Earth-like Planets are Common in Universe!!

Planet Earth is not so special after all; there’s one orbiting roughly every one in four Sun-like stars, according to a five-year astronomy study. The study, published in the journal Science, used Hawaii’s twin 10-metre Keck telescopes to scan 166 sun-like stars within 80 light years, or about 757 trillion kilometres. The team spotted 22 planets around 33 of these stars by the gravitational tug of the planets – called the Doppler or radial velocity method.

23 Earths for every 100 Suns

Of about 100 typical Sun-like stars, one or two have planets the size of Jupiter, roughly six have a planet the size of Neptune,and about 12 have super-Earths between three and 10 Earth masses. How tough the search for habitable worlds would be wasn’t at all clear when NASA gave the Kepler team the go-ahead almost 10 years ago. Only huge, scorching-hot exoplanets larger than Jupiter had been found by then. Limitations in the technique mean astronomers can’t yet see planets up to three times Jupiter’s mass orbiting within one quarter of the distance of the Earth to the Sun (1 AU or almost 150 million kilometres), or smaller Earth-like planets much close in.

Image: The data, depicted here in this illustrated bar chart, show a clear trend. Small planets outnumber larger ones. Astronomers extrapolated from these data to estimate the frequency of the Earth-size planets — nearly one in four sun-like stars, or 23 percent, are thought to host Earth-size planets orbiting close in. Each bar on this chart represents a different group of planets, divided according to their masses. In each of the three highest-mass groups, with masses comparable to Saturn and Jupiter, the frequency of planets around sun-like stars was found to be 1.6 percent. For intermediate-mass planets, with 10 to 30 times the mass of Earth, or roughly the size of Neptune and Uranus, the frequency is 6.5 percent. And the super-Earths, weighing in at only three to 10 times the mass of Earth, had a frequency of 11.8 percent. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Berkeley[via: Centauri Dreams]

One of astronomy’s goals is to find eta-Earth (η-Earth), the fraction of Sun-like stars that have an Earth. This is a first estimate, and the real number could be one in eight instead of one in four. But it’s not one in 100, which is glorious news. What this means is that, as NASA develops new techniques over the next decade to find truly Earth-size planets, it won’t have to look too far. Greenhill’s expertise is in the ‘microlensing technique’, which looks at the bending of light of a source star by an intervening planet-star system and is particularly suitable for finding small-mass planets. He estimates between 32% and 100% of stars have planets two to 10 times the size of Earth in orbits ranging from 1¬-10 AU. That’s one heck of a lot of Earth-mass planets. I don’t care how small the probability of life is; some of them are bound to have water on them and will probably have life there.

Remark: It simply suggests that there could be more and more Earth like planet irrespective to our probablistic estimations. In a previous article , I’ve presented a detailed information about temporal temperature zones and wind maps, which supports my earlier speculation of planet being habitable . In that article you can see that wind flow maps of Gliese 581g are similar to wind map of planet Earth at various locations. All of these calculations and evidences dismay the idea of planet being inhabitable. Now this study presents even more optimistic speculation as to how common Earth like planets are. Rare Earth hypothesis goes to hell.

[Source: Cosmos Magazine]
[Note: In original article they referred 80million light years as ~757 trillion kilometers. There should be instead 80 light years.]

This is How Fake Stories Are Made?

Do you know how most of the news stories are made? I’m not so sure but your answer would more likely be that authors do great research/discern through research papers, with a keen observing brain. It’s frustrating for me, however that some really credible news sources like space.com are perverted and as for DailyMail, it’s nothing like new. They already have a history of publishing sucking misinformation or deadbeats.

If you ever wish to read this story by Danis Chow of space.com, I warn you to be very careful. They have just published the delusive news from DailyMail with exponentiating mystery and misinformation. In my prior post, I’ve already noted that. IO9 is even worse. See this article:

Officially known as Gliese 581g, we’ve dubbed the first colony on this newly-discovered planet Gloaming, a word that means “twilight.” Because the planet is tidally locked to its star, only one side sees sunlight while the other is in constant darkness. The sunny side would be incredibly hot, while the dark side would befrozen – but astronomers estimate temperatures would be cold but livable at the border between. Colonies would be built in the gloaming, where light and dark meet. The planet is also in orbit around a red dwarf star, whose light would be redder and much cooler than light from our yellow sun. Colonists living in Gloaming would be warmed by a sun that appeared much bigger in the sky than our own.
UPDATE ABOUT THE NAME GLOAMING:
I just spoke by phone with Steve Vogt, the astrophysicst at UC Santa Cruz who led the team that discovered this planet. Though hewas fine with us calling the planet Gloaming, he said he preferred the name Zarmina (he added that the planet was “too pretty” to be called Gliese 581g). So I’ve decided that our future planetary colony should be called Gloaming, but in deference to his wishes the planet is going to be Zarmina from here on out.

Well, what’s the information you have from this article? Is there any depiction that is unknown to you yet? I doesn’t seems to me at the least. Just follow the steps below and you have a great story for curious readers:

1. Select a impressive title.

2. Introduce your article’s title in 50words. Put some tidbits that makes it interesting and beat around the bush.

This is exactly how most of the fictional stories are made.

ARTEMIS: A New Hope

In August 1960, NASA launched its first communications satellite, Echo 1. Fifty years later, NASA has achieved another first by placing the ARTEMIS-P1 spacecraft into a unique orbit behind the moon, but not actually orbiting the moon itself. This type of orbit, called an Earth-Moon libration orbit, relies on a precise balancing of the Sun, Earth, and Moon gravity so that a spacecraft can orbit about a virtual location rather than about a planet or moon. The diagrams below show the full ARTEMIS-P1 orbit as it flies in proximity to the moon.

