Earth and Space News: Brian May Bang Chapter Five The Emergence of Life

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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Extraterrestrial Life Maybe Adopts Mars in Bang! The Complete History

Summary: Extraterrestrial life perhaps assumes carbon-based, Earthling-like aspects in Chapter 5 of Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

Brian May, Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott note in Bang! that a civilization with Earth-reaching capability would "come in peace," having "left war far behind" (page 76); "Map of Mars on Mercator Projection" shows Martian canals, observed via Lowell Observatory, in Percival Lowell's Mars (1895), plate 24, page 213: Public Domain, via Wikisource

Extraterrestrial life assembles molecules from carbon and other atoms in Chapter 5 The Emergence of Life in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

Extraterrestrial life becomes Earth-like and possible if carbon-based in a free oxygen atmosphere, on liquid or solid surfaces, with adequate water, equable temperatures and slow-changing conditions. It configures regular day-lit, night-darkened alternations since, without dark-interfacing, light-interfacing terminator boundary zones, one boiling illuminated side and one freezing dark side convoke rainless, violent winds. The habitable Goldilocks zone of Baby Bear-friendly temperatures describes Earth, not too hot Venus too close to, or too cold Mars too distant from, our Sun.

Perhaps one in every 100 in five billion planets out of the Milky Way Galaxy's 20 billion planets entail carbon-based extraterrestrial life in Goldilocks zone-friendly conditions.

Mars perhaps functions as the likeliest candidate for carbon-based extraterrestrial life with an albeit tenuous atmosphere, rotations 30 minutes longer than Earth's and tolerable surface temperatures.

No naturally adequate shield gives above-ground protection from harmful space radiation to carbon-based extraterrestrial life so any Martian life necessarily gets year-in, year-out underground living arrangements. Mars Exploration Rovers MER-A Spirit's (Jan. 2004-March 22, 2010) and MER-B Opportunity's (Jan. 2004-) hydrogeological information-gathering heralded Mars as a previously warm water-world with huge seas. Northern arctic regions include large quantities of water as ice, whose sampling the Phoenix spacecraft robotic arm implemented in 2008 and perhaps as occasional water spouts.

Perhaps extraterrestrial life, carbon-based or otherwise, once journeyed, or still journeys, through life cycles above or below Martian surfaces where environmental conditions jeopardize, or not, sustainability.

Perhaps one of 200 billion galaxies kindles extraterrestrial life, whose inevitable intelligence, unless only Earthlings key into intelligence, minimally knows our twentieth and twenty-first-century technological levels.

Civilizations capable of communication perhaps last long enough to languish from natural disasters, such as ancient Earthly cultures, or their own follies, perhaps such as ours. Interstellar travel mandates technological breakthroughs for us to meander outside our Solar System since modern spacecraft and rocket travel means centuries-long interstellar and years-long intra-galactic movements. Albert Einstein's (March 14, 1879-April 18, 1955) Theory of Special Relativity noted necessarily infinite amounts of energy negating human navigation at 300,000-mile (186,000-kilometer) light-speeds per second.

Radio waves operate at light-speeds and offer, for example, 11-light-year one-way, 22-light-year round-trip interstellar communications between observational astronomers on Earth and a planet orbiting Tau Ceti.

Nonreactiveness by 2031 to coded, mathematics-based artificial transmissions in 2009 to Epsilon Eridani perhaps proves Earthling-only intelligence, flawed experiments or technological civilizations over 11 light-years away.

The three authors quote Percival Lowell's (March 13, 1855-Nov. 12, 1916) qualifying extraterrestrial life as peaceful questers who quit far-off, technologically advanced civilizations for Earthly visits. Fred Hoyle's (June 24, 1915-Aug. 20, 2001) and Chandra Wickramasinghe's (born Jan. 20, 1939) theorized comet-released, pandemic viruses that ravage Earth resists our receiving extraterrestrial life. Solar hyperluminosity, not comet-sent, Earth-savaging, upper-atmospheric viruses, perhaps stops Francis Crick's (June 8, 1916-July 28, 2004) and Leslie Orgel's (Jan. 12, 1927-Oct. 27, 2007) directed panspermia.

