Are we ALONE in the Universe?

By G. O. Okeng'o 

© Copyright by Okeng'o Geoffrey Onchong'a, All Rights Reserved August, 2012

The question of the origin and the existence of life in the universe is a very controversial one. On a very broad spectrum, the views on this subject, by different individuals, are bound differ according to whether one adopts a religious standpoint or the scientific paradigm. On a more general sense, however, the two pictures seem to complement each other with the former seeking answers to the questions “why” while the latter attempts to address the questions “how”. It is on this basis that it can be argued that science really does not necessarily anyway contradict religion but in actual sense the two co-exist to serve different purposes. However, this may not augur well with some schools of thought who may often want to initiate spirited debates on this subject (this is allowed!) but whose basis is likely to be due to a number of opposing views which I will discuss in a future edition in this series.

However, despite this quagmire enigma and the numerous efforts by scientists to discover other “earths” out there, one thing is as clear as snow; that we all know of only one place where life exists and we can see it today, and that is the planet Earth. But as discussed in my previous article titled “How Big is the Universe?” the Earth occupies only a very tiny portion of the whole universe and using the numbers I provided this ratio comes to about 1:3,000,000,000,000,000,000; that is one part in three billion billion kilometers, where one billion is the number one (1) followed by nine (9) 'zeros'. That's the region of space occupied by us in the universe!

While you digest these numbers, it is also important to further reinforce the fact that the Earth is just but only one planet in our solar system that consists of eight planets (following the demotion of Pluto- I will discuss this in a future edition!), located third from the Sun with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune being the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eight respectively, and this system, together with a number of minor objects including dwarf planets, asteroids, meteoroids and rock debris are what makes up our solar system.

A solar system by definition is an 'arrangement' of planets and other smaller bodies that orbit a central star under mutual gravitational attraction. But how many stars (like the Sun) do we have in the universe? How many of them have their own planetary systems? Is there a possibility that some of the planets going around those suns (stars) or some of them could be Earth-like? Could these planets be harboring intelligent life or any other form of life? Are we alone in the universe?

To answer this questions, it's important to draw your attention to the following known facts: scientists estimate that there are about 1 trillion stars in our galaxy and over 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Now, if we temporarily assume that each galaxy is a typical medium-sized galaxy, like our own Milky Way, (not a bad assumption since many of such galaxies are known e.g Andromeda), the total number of stars like the Sun in the universe comes to about 10,000 billion billion! Simple mathematical probability then undoubtedly leads to the (not) so surprising result that it will be very 'selfish' to argue that we are the only creatures existing out here... If true this is likely to violate the fundamental law of natural economics: “thou shalt not waste space”.

But why do scientists care about the existence of life outside the Earth? (extraterrestrial life) or other creatures to be precise? How do they find it? What do they look for? And what have they found so far?

The first question is tricky but easy to answer, the rest are a subject of ongoing research and can only be answered tentatively.

Well, scientists care about existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe because that is science; they are scientists, so they do science! On the other hand, the question of whether we are alone in the universe has vexed humans for a number of centuries and according to a recent television survey in UK published in the Mail Online (29^th June, 2012), this is the top-most question among the top mysteries that many people are most desperate to see solved. Second on this list is the cure for cancer, followed by a prove if God exists and as you might have guessed.... further down near the bottom of the list is the question of why the fridge lights do not go off when the fridge door is closed!

The following facts sum up answers to the questions above:

No contact yet with an “Extraterrestrial"

You might have heard, (or probably claimed yourself) that they (you) have been visited by aliens or sighted some Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO's). But how true is this? And what does science say about this? To begin with, no ordinary mortal person can completely say that such creatures do not exist at all or that they haven't visited anybody. However, these claims remain untrue scientifically (unless one captures the alien for everybody to see or captures the UFO so that it can undergo lab verification tests to show that it's indeed an extraterrestrial!). Beyond that, such claims remains entirely unfounded and hence untrue (at least scientifically). To try and verify this idea, astronomers have for many years scanned the sky using powerful telescopes to detect weak signals from extraterrestrial beings but so far nothing has been detected. Relaxed now?