Illustration of Artemis-P1 liberations orbits. Credit: NASA/Goddard

ARTEMIS-P1 is the first spacecraft to navigate to and perform stationkeeping operations around the Earth-Moon L1 and L2 Lagrangian points. There are five Lagrangian points associated with the Earth-Moon system. The two points nearest the moon are of great interest for lunar exploration. These points are called L1 (located between the Earth and Moon) and L2 (located on the far side of the Moon from Earth), each about 61,300 km (38,100 miles) above the lunar surface. It takes about 14 to 15 days to complete one revolution about either the L1 or L2 point. These distinctive kidney-shaped orbits are dynamically unstable and require weekly monitoring from ground personnel. Orbit corrections to maintain stability are regularly performed using onboard thrusters.

After the ARTEMIS-P1 spacecraft has completed its first four revolutions in the L2 orbit, the ARTEMIS-P2 spacecraft will enter the L1 orbit. The two sister spacecraft will take magnetospheric observations from opposite sides of the moon for three months, then ARTEMIS-P1 will move to the L1 side where they will both remain in orbit for an additional three months. Flying the two spacecraft on opposite sides, then the same side, of the moon provides for collection of new science data in the Sun-Earth-Moon environment. ARTEMIS will use simultaneous measurements of particles and electric and magnetic fields from two locations to provide the first three-dimensional perspective of how energetic particle acceleration occurs near the Moon’s orbit, in the distant magnetosphere, and in the solar wind. ARTEMIS will also collect unprecedented observations of the space environment behind the dark side of the Moon – the greatest known vacuum in the solar system – by the solar wind. In late March 2011, both spacecraft will be maneuvered into elliptical lunar orbits where they will continue to observe magnetospheric dynamics, solar wind and the space environment over the course of several years.

Illustration of Artemis-P1 liberations orbits, side or ecliptic view. Credit: NASA/Goddard

ARTEMIS stands for “Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun”. The ARTEMIS mission uses two of the five in-orbit spacecraft from another NASA Heliophysics constellation of satellites (THEMIS) that were launched in 2007 and successfully completed their mission earlier this year. The ARTEMIS mission allowed NASA to repurpose two in-orbit spacecraft to extend their useful science mission, saving tens of millions of taxpayer dollars instead of building and launching new spacecraft. Other benefits of this first ever libration orbit mission include the investigation of lunar regions to provide a staging location for both assembly of telescopes or human exploration of planets and asteroids or even to serve as a communication relay location for a future lunar outpost. The navigation and control of the spacecraft will also provide NASA engineers with important information on propellant usage, requirements on ground station resources, and the sensitivity of controlling these unique orbits.

[Source: NASA/Goddard]

Chronology Protection Conjecture: Where are They?

“Where are they?” It becomes necessary to ponder about time travellers if you are going to discuss time travel. Well, if time travel is possible, where are the time travellers from future? What if a time machine is handled over you? Where would you like to go first in time dimension? Of course, your answer would be ‘in the past’!! As you know quantum physics allows time travel with given circumstances.[See, Time Travel]

I have already peer reviewed a lot of research paper in regards to time travel. Consider, if our civilization might have been survived for next six centuries and fore, we would have reached to the stage of post singularity and tending to become a typeII civilization. Since every time travelling trick acquire highly risky and pesky technologies like traversable wormholes, tipler cylinder, closed time like curve,macroscopic casimir effect(filled with high negative energy densities) so it is fairly reasonable to assume that building a time machine is just a engineering problem. I bet if we have ensured our survival to the next ten centuries, we would have all such technologies which are today viewed as the challenge. So I’ll assume that our future descendents have such technology which would allow them to travel back and forth in time. Now, a obvious question which knock down our brain is-”where are they?”
Well explanation can be offered in two ways:
1.Chronology Protection Conjecture(CPC):This was first proposed by Pro. Hawking in 1992. Well CPC is nothing but a metaphorical device which prevents the macroscopic time travel. The idea of chronology protection gained considerable currency during the 1990′s when it became clear that traversable wormholes,which are not too objectionable in their own right seem almost generically to lead to the creation of time machines. Why CPC is a key issue? In Newtonian physics, and even in special relativity or flat-space quantum field theory, notions of chronology and causality are so fundamental that they are simply built into the theory ab initio. Violation of normal chronology (for instance, an eect preceding its cause)is so objectionable an occurrence that any such theory would immediately be rejected as unphysical. Unfortunately, in general relativity one can’t simply assert that chronology is preserved, and causality respected, without doing considerable ad-ditional work. The essence of the problem lies in the fact that the Einstein equations of general relativity are local equations, relating some aspects of the spacetime curvature at a point to the presence of stress-energy at that point. Additionally, one also has local chronology protection, inherited from the fact that the spacetime is locally Minkowskian(the Einstein Equivalence Principle), and so in the small general relativity respects all of the causality constraints of special relativity. There is quantum like thingy known as Cauchy horizon problem which prevent the formation of closed time like curve but that could be easily overrun by Casimir effect(exception of Cauchy horizon problem). One side of the horizon contains closed space-like geodesics and the other side contains closed time-like geodesics. When waves traveling in Misner space pass through the identification world line. As this happens infinitely many times while approaching the horizon, the stress-energy tensor diverges at the horizon. Presumably, this prevents space time from developing closed time-like curve ts that would otherwise be feasible. Thus, CPC is protected.
2.Multiverse Theory: This could also be proposed as a possible strategy to explain the paradox. There are infinite universes having every single possibility. So, it is possible that indeed, time travellers from future might be lurking into the past enjoying dinosaur riding but in a different parallel universe. Thusly, it resolves the paradox.

