Save Arecibo

From an 18 July 2008 email from Seti@home:

Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest radio telescope and the source for the SETI@home data that your computer analyzes, faces massive budget cuts that will END its ability to continue the search for life beyond Earth. The decision to ensure full funding currently rests upon votes in Congress on Senate Bill S. 2862 and House Resolution H.R. 3737. These bills desperately need more support.

Please take a moment to help us SAVE ARECIBO.

Clicking the link below will direct you to a web page that allows you to print out letters prepared for your Senators and Congressional Representative urging them to support Arecibo. Printing and mailing the letters is really easy, too! You will also have the chance to add a few personal thoughts, if you wish, to let your Senators and Representative know why this funding is important to you! And if you're really feeling passionate about saving Arecibo, please use these
letters as the basis for letters you write yourself, urging your congressmen and women to vote to save Arecibo.

Because our representatives in Congress rarely give much attention to all the email they receive, printing out and MAILING these letters via standard U.S. Postal mail remains our best option for contacting them and our best hope for saving Arecibo (The second best option is to call your representatives). Your 42 cent stamps on these letters could help us get the millions of dollars
needed to save Arecibo.

Our search cannot continue without the necessary support. Your work, as SETI@home participants, represents an indispensable resource for conducting the search. Now, we need your help to ensure that our other most valuable resource - our eyes and ears to the cosmos - can continue to probe the universe as we seek to answer the question: Is there anybody out there?

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/arecibo_letter.php

Thank you for your help,

The SETI@home Team

Related information:

• As the largest radio telescope in the world, the Arecibo Observatory is an important asset to America's scientific and technological communities. No other radio telescope comes close to the sensitivity that the Arecibo telescope has.
• Not until the year 2020 will any other telescope even have a chance to surpass Arecibo. If the Square Kilometer Array (to be located in South Africa or Australia) gets all of its funding on time, a decade-long gap without the use of Arecibo (or any comparable telescope) will still plague astronomic, planetary, and atmospheric research.
• Only Arecibo's planetary radar can image and determine exact trajectories of potentially threatening asteroids. This makes Arecibo the best tool for investigating Near Earth Objects and warning the world about possible asteroid threats.
• Radio technologies developed for the Arecibo telescope strengthen the U.S. competitive edge in the global marketplace. Ionospheric radio wave propagation studies conducted at Arecibo form an important component of space technologies, from communications satellites to the Global Positioning System (GPS).
• Arecibo benefits education. Many of our next generation of scientists and engineers receive training at the Arecibo Observatory.
• Arecibo captures the public imagination. Over 120,000 people per year visit this technical wonder while millions more contribute to scientific projects conducted with this telescope. Over 5 million participants have contributed to SETI@home -- the world's largest public participation science project.
• The citizens of the United States, especially those in Puerto Rico, and the scientific community look at Arecibo with pride. The Observatory represents a commitment to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and a major asset to the world scientific community.

Reference:

"Save Arecibo: Write to Congress." Press Release. UC Berkley News. 3 July 2008. 21 July 2008. <http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/arecibo_letter.php>

Hello, or, Is This Thing On?

© Animation Factory

Mea culpa for being away for so long. Some family matters (no, not the TV show) kept me busy, as well as moving offices (home office and work office).

Stay tuned, there is much to discuss.

Houses in the Wind

© DigitalBlasphemy.com

I was watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on ABC yesterday; they were building a home and a church in New Orleans that were designed to resist hurricane force winds. I suddenly recalled reading science articles about winds on other planets and how Earth has very moderate winds by comparison. It may well be that some, or many, alien planets harboring life will have higher average wind speeds that we Earthlings have. If so, that will definitely affect alien architecture and technology. Their houses will tend to be round or octagonal in shape to help deflect the wind around the building, thereby deflecting much of its destructive force. Structures may tend to be smaller - no towering skyscrapers. Some would still be tempted to design skyscrapers, it's just it would be more difficult to build, and would have to be built to deflect as much of the wind as possible as well as have dampeners to help dampen the swaying caused by winds. They may be more likely to have more of the buildings underground than above ground (depending upon the level of tectonic activity). Their vehicles will all have to be rather aerodynamic in design to be efficient. They may be more apt to use the wind to generate electric power than we have been.

Black Holes and Aliens

© DigitalBlasphemy.com

I was watching The Ark of Truth (surprise, surprise, I'm a Stargate SG-1 fan), and contemplating the super-gate that is powered by a black hole that the Ori use to travel from their galaxy to ours and while traveling such a distance by an artificially produced wormhole may be something that is highly improbable, it did get me to thinking about the power of black holes and that maybe, just maybe, that is one place to go looking for aliens.

Let me explain. I am not saying black holes can be a natural habitat for some alien species. But black holes do give off immense energy. Not all matter that falls into a black hole is swallowed up, never to be seen again. No, a fair amount of it is given off by the matter as it is ripped apart before it gets to the event horizon (from which there is no return). Much of it streams out in a spiral along an axis.

Such unimaginable power sources just beg to be used / tapped into. OK, at least by species with similar outlook on power as humans. Some types of research may require incredible energies - our particle accelerators are but one example of this. Some explorations of our universe can only happen at high energies. And if some methods of interstellar travel, methods deemed impossible by us at the moment, like artificial wormholes, can only happen with great infusion of power, then black holes may be highly sought after. So maybe that's one place some aliens will not be able to resist, and so one place we may find them.

