Just Finished Reading: The Future of Geography – How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World by Tim Marshall (FP: 2023) [298pp] 

Space is indeed the Final Frontier (unless we invent Time Travel at some point). Space is, effectively, endless even if the boundary of exactly where it begins (either 80 or 100 Kilometres up depending on who you agree with). But this is where things get interesting, human, political. Although a few treaties have been proposed, even signed up to by some nations, the politics of space is... messy, sparse, complicated. So? Why does that matter? Surely space is big enough for everyone, right? Unfortunately, no. 

Part of the problem is what countries use space for. There’s the good stuff like GPS (even with its primary military application) and weather satellites to say nothing of satellites which enable global phone coverage, Internet and TV. Then there’s spy satellites and (probably) a whole host of other military kit up there that ‘they’ don’t want you to know about. Is that OK to be up there? Is it OK for a country to shoot (or even attempt to shoot) ‘enemy’ satellites down in a conflict – or as a pre-emptive strike knowing that the resultant debris could damage other non-combative satellites or space stations? Is it OK to have nukes in space? Who decides? Who monitors and enforces any agreements about this? What about countries that don’t sign up? 

Then there’s the Moon. An old agreement said that countries can, and cannot, do certain things – including basing weapons on Luna. Because of the age of these treaties no one expected that private companies could have interests in mining or other activities on the Moon. So, do the treaties apply to them? Even with the best will in the world who exactly enforces this? A Space Police? Funded by who? Manned by which countries? Based on what authority? Complicated, isn’t it? Mining of asteroids is all very well – indeed is a brilliant idea that could really kick-start the ongoing effort to push out into our Solar System, but can a company own as asteroid and mine it exclusively? What if it accidently pushed it into an orbit that could put it in danger of hitting the Moon, Mars or even Earth? How would things like that be ensured against? 

Although we are still at the VERY early stages of such things, these are subjects that need to be thought about and, as much as possible, solved BEFORE someone pulls a modified AK-74 to defend their bit of the Moon or their space rock from someone else and BEFORE someone blows up a satellite and collaterally brings down a space station. In a nutshell that’s the context of this fascinating continuation of the authors series of Geopolitical books which move ever outward and ever into our (possible) future. This certainly provided me which much to think about and added much information/knowledge to think with. The next 100 years are going to be quite something in Earth orbit, on the Moon and even on Mars if we get there in any numbers. Exactly HOW we deal with things in space will define what benefits we derive from this expansion of the human domain and who exactly gets access to them. Interesting times indeed and most definitely an interesting read. Recommended.  

Gotta admit it.... Our Universe is a very pretty place.....

Just Finished Reading: Atom by Piers Bizony (FP: 2007) [194pp] 

The transition between the 19th and 20th centuries was an odd time in many ways. One of the strangest, and in hindsight one of the most amusing, was in the realm of Physics. As the 19th century ended students who expressed an interest in physics as a career were told that they were wasting their time and that most everything that could be discovered already had been at that anyone left in the profession would spend their, presumably bored, time finishing off a few left-over details. One of those ‘details’ was the structure of atoms. 

No one really knew very much about atomic structure in the Edwardian period. The prevailing ‘theory’ was that atoms (along with their electrons – then of disputed existence) existed in a kind of ‘cake-mix’ blob with the electrons playing the part of chocolate chips. As investigation progressed (using incredibly primitive and home-made equipment) it quickly became apparent that things were far more complex and that a ‘solar system’ model with electrons ‘orbiting’ the nucleus of the atom was a better representation of reality. But that idea created problems of its own. Such a model might work for Hydrogen but more complex atoms had multiple electrons in various ‘orbits’. How did the system maintain itself for more than a vanishingly short period without collapse? How did chemical reactions happen? The more they investigated the more complex and the more frankly bizarre it all became. We were moving into the age of Quantum Mechanics (QM). 

