The Space Thread

'Fossils' of galaxies reveal the formation and evolution of massive galaxies: "Astronomers have observed massive dead galaxies in the universe 4 billion years after the Big Bang. They discovered that the stellar content of these galaxies is strikingly similar to that of massive elliptical galaxies seen locally. Furthermore, they identified progenitors of these dead galaxies when they were forming stars at an earlier cosmic epoch, unveiling the formation and evolution of massive galaxies across 11 billion years of cosmic time."

Liquid water confirmed in Mars.

Source. This tidbit:

Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons.

Yep. The perchlorates apparently keep the water liquid all the way until -70°C, although at the cost of making it unpalatable to known life.

My reaction to that: "The extremophiles living next to hydrothermal vents on Earth's ocean floor are probably able to withstand worse stuff, so there's still hope."

edited 28th Sep '15 1:40:04 PM by amitakartok

Anything to give us the hope of someday colonizing that rock in space.

Geez, you space people always go for the colonization dreams

I just came here to comment "Hey, thats neat" xD

Well it ups our chances of survival if we are able to live and thrive outside of Earth.

BTW does this double as an Astrology thread or is this purely Astronomy (prolly the former)? I found out someone had made symbols for the non zodiacal constellations, meteor showers, trans-neptunian objects and such and I want to share them.

edited 29th Sep '15 12:51:05 AM by MorningStar1337

Earth-like planets around small stars likely have protective magnetic fields, aiding chance for life: "Earth-like planets orbiting close to small stars probably have magnetic fields that protect them from stellar radiation and help maintain surface conditions that could be conducive to life, according to research from astronomers."

Here’s why NASA’s Mars rovers are banned from investigating that liquid water: "This week, NASA scientists announced that they had found chemical evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars. While they make a compelling case, the existence of seasonal rivers of briney water will never be 100 percent confirmed until we can see it and touch it and analyse it, and if it’s not actual humans on Mars doing that, we’ll have to study it vicariously through our far-flung robots.

Except we can’t. Not as long as those far-flung robots originated on Earth, anyway. Right now, NASA’s Curiosity rover is about 50 kilometres from the site that scientists suspect holds liquid Martian water, but thanks to an international treaty signed in 1967, it’s not allowed to go anywhere near it."

Makes sense, If the water is contaminated, then it might lead to inconclusive evidence.

Still wondering if I can share the symbols here or not?

On another note, Even if the magnetic shields do exist, how will we know if they would be effect enough to protect from their star's radiation?

... Wait, how do they sterilize the rover after it landed on Mars? What in the world could shoot an "ultraviolet tanning" beam — or a beam of "crazy heat and radiation" — that's strong enough to reach all the way between Earth and the Red Planet at a strong enough intensity to kill microorganisms?

They don't

Spacecraft is routinely sterilized pre-launch to avoid such microbial transfer.

Avoiding such transfer was also part of the reason why Galileo was crashed into Jupiter; folks were afraid that the craft may otherwise crash into one of Jupiter's moons, and if that were to happen on Europa it may result in contamination.

... But the article said that they did/could.

Imagine how tragic it would be if it turned out that Jupiter's gaseous/liquid layers were home to exotic life forms beyond our limited imaginations that ended up dying due to contamination via Galileo's crash.

edited 30th Sep '15 6:22:41 AM by MarqFJA

You wouldn't shoot the bean from Earth, you'd have a salaried orbiting Mars that would do it.

Though I'm pretty sure you can't actually put a satalite with a laser that powerful into space, what with space being demilitarised with the Outer Space Treaty.

Space has already been militarized. As to the possibility of water on Mars, if anything it makes colonization more unlikely, as it brings the ethical argument about not wanting to destroy the lifeforms their. Dam it I thought at least in space we could have the whole exploration and frontier spirit thing without geocoding anyone, but I guess not.

"Militarization of space" means putting actual weapons in space, not just spy satellites and the like.

edited 30th Sep '15 8:34:46 AM by MarqFJA

And spy satellites have existed since the 50s.

