Walk Like An Egyptian

Or at least any other human.

A newly minted PhD in the Netherlands has built a robot named Flame that walks in a manner resembling the way humans walk -- a first in robotics.

The way humans walk -- as we all learn when we trip over something -- is really just a controlled method of falling forward. Daan Hobbelen's creation -- which he believes to be the most advanced walking robot in the world -- ambles along in a human-like manner that is both energy efficient and highly stable.

Powered by seven motors and controlled by an "organ" for balance and various algorithms, Flame can adapt to challenges by doing things like placing its feet further apart to avoid a spill. Researchers hope that robots such as Flame will enlighten the work of those studying human rehabilitation.

Flame weighs 40 pounds, is 4 feet tall, and can walk at a speed of one mile per hour.

You can view a video of Flame walking here.

A Sterile Mars?

Just as Phoenix begins its mission to determine whether Mars was once an inviting environment for life comes news that it probably was not.

First hinted at in news reports back in February and confirmed further today, an analysis of Martian rock indicates the Red Planet was once covered by acidic, briny oceans that would have been inhospitable to life as we know it.

In 2004, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity investigated salt deposits in 4-billion-year-old Martian rock on Mars' Meridiani Planum. A new analysis of those deposits by scientists at Harvard and Stony Brook indicates the water that once flowed on the surface of Mars had a salinity somewhere between that of the sterile Dead Sea and the almost-sterile Great Salt Lake.

Do the findings dash hopes of finding evidence of past or even current Martian life? Not necessarily. Extremophile bacteria are known to live in what would seem to be the most inhospitable environments on Earth, including deep-sea hydrothermal vents and far below the bottom of the ocean.

The news comes days after other research I told you about indicating the opposite conclusion, that Mars probably was an inviting environment for life at one time.

Voyage To An Alien World

On Sunday, May 25, 2008, as NASA's Phoenix Lander parachuted to the surface of Mars, another NASA interplanetary probe, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, captured the above extraordinary photo of Phoenix gliding to the surface of the Red Planet. You can see the lander dangling from its parachute.

This is the first time a space probe has photographed another probe descending to the surface of an alien world. In the background is the seemingly massive 10-km-wide crater Heimdall. Phoenix landed a safe 20 km from the crater's rim.

As if that is not amazing enough, you can actually listen to the Phoenix Lander's descent to the surface of Mars. Yet another space probe, the European Space Agency's Mar Express orbiter, recorded the radio transmissions of Phoenix as it descended. You can listen to them here.

You cam also find more photographs from the Phoenix Lander at NASA's website.

Does Evidence of Past Martian Life Really Equal Doomsday For Humans?

Some guy named Nick Bostrom has been making the rounds lately, presenting a version of the Doomsday Argument essentially equating any evidence of past life on Mars with big, bad news for humankind. (OK, he's not really just "some guy" but actually a well-known Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford.)

Bostrom most recently laid out his argument in the Boston Globe on Sunday, the day NASA's Phoenix Lander successfully alighted on the Red Planet. I'll briefly summarize his argument below, and then point out its obvious fallacy.

While not couched explicitly in terms of the Fermi Paradox, Bostrom's argument essentially has the same point, which is to suggest an answer to the question, "Where is everybody?"

According to Bostrom, if our galaxy is populated with advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, we should have found one by now, if not actually been visited by them.

Bostrom posits there are at least two possible reasons for this failure to find ET, or for ET to find us.

First, complex life -- or at least intelligent life -- may be extraordinarily rare in the Universe.

Second, some catastrophe may tend to befall intelligent species not too long after their evolution, either one of their own making or -- more likely -- one of cosmic origin (such as a nearby supernova explosion or perhaps an asteroid impact).

Whether the reason is that complex life is rare in our universe or that intelligent life tends to suffer destruction before too long, Bostrom calls this limiting factor the Great Filter.

What does Bostrom's Great Filter have to do with Mars? You can probably guess.

If simple life -- or at least complex life -- is rare in the Universe, then hopefully the Great Filter lies in humanity's past, and we have many, many millennia ahead of us.

