LA Times Today: Patt Says: Is extraterrestrial life just an asteroid away?
For generations, humans have pondered whether we're truly alone in the universe.Extraterrestrial lifeforms will likely not look like E.T. or little green Martians. But L.A. Times columnist Patt Morrison looked at a space rock with some promising, and microscopic, signs of life.
Here's what Patt says.
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5 days ago
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Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the red planet
Living in today's age of ambitious robotic exploration of Mars, with an eventual human mission to the red planet likely to happen one day, it is hard to imagine a time when Mars was a mysterious and unreachable world. And yet, before the invention of the rocket, astronomers who wanted to explore Mars beyond what they could see through their telescopes had to use their imaginations. As a space historian and author of the book 'For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet,' I've worked to understand how people in different times and places imagined Mars. The second half of the 19th century was a particularly interesting time to imagine Mars. This was a period during which the red planet seemed to be ready to give up some of its mystery. Astronomers were learning more about Mars, but they still didn't have enough information to know whether it hosted life, and if so, what kind. With more powerful telescopes and new printing technologies, astronomers began applying the cartographic tools of geographers to create the first detailed maps of the planet's surface, filling it in with continents and seas, and in some cases features that could have been produced by life. Because it was still difficult to see the actual surface features of Mars, these maps varied considerably. During this period, one prominent scientist and popularizer brought together science and imagination to explore the possibilities that life on another world could hold. One imaginative thinker whose attention was drawn to Mars during this period was the Parisian astronomer Camille Flammarion. In 1892, Flammarion published 'The Planet Mars,' which remains to this day a definitive history of Mars observation up through the 19th century. It summarized all the published literature about Mars since the time of Galileo in the 17th century. This work, he reported, required him to review 572 drawings of Mars. Like many of his contemporaries, Flammarion concluded that Mars, an older world that had gone through the same evolutionary stages as Earth, must be a living world. Unlike his contemporaries, he insisted that Mars, while it might be the most Earth-like planet in our solar system, was distinctly its own world. It was the differences that made Mars interesting to Flammarion, not the similarities. Any life found there would be evolutionarily adapted to its particular conditions – an idea that appealed to the author H.G. Wells when he imagined invading Martians in 'The War of the Worlds.' But Flammarion also admitted that it was difficult to pin down these differences, as 'the distance is too great, our atmosphere is too dense, and our instruments are not perfect enough.' None of the maps he reviewed could be taken literally, he lamented, because everyone had seen and drawn Mars differently. Given this uncertainty about what had actually been seen on Mars' surface, Flammarion took an agnostic stance in 'The Planet Mars' as to the specific nature of life on Mars. He did, however, consider that if intelligent life did exist on Mars, it would be more ancient than human life on Earth. Logically, that life would be more perfect — akin to the peaceful, unified and technologically advanced civilization he predicted would come into being on Earth in the coming century. 'We can however hope,' he wrote, 'that since the world of Mars is older than our own, its inhabitants may be wiser and more advanced than we are. Undoubtedly it is the spirit of peace which has animated this neighboring world.' But as Flammarion informed his readers, 'the Known is a tiny island in the midst of the ocean of the Unknown,' a point he often underscored in the more than 70 books he published in his lifetime. It was the 'Unknown' that he found particularly tantalizing. Historians often describe Flammarion more as a popularizer than a serious scientist, but this should not diminish his accomplishments. For Flammarion, science wasn't a method or a body of established knowledge. It was the nascent core of a new philosophy waiting to be born. He took his popular writing very seriously and hoped it could turn people's minds toward the heavens. Without resolving the planet's surface or somehow communicating with its inhabitants, it was premature to speculate about what forms of life might exist on Mars. And yet, Flammarion did speculate — not so much in his scientific work, but in a series of novels he wrote over the course of his career. In these imaginative works, he was able to visit Mars and see its surface for himself. Unlike his contemporary, the science fiction author Jules Verne, who imagined a technologically facilitated journey to the Moon, Flammarion preferred a type of spiritual journey. Based on his belief that human souls after death can travel through space in a way that the living body cannot, Flammarion's novels include dream journeys as well as the accounts of deceased friends or fictional characters. In his novel 'Urania' (1889), Flammarion's soul visits Mars in a dream. Upon arrival, he encounters a deceased friend, George Spero, who has been reincarnated as a winged, luminous, six-limbed being. 