Layman help sought in solving dwarf planet mysteries: "Throwing open the doors to the hallowed halls of science, stumped researchers welcomed help from the public Wednesday in solving a number of nagging mysteries about dwarf planet Ceres.

NASA's space probe Dawn, which travelled seven-and-a-half years and some 4.9 billion kilometres to reach Ceres in March this year, is the first to orbit a dwarf planet.

The probe is seeking to learn more about the structure of Ceres, which circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, in a bid to better understand the formation of Earth and other planets."

Jack, don't act all melodramatic like that. It's not likely there are people living on Mars. As in we know there's not any people living there. Microbial life, if it exists there, will be a scientific bonanza. But I am pretty sure that if we get to the point where we can actually send people there to live (at least in temporary outpost situations) that we can do so without harming any microbes there, and certainly we won't be committing genocide to do it.

Anyway, it's really stupid that we can't send the rovers over there to investigate the potential water source. If government entities were more interested (something that requires political will coming from the people) then maybe we could have a revisit on the whole space exploration treaty thing. I'm also not sure how the rovers currently could be carrying any sort of earthly contaminants after being on Mars for a while right now.

edited 30th Sep '15 8:14:41 PM by AceofSpades

It can be surprising; I think Xkcd estimated that, even with the Voyager probes, you would still have millions of bacteria sitting on them.

Since No one answered my question and I'm under the assumption that the title isn't misleading, I decided to go ahead and post this: Someone managed to make symbols for the other 76 constellations, along with signs for moons, meteorshows and other celestial bodies. What do you think?

I'm not sure how the Outer Space Treaty is the problem, it simply says that you can't risk contaminating an alien water source, the fact that NASA aren't sure that they can avoid that risk is a problem with NASA, not the treaty.

Also I was wrong, space isn't full demilitarised, it's simply WM Ds that are banned from space, though giant space lasers might well count as WM Ds, also claiming bits of space is banned.

If there is life on Mars, and it gets properly investigated, I expect to be disappointed by having my prediction proven correct.

The origin of life is probably a very unlikely chain reaction in a situation that is, itself, not likely to occur. Thus life will only occur rarely (possibly even if there are many possible ways for life to develop, which I think there probably are). Thus, if there's life on Mars, it would be a huge coincidence for it to have developed independently of life on Earth.

The most popular answer here is the notion of panspermia - of life on one planet somehow being expelled from that planet (by a volcanic event, perhaps, or an impact of some sort) and being carried to another planet. Even a tiny bit of life surviving this, assuming it lands somewhere it can live, will have a chance of initiating evolution (from the form that that life already had when it arrived) on that new planet.

If life on Mars is ever discovered and studied, I would hope that it'd be sufficiently different from life on Earth to suggest that it came about independently of the abiogenesis event on Earth. That would be very exciting.

The more likely outcome, if there is life on Mars, is that it'll turn out to be fundamentally the same as life on Earth. That will reveal that life escaped Earth and landed on mars, or vice versa. This would be disappointing because it would dramatically reduce the possibility of new discoveries about life based on the Marian lifeforms.

Perhaps more important, though, would be the implication of this result on our estimates of the chances of life developing in the first place. If life on Mars is of the same origin as life on Earth we will have learned essentially nothing about the probability of an abiogenesis event.

I do believe that it's fairly likely that we'll find life on Mars, but I'm pessimistic in that I think it'll probably turn out to be the same as life on Earth. It'll still be very exciting, but it'll also be much less interesting than the alternative.

Well, if nothing else, we would certainly discover some interesting extremophiles.

Of course, there is also the third possibility that life on both Mars and Earth originated from a whole other source rather than either of them "infecting" the other with its native (microbial) life.

Europa seems the likely candidate for completely alien life via distinct abiogenesis in the solar system if it's possible to be infected by rocks from other stars.

edited 4th Oct '15 4:46:38 PM by Artificius