Extra­-Terrestrial Life? Part 2 - By Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

To continue Mark Twain's suggestion of a debate between a telescope and microscope (which has the greater view?), I want to continue with the microscope side - without billion dollar instruments.

A common question from grade school students who visited the planetarium at Arizona State University was: "If you could live on any planet, which planet would you choose?"

My answer always was "Earth."

A low audible rumble of disappointment was heard.

I continued...

"In the tens of thousands of photographs I've seen of the surfaces of Mercury, Mars and Venus, nothing - I mean absolutely nothing - comes even remotely close to the spectacular view one has while standing on the beach of Point Pleasant, New Jersey (or any ocean front beach). Before you is the magnificent spectacle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Trying to take all of this in is both a mental and physical challenge. No Martians, Venusians or Mercurians can present anything as spectacular.

Dead silence.

Cue the crickets!

When you eat something, the chemistry set in your body tries to break down the food into sugar.  The primary sugar is glucose. The glucose donates electrons to the oxygen you breath. This exchange of electrons from a higher glucose to a lower oxygen state is what provides you with energy to, for example, read this submission, empty the trash and check the mail.

The year was 1982. A problem existed at Lake Oneida upper New York State.  The lake,  fed by slopes that contained magnesium, was expected to have magnesium oxide deposited in the ooze at the bottom of the lake. When the ooze was analyzed there was very little magnesium oxide - less than one thousand times the anticipated amount.

Kenneth Nealson had the answer.  He thought there must be some kind of bacteria capable of making the magnesium oxide disappear. He discovered the agent responsible was a bacterium known as Shewanella. Shewanella was the first, but far from the last bacterium of this type. We are now aware of  an estimated thousand strains of bacteria popularly called "electric bacteria" they don't give a rap about sugar, oxygen or sunlight to produce their energy.  Instead they eat and breath electricity.

Shewanella

You probably are already aware of metal eating bacteria if you have been following the story of the Titanic. 

The rusticles decorating the sunken wreck are the result of 20 or so different bacteria eating away at the ship's steel.  They are part of the same strain of electric eating, metal eating bacteria.

You want to determine the bacteria in the soil of your backyard - possibly for your son or daughter's 6th grade science fair project. 

It is simple. Get a teaspoon of soil, place it in a Petri dish, add a nutrient such as sugar water and cover the dish.  Return to the dish in a few days and there you have it, the dish teeming with microbe life. A drop of the water from the dish examined under a microscope reveals plenty of life forms for your science project.

As they are metal seeking, electron seeking microbes won't be caught up in the experiment because they do not seek oxygen, sugar, or sunlight for energy production, unless you caught a few by accident.

There are aquarium tanks in some biology labs that have only water, a charged electrode and electric bacteria in the tank.  The tank is kept in darkness.  The only energy source for these electric bacteria are in consuming the electrons from the electrode.  The bacteria are swimming around in the tank without incident.

I can imagine the headlines, however, had these bacteria been found on Mars... "Extra Terrestrial Life Found on Mars." And "...this life unlike anything found on earth.  They eat electricity and discharge electrons!"

         "No way"                        "Way!"

It is not that these bacteria are extraterrestrials, rather it is additional evidence of how little we know of life on earth...life in your own backyard.

  

   

"Close Approach " of Venus and Mercury PART 2, by Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

                                    January 20-22, 2015

 

FIGURE 01

Let's examine Figure 01, depicting the southwest backyard sky at about 6:15 p.m. on January 20, 2015. This is a time when a half-dozen stars are visible in your evening sky. Features include the positions of the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars.

A line drawn from the "S" which stands for South and to the "W" which stands for West would be the horizon if you were standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean. 

The Moon in our setting is just above the South-West horizon.  It is an eleven hour moon.  At 7 a.m. this morning the moon and sun were on the same north south line. The moon travels around the earth such it moves its own diameter each hour, or as viewed in the sky, half-degree each hour. At the time of our diagram, the moon has separated from the sun by 5.5 degrees.

Technically above the horizon, practically it would be very difficult to observe the 11-hour moon this close to the horizon, even though you were trying to observe it atop a large sand dune in the middle of the Sahara.  Only 0.4 percent of the moon is illuminated.  Figure 02 illustrates how little this is.

FIGURE 2

The illuminated crescent part of the moon does not present a continued light line, but is broken up in places due to the moon's crater walls seen edge on.

The brightest image in our sky is the planet Venus. It is the anchor in this our second posting of four; since our last posting of January 10th, when Venus and Mercury were very close in the sky.  Now, just ten days later, Mercury has peeled off to the west and below Venus. 

Mars is above Venus.  It will be interesting to watch from one evening to the next as their separation decreases.

                                    January 21, 2015

Just 24 hours later, we note from comparisons of last evening sky to this, the increasing separation between Venus and Mercury. (Fig. 03)

FIGURE 3

Last evening the Moon was 11 hours old. This evening it is 11 hours old plus 24, or 35 hours old.  It has increased from 0.4 percent illumination last evening to 1.3 percent this evening. (Fig.04)

FIGURE 4

This evening marks the first evening when the crescent moon is an easy target for the backyard observer.  Finding the moon's position is aided by its close proximity to the planet Venus. Two nights and three days ago the moon was an equally visible object in the morning sky immediately before sunrise.  Two nights and three days equal 72 hours. It took the moon 72 hours to pass from the morning sky to the evening sky. Half of 72 is 36.  We have a 35 hour moon this evening in good agreement of a standard two nights and three days traditional description of the dark of the moon, when the moon is not visible to the unaided eye.  

The Greek goddess of the Moon was Artemis. As the goddess of transitions she was a goddess of birth and death.  The crescent moon mythically died two nights and three days ago but now reborn as a crescent in this evening sky. A Greek word to describe a thin crescent moon is the word "Cynthia," abbreviated as "Cindy." Parents in search of a name for their newborn find Cynthia listed as another name for the Moon goddess Artemis.  This is a translation I would expect from a high school guidance counselor or worse yet, from a gym coach. An appropriate sense of the name Cynthia is: "She who hunts among the clouds."

The separation of Venus and Mars continues to decline.

                               January 22, 2015

This is the evening sky at about 6:20. (Fig. 05)

FIGURE 5

Note the position of Mercury. It is getting very low and by month's end will rise and set at the same time as the sun.

In just 24 hours the moon has changed its position from the west of Venus to the west of Mars. If we could pace the apparent distance the moon traveled from last evening to this evening, multiply it by 29.5 times, we would have marked a great circle around the sky. We would find the moon back to the same phase as tonight. This number is near the 30 day cycle of the month.  The month does indeed get its length from this, the Synodic cycle of the moon.

The moon is 9 percent sunlit. (Fig. 06)

FIGURE 6

I refer to this phase of the moon as the Romantic Moon, because it will take the moon 2.5 hours to set; more than enough time to accomplish the tasks at hand.

"Close Approach " of Venus and Mercury by Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

The illustration shows the "close approach" of  the Planets Venus and Mercury at 6p.m. January 10th and 11th.  The apparent close planetary images is an illusion.  The planet Venus, on the far side of the Solar System is emerging from behind the Sun while Mercury is on the same side of the solar system as the Earth and will pass between the Sun and Earth on the 29th of January.

 It is the pairing of the fainter Mercury with the brighter Venus that makes the planet Mercury an easier target for backyard observing. This is the first of Venus paring with four celestial objects worth noting.  It was these apparent motions of the Sun, Moon and five visible planets that had a profound effect on human culture. 

Watch this space!