Category: space cartoon

3I/ATLAS: But What If It Were Aliens?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

Hello, friends!

Right now, there’s an interstellar object passing through our Solar System.  Astronomers have named this object 3I/ATLAS, and in my last post I explained how 3I/ATLAS is just a comet and NOT an alien spacecraft.  But let’s pretend for a moment that an alien spaceship were traveling through the Solar System, perhaps on some sort of survey mission.  What would the aliens see when they turn their scientific instruments toward Earth?  How much would they learn about us and our planet?

Much depends on how technologically advanced we imagine these aliens to be, of course, but we humans have been observing Earth from space for decades now.  We know some things are pretty obvious about our planet, even when viewed from a great distance away.  For a start, the aliens would notice that Earth has an abnormally large moon.  They’d also notice that Earth has oceans.  The glint of sunlight reflecting off water would give that away.  And then there’s oxygen.  The spectrographic fingerprints of oxygen are all over Earth’s atmosphere.

Do these aliens breathe oxygen like we do?  Maybe, maybe not.  Either way, Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere would make the aliens stop and think, “Huh, that’s weird.”  Most planets don’t have atmospheres like that.  Even weirder, though, the aliens would also detect traces of methane in our atmosphere.  Methane is an easily oxidized chemical, so you’d think all that oxygen would oxidize any atmospheric methane out of existence pretty quick.  Something must keep replenishing the methane as quickly as oxygen destroys it.  Something alive, perhaps?  It’s hard to guess if the aliens would reach that conclusion yet.

As the aliens draw nearer, they’d soon notice this odd green stuff covering much of Earth’s landmasses.  To say that in a more technobabbly way, the extraterrestrials would detect a chemical substance with a strong reflection spectrum in green light (and an even stronger reflection spectrum in infrared).  You and I know what all that green stuff is, but would the aliens figure it out?  Do they have plants back home?  Do their plants contain chlorophyll and perform photosynthesis like ours do?  Hard to say, but Earth’s green stuff would at least make the aliens think, “Huh, that’s also weird.”

A few more things our hypothetical aliens would notice: a substantial ozone layer, continents shaped by recent (or possibly ongoing) tectonic activity, a complex hydrological cycle with water existing as a solid, a liquid, and a gas… oh, and radio emissions.  Lots and lots of narrow-band, amplitude modulated radio emissions, which cannot possibly be a natural phenomenon.

The idea that aliens many lightyears away are watching I Love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, or The Dick Van Dyke Show is probably false.  As radio/television broadcasts propagate through space, those signals grow weaker and eventually blend into the background radiation.  But for the purposes of this blog post, we’re imagining that an alien spaceship is right here in the Solar System with us.  They’re close enough to pick up our broadcasts.  At that point, the aliens wouldn’t just think, “Huh, weird.”  They’d be forced to conclude not only that life exists on Earth but that intelligent life exists on Earth (unless they start watching our news or listening to our talk radio; if they do that, they might second guess the “intelligent” part).

How much more could the aliens learn about us?  Again, it depends on how technologically advanced these aliens are.  Consider the stuff I listed in this blog post to be the bare minimum of what they’d know.

WHAT TO LEARN MORE?

This blog post is based off several research papers, which are listed below.  Detecting life on a planet—even a planet teeming with life, like Earth—is more of a challenge than you might realize.  If that’s a topic you want to learn more about, please check out some of the papers below, especially the first one (the one written by Carl Sagan).

The art in today’s post is my own original work.  I didn’t take it from the Internet or ask an A.I. to generate it.  If you like my art, please consider visiting my store on RedBubble.  Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me!) so that we can keep doing what we do.  Thank you!

3I/ATLAS: It’s Not Aliens

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 9 Comments

Hello, friends!

You know the expression “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably just a duck”?  Well, to a certain kind of person, if it looks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be an extraterrestrial life form that the government has disguised as a duck.  Right now, there’s an interstellar object passing through our Solar System.  It looks like a comet.  It moves like a comet.   It’s grown a tail like a comet.  I think you know where I’m going with this.