Of course, the aliens need to live somewhat nearby a black hole - close enough that even a very long journey is worth the effort and sacrifice (may be one way trips at first) to first get near one, study it, learn how to use it, and then invent and construct whatever device is needed to extract/capture the energy given off by in-falling matter. And what if other aliens have the same idea?

OK, so not very probable. But that's one of the fun things about speculation - don't need to stay only in the very probable.

Where's the Kaboom? - Updated

© Warner Bros. Inc.

Has a month passed already? I have a stack of science magazines, and a virtual stack of science e-newsletters to wade through. But more importantly, I have a stack of papers to grade. The other stacks will have to wait. All the best laid plans of mice and men...

Lately, the one question on my mind related to Alien Realities is "should we actively try to make contact with other planetary civilizations?" IF distances between solar systems are such that viable physical travel between them is virtually impossible, then there is little physical danger and thus, little reason to fear contact. Psychological, sociological, theological, and cultural dangers are another topic - we don't need physical contact to still be affected. Many scientists so far say interstellar travel is highly impractical: the energy costs are enormous (maybe close to infinite) and the time needed generational. Also, the speed of light does seem to be ultimate speed barrier, and there are no workarounds that seem viable. For instance, many feel that wormholes are not a viable workaround, despite what one my favorite Sci-Fi series uses for their main means of interstellar travel - as they would require far too much energy, and can not be controlled. But just because we can't see any viable "workaround" at present doesn't mean there are not any.

There are other assumptions at work here as well: what may be a generational travel for us (would take many generations of people to get there) may not necessarily be a generational trip for an extremely long lived alien species. They may not mind the long separation from loved ones (if they even feel such emotions, or have such emotional equivalents).

Also, in such a large universe, could there not be a species that is so xenophobic for whatever reasons (even reasons that may not make sense to us) that they are willing to send out a barrage of weapons toward our planet at the first sign of our existence? The weapons may take hundreds or thousands of years to reach us, but that doesn't make it impossible for a alien society from launching them. On the other hand, if they are that xenophobic, launching an attack would broadcast their presence, and they would need to ensure that their weapons could 1) approach completely undetected and 2) completely destroy their target - otherwise a retaliatory response could be mounted against them. Though as we see too often with our own species, intelligence and wisdom do not always go hand in hand - there is no reason to assume alien species would always have increased wisdom with increased intelligence or increased knowledge.

I think we have to be very careful. The old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Marvin the Martian cavalierly wants to destroy the Earth because it gets in the way of his view of Venus could have a kernel of chilling truth to it.

"Where's the Kaboom? There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom?" - Marvin the Martian.

On such an uplifting note I will leave for now, but shall return to this topic from time to time.

Reflected Light From an Exoplanet Seen

Credit: 2007, ETH Zurich, S.V. Berdyugina

Last December, a team of astronomers with the Zurich's Institute of Astronomy, imaged, for the first time, the reflected light of an exoplanet (known as HD9189733b) using polarization (similar to how Polaroid sunglasses work). Because of this, they were able to, again for the first time, directly determine the orbit of an exoplanet. The planet orbits the dwarf star HD189733 located more than 60 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula. It orbits very close to its parent, with a year measured in just a couple of days. Because this close proximity, HD9189733b's atmosphere is swollen by the heat, as well as brightly reflects the dwarf stars light - which makes it easier to be detected visually.

This is an exciting development; another step toward being able to eventually (though probably not that far away) determine the atmospheric composition of another planet.

It may be that we will first detect extraterrestrial life not by their radio signals, but by visually seeing and analyzing their planet's atmosphere!

Reference:

ETH Zurich/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. "Exoplanet Reflected Light Detected For The First Time." ScienceDaily. 28 December 2007. 31 March 2008 <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071226225432.htm>.

Population Bottlenecks

This is something I will return to after some more research, but I find it very intriguing how population bottlenecks have affected the human race. A population bottleneck occurs when either a significant percentage of a population or species is reduced by 50% or moreor when a small group gets isolated from the main population (called the "founder effect"). This results in increased gene frequencies (genetic drift), as well as resulting in increased inbreeding. This has profound effects on the future of the species affected by the bottleneck.

These bottlenecks usually occur due to some large disaster, whether cosmic, natural, or man-made such as meteor impacts, super volcano eruptions, climate change, disease, or war, just to name a few.

So when thinking about alien realities, we need to keep in mind that unexpected evolutionary pathways can occur because of bottlenecks. Think of this hypothetical situation: a small group of a sentient species is exiled or chased away by a larger, stronger group (of the same species). Left alone, Darwinian forces here would predict that eventually the stronger group's genes would win out over the weaker group. But if a disaster comes along that wipes out the stronger group but, by the luck of the draw, the small, weaker group manages to survive - guess who will repopulate the species?

On Earth we have isolated groups where color-blindness is much higher than the average human population, or where six-fingers is the norm, or people who walk on all fours. If a major disaster were to happen and by fluke stroke of luck one of these isolated groups survived, the future of the human race would be greatly changed (where, for instance, those with five fingers would be the odd ones). Of course, some of these attributes are recessive, and eventually the dominant genes would reassert themselves as the norm.