Introduction

Since the beginning of human space exploration, mankind has been expanding its reach further and further across the universe. Other star systems and planets that were not even known to exist just a few decades ago are now actively being observed and studied. While our current technologies do not generally allow us to send spacecraft (especially if there are humans onboard) too much further than around our own solar system, innovations in other fields have allowed scientists to study extremely distant star systems and compare them to ours. More and more powerful telescopes are always being created, and at this point we have found planets orbiting stars over 20,000 light years away. A planet found orbiting a star other than the Sun is called an exoplanet, and even though no exoplanet is near enough to Earth to been seen with the naked eye, these mysterious cousins of ours can mimic conditions in our solar system very closely. We would search for life in our solar system, but unfortunately no planets orbiting the Sun, other than Earth, seem too likely to be home to any life. As a result, exoplanets are sometimes thought of as the key to finding extraterrestrial life in our universe. Because the nebula theory describes how all solar systems are born, the existence of a planet as habitable as our Earth is perfectly plausible, even in an extraordinarily far-off star system. So, when scientists are scanning the sky for exoplanets, they generally try to limit their search of the cosmos to stars similar to our a sun, a G-star on the main sequence.

One of the most habitable exoplanets ever discovered, Kepler-22b, falls directly into this category. The star it orbits, Kepler-22, is a G5 star that lies approximately 620 light years away from us, in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler-22b was confirmed to exist on October 1st, 2011, after its 4th transit was observed by the Kepler space telescope. The transit method used to discover this exoplanet is also one of the more commonly used techniques in exoplanet detection. This method works when the Kepler space telescope detects a drop in the luminosity of a star for a short period of time. The drop in luminosity can be explained by the fact that a planet orbiting the star may have come around and temporarily come in between the star and the Earth, blocking some of the star’s emitted light. If viewed at the proper inclination (which is not always possible when observing distant stars, and therefore makes this technique only occasionally optional), transits of this type can prove the existence of orbiting planets. However, it generally takes three observed transits to convince astronomers that an exoplanet does, in fact, exist. Kepler-22 is actually very similar to the Sun, which only adds to scientific interest in this star system. Its luminosity is about 0.8 that of our Sun, its radius is 0.979 Solar radii, and its average temperature lies at around 5500K, making it only about 200K cooler than the Sun. Kepler-22b appears to be in the closer in fifth or so of its star’s habitable zone, so it is expected that the planet will slowly but surely become uninhabitable as the habitable zone moves outward. Regardless, the planet probably has many hundreds of millions or even billions of years until it is no longer habitable. Because of this and all of its host star’s similarities to our Sun, Kepler-22b gives us a better chance of discovering extraterrestrial biology than any other exoplanet discovered to date.

Mathematical Evidence for physical conditions of Kepler-22b

When researching an exoplanet to decide whether or not it may have conditions fit for life, there are a few things to consider. In order for life to exist, there must be a liquid medium in which different molecules can interact with each other (water is usually considered the most likely liquid medium to give rise to life as it is liquid for a large range of warm temperatures), and for a liquid medium to exist on a planet, a planet must be in its star’s habitable zone. To determine whether or not a planet is in its star’s habitable zone, we use two equations to determine the inner and outer boundaries of the habitable zone:

, where L/L_sun is the luminosity of the star in solar luminosities. For Kepler-22, L would be set equal to 0.75 as it is about 75% as luminous as the Sun. After plugging a few numbers in, we learn that the inner limit of the habitable zone for Kepler-22 lies 0.82 AU from the star, and the outer limit lies 1.21 AU from the star. This means that the range of the habitable zone around Kepler-22 is 0.39 AU. Since Kepler-22b lies at 0.85 AU from its star, it is in well within its habitable zone, although closer to the inner limit. Since stars brighten with age, the habitable zone will continue to expand and move outward as time goes on, and eventually Kepler-22b will no longer be encompassed in its star’s habitable zone.

Kepler-22b is close to the inner edge of its habitable zone.

One of the other large determinants over whether or not we consider a planet habitable is the planet’s temperature. While some heat is necessary for metabolism to occur and therefore for life to exist, too much of it can easily denature proteins and actually cause it to be even more difficult for life to exist. On top of all of this, temperature (and pressure, but the two are relative) decides what phase a substance will be in – solid, liquid or gas – and since it has already been stated that a liquid medium is one of the necessities for life, temperature clearly helps determine whether or not a planet could give rise to life. One of the deciding factors for the temperature of a planet (along with the content of its atmosphere/knowledge about its interior, which current technology is not powerful enough to determine for distance exoplanets like Kepler-22b) is its albedo, or level of reflectivity. A totally white planet has an albedo of 1, meaning all light that hits the planet is reflected back into space, and a totally black planet has an albedo of 0, where all light is absorbed by the planet.

The idea of albedo is simple – the whiter the object, the more reflective it is.