On the other hand, if we should eventually find evidence of past microbial life on Mars -- or, God forbid, fossils of complex, multicellular life -- the news is worse, for we shall have fairly good evidence that Bostrom's Great Filter lies in our future and not in our past. (Although Bostrom does say the Great Filter could still be some other evolutionary chokepoint in our past -- for example, the evolution of language or bipedalism.)

The fallacy in Bostrom's argument is fairly obvious: its central premise -- that if extraterrestrials exist, by now humans should have either found radio signals from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization if not actually been visited by ET -- is faulty at best.

Humanity's SETI experiment is not even 50 years old. For most of those 50 years, SETI science was a sporadic and virtually unfunded effort. It has only been since the early 1990s that the SETI Institute has had anything resembling a meaningful budget. SETI is in the early stages of building the first and only radio telescope dedicated to full-time SETI research: the Allen Telescope Array. Scientists are constantly exploring new SETI media, from optical SETI (a reality) to signals encoded using orbital angular momentum (hypothetical) to neutrino-based SETI searches (also hypothetical).

On a related note, we did not even discover the first extrasolar planetary system until 1992. We still have yet to find the first truly Earth-like extrasolar planet. However, the pace of discovery in this field is quickening also and will continue to do so with the coming launch of the Kepler mission to find Earth-like planets.

In short, the scientific search for ET in its infancy. It is far too early for Bostrom to call the experiment a null result.

Finally, as for Bostrom's claim that we should not only have detected ET's radio and television signals by now -- but actually been visited by extraterrestrials -- mainstream SETI thought now is that, due to the extraordinary distances between stars, interstellar travel is unlikely, even for an extraordinarily advanced civilization. (Other scientists, however, disagree with this contention and believe we should be searching our solar system for extraterrestrial space probes.)

Other arguments some have advanced to explain why we have not had contact with advanced extraterrestrial civilizations also merit mention. It is well established, from a statistical standpoint, that if we do share our galaxy with other civilizations, they are likely to far more advanced than we are. It may simply be that for either ethical reasons (an extraterrestrial "Prime Directive") or pragmatic reasons (the ETs don't want those they are observing to be aware of the observers), any would-be cosmic correspondents or visitors simply choose to stay out of sight.

I believe Bostrom is wrong, or at least premature. If -- in one hundred years or so -- we have finally found evidence of extinct or even extant microbial life on Mars or other bodies in our solar system, but still have no evidence of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials in our galaxy, we should revisit Bostrom's argument.

But not before then.

So relax. The sky isn't falling.

Yet.

The Lawyer In The Moon

In the June Popular Mechanics, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds lays out his case for allowing individuals and corporations to hold title to real estate on the Moon.

Reynolds believes creating lunar property rights would promote commercial development on the Moon, triggering a lunar "land rush" for its resources.

As well as a lot of work for space lawyers.

Whether or not the 1967 Outer Space Treaty -- which prohibits any nation on Earth claiming sovereignty over the Moon or other celestial bodies -- allows for private ownership is something of an open question, although Reynolds argues the failed 1979 effort to enact a Moon Treaty to prohibit private ownership indicates that private property rights can be created in lunar real estate.

Does any one really want to go to bed by the light of a Moon owned by Halliburton and guarded by Blackwater?

The Search For Life On Mars

As the Mars Phoenix Lander mission begins its search for evidence the Red Planet was once hospitable to life, several other ongoing Mars missions continue to produce evidence that it indeed was.

Last month I posted about photographs taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that appear to show geological formations strongly resembling ancient hydrothermal springs -- which on Earth are known to be favorable habitats for microbial life.

And last week came word that NASA's Mars Rover Spirit has uncovered evidence of silica on Mars. On Earth, silica formation is usually associated with hydrothermal vents like those found today in Yellowstone Park. If hydrothermal vents once existed on Mars, they may have provided a favorable environment for simple life forms similar to those found in hot springs on Earth.

If simple life did once thrive in such environments on Mars, we should one day be able to find evidence of its existence.

Life Found Where You Least Expect It

In a discovery with direct relevance to the search for simple life on Mars -- as well as elsewhere in our solar system -- scientists have announced they have found single-cell prokaryotes living 1.6 kilometers beneath the sea floor, under temperatures near 100 degrees centigrade.

