Thursday, May 17, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
9 NASA Astrona9 NASA Astronauts, 2 CIA Directors, 4 Presidents Believe In UFOs uts, 2 CIA Directors, 4 Presidents Believe In UFOs
Amazing that people who believe in UFOs get such stigma. They're in great company... check out this amazing collection of UFO believers, with VERIFIABLE quotes, like:
- Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter Director, CIA: "Unknown objects are operating under intelligent control... It is imperative that we learn where UFO's come from and what their purpose is..."
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Using Planet Colors to Search for Alien Earths
Using Planet Colors to Search for Alien Earths
Planets around other stars probably exhibit a rainbow of colors every bit as diverse as those in our solar system. And astronomers would like to eventually harness color to learn more about exoplanets. Are they rocky or gaseous — or earthlike?
In a study recently accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, a team led by NASA astronomer Lucy McFadden and UCLA graduate student Carolyn Crow describe a simple way to distinguish between the planets of our solar system based on color information. Earth, in particular, stands out clearly among the planets, like a blue jay in a flock of seagulls.
"The method we developed separates the planets out," Crow says. "It makes Earth look unique."
This suggests that someday, when we have the technology to gather light from individual exoplanets, astronomers could use color information to identify earthlike worlds. "Eventually, as telescopes get bigger, there will be the light-gathering power to look at the colors of planets around other stars," McFadden says. "Their colors will tell us which ones to study in more detail."
Earth the Exoplanet
The project began in 2008, when Crow teamed up with McFadden, her faculty mentor at the University of Maryland in College Park. McFadden currently heads university and post-doctoral programs at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
New color information about Earth, the moon, and Mars became available, thanks to NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. En route to a planned encounter this November with Comet 103P/Hartley 2, Deep Impact observed Earth. The idea was to determine what our home looks like to alien astronomers and eventually use that insight to figure out how to spot earthlike worlds around other stars.
As Deep Impact cruised through space, its High Resolution Instrument (HRI) measured the intensity of Earth's light. HRI is an 11.8-inch (30 cm) telescope that feeds light through seven different color filters mounted on a revolving wheel. Each filter samples the incoming light at a different portion of the visible-light spectrum, from ultraviolet and blue to red and near-infrared. On May 28, 2008, Deep Impact even caught a glimpse of the moon's light as it crossed in front of Earth. Later, in 2009, HRI scoped Mars.
McFadden wondered what combination of color information from the filters would best distinguish Earth from the other planets and moons of the solar system. She recruited Crow to work on the project. Eight other researchers from NASA, the University of Maryland, the University of Washington (Seattle), and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab also joined the team.
The Magic Mix
The Deep Impact color data covered Earth, the moon, and Mars. The relative amounts of light passing through the filters vary for each planet or moon, providing a kind of color fingerprint. To this the team added existing color information about Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn's moon Titan.
NASA researchers analyzed the light reflected by the planets and plotted the results on a "color-color" diagram. By plotting the ratios of red to green light as well as blue to green, the planets cluster into "color families." On the diagram, Earth is easily distinguishable from the other major planets. Credit: NASA/GSFC
A simple side-by-side comparison of color data on all the major planets was a confusing mess. The team finally found a combination of three different filters — one in the blue, one in the green, and one in the red — that highlights the differences between the planets.
On a special "color-color" diagram the team created, the planets cluster into groups based on similarities in the wavelengths of sunlight that their surfaces and atmospheres reflect. The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn huddle in one corner, Uranus and Neptune in a different one. The rocky inner planets Mars, Venus, and Mercury cluster off in their own corner of "color space."
But Earth is the true loner in color space. Its uniqueness traces to two factors. One is the scattering of blue light by the atmosphere. This is called Rayleigh scattering, after the English scientist who discovered it.
The other reason Earth stands out in color space is because it does not absorb a lot of infrared light. That's because our atmosphere is low in infrared-absorbing gases like methane and ammonia, compared to the gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn.
"It is Earth's atmosphere that dominates the colors of Earth," Crow says. "It's the scattering of light in the ultraviolet and the absence of absorption in the infrared."
Colorful Future
Someday, the three-filter approach may provide a rough "first cut" look at exoplanet surfaces and atmospheres. "There are some things we can tell from the colors but there are some things that we can't quite tell without additional information," Crow says.
For example, if an exoplanet shows a similar color fingerprint to Earth's, it would not necessarily mean that the planet has the blue skies and vast oceans of our home. But it would tell us to look at that planet more closely.
And that would be an important first step toward making sense of the colorful complexity of the 490 (and counting) alien planets already discovered, and the scores more on the way.
A simple side-by-side comparison of color data on all the major planets was a confusing mess. The team finally found a combination of three different filters — one in the blue, one in the green, and one in the red — that highlights the differences between the planets.
On a special "color-color" diagram the team created, the planets cluster into groups based on similarities in the wavelengths of sunlight that their surfaces and atmospheres reflect. The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn huddle in one corner, Uranus and Neptune in a different one. The rocky inner planets Mars, Venus, and Mercury cluster off in their own corner of "color space."