3.No Time Machine can be engineered: Probably this is the simplest solution to the paradox. The parody with time travel is that it always involves something that is way beyond our technology or even rhetorical ideas. General requirements of a time machine are tipler cylinders, black holes, warp drives, wormholes, Kerr Neumann black holes, BPS black holes etc. which won’t seem feasible by any means of technology. Perhaps, which is why there are no time traveller intruding into the past to get better resources, appaling Homo Sapiens.

Understanding the New View of Tectonic Plates

Tectonic plates of Earth has ever been a mystery as to how it works. But now this mystery seems to be resolved. Scientists at Caltech have developed new computer algorithms that for the first time allow for the simultaneous modeling of the earth’s mantle flow, large-scale tectonic plate motions, and the behavior of individual fault zones, to produce an unprecedented view of plate tectonics and the forces that drive it. A paper describing the whole earth model and its underlying algorithms was published in the August 27 issue of the journal Science and also featured on the cover.The work illustrates the interplay between making important advances in science and pushing the envelope of computational science. To create the new model, computational scientists at Texas’s Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) pushed the envelope of a computational technique known as Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR).

Partial differential equations such as those describing mantle flow are solved by subdividing the region of interest (such as the mantle) into a computational grid. Ordinarily, the resolution is kept the same throughout the grid. However, many problems feature small-scale dynamics that are found only in limited regions. AMR methods adaptively create finer resolution only where it’s needed. This leads to huge reductions in the number of grid points, making possible simulations that were previously out of reach. The complexity of managing adaptivity among thousands of processors, however, has meant that current AMR algorithms have not scaled well on modern petascale supercomputers. Petascale computers are capable of one million billion operations per second. To overcome this long-standing problem, the group developed new algorithms that allows for adaptivity in a way that scales to the hundreds of thousands of processor cores of the largest supercomputers available today.

[Image Details:Tectonic plate motion (arrows) and viscosity arising from global mantle flow simulation. Plate boundaries, which can be seen as narrow red lines are resolved using an adaptively refined mesh with 1km local resolution. Shown are the Pacific and the Australian tectonic plates and the New Hebrides and Tonga microplates.]

With the new algorithms, the scientists were able to simulate global mantle flow and how it manifests as plate tectonics and the motion of individual faults. The AMR algorithms reduced the size of the simulations by a factor of 5,000, permitting them to fit on fewer than 10,000 processors and run overnight on the Ranger supercomputer at the National Science Foundation. A key to the model was the incorporation of data on a multitude of scales. Many natural processes display a multitude of phenomena on a wide range of scales, from small to large. For example, at the largest scale—that of the whole earth—the movement of the surface tectonic plates is a manifestation of a giant heat engine, driven by the convection of the mantle below. The boundaries between the plates, however, are composed of many hundreds to thousands of individual faults, which together constitute active fault zones. Gurnish said:

The individual fault zones play a critical role in how the whole planet works and if you can’t simulate the fault zones, you can’t simulate plate movement—and, in turn, you can’t simulate the dynamics of the whole planet.

In the new model, the researchers were able to resolve the largest fault zones, creating a mesh with a resolution of about one kilometer near the plate boundaries. Included in the simulation were seismological data as well as data pertaining to the temperature of the rocks, their density, and their viscosity—or how strong or weak the rocks are, which affects how easily they deform. That deformation is nonlinear—with simple changes producing unexpected and complex effects.
Normally, when you hit a baseball with a bat, the properties of the bat don’t change—it won’t turn to Silly Putty. In the earth, the properties do change, which creates an exciting computational problem. If the system is too nonlinear, the earth becomes too mushy; if it’s not nonlinear enough, plates won’t move. We need to hit the ‘sweet spot.

[Image Details:Cross section showing the adaptively refined mesh with a finest resolution of about 1km in the region from the New Hebrides to Tonga in the SW Pacific. The refinement occurs both around plate plate boundaries and dynamically in response to the nonlinear rheology.]
One surprising result from the model relates to the energy released from plates in earthquake zones. Much of the energy dissipation occurs in the earth’s deep interior. We never saw this when we looked on smaller scales.

Poor Hawking You Are Still Wrong!!

Hawking is getting more and more weirder. This time a genius weirdo is explaining the origin of universe alone with his physical laws. In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.” He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

Okay, admitted! Admitted that Hawking is right then he need to explain everything around us as to why it exist at all? Hawking has already made a fuss of controversial statements.

This is the big bang which started from a explosion and symmetry breaking in ultimate supersymmetric singularity. It seems fairly likely that there was a Big Bang. The obvious question that could be asked to challenge or define the boundaries between physics and metaphysics is: what came before the Big Bang? Physicists define the boundaries of physics by trying to describe them theoretically and then testing that description against observation. Our observed expanding Universe is very well described by flat space, with critical density supplied mainly by dark matter and a cosmological constant, that should expand forever. If we follow this model backwards in time to when the Universe was very hot and dense, and dominated by radiation, then we have to understand the particle physics that happens at such high densities of energy. The experimental understanding of particle physics starts to poop out after the energy scale of electroweak unification, and theoretical physicists have to reach for models of particle physics beyond the Standard Model, to Grand Unified Theories, supersymmetry, string theory and quantum cosmology.