Astronomers have named this object 3I/ATLAS.  The “3I” part of the name means this is the 3rd interstellar object we’ve spotted inside our Solar System (the previous two were 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov).  The “ATLAS” part means this object was first detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS for short).  Ever since the discovery of 3I/ATLAS, there’s been a lot of speculation online, in the news, and even in some corners of the scientific community about how this object might/must be an alien spaceship or alien space probe—or even an alien space weapon!  But this is coming from the same people who cry aliens whenever anything even remotely interesting happens in outer space.

As someone who loves space, I find all this “BuT WhaT iF iT’s ALieNs?” talk annoying and disheartening, because 3I/ATLAS doesn’t need to be aliens in order for it to be interesting.  For example, did you know 3I/ATLAS is insanely old?  By most estimates, it’s approximately 7 billion years old, which makes it 50% older than our entire Solar System.  3I/ATLAS also seems to be composed of unusually high quantities of frozen carbon dioxide (and correspondingly low quantities of frozen H2O).  I’ve read several different possible explanations for this, but the one I find most intriguing is that 3I/ATLAS may come from a star system where water is extremely scarce.

When we learn new things about outer space, ironically, we often end up learning even more about the Earth.  I’ve said before on this blog that our ability to compare and contrast Earth with other planets in the Solar System has taught us a great deal about our home planet.  Now our science has advanced to a point where we can identify interstellar objects as they pass through our Solar System.  We can observe them and study them and use that information to start comparing and contrasting our Solar System with whatever star systems these objects originally came from.  I don’t know what we’ll learn by doing that, but I know we’re going to learn something, and I love that for us!

As for the aliens… someday, I believe we will discover alien life, and that day will be awesome!  If 3I/ATLAS really were an alien spacecraft, that would be awesome, too, but that hypothesis is based more on wishful thinking than actual evidence.  I, for one, think the actual evidence about comet 3I/ATLAS tells a far more interesting story than all the wishful thinking in the world ever could.  How about you?

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

There’s a lot of confusing and conflicting information out there right now about 3I/ATLAS, even without the people crying “it’s aliens!”  That’s because 3I/ATLAS is still under heavy observation at the moment, and new data is coming in at a rapid pace.  That being said, I’m going to recommend these two articles, which I feel give a pretty good synopsis of how much we know so far and how much more we’re hoping to learn.

I also want to recommend this video from Hank Green, titled “Why it’s Never Aliens,” for a more detailed analysis of why, whenever people cry aliens, it never turns out to be aliens.

I Love Earth

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

Hello, friends!

As you know, I love space, and as you might imagine, I socialize with a lot of other people (both online and I.R.L.) who also love space.  But in the last year or so, I’ve noticed a change in the space love community.  It used to be that if you loved space, it naturally followed that you also loved planet Earth.  But that’s not the case anymore.  Not for everybody.  These days, for some people, it seems that love for space equals disdain for Earth.

I’ve seen this disdain for Earth expressed in some of the recent discourse about the Moon and Mars, as well as other proposals for the colonization of outer space: rotating space stations, generation ships to other star systems, far future megastructures encircling our Sun.  Basically, these people say Earth sucks.  Earth is boring.  And Earth’s doomed anyway, so let’s cut our loses and move on from this stupid blue planet.  Let’s all go to Mars, or Proxima Centauri, or anywhere else that might be nominally habitable for humans.

So I want you to know something: when I say I love space, that does not mean I share in this weird disdain for Earth.  As of the time of this writing, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of about 6000 exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than our Sun), but they have yet to confirm the existence of a single exoEarth.  Not one.  For me, loving space means having the context to understand how extremely rare, extremely special, and extremely precious Earth is.

I love space.  It naturally follows from my love of space that I also feel a deep and profound love for the Earth, too.  How about you?

The art in today’s post is my own original work.  I didn’t take it from the Internet or ask an A.I. to generate it.  If you like my art, please consider visiting my store on RedBubble.  Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me!) so that we can keep doing what we do.  Thank you!