Anyone with even the barest ‘knowledge’ of QM will know how strange it is. In fact, the word ‘strange’ just doesn’t cover it. QM is honestly CRAZY. Albert Einstein himself – who was, to be honest, at least partially responsible for creating the field – never accepted the theory and spent a good deal of his life in opposition to it. Yet, time and time again, QM has been shown in theory, in experiments and in practice as being fundamentally correct – there's just a few little things presently unexplained that need to be cleared up...    

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this, maybe a quick refresher read and nothing more. Pleasantly it was rather more than that. This was FUN. Not only did the author have a very readable style he also managed to explain some very complex ideas that only once or twice pushed up against my ability to wrap my head around them – and for a book on QM that’s quite something! Another thing I really liked about this was the focus on the scientists doing the work and their portrayal as human beings – odd though many of them were. This grounded the experience at a human level. Looking at the beginnings of the ideas surrounding the atom, moving on to the race to create the atom bomb, debates on how stars burn for so long, the creation of heavy atoms in supernova, the Big Bang and much besides this was a great way into the worlds of the vanishing small and the cosmically BIG. If you’ve ever wondered what the fuss was all about but either didn’t know where to start or were afraid that reading up on the subject would fry your brain, this is the book for you. With barely an equation to be seen and very good explanations of the issues raised and their resolutions this will give you a good basic grounding on the subject and might even get you interested in reading further. Definitely recommended. 

Just Finished Reading: The Possibility of Life – Searching for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green (FP: 2023) [276pp] 

As far as we know, life on Earth emerged practically the moment conditions allowed. As soon as the crust was cool enough for liquid water – BAMM Life! That being the case I have long thought it likely (actually very likely) that life is everywhere in the cosmos although, like Brian Cox, I like to restrict myself to our galaxy which is plenty big enough to be getting on with. 

Starting by looking at the origin of life on Earth (still very much open for debate and further study) the author considers exactly what conditions had to exist to facilitate the leap from lifeless to living matter and how this process could have been replicated on other worlds both similar to and different from our own. Interestingly (again as Brian Cox has stated) there are likely to be BILLIONS of Earth-like worlds in the galaxy so, unless the odds for life are vanishing low, we can expect life elsewhere just on the basis of statistics. Although the Earth does seem to have some ‘unusual’ characteristics – a significantly larger moon that we’d expect – personally I don’t think that we’re odd enough to be anywhere like unique. 

Once the foundations are laid, the author moves onwards looking at planet formation (most stars seem to have at least a few planets) and relates what we can glean about other planetary systems orbiting a variety of star types (note: Red Dwarves last a LONG-ass time!). Then its time for the meat... Multicellular life. Whilst its true that for most of Earth’s history we were a world dominated by single cell life personally I don’t think that such a state is the universal default. If cells bunching together happened here – no matter how ‘late’ - I don’t see why it can’t happen elsewhere and possibly a whole lot quicker. Of course, operating with a single example – US! - its difficult to draw any firm conclusions. Hopefully such a state of affairs won’t last forever. Again, personally I’m betting for simple life on Mars and more complex (fish?) under the ice of Jupiter’s moons. Here’s hoping! 

Once you have complex life the next natural question is going to be about intelligence – could we recognise alien creatures as people? I’m not sure about this one. We humans are late arrivals in the grand scheme of things and its possible that we’re an aberration. We might just be alone in that regard. Of course, the other thing – especially if we’re hoping for some kind of communication if not actual hand/tentacle shakes is technology. The ability to send and receive messages over stellar distances is VERY new for us, so we might be checking out planets that haven’t invented radio yet or even have been scanned in the past during the height of the Roman Empire – proving that there are no intelligent beings here! 

