Earth (Again)

Earth (Again)

    You may have read that a few recent observations have discovered what may likely be yet another "earth."  Ho-hum, one might say, since recent reports have put the number of earth-like objects in space (that is, potentially habitable to some form of life, about our planet's size and orbiting a larger heat source star) in the billions, anywhere from 11 to 40 billion.  Yes, billion with a "b."  So why on earth (pardon the purposeful pun) would this latest find be such a big deal?  For one thing, this newest orbiting planet is pretty darn close to us, relatively speaking...just 39 light years away...now just as a refresher, a light year is the distance light (moving at 186,282 miles per second or, for those of you outside of the U.S., 299,792,458 meters per second) would travel in a year...pretty far, in other words, about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion kilometers) if you're wondering.  Now multiply that by 39 and you have our nearest "escape" planet.

    Of course, the new nearby planet is not quite another earth.  But it does seem to have a possible atmosphere, according to a report on the discovery by MIT (their brief video explanation on the link is fascinating to watch).  Prior to this latest discovery, the closest planet of sorts (size and habitability) was over 10 times further away, according to NASA (it's worth peeking at the link to view a size comparison).  According to the press release from MIT about the new exo-planet titled GJ 1132b: Because of its scorching temperatures, GJ 1132b most likely cannot retain liquid water on its surface, making it uninhabitable for life as we know it.  However, scientists say it is cool enough to host a substantial atmosphere.  And in a related article by Chukwuma Muanya in The Guardian, it was reported: The Venus-like rocky planet 39 light years from Earth could provide astronomers with an early opportunity to study the atmosphere of a world outside our solar system... its surface is likely to be a roasting 260C.  The scorching temperatures mean liquid water and life as we know cannot exist on GJ 1132, but the planet could still have a substantial atmosphere.  Because it is so close, the air and clouds above GJ 1132b could be studied in detail using space and ground-based telescopes.  

    But more importantly, the discovery might change the way we view how water got to our planet.  Continues the article: The origin of Earth’s water has puzzled scientists for decades.  Icy comets smashing into the planet seemed like natural donors, but many comets have water chemistry different from that of Earth’s oceans.  Rocky asteroids that contain water might have soaked the young planet, but analyses of meteorites — the asteroids’ remnants on Earth — show that the planet today is missing the material that those impacts should have left behind...The research published Monday in Science provide evidence for a different theory: that water has been around since the Earth formed, trapped on grains of dust that aggregated to make a planet.  Measurements of volcanic rock suggest that at least some of Earth’s water might have such primordial origins...Meanwhile, astronomer Dr. David Charbonneau, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US, said: “Our ultimate goal is to find a twin Earth, but along the way we’ve found a twin Venus. We suspect it will have a Venus-like atmosphere too, and if it does we can’t wait to get a whiff.”

    Blah-blah-blah.  Yes, I've likely already lost a few of you with such gibberish, scientifically speaking.  And apologies to those of you who are actual geologists and astro-geologists (likely screaming at my layperson inaccuracies on the planetary findings).  But here's where I was heading with this.  As a non-scientist, how do we even measure such findings about atmospheres and such, especially when these space objects are so, so far away?  As author Andrew Grant wrote in Discover, even at minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit, atoms still form molecules, which cloud together and eventually collapse...the beginning of a star.  Heat occurs, the cold molecules evaporate and a new chemical reaction occurs.  More blah-blah-blah.  But in the early 1960s,  two astronomers (Lew Snyder and David Buhl) took an endless amount of ridicule and being ignored when they presented  their hypothesis that organic molecules existed in space.  Too cold, they were told.  Then, a break.  Charles Townes (winner of a Nobel Prize for his work on the laser) found ammonia molecules in our Milky Way.  Snyder and Buhl waited a year (still pleading for radio telescope time) then began unleashing their discoveries.

   4.8 gigahertz...formaldehyde.  88.6 gigahertz...hydrogen cyanide.  87.6 gigahertz...isocyanic acid.  Methanol, formic acid, more and more chemical "signatures" appeared: Despite the large and growing catalog of space chemicals coming from the radio observatories, astronomer J. Mayo Greenberg of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands suspected that his colleagues were missing a vital piece of the puzzle.  The radio astronomers were searching for free-floating gas molecules in space, but nebulas also contain dust, microscopic grains of carbon and silicon.  What would happen, Greenberg wondered, if interstellar gas molecules like formaldehyde collided with frigid grains of dust?  They would freeze there instantly, he surmised, creating another kind of environment in which chemical reactions, driven by starlight, could take place.  At temperatures just a few degrees above absolute zero, the molecules would still vibrate.  These vibrating molecules—just like the rotating dipolar ones Snyder observed—could absorb and emit radiation.  The frozen chemicals Greenberg was postulating would show up not in radio, however, but at infrared wavelengths.

Photo: SMS Outfitters & Guides

    Wow (my reaction, anyway).  The thinking outside of the box was what as most fascinating to me.  Who would first think of measuring chemicals with radio frequencies?  Then who would think of moving beyond that and checking other "invisible" spectrums?  Who would think of developing the instruments capable of measuring these frequencies?  Surprisingly, many of these questions had already been answered decades and decades ago.  So consider what advances have been made in the years since.  As with technology, scientific understanding and discoveries of our universe have been exponential.  And here's something new right on our planet, a giant crack appearing in Wyoming...one geological theory is that of shifting water underneath, but why now (the crack, according to a story in Smithsonian, is about six football fields in length).

    Editor Tim Folger once wrote about our first discovery of nearby earth-like planets, way back in 2011.  At that time, the count was just over 1200 planets, double what we previously believed existed in our galaxy.  One astronomer, Geoff Marcy (part of the team that worked with the Kepler satellite that is still discovering such things) said at the time: I really think February 3, 2011 (the date NASA released news of the discovery) will be remembered for a long time.  It was a moment when all the interested members of our species, no matter what continent they lived on, realized that the Milky Way galaxy is just teeming with Earth-size planets...this really is an extraordinary new chapter in human history.

    But, says Folger: The new chapter --one of the greatest discoveries of the ages-- made headlines for a day, and then...our collective attention moved on.  The Super Bowl was only a few days away; protesters were massing in Cairo's Tahir Square.  A thousand new worlds, some of which might be habitable?  Yesterday's news.  It made me wonder what cultural life might have been like, say, in Galileo's time, if Renaissance Italy had been plagued by a twenty-four-hour news cycle.  Would endlessly recycled rumors of a papal scandal have eclipsed Galileo's discovery of the moons of Jupiter in 1610?  Or maybe a hit reality stage show --Growing Up Midici-- would have so distracted officials of the Inquisition that they wouldn't have cared when Galileo claimed that Earth orbited the sun, and the old man would have been spared his sentence of lifetime house arrest...So give the Inquisitors some credit.  They tortured; they burned; they broke wills--but they knew a turning point in history when they saw one, even if they did their best to suppress it.  They must have thought they were doing the right thing.  Maybe they even imagined that future generations would be grateful for their efforts.  But who now remembers the name of the pope who reigned when Galileo was imprisoned? (It was Paul V, but I had to look it up).  Four hundred years from now, if our species survives, it's probably safe to assume that the wars of our times --not to mention our leaders and celebrities-- will be forgotten.  The year 2011 may well be remembered as the time when we learned that our world was but one of many in the galaxy.  And who knows?  In another four centuries we may have found that we're not alone in the universe.

    With cracks appearing in our earth, with oceans warming more rapidly than expected, with glaciers melting, we may not have to look far.  Mother Nature might simply be telling us to pay attention to what's beneath our feet...and to forget the Super Bowl for a minute.