All planets lie somewhere on this range, and generally, as the albedo of a planet approaches 1, the planet will be getting colder, as less and less light is absorbed by the surface. The issue in this category is that it is very difficult for us to accurately determine the temperature or albedo of an exoplanet so far away, although we do have estimates. If you do a quick Google search, you will see that estimates for Kepler-22b’s temperature are generally around 262K. Using this value and setting it equal to the equation:

, where L is the luminosity of the host star in solar luminosities, A is albedo of the planet, and D is the distance at which the planet orbits its star in meters, we can estimate the albedo of the planet. For Kepler-22b to have this temperature of 262K, a fairly moderate temperature probably capable of allowing for life, the albedo has to be 0.07. So, based on this temperature estimate, Kepler-22b is a very dark planet that absorbs most of the light that comes across it. Keep in mind that this albedo is the result of an estimated temperature, so we cannot be sure that it accurately depicts conditions on Kepler-22b. It is worth noting that planets with lower albedos do not reflect a lot of light, so they are difficult to find via direct imaging. However, most exoplanets are discovered using indirect techniques, and Kepler-22b was no exception.

The transit detection method is one of the more popular methods for detecting exoplanets, as it is conducted by measuring luminosities of stars and looking for temporary dips. This is how Kepler-22b was discovered – after the Kepler spacecraft detected the third uniform, temporary, dip in the luminosity of the star Kepler-22, the planet Kepler-22b was confirmed to exist. I briefly explained how the transit detection method works earlier, but once again the idea is this – if a planet lies in between the Earth and an observed star and the planet passes by the star on the side facing us, it will block some (although a very small amount) of the star’s emitted light to us. On the graph of the star’s luminosity, there will be a small dip for a certain amount of time that matches the amount of time it took the planet to cross the plane of the star.

The luminosity of the star is only lowered when its planet is passing in front of it.

The only equation necessary to figure this out is the equation for the area of a circle, πr², in the form πr_sun² – πr_planet². In a normal solar system where the host star is very large compared to its orbiting planets, this value should come out to be very small. This is because the change in emitted light from the star is extremely small, and as a result it is difficult to detect and could occur from any object passing the star. This was exactly the case with Kepler-22b, as its transit only caused a 0.002 decrease in the luminosity of Kepler-22. Because of this, scientists require three confirmed observations of exoplanet transits before they can confidently say that they have discovered a planet.

An atmosphere is of integral importance to the habitability of a planet as it helps decide how intense the pressure is on the surface of the planet and what the objects (and potentially life) on the surface of the planet experience. Think about what the earth’s atmosphere does for us; it provides us with breathable oxygen, protects us from the harsh radiation of the sun, keeps us warm via the greenhouse effect, etc. The many benefits of an atmosphere are obvious, and it might even be safe to say that if Kepler-22b had a sufficient atmosphere of proper composition, there may actually be life on the planet. However, we have no real way of estimating what the atmosphere is like on the planet and also have no way of determining the composition of the planet. As a result, all of our estimates of the temperature and other factors of Kepler-22b are really just that – estimates. All of the factors for habitability sort of work together like a puzzle, so when we figure out one detail, it sometimes helps us figure out another. As for now, however, we simply cannot speak of Kepler-22b in terms of certainty as we just do not have the required technology to study the planet in detail.

The last key factor in determining the habitability of a planet is its host star’s evolution. Since stars go through different phases in their lives, the planets orbiting those stars experience related conditions. As stars grow older, they also get brighter, and as a result their habitable zones both expand and move outward. This has implications for the planets orbiting the star. Since planets will always orbit their star from the same distance for their entire lives, the habitable zone could at one point encompass a planet and at some point in the future have moved beyond the orbit of that planet. Because Kepler-22b lies 0.85 AU from its star, it would actually be too close to be in the habitable zone for a star like our Sun. However, Kepler-22 is a G5 star, not a G2 star like the Sun, so its relatively lower temperature allows its habitable zone to be closer in. The result is that Kepler-22b lies near the inner edge of its star’s habitable zone, but it still has plenty of time before the habitable zone will migrates beyond its orbit.

What if life really does exist on Kepler-22b?

