Darwinian evolutionary theory will help find alien life, says Nasa scientist

In a talk marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, a Nasa scientist said that Darwinian evolution will be the driving force of life anywhere in the universe, and we should use its predictions to decide where to look.

Dr John Baross, a researcher at the Nasa Astrobiology Institute, said: “I really feel that Darwinian evolution is a defining feature of all life.

“And so the limits of Darwinian evolution will define the range of planets that can support life – at least Earth-like life.”

Speaking at a public lecture at the Nasa Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, Dr Baross said that the Kepler Space Telescope’s mission, looking for Earth-like planets around other stars, made this an exciting time for astrobiology – the search for alien life.

He said: “I predict in the next five to ten years, we will make discoveries that will lead to theories and ideas at least as profound as Darwin’s.”

Dr Baross said that looking for alien life has always involved using the Earth as a model. While our understanding of how life began is incomplete, it seems clear that there are certain requirements.

All life on Earth needs water, carbon-based organic molecules, and an energy source, either solar or chemical. But alien life may not be entirely Earth-like. Dr Baross said: “I’d like to point out there are many different ways for non-Earth-like life to not use light or chemical energy but use some other form like radiation energy, wave energy, or ultraviolet energy.”

Similarly, the need for water may not be universal. Dr Baross said: “[Life may exist] in an organic solvent rather than liquid water on Titan, or… at temperatures of minus 100 degrees Celsius — there are a lot of ways to think of this because those conditions exist on other planetary bodies.”

So far, astronomers have found 403 “exoplanets” – planets outside our own solar system. While most of them are Jupiter-like gas giants hundreds or thousands of times bigger than the Earth, a few smaller ones have been found, and Kepler is expected to start finding many more over the next few years.

“I think all of us really believe that rocky planets, like Earth, are going to be found at some point,” said Baross.

Story via The Register.

British worms join Nasa space mission

More than 4,000 Caenorhabditis elegans worm were sent from the University of Nottingham to the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral.

They will spend 11 days in orbit more than 200 miles above the Earth, travelling 4.5 million miles, as part of a study on the muscle-wasting effects of space travel, the Times reports.

Known to scientists simply as C. Elegans, the species shares as much as 80 per cent of its genetic material with humans. Such similarities make it a reasonable laboratory model for research into human physiology.

Muscles do not have to work against gravity while in space, so they become weak. With astronauts destined to spend years at a time off the planet manning long-term missions to destinations such as the Moon and Mars, scientists are keen to establish how such degradation might be prevented.

“There’s a reasonable amount of variability in the muscle mass that’s lost due to space flight, with some losing 50 per cent, though on average it’s 5 to 15 per cent,” Nathaniel Szewczyk, of the university’s Institute for Clinical Research, told the paper.

“We need to figure out how we can deal with some of the medical problems associated with space flight, how do we deal with muscle atrophy and radiation? That’s what these worms will be helping us to do.”

The worms will be exposed to a drug that has been approved recently for use in preventing muscle wastage among cancer patients. The study is likely to pave the way for testing the drug on astronauts during future missions.

Water found on Moon by Nasa!

What exactly has Nasa found?
The equivalent of 24 gallons of frozen water, mixed in with the rock and dust that was thrown into the air when a rocket was deliberately crashed into a crater near the Moon’s south pole last month. It is far from the science fiction fantasy of an underground lake, but still pretty impressive for a satellite long dismissed as arid and dull.

Didn’t we know there was water on the Moon already?
Scientists have long suspected that there was water on the Moon, but have struggled to prove it. The sensors on orbital craft have detected evidence of hydrogen on the lunar surface, but the quantities were tiny. A major breakthrough came last September, when India announced that its Chandrayaan-1 craft had detected that chemical reactions producing water are still taking place.

Where does the water come from?
No one is certain. One theory suggests that hydrogen released by the Sun in solar winds could have reacted with compounds containing oxygen in the Moon rock, producing tiny amounts of H20. Another explanation proposes that the water came from vapour produced when comets and meteors crashed into the Moon’s surface.

 

What does this all mean?
Nasa has been so keen to find water on the Moon because it brings the dream of a permanent lunar base one step closer. If water exists in the quantities that Nasa now believes, it could be drunk by astronauts, turned into oxygen to make stations inhabitable and – most excitingly – converted into fuel. The Moon could then become the space equivalent of a service station – acting as a staging post for manned missions to Mars.