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Category: Space

  • Ants and Life on Mars

    I had recently seen two interesting news. One was about an ant species that must clone males of another species to produce hybrid offspring for worker caste. The other was about the possibility of there having been life on Mars.

    The ants are haplodiploid relatives of wasps, females are diploid, males are haploid. In Messor ibericus species the queens can produce two types of male offspring, one of their own species, other from a related species Messor structor, with which they have been estimated to have a common ancestor about 5 million years ago. The queens mate with both types of males, because ibericus males are needed to make new queens, whereas structor males are needed to make hybrid workers. The structor male genome survives because the queen can somehow clone haploid offspring from sperm (though the mitochondria of the ova come from ibericus.) It should be noted that the ibericus-born genetically structor males are morphologically different from wild structor males, which the authors of the study hypothesized to result from differences in mitonuclear environment, from differences in brood rearing conditions, or from genetic differentiation of the ‘cloned’ lineage of structor males. This case is interesting, because it stretches the concept of biological species to have genomes of two species, separate but intertwined by sexual reproduction to maintain the colonies of the species lineages.

    Little black ants in Finland, crawling in and around their hole in the ground. Not connected to the ants discussed above.

    As for life on Mars, NASA scientists published a paper on speckles on Mars rock, which on Earth would have formed by metabolism of accumulated microbes. I do not know enough of mineralogy to follow the paper, but the NASA press release was much more accessible. The speckled rock was found in area that had contained long ago liquid water. While alternative processes have not been totally excluded, the most likely ones were. This biosignature is the strongest evidence that Mars has some time in the past hosted life. This implies either life evolving easily in multiple locations or if life evolves rarely, panspermia, i.e., life spreading in space, and it has been speculated that life on Earth and Mars being related. Also, considering the prevalence of lithospheric life on Earth, I would not consider it impossible that there still exists (microbial) life deep underground in Mars.

  • Update on K2-18b

    There might not be hycean worlds, that is worlds with hydrogen rich atmosphere over liquid ocean.

    A recent study could explain the spectral signature of another potential hycean world, TOI 270d, by an atmosphere over a magma ocean, an environment not conductive to our kind of oceanic of organic life. Bummer.

    But a lava world with boiling atmosphere is interesting to me – those were the conditions of early Earth during Hadean Eon, just after forming. Once the lava cooled enough to form a crust and tolerate liquid water, we got our early ocean, either from meteors or from inside the mantle.

    Earth was small enough to cool soon, now only the ferrous core is molten, maintaining the Earth’s magnetic field and volcanism, both essential for life. Magnetic field shields us from space radiation whereas volcanism recycles back to surface nutrients, gases and water that would otherwise have sedimented or seeped into ground.

    The reason we have oceans in the surface is volcanism, which pushes water towards the surface. Yet, lithosphere contains water, maybe multiple times the amount in world’s oceans.

    So, while a hycean world is not proven, it is not impossible, either. I wonder if maybe, once a large lava world with lots of hydrogen and water vapor cools down enough to have an ocean, a hycean world arises.

  • Interesting Things I Wanted to Post

    I don’t usually work on Sundays (the day of rest and so on), but the recent news about heightening tensions between two nuclear powers have been alarming. No, not the war in Europe, or the slow boiling in Middle East. I am talking about India and Pakistan. Here is what I get from the non-mainstream news/commentary streams I follow.

    Negligible Chance of Mushroom Clouds

    Apparently, there was a terrorist attack in Kashmir where 26 Indian tourists were killed. This region has been contested by Pakistan and India for decades and occasionally, a war has flared up. India blames the attack on Pakistan, which claims innocence. Regardless of truth, the relationship between the countries tensed up, as in India giving 48 hours for all Pakistanis to get out of the country, whereas Pakistan closed Indian borders and Pakistani airspace from Indian airlines, while revoking visas from Indians and telling the Indian government to reduce their embassy size to 30 people, no military attaches allowed. India informed that they will no longer recognize the Indus River Treaty, which allocates the rights over this common river between the two countries. This is very important, because Indus river waters about 80% of Pakistani farmland, and if India were to block the water, it would create a famine that would collapse Pakistan. Pakistan has informed that if India messes with Indus river, it will be an act of war. Presumably, India has already been accused of flooding some Pakistani villages along Indus tributary. The same podcast claimed that there has been clashes along the border, not just small arms fire but actual artillery shelling. This is before the formal declaration of war. The Indus river question is an existential threat to Pakistan, which is estimated to have at least 170 nuclear warheads and has a first strike policy. India is estimated to have over 160 nuclear warheads and if things escalate, we could see mushroom clouds, though this is still a very small possibility.

    Oddly enough, when president Trump was asked about this issue, he seems to hint that United States will stay out of this conflict. That would be a refreshing novelty, a war that USA is not starting or participating in.

    Earthquake (Space) Weather

    A Podcast that YouTube recommended to me says that the magnetic field of the Sun is weakening. Apparently, this may be somehow connected with the likelihood of big earthquakes. Sun’s magnetic field weakens and strengthens by 11-12 year sunspot cycles but the peak magnetic field has been weakening over the latest solar cycles (data starts in 1970s, so we don’t know how things were earlier). This presentation fits the hypothesis that solar weather including sunspot activity triggers earth quakes that has been making rounds around interwebs for some time, except that in this presentation it is the weakening solar magnetic field that creates sunspots and correlates with the frequency of big earthquakes.

    The earthquake – sunspot connection has been explained by the effects of space weather on telluric currents, i.e., the electric currents going through Earth, telluric currents being stronger along fault lines. Living within a walking distance from Hayward fault, I have been interested in earthquakes, waiting for the Big One.

  • K2-18b

    Scientists in University of Cambridge have published their analysis of the data collected by James Webb telescope, presenting the results showing likely dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) signal in the atmosphere of an exoplanet K2-18b. This is thought to be a hycean world, which is supposed to have large liquid water ocean with hydrogen atmosphere but not all scientists agree even that. There were preliminary results suggesting DMS in the atmosphere published earlier, but this later analysis by the group presented more evidence claiming to have strengthened the earlier findings to 3 sigma levels.

    DMS on Earth is produced by microbes like phytoplankton, and the researchers consider it in the atmosphere of K2-18b as a potential sign of large amounts of life in the ocean of K2-18b. However, the possibility of some exotic chemistry occurring in extraterrestrial conditions (different gravity, temperature, availability of component chemicals, space chemistry, etc) has not been excluded and may explain the signal, in which case it would be abiogenic. Besides, collecting spectroscopy signals from faraway planets (in this case about 120 light years away) is difficult, and more data is needed to verify the DMS/DMDS signal instead of some other chemical with similar spectrum at 5 sigma certainty.

    In any case, an interesting possibility and worth noting, just in case.