The organisms are similar to those found living around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. How they ended up buried so deep is not known, but one possibility is the creatures may live for millions of years as they are gradually buried by sedimentation and other geologic processes.

The discovery is another example of extremophile life on Earth -- life that exists under circumstances so inhospitable we did not think life could survive. Another recent example is the discovery of extraordinarily hardy microbes found in the Rio Tinto region of Spain, which scientists believe may resemble the soil of Mars.

These discoveries may also indicate the forms of life, if any, that once lived or may still thrive on Mars and other bodies in solar system, such as Europa or Enceladus.

The Phoenix Has Landed

Congratulations NASA.

Is Our Solar System Unusual, After All?

Yesterday I told you about new research regarding our Sun that undermined the Rare Earth hypothesis -- the theory that Earth and our solar system are relatively unusual in our galaxy, and that as a result intelligent life is probably rare in the Milky Way.

However, today comes news of recent research that may actually support the Rare Earth hypothesis.

Swiss astronomers at the Geneva Observatory surveyed 400 stars similar to our Sun and uncovered an interesting statistic: approximately 30% of these stars hosted relatively small terrestrial planets several times the size of our Earth. These planets orbit extremely close to their host stars, with orbital periods of less than 50 days. As a result, they would be inhospitable to life.

The survey results are only tentative at this point, and the existence of these extrasolar planets has yet to be confirmed in most cases. However, if the 30% figure is confirmed, that could mean that at least 40% of Sun-like stars have solar systems quite unlike ours. It is already known that approximately 10% of stars like our Sun host "hot Jupiters," massive gas giant planets the size of Jupiter that orbit extraordinarily close to their star, generally closer than Mercury is to our Sun.

The flip side of this, however, is that perhaps 60% of Sun-like stars in our galactic neighborhood do have solar systems like ours.

We just don't know yet. Stay tuned.

Our Sun Is Average

In yet another blow to the Rare Earth hypothesis, a new study supports the idea that our Sun is an unremarkable star and that life is probably common in the Milky Way.

Charles Lineweaver at the Australian National University measured 11 characteristics of the Sun that are thought to affect its suitability for hosting habitable planets, including its mass, age, and distance from the center of the galaxy. He then compared those 11 characteristics with those of other stars -- and came to the conclusion that the Sun appears to be relatively average.

The Sun appeared unusual only in 2 or the 11 measurements -- the Sun is more massive than 95% of its neighbors, and its orbit around the center of the galaxy is more circular than 93% of neighboring stars.

Lineweaver concludes that there are probably no special properties a star must have in order to host habitable planets such as Earth, other than the obvious: such planets must orbit within the host star's habitable zone.

Habitable planets -- and life -- should therefore be common in our galaxy.

You can read Lineweaver's paper in its entirety here.

Bad Astronomical News Of The Week

Gregg Easterbrook writes extensively in the Atlantic Monthly over what he says is a disturbingly underestimated and under-appreciated astronomical threat: catastrophic collisions with asteroids and comets.

The bad news: due to a historical failure to account for asteroid and comet strikes that hit oceans instead of land or that explode in the atmosphere without leaving a crater (both with results that are still devastating), the chances of Earth being hit by a catastrophic strike may actually be as high as 10% each century.

The even worse news: NASA doesn't seem to care.

But at least the Air Force does.

Extraterrestrial Neutrino Phone

Are SETI scientists going down the wrong path when they search the heavens for an interstellar radio or laser message?

Several scientists have authored a paper suggesting that rather than using the electromagnetic spectrum to communicate, an advanced extraterrestrial civilization might use neutrinos instead. Fortunately, they think the current generation of neutrino detectors we are building now should be capable of detecting extraterrestrial neutrino signals.

Unlike light, radio, or other frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, neutrinos react weakly with matter and can travel from one end of the galaxy to the other unhindered by noise or absorption.

The paper's authors suggest several methods of encoding information in a man-made neutrino beam.