How Venus Saved Earth’s Ozone Layer

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends!

Fun fact about me: Venus is my favorite planet.  I just feel like, out of all the planets in the Solar System, Venus has the most personality.  Granted, it’s the personality of a mad scientist, or maybe a serial killer.  But still… so much personality!  Anyway, today I want to share one of my favorite stories about my favorite planet.  It’s the story of how Venus (the mad scientist/serial killer planet) accidentally saved all life on Earth.

In 1962, NASA’s Mariner 2 space probe became the first spacecraft to send data back from Venus (the Soviet Union’s Venera 1 probe visited Venus a year before, but due to communications issues, it couldn’t transmit any data back to Earth).  In the decade that followed, more missions to Venus sent back even more data, and we learned that Venus spends all her time brewing this super deadly mix of chemicals in her atmosphere.  As I said, Venus has the personality of a mad scientist/serial killer.  If future astronauts ever try to land on the surface of Venus, she will straight up murder them.

As scientists in the 1960’s and 70’s catalogued all the absolutely terrifying stuff in Venus’s atmosphere, they realized something was missing: ozone.  I won’t go into all the chemistry details here, but given the kinds of chemical reactions happening on Venus, Venus should have produced something similar to Earth’s ozone layer.  And yet little to no ozone was detected.  So what gives?

Well, among all the other horrifying chemicals in Venus’s atmosphere, there are some chlorine-based molecules.  Turns out those chlorine-based molecules were interfering with ozone production.  Mystery solved!  But then somebody said, “Wait, what about chlorofluorocarbons?  Those are chlorine-based molecules, and we’ve been releasing them into Earth’s atmosphere for decades.”  More research followed, comparing and contrasting Earth and Venus.  It turned out that, yes, chlorofluorocarbons (better known as C.F.C.s) were interfering with Earth’s ozone layer just as similar chlorine-based molecules interfered with ozone production on Venus.

By the mid-1970’s, scientists were calling for action.  By the end of the 1980’s, politicians were listening, and they actually did something about the problem.  The Montreal Protocol is an international agreement restricting the production and use of C.F.C.s and other ozone-depleting chemicals.  As a direct result, today Earth’s ozone layer is healing, and there’s hope that the ozone layer will fully recover by the end of the 21st Century.  Would scientists have figured out what C.F.C.s were doing to Earth’s ozone layer without Venus’s help?  Probably.  But they might have figured it out too late.

A couple months ago, I did a post about solar storms and the danger they pose to our modern technological world.  In that post, I cited solar storms as one of the reasons why space exploration is worthwhile, despite the notoriously high price tag.  This story about Venus and the ozone layer?  This is another example of why space exploration is worth the money.  Comparing and contrasting Earth with another planet helped save us from disaster once before.  Who knows what other valuable lessons Venus (or Mars, or any of the other planets) still have to teach us?

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Click here for a video from Sci-Show entitled “How Studying Venus Saved Earth.”

Or click here for an article from The Conversation entitled “What Venus has taught us about protecting the ozone layer.”

If you’re wondering why the ozone layer’s so important, click here for an article from How Stuff Works entitled “What If the Ozone Layer Disappeared?”

And lastly, some of you may be thinking, “Hey, didn’t they discover an ozone layer on Venus just a few years ago?”  You’re right, they did!  It’s at a much higher altitude than Earth’s ozone layer, and it’s much thinner and more tenuous, too.  But Venus does have just a little bit of ozone after all.  Click here to learn more.

The art used in today’s post is my own original work.  If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me) so that we can keep doing what we do.  Thank you!

Living with a Star

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends!

I love space, you love space—lots and lots of people love space.  It’s easy to get large numbers of people hyped up about outer space!  But as soon as you start talking about funding space exploration, the mood shifts.  Folks get uncomfortable, and it turns out that space can be a controversial topic after all.  So today, I want to talk about one of the reasons (just one of the reasons) why space exploration is worth the high price tag.  It has to do with the Sun.

