What it will mean to find Earth's Twin out there

One of the most ancient and perhaps the most enduring questions that humankind has been asking since picking up the first stone and striking fire has been around the topic of who we are and what are we doing here. Is there a destiny or are we just result of random mutations through a cycle which started billions of years ago.

Related to search for our place in the universe are the questions relating to whether there are worlds out there which are earth like. At first the whole question of whether there are any extra solar planets at all was a huge problem for us. It was indeed a formidable question for our kind with our primitive equipment and the ability to squint through the fog of earth’s atmosphere and then the gaseous envelop of our solar system. Through this foggy and often obscured picture, we used to wonder if there are any other rocks circling other stars. Logic of course told us that formation of the solar system shouldn’t be unique process which happened only in our neighborhood, but our ability to experimentally and by observation prove what was common sense was limited.

Well, not any more. For quite some time, we have been able to at least deduce the existence of extra solar planets, if not see them directly. An exoplanet (or extra solar planet) is a planet orbiting a star different from the Sun (the "exo" prefix means "outside" in Greek). Up until now, one has found mainly gas giant planets, which are easier to detect than telluric planets. An exoplanet or extra solar planet is a planet that does not orbit the Sun and instead orbits a different star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf. More than 1800 exoplanets have been discovered (1849 planets in 1160 planetary systems including 471 multiple planetary systems as of 2 November 2014).

According to Observatoire de Paris - The planets of the solar system can be divided into two groups, the telluric planets and the gas giant (or "Jovian") planets. The telluric planets are spherical bodies with a crust of rock, and the gas giant planets are spheres composed of gas and ice (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). Pluto is a solid body, whose composition consists of a variety of rocks and ices. An exoplanet (or extra solar planet) is a planet orbiting a star different from the Sun (the "exo" prefix means "outside" in Greek). Up until now, one has found mainly gas giant planets, which are easier to detect than telluric planets. However, due to the increasing sensitivity of the detection methods, one already begins to observe the first planets of sizes comparable to the Earth.

So, as we can see, thousands have been discovered in the past two decades, mostly with NASA's Kepler space telescope. The first extra solar planet discovery was confirmed in 1992, although they had been predicted long before. Planets are difficult to detect directly because they are so much dimmer than the stars they orbit. The Sun is a billion (10⁹) times brighter than Jupiter and 10 billion (10¹⁰) times brighter than the Earth.

According to space.com - These worlds come in a huge variety of sizes and orbits. Some are gigantic planets hugging close to their parent stars; others are icy, some rocky. NASA and other agencies are looking for a special kind of planet: one that’s the same size as Earth, orbiting a sun-like star in the habitable zone. The habitable zone is the range of distances from a star where a planet’s temperature allows liquid water oceans, critical for life on Earth. The earliest definition of the zone was based on simple thermal equilibrium, but current calculations of the habitable zone include many other factors, including the greenhouse effect of a planet’s atmosphere. This makes the boundaries of a habitable zone "fuzzy."

There are various available methods for detection of these extra solar planets, short of visiting them with FTL ships. If one is interested in details of various methods, then please visit website of Las Cumbres Observatory.

But a more interesting question is – what would be the social impact of a finding of Earth’s Twin out there? There is a lot of interest in the study of this phenomenon across the world by both religious and political leaders – for the same obvious reasons. Most of the apprehensions border on possibility of chaos and widespread anarchy. Why? Well you have to take a deep look at how our society has been structured since the birth of formal civilization thousands of years ago.

