Music

Today I was listening to "Club Soda" by Ghostland Observatory off of their new album, Robotique Majestique. I like their instrumentals, the vocals - not so much. Just my personal tastes. But it got me to thinking about music and how some claim it to be "the universal language" (others would argue it is mathematics, but then there is a relationship between music and mathematics, but I digress...).

Back to "Club Soda:" the song has the sound of something rising, or powering up, or racing toward the listener. This sound, for Earthlings, adds a dramatic component. If reversed, it can remind one of the sound of something crashing, or a bomb falling. Whether caused by Doppler shift, or by the physics of sound in a chamber that is decreasing the volume of air, or by the physics of sound as a spinning mechanical device increases in speed, it gives the feeling of something approaching. This comes from our experiences in the world. When we fill up a bottle, when a train heads towards us, when a bomb or mortar flies toward us, or when a powerful motor spins up to speed, there is that sound sliding up the scale.

Would aliens feel the same? Physics is physics whether here or on Omicron Ceti 8, and sentient beings would most probably be good at finding patterns and making connections. However, for sentient beings that are deaf by nature and who mainly communicate through scent, touch, or light, this sliding scale sound may have no meaning to them whatsoever.

For those that do hear, the question may actually be do they experience emotion as we do, and attach emotion to sounds? They may not. Or may experience the emotions differently. Some will communicate by sound in different ways than we do because of their different physiology and/or the differences in physical environments (denser atmosphere or underwater, for example) - and the sliding scale sound may be one they reproduce naturally themselves in communicating and so does not have any dramatic connotation to them.

Hmm, but yet... it would seem that nature likes to be efficient when it can, or that it at least tries to be. It seems very logically, and efficient, for creatures to interpret the sound of something approaching, or falling, or increasing in power as something dramatic - to stop and pay attention to. Creatures that do are more likely to survive than those that do not.

Finally!

Finally! Grading is over, and our short quarter break is about to begin. I will be attending to the backlog of science articles and press releases during this time, and will thus be posting in earnest shortly.

Oh, and if you are in school, or have a child who is, thank your teacher for all the work they put in. Making syllabi, tests, quizzes, assignments and grading them, plus finishing administrative paperwork, as well as advising students and, finally, attending committees and meetings, makes for long, and too often thankless, days! OK, so maybe I am feeling a big melodramatic, but I feel I earned it today!

OK, diversion/digression is over. Next post will be on an Alien Realities' topic.

Digital Blasphemy

For those who are curious, most of the images used for illustrative purposes in this blog come from Digital Blashpemy (used with permission). His planetary landscapes are beautifully done. And no, I do not get any commissions for promoting his work - just a fan spreading the word.

"Circumpolar" (triple screen) © DigitalBlasphemy.com

For links to other great space art, visit the "Art, Graphics, & Wallpaper" section of the side menu.

Update: Bad Link Removed - Blog Back Up

© Warner Bros. Inc.

This morning I discovered I could not access my blog - a widget I had added from Galaxiki.org some time back was suddenly asking for a password instead of just showing the solar system I "adopted." This had the unfortunate effect of making it very difficult to load my blog.

I removed the offending widget.

I have no doubt many others, who have a Galaxiki widget installed, are having the same problem. Their entire website is asking for a password - it may be that it has been hacked by someone who is enjoying the temporary power they have exerted over their fellow beings. Seems there are better ways to get attention, there is power in doing good works with one's talents, and attention - but that's a topic for other blogs, not this one.

My apologies for any inconvenience this caused.

Hypervelocity Stars (updated)

© Ruth Bazinet/Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics

Hypervelocity stars are stars that are moving, on average, around 7x than the average for, well, your average star. OK, in other words the average velocity for most stars is around 223,694 mph, which seems plenty fast but your average hypervelocity star moves at 1,615,068 mph (1.6 million mph)!

What causes these stars to become dragsters? A binary star system tangling with a black hole. If the conditions are right, one of the binary will be captured by the black hole, while the other star gets flung away at great velocity.

Not many of these hypervelocity stars have been found so far. One recent discovery, HE 0437-5439, has not been ejected from the Milky Way, but from the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small neighbor galaxy. This star is strong indirect proof of a black hole somewhere in the LMC.

What would that mean for any life on a habitable planet around such a star? They would see constellations change about 7 times faster than we do and they would experience a slight relativistic time dilation (1.5 minutes per year).