At this point, we simply have to wait to find out more. We have learned as much about Kepler-22b as our current technologies allow us, so until our science improves further, we are at a bit of a standstill. But, based on what we do know, we can make certain assumptions. If Kepler-22b’s temperature really does lie at 262K, that means that the average surface temperature is 11 degrees Fahrenheit. While this is pretty chilly, it is clearly approaching the range that is necessary for water to be liquid. As a result, it seems plausible to imagine Kepler-22b as a cold, icy, wet world similar to Earth’s Arctic regions. While life definitely could exist, it does not seem likely that too many species could exist in abundance at such frigid constant temperatures, although it is hard to say. Certain dominant species would arise that would be immune to the harsh cold and would probably be adapted to spend much of their life in the water. Penguins come to mind when thinking of a well-adapted, versatile species, as they are extremely adept swimmers but still generally congregate on land. Kepler-22b’s temperature would probably cause the planet to be mostly liquid with certain sections frozen over in ice, and this is how evolution would progress. Life would likely start in the ocean, perhaps by underwater volcanoes that provide the disequilibrium that life needs to begin. As time passes and species continue to evolve, certain animals would make their way onto solid ice and start to live and reproduce there. If I was a travel agent hoping to send a family of four to Kepler-22b, it might be hard to convince them to go. For one, there is not enough information about the atmosphere or composition of the planet to even say for sure whether or not they could survive there. This little detail aside, the trip would probably be like a cruise through Alaska, and the family could admire the icy conditions on their ship cruising through the waters. Kepler-22b’s relative proximity to its star (compared to the Earth’s distance to the Sun) might make more for an incredible view, where Kepler-22 could occupy a large chunk of the horizon during sunrise and sunset. All in all, Kepler-22 star system travel agents will not be necessary for a long while, at least until we find some way of safely and reliably conducting interstellar space travel.

What have we learned?

Kepler-22b offers us one of the best known examples of an exoplanet potentially capable of harboring life. Although we do not yet have proof of biological activity in this distant star system, many of the similarities between the Kepler-22 system and our solar system make us believe that Kepler-22b may be the perfect planet for harboring life. Not only is its star very similar to our Sun, Kepler-22b also lies in the habitable zone of its host star, making it seem plausible that liquid water exists on the surface of the planet. At this point, we just hope that new scientific discoveries will allow us to study the planet in further detail, hopefully someday revealing the existence of extraterrestrial life in the Kepler-22 star system.

For today’s blogpost, our class was asked to create our own version of the HR Diagram, one of the most prominent tools used in astronomy today. If you do not know what the HR (or Hertzsprung-Russel) Diagram is, it is essentially a luminosity vs. temperature graph for all of the stars in our galaxy that we have observed to date. Some very interesting relationships can be noted between the stars on the graph (i.e., the fact that mass is clearly a deciding factor for the temperature, luminosity, life span, and other characteristics of stars), all of which are very clear since the HR Diagram has concentrations of stars in various areas, which contradicted the initial hypothesis that stars would be randomly scattered throughout the graph. The HR Diagram is actually very interesting, take a look here:

The HR Diagram, which compares stars of different types and shows some striking conclusions

In an attempt to recreate the HR Diagram with different variables that happen to have similar relationships to each other, I researched the example of poverty vs. obesity, since the two are clearly related. Here is what I came up with:

A graph comparing the relationships between socioeconomic status and obesity levels

To understand my WH Diagram, think of it in 3 different sections – poor, skinny dudes, the main sequence (which was not given a euphemism because it scales the entire graph and therefore all socioeconomic levels), and the rich, which I separated into two sections, well-off big-guys and wealthy fat-guys. Although I did not use specific values to create my graph and instead used general descriptions like “lower class” or “obese”, there are still certain relationships between socioeconomic status and obesity that the graph highlights.

Let’s start with the bottom left area, where the poor, skinny dudes reside. Here we see a relationship between the underweight and the lower class. Why might this relationship exist? The answer to this one is easy; people who cannot afford enough food probably will not have too much weight on their bones, simply by virtue of the fact that food does cost a considerable amount of money. It is hard for someone to prioritize their health if they cannot even afford a place to live. It is important to note here that the reason these people are so skinny (and probably unhealthy) is because they do not actually have enough money to purchase food to eat. While this may seem obvious since I have repeated it so many times, this is key because if you take a small step up in the socioeconomic ladder – where a family can afford food, but only particularly unhealthy food like McDonalds or Burger King – this family will actually be more overweight than your average family. So, although poverty generally implies some level of obesity, if a person/family is too poor to afford any food at all, then they will likely be very underweight.

The next section, the main sequence, is also simple to understand. The more wealthy you are, the more healthy food you can afford. This is interesting because although wealthier people will likely eat more food since they can afford it, they are not generally overweight because the food that they are eating is healthier. Take a look at this picture for an example:

In almost every section, Whole Foods is more expensive

It is evident that Whole Foods is almost always more expensive than its competitor, but why? The answer to this question lies in the fact that when people go to Whole Foods, they are willing to spend more because they want to buy organic foods, which are healthier alternatives to non-organics. So, if you can afford to buy food at Whole Foods, you will probably be a healthier person, but you need to spend more to achieve that health.

The last section is the rich, separated into two groups: wealthy fat-guys, well-off big-guys. The distinction between these two sub-groups is not particularly necessary, I simply included it to show that there are different levels of over-eating. This “rich” section is a bit of an outlier because it stems from people who have so much money that they over-eat to a point where they are obese. Whether these types of people are eating organic foods or not since they can afford them (which is probably unlikely since their preferred dinner consists of a big, fat, juicy steak), if you eat enough food, you will be overweight, it is as simple as that. Most people do not even have enough money to afford to eat this much food, but for those that do, they should be wary of ending up on the top right of my WH Diagram.