Its still (very) early days and there are still lots of questions to be answered (or even posed). From what we know about our planet and our galaxy life SHOULD be reasonably common. Finding it is, of course, a whole other ball game. We haven’t been looking very long and we’re still working out exactly what we need to look for – water worlds, radio waves, mega-structures? - so I’m not particularly let down by the results so far. Jupiter’s moons are our best bet for finding additional life in our Solar system. What would be really nice is if we could establish early on that it emerged and developed completely independently of life on Earth. If life could begin in two places in the same system, then that would indicate that life is EVERYWHERE (crosses fingers). 

The author is obviously enthusiastic about the subject which really comes across. She also uses a LOT of Sci-Fi references – an important source of speculation about alien life – which is why I’ve added the SF label to the list. Such references certainly didn’t hinder my enjoyment of this work. If you’ve ever wondered about the subject and wanted an idea where the latest research and ideas are leading us then this is the book for you. Definitely recommended.

Happy Birthday: Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by exposure to light. He assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, which were universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. He argued in favor of the hypothesis, which has since been accepted, that the high surface temperatures of Venus are the result of the greenhouse effect.

Initially an assistant professor at Harvard, Sagan later moved to Cornell University, where he spent most of his career. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He wrote many popular science books, such as The Dragons of Eden, Broca's Brain, Pale Blue Dot and The Demon-Haunted World. He also co-wrote and narrated the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television: Cosmos has been seen by at least 500 million people in 60 countries. A book, also called Cosmos, was published to accompany the series. Sagan also wrote a science-fiction novel, published in 1985, called Contact, which became the basis for the 1997 film Contact. His papers, comprising 595,000 items, are archived in the Library of Congress.

Sagan was a popular public advocate of skeptical scientific inquiry and the scientific method; he pioneered the field of exobiology and promoted the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life (SETI). He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. Sagan and his works received numerous awards and honors, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (for his book The Dragons of Eden), and (for Cosmos: A Personal Voyage) two Emmy Awards, the Peabody Award, and the Hugo Award. He married three times and had five children. After developing myelodysplasia, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62 on December 20, 1996.

[Cosmos, the TV series, had a HUGE impact on me - and millions of others - and really turned me on to all things cosmic, well that and reading copious amounts of SF. Sagan was an important part of me growing up...]

Happy Birthday: Neil deGrasse Tyson (born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Since 1996, he has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.

From 1995 to 2005, Tyson wrote monthly essays in the "Universe" column for Natural History magazine, some of which were later published in his books Death by Black Hole (2007) and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017). During the same period, he wrote a monthly column in StarDate magazine, answering questions about the universe under the pen name "Merlin". Material from the column appeared in his books Merlin's Tour of the Universe (1998) and Just Visiting This Planet (1998). Tyson served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year. From 2006 to 2011, he hosted the television show NOVA ScienceNow on PBS. Since 2009, Tyson has hosted the weekly podcast StarTalk. A spin-off, also called StarTalk, began airing on National Geographic in 2015. In 2014, he hosted the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his "extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science".

Happy Birthday: Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell OBE FRS (31 August 1913 – 6 August 2012) was an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980. 

[I went to Jodrell Bank radio-telescope - pictured below - on a school trip. AMAZING!]

Just Finished Reading: The Consolations of Physics – Why the Wonders of the Universe Can Make You Happy by Tim Radford (FP: 2018) [178pp] 

It's difficult not to view the Universe we’re born into with a feeling of awe. Indeed, it's difficult to learn about the Universe without becoming over-awed and maybe a little overwhelmed. Both staggeringly old and STAGGERINGLY huge, it’s easy to think that we’ll never understand it, but the amazing thing is that we ARE beginning to do just that. 

We’ve been looking at the heavens for longer than human history and, no doubt, wondering about the lights in the night sky and what they are. It took a LONG time to finally figure things out (or start the process!) but we’re getting there. With telescopes, probes and a bit of mathematical wizardry we can understand the movement of planets, the birth (and death) of stars and even the birth (and death?) of the Universe itself. But we’re not there yet – not by a long way. Our knowledge of the Universe is still partial and there is much we still don’t understand – or even know we don’t know. There’s even the real possibility that much that we think we know might be flat wrong. We do indeed live in exciting times. 