'Organisms can no more be earthly on Mars than they could be aerial at the bottom of the sea,' Flammarion writes. Later in the same novel, Spero's soul visits Flammarion on Earth. He reveals that Martian civilization and science have progressed well beyond Earth, not only because Mars is an older world, but because the atmosphere is thinner and more suitable for astronomy. Flammarion imagined that practicing and popularizing astronomy, along with the other sciences, had helped advance Martian society. Flammarion's imagined Martians lived intellectual lives untroubled by war, hunger and other earthly concerns. This was the life Flammarion wanted for his fellow Parisians, who had lived through the devastation of the Franco-Prussian war and suffered starvation and deprivation during the Siege of Paris and its aftermath. Today, Flammarion's Mars is a reminder that imagining a future on Mars is as much about understanding ourselves and our societal aspirations as it is about developing the technologies to take us there. Flammarion's popularization of science was his means of helping his fellow Earth-bound humans understand their place in the universe. They could one day join his imagined Martians, which weren't meant to be taken any more literally than the maps of Mars he analyzed for 'The Planet Mars.' His world was an example of what life could become under the right conditions. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Matthew Shindell, Smithsonian Institution Read more: A decade after the release of 'The Martian' and a decade out from the world it envisions, a planetary scientist checks in on real-life Mars exploration Dear Elon Musk: Your dazzling Mars plan overlooks some big nontechnical hurdles When will the first baby be born in space? Matthew Shindell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
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Wildfire threatens Joshua trees in area considered a 'last refuge' for the species
A fire ignited in the Covington Flats area of Joshua Tree National Park on Friday afternoon and burned 165 acres in a region that experts say is critical to the species' future in a warming climate. Meg Rockwell, a spokesperson for the national park, said it wasn't immediately clear if any Joshua trees in the area had burned, but she said there are major concerns about the possibility of damage to the trees. "This area is important for the long-term survival of the Joshua trees," Rockwell said. "It's that last refuge." San Bernardino County Fire officials said no structures are threatened. Read more: World's oldest trees threatened by Silver fire in Inyo County. Crews halt spread of blaze The Covington Flats region—located in a northwestern section of the park—is known as a "climate refugia" sitting at a slightly higher elevation, which brings cooler temperatures and more rainfall. These slight differences could be enough, experts say, to to allow Joshua trees to continue to survive and reproduce even under a hotter, drier climate that is expected in the coming decades. The iconic trees are not adapted to wildfire, meaning any fire damage can be devastating to the population. The Eureka fire was reported around noon Friday and had no containment as of 2:30 p.m. The park reported temperatures Friday around 85 degrees with wind gusts up to about 20 mph in the area. Rockwell said additional fire crews from the Bureau of Land Management and San Bernardino County had been called in to assist with the firefight. Read more: How large fires are altering the face of California's Mojave Desert The Joshua tree is cherished for its distinctive silhouette and singular role as a linchpin of the Mojave Desert ecosystem. Yet the iconic succulent is losing suitable habitat at a brisk clip due to climate change, worsening wildfires and development, scientists and environmental advocates say. While the Joshua tree is currently ubiquitous, climate models show there won't be much suitable habitat left by the end of the century. That's why protecting areas like Covington Flats is so important, Rockwell said. But, experts have also found that many of these cooler, higher-elevation areas — that are more hospitable for Joshua trees — are also susceptible to wildfires because they tend to have denser vegetation. Two large wildfires have killed an estimated 1.8 million Joshua trees in and around the Mojave National Preserve since 2020. Staff writer Alex Wigglesworth contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Could deciphering dolphin language help us communicate with ET?