The Crick and Orgel theory transports micro-organisms in the transgalactic spaceship of technologically advanced extraterrestrial life that perhaps tries nothing, or something, to trump solar hyperluminosity.

British rock band Queen's (left to right) John Deacon, Brian May, Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury display gold disc for their sixth studio album, News of the World, released Oct. 28, 1977, and silver disc for the album's lead single, We Are the Champions, in London in May 1978: Record World, June 10, 1978: Comunità Queeniana, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Lowell, Percival. Mars. Boston MA and New York NY: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/mars01lowegoog/

Marriner, Derdriu. 22 November 2012. "Earthly Life Avoids Replication Anywhere in Bang! The Complete History." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/earthly-life-avoids-replication.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 15 November 2012. "Goldilocks Must Like Extrasolar Planets in Bang! The Complete History." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/goldilocks-must-like-extrasolar-planets.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 8 November 2012. "Solar System Formation Accepts Leftovers in Bang! The Complete History." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/solar-system-formation-accepts.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 1 November 2012. "Star Formation Acts Local on Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/11/star-formation-acts-local-on-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 25 October 2012. "Dark Energy Accelerates Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/dark-matter-accrues-in-bang-complete.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 18 October 2012. "Dark Matter Accrues in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/black-holes-are-ionizers-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 11 October 2012. "Black Holes Are Ionizers in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/black-holes-are-ionizers-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 4 October 2012. "Ionized Gas Bubbles Atomize Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/10/ionized-gas-bubbles-atomize-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 27 September 2012. "Lighted Spaces Are Late in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/lighted-spaces-are-late-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 20 September 2012. "Inflation Affects Space in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/inflation-affects-space-in-bang.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 13 September 2012. "Lighted Dark Space Affirms Bang! The Complete History of the Universe." Earth and Space News. Thursday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/09/lighted-dark-space-affirms-bang.html

May, Brian; Patrick Moore; and Chris Lintott. 2012. Bang! The Complete History of the Universe. London UK: Carlton Books Ltd.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Earthly Life Avoids Replication Anywhere in Bang! The Complete History

Summary: Earthly life appears unusual if not unique in Chapter 5 of Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore explain in Bang! that, although only 50 percent of the lunar surface is visible to Earth-based observers at any one time, the Moon’s favorable librations, or wobbles, expand the Earth-based viewing range to 59 percent, leaving only 41 percent of the far side unseen from Earth; Apollo 16 Hasselblad camera image shows Hubble Crater (center left), which lies close to the near side’s eastern limb, and Joliot Crater (bottom center), a far side crater visible during a favorable libration; film magazine 122/QQ, TransEarth Coast (TEC); NASA ID AS16-122-19610: No known copyright restrictions, via NARA (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) & DVIDS (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service) Public Domain Archive

Earthly life arose because a collision created the Moon, in Chapter 5 The Emergence of Life in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

A collision brought Earth and a Mars-sized body together and, from impact debris, bore the Moon, stabilizer of Earth's tilted axis and raiser of Earth tides. Its small moons, Deimos and Phobos, cannot counter the tilted Martian axis of 11 to 35 degrees, contrary to Earth's 23-degree tilt, over a 100,000-year cycle. Friction driven by lunar raising of Earth tides decreases the latter's rotation period and distances the Moon from Earth by 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) each year.

Earth mass 80 times lunar mass effectuated tidal slowing of lunar rotations until spin period synchronously equaled orbital periods, as evidenced in the Moon same-facing Earth.

Synchronous orbit and spin always face one lunar side to Earth even as both hemispheres alternately, regularly face the Sun, for two day-lit, night-darkened lunar sides.

The Moon seemingly generates rocking, wobbled librations from otherwise synchronously constant rotation and elliptical speeds going asynchronous when the latter goes fastest when closest to Earth. A 500-million-year-long cooling harvested a solid-crusted Earth from a molten Earth; headed energetic hydrogen atoms spaceward and volcanic gases atmosphere-ward; and helped the ocean-forming Great Rains. Core heat from decaying, unstable heavy elements such as uranium impelled mountain-squeezing, plate-crashing tectonics that impeded smooth, water-inundated surfaces and lunar-like craters from planetary formation-induced bombardments.