At the other end of the scale, we have the infinitely small – the once indivisible atom, now known to be made up of progressively smaller and smaller parts. The Quantum realm is bizarre on steroids but works despite Einstein never fully accepting its implications. Not only are things stranger than we know, but they might also very well be stranger than we can know. Few scientists can wrap their heads around the mathematics required to understand (or at least appreciate or approach understanding) of the strangeness of Quantum Mechanics whilst the rest of us normal folk can only look on with wide-eyed wonder and laugh at the absurdity. I do find it FUN though – knowing that the foundations of everything are just so WEIRD. It warms my heart. 

Looking both out into the Universe and into the heart of atomic structure, the author shows how the endeavour to understand EVERYTHING is an amazing gift and one that can inspire much previously held to be the domain of Religion. The Cosmos can leave us feeling a sense of awe, a knowledge of how small we are, and inspire us to want to know the origins and mechanics of existence itself. Breakthroughs in the study of sub-atomic particles can should us just how amazing things really are and how everything, from the exploding hearts of stars to the DNA in every one of every living creature's cells are ultimately connected. We are indeed star stuff. But I think the most awe-inspiring thing we’ve learnt from all our endeavours so far is the sure and certain knowledge of how little we actually know. There is still SO much to learn, So much the discover and SO many misunderstandings to correct. We are living in an era of great scientific breakthroughs. I for one love finding out new stuff and even more finding out we were wrong about the old stuff. Can Physics make you happy? It works for me... [lol] A recommended, if somewhat short, read for anyone unsure what all the fuss is about with Cosmologists and the Quantum world. More to come. 

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Just Finished Reading: The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy – What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens and Ourselves by Dr Arik Kershenbaum (FP: 2020) [324pp] 

It’s a deceptively simple question: What can we say about life beyond Earth in the rest of the Galaxy? The obvious, maybe even the instinctive, answer is: Nothing. We know of life in only one place, here on Earth. We can say, probably, with a fair degree of confidence that there IS life in the Galaxy but what is it like? With billions of planets orbiting billions of stars there must be countless environments where life could emerge, but how can we confidently extrapolate from a single example? We can’t, right? Or maybe, actually we can. 

Hollywood and Science Fiction authors have tried to envisage aliens for us to either fall in love with or have nightmares about. But even a cursory examination, with any scientific background, shows that most of the well-known aliens are nothing more than human life made either large or particularly malevolent. I mean, concentrated acid for blood? Yeah, right. But moving on from Hollywood is easier than you might expect. Until we actually find any and are able to analyse it, we don’t know if alien life will utilise the DNA we’re so familiar with. What we can be more certain about is that, no matter where life emerges, the environment will no doubt have limited resources. Because of this it follows that alien life will need to compete for those resources and that some alien creatures will be more adept at this competition than others. With those simple facts it appears that Evolutionary principles will operate throughout the Galaxy and, indeed, into other Galaxies too. Evolution is something we have a pretty good understanding of, and we can use that understanding to come to some reasonable conclusions about life elsewhere. 

This is the foundation for this fascinating book – that Evolution, as we know it here, operates in the same way out there no matter if aliens use DNA or if they’re carbon based (they’re highly likely to be!) or if their atmosphere is oxygen, methane or something else. From that baseline we can reasonably expect that aliens will move around – swim, fly, walk – and that they’ll be able to gain information about their environment through eyes, ears, whiskers or more exotic ways through magnetic fields. Likewise, they’ll be about to communicate through sound, light or in other ways in order to attract mates, ward of danger or even to sing. We may not know exactly what an alien creature might LOOK like, but we can expect things like kin bias, social structures, hierarchies and so much more we are already familiar with. There is indeed a great deal we can say about aliens without (at the moment) ever meeting one. 