Anyways, the overall trend of the WH Diagram should be clear – the less money you have, the lower quality of food you are able to afford, and the more overweight you probably are. I have noted that there are certain groups that lie off of the main sequence for one reason or another, but all of these outliers can be explained in some way.

When humans finally create a reliable, safe and speedy method of travel, which is quite inevitable; what will be our first destination? With 7 planets (other than Earth) that orbit the Sun, and many more moons that orbit these planets, there are almost too many options. Clearly, if our goal is to find evidence of extraterrestrial life, some of these bodies have significantly better prospects than others. So which planets/moons in our solar system are habitable enough for it to be worth our time to do some research there?

The most obvious answer is Mars. For hundreds of years, humans have pondered the possibility of us having Martian neighbors, and some (namely Percival Lowell) even became convinced that advanced civilizations inhabited the cold, barren planet. By now, technology has advanced to a point where we can easily disprove this; we have even put multiple landers on the surface of Mars, and none of them have observed any evidence of advanced organisms. However, life does not only exist in the form of super-evolved organisms capable of advanced intelligence. Instead, the best chance we have for searching for life on other planetary bodies lies in finding microbial life. Since microbes can survive in a much wider range of conditions than lifeforms like humans can, they could potentially survive in conditions that seem extremely hostile to us… Like on Mars. While Mars is extremely cold, it does actually have water (which is, of course, one of the essentials for life), just not in liquid form. Mars has nearly no atmosphere as a result of its relatively small size/gravity and solar stripping, so its atmospheric pressure is extremely low. Because of this, on Mars water goes directly from its water ice phase to its gaseous state, and never has an intermediate liquid phase. While this does diminish the likelihood of finding Martian life, Mars’ internal heat probably keeps water liquid at certain altitudes, all of which are below the surface. On top of this, it is theorized that Mars was warm enough 2-3 billion years ago to have had abundant flowing water on its surface, and as the Sun brightens with age, Mars will again enter the habitable zone (pictured below) in the future.

After several hundred million years, Mars will enter our conservative prediction of where the habitable zone will be

As you can see, both Mars’ proximity to Earth and much of our scientific analysis of the planet makes our neighbor one of the leading candidates for extraterrestrial life in our solar system.

The other place we would search for life, although it is much further away, is Europa, the second moon of Jupiter. Because liquid water is one of the main requirements for life in the universe, planetary bodies with oceans offer great potential locations to search for life. It is this reason that makes Europa such an exciting place to look for life. Europa’s surface consists almost entirely of solid water ice, and as a result is extremely cold. While prospects for life on Europa’s icy, desert-like surface are small, it is thought that this Galilean moon harbors a salty subsurface ocean many kilometers under its icy surface. There are a few reasons why astronomers theorize the existence of this ocean, the most important of which is the way that cracks on Europa’s icy surface seem to fit together. There are many rifts in the ice of the surface, which can be seen in the picture below, and each of these rifts seems like it might form a sort of jigsaw puzzle with the pieces around it.

The cracks in the ice likely represent places where masses of ice have broken apart, shifted as a result of the water they temporarily float in, and finally re-frozen

It is for this reason that astronomers believe that liquid water occasionally swells up from the ocean below to both repave the icy surface and to cause masses of ice to shift apart from each other, then re-freeze in place. This seems like fairly convincing evidence of a subsurface ocean, but there is one more detail that makes the existence of the ocean even more likely. The Galileo orbiter discovered that Europa is able to interact slightly with Jupiter’s magnetic field. This is only possible if there is some conductive material under the surface of Europa, and a salty subsurface ocean would offer a perfect example of this. These two lines of evidence go together to make a fairly convincing argument that Europa at least has a subsurface ocean. There is not yet any evidence of extraterrestrial life on this moon of Jupiter (which, if it exists, would probably be in the form of microbial/primordial life because of the moon’s distance from the Sun), but the potential existence of an ocean makes Europa one of the leading candidates for places to look for extraterrestrial life in our solar system.

It may be hundreds, even thousands of years before we get to thoroughly investigate other planetary bodies in our solar system for life. However, when our technologies have advanced to a point where interplanetary travel is fairly easy, Mars and Europa will likely be two of the locations where we begin our search for aliens.

Just a few days ago, on the morning of Tuesday the 8th of October, physicists Peter Higgs and François Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. This incredible discovery signals the end of a 50+ year search for a particle which was first hypothesized to exist in 1961 by Sheldon Glashow. 