The three co-authors judge the earliest-evidenced Earthly life as primitive organisms 4.3 billion years ago, rising atmospheric oxygen levels and Western Greenland's 3.8-billion-year-old Akila island rocks.

Perhaps lightning-strike and short-wave solar radiation energy kept driving chemical reactions that kindled vastly varied Earthly life from complex molecules, then self-replicating molecules, then replicating generations.

The Northern Territory of Australia lodges rock-like stromatolites that look like the fossilized stromatolite structures of blue-green, free oxygen-producing, ocean-living algae, labeled cyanobacteria, in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks. Perhaps acidic waters at 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) around hydrothermal vents, around which modern-day clams, shrimps and tubeworms move, maintained the earliest Earthly life. Earthly life netted land niches during the Devonian period 400 million years ago as planets removing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen atmospherically, then arthropods, then vertebrates.

Permian ball-shaped, cage-like, carbon-moleculed fullerenes from 250 million to 310 million years ago offer trapped, unreactive argon and helium atoms, perhaps from exploded supernovae or meteorites.

Seventy percent of land vertebrates and 90 percent of marine species perished from the Great Dying, perhaps from meteorite-provoked volcanism pouring 9-foot (3-meter-) deep lava worldwide.

The 60-million-year-long Permian era quickened dinosaurian and reptilian proliferations, with the former queuing up from world-largest, the Argentinosaurus huinculensis, to perhaps world-smallest, the canary-sized Tweetieosaurus Rex. Iridium-rich 65-million-year-old rocks perhaps reveal the 200-million-year-long dinosaur rules' replacements, shrew-like animals diversifying into mammals, such as Miocene apes 40 million to 60 million years later. Iridium, Earth-rare element suggestive of meteorite strikes, supports the theory of dinosaur extinctions from a large meteorite spreading worldwide dust storms from Chicxulub, off coastal Mexico.

The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) thus far turns up no Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars, no signals from another civilization and nothing like Earthly life.

cover art for A Night at the Opera, fourth studio album, released Nov. 21, 1975, by British rock band Queen's Brian May, Roger Taylor, Freddie Mercury and John Deacon: brett jordan (Brett Jordan), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore explain in Bang! that, although only 50 percent of the lunar surface is visible to Earth-based observers, the Moon’s favorable librations, or wobbles, expand the Earth-based viewing range to 59 percent, leaving only 41 percent of the far side unseen from Earth; Apollo 16 Hasselblad camera image shows Hubble Crater (center left), which lies close to the near side’s eastern limb, and Joliot Crater (bottom center), a far side crater visible during a favorable libration; film magazine 122/QQ, TransEarth Coast (TEC); NASA ID AS16-122-19610: No known copyright restrictions, via NARA (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) & DVIDS (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service) Public Domain Archive @ https://nara.getarchive.net/media/as16-122-19610-apollo-16-apollo-16-mission-image-view-of-the-joliot-and-hubble-f7b9b2

May, Brian; Patrick Moore; and Chris Lintott. 2012. Bang! The Complete History of the Universe. London UK: Carlton Books Ltd.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Goldilocks Must Like Extrasolar Planets in Bang! The Complete History

Summary: Extrasolar planets are where, not how, Goldilocks abides them in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

Estimated extent of the solar system's habitable zone is shown in graphic created Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011, 21:19: EvenGreenerFish at English Wikipedia, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Extrasolar planets are perhaps akin to solar satellite Titan, appealing locationally but not atmospherically to Goldilocks in Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Chris Lintott, Brian May and Patrick Moore.