This was a fun read for me. Most of my Science reading is in the Biology/Evolution sphere, so it's interesting to link that – not just speculatively – to my other long-term interest in alien life in the Galaxy. Hopefully, with the probe on its way to Jupiter’s moons we might get a good idea if life exists outside Earth and yet still inside our own Solar System. If strong indications of life ARE found that’ll be amazing. I’m a firm believer that life does indeed exist ‘out there’ and will not be in the least surprised if bacteria are found on Mars and that fish swim in the seas under the ice on a few of Jupiter's moons. Definitely a recommended read for anyone interesting in the alien life question.  

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Just Finished Reading: Life Everywhere – The Maverick Science of Astrobiology by David Darling (FP: 2001) [182pp] 

This interesting slim volume was written in response to my previous book on the subject [Rare Earth – Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter D Ward and Donald Brownlee] reviewed back in March last year and was, essentially a refutation of its conclusions and many of its underlying assumptions of the so-called special or unique nature of planet Earth where life is concerned. Contrary to the ideas in ‘Rare Earth’ the author here contends that life is common throughout the galaxy and that increased complexity is almost certain based on what we know about life on Earth. Of course, since we’re working with a single example here, extrapolation is difficult but not impossible. Even 20 years ago when this book was published, we had a pretty fair understanding about when and how life emerged on this planet. One thing that really stuck out was that it was QUICK. As far as we can tell the moment life could begin it did. That alone suggests that the start of life is comparatively easy given a reasonable set of starting conditions. What’s more, now we know about the number and range of extremophiles living quite happily in environments thought to be hostile to life, those conditions seem to be a lot wider and less benign than we first thought.  

So, we can say with a fair degree of confidence that, where a wide range of conditions allow, life will emerge quickly. Once life has emerged it will grow, expand and evolve. Part of that evolutionary process is to adapt to the local conditions and also quite naturally slowly increase in complexity. Earth in this sense cannot be unique. Contentions that for life to exist or evolve a planet needs a large moon or any other obviously Earth specific attribute is nothing more than special pleading and yet another defensive redoubt to protect the supposedly special place of Earth or (by extension) humanity in the grand scheme of things. With what we know of the Universe this simply won’t stand. 

The author contends (and I agree with him) that the prospect for the longed-for existence of life on Mars is possible – if only just. Life may have emerged independently there (indeed it's possible that life on Earth may have been at least partially seeded from Mars) in its warm wet period and then either become extinct or moved underground. We’ve found some tantilising hints so far but nothing definite at least yet! Much more likely (and I agree again) is the possibility of life under the ice on several of Jupiter’s moons. Knowing what we know of the ‘black smokers’ on our own seabed I think it’s entirely likely that not only bacteria exist in those oceans, but I fully expect our probes to find complex fish. If we do find life – proven as far as possible to have evolved independently of Earth – on any other body in this Solar System, it would indeed indicate that life is everywhere. I do hope so! 

Overall, despite its age, this was an interesting read and a good introduction to the ideas behind Astrobiology and the search for life elsewhere. If the topic intrigues you I can definitely think of worse places to start reading about it. Recommended. More current reading on this topic to come.    

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Just Finished Reading: Rare Earth – Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter D Ward and Donald Brownlee (FP: 2000) [287pp] 

Humans have been wondering if we are ‘alone’ in the Universe for a long time – centuries at least if not longer. Only in the last 20 years or so, and mostly after the publication of this book, are we starting to get enough data together to start answering that question. The biggest impact on our understanding of the possibility of life elsewhere is the large and ever-growing number of planets already discovered with more coming in each day. With the launch and activation of the new James Webb telescope I imagine that these numbers will skyrocket. But not so fast, say the authors! Just because we’re finding planets doesn’t mean that we’ll find life and especially complex life. It’s really not that simple. For example, of the 8 (or 9 if you still count Pluto) planets in our system only 1 can definitely be shown to have complex life. If most star systems are like ours – which we suspect they’re not – then the odds are greatly reduced. Furthermore, as the authors point out, a good part of our galaxy might be life fee, or at least complex life free, because of the real danger of nearby stellar explosions and other cosmic threats. Not only do stars have habitable or ‘Goldilocks’ zones but so do galaxies. The authors even dismiss whole galaxies (of the ‘wrong’ type) likely to be unlikely candidates for life. So, are we alone? Is Earth a rare and precious example or are the authors being far too pessimistic? 