Theories can explain the characteristics but not ultimate fundamental origin. Even if we would have discovered the grand unified theory or say theory of everything, a fundamental question would still be unexplained for us perplexing our 1600cc mind for infinite light years in time dimension that is, from where such singularity came? Who created the space time itself? What is that upholding the whole quantum chunk of space time? Indeed, what is withing our scope that we could know how this universe was formed, what are the laws of universe, how to create extra dimensions of our own or even universe.!?

Consider a scenario to comprehend the controversial case with better intellect! What if we have created five dimensional universe of our own followed by programming laws of universe and intensionally creating a ultimate singularity made of compactified 10^78 electrons,protons and neutrons? Assume somehow we have completed this task by hook or crook. Since we already have TOE( Theory of Everything) so it is desired that we would explode it using our technology inasmuch it would be stupidity to wait for billions of years to see a big bang explosion happening(or we may accelerate the rate of change of time by vast amounts). Now consider the evolution of universe in a same way(it would be slightly different since this time we are dealing with a five dimensional universe not classical 4dimensional universe) as it has already happened. It is presumed that there are intelligent beings which have been evolved along the pace of time. Now if these five dimensional intelligent intellectual entities are smart enough to comprehend their five dimensional universe. Now consider they have discovered quantum theory of origin of universe and physical laws of extradimensions and parallel universes.
What if another five dimensional Hawking( this is not four dimensional Hawking) has acclaimed that we don’t need god since we could explain the origin of our five dimensional universe with the help of supergravity? Is he correct? Certainly not!!

Something can be explained without the need of anything doesn’t mean that anything don’t exist. This is where Hawking still stands for totally vague and satired leaning argument. Hey Hawking, stop this unnecessery controversies!!

Short Article: Laser Weapons Won’t be Good for Space War

There is a good technical mistake, often committed whenever we are going to pioneer space war. In various games like Star Cruisers, it is vigourasly shown that to knock your opponent down what you have to do is, just beam your laser weapon to metallic spaceship and all the stuff is over. Is is drastically and technically correct? With all this frightfulness flying at your ship, you’d want some kind of defense, besides just hoping they’ll miss. As mentioned before, advances in effectiveness of weapon lethality and defensive protection are mainly focused on the targeting problem. That is, the weapons are generally already powerful enough for a one-hit kill. So the room for improvement lies in increasing the probability that the weapon actually hits the target. And the the probability that the weapon actually hits the target. And the room for improvement on the defensive side is to decrease the probability of a hit. Weapons can be improved two ways: increase the precision of each shot(precision of fire), or keep the same precision but increase the number of shots fired(volume of fire). Precision of fire is governed by
[a]the location of the target when the weapons fire arrives,
[b]the flight path of the weapons fire given characteristic of the shot and the environment though which the shot passes, and
[c]the weapon’s aiming precision. Volume of fire is governed by
[d]the weapon’s rate of fire and
[e]the lethality of a given shot.

A defense can interfere with the[a] location of the targetby evasive maneuvers. There isn’t really a way to interfere with [b] the characteristics of a shot, short of inserting a saboteur into the crew of the firing ship. A defense can interfere with the environment through which the shot passes by such things as jamming the weapon’s homing frequencies or clouds of anti-laser sand(which may work in the Traveller universe, but not in reality). There isn’t really a way to directly interfere with [c] the weapon’s aiming precision(again short of a saboteur), though one can indirectly do so by decreasing the target’s by decreasing the target’s signature, increasing the range or jamming the firing ship’s targeting sensors and degrade their targeting solution. Finally, while one cannot do much about the [d] weapon’s rate of fire, the [e] lethality of a given shotcan be effectively reduced by rendering harmless shots that actually hit. This is done by armor, point defense, and science-fictional force fields.

But our weapons are really good? Generally, laser weapons or beam weapons like high energy electron beam weapons are suggested as best proponents for space war. Kinetic weapons are not good for space war. Why? Consider a spaceship with a rest mass of say 20 tons and moving at a speed of twenty miles/second. Now a missile having mass two or three tons is fired say at a thirty miles/seconds. Now apply the law of conservation of momentum and tell me by which amount your spaceship is get deflected(ignore the special relativity since velocity is not considerable against c)? It is obvious that ship would get unbalanced and it won’t be able to fire the weapons continuously.

Like a beam of high velocity electrons, a laser beam is also capable of producing very high power density. Perhaps which is why science fiction finds it excellent especially in space war. I also find it excellent against kinetic weapons since it is precise and accurate in targetting the opponent and one hit kill as it would travel at a speed of c which is very high compared to kinetic weapon’s speed. It also diminish the inertial effects as which were very large in the case of kinetic weapons. How effective laser weapons are, it would depend upon following factors:
1. Interaction of laser beam with spaceship’s material(here I’ll assume it as to be metal in order to get better stealth)
2. Heat conduction and temperature rise
3. Melting, vaporization, and ablation.

Destroying power of laser weapons depend on the thermo-optic interaction between spaceship’s outer metal(or say material) and the beam. So, it’s obvious that the crew surface should reflect back too much to get better stealth or use ceramic material with very high temperature resistance. So what if opponent ship has a relatively thick layer of ceramics( as most of space shuttles do have)? The absorbed light propagates into the medium and its energy is gradually transferred to the lattice atoms in the form of heat. It follows the Lambert’s law here which is (Intensity at a depth)/(initial intensity)= exp(absorption cofficient*depth)
it is pretty clear from the above law that most of the laser’s power would be consumed just to vaporize a very thin outer layer(0.01micrometer) which won’t be effective much against the crew. Not only that laser’s efficiency is very low and providing a nearly hundred percent reflective armor would be excellent against laser weapons. I’ll make it more clear in upcoming articles.