Earth has a complicated relationship with the Sun.  Sure, the Sun gives Earth something to orbit.  It also provides Earth with light and heat and generally makes this planet livable.  However, the Sun also throws spectacular temper tantrums, flinging all sorts of high energy radiation and electrically charged particles out into space.  Sometimes, when the Sun throws a temper tantrum, it flings all those charged particles and all that super scary radiation directly at Earth.

Fortunately, Earth’s magnetic field protects us, deflecting the danger away or redirecting it toward Earth’s poles (this is what causes auroras).  And so, for the vast majority of human history, the Sun could throw all the temper tantrums she liked, and we haven’t had to worry about it much down here on the ground.  That changed on September 1st, 1859.

On that day, English astronomer Richard Carrington was studying sunspots on the Sun (using the proper safety filters on his telescope, I presume) when he observed an absolutely stupendous flash of light.  Most likely, Carrington witnessed what we now call a coronal mass ejection, or C.M.E.  Seventeen hours later, that C.M.E. hit Earth.  It’s said that the resulting auroras stretched from the poles to the tropics and were bright enough to turn night into day.  I’ve read some versions of this story that claim auroras were even visible at Earth’s equator.

The Carrington Event, as we now call it, in Richard Carrington’s honor, must have been a beautiful sight.  However, this was also the first time a C.M.E. of that magnitude hit Earth while Earth was wired up with telegraph lines.  As Earth’s magnetic field reacted to the impact of the C.M.E., induced electric currents wreaked havoc up and down the world’s telegraph network.  Telegraph operators received electric shocks.  Telegraph equipment started shooting sparks.  In some instances, those sparks started fires.

The world today is even more wired up with technology than it was in 1859, so how bad would it be if something like the Carrington Event happened again?  No one really knows, but the Sun doesn’t need to produce another Carrington Event to mess with our technology.  Much weaker solar events have damaged or disabled our satellites in orbit, triggered power outages here on the ground, and caused radio communications blackouts.  Solar storms pose radiation hazards for astronauts, obviously, but they can also put the passengers and crew of aircraft at risk, especially if those aircraft are flying anywhere near Earth’s north or south poles.  Solar storms are enough of a problem that insurance companies are paying attention, and they get nervous whenever the Sun stars acting up (see the “want to learn more?” section below if you want to learn more).

So in the early 2000’s, NASA created the Living With a Star program, or L.W.S.  Because, for better or worse, the Sun is right there, and we have to live with it.  As of this writing, there are three active L.W.S. missions in space, plus a few other solar science missions that operate outside the L.W.S. program.  They’re all monitoring the Sun, gathering new data about solar physics, doing their best to give us a least a little warning whenever the Sun decides to hurl a giant, radioactive fireball our way.  In time, perhaps these missions will teach us why the Sun’s temper tantrums happen in the first place, so that we can better predict when they’ll happen next.

I heard something on a podcast recently: there is a difference between knowing the cost of a thing and understanding the value of that thing.  Space exploration costs an enormous amount of money.  There’s no denying that.  But for a society like ours, on an increasingly technological world like ours, the value of something like the International Living With a Star program far exceeds the cost.  This is just one example of why space exploration is worthwhile, despite the high price tag, and in upcoming posts I’m planning to offer other examples, too.

Thank you for reading, friends.  I hope to talk to you again soon.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Click here to read “The Carrington Event: History’s greatest solar storm” from Space.com

Click here to visit NASA’s website for the Living With a Star Program.

I mentioned that solar storms can make insurance companies nervous.  Click here for an article on how much money the insurance industry could potentially lose due to an “extreme space weather event.”

And lastly, here’s a link to the podcast I mentioned near the end of my post.  The podcast is called Stories from Space, and the episode is titled “WTF is Happening at NASA?”

The art used in today’s post is my own original work.  If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me) so that we can keep doing what we do.  Thank you!

What’s It Like Seeing Earth from Space?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends!