The idea is reminiscent of a recent suggestion by a Russian scientist -- which I posted about in March -- that we may be able to detect an advanced extraterrestrial civilization by searching for the neutrino signature of an alien muon collider. The Russian scientist also believed we should be able to detect alien-generated neutrinos with our existing technology.

You can read the entire neutrino paper here.

Find The Mars Polar Lander

NASA's Mars Polar Lander crashed during its final descent to the Red Planet back in 1999, and they've been looking for the wreckage ever since.

Now, NASA is enlisting the efforts of bored web surfers everywhere to scour photographs of the region where they suspect the space probe crashed, in hope of finding its final resting place.

MSBNC's Alan Boyle has an excellent post here on Cosmic Log.

Interstellar Message Composition 101

Why didn't they offer course like this when I was in college?

The Christian Science Monitor reports on a new creative writing class at the University of Wyoming underwritten by NASA, which mines the minds of its students for insight into what humanity can and should say to an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

Whether it be a haiku or a sonnet, the students' compositions have got to be better than a few recent facetious efforts at contacting ET, including NASA's recent broadcast of the Beatles' Across the Universe toward Polaris, or the plan to beam a consumer-made commercial for Doritos in the direction of 47 Ursae Majoris.

The article touches upon a number of issues I've posted about previously, including the controversy over "active SETI" -- sending interstellar messages as opposed to just listening for them.

At the end of the semester, the students' work will be sent to Dr. Douglas Vakoch at the SETI Institute.

Planetary Water Report

Scientists announced results this week indicating liquid water on Mars may be less abundant than researchers had previously thought, as well as new evidence for the theory Jupiter's frozen moon Europa harbors an ocean covered under miles of ice.

NASA announced Friday new results from its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show the crust and upper mantle of Mars are colder and more rigid than its scientists had previously theorized, suggesting any liquid water on the planet is probably deeper underground than they thought.

NASA used a radar on the MRO to determine the rocky exterior of Mars is not bending as much as expected under the weight of its north polar ice cap, implying the interior of Mars is colder and more rigid than expected.

The results may mean any microbial life on Mars today lies buried deep underground.

Meanwhile, a team of scientists from the Carnegie Institution and UC-Santa Cruz announced new evidence Europa is home to an ocean of water buried under miles of ice.

By studying cracks in the moon's icy surface, the researchers were able to determine Europa's pole has shifted by as much as 90 degrees. Such an extreme pole shift suggests a deep ocean lurks below Europa's icy crust and is likely the result of ice building up at the moon's poles, causing the moon to be unstable and wobble like a spinning top.

The presence of water warm enough to remain liquid bolsters the possibility microbial life may one day be found on Europa, leading NASA and other space agencies to consider Europa as a destination for future unmanned space probes.

About That Flying Car . . .

We've all asked the question: where's my flying car?

Aren't we all supposed to have flying cars by now?

A couple news items this week indicate that we may be getting closer to the age of personal flying vehicles -- of one type or another -- if not necessarily a flying car.

First, there's the Swiss man who made himself a a jet-powered wing and flew this week a few thousand feet above the Alps at 180 mph. Word is he plans to fly across the English Channel next. Personally I would expect to see this gadget make an appearance in the next James Bond flick, but don't plan on buying one anytime soon: apparently there are no plans to take it to market.

Already on the market is the Gen H-4 personal helicopter, which also made a splash in the news this week. It is believed to be the world's smallest one-man helicopter, and you can pick it up for just 6 million yen -- about $58,000. (If I recall, James Bond did fly something like this about 40 years ago in You Only Live Twice.)

Ah, but you want something more . . . well, car-like? How about the Moller Volantor, a saucer-shaped two-person hovercraft that can go 75 mph at a maximum height of 10 feet (to avoid FAA restrictions). It does look like something that came straight out of The Jetsons, and is expected to retail at around $100,000.

You'll have to wait even longer -- any pay a lot more -- if you want a Moller Skycar, which the designer claims will be capable of vertical take-off and landing and will cruise at 275 mph. Plan to fork over about $1 million, when and if they make it to market.

Sadly, for those who wish they could fly to work rather than fight morning traffic, it should be noted that Boeing has abandoned its flying car venture, dubbed the Sky Commuter Aircraft. Apparently a prototype that escaped destruction when Boeing cancelled the project recently showed up on Ebay.