Short Article: Hawking’s Weirdness Continued

Listen, Earthlings: Everythings going to be fine. All we have to do is survive another century or two without self-destructing as a species. Then well get off this rock, spread throughout space, and everything will be all right. If this is not your idea of optimism, then you are not Stephen Hawking. We are going to face various mountainous problems including overpopulation, global warming and cataclysmic problems. The biggest problem is, for sure, overpopulation and depleting resources. Imagine our planet after 50years where our planet would have been harboring nearly 11billion humans with very less natural resources. And, if you are accepting data the temperature would be increased by one or two degree cel. by that time. Not only global warming and overpopulations are problems but devasted ecosystem/biosphere also be a non renewable problem. Agreed, Hawking is correct about future crisis. Then, what are ultimate survival tactics? Fleeing into space? No way, we are far from being a starfaring civilization! We can’t engineer a wormhole, warp drive or anything like that. Negative energy is not discovered yet, making our future gloomy. We haven’t reached to the Mars yet, unless you believe in conspiracy theory. Lately, Stephen Hawking warned us about aliens saying that they could be nomads. I don’t know from where he is getting such ideas.

Is space colonization ultimate survival idea? No, it’s not! We are not advanced upto the extent where we could colonize space. Not from only technological point of view but also mentally. Establishing a colony in moon or mars is not so easy(not even impossible). There is another problem with moon or mars colonization and that is, low gravity. Can you change the gravity of these planets or will you establish O’Neill type colonies in martian region? I’ve already said that O’Neill type colonies are not appropriate for harboring 1billion peoples(and most of them will die during establishment of colonization).

Is it better to leave Earth after contaminating it? I don’t think so. We should try to make our planet green once again. It is far easier and better than fleeing of into space. Space is not good place to develop advanced civilization. Again, space colonization is not bad that much but it should be limited only for exploration and study not to develop civilization otherwise we would have to encounter many adverse effects.

Analysis of Evidence of Life On Mars

Mars, our neighboring planet is flourishing with extraterrestrial life. Here are some really credible evidences which suggests, there is life on Mars. A new research paper by Gilbert V. Levin, has proposed this provocative series of evidences.

1. The Viking landers carried nine courses of the Labeled Release experiment (LR) designed to detect any metabolizing microorganisms that might be present on the martian surface. The LR was designed to drop a nutrient solution of organic compounds labeled with radioactive carbon atoms into a soil sample taken from the surface of Mars and placed into a small test cell. A radiation detector then monitored over time for the evolution of radioactive gas from the sample as evidence of metabolism: namely, if microorganisms were metabolizing the nutrients they had been given. When the experiment was conducted on both Viking landers, it gave positive results almost immediately. The protocol called for a control in the event of a positive response. Accordingly, duplicate soil samples were inserted into fresh cells, heated for three hours at 160 ºC to sterilize them (the control procedure established for all Viking biology experiments), allowed to cool and then tested. These courses produced virtually no response,

thus completing the pre-mission criteria for the detection of microbial life. All LR results support, or are consistent with, the presence of living microorganisms. Yet between 1976 and late 2006 life on Mars remained a subject of debate, with the scientific consensus being negative because of the following arguments:

• The Viking organic analysis instrument (GCMS), an abbreviated gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer designed to identify the organic material widely presumed to be present on Mars, found no organic molecules. After years of discussion and experimentation, a consensus was reached explaining this negative result as a lack of sensitivity.
• “UV destroys life and organics”. Yet sampling soil from under a rock on Mars demonstrated that UV light was not inducing the LR activity detected.
• “Strong oxidants were present that destroy life and organics”. Findings  by the Viking Magnetic Properties Experiment showed that the surface material of Mars contains a large magnetic component, evidence against a highly oxidizing condition. Further, three Earth-based IR observations, by the ESA orbiter  failed to detect the putative oxidant in any amount that could cause the LR results, and, most recently, data from the Rover Opportunity have shown Mars surface iron to be not completely oxidized (ferric) – but to occur mostly in the ferrous form which would not be expected in a highly oxidizing environment.
• “Too much too soon”. The LR positive responses and their reaction kinetics were said to be those of a first order reaction, without the lag or exponential phases seen in classic microbial growth curves, all of which seemed to argue for a simple chemical reaction. However, terrestrial LR experiments on a variety of soils produced response rates with the  kinetics and the range of amplitudes of the LR on Mars, thereby offsetting this argument.
• Lack of a new surge of gas upon injection of fresh medium. Although 2nd injection responsiveness was not part of the LR life detection criteria, the lack of a new surge of gas upon injection of fresh medium on an active sample was interpreted as evidence against biology. However, a previous test of bonded, NASA-supplied Antarctic soil, No. 664, containing less than 10 viable cells/g , had shown this same type of response to a 2nd injection. The failure of the 2nd injection to elicit a response can be attributed to the organisms in the active sample having died sometime after the 1st injection, during the latter part of Cycle 1. The effect  of the 2nd injection was to wet the soil, causing it to absorb headspace gas. The gradual reemergence of the gas into the headspace with time occurred as the system came to equilibrium.
• “There can be no liquid water on the surface of Mars”. Since November and December 2006, the accumulated evidence shows that liquid water exists in soil even if only as a thin film. Viking, itself, gave strong evidence [] of the presence of liquid water when the rise in the temperature of its footpad, responding to the rising sun, halted at 273 degrees K. Snow or frost is seen in Viking images of the landing site (e.g., Viking Lander Image 21I093). Pathfinder has shown that the surface atmosphere of Mars exceeds 20 oC part of the day, providing transient conditions for liquid water.Together, these observations constitute  strong evidence for the diurnal presence of liquid water. In explaining the stickiness of the soil, MER scientists have said that it “might contain tiny globules of liquid water,” or “might contain brine”. Other images of Mars show current, if intermittent, rivulet activity. On the Earth’s South Polar Cap and within permafrost in the Arctic there is liquid water: even in those frozen places, very thin films of liquid water exist among the interstices of ice and minerals, enough to sustain an ecology involving highly differentiated species.
• “Cosmic radiation destroys life on Mars”. a recent report [8] calculated the incoming flow of both galactic cosmic rays particles (GCR) and solar energetic protons (SEP) over a wide energy range. As a result one may acknowledge that -without even invoking natural selection to enhance radiation  protection and damage repair- the radiation incident to the surface of Mars appears trivial for the survival of numerous terrestrial-like microorganisms. With respect to the near-term effect of the radiation, when Surveyor’s camera was returned  from the Moon after being in its much-harsherthan- Mars radiation fields for forty months, it was found to contain viable microorganisms. However, the point was then made that exposures of constantly frozen microorganisms to this flux for millions to billions of years would have damaged their DNA and its repair mechanism to the point where survival could not occur. In this regard, Viking and the Pathfinder thermal data demonstrate that, at least at the three widely separated locations of those landers, prolonged freezing is not the case.

