for detection on the change of Antarctica land cover in a long run, Cheng said.

The 26th expedition team began its journey on Oct. 11 from Shanghai and sailed into Australia’s Coral Sea on Sunday. A total of 251 scientists, workers and logistics staff joined the team for the half-year-long research expedition on the icebreaker. The scientists will stay on the icy continent until April 10 next year.

Casey Kazan

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/26/content_12332541.htm

The Haiti Response: Is the Human Species Hardwired to be Compassionate? (A Weekend Feature)

The world’s incredible outpouring of help to thhe people of Haiti raises the queestion: are we evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive? A research team at the University of California, Berkeley, says “yes.” They are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.The researchers have found compelling evidence that people who are more empathetic possess a particular variation of the oxytocin receptor gene.

The findings support other research showing that oxytocin plays a major role in countering stress. Previous studies have also linked this genetic variation with autism and parenting styles, says study coauthor Sarina Rodrigues, assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University.

All humans inherit a variation of this gene or "allele" from each parent. The study looked at the three combinations of gene variations of the oxytocin receptor. The most empathetic—able to get an accurate read on others' emotions—had two copies of the "G allele." In contrast, members of the AA and AG allele groups were found to be less capable of putting themselves in the shoes of others and more likely to get stressed out in difficult situations.

"This is the first study to suggest that a tendency to be more empathetic and stress reactive than others may be influenced by a single gene," notes Rodrigues.

Informally known as the "cuddle" or "love" hormone, oxytocin is secreted into the bloodstream and the brain, where it promotes social interaction, bonding and romantic love, among other functions. It is also key to procreation, activating uterine contractions during childbirth and lactation for breastfeeding.

But while nature might have given some of us the DNA to be more empathetic, those who are not in the GG group should not despair, Rodrigues says. "There are plenty of people in the AA or AG gene pool who are empathetic, caring individuals," adds Rodrigues, who is not a double G but counts herself as caring and empathetic.

In the study of some 200 young men and women of diverse ethnicities, participants, who provided DNA samples, filled out questionnaires that gauged their levels of empathy and their ability to read emotions displayed in eye expressions. Those with the GG variation were better at reading eye expressions than their AA and AG counterparts.

Participants were also were given stress reactivity tests, including one that measured their heart rate as they awaited loud blasts of noise. While female participants were found overall to be more sensitive to stress, both men and women in the GG group maintained a lower heart rate in the face of the sound blasts..

"Not everyone is going to be a touchy-feely person," Rodrigues adds. "We should reach out to people who aren't because research shows it's better for everyone to be socially connected."

The study was funded by the Metanexus Institute and UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center.

Jason McManus from UC Berkeley news

Earth 1.2 Millions Years Ago: Human Population, 18,500!

Scientists have calculated that for a period lasting one million years and beginning 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors were spreading through Africa, Europe and Asia, there were probably between 18,500 to 26,000 individuals capable of breeding (and no more than 26,000). This made them an endangered species with a smaller population than today's species such as gorillas which number 25,000 breeding individuals and chimpanzees (21,000). 

Researchers have proposed a number of explanations , such as events in which a significant proportion of the population is killed or prevented from reproducing. One such event was the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that erupted around 70,000 years ago, triggering a nuclear winter. Only an estimated 15,000 humans are thought to have survived. Another explanation is that the numbers of humans and our ancestors were chronically low throughout the last two million years, sometimes with only 10,000 breeding individuals surviving.

The new research is concerned with the entire genome rather than specific genetic lineages studied in the earlier research work. Using a new method of studying genetic markers of DNA in the genome has allowed geneticists to study the genetics not only modern humans, but also our early ancestors such as Homo erectus (thought the most likely to be our direct ancestors), H. ergaster and archaic H. sapiens. Remarkably, they found there was enough information in only two human DNA sequences to estimate the ancient population size.

Human geneticist Lynn B. Jorde and colleagues at the University of Utah studied parts of the genome containing mobile elements called Alu sequences, which are sections of DNA around 300 base-pairs long that randomly insert themselves into the genome. This is a rare occurrence, but once inserted, they tend to stay in place over generations, and act as markers, rather like fossils, for ancient parts of the genome. 