The Extraterrestrial Week In Review

. . . . and what a week it has been!

What's going on?

On Monday, the European press was abuzz with the story that several shuttle astronauts who flew on Endeavour's 16-day STS-123 mission in March had told the Japanese press they believed we would one day discover intelligent extraterrestrial life.

The comments got attention because of an ongoing controversy in Japan over remarks by several high-level government officials regarding the existence of extraterrestrials. The Japanese defense minister has even said he is studying whether the country's pacifist constitution imposes any legal limitations on Japan's ability to respond to an alien attack.

On Wednesday, as everyone now knows, the British Ministry of Defense released 10 years of files on UFO sightings that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.

Also on Wednesday came word from a Vatican astronomer that, in the Holy See's opinion, no conflict exists between Christianity and the possible existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

(In what I can only assume was a little-noticed reaction to the news from the Vatican, Russia's Interfax news agency reported that both a Russian Islamic leader and a Russian Rabbi also voiced the opinion that extraterrestrial life was likely; on the other hand, Interfax also reported that a key Orthodox theologian stated that extraterrestrial life was incompatible with Orthodox belief.)

Finally, throw into this mix NASA's intriguing but ultimately anti-climatic announcement on Wednesday regarding the discovery of a supernova remnant in our galaxy. (NASA had hyped the upcoming announcement the week before; in an unusual twist, the space agency's teasing media advisory gave no hint as to the nature of the discovery to be announced, other than that it was an object for which astronomers had been searching for 50 years.)

In my opinion some of these events are of questionable significance -- I personally don't think religious leaders know any more about extraterrestrial life than astronomers do about religion -- but the fact that all of these stories hit the news wires in a single week is truly extraordinary.

What do you think?

Life From Space

A new study by German scientists indicates that asteroid impacts may do more than just destroy life, as did the asteroid that smacked the Earth 65 million years ago, killing the dinosaurs.

Asteroid impacts may actually spread life from one planet to another.

It is known that asteroid impacts can eject planetary rocks into space, and that some of those space-born rocks will collide with other planets. (This is exactly how the infamous Martian meteorite ALH84001 came rest in Antarctica -- it was blasted off the Martian surface eons ago by an asteroid impact, and then orbited the Sun for millennia before colliding with and crashing to Earth.)

Scientists have previously determined that rock-borne bacteria -- called "endoliths" -- can survive a trip through space. The German study, however, confirms that certain bacteria can actually survive the initial violent trip into space while embedded deep inside a rock.

The German researchers simulated the pressures believed to result from asteroid impacts and the resulting ejection into space, and determined that a wide range of Earthly bacteria could survive an asteroid impact on Earth -- or on Mars.

Maybe life really did come from the stars.

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Researchers at UC-Berkeley claim to have created the first three-dimensional material with a negative refractive index, meaning it can bend light in the opposite direction and may serve as the basis for a future "invisibility cloak" that can hide objects by bending light around it.

The feat has been achieved before, but only with flat, two-dimensional materials.

The new 3D material consists of 21 alternating layers of silver and magnesium fluoride, arranged in a fishnet structure.

Other scientists have expressed skepticism over the Berkeley claims.

Lifespan Of The Human Race And The Likelihood Of Extraterrestrial Contact

Most people have probably wondered how long they will live.

But how long will the human race survive? Will humans still be around in 100, 1000 or 10,000 years? Is there any way to know?

In a sense, yes. Almost 40 years ago, during a visit to the Berlin Wall, J. Richard Gott III -- now an astrophysicist at Princeton -- hit upon a simple but ingenuous method for predicting the likelihood of future events.

I'm oversimplifying Gott's method, but if you want to predict with 95% confidence the likely length of time something will last, multiply the length of time it has already existed by the fraction 1/39. That will give you the lower temporal parameter; multiply the length of time something has existed by 39, and that will give you the upper temporal limit.

The method works best with things for which no actuarial data exists, such as the lifespan of intelligent species. In other words, don't use it to calculate your own lifespan. You'll be disappointed with the results.

