SHOW ME THE MONEY

This past Sunday a fairly momentous event happened without much fanfare among the general public. It was the successful splashdown of the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft after a supply mission to the International Space Station—the very first such mission by a craft produced and launched by a private company. This was important to NASA and the International Space Station program in general because it assures the station can continue without the American space shuttles, now retired. The Dragon craft is also capable of bringing back a lot more in the way of research materials than the conventional Russian spacecraft that have been going back and forth to the ISS since the last shuttle flight, and especially refrigerated materials. But this mission was much more important as a symbol: a sign that private industry can pick up where government-funded organizations like NASA leave off in the realm of space exploration.

Why does that matter?

I could list dozens of reasons I think humanity needs to venture out into space—from ecological relief, to easing population pressure, to safeguarding Life from possible extinction by cosmic collision. Yet the truth is, the real motivator that will ensure us a lasting presence in space is the same as it has always been for exploration: wealth. Money. Commerce. Call it what you will. Columbus’s voyages might have been funded by government (royalty) but his explorations were about finding cheaper ways to access the riches of the Orient. Same with the first expeditions to Canada, and then the exploration deeper into the continent was all about the fur trade. The story was the same for Africa and South America, and it will be the same for the Moon and Mars and the asteroid belt. When the journeys can be made to provide a desirable financial return they’ll happen. For that reason my bet is that we’ll have a better-established presence in the asteroid belt before we have colonies of any size on Mars (unless someone discovers oil there!)

What does this mean for the future? Great opportunities for companies that deal in mining technology, pharmaceutical research (thanks to zero-gravity), solar energy, and robotic systems, among many other fields.

And maybe more science fiction stories with former hard rock miners and lab-coated technicians, and fewer hot shot ex-military pilots.

WHAT IF WE KNEW WE HAD NEIGHBOURS?

Just a week ago, on October 17^th, a group of scientists at the Observatory of Geneva in Switzerland announced a discovery some are calling the biggest of the century. They discovered a new planet beyond our solar system—a rocky planet a little more massive than Earth, orbiting so close to its sun that its surface temperature could easily reach 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. So what’s the big deal? Well, it’s the nearest planet we’ve ever found—it orbits the star Alpha Centauri B which, along with its companion Alpha Centauri A, is our closest stellar neighbour, only 4.4 light years away. And where there’s one rocky planet, there are almost always others. Maybe the new planet Alpha Centauri B b has a sister planet that orbits within the habitable zone of its star, a planet that is home to Life.

Those who’ll admit to watching the 1960’s TV show Lost In Space may remember that the Alpha Centauri system was the original destination of the Jupiter 2 mission. Because it’s the closest star system to our own, people have long imagined going there. In reality, we can’t travel at anything close to the speed of light, so even futuristic propulsion methods being developed couldn’t get us there in much less than a human lifetime. NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) are jointly sponsoring a research project called the 100-Year Starship led by former astronaut Mae Jeppison, the first African-American woman in space. The project is charged with envisioning what will be needed to make such a long journey through space, from food supplies to social structures to the clothes the travellers would (or wouldn’t) wear. A daunting task, but since the technology required is likely many years away, I guess there’s no rush.

The thing is, we won’t have to wait a hundred years to know whether Alpha Centauri will change our universe-view forever. The discovery of Alpha Centauri B b required a painstaking process of more than 450 observations over four years (and hasn’t yet been confirmed by another team). But the technology used to discover exoplanets is getting better all the time. Before too many more years we’ll know if Alpha Centauri B has more planets. We’ll know if those planets have atmospheres capable of sustaining life. And soon after, we’ll know if those atmospheres show traces of industrial processes or other signs of civilization. Then we will know we’re not alone in the universe.

I read about a recent survey that said more Brits believe in space aliens than believe in God. But believing isn’t the same as knowing. Once we know we’re not the only intelligent species, will it make us curl up and hide on our little planet, or become aggressive, determined to outcompete anything and anyone else out there? Will we become peaceful? Or fearful?