From theirstudies, they calculated there was more genetic diversity in our early ancestors than there is in modern humans. They also came to the conclusion that there had been a catastrophic event around one million years ago that was at least as devastating as the Toba volcanic eruption, and which had almost wiped out the species.

Casey Kazan 

Sources: 

PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 19.

http://www.physorg.com/news183278038.html

Image of the Day: 3D Video of the Cassiopeia A Supernova Explosion -The Galactic Death Ray

Most astronomers today believe that one of the most plausible reasons we have yet to detect intelligent life in the universe is due to the deadly effects of local supernova explosions that wipe out all life in a given region of a galaxy. Cassiopeia A might have a rare killer type 11 star -a core collapsed hypernova that generates deadly GRBs, gamma ray bursts that may leading astyronomers and physicists believe may be resonsible for destroying much of existing life throughout the billions of galaxies that populate the universe.

 While there is, on average, only one supernova per galaxy per century, there is something on the order of 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe. Taking 10 billion years for the age of the Universe (it’s actually 13.7 billion, but stars didn’t form for the first few hundred million), Dr. Richard Mushotzky of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, derived a figure of 1 billion supernovae per year, or 30 supernovae per second in the observable Universe! 

Cassiopeia A is a supernova remnant in the constellation Cassiopeia and the brightest and strongest astronomical radio source in the sky. It is believed that first light from the stellar explosion reached Earth approximately 300 years ago but there are no historical records of any sightings of the progenitor supernova, probably due to interstellar dust absorbing optical wavelength radiation before it reached Earth. 

The best explanation is that the source star was unusually massive and had previously ejected much of its outer layers. In 1999, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory found a “hot point-like source” close to the center of the nebula that is quite likely the neutron star or black hole that had been predicted but not previously found. 

Certain rare stars -real killers -type 11 stars, are core-collapse hypernova that generate deadly gamma ray bursts (GRBs). These long burst objects release 1000 times the non-neutrino energy release of an ordinary “core-collapse” supernova. Concrete proof of the core-collapse GRB model came in 2003.

It isn’t known if every hypernova is associated with a GRB. However, astronomers estimate only about one out of 100,000 supernovae produce a hypernova. This works out to about one gamma-ray burst per day, which is in fact what is observed.

What is almost certain is that the core of the star involved in a given hypernova is massive enough to collapse into a black hole (rather than a neutron star). So every GRB detected is also the “birth cry” of a new black hole. 

 

What's Keeping Earth Cooler Expected? New Report on Climate Change Explores the Possibilities

The planet has warmed much less than expected during the industrial era based on current best estimates of Earth’s “climate sensitivity” — the amount of global temperature increase expected in response to a given rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. 

The amount of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases added to Earth’s atmosphere since humanity began burning fossil fuels on a significant scale during the industrial period would be expected to result in a mean global temperature rise of 3.8°F — well more than the 1.4°F increase that has been observed for this time span.

Stephen Schwartz, team leader at the Brookhaven National Laboratory attributes the reasons for this discrepancy to a possible mix of two major factors: 1) Earth’s climate may be less sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than currently assumed and/or 2) reflection of sunlight by haze particles in the atmosphere may be offsetting some of the expected warming.

“Because of present uncertainties in climate sensitivity and the enhanced reflectivity of haze particles,” said Schwartz, “it is impossible to accurately assign weights to the relative contributions of these two factors. This has major implications for understanding of Earth’s climate and how the world will meet its future energy needs.”

A third possible reason for the lower-than-expected increase of Earth’s temperature over the industrial period is the slow response of temperature to the warming influence of heat-trapping gases. Based on calculations using measurements of the increase in ocean heat content over the past fifty years, however, this present study found the role of so-called thermal lag to be minor.

A key question facing policymakers is how much additional CO2 and other heat-trapping gases can be introduced into the atmosphere, beyond what is already present, without committing the planet to a dangerous level of human interference with the climate system. Many scientists and policymakers consider the threshold for such dangerous interference to be an increase in global temperature of 3.6°F above the preindustrial level, although no single threshold would encompass all effects.