The idea behind the existence of the Higgs particle is very complex, but is well-summarized in a short interactive slide show courtesy of Nigel Holmes and the NYTimes right here: 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/08/science/the-higgs-boson.html?src=me#/?g=true

If you don’t have any interest in checking out the slide show, here’s my best attempt of summarizing what the Higgs Boson Particle does and why it has such enormous implications on how we view our world. When you get down to it, the true building blocks of this world are tiny atoms that are made up of different ratios of protons, neutrons, electrons, and other sub-atomic particles like quarks and bosons (and many others that I will not get into; if you are curious to see just how extensive this list is, you can look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_particles). All of these particles have varying masses (for instance, a proton weighs 1.673 x 10E-24 grams, while an electron weighs just 9.109 x 10E-28 grams), and it is the way in which these tiny objects’ masses interact that governs how whole atoms interact. Simply scale this up and it should be clear that because atoms are the building blocks for the objects we see and use everyday – cars, chairs, water bottles – the diversity of materials that we see used in the world today (like how cars are made mostly of steel, chairs of wood and water bottles of plastic) can be attributed to the differences in weight of the subatomic particles that make up these objects. So, we’ve arrived at the central question that scientists have pondered for the past 5 decades – what gives the various subatomic particles their respective weights and is therefore causing the wide diversity of materials in our universe? And the answer, which we have only recently discovered thanks to the work of Higgs, Englert, and thousands of other contributing scientists, is the Higgs Boson Particle. These Higgs Boson particles go together to form the Higgs Field, a plane that is present everywhere in the universe and gives mass to every particle that encounters it. 

How was the particle found? At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, scientists are able to launch tiny protons at each other at extremely high speeds, causing them to erupt. When they are ripped apart, the protons do not simply disappear, instead they separate into the subatomic particles that make them up.

When protons collide at high speeds, the subatomic particles that make them up are revealed

At this point, the “debris” of the explosion can be searched for certain particles, and the Higgs Boson has been one of the targets of the search for a very long time. The Higgs particle is only expected to pop into existence every couple billion impacts, so it is understandable that it took so long for physicists to finally confirm its existence.

If you would like to read more about the Higgs Boson particle and this revolutionary discovery, here is a great article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/science/englert-and-higgs-win-nobel-physics-prize.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=science&

When it comes down to it, technology is one of the main limiting factors when it comes to space travel; we simply have not yet created efficient enough machines to sustain life for extended periods of time in space. This is such an issue because the sheer distance in between the many planets that scientists would like to study and the Earth is so great that the travel time to these planets could be many months or even years. For instance, if scientists plan to send a man to Mars and have him return safely back to Earth, they not only have to engineer machines capable of safely transporting life through extremely hostile conditions, but they also have to provide enough food, water, and other necessary amenities for an astronaut to survive for almost a year away from the Earth. On top of this, they also have to consider the amount of time the astronaut will be spending on Mars conducting studies. Not only are the expenses of all these requirements great, but it is also worth noting that the current energy sources for space travel – either a combination of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, or other methods like the use of solar panels – are simply not capable of producing the energy required for extensive trips. They are not lightweight, long-lasting and reliable enough for us to travel to the distant reaches of the universe. All of this means that based on our current capabilities, missions to Mars, which is the closest of the many planetary bodies astronomers would like to study, simply seem unrealistic.

For the foreseeable future, it doesn’t look like any human will match the description of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

Does this mean that the many astronomers excited about Martian travel should quit their work and come to terms with the fact that humans may never step foot on Mars? Not quite – in fact, there seems to be one viable method left for space travel – nuclear fusion. Although nuclear fusion is always occurring in the cores of stars all around the universe, we have not yet found a way to reproduce it on Earth. But, let’s put that aside for now and focus on what it could do for us should we find a way to safely utilize it. Our current methods of creating energy via chemical reactions are simply not viable for long term space travel – it could take over 150,000 years to get to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our sun, using our current methods. However, if we took advantage of nuclear energy, that same trip might only take 100 years. Sure, this is still a hefty travel time, but this is much closer to where we need to be if we humans plan to be colonizers of the cosmos. All it takes is implementation. If we start actively investing in nuclear energy and showing people exactly how useful it could be (this super-efficient source of energy would not be limited only to space travel, it could revolutionize many fields of study), we may soon find a good way to control it. If this happens, our dreams of going to Mars (and much, much further) are not unrealistic at all.

If you’re interested about this and want to learn more, watch this TedxYouth talk that an old classmate of mine presented here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJrOJzF0IiY

The Space Race was one of the most incredible scientific periods in human history. Not only were enormous technological leaps made during this period, but all of these advances also occurred in rapid succession. In April of 1961, Yuri Gagarin was the first man to enter space, and just over 8 years later, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. Even though 50 years have now passed, human civilization has yet to venture further; so what exactly is the hold up? People have been speculating about civilizations on Mars for hundreds of years now, shouldn’t we be able to confirm or deny their suspicions by now?