All of this could follow from last week’s announcement. Significant indeed.

Just as a treat, check out this video of layered images from the International Space Station for a great light show.

NEW HOPE FOR STAR TREK FANS?

In the decade that saw men first land on the moon author Arthur C. Clarke envisioned a manned mission to Jupiter in the year 2001 (Saturn in the book), and probably most of us thought that was reasonable. Eleven years past that date we’re no longer capable of going to the moon and a long way from being able to send humans to Mars. Sure, we’ve got an International Space Station crewed around the clock, but that’s practically in our backyard, and there’s no Pan Am space clipper service to take tourists for a visit.

Still, there are some hopeful signs. Some believe that private industry holds the greatest promise for space exploration and exploitation. I’ve written here about some of the current endeavours before, and this coming October 7^th the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will take its second trip up to the ISS, this time carrying supplies, after proving it was up to the task last May. A supply run may not seem glamorous, but it’s a good sign for things to come.

Even so, the most encouraging news I saw this month was the assertion that warp drive might not be out of the question after all. Every Star Trek fan knows that it wouldn’t have been possible for the starship Enterprise to visit a different planet every week without being able to travel a whole lot faster than the speed of light. The concept of warp drive was a brilliant (but fictional) solution to Einstein’s edict that nothing can exceed light speed. Then in 1994 a Mexican physicist named Miguel Alcubierre proposed a method for a spacecraft to warp space/time around itself and propel itself at speeds of up to ten times the speed of light. The problem was the energy required: something like the total conversion to energy of a mass the size of Jupiter. Mind boggling! So Alcubierre’s warp drive might not be entirely impossible, but just this side of it.

Fast forward to September of 2012 when Sonny White of NASA’s Johnson Space Centre announced that, with an alteration of the shape of the warp field that Alcubierre had proposed, the energy requirement would be far less—still requiring the complete mass conversion of something the size of the Voyager 1 space probe, but not a gas giant! Further tweaks could improve the situation still more, bringing the concept of warp drive into the realm of plausibility. And NASA scientists are now experimenting to see if they can create a (miniscule) warp field in a lab.

Ceti Alpha Five here we come. (No, wait! Not Ceti Alpha Five!!)

SPACE EXPLORATION: RUNNING ON EMPTY?

I recently read an article that suggested humanity’s efforts to explore space are quietly being abandoned. The idea was triggered by the recent transport of the space shuttle Discovery to Washington DC to become a museum display. The argument goes that, while surveys show citizens still want and expect to see a future that includes Star Trek-like space travel, governments are quietly cutting funds and letting the dream die.

While there’s some truth to that, it ignores the way the private sector has been stepping up to the plate, and it’s been doing so in a big way lately. We’ve all heard about Richard Branson’s plans with Virgin Galactic to take millionaire thrill-seekers like Ashton Kutcher to the edge of space, and you may have dismissed it as little more than a carnival stunt. But space tourism is a perfectly valid way to fund other projects, and I’m sure Branson won’t be content with joyrides alone.

Even more immediately promising is PayPal co-founder Elon Musk’s company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). NASA has just given the go-ahead for SpaceX to launch a test cargo mission to the International Space Station on April 30^th. The mission calls for SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon space capsule, launched by their Falcon 9 rocket, to haul a cargo of food and supplies to the station and bring other cargo back to Earth. It will be the first time a private spacecraft has visited the station, but it’s part of a longer contract to supply the ISS for the next few years. The Falcon rockets have performed well so far, and the Dragon capsule is designed to be able to land on the Moon or other planets in years to come.

Then there’s the Google Lunar X PRIZE offering $20 million to the first nongovernment team that can land a robot on the moon capable of traveling a half a mile or so and sending high-definition video back to Earth before the end of 2015. Second prize is $5 million, and other bonuses are available. A reported twenty-six groups are in the running.