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. There are creatures here on Earth that may give us clues on getting "chat-time" with extraterrestrial intelligence — dolphins, which are famously social and smart. Recently, the Coller Dolittle Challenge awarded the winner of its first $100,000 annual prize to accelerate progress toward interspecies two-way communication. A prize of equal value will be awarded every year until a team deciphers the secret to interspecies communication. This year's winning team of researchers has discovered that dolphin whistles could function like words — with mutually understood, context-specific meaning. The winning team was led by Laela Sayigh from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The researchers are studying the resident bottlenose dolphin community offshore of Sarasota, Florida. They were on the lookout for "non-signature" whistles, which comprise approximately 50% of the whistles produced by Sarasota dolphins. Non-signature whistles differ from the more widely studied "signature" whistles, which are referential, name-like vocalizations. Sayigh's team used non-invasive suction-cup hydrophones, which they placed on the dolphins during unique catch-and-release health assessments, as well as digital acoustic tags. "Bottlenose dolphins have long fascinated animal communication researchers," Sayigh said in a statement. "Our work shows that these whistles could potentially function like words, shared by multiple dolphins." Sayigh and her team can now use deep learning in an attempt to "crack the code" and analyze those whistles. But what does all this have to do with E.T.? "My interests are very firmly here on Earth, in learning about how dolphins communicate with each other," Sayigh told "I do know that there are others in the animal communication world that are interested in this, however." One of those researchers is Arik Kershenbaum, an associate professor and director of studies at Girton College, part of the University of Cambridge in England. He's the author of "The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens — and Ourselves" (Viking, 2020). Kershenbaum explained that the book is about life on Earth, because "that's all we have to look at." He also contributed a white paper for a workshop at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in California, titled "What Animal Studies Can Tell Us about Detecting Intelligent Messages from Outside Earth." In that paper for the SETI Institute, Kershenbaum and colleagues concluded that animal communication research is the closest we are likely to get to studying extraterrestrial signals, until such signals are actually received. "Many of the challenges facing SETI research are similar to those already addressed in the investigation of animal behavior, and the evolutionary origins of human language," they wrote. "Indeed, the evolution of language on Earth may in fact have been driven and constrained by similar principles to those operating on life on other planets." The researchers have proposed the establishment of a large cross-species database of communicative signals, made available to all SETI and animal behavior researchers. In addition, they also proposed that tools, algorithms and software used to analyze these signals should be made publicly available for application to these data sets, "so that comparative studies can take full advantage of the expertise from the biological, mathematical, linguistic and astronomical communities." The topic of dolphin language interpretation, as well as the vocalizations of humpback whales and the field of non-human communications more broadly, is increasingly drawing the interest of SETI researchers and astrobiologists, explained Bill Diamond, president of the SETI Institute. Humpback whales have very complex vocalizations, Diamond told "where it seems clear that they are transmitting information and not simply making sounds associated with mating, feeding or dealing with threats. They plan ahead and communicate complex instructions to one another." Leading that look is SETI researcher Laurance Doyle, who's working on a project in partnership with the Alaska Whale Foundation to study the vocalizations of humpback whales. Related stories: — Talking to ET? Why math may be the best language — The search for alien life (reference) — Will we ever be able to communicate with aliens? For Diamond, the relevant research question is whether or not there are some fundamental mathematical rules associated with the transmission of information that would be universal — like the laws of physics and chemistry — within our known universe. "If there's an underlying rule structure to the transmission of information, and we can decipher it," Diamond said, "we would firstly be able to recognize a detected SETI signal as containing information, and therefore intelligence. And, possibly, we might even ultimately be able to translate it!" According to Diamond, "there's definitely a connection between SETI/astrobiology and the study of non-human communication and non-human intelligence."