2. Those arguments should have been satisfied with the cited data. If not, additional evidence added an even richer context in support of the LR results. Main items are listed as follows.

3. Further supporting evidence includes the possible presence, on some of the Martian rocks, of desert varnish, a coating which on Earth is of microbial origin or contains products generated by microorganisms - an observation originally made by Viking on which several recent articles have rekindled interest. Adding to this rising tide of facts supporting the detection of life by the Viking LR experiment are the recent findings in the Martian atmosphere of methane, formaldehyde, and, possibly, ammonia, gases frequently involved in microbial metabolism. The existence of the short half-lived, UV-labile methane requires a source of continual replacement. Continual volcanic activity, a potential non-biological source of methane, has not been indicated by thermal mapping of the entire planet. In the Earth’s atmosphere, methane is sustained primarily by biological metabolism. Moreover, the methane detected on Mars was associated with water vapor in the lower atmosphere, consistent with, if not indicative of, extant life.

4. As still further evidence, the kinetics of evolution of labeled gas in the Viking LR experiment indicates the possibility of a circadian rhythm, daily over the length of the experiments, up to 90 sols. However, as of now, these are only indications, not statistically significant. However, another paper , using a non linear approach, concluded,“Our results strongly support the hypothesis of a biologic origin of the gas collected by the LR experiment from the Martian soil.” A new study, in which the authors of the initial papers and the most recent paper are collaborating, is currently underway to further investigate the statistical significance for that conclusion.

5. Huge recent advances in the research of the variety of extremophiles on Earth have added very strong import to the current context. Recently, an expert in soil science from the Netherlands communicated to the congress of the European Geosciences Union that the discovery of the recent detection of phyllosilicate clays on Mars may indicate pedogenesis processes, or soil (as opposed to regolith) development, extended over the entire surface of Mars. This interpretation views most of Mars surface as active soil, colored red, as on Earth, by eons of widespread microbial activity.

6. Another new, potentially important new insight is the proposed H2O2-H2O life hypothesis , namely the possibility that the Martian life solvent, in the organisms detected by the LR may be H2O2- H2O rather than H2O. Additionally, it is conjectured [1] that layers of structured H2O (probably vitreous, rather than crystalline, at the relevant temperatures) adsorbed on cytoskeletal/organel analogs may compartment any H2O2-H2O mixtures.

7. Collectively, these new findings and analyses, compiled with the LR data, strongly indicate microbial life on Mars. This development should re-focus the analysis of the Viking Mission results to working out the broadest physiological details required by the organisms in Marciana.

The analysis of the whole evidence thus constitutes a situation very different from that of only a few months ago. With the biological nomenclature of Gillevinia straata, the possibility of contamination of Marciana must be considered. This may have occurred in the missions over the past decades in which the sterilization procedures were abandoned in the belief that there was no life on Mars. This and other biosecurity concerns  must be evaluated. Also an epistemological objection that he has long posed, that Jakobia organisms cannot be proven extant by detection of their components alone, but only through the detection of their active metabolism [Comentario editorial: la cuestión epistemológica en la detección de vida en Marte], would seem to take on new significance. He has proposed a detailed approach that could enable the first determination of whether the Martian micro-organisms are similar to our life forms or truly alien[Modern Myths Concerning Life on Mars]. Further, comparative biological studies and the classification of extraterrestrial organisms could be accomplished with metabolism-detection experiments in which environmental and nutrient variables were studied. With the first extraterrestrial creature discovered and named, our sense of responsibility in this endeavor should be heightened. Really an interesting analysis.

[Ref: A Possible Biogenic Origin for Hydrogen Peroxide on Mars: The Viking Results Reinterpreted by Houtkooper, J. M. and D. Schulze-Makuch, The Red Soil on Mars as a proof for water and vegetation, Modelling the surface and subsurface Martian radiation environment: Implications for astrobiology- doi:10.1029/2006GL027494 and The limitations on organic detection in Mars-like soils by thermal volatilization- gas chromatography-MS and their implications for the Viking results ]

Why To Colonize Mars?