But most importantly, they would either pass by other stars several times more often than our own Sun, or be flung out into intergalactic space - far from any other star. The latter would be lonely civilizations indeed, unless they could somehow develop faster than light speeds, as it may take a few billion years for sentient life to arise on such a planet; after a few billion years they would be thousands of light years out into intergalactic space by the time they developed a technological civilization. They would be even further out if they had the unfortunate luck of being ejected from the galaxy, or the LMC, in the opposite direction of the galaxy's trajectory (the Local Group of galaxies, of which the Milky Way and the LMC are members of, is moving at 1.34 million miles per hour in the direction of the constellation Hydra) ¹.

There is an additional effect of being flung out into intergalactic space: being so far from other stars would mean the chances of being effected by a nearby supernova would be nearly zero. As mentioned in a previous post, for the Earth, a supernova 30 light years or closer would be quite devastating for life - for other planets, the distance could be greater, depending upon how thick their protective atmospheres are (to show you how protective our atmosphere is, for astronauts outside the Earth's atmosphere, a supernova 3,000 light years away could be deadly). Some scientist conjecture that maybe a supernova was involved in past extinction events on Earth.

In addition, the solar system would not be affected by galactic disturbances (compression waves, for instance). Thus, the system might be more "boring" than our own, and thus allow sentient life to form more rapidly. HE 0437-5439 is a young star, only 35 million years old, so if there are any planets around it (and it is a big if), and if one of those planets is habitable and in the habitable zone, most likely hasn't arisen yet. But if it does, and it evolves into a sentient race, it will be a very isolated race.

Would they feel themselves blessed by being alone in the universe? Will it appear, to them, that the entire universe revolves around them - even the galaxies? Though if their parent galaxy is racing away from them, what would the make of it? Would they instead feel abandoned? Any thing they create would be lost when their star dies - there would be no one else to ever come along to explore their world. Would this affect how they lived? And if so, how?

Of course, if faster than light travel is somehow possible, by some "trick" (like worm holes), maybe they would be more pressured to discover it than would other, galactic, civilizations; and solve their isolation that way.

Another example of counsel given by Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167). Speculating on on possible extrasolar (alien) biological, psychological, societal, technological, and theological realities stretches the dreams of any of our philosophies here on Earth!

Notes:

1. A light year is the distance light travels in mph: 186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour = 669,600,000 mph.

The distance light travels in a year: 186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year.

A hypervelocity star traveling at 1,615,000 mph would be traveling at 0.04145 light years per year: 1,615,000 mph/669,600,000 mph = 0.0024119 or 0.24119 % the speed of light.

Thus, the hypervelocity star would cover 0.24119% of 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year; it would take the star 414.611 years to cover a light year.

For a hypervelocity star leaving a galaxy, in 4 billion years it could be (depending upon relative velocity of it with its parent galaxy) 9,647,597.386 light years away from its parent galaxy! If sentient life takes as long to develop on a planet around such a star as it did on Earth (4.5 billion years), it would be 10,853,547.06 light years away.


References:

Kraan-Korteweg, Renée C. & Ofer Lahav. "Galaxies Behind The Milky Way." Scientific America. October 1998.

Przybilla, N. et al. "LMC origin of the hyper-velocity star HE 0437-5439. Beyond the supermassive black hole paradigm." Astrophysical Journal Letters. Submitted on 29 Jan 2008. 17 Feb 2008. <http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.4456>.

"What is a Light Year?" How Stuff Works. 17 February 2008. < http://www.howstuffworks.com/question94.htm>.

Life on large planets (Are Earth sized planets not the best size for life? II)

© David A. Aguilar (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

What would a larger planet mean for the evolution of its life forms? One of the first considerations would be the effect of the heavier gravitational field have. And that effect? Size. No matter what skeletal structure is used, weight (gravity) affects how big a creature can become.

Let's examine insects first. One reason insects are so small (OK, if you have a fear or phobia for a particular insect, it doesn't look all that small!) is that their exoskeleton structure is not effective for supporting great weight (crayfish also have exoskeletal structure, but they live in water, which helps support added weight).

So then why do insects have exoskeletons? It may have something to do with surface to volume ratios. As surface area doubles, volume triples. Smaller creatures have a greater surface area to volume ratio, but as creatures increase in size, the ratio quickly decreases. What this means for small creatures is that they have greater water loss, as well as heat loss. This is why children can dehydrate and become hypothermic much easier than adults (of course this works in "reverse" as well: larger, heavier people overheat easier than thinner people).