But Earth is the true loner in color space. Its uniqueness traces to two factors. One is the scattering of blue light by the atmosphere. This is called Rayleigh scattering, after the English scientist who discovered it.
The other reason Earth stands out in color space is because it does not absorb a lot of infrared light. That's because our atmosphere is low in infrared-absorbing gases like methane and ammonia, compared to the gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn.
"It is Earth's atmosphere that dominates the colors of Earth," Crow says. "It's the scattering of light in the ultraviolet and the absence of absorption in the infrared."
Colorful Future
Someday, the three-filter approach may provide a rough "first cut" look at exoplanet surfaces and atmospheres. "There are some things we can tell from the colors but there are some things that we can't quite tell without additional information," Crow says.
For example, if an exoplanet shows a similar color fingerprint to Earth's, it would not necessarily mean that the planet has the blue skies and vast oceans of our home. But it would tell us to look at that planet more closely.
And that would be an important first step toward making sense of the colorful complexity of the 490 (and counting) alien planets already discovered, and the scores more on the way.
NASA Astrobiologist Identifies New 'Extreme' Life Form
The end of a scientific journey -- started five years ago in a frozen tunnel deep below the Alaska tundra -- came in January for NASA astrobiologist Dr. Richard Hoover.
It proved a long, arduous journey for Hoover and his colleagues to complete the process of identifying a unique new life form. For the life form itself, a new bacterium dubbed Carnobacterium pleistocenium, the journey to discovery took much longer -- some 32,000 years.
The bacterium -- the first fully described, validated species ever found alive in ancient ice -- is NASA’s latest discovery of an "extremophile." Extremophiles are hardy life forms that exist and flourish in conditions hostile to most known organisms, from the potentially toxic chemical levels of salt-choked lakes and alkaline deserts to the extreme heat of deep-sea volcanoes. NASA and its partner organizations study the potential for life in such extreme zones to help prepare robotic probes and, eventually, human explorers to search other worlds for signs of life.
This search is a key element of the Vision for Space Exploration, the ambitious effort to return Americans to the Moon and to conduct robotic and human exploration of Mars and other worlds in our Solar System, which might conceal life forms unimaginable to us -- thriving in conditions few Earth species could tolerate.
In 1999 and 2000, Hoover, a researcher at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., time-traveled back to the Pleistocene via the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, or "CRREL tunnel." The research site near Fox, Alaska, just north of Fairbanks, was carved by the Army Corps of Engineers in the mid-1960s to enable geologists and other scientists to study permafrost -- the mix of permanently frozen ice, soil and rock -- in preparation for construction in the early 1970s of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline.
Hoover initially went to the CRREL tunnel in search of "psychrophiles" -- organisms that live only at extremely low temperatures. Hoover initially suspected the samples he collected there, from ice more than 30 millennia old, were diatoms, or microscopic, golden-brown algae. But closer study at the nearby University of Alaska revealed not diatoms but something much more interesting -- an assortment of bacterial cells, many of which came to life as soon as the ice thawed.
Hoover and his collaborator, microbiologist Dr. Elena Pikuta of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, studied the samples at the National Space Science and Technology Center, the research consortium operated by NASA and Alabama universities. They found the samples contained anaerobic bacteria that grew on sugars and proteins in total absence of oxygen. The bacteria had frozen near the end of the Pleistocene Age, which extended from about 1.8 million years ago to just 11,000 years ago -- and earned the new organism its name.
Further testing revealed the organism was not a psychrophile at all, but a "psychrotolerant" -- not an organism that thrives only at very cold temperatures, but one capable of enduring deep cold that resumes normal activity when temperatures rise.
Hoover, Pikuta and their collaborators -- Damien Marsic of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Professor Asim Bej of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Dr. Jane Tang and Dr. Paul Krader of the American Type Culture Collection in Manassas, Va. -- published their discovery in the January issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. The bimonthly periodical, the official journal of record for new bacterial species, is produced by the Society for General Microbiology.
"Astrobiologists ask, 'Is life strictly terrestrial in origin, or is it a cosmic imperative, an undeniable, universal biological truth?' That possibility is central to our desire to explore the universe," Hoover said. "The existence of microorganisms in these harsh environments suggests -- but does not promise -- that we might one day discover similar life forms in the glaciers or permafrost of Mars or in the ice crust and oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa."
Although many people think of bacteria merely as a cause of illness or decay, Hoover and Pikuta are quick to defend the organisms, which they call highly advanced marvels of natural engineering. There are approximately 7,000 validly described species of bacteria, though far more are surmised to exist. The vast majority are harmless to humans. Only a very few -- less than 1 percent of all known species -- are dangerous. And many, Hoover noted, are valuable to human life, aiding us in numerous ways: culturing wine, dairy products and other foods; assisting in the biological extraction of gold and other precious metals from ore wastes; and aiding production of valuable proteins and life-saving drugs.