Gott, using the generally accepted figure of 200,000 years as the age to date of biologically modern humans, has used this formula to estimate with 95% confidence that the human race will be around for at least 5100 more years but not more than 7.8 million years.

OK, so what? Well, this number -- the average lifespan of an advanced technological species -- happens to be one of the great unknown factors of the Drake Equation, which can be used to estimate the number of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.

If you play around with the numbers in this do-it-yourself online Drake Equation computer, you'll find that the final factor -- the average lifespan of advanced technological species -- makes an enormous difference in the answer to this question: how many ET races are there in our galaxy?

I plugged Gott's parameters for the lifespan of the human race into the Drake Equation -- using some commonly accepted estimates for the remaining variables in the equation -- and arrived at estimates of extant advanced technological civilizations that ranged from 255 to almost 400,000.

Clearly, there is a direct relationship between the lifespan of the human race and the likelihood of SETI ever succeeding.

What Would A Martian Look Like?

A Martian fossil, that is.

Certain bacteria on Earth produce a form of the magnetic mineral magnetite. Some bacteria do it so they can orient themselves to the Earth's magnetic field; other forms of bacteria produce magnetite as a byproduct as they metabolize iron.

Mars no longer has a magnetic field like Earth's, but evidence exists to believe it did once. And, as the rust-colored hue of the planet attests, Mars is very rich in iron.

While previous efforts to find evidence of current or past microbial life on Mars have focused on the presence of organic molecules, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is proposing that a simple magnet could be used by a future unmanned Mars probe to select rocks containing magnetite that might also contain evidence of ancient microbial life. The rocks could then be returned to Earth for further study as part of a sample return mission.

Magnetite has previously been found in meteorites believed to have originated on the Red Planet, such as the infamous meteorite ALH84001, which may or may not contain evidence of ancient Martian bacteria.

Other researchers are exploring the iron-rich region of the Rio Tinto in Spain, studying the fossilized remains of bacteria that thrive in area's geothermal springs. The springs are rich in iron sulfides, and scientists hope to find telltale signs of iron-metabolizing bacteria -- signs they can look for on Mars some day.

Heavenly MARVELS

Twenty years ago, scientists hypothesized (as they had for hundreds of years) that solar systems other than ours existed in our galaxy.

But no one could point to one.

Since 1995, however, astronomers have discovered at least 248 other planetary systems containing at least 287 extrasolar planets.

This fall, a new NASA-funded study will expand the search for extrasolar planets, hoping to find 150 or more previously undiscovered gas giants like Jupiter. Called MARVELS (Multi-object Apache Point Observatory Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey), the study is premised on the idea that Jupiter-class gas giants are like beacons signalling the likely existence of other smaller planets orbiting the same host star.

MARVELS, housed at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, will be able to monitor up to 120 stars at a time and is hoped to eventually survey a total of 11,000 stars for the presence of planets -- almost four times the 3,000 stars astronomers have surveyed to date in the search for extrasolar planets.

In addition to finding previously unknown planetary systems, astronomers hope to learn more about what types of stars are orbited by gas giants like Jupiter, further informing theories of planetary formation.

High-Tech, 2050

Abundant clean water and clean energy. Lifespans of a length unimaginable today. Human brains that can parallel process like today's multi-core computers. Laptop computers with 100,000 times the computing capacity of today's machines. Personalized genetic medicine.

Just a few predictions from the gurus at a recent IBM forum on life in high-tech 2050.

"Flying Saucer" Patent

An aerospace engineer at the University of Florida has patented a design for a tiny, plasma-driven flying saucer that could be used as a micro air vehicle to conduct surveillance for the military or law enforcement.

Powered by a principle called magnetohydrodynamics, the 15-centimeter-wide device would be covered by electrodes to ionize the surrounding air, which is then accelerated by an electric field to create lift.

Here's the patent application.

American SETI

In an intriguing article on Space.com, Seth Shostak explores why -- other than the Italians -- America is the only nation actively pursuing a SETI program. Hint: it's not our frontier spirit, or our (presumably) fatter wallets.

Apparently, according to social scientists, Americans have a greater appetite for uncertainty and ambiguity.