Our blue planet is suffering from cataclysmic processes including global warming and pollution. Now our Earth is harboring almost seven billion Homo Sapience. In near future it would be even greater problem. Except that there are many problems which force us to establish colonies outside of terran. Here Robert Zubrin, Former chairman of National Space Society, will explain some prospects for Mars colonization.

By Robert Zubrin

Among extraterrestrial bodies in our solar system, Mars is singular in that it possesses all the raw materials required to support not only life, but a new branch of human civilization. This uniqueness is illustrated most clearly if we contrast Mars with the Earth’s Moon, the most frequently cited alternative location for extraterrestrial human colonization.

In contrast to the Moon, Mars is rich in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, all in biologically readily accessible forms such as carbon dioxide gas, nitrogen gas, and water ice and permafrost. Carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen are only present on the Moon in parts per million quantities, much like gold in seawater. Oxygen is abundant on the Moon, but only in tightly bound oxides such as silicon dioxide (SiO₂), ferrous oxide (Fe₂O₃), magnesium oxide (MgO), and aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃), which require very high energy processes to reduce. Current knowledge indicates that if Mars were smooth and all its ice and permafrost melted into liquid water, the entire planet would be covered with an ocean over 100 meters deep. This contrasts strongly with the Moon, which is so dry that if concrete were found there, Lunar colonists would mine it to get the water out. Thus, if plants could be grown in greenhouses on the Moon (an unlikely proposition, as we’ve seen) most of their biomass material would have to be imported.

The Moon is also deficient in about half the metals of interest to industrial society (copper, for example), as well as many other elements of interest such as sulfur and phosphorus. Mars has every required element in abundance. Moreover, on Mars, as on Earth, hydrologic and volcanic processes have occurred that are likely to have consolidated various elements into local concentrations of high-grade mineral ore. Indeed, the geologic history of Mars has been compared to that of Africa, with very optimistic inferences as to its mineral wealth implied as a corollary. In contrast, the Moon has had virtually no history of water or volcanic action, with the result that it is basically composed of trash rocks with very little differentiation into ores that represent useful concentrations of anything interesting.

You can generate power on either the Moon or Mars with solar panels, and here the advantages of the Moon’s clearer skies and closer proximity to the Sun than Mars roughly balances the disadvantage of large energy storage requirements created by the Moon’s 28-day light-dark cycle. But if you wish to manufacture solar panels, so as to create a self-expanding power base, Mars holds an enormous advantage, as only Mars possesses the large supplies of carbon and hydrogen needed to produce the pure silicon required for producing photovoltaic panels and other electronics. In addition, Mars has the potential for wind-generated power while the Moon clearly does not. But both solar and wind offer relatively modest power potential — tens or at most hundreds of kilowatts here or there. To create a vibrant civilization you need a richer power base, and this Mars has both in the short and medium term in the form of its geothermal power resources, which offer potential for large numbers of locally created electricity generating stations in the 10 MW (10,000 kilowatt) class. In the long-term, Mars will enjoy a power-rich economy based upon exploitation of its large domestic resources of deuterium fuel for fusion reactors. Deuterium is five times more common on Mars than it is on Earth, and tens of thousands of times more common on Mars than on the Moon.

But the biggest problem with the Moon, as with all other airless planetary bodies and proposed artificial free-space colonies, is that sunlight is not available in a form useful for growing crops. A single acre of plants on Earth requires four megawatts of sunlight power, a square kilometer needs 1,000 MW. The entire world put together does not produce enough electrical power to illuminate the farms of the state of Rhode Island, that agricultural giant. Growing crops with electrically generated light is just economically hopeless. But you can’t use natural sunlight on the Moon or any other airless body in space unless you put walls on the greenhouse thick enough to shield out solar flares, a requirement that enormously increases the expense of creating cropland. Even if you did that, it wouldn’t do you any good on the Moon, because plants won’t grow in a light/dark cycle lasting 28 days.

But on Mars there is an atmosphere thick enough to protect crops grown on the surface from solar flare. Therefore, thin-walled inflatable plastic greenhouses protected by unpressurized UV-resistant hard-plastic shield domes can be used to rapidly create cropland on the surface. Even without the problems of solar flares and month-long diurnal cycle, such simple greenhouses would be impractical on the Moon as they would create unbearably high temperatures. On Mars, in contrast, the strong greenhouse effect created by such domes would be precisely what is necessary to produce a temperate climate inside. Such domes up to 50 meters in diameter are light enough to be transported from Earth initially, and later on they can be manufactured on Mars out of indigenous materials. Because all the resources to make plastics exist on Mars, networks of such 50- to 100-meter domes couldbe rapidly manufactured and deployed, opening up large areas of the surface to both shirtsleeve human habitation and agriculture. That’s just the beginning, because it will eventually be possible for humans to substantially thicken Mars’ atmosphere by forcing the regolith to outgas its contents through a deliberate program of artificially induced global warming. Once that has been accomplished, the habitation domes could be virtually any size, as they would not have to sustain a pressure differential between their interior and exterior. In fact, once that has been done, it will be possible to raise specially bred crops outside the domes.

The point to be made is that unlike colonists on any known extraterrestrial body, Martian colonists will be able to live on the surface, not in tunnels, and move about freely and grow crops in the light of day. Mars is a place where humans can live and multiply to large numbers, supporting themselves with products of every description made out of indigenous materials. Mars is thus a place where an actual civilization, not just a mining or scientific outpost, can be developed. And significantly for interplanetary commerce, Mars and Earth are the only two locations in the solar system where humans will be able to grow crops for export.