An insect's exoskeletal structure helps insulate and "waterproof"it; this is how it overcomes the surface to volume ratio problem. However the exoskeleton helps reinforce upper size limitations on insects - to grow in size, an insect must molt or shed its exoskeleton in order to secrete a new one. Since the insect needs the exoskeleton for structure, and any growth must occur within it - thus it can not be very large when it sheds the exoskeleton. Of course, if the insect undergoes metamorphosis - the transformation of a larvae into a mature adult - major changes can occur.

Even for vertebrate creatures, there are limits to what biology can support in terms of the musculature needed to hold up great body weight. There is also a need to be able to rid the body of heat, since the surface to volume ratio decreases dramatically as creatures attain very large sizes - it is difficult to radiate out inner heat rapidly. This is why various dinosaurs grew large plates on their backs: they essentially operated as radiator fins. Of course, creatures living in water can more easily obtain larger sizes since the water aids in supporting the weight (buoyancy).

In addition, a large terrestrial planet may also affect the development of avian creatures. I think, though, this question is more difficult to answer. A heavier gravitational field would be harder to work against, requiring more muscles, more energy. The lighter the creature, the less weight it has to try to get airborne. Since we've seen how volume triples when area doubles, we can quickly see that if you double the size of an avian creature, it will triple in mass. However, birds have evolved ways around this. Having larger wingspans help develop more lift, but also having air spaces in their bones helps reduce their mass. This however weakens their bones to a degree, and since muscles need to be connected to the skeleton (kinesiology - mechanics, physics, of biological movement), weaker bones mean a lower limit to muscle strength. A lower limit to muscle strength means a lower limit to the weight that can be lifted into flight.

However, a thicker atmosphere might make up for some of that heavier gravitational pull by making it easier to acquire lift. Also, creatures that glide more than they actually fly, may be able to attain larger size since what they need is a large wingspan to float on the air or to catch updrafts with. Such creatures may tend to climb up large trees or cliffs and leap off to glide, reducing the need to power themselves into flight. Once launched, it would require less energy to stay aloft. They may have large thin membranes for wings since such structures would be very lightweight. It may even be feasible that some could develop bladders where they produce and store helium like the swim bladders in a fish, which are gas or air filled bladders which controls the fish's buoyancy (and for some even helps them hear) .

So a sentient alien from a very large planet may tend to be small in size, especially if they come from a warm planet with heavy gravity. I would doubt they would be insectile creatures, as insectile creatures on a very heavy planet (especially a warm and/or dry one) would have a harder time with large sizes than those on Earth. Not to say such sentient alien creatures as the insectile Xendi creatures from Star Trek: Enterprise are impossible, just that they are highly unlikely (maybe a very humid Earth sized planet could somehow produce one). Thus, I think heavy planets would tend to favor vertebrates of some sort, whether terrestrial or aquatic.

© Animationfactory

Hmm, maybe one reason why many UFO accounts have aliens as being small, just a few feet in height, is that they come from terrestrial planets that are several times larger than the Earth, and thus with much greater gravity.

Are Earth sized planets not the best size for life?

© David A. Aguilar (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

An interesting study claims that if Earth was any smaller than it is now, it may not have been conducive for the formation of life - larger terrestrial planets are better. If so, then that may mean that maybe alien sentient life will arise, on average, on larger planets than Earth, up to 10 times as large.

Of course, what we need to know is what is more common, habitable terrestrial planets that are around the size of the Earth, or ones that are larger. At present we are finding large planets because our detection methods are not sensitive enough -yet- to discover smaller ones. But that is rapidly changing. But even Earth sized and larger sized terrestrial planets are both just as common, the fact that life may be more likely to arise and/or survive on the larger ones than the smaller ones may still indicate that alien life will tend to come more from the larger terrestrial planets.

The main reason why larger terrestrial planets would be more conducive for creating life is that they would be more geographically active:

Plate tectonics are crucial to a planet's habitability because they enable complex chemistry and recycle substances like carbon dioxide, which acts as a thermostat and keeps Earth balmy.

A larger planet is more likely to have the complex chemistry necessary for life to begin and would have a more active recycling of substances like carbon dioxide, among others, which helps to keep the climate more stable (overall). In addition, a larger planet would have, probably, a thicker atmosphere, which would offer more protection from meteor impacts. If a larger active terrestrial planet also has a stronger magnetic field, then it would have increased protection from cosmic radiation. Such a planet would be a safer, for a longer period, environment for life to begin, evolve, and thrive on.

The next question, to be addressed later (I have papers to grade at the moment), is how would a larger planet affect the development of alien sentient beings?

Reference:

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Earth: A Borderline Planet For Life?." ScienceDaily. 14 January 2008. 11 February 2008. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080112151809.htm>.