For Life to Exist conditions must be “Just Right”

For a planet to support life, very stringent conditions must be fulfilled. It must for instance among other things; contain sufficient liquid water, be at the “right” distance from it's sun (star) and must be neither too hot nor too cold otherwise all the liquid water would evaporate or freeze, hence support no life.

No spontaneous life

According to scientific findings, for life to develop, there must exist specific initial conditions. If such conditions are not met in a planet, no life would develop.

Vast distances makes finding extraterrestrial life (im)possible

If we could send humans onboard of the Apollo 11 mission that landed men on the moon, the journey to the nearest star Proxima Centauri would take about a million years. What if we can make it accelerate? You can quip! Well, if we send an unmanned mission cruising at the incredibly high one-tenth the speed of light (which is about 30,000 km a second!), the journey would still take over 40 years. However, the success of this will also depend on whether the spacecraft would survive tearing apart from violent collisions with the thousands of grains and loose particles present in space (which is most unlikely). But let us be optimistic enough and assume that the spacecraft survives and completes the journey. Fuel economics then dictates that an enormous amount of power (or fuel) would be needed to fuel this journey. Estimates (it is easy to perform a simple calculation to prove this) show that the amount of energy needed to fuel such a voyage would be equivalent to the total electric power consumption required to power the whole world for one month! Would it then be possible to send missions to other stars in the universe? Simple estimates tells us further (against the wishes of scientists) that not even a combination of all world economies would have the capacity to fuel such a project!

Now you know better; there is simply not enough technological manpower (at the moment) to enable us make contact with our 'friends' out there, so are we alone in the universe? Or what do you think?

Is there a difference between astronomy, astrophysics, space science (and navigation)?

By G. O. Okeng'o

A friend of mine recently asked me if there is any difference between the three disciplines: astronomy, astrophysics and navigation. My instincts told me that by mentioning the latter he probably mean't space science, so I chose to hold my cards close to my chest and provide a full answer to his (intended and asked) question....

The term astronomy comes from two Greek words “astron” meaning “star” and “nomos” meaning “law” and therefore 'literary' means "the laws of stars". It  is a natural science (a science that seeks to explain the natural world using laws of science) that deals with the study of celestial objects or celestial bodies such as planets, asteroids, comets, stars and galaxies, and all phenomena that originate from beyond (or outside) the Earth's atmosphere (also called 'space') such as the cosmic microwave background (or CMB in short).

Astrophysics is a branch of astronomy that deals with the physics, chemistry, meteorology, motions and interactions between celestial objects,  their physical properties such as temperature, chemical composition and structure, and the physics of the space between stars (interstellar medium) and that between galaxies (intergalactic medium).

The differences above are, however, only historical; and were based on astronomy being considered an observational science charged with observing and storing data about positions and properties of celestial bodies (cataloguing the heavens), while astrophysics was deemed a theoretical science concerned mainly with computing models and formulating theories to be tested against the observations.

In the present era of modern astronomy, the two disciplines refer to one but the same subject since both astronomers and astrophysicists today use a combination of observational and theoretical tools such as telescopes and various analytical techniques to study the universe.

Space science- can be defined as the study of 'issues' related to outer space (and voila! Astrophysics becomes one branch) and may include, but not limited to:

• Planetary science- study of planets other than the Earth
• Solar astronomy- study of the Sun
• Stellar astronomy- study of stars
• Galactic astronomy- study of the Milky Way galaxy (our galaxy)
• Astronautics- the science and engineering spacefaring and spaceflight, a branch of aerospace engineering (which includes atmospheric flight)
• space food, space medicine, astrobiology etc

Navigation-, on the other hand, is a field of science that focuses on the monitoring and controlling of the movement of an aircraft, spacecraft or vehicle from one place to another. In includes sub-fields such as: land navigation, marine navigation, aeronautic navigation, and space navigation, which refer to monitoring motion through land, sea, air and space respectively. In the context of astronomy and astrophysics, the relevant type of navigation (such as the one used by NASA to land the Curiosity rover on Mars, yesterday) is space navigation. And space navigation requires good knowledge about space and hence astrophysics.

References

1. www.wikipedia.org

An open letter to all physicists

By G. O. Okeng'o

What's happening to the subject we have all loved and served?