And this coming Tuesday April 24^th a new space exploration company called Planetary Resources will be unveiled at a press conference. The high profile names associated with the venture include film director James Cameron, Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, X PRIZE founder Peter Diamandis, former NASA mission manager Chris Lewicki, and politician Ross Perot's son, among others. The project to be announced Tuesday is promised to involve a new industry that will overlay space exploration and natural resources. Industry watchers believe it will be a plan to mine asteroids.

So maybe governments are losing some of their enthusiasm, but private entrepreneurs are stepping forward to pick up the slack and, to me, that signals that the future of space exploration is still bright!

TAKE A RIDE ON A ROCKET

Here some pretty amazing footage taken from cameras aboard the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters. Experience the ride from start to finish. We won't see this kind of thing anymore.

Whether or not you were a fan of the space shuttle program, the first privately-owned space cargo delivery business is almost ready to begin. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX plans to launch the first commercial cargo load of supplies to the International Space Station on April 30. After about 12 contracted cargo runs, SpaceX will start ferrying astronauts to the space station.

We'll be watching closely on April 30 and keeping fingers crossed that this will be a productive new step outward into space.

In the meantime Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic continues to sign up passengers for its planned tours to the edge of space. The newest to make a booking? Actor Ashton Kutcher will be Virgin Galactic's 500th passenger, if everything goes according to plan, though there's still no official start date for flights to begin. The ride is expected to cost about $200,000 per person for a flight about three-and-a-half hours in total (only six minutes of weightlessness).

The times they are a changin'...hopefully for the better.

STUFF HAPPENS AND EINSTEIN STILL RULES

If you follow scientific news at all you probably saw the headlines in September of last year when an experiment done by a particle accelerator at the CERN facilities in Switzerland appeared to show neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light (see my earlier post). A beam of neutrinos sent from the Super Proton Synchotron in Geneva seemed to arrive at a detector 730 kilometers away in Italy 60 nanoseconds faster than a beam of light sent at the same time. Of course, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity says that nothing can go faster than light, so this was potentially momentous news.

Fast forward to this week (but not faster than light!) and the scientists involved have announced that the results of the experiment are in doubt. They may have been caused by a data transmission problem. A fiber-optic cable that fed data from a GPS used in the timing procedure wasn’t as tight as it should have been, and that bad connection could potentially have produced a time discrepancy that suspiciously matches the 60 nanoseconds at the heart of the furor.

Now, this isn’t a clear-cut conclusion that the experiment was a bust, just an admission that an equipment problem could have accounted for the controversial results. The smell test says it probably did, and Einstein is still on his throne.

Which also means warp speed is still fiction. For now!

BACK TO THE BASICS IN GENETIC ENGINEERING?

At some point in Earth’s history, the first living cell was produced from what’s popularly called a “witches brew” of chemicals in the water of our newborn planet. Then the next big leap was when those first single-cell organisms became multicellular, allowing for specialization of function and the beginnings of the diversity we know today. We’re not sure how that happened, or exactly what triggered it, so for decades chemists have searched for the answer with a wide range of experiments.

Mostly, when we think about evolution, we think in terms of major changes occurring over millions of years, if not billions. Especially a transition as pivotal as from single cells to multicellularity. But now a team of scientists at the University of Minnesota has encouraged cells of simple brewer’s yeast to evolve into multicellular clusters within just two months!

How? By creating conditions that forced it to evolve. Their process is described in a good Wired article here, but essentially the researchers created an environment in which yeast cells that clustered together were given an advantage in reproducing—so that’s exactly what the cells did. Within two months they’d formed permanent multicellular clusters of cells, featuring specialized components and ready to diversify.

The lead researchers suggest that, when we want to produce specialized organisms for industry or medicine, complex genetic engineering might be far more complicated than necessary. We might be better off shaping evolution by doing the job that natural selection has done, but doing it faster. Farmers have done something similar for centuries breeding animals and crops.

To my way of thinking, that method seems a lot less likely to produce unintentional genetic creations that might prove unwelcome or even dangerous.