This is a question that rings in my head every night when I look up at the stars. However, it is clear that this lull in scientific advances has to do with money; the study of our universe requires a lot of pricey technology, and many people do not see the value of astronomy. Lots of people believe that we have no need to waste money studying other planetary bodies when we have problems of our own here on Earth. While this is a somewhat valid point, it would be silly for us to save money we would have spent on science and instead spend it in more useless areas like the defense budget. In 2011, the military budget was well over $900 billion, where NASA’s budget was just over $18 billion. In its 55 years of existence, NASA’s accumulative budget is only around $800 billion, still considerably less than what the military spent in 2011 alone.

Graph of US military budget vs. NASA budget

Now, we do of course need the military; it would be naive to dismantle our armed services for the purposes of furthering science, but clearly there needs to be a change. The disparity between the sizes of the military and NASA’s respective budgets could be evidence a fundamental problem with our society – maybe we simply value our physical power as a country more than we do our intelligence.

If this is the case, then what could have caused this change to occur? It probably had to do with the fact that in the 60s, the search for knowledge was not the United States’ only motivator. While the scientific advances were incredible, they were only occurring because of competition with the Soviet Union. It was fear that was motivating the country to put a man on the moon, not a yearning to learn. While the reasons behind the scientific push might not be the best ones, the Americans and the Soviets did prove that humans are capable of achieving magnificent things. If that mentality had continued for the decades following the space race, maybe there would be a human colony on Mars today.

Military Budget vs NASA budget information from:

http://www.upworthy.com/defense-budget-1t-50-years-of-nasa-budgets-800b-chart-of-this-ridiculous-dispari

Everyone has at one point or another pondered the age old question: are the living beings that inhabit Earth the only organisms in the entire universe? Since everything that occurs in the universe is entirely up to the will of natural physics and is therefore extremely random, extraordinarily diverse types of planets exist everywhere; no two are the same. Some planets are too hot for life, some too small, some rotate too fast, some are not even solid structures, etc. Habitable planets, that is, planets that at least have the potential for life, are seemingly very rare throughout the universe. This detail is very important in the debate over whether or not extraterrestrial life exists, however the size of the universe is a slightly more essential fact to consider. Of an estimated 400 billion stars in our galaxy (also keep in mind that our galaxy is only one of hundreds of billions in the universe), how could only one contain an orbiting planet with life? No matter how difficult it is for life to arise from non-life (which is, of course, how life on Earth began), the scale of the universe is magnificent enough that it seems almost silly to say that we on Earth really and truly are unique.

This debate over the existence of aliens seems even more one-sided when you look at the chemical composition of Earth, which was obviously, in its infancy, one of the few planets actually capable of creating life. Since Earth was an eventual result of the big bang, as was everything else that exists in the universe, let’s take it back to the beginning to consider how we came to be.

At first, there was nothing, except for an infinitely dense spot that held all of the mass in the universe. Then, in an instant that we refer to as the big bang, this spot started to expand, forming the universe (which, of course, is still expanding).

The universe is infinitely expanding at an accelerated rate, so galaxies get further and further away from each other as time goes on.

The big bang got everything started by creating Hydrogen and Helium (and traces of Lithium). The Hydrogen and Helium went on to become parts of stars around the universe, which conducted nuclear fusion in their cores to create heavier elements. But, since stars have lifespans just as everything else does, they were ripped apart at the end of their lives by massive explosions starting in their cores known as supernovas. These supernovas scattered all of the elements created by the star’s nuclear fusion into the universe. Solar systems then formed from the enormous clouds of gas (with abundances of various elements within) that were left after the supernovas. Several billion years pass, and now people are studying the elements that were, in the very beginning, the reason for their existence.

Now that it is clear that everything in the universe had the same beginning, the following fact should be even more incredible – at our very core, we are made up of billions and billions of tiny carbon-based structures, without which we could not function effectively and live. This is such a shocking detail because even though life does not seem to be widespread throughout the universe, carbon, the element that allows us to exist, is just about everywhere. How could the main ingredient for life exist everywhere, while life itself is currently only known to exist in one place? It is this pondering that leads most scientists to believe that it is not that life does not exist somewhere out there in the cosmos, but instead that it is just extremely rare and difficult to find. The scale of the universe and adverse environment of deep space makes our search even more tough, and it is likely that the only thing holding us back from discovering a plethora of extraterrestrial species is current technology. Once we develop a way to travel through space much quicker and are able to sustain life on a spacecraft for extended periods of time, I can almost guarantee that we will find life.

Kurt Vonnegut’s thriller Slaughterhouse-Five, a wonderful novel about a man named Billy Pilgrim, is one of the most unique books of its time. Instead of writing the novel with a beginning, middle, climax and end, Vonnegut gives the story an entirely non-linear time scale. While slightly difficult to follow at times, this method does the actual story of Billy Pilgrim much justice, as Billy uncontrollably time travels to different moments in his life whenever he is under emotional stress. So, the reader’s experience is somewhat akin to what Billy is dealing with in his life. The story of Billy Pilgrim itself is somewhat farfetched – Billy is a World War II veteran who, later in life, is abducted by a mysterious species of aliens known as the Tralfamadorians. The Tralfamadorians reveal certain truths about the nature of time to Billy, most importantly that each and every moment in one’s life not only occurs simultaneously, but also infinitely occurs over and over again. Based on this idea, no moment in any person’s life is any more permanent than any other moment in their life, a notion that helps Billy overcome many of the tragedies he witnessed while he was at war. Although Billy’s Tralfamadorian abduction tale is absolutely integral to the story, Slaughterhouse-Five is not a novel about extraterrestrial lifeforms; it is a novel about war.