Carnobacterium pleistocenium could even offer new medical breakthroughs. "The enzymes and proteins it possesses, which give it the ability to spring to life after such long periods of dormancy, might hold the key to long-term, cryogenic -- or very low temperature -- storage of living cells, tissues and perhaps even complex life forms," Hoover said.
"Life is far more diverse, and far more resistant to conditions we consider hostile, than was thought possible only a decade or two ago," he adds. "Studying these organisms helps us understand that life may be far more widespread in the cosmos than we previously imagined."
Living cultures of the new bacterium have been deposited in the American Type Culture Collection, in the Microbial Collection at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and in the Japan Collection of Microorganisms in Saitama, Japan.
It proved a long, arduous journey for Hoover and his colleagues to complete the process of identifying a unique new life form. For the life form itself, a new bacterium dubbed Carnobacterium pleistocenium, the journey to discovery took much longer -- some 32,000 years.
The bacterium -- the first fully described, validated species ever found alive in ancient ice -- is NASA’s latest discovery of an "extremophile." Extremophiles are hardy life forms that exist and flourish in conditions hostile to most known organisms, from the potentially toxic chemical levels of salt-choked lakes and alkaline deserts to the extreme heat of deep-sea volcanoes. NASA and its partner organizations study the potential for life in such extreme zones to help prepare robotic probes and, eventually, human explorers to search other worlds for signs of life.
This search is a key element of the Vision for Space Exploration, the ambitious effort to return Americans to the Moon and to conduct robotic and human exploration of Mars and other worlds in our Solar System, which might conceal life forms unimaginable to us -- thriving in conditions few Earth species could tolerate.
In 1999 and 2000, Hoover, a researcher at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., time-traveled back to the Pleistocene via the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, or "CRREL tunnel." The research site near Fox, Alaska, just north of Fairbanks, was carved by the Army Corps of Engineers in the mid-1960s to enable geologists and other scientists to study permafrost -- the mix of permanently frozen ice, soil and rock -- in preparation for construction in the early 1970s of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline.
Hoover initially went to the CRREL tunnel in search of "psychrophiles" -- organisms that live only at extremely low temperatures. Hoover initially suspected the samples he collected there, from ice more than 30 millennia old, were diatoms, or microscopic, golden-brown algae. But closer study at the nearby University of Alaska revealed not diatoms but something much more interesting -- an assortment of bacterial cells, many of which came to life as soon as the ice thawed.
Hoover and his collaborator, microbiologist Dr. Elena Pikuta of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, studied the samples at the National Space Science and Technology Center, the research consortium operated by NASA and Alabama universities. They found the samples contained anaerobic bacteria that grew on sugars and proteins in total absence of oxygen. The bacteria had frozen near the end of the Pleistocene Age, which extended from about 1.8 million years ago to just 11,000 years ago -- and earned the new organism its name.
Further testing revealed the organism was not a psychrophile at all, but a "psychrotolerant" -- not an organism that thrives only at very cold temperatures, but one capable of enduring deep cold that resumes normal activity when temperatures rise.
Hoover, Pikuta and their collaborators -- Damien Marsic of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Professor Asim Bej of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Dr. Jane Tang and Dr. Paul Krader of the American Type Culture Collection in Manassas, Va. -- published their discovery in the January issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. The bimonthly periodical, the official journal of record for new bacterial species, is produced by the Society for General Microbiology.
"Astrobiologists ask, 'Is life strictly terrestrial in origin, or is it a cosmic imperative, an undeniable, universal biological truth?' That possibility is central to our desire to explore the universe," Hoover said. "The existence of microorganisms in these harsh environments suggests -- but does not promise -- that we might one day discover similar life forms in the glaciers or permafrost of Mars or in the ice crust and oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa."
Although many people think of bacteria merely as a cause of illness or decay, Hoover and Pikuta are quick to defend the organisms, which they call highly advanced marvels of natural engineering. There are approximately 7,000 validly described species of bacteria, though far more are surmised to exist. The vast majority are harmless to humans. Only a very few -- less than 1 percent of all known species -- are dangerous. And many, Hoover noted, are valuable to human life, aiding us in numerous ways: culturing wine, dairy products and other foods; assisting in the biological extraction of gold and other precious metals from ore wastes; and aiding production of valuable proteins and life-saving drugs.
Carnobacterium pleistocenium could even offer new medical breakthroughs. "The enzymes and proteins it possesses, which give it the ability to spring to life after such long periods of dormancy, might hold the key to long-term, cryogenic -- or very low temperature -- storage of living cells, tissues and perhaps even complex life forms," Hoover said.
"Life is far more diverse, and far more resistant to conditions we consider hostile, than was thought possible only a decade or two ago," he adds. "Studying these organisms helps us understand that life may be far more widespread in the cosmos than we previously imagined."
Living cultures of the new bacterium have been deposited in the American Type Culture Collection, in the Microbial Collection at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and in the Japan Collection of Microorganisms in Saitama, Japan.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)