Hmmm. I'm not certain I believe that.

Take Me To Your Lawyer

Space law is getting some respectability. Tomorrow, a new lawyer will graduate from the University of Mississippi with America's first certificate in space law. The school is the only ABA-accredited law school to offer a space law program.

Fly Me To The Moon

Well, my name at least.

The Planetary Society is offering us the opportunity to send our names along with those of thousands of others to the Moon onboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is scheduled to launch in late 2008 and will orbit the Moon in search of future manned landing sites and possible lunar resources. All you need to do is log onto their webpage and enter your first and last name, and your name will be programmed onto a microchip that will be incorporated into the LRO.

Don't want to go to the Moon? How about sending it into orbit around the Sun, onboard the Kepler Mission, which will launch in early 2009 in search of Earth-like extrasolar planets? The SETI Institute is offering people the opportunity to have their names encoded on a DVD that will be placed inside the Kepler space telescope.

Hurry, though. The deadline for joining the LRO mission is June 27, 2008, and the deadline for the Kepler Mission is November 1, 2008.

Click here to Send Your Name to the Moon, and here to send it into orbit with the Kepler Mission.

Update: The Drake Equation

What is the current best estimate for the values of the Drake Equation? Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute talks with Frank Drake himself and SETI pessimist Charley Lineweaver in this entertaining and instructive episode of the SETI Institute's Are We Alone? radio show.

Listen to the free podcast here.

Want to figure the odds of extraterrestrial life yourself? Here is an online, interactive Drake Equation computer that allows you to plug various values into the equation.

More Bad Astronomical News

A new computer model by scientists at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology supports the theory that the Sun's movement through the galactic plane has periodically triggered periods of intense cometary bombardment linked to past mass extinctions.

Here's the bad news: our present position in the galaxy suggests we are now approaching another such period.

As the Sun and our solar system passes through the densest part of the Milky Way's galactic plane, gravitational tugs from surrounding gas and dust dislodge comets from their usual paths in the outer solar system, sending them hurtling into the inner solar system and, occasionally, on a collision course with Earth.

Scientists believe the solar system passes through the galactic plane every 35 to 40 million years, a periodicity that coincides with the geological record of impact craters on Earth. This periodicity also coincides with the record of mass extinctions, such as the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Another possible solution to the Fermi Paradox?

Hostile Aliens

I've posted several times on the general subject of whether or not an advanced extraterrestrial civilization could detect Earth's electromagnetic leakage into space, and on whether or not it is a good idea for us to attempt to signal an alien civilization using radio or other methods.

Several recent attempts have been made to send radio broadcasts intended for advanced technological civilizations, from the NASA broadcast of an old Beatles song in the direction of the North Star to the facetious plan to send a Doritos advertisement to 47 Ursae Majoris.

Now comes word from a Russian scientist that it may be too late to debate whether this is a good idea. For 40 years astronomers have been using extremely powerful radars to study and map the Moon and other planets and asteroids in our own solar system.

Alexander Zaitsev of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics in Moscow, Russia, says that half-hearted attempts to signal ET are a whisper in the dark compared to these astronomical broadcasts, and that it is a million times more likely the radar-mapping blasts of astronomers will be detected than any deliberate attempts to talk to any neighbors that may be out there. Zaitsev says that astronomical broadcasts have filled an area of the sky 2000 times larger than any efforts to signal extraterrestrials.

In other words, even if we humans decided now that we wanted to keep our existence a secret, it is too late.

Enter The Memristor

Scientists at HP Labs have proven the existence of the elusive memristor, or memory resistor, the long-theorized fourth fundamental circuit element of electrical engineering. The development could significantly advance artificial intelligence, permitting the development of circuits that emulate the synapses of the human brain.

Previously, only three fundamental circuit were known to be possible -- the capacitor, resistor and inductor. The memristor has the unique capability of remembering information it has acquired. The use of memristors in computers, at minimum, could lead to the development of computers that do not forget, do not need to reboot and use less power.

More significantly, memristors may enable computers to process information in a manner that closely resembles the way the human brain recognizes patterns, leading to the development of machines that can learn from experience.