Sometimes simple is better.

FASTER THAN LIGHT? OR JUST TOO HARD TO MEASURE?

There was an earthquake this week. Not a real one, but a piece of news that shook the world of physics. A team of scientists claimed to have measured some particles moving faster than the speed of light.

The experiment involved a beam of neutrinos sent from a giant particle accelerator, the Super Proton Synchotron, at the facilities of CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to a special neutrino detector under Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, 730 kilometers away. What shocked the researchers was that the neutrinos appeared to arrive at the detector 60 nanoseconds sooner than they would have if they’d been travelling at the speed of light. Now, 60 billionths of a second may not seem like much, but Einstein’s theories of relativity say that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So, if true, this experiment might not only prove the great Einstein wrong, but even force a significant shift in thinking about the laws of the universe.

Maybe that’s why so many reputable scientists don’t believe it.

There’s been endless speculation since the result was announced, including a lot of criticism that the findings should not have been announced until they’d been properly verified and duplicated. Even though the experiments took place over three years and the experimental data is rated as having a very high degree of reliability, most don’t believe it. They think there’s been an error somewhere. The results contradict earlier measurements involving neutrinos, including neutrinos from supernovae which were not found to have outraced the photons from the star explosions. And, after all, neutrinos are notoriously hard to measure. Besides, most scientists would rather bet on Einstein than some upstarts, even if they do have a particle accelerator.

But most importantly, there’s a lot at stake here. Relativity would have to be scrapped or seriously rejigged, and even causality—the law of cause and effect—would be on the trash heap. Then where will we be?

If my computer starts submitting posts before I even hit the ENTER key, who knows how much trouble I could get myself into?

ARE WE ALONE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD?

We look up at the stars and wonder if we humans are alone in this vast universe. It’s not a question we can answer yet (unless you’re a true believer in UFOs), but there sure are a lot of people working to estimate how much galactic real estate might support life.

Our Milky Way galaxy alone is thought to include 200 billion stars—maybe many more than that, and at least tens of billions of those are yellow-orange stars similar to our sun. But until the last 20 years or so, we really had no way to know if many of those stars had planets orbiting them. If we’re hoping to find life, the first step is to not only find planets, but planets in the habitable zone of their stars: the so-called Goldilocks zone: not too hot, not too cold. There are other considerations, like gravity and atmosphere, but even just finding rocky planets the right distance from their sun is a good start.

Since 2009 the Kepler spacecraft has been monitoring the brightness of more than 145,000 stars. Why? Because if a planet crosses in front of the star (between it and Earth) the light will dim just a tiny bit. Kepler can measure that. Another astonishing instrument called High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) in an observatory in Chile uses a high-precision spectrograph to also measure light, but in such a way as to detect motion. A planet orbiting a star will cause a tiny wobble in the star that HARPS can see. The Keck Observatory in Hawaii has been using a similar method to great effect for a couple of decades now. There are other efforts underway in the UK, Spain and elsewhere.

So with all this searching going on, how many planets have scientists really discovered around other stars? The number is approaching 700, and might even be higher than that by the time you read this. More than 1200 other possible candidates have been identified and are just waiting to be confirmed. Admittedly many of those are probably gas giants like Jupiter, but many are also smaller than Neptune and might be much closer to Earth in size and composition. But it’s the ones that appear to be in the habitable zone of their star that grab headlines. That number is still small, but growing. And even if only a small percentage of sun-like stars have a habitable planet, in a place as big as the Milky Way that still means potentially tens of millions of planets where life similar to Earth’s could exist.

It’s still not proof, but it sure does improve the odds. So if you’re getting tired of the Caribbean or Europe, have we got a long distance vacation destination for you!

FLY ME TO...SATURN

Just a short post to invite you to have a look at this amazing composite video clip made from images of the Cassini spacecraft as it passed through the rings of Saturn. It's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen, because it's REAL.

Be sure to watch it full-screen.