Titan alone among solar satellites bears methane atmospherically and as channeled liquid flows on pebbled, wet-clay Xanadu plain dunes; and a substantial atmosphere, albeit 98-plus-percent nitrogen. Methane-rained surfaces configure crater-free hills and valleys; ethane and methane-composed, south-polar, square-mile (20,000-square-kilometer) Lake Ontario; and temperatures around minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 degrees Celsius). Not even single cells develop on Titan, where low temperatures defeat life, whose fundamental quality of replicating patterns of chemical reactions cold, dark chemical waters divulge.

Icy-surfaced and somewhat crater-free Enceladus, among Saturn's smaller and perhaps younger moons, emits water plumes, some for Saturn's more tenuous rings, from south polar internal waters.

Earth and the satellites Enceladus, Io and Triton, as our solar system's only known active worlds, perhaps find few or no frequent counterparts among extrasolar planets.

Exoplanet detection techniques thus far give us solar-like systems with gas giants whose inward migrations perhaps got Earth-like, rocky, small, wet extrasolar planets destroyed or ejected. The transit method, indirect exoplanet-detecting technique, has night skies monitored for semi-dimmed starlight as extrasolar planets head across star faces, like Mercury's and Venus' solar transits. Indirect methods impel identifying many of the 700-plus known extrasolar planets and include the wobble technique of parent stars' semi-wobbled itineraries from their exoplanets' gravitational pull.

More than one-half of all stars journey through interstellar space as binary, double-star systems with one or multiple extrasolar plants more Neptune than Earth or Jupiter-like.

Indirect detection of extrasolar planets kindles knowing an exoplanet spectrum from differences between parent star spectra with the former orbiting behind, versus transiting across, the latter.

Transiting extrasolar planets HD209458b and HD 189733b respectively log 10,000-ton (9,071.85-tonne) atmospheric losses per second from parent star ultraviolet radiation and lodge Jupiter-like atmospheric carbon dioxide. Coronagraphs mask parent star light and manifest massive young star HR8799's three-planet solar-like system and Jupiter-like planet Fomalhaut b moving in parent white star Fomalhaut's disk. Brown dwarfs navigate, star-like, by their own light but net unstar-like trace atmospheric lithium and masses not even 8 percent our Sun's or 75 times Jupiter's.

Jupiter-sized Gliese 570D, dimmest brown dwarf, observes mass 50 times Jupiter's, trace atmospheric lithium and surface temperatures at 750 Kelvin (476.85 degrees Celsius, 890.33 degrees Fahrenheit).

Perhaps gravitational interactions push brown dwarf stars away from their partner stars so that the former pass through interstellar space as free-floating, lonely, wandering rogue planets.

Gravitational lensing techniques that quest recognizable, repeated brightening and fading of distant stars thus far queue up a handful of brown dwarf rogue and wandering planets. An inclination of 17 degrees in a 248-year orbit and, like double planetary system companion Charon's orbital period, a 6.3-day rotation resists Pluto running into Neptune. Charon, one-half Pluto's diameter; Cubewano, unofficially catalogued 1992 QB1; and Eris, larger than Pluto, swarm trans-Neptunian Kuiper Belt object space (for Gerard Kuiper, 1905-1973).

The International Astronomical Union since 2006 terms Kuiper Belt objects and Main Belt asteroids (excluding dwarf planets Ceres, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Pluto) small solar system bodies.

British rock band Queen's John Deacon, Brian May and Freddie Mercury perform Nov. 16, 1977, in New Haven, Connecticut: Carl Lender, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Estimated extent of the solar system's habitable zone is shown in graphic created Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011, 21:19: EvenGreenerFish at English Wikipedia, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Estimated_extent_of_the_Solar_Systems_habitable_zone.png

British rock band Queen's John Deacon, Brian May and Freddie Mercury perform Nov. 16, 1977, in New Haven, Connecticut: Carl Lender, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QueenPerforming1977.jpg

For further information:

May, Brian; Patrick Moore; and Chris Lintott. 2012. Bang! The Complete History of the Universe. London UK: Carlton Books Ltd.

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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Extraterrestrial Life Maybe Adopts Mars in Bang! The Complete History

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Earthly Life Avoids Replication Anywhere in Bang! The Complete History

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Goldilocks Must Like Extrasolar Planets in Bang! The Complete History

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