The research describes three scenarios: If Earth’s climate sensitivity is at the low end of current estimates as given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then the total maximum future emissions of heat-trapping gases so as not to exceed the 3.6° threshold would correspond to about 35 years of present annual emissions of CO2 from fossil-fuel combustion. A climate sensitivity at the present best estimate would mean that no more heat-trapping gases can be added to the atmosphere without committing the planet to exceeding the threshold. And if the sensitivity is at the high end of current estimates, present atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases are such that the planet is already committed to warming that substantially exceeds the 3.6° threshold.

The authors emphasize the need to quantify the influences of haze particles to narrow the uncertainty in Earth’s climate sensitivity. This is much more difficult than quantifying the influences of the heat-trapping gases.

Schwartz adds that formulating energy policy with the present uncertainty in climate sensitivity is like navigating a large ship in perilous waters without charts. “We know we have to change the course of this ship, and we know the direction of the change, but we don’t know how much we need to change the course or how soon we have to do it.”

Jason McManus, adapted from materials provided by DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Stephen Hawking & "The Hitchhiker's Guide" - Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life? (A Galaxy Classic)

In what is becoming to be one of the worst misuses of science since electronics ended up in Sammy the Singing Sea Bass, defenders of “Intelligent Design” increasingly abuse both words and the anthropic principle to “prove” the existence of God.  

Many of our greatest scientists have been asking why does the universe appear to fe “fine-tuned” for life? The logic behind this question, sometimes known as the anthropic principle, says that we are here today, able to study the universe and learn about its laws. But if any of these were much different, we could never have come in to exist in the first place.

Scientists study why fundamental values of the universe like the gravitational constant or the mass of an electron are what they are. The anthropic principle states that these values can only be observed if they’re such that observers can exist to do so.  You’ll notice that this is perfectly true but doesn’t actually advance the issue, and certainly isn’t proof that an invisible man spent a few millenia tuning the basic interactions of physics to eventually create something that looked like him thirteen billion years later, in the most complicated bio-cosmic Rube Goldberg machine possible.

The way the values are exactly those required for life as we know it unnecessarily surprises far too many people. Of course any life will be perfectly suited to the universe it’s in - almost as if that’s where it bloody happened, and in fact every process leading to anything called life is utterly dependent on succeeding in the local environment.  It’s like being amazed how well water fits into gills - surely the structure of H2O is perfectly engineered by an omnipotent fishgod for his faithful marine subjects!

People who say slightly different values would prevent life only betray their total lack of imagination: they can conceive of an entirely alternate universe with fundamentally different physics, but the idea that maybe different things would happen in a different universe?  Madness!  Insisting on carbon constructions when there’s an infinity of possible existences to play with?  It’s like going to the Library of Congress and maintaining that something’s only a book if it’s about Peter Rabbit, because that’s the first one you read..

This is where we’re usually accused of being anti-religion.  We’re not.  Faith provides a wonderful support for countless millions, as well as parts of a moral system which would probably be really good if people would use it right.  But we are against religion interfering with science.  No lab-coated lunatic has ever burst into a church towing a mass spectrometer demanding to analyze the Eucharist. So sermonizers shouldn’t stuff up the gears of actual progress because they’ve decided their faith isn’t actually strong enough to withstand other people thinking differently.

Unfortunately we’re going to keep seeing complete logical breaks like this quote: 

“Hawking and his colleagues presented the mathematical details in a formal paper that supports the anthropic principle. In other words, the universe is adapted for a purpose and that purpose is life.”  

Can you spot where the author helpfully explains what those silly scientists really meant?  You should always be extremely suspicious of “this means” and “in other words.”  

When we really get education working, everyone will spot such logical fallacies and make their own minds up.  Until then we’ll have shouting matches started by those who pick a position first and then choose their evidence afterwards.

We at The Daily Galaxy think Douglas Adams nailed the issue in The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

"The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. 

The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

"`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Luke McKinney with Casey Kazan

Source: http://www.thesunnews.com/opinion/story/1192709.html

Do the Outer Planets Have Vast Oceans of Liquid Diamond?