To begin, if Vonnegut had intended to write his novel predominantly about the Tralfamadorians, he would have made them seem more plausible. Instead, the Tralfamadorians are described as looking like upside-down plungers. Not only is this an odd image, in general, it is also biologically silly as it would be very difficult to move around with a suction cup where your feet should be. Additionally, when Billy is taken to Tralfamadore, the aliens lock him up in a zoo-like cage to be examined. While this idea is not necessarily impossible, it is more likely that if humans ever encountered far more intelligent lifeforms than themselves, they would not simply be locked up in cages like animals – instead, they would most likely be killed or put to work. Granted, there is no definite way to determine what might be the normal treatment for humans recently enslaved by an alien species. However, it is clear that Vonnegut is attempting to illustrate some level of absurdity when he describes the Tralfamadorians. Through all of this, Vonnegut is trying to show that the lessons about time that the Tralfamadorians teach Billy are much more important than the details of the aliens themselves.

When Billy learns of the reality of how time works, or at least how the Tralfamadorians believe it works, he is instantly granted some level of comfort from his memories of World War II. In the war, Billy witnessed many terrifying tragedies, the most prominent of which was the bombing of Dresden, a civilian city in Germany. The Americans bombed Dresden in a display of power, and they killed over 20,000 civilians in the process. During the bombing, Billy, a few other American soldiers, and a few German soldiers watching over them, are hiding in a bomb shelter in the basement of Slaughterhouse-Five, an abandoned slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the city. When the bombing finally concludes, the mismatched group of soldiers emerges from the basement to see utter devastation. Restaurants and stores around the city that were open for business just a few hours earlier are now reduced to piles of rock. Burnt corpses lie as far as the eye can see, and the true devastation that the bombing caused is glaringly obvious through the eyes of the German soldiers, who have just learned that everything and everyone they know and love is gone.

Now, back to the the flying saucer where Billy is being held en route to Tralfamadore. When Billy asks the Tralfamadorians how the universe is expected to end, they tell him, “We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears” (Vonnegut 111). Naturally, Billy asks the Tralfamadorians why they would not prevent this if they already know it will occur. To this, they respond, “He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way” (Vonnegut 111). This brilliantly illustrates the Tralfamadorian concept of time; fate is pre-determined and cannot be altered, so if something is known to happen in the future, no matter how terrible it is, it cannot be prevented. When Billy realizes this, he says to the aliens, “So – I suppose that the idea of preventing war on Earth is stupid, too” (Vonnegut 111). Once the ship arrives in Tralfamadore, Billy notes that the planet seems very peaceful. The Tralfamadorians correct him: while it is currently peacetime on Tralfamadore, war is no less inevitable on this distant planet than it is on Earth.

Finally, war is a more central theme in this book than extraterrestrial life because Billy’s entire Tralfamadorian story – his abduction and then his imprisonment in an alien zoo – is likely just a coping mechanism. After witnessing the bombing of Dresden, Billy needs to prove to himself that tens of thousands of innocents did not die pointlessly. Note that Billy cares deeply about the deaths of these many Germans, even though they are technically his enemy. To Billy, death on this scale is a tragedy, no matter which side it occurs on, which further emphasizes the point that this book is trying to make: war, although unavoidable, is idiotic and useless. As was stated earlier, the Tralfamadorians teach Billy that each moment in life is no more important or permanent than any of the others. Take Billy, for instance – his ability to time travel means that he has witnessed his own birth, his own death, and every moment in between countless times.

As a result, Billy’s death, and anyone else’s, for that matter, is just one out of an infinite number of moments that each person experiences in his or her life. This greatly comforts Billy as he can apply this rule to each innocent civilian who lost their life in Dresden in February of 1945, just a few months before World War II came to a close.

This idea of the Tralfamadorian story being a coping mechanism becomes clear when you look at Billy’s tale from the perspective of Barbara, his daughter who is tasked with taking care of him as he grows old. When Barbara hears Billy’s alien story, her father is to her like any other crazy, old war veteran whose life was drastically altered when he went to war. Instead of believing that her father actually encountered an advanced alien species, it is considerably easier for her to believe that her father’s perception of reality was simply altered during the war, causing him to believe that he saw these things, without actually seeing them.