I knew going into this book that I’d have problems with the author’s conclusions. I am of the belief, and it is a belief, that life is common is our galaxy (I’m not going to discuss the universe as a whole because we’ll never explore the vast majority of it unless we can develop some very exotic propulsion systems). Surprisingly though, the authors agree that at least bacteria are indeed common throughout the cosmos. Although we presently only have a single example to work from – our home planet Earth – it appears certain that life emerged here almost as soon as it could and has been present ever since for around 3.7 to 4 billion years. Most of that time bacteria has been the only life present and it still makes up the vast majority of biomass on the planet. Bacteria is, and always has been a dominant lifeform. Reasonably extrapolating from our one example its probable that bacteria will exist on every world capable of supporting it. Where we disagree is what comes next. The authors argue (or just as often simply declare) that anything much more complex than bacteria has a much harder job of developing and thriving and, therefore, will be vanishingly rare. Generally, I found their arguments to support this conclusion (something that often felt already decided upon) varied between weak and disingenuous. Some had merit – the stability of various star types for example – but in every case they took doubts as fact and foibles as necessities – that planets with complex life demand large satellites, at least one Jupiter in the system to mop up potential planet killers and a whole host of other ‘reasons’ for Earth being close to unique. In each and every category their argument always managed to get the ‘benefit of the doubt’ even if that ‘doubt’ had to be manufactured in advance. Indeed, much was made of the fact that at publication date no Earth type planets had yet been discovered – despite the fact that the authors knew full well that technology of the time could not detect planets that small!  

I am of the opinion that, wherever conditions allow, life will emerge on planets throughout the galaxy. If time permits that life, certainly at the level of bacteria, will spread and become ‘endemic’ and almost impossible to remove with anything less than a truly planet shattering cataclysmic event. Once life is so established I think, in line with my reading of Stephen J Gould, it will inevitably increase in complexity for the simple reason that life at such a basic level will find it difficult to become less complex. Random mutations will, over time if conditions are reasonably stable, gradually and inevitably increase life’s complexity. Just how complex life will then become is anyone’s guess. Again, given enough time and reasonable levels of environmental stability, I see no reason why complexity cannot steadily increase. Will this produce intelligent life that we could converse with? Possibly. Again, we don’t know enough about how intelligence (what we have anyway!) emerged on the one planetary example we have. Intelligence and self-awareness might be a one in a million fluke, or it might be just a matter of time. We don’t know but I certainly don’t dismiss the possibility. Like the famous ‘Drake Equation’ the author’s produced an equation of their own. I’ve seen people plug in the most pessimistic figures into each function and the number they came up with is 10 – that 9 other human level civilisations in our galaxy right now. Personally, I think that number is way too low. Carl Sagan suggested that there could be 1000’s of civilisations out there, but I think that figure is probably too optimistic. Despite the fact that we haven’t been looking very long I think we might have stumbled upon at least 1 of them by now! I think the realistic figure is probably in the 100’s. Some will be less advanced than us (if that’s possible!) and others will be much more advanced. The galaxy is, however, on the large side so it’s entirely possible that our nearest intelligent neighbour might simply be too far away for us to notice each other. 