More than any other discipline, physics has transformed the face of civilization, particularly during the last century. It has developed techniques and insights that have propelled chemistry, biology and medicine to new heights. It has led to the genesis of modern engineering and has created vast industries, such as energy, communications, computing and the broadcast media. It has been the winner of wars and preserver of peace. It has played a seminal role in the emergence and development of the Internet, one of the most significant new communication media in history. As we march through the 21^st century, its potential for economic and social innovation remains greater than ever.

  Yet as we survey the state of physics as a viable enterprise, the signs of accelerating decay and decline are distressingly clear. The number and calibre of students and teachers that it attracts are falling alarmingly. Academic departments are shrinking, amalgamating and closing. Corporate physics labs are deemed to be an extravagance in the era of deregulation and "market forces". Morale in the global community of physicists is waning as professional positions, research grants and fellowships continue to diminish. Among non-physicists, and particularly among non-scientific decision makers in politics and business, physics is perceived to have had its day, never again to merit the pivotal position that it held during the 20th century. Physics is in crisis, it would seem, and the future is believed to belong to biotechnology and software engineering.

Some analysis before prognosis

It is vital that we, as physicists, analyse the current crisis carefully before rushing to embrace easy answers and shallow remedies. It is sometimes assumed, for example, that it will be enough merely to publicize what we do - that the root of the problems of our subject is a simple inability to market it as aggressively as those in biotechnology or IT, for example, manage to do. Certainly we must take these elementary steps, difficult though they may be for us physicists, who have always considered the worth of our subject as self-evident. However, we must delve more deeply into the state of physics and physics education, asking difficult and embarrassing questions. For example, has physics lost its intellectual appeal as the basis for all science and engineering? Does physics training still provide the talents needed at the cutting edge of technology? Have our courses and research programmes adapted to the rapidly changing dynamics of university education, as it evolves from serving an elite group of school leavers to providing advanced vocational education for a large cross-section of society? Have we adapted to the new reality of the pace and scope of innovation and investment in high-tech industry, as the new knowledge-based economies place ever greater emphasis on intellectual property and the laws of increasing returns?

   Nothing has provoked these questions and their attendant doubts as much as the advent of IT and the Internet, where the value of bits is emphasized while the value of atoms is taken for granted. There are, it appears, no atoms in cyberspace.

Is physics simply too successful?

In many ways, physics has been a victim of its own successes. We have helped to create a rapidly changing world, in which microscopes, telescopes, space vehicles, MRI scanners, mobile phones, lasers, DNA- sequencing equipment and the rest are yesterday's news. We cannot compete with the palpable sense of excitement created by popular books such as Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital, in which it is assumed that physicists and electronic engineers will continue to do their jobs so well that unlimited computing power, data-storage capacity and communication bandwidth can be taken for granted by the software engineers.

   Our systems are so capable and reliable that they have become transparent - the performance of practical systems being limited only by software glitches and limited user understanding of the vast networks that we provide. Packet-switched data networks are so versatile that they will one day probably cost their users nothing apart from a modest access fee. (Perhaps we should build fibre-optic systems and digital radio transmitters that cost a fortune to use and break down more often so that our crucial role will become more apparent.) There are, in fact, many atoms in cyberspace, but they perform so flawlessly that only the antics of the bits and pixels that they support are visible to the world at large.
    At the other end of the spectrum, our research into the "external" frontiers of physics - fundamental areas such as high- energy physics, cosmology, gravitation and quantum physics, in which we are pushing to the limits of energy, time and distance - has succeeded so well and progressed so far that it has become incomprehensible to all but a few specialists. Large-scale transnational efforts are often required, in which politics and economics can dominate and obscure the physics. Whether looking at bits, quarks or plasma ignition -or in many other cases where physics has a vital role to play- the importance of physics is invisible to non- physicists. Clearly our communication and marketing skills need to be developed and used in earnest, and they must be directed at the future rather than the past.
   Then there is the anti-science culture that is rising steadily in most countries. Again much of the blame can be laid at the door of the practitioners: our successes have distanced physicists from the public, making us appear mysterious or arrogant. We have become closely identified with the military- industrial complex. We are blamed for releasing the twin genies of nuclear fission and thermonuclear weapons. Such is the level of distrust that we have engendered that even the power lines and cellular communication masts required by the rapid growth of new industries are believed to cause health hazards comparable to those of industrial pollution or tobacco smoking. Scientists are believed to be part of the problem rather than the solution.