 A little over two years ago, like an episode out of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of a mass of crystallized carbon formerly known as star BPM 37093, now known as the biggest diamond in the galaxy, fifty light years away from Earth in the constellation Centaurus.

The star, named “Lucy” after the Beatles song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” is estimated to be 2,500 miles across and weighs approximately 10 billion-trillion-trillion-carats – a one, followed by 34 zeros. 

Travis Metcalfe, an astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and leader of the team who discovered the gem, says "You would need a jeweler's loupe the size of the sun to grade this diamond. Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to afford it."

Now, scientist are explaining how it may be possible for the planets Neptune (image above) and Uranus to contain liquid diamond oceans.

The research was conducted by taking detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond. When diamond is melted it behaves like water during freezing and melting, with solid forms floating atop liquid forms. Diamond is a very hard material which makes it difficult to melt. Measuring the melting point of a diamond is very difficult because when it’s heated to very high temperatures the diamond changes to graphite.

Since it’s the graphite and not the diamond that turns to liquid, scientist are faced with the problem of melting the diamond without it turning to graphite. Scientists can get around this problem by exposing the diamond to extremely high pressures by blasting it with lasers. The diamond is liquefied at pressures 40 million times greater than that found at Earth’s sea level.

When the pressure is lowered to 11 million times greater than Earth’s sea level and the temperature drops to about 50,000 degrees, chunks of diamond start to appear.

 Scientists discovered something they didn’t expect, after the pressure kept dropping the temperature of the diamond remained the same, with more chunks of diamond forming. The chunks of diamond did not sink but floated on top of the liquid diamond, creating diamond icebergs.

These ultrahigh temperatures and ultrahigh pressures are found in huge gas giant planets like Neptune and Uranus. Neptune and Uranus are estimated to be made up of 10% carbon. A large ocean of liquid diamond could deflect or tilt the magnetic field out of alignment with the rotation of the planet.

The only way scientists can know for sure if liquid diamond exists on these gas giant planets is either by sending a scientific spacecraft to one of them or by simulating the conditions on earth. Both methods would be very expensive and take years to prepare.

Meanwhile,back to the diamond as big as the Earth (image above): The diamond is actually the crystallized interior of a white dwarf – or the hot core of a star that is left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon and is coated by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases. Five billion years from now, our sun will die and become a white dwarf. Approximately two billion years after that, its ember core will crystallize as well, leaving a giant diamond in the center of our solar system.

The paper is published in Nature Physics. 

http://www.physorg.com/news183044315.html

NASA listens for "Lazarus Call" Signaling Life for the Viking Lander

 

Hoping for a possible resurrection, NASA on Monday will begin a three-day effort to listen for signs of life from the Phoenix lander, which has been programmed with a “Lazarus mode” to signal that it is alive. The lander is believed frozen to death near Mars’ north pole after spending five months probong soil and ice for signs of life.

Phoenix landed in May 2008 and spent five months digging trenches and conducting science experiments in the arctic plains. It confirmed the presence of ice and became the first spacecraft to touch and taste water on another planet. It last communicated with Earth in November 2008 as sunlight waned and temperatures dipped.

The plan calls for the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft to make regular passes over the Phoenix landing site and listen for a beep. If the three-legged, solar-powered lander fails to phone home as expected, NASA will hail it again next month when the sun is higher on the horizon.

The lander was not designed to withstand extreme Martian winters where temperatures average minus 195 degrees Fahrenheit, far chillier than Earth’s all-time coldest temperature - minus 129 degrees - recorded in Antarctica in 1983.

Since seasons on Mars last twice as long as Earth’s, scientists waited until Martian spring was underway in the northern latitudes to check on Phoenix, which has been blanketed in carbon dioxide frost.
It’s doubtful Phoenix’s solar panels can capture enough sunlight to charge its batteries. Even if it miraculously re-energizes itself, there’s no guarantee its science instruments and other electronics will still work, researchers say.

Casey Kazan

Source:
More information: Phoenix mission: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University Arizona/Texas A&M University