Looking within our own system we have, obviously, one strong example of complex life but are there any others close at hand? Personally, I wouldn’t be hugely surprised (though undoubtedly delighted) if we eventually find independently evolved bacteria in caves on Mars. The planet was wet for a while and it just might have been hospitable enough for long enough for life to emerge. As conditions worsened and life struggled to survive it would have moved underground. Complex, but still reasonably simple, life might be a possibility but bacteria are, I think, a distinct probability. If the suspected deep oceans of liquid water exist on some of Jupiter’s moons, then the odds of complex life there increase greatly. Again, personally I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if our first probes report fish happily swimming around in the pitch black beneath kilometers of ice. Overall, this book was pretty much what I expected so I wasn’t particularly disappointed that I disagreed with most of what the author’s proposed. It’s worth a read despite being 20 years out of date as well as being unduly pessimistic (trying vainly to retain *some* special place for humanity after so many demotions I think). Two more positive books on this subject to come later in the year. Reasonable. 

An OLD poster (obviously!).

Just Finished Reading: A Universe from Nothing – Why is there Something rather than Nothing by Lawrence M Krauss (FP: 2012)

I have always believed that the Universe is a natural phenomenon which came into existence, through completely natural processes, some 13.7 billion years ago. Over the years I have, occasionally, dabbled in the science of such things to flesh out my belief with some facts. This book was another part of the effort to get my head around the whole thing. Whilst not completely effective – much more my fault than the authors – I am now a little closer to my goal of appreciating the science behind the existence of the Universe if not exactly fully understanding it. I am the first to admit that I am not a scientist. My formal education over the years has, by and large, been in the Humanities and that’s where I feel most at home. However I have developed, mostly through reading and some excellent TV documentaries a deepening interest in biological Evolution, Cosmology and Quantum Mechanics. This book brought together two of those subjects – Cosmology & QM.

Most of us have by now heard of Dark Matter. It is an idea conceived to explain why the Universe is behaving in the way it does. Essentially, according to present theories, there isn’t enough visible matter in the Universe to explain why it’s continuing to expand after the Big Bang and looks like it’ll expand forever so not Big Crunch when it all comes back. But weirdly (and to be honest most of the ideas discussed in this book can easily be labelled ‘weird’) not only is the Universe continuing to expand but the expansion is actually accelerating. Yes, that’s right. Accelerating. Pretty soon – in cosmic terms – we’ll no longer to be able to see the furthest galaxies and stars because they’ll be accelerating away from our area of space faster than the speed of light. Told you it was weird… The cause, the driving force of this expansion? More weirdness – Dark Energy. All space – even the empty space between stars and between galaxies is literally frothing with energy at a quantum level. Not only that, at intervals too small to measure, things like electrons spontaneously pop into existence and just as quickly pop out again and this is happening all the time. Going a little deeper down the rabbit hole it’s not only matter that seemingly spontaneously generates itself – its space too in the form of a rapid expansion. Mostly this occurs in vanishing small timeframes followed by an equally rapid deflation. But sometimes the expansion goes on into measurable time periods – like 13.7 billion years. Yes, just like our Universe and, it seems, like others too. Weird enough yet? Because there’s just one more thing – not only do the observations of our Universe say that spontaneous generation of entire Universes could happen or even do happen but, as far as the observations seem to be indicating and backed up by very sophisticated and verified mathematics, that this sort of thing *has* to happen and is happening right now. Because of the nature of QM exhibited in Dark Energy entire Universes are coming into existence in other parts of our Universe, in effect ‘budding off’ multiple Universes that, given the right physical constraints may well be very similar to this one. OK, that’s weird enough I think.

Although some of this book clearly flew over my head – I did struggle at times to work my way through the logic of it all – I did ‘get’ enough of it to appreciate how far our understanding of Universe creation has come since the idea of the Big Bang first made scientific headlines. Clearly I need to keep reading about both QM and Cosmology to get my head around the difficult stuff so there will be more in both areas (and, naturally, in Evolution too) to come. I seriously doubt that I’ll ever understand the maths behind any of this and I’ll probably never understand the intricacies of QM (I mean, who does?) but I do hope that I’ll be able to deepen (and widen?) my appreciation of both subjects so I at least get the gist of what they’re talking about. Recommended if you fancy something weird, cool and reasonably difficult to get you head around.