Interplanetary Commerce

Mars is the best target for colonization in the solar system because it has by far the greatest potential for self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, even with optimistic extrapolation of robotic manufacturing techniques, Mars will not have the division of labor required to make it fully self-sufficient until its population numbers in the millions. Thus, for decades and perhaps longer, it will be necessary, and forever desirable, for Mars to be able to import specialized manufactured goods from Earth. These goods can be fairly limited in mass, as only small portions (by weight) of even very high-tech goods are actually complex. Nevertheless, these smaller sophisticated items will have to be paid for, and the high costs of Earth-launch and interplanetary transport will greatly increase their price. What can Mars possibly export back to Earth in return?

It is this question that has caused many to incorrectly deem Mars colonization intractable, or at least inferior in prospect to the Moon. For example, much has been made of the fact that the Moon has indigenous supplies of helium-3, an isotope not found on Earth and which could be of considerable value as a fuel for second generation thermonuclear fusion reactors. Mars has no known helium-3 resources. On the other hand, because of its complex geologic history, Mars may have concentrated mineral ores, with much greater concentrations of precious metal ores readily available than is currently the case on Earth — because the terrestrial ores have been heavily scavenged by humans for the past 5,000 years. If concentrated supplies of metals of equal or greater value than silver (such as germanium, hafnium, lanthanum, cerium, rhenium, samarium, gallium, gadolinium, gold, palladium, iridium, rubidium, platinum, rhodium, europium, and a host of others) were available on Mars, they could potentially be transported back to Earth for a substantial profit. Reusable Mars-surface based single-stage-to-orbit vehicles would haul cargoes to Mars orbit for transportation to Earth via either cheap expendable chemical stages manufactured on Mars or reusable cycling solar or magnetic sail-powered interplanetary spacecraft. The existence of such Martian precious metal ores, however, is still hypothetical.

But there is one commercial resource that is known to exist ubiquitously on Mars in large amount — deuterium. Deuterium, the heavy isotope of hydrogen, occurs as 166 out of every million hydrogen atoms on Earth, but comprises 833 out of every million hydrogen atoms on Mars. Deuterium is the key fuel not only for both first and second generation fusion reactors, but it is also an essential material needed by the nuclear power industry today. Even with cheap power, deuterium is very expensive; its current market value on Earth is about $10,000 per kilogram, roughly fifty times as valuable as silver or 70% as valuable as gold. This is in today’s pre-fusion economy. Once fusion reactors go into widespread use deuterium prices will increase. All the in-situ chemical processes required to produce the fuel, oxygen, and plastics necessary to run a Mars settlement require water electrolysis as an intermediate step. As a by product of these operations, millions, perhaps billions, of dollars worth of deuterium will be produced.

Ideas may be another possible export for Martian colonists. Just as the labor shortage prevalent in colonial and nineteenth century America drove the creation of “Yankee ingenuity’s” flood of inventions, so the conditions of extreme labor shortage combined with a technological culture that shuns impractical legislative constraints against innovation will tend to drive Martian ingenuity to produce wave after wave of invention in energy production, automation and robotics, biotechnology, and other areas. These inventions, licensed on Earth, could finance Mars even as they revolutionize and advance terrestrial living standards as forcefully as nineteenth century American invention changed Europe and ultimately the rest of the world as well.

Inventions produced as a matter of necessity by a practical intellectual culture stressed by frontier conditions can make Mars rich, but invention and direct export to Earth are not the only ways that Martians will be able to make a fortune. The other route is via trade to the asteroid belt, the band of small, mineral-rich bodies lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. There are about 5,000 asteroids known today, of which about 98% are in the “Main Belt” lying between Mars and Jupiter, with an average distance from the Sun of about 2.7 astronomical units, or AU. (The Earth is 1.0 AU from the Sun.) Of the remaining two percent known as the near-Earth asteroids, about 90% orbit closer to Mars than to the Earth. Collectively, these asteroids represent an enormous stockpile of mineral wealth in the form of platinum group and other valuable metals.

Miners operating among the asteroids will be unable to produce their necessary supplies locally. There will thus be a need to export food and other necessary goods from either Earth or Mars to the Main Belt. Mars has an overwhelming positional advantage as a location from which to conduct such trade.

Historical Analogies

The primary analogy I wish to draw is that Mars is to the new age of exploration as North America was to the last. The Earth’s Moon, close to the metropolitan planet but impoverished in resources, compares to Greenland. Other destinations, such as the Main Belt asteroids, may be rich in potential future exports to Earth but lack the preconditions for the creation of a fully developed indigenous society; these compare to the West Indies. Only Mars has the full set of resources required to develop a native civilization, and only Mars is a viable target for true colonization. Like America in its relationship to Britain and the West Indies, Mars has a positional advantage that will allow it to participate in a useful way to support extractive activities on behalf of Earth in the asteroid belt and elsewhere.

But despite the shortsighted calculations of eighteenth-century European statesmen and financiers, the true value of America never was as a logistical support base for West Indies sugar and spice trade, inland fur trade, or as a potential market for manufactured goods. The true value of America was as the future home for a new branch of human civilization, one that as a combined result of its humanistic antecedents and its frontier conditions was able to develop into the most powerful engine for human progress and economic growth the world had ever seen. The wealth of America was in fact that she could support people, and that the right kind of people chose to go to her. People create wealth. People are wealth and power. Every feature of Frontier American life that acted to create a practical can-do culture of innovating people will apply to Mars a hundred-fold.

Mars is a harsher place than any on Earth. But provided one can survive the regimen, it is the toughest schools that are the best. The Martians shall do well.