According to Wikipedia - The cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact is the corpus of changes to terrestrial science, technology, religion, politics, and ecosystems resulting from contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. Although closely related to it, the study of the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact is distinct from the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which attempts to locate intelligent life as opposed to analyzing the implications of contact with that life. The potential changes from extraterrestrial contact could vary greatly in magnitude and type, based on the extraterrestrial civilization's level of technological advancement, degree of benevolence or malevolence, and level of mutual comprehension between itself and humanity. The medium, through which humanity is contacted, be it electromagnetic radiation, direct physical interaction, extraterrestrial artifact, or otherwise, may also influence the results of contact. Incorporating these factors, various systems have been created to assess the implications of extraterrestrial contact. The implications of extraterrestrial contact, particularly with a technologically superior civilization, have often been likened to the meeting of two vastly different human cultures on Earth, an historical precedent being the Columbian Exchange. Such meetings have generally led to the destruction of the civilization receiving contact (as opposed to the "contactor", which initiates contact), and therefore destruction of human civilization is a possible outcome. However, the absence of any such contact to date means such conjecture is largely speculative.

According to an article on The Conversation - Habitable exoplanets are bad news for humanity. What did not make the news, however, is that this discovery also slightly increases how much credence we give to the possibility of near-term human extinction. This is because of a concept known as the Great Filter. The author hopes for a barren Kepler-186f and argues - If Kepler-186f is teeming with intelligent life, then that would be really bad news for humanity.

As philosopher Nick Bostrom once said: - The silence of the night sky is golden … in the search for extraterrestrial life, no news is good news. It promises a potentially great future for humanity.

In my opinion, this is a way different way of approaching a monumental question of whether we are alone in the universe, or ever have been? Doomsday scenarios abound across the literature of our species. But I ask why should it always be an extinction trajectory?

Well, as it turns out – according to space.com - Announced on July 23, 2015, planet Kepler-452b is larger than Earth and orbits a star nearly identical to the sun, but older and therefore hotter. The planet's orbit is nearly the same as Earth's, and its year is about 20 days longer than Earth's. Kepler-452b is 1,400 light-years away.

John Traveler in this article - What the Discovery of Earth Sized Exoplanets Means for the Human Race – goes on to say - To find that we are not alone in the vast cosmos will undoubtedly have substantial impact on human cultural, socio-religious, and intellectual paradigms. It’s safe to predict, such a discovery might have the greatest impact on human perspectives since ancient humans first experienced the cognitive foundations of logical thought and reason.

I firmly believe that human society would be changed for the better. Of course there will be some changes which a certain section of society might not like. The strangle hold that our current political and religious organizations have upon us would be loosened a bit. We may even suffer through a period when the faith system collapses, forcing humanity to start believing in itself rather than a divine intervention and overseeing. But we will pull through. We have come a long way in the last 400 years and we have survived 200,000 years of super volcanoes, earthquakes, global climate changes, flooding of epic proportions, genetic changes, and epidemics and have achieved, well almost, a global civilization.

My hopes for humanity are high. More on this in the next post.

Water on Moon!

So it’s finally confirmed!

Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.

Forget that tired old image of the moon as an entirely dry locale, devoid of any moisture. A recent set of discoveries have found that not only is there water on Earth's sole satellite — but the water is everywhere

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. The Moon is in synchronous rotation, which means it rotates about its axis in about the same time it takes to orbit the Earth. This result in it keeping nearly the same face turned towards the Earth at all times. The Moon used to rotate at a faster rate, but early in its history, its rotation slowed and became locked in this orientation as a result of frictional effects associated with tidal deformations caused by the Earth.

The Moon is the only celestial body on which human beings (home sapiens) have made a manned landing. While the erstwhile Soviet Union's Luna programme was the first to reach the Moon with unmanned spacecraft, the NASA Apollo program achieved the only manned missions to date, beginning with the first manned lunar mission by Apollo 8 in 1968, and six manned lunar landings between 1969 and 1972 – the first being Apollo 11 in 1969. Human exploration of the Moon temporarily ceased with the conclusion of the Apollo program, although a few robotic landers and orbiters have been sent to the Moon since that time. The U.S. has committed to return to the Moon by 2018 and I am not much impressed by the conspiracy theories indicating that the Americans never landed on moon in the first place and all these manned spaceflights have been nothing but utter hogwash…

According to Wikipedia…

The continuous bombardment of the Moon by comets and meteoroids has most likely added small amounts of water to the lunar surface. If so, sunlight would split much of this water into its constituent elements of hydrogen and oxygen, both of which would ordinarily escape into space over time, because of the Moon's weak gravity. However, because of the slightness of the axial tilt of the Moon's spin axis to the ecliptic plane—only 1.5°—some deep craters near the poles never receive direct light from the Sun and are thus in permanent shadow. Water molecules that ended up in these craters could be stable for long periods of time.