All in all, it is evident throughout the novel that Vonnegut means to say that war is the reason for the Tralfamadorian tale, and that the story of the aliens is simply a way for an old, tired man to deal with horrendous catastrophes that he witnessed in his past. Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel about the nature of war – not an intriguing alien race called the Tralfamadorians – and it goes to great lengths to show just how devastating needless fighting can be.

Bibliography:

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five, Or, the Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death. New York: Dial Press, 2005. Print.

“Bombing of Dresden in World War II.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Sept. 2013. Web. 25 Sept. 2013.

Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity has to be one of the most magnificent scientific theories ever developed. In short, the theory explains how gravity is an infinite curvature of space-time. It is important to note that I am no expert on this topic, although I have studied it independently on a few occasions. However, I will do my best to show you what I do know, as only a minimal understanding of the theory and how it was proven is necessary to appreciate how incredible it is.

In the early 1900s, it was generally accepted that all space around us was filled with ether, and that this ether helped suspend stars and planets all over the universe in place. This idea implied that if you were traveling in the same direction as light, the light would appear to move slower, and that when you turned around and went back the other way, the light would appear to move faster. However, the first accurate experiments conducted on the speed of light proved that light traveled at the same speed, no matter how fast the observer was moving. By 1915, Einstein had drawn up an equation for this idea, which you have probably heard of; E=MC^2. All of the math proved to be correct, so the only thing that Einstein needed to confirm his theory was observational proof of the phenomena he aimed to describe. Specifically, Einstein needed evidence that light would be physically affected by the gravity of any object with mass, and as a result would not necessarily travel in a straight line. The only problem lied in the fact that it was particularly difficult to capture a picture in which the path of light had been noticeably altered. On May 29, 1919, he finally found the proof he was looking for, through Arthur Eddington.

Eddington, a famous British astrophysicist, was leading an expedition to West Africa to observe a solar eclipse. If Einstein’s theory was correct, an eclipse seemed to provide the only scenario in which this morphing of light could be observed, as light would be bent greatly around an object as massive as the sun. However, the sun had to be pictured during an eclipse, and not just at any time, because photographing the sun when it was out during the day would just cause the pictures to be blurry and inaccurate. Something as simple as a cloudy night would have completely ruined Eddington’s plans of photographing the sun, but luckily, the skies were clear that Thursday night. As expected, when the eclipse was at its peak, light from stars that lie great distances behind the sun seemed to be curving as it passed the sun (picture below). Just as Einstein had predicted, the light was physically shifted as it passed by our enormous star, which showed that light could be affected by gravity just as any other matter would be. For most of the leading scientists at the time, this was enough evidence to confirm Einstein’s brilliant General Theory of Relativity, and earn him the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Arthur Eddington’s famous picture of the sun, which went on to prove Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity

The most amazing part of this story is probably Einstein’s burning desire to achieve his goal. He found out that he would have to somehow photograph the morphing of light around the sun, so what did he do? He realized that the only time where this would be even remotely possible would be during a solar eclipse, so he responded accordingly and eventually had pictures to prove his theory. The results of his hard work are incredible – A Nobel Prize in Physics and the complete reworking of what we now consider to be a primitive, pre-Einstein understanding of gravity.

The following article by Steven Hawking was used for reference in this blogpost:

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1999/12/27/relativity.html

For me, it’s tough to say, since it would be an understatement to call Houston a geologically boring town. Everywhere in the city is at sea level, so there is not a whole lot of variation. However, if you make the short (6 hour drive) trip to Big Bend National Park, it is a whole new world. Before we discuss the details, here are a few photos from the park, which really and truly is one of nature’s marvels.

A beautiful perch at one of the highest points in Big Bend

The Rio Grande flowing through Big Bend National Park, which separates Mexico and the United States (both of these images are from reddit.com/r/bigbendtx)

From high peaks to mid canyon rivers, Big Bend offers adventurers much more than they probably ever thought they could experience in Texas. From Big Bend, the wide, dry, and open plains of Texas are not nearly as monotonous as they seem when you are driving through them. Instead, the characteristically southern prairies are somewhat breathtaking. 

Big Bend National Park is only as incredible as it is because of its geology. The rocks and minerals that slowly combined and layered themselves to form the massive rocks that now make up the park have more than stood the test of time. In fact, the oldest known rocks ever found in the park were from the late Proterozoic Era (over 550 million years ago). The many steep ridges at Big Bend were formed when the South American Plate made contact with the North American Plate. As the plates began to slide against each other, many rocky formations were forced upward and out from underneath the Earth’s surface. A couple hundred million years ago, the South American Plate rifted (meaning the crust and the lithosphere began to separate) from the North American Plate. As a result, limestone formations can now be spotted just about anywhere in the park. The Park is known to have been inhabited by several native American tribes for a period of time a few thousands years ago. Much later, in the 1500s, there was some activity between Spain and Mexico around the park because of its proximity to the border. 

All in all, the park is an incredible spot with an even more incredible history. If you can bare the heat, Big Bend National Park is on top of my list of things to see in Texas.