Just Finished Reading: The Neptune File – Planet Detectives and the Discovery of Worlds Unseen by Tom Standage (FP: 2000)

The whole civilised world rejoiced in 1781 when, for the first time in centuries, a new planet in the heavens was discovered proving beyond doubt the mankind had truly entered the new Scientific Age. As astronomers all across the globe gazed upon the new planet and began to chart its movement joy gave way to puzzlement. The new world, named Uranus, was not behaving as predicted and, as more observations were made its aberrant behaviour only became worse. Checking back in the historical record sightings of Uranus (unknown at the time) didn’t help at all. In fact the more information astronomers had about the planet the less predictable its path through the Zodiac became. So the mystery remained for over 50 years – a puzzle without a solution indeed, as some saw it, without even a possible solution. But if there’s one thing that unites men across space and time is that they can’t resist a challenge no matter how seemingly intractable.

As with all good science any errors must be eliminated and the underlying theories examined for flaws. The observations of the orbit of Uranus were checked, confirmed and checked again. Errors were indeed discovered and eliminated but still the planet was not behaving as it should. Things became so desperate that the very framework of Celestial Mechanics itself – Newton’s Theory of Gravity – was examined for flaws and, with a great sigh of relief, found to be without error. Even ideas of some sort of substance only evident in the outer Solar system enforcing a drag on the new planet where put forward only to be dismissed when the accumulating facts found it wanting. There was only one theory that could account for the path of Uranus across the night sky. Something beyond its orbit must be influencing it. Another, yet undiscovered, body must be influencing its orbit but how could something like that be caught in even the world’s most powerful telescopes without any idea where to look in the vastness of space. To do that you would have to calculate the position of a planet effectively in reverse starting with the perturbation of another world and working backwards to identify what was causing the disturbance and where it was at any particular time. A task, many considered, simply beyond the capability of the human mind.

But in the first half of the 19th century two mathematicians, completely unknown to each other, put their minds to the problem of finding a planet without ever looking through a telescope. They would use mathematics alone to determine exactly where an invisible body was and then, when they were certain, announce it to the world and expect others to actually look for it themselves. The race was on between an unknown English mathematician John Crouch Adams and the famous French scientist and astronomer Urbain Jean-Joseph Le Verrier. Whoever got there first would become world famous and their name would become immortalised as the first man to find a planet by brain power alone.

This was a complete impulse buy from Amazon some months ago and there was a real danger that it would continue to gather dust far into the future without being read. Looking for something different to pass the time with I picked it up recently and was almost immediately hooked. Today we live in an age where new planets on far away stars are discovered on a weekly basis. So much so that new discoveries are rarely reported beyond the scientific press. After the amazing discovery of Uranus and the reality of an enlarged Solar system it must have come as quite a shock when yet another unknown world was discovered between the lines of pages of equations. Like all mysteries, even mathematical ones, the trick is to recognise the clues and to follow them to their conclusion – no matter the prejudices or preconceptions of the investigators. Theory after theory is put forward to explain the observed facts and each is demolished as the mysterious planet eventually named Neptune serenely smashes through them. This is science in action on a grand scale. Observations are made, theories are tested and found wanting, facts are checked and new theories built until, slowly and carefully, the new planet is tamed and becomes one of the family rather than a wayward son.

Of course that was not the end to things. Once the theory was in place and solidified into a useable technique the search for other planets began in earnest. Every slight ambiguity in the orbit of any planet was seen as a potential case of yet another world to be discovered. But over the years they each turned out to be false hopes. But over a century later similar techniques began to produce results and the first planets orbiting other stars emerged from the darkness of deep space. At least from a planetary perspective we were not alone. Well written and full of interesting characters (although not always the nicest or most professional) this is a must read for anyone interested in the history of planet hunting. Recommended.