I don’t know about you, but whenever I stop and look up at the nighttime sky, I feel… something.  It’s hard to explain.  And if I take out my telescope to look more closely at the planets and nebulae and galaxies up there, I feel that same indescribable something even more.  Whatever it is I feel, it’s a powerful, almost spiritual thing.  But as powerful as that experience is, I’m told it’s nothing compared to the feeling you get when you’re up in space, looking not farther out into the cosmos but rather looking back at the Earth.

In 1987, American author and space exploration advocate Frank White coined the term “overview effect” to describe the experience so many astronauts report having when they first see the Earth from space.  These astronauts don’t just look at Earth and think, “Huh, neat view.”  They describe this as a life changing experience, a dramatic shift in belief and perspective, a sudden realization that our world is precious and fragile and that we all must set aside our differences and work toward the common good.

If only more people could have an experience like that, maybe the world would be in a better state than it is currently in.  That would be great, wouldn’t it?  Well, there are individuals and organizations working to make this an experience more people can have.  One option is, of course, to make commercial spaceflight more affordable.  Another is to try to simulate the overview effect in virtual reality.  But if more people could see our planet for what it truly is—not as a globe crisscrossed by national borders but rather as a singular world that we all must share—that might bring about some real change.  It might, right?

Now obviously there’s been some criticism of this idea, and I do think some of the criticism is valid.  Even among those who’ve been to space, who’ve experienced the overview effect for themselves, and who’ve come back eager to do good things for our planet and our species… even among those people, some of them still say some troubling things.  For example, during the Cold War, Soviet cosmonauts would sometimes remark that seeing the Earth laid out before them reinforced their belief that communism must be spread all across the world.  American astronauts occasionally say similar things about spreading freedom and democracy.  Even if we all want to do good things for our planet, we’ll still disagree about what good things our planet needs us to do.

Frank White has acknowledged this issue in some of his writings.  If you’re one of the people lucky enough to see the Earth from space, cultural and political biases, religious beliefs, personal history… all sorts of factors may influence how you describe the overview effect to others, or how you interpret the experience for yourself.  But it does seem that no matter who you are or where you come from, seeing the Earth from space is a powerful and humbling experience.  Maybe White and others in the overview effect movement are right.  Maybe it would do some good if more people could have this experience for themselves.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

A few years ago, William Shatner (a.k.a. Captain Kirk from Star Trek) went to space aboard a Blue Origin rocket.  What he saw moved him to tears.  Regardless of how you might feel about Blue Origin or its owner, Jeff Bezos, I think what Shatner had to say about the experience is worth hearing.  Click here.

Friend of the blog Matt Williams had the chance to interview Frank White a few years back, and I’m super jealous about it.  Click here to listen to that interview on Matt’s podcast, Stories from Space.

Jordan Bimm is one of the most noteworthy critics of the overview effect and the overview effect movement.  Click here to read his paper “Rethinking the Overview Effect,” which lays out his main points.

I’d also recommend reading Frank White’s response, entitled “Rethinking ‘Rethinking the Overview Effect.’”  Click here for that.

The art used in today’s post is my own original work. If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble. Shopping on RedBubble is a great way to support artists (like me) so that we can keep doing what we do. Thank you!

Mr. Pailly Goes to Washington

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends!

Sometimes I say I’m shy.  Sometimes I call myself an introvert.  But that’s not the full truth.  I have some deep-rooted social anxiety issues which date back to some unpleasant experiences I had around the age of ten.  And yet, despite that deep-rooted social anxiety, I recently took a big risk.  A week an a half ago, I participated in an event in Washington, D.C., where ordinary citizens (not professional lobbyists) talk to Congress about why we love space and why we support NASA funding.

This event was organized by the Planetary Society, a non-profit group that was established in 1980.  Carl Sagan was among the original founders, and Bill Nye is the group’s current C.E.O.  Americans like to gripe about our government, but NASA stands out as one of the few government agencies that’s actually popular with the American people.  And yet Congress seems to believe, at times, that voters don’t really care about space exploration.  This makes NASA more vulnerable to budget cuts than most other federal agencies.  The Planetary Society exists to help show Congress that voters do care, that voters do support NASA, and that voters want to see NASA properly funded.