Clementine has mapped craters at the lunar south pole that are shadowed in this way, and computer simulations suggest that up to 14,000 km² might be in permanent shadow. Results from the Clementine mission bistatic radar experiment are consistent with small, frozen pockets of water close to the surface, and data from the Lunar Prospector neutron spectrometer indicate that anomalously high concentrations of hydrogen are present in the upper meter of the regolith near the Polar Regions. Estimates for the total quantity of water ice are close to one cubic kilometer.

Water ice can be mined and then split into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms by means of nuclear generators or electric power stations equipped with solar panels. The presence of usable quantities of water on the Moon is an important factor in rendering lunar habitation cost-effective, since transporting water from Earth would be prohibitively expensive. However, recent observations made with the Arecibo planetary radar suggest that some of the near-polar Clementine radar data that were previously interpreted as being indicative of water ice might instead be a result of rocks ejected from young impact craters. The question of how much water there is on the Moon has not been resolved conclusively.

Three papers appearing in the upcoming issue of Science Express outline the discovery of pervasive water found clinging to the surface of the moon. Infrared spectroscope measurements from three different space probes have detected absorptions that indicate the presence of water or hydroxyl (which is, itself, a strong indicator for the presence of water) on the lunar surface, with one model suggesting water makes up a few tenths of a percent by weight in the optical surface. This water is apparently clinging to the moon's surface, rather than being absorbed by dust.

India's own Moon Impact Probe (MIP) on board the country's maiden lunar craft had discovered water on the moon, a finding confirmed by US space agency NASA's probe that was also aboard Chandrayaan-1.

India's first moon mission has achieved a historic first by discovering water on the lunar surface. This is being hailed not only as a landmark breakthrough in space science but also as a vindication of the mission itself, since the two year project got terminated after just 10 months.

Predictably - India's first lunar mission had made a "path-breaking and real discovery" by establishing the presence of water on the moon, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman Nair said. While expressing pride in the achievement, Nair added: "But the water is not in the form of sea or lake or puddle or drops. It is embedded on the surface in minerals and rocks.” Scientists confirming the presence of water on the moon are doing so on the basis of scientific findings that have been arrived at after a rigorous process of deduction and analysis and not by actually finding lakes, pools or puddles of water that we're familiar with on earth. It's hardly a vast lake, and it won't yet support that lunar agricultural colony you've been dreaming of, but it's far more water than scientists ever expected to find on the moon, and it could prove a valuable resource to future lunar visitors.

The researchers have also found that the concentration of water is higher toward the poles, lending credence to the theory that larger deposits of water exist near the poles, and researchers note that it's possible we'll continue to find wetter lunar regions in the future.

So where did all this water come from? Although meteors or comets may have periodically brought water to the moon, the prevailing theory among the three papers is that solar winds have carried hydrogen to the moon's surface, where it has bonded with the oxygen in the moon's own dust and produced water.

However, according to Mylswamy Annadurai, Chandrayaan-1 project director, the water molecules came from the Moon surface — a major revelation made possible by the Indian mission. This dispels the age-old belief and the current thinking that only other planetary bodies can be the source of water molecules on the Moon. According to ISRO scientists, this mission has changed the thinking. The new theory is that the water molecules are not from an outside source, but are being generated then and there. This is now being analyzed.

According to a space.com article - There are potentially two types of water on the moon: that brought from outside sources, such as water-bearing comets striking the surface, or that that originates on the moon.

It is really one of those moments in human history which can prove as a turning point. Finding water on the moon would be a boon to possible future lunar bases, acting as a potential source of drinking water and fuel.