Now I fully understand that space exploration is expensive, and I fully understand that we have a lot of problems here on Earth.  But year after year, I keep hearing about budget cuts at NASA.  I keep hearing about important missions falling behind schedule or being canceled outright.  And earlier this year, I heard about mass layoffs at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with more layoffs at various companies that serve as NASA contractors.  I believe space exploration is our pathway to the future, and so when I keep hearing about all these cutbacks at NASA, I worry that we’re so focused on the problems of today that we’re letting our future slowly slip from our grasp (in case you’re wondering what I said to Congress, that’s almost word-for-word what I said to Congress).

As I said at the top of this post, I went to D.C. despite having some deep-rooted social anxiety issues.  That’s how much I care about this issue.  But there’s more to it than that.  I didn’t just do this despite my social anxiety; I also did it because of my social anxiety.  I wanted to push myself.  I wanted to test myself.  I’m tired of this problem holding me back in life, and I want to overcome it.  I knew this trip wouldn’t be easy for me, and in some respects it ended up being even harder than I expected.  But I got through it, and hopefully what I said to Congress will make a difference.

The Planetary Society does this “Day of Action,” as they call it, every year, and I plan to go again next year.  The way I see it, if I can learn to be a better advocate for space exploration, then I can also learn to be a better advocate for myself.  Time will tell how much my trip to D.C. has helped me, but I can already say that it has helped me at least a little.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s some information from Pew Research about the popularity of various U.S. federal agencies, with NASA ranked the third most popular agency after the National Parks Service and the Post Office (two other agencies that Congress seems to keep trying to cut).

And here’s an article from SpaceNews.com about the recent layoffs at NASA JPL.

And lastly, you don’t have to personally go to Congress to advocate for space exploration.  You can also call your congressional representatives on the phone.  Here’s an article from the Planetary Society explaining how to do that and how to do it effectively.

Why Do I Love Space?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 15 Comments

Hello, friends!

This is my first “real” post here on my new blog.  The main message I’m hoping to convey with this new blog is, quite frankly, right there in the title: I Love Space!  If you’re still wondering how I feel about space, then… I don’t know what else to do.  I don’t know how to make my feelings for space any clearer.  However, the title of this blog does raise another question that I think is worth talking about.  Sure, I love space.  But why do I love space?

I think everyone will understand what I mean when I say space represents the future.  This “space equals the future” idea has been part of the zeitgeist for a long time now.  I can’t say what, precisely, our future in space will look like.  Will there be humans on Mars?  Face-to-face contact with extraterrestrials?  Fleets of starships exploring the Orion Nebula?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Perhaps the work of exploring space, gathering resources from space, and defending our planet from space-based threats (like asteroids and comets) will be left to machines while we humans remain safe and comfortable here on the ground.

Either way, I do believe space will be a big part of our future.  That’s always in the back of my mind whenever I look up at the stars.  That’s always in the back of my mind whenever I learn a new space fact (like the many space facts I hope to share with you, dear reader, on this blog).  It’s in the back of my mind whenever anything even remotely space-related comes up in conversation.  Space isn’t just an empty void.  The other planets aren’t just barren rocks or giant gas balls.  These things represent our future as a species, our future as a civilization.

Given the state of the world today, it’s easy to lose hope.  It’s easy to get so wrapped up in the problems and conflicts of the present that we lose sight of the future.  Reading the news these days fills me with a sense of hopelessness.  And that, my friends, is why I love space.  I love space because no matter how bad things get here on Earth, space always reminds me that there is still a future to look forward to, a future worth living for, a future worth fighting for.

And so that is what space means to me.  It represents the future—but even more than that, it represents hope.  Every single one of us needs to find hope in something.  I find my hope up there, among the planets and stars.  Where do you find yours?