   And what of our relationship with the vast physics-based industries that drive the developed world's economies? In the past, physicists have had so many choices and career options that we have kept only the most intellectually stimulating and academically respectable topics (in our opinion) and abandoned many of the more mundane but useful technologies and industries to the engineers. The contrast with chemistry- and biology-based industries is striking: to pursue a career in these industries one needs a degree in the core scientific discipline, whereas to enter physics-based industries it is usually easier if one has a degree in some branch of engineering. Physics is erroneously seen by many employers as being too abstract and esoteric for their needs.


What are the solutions to this problem?


The crisis now facing physics and physicists is a multi-layered one that has developed over decades. To resolve it we will need a careful, considered and strategic response, not merely for physics graduates working as engineers or IT specialists. We must make university physics courses more attractive and accessible to a range of students. However, we should avoid at all costs the temptation to "dumb down" to garner popularity: it would be far better to build a new education and training structure to enable moderately able students to master difficult material. Instead of the forbidding quasi-professional primary physics degrees offered in most universities, with their steep learning curves, we should seriously consider schemes where students accumulate credits at a flexible pace toward broader primary degrees. Students would then learn to understand and use physics in context with mathematics, computing, chemistry, biology and engineering, and sample topics from the humanities and business studies. For those wishing to become professional physicists, this broader first degree would be topped up by a sharper, more focused, professionally accredited postgraduate degree involving vocational training and experience.
   The 21st century requires new interdisciplinary insights and work habits, and we need to develop and position physics as an ideal basis for this continually evolving mode of education and working. A physicist should be seen as a person who can enhance any scientific activity or industry, because of both specific technical training, and general problem formulation and solving skills. Physics applied to economics and finance should be encouraged and researched rather than lamented as a waste of talent.
   We must reinvent physics to remain the basis for all science - the dynamics of bits and pixels as well as atoms and photons. This will require fundamental new approaches to information science, including (but not limited to) physical treatments of information at a quantum level. We should develop the "internal" frontiers of physics - those areas in which we are finding new insights and applications within the currently accessible regimes of time, energy and space. These include dynamical systems and control, hard and soft condensed matter, environmental physics, biophysics, ultrafast optics and nanoscale electronics. Such topics should connect naturally and seamlessly with developments in the life sciences, information and communications technologies, energy studies and other emerging priorities. They should be accorded the same respectability as the external frontiers of physics, where elite efforts should continue for the sake of basic human curiosity.
   We must increasingly focus on those areas crucial to the benefit of humankind, including medical physics, space exploration and novel forms of energy. There must also be a continued emphasis on information. While it is impossible to set targets and deadlines in these areas, it is vital that physics and physicists should play - and be seen to play - a vital role in the continued development of the human race.
   We must persuade the politicians, captains of industry, journalists and other agents of influence that physics is an essential ingredient in the mixture of talents that is needed in the 21st century and beyond. We must restore the drive, energy and excitement to physics by reinventing both it and ourselves. We need to open up the doors and windows, clean out the cobwebs, and identify and safeguard the true treasures of physics. Only then can we set about the task of rebuilding our subject to become the basis of the new interdisciplinary science, engineering and innovation culture of the information age.

(Adapted from Prof John McInerney's article titled “How to survive in the 21^st century”, Physics World, 2000)

What's the Relevance of Astronomy and Astrophysics for Development?

By G. O. Okeng'o

“Many have asked me this question; students, politicians, colleagues and media.. here is a quickly 'put-together' answer to quench your 'thirst' and illuminate your thoughts on what the “Tom” and “Dick” of astronomy are up to...."  (G. O. Okeng'o, 2012 )

A brief summary of the answers to this question can be found by reading the “introduction” part of the International Astronomical Union's (IAU), “Astronomy for the Developing World Strategic Plan 2010–2020” which can be downloaded online by following the link: http://iau.org/static/education/strategicplan_091001.pdf.

But in a very brief sense, historically, from the times of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (the great greek philosophers who laid the foundations of science), Claudius Ptolemy, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and the rest (the great scientists who made outstanding discoveries that revolutionized science), astronomy has played a major role in the development of modern science, upon which all technology today is based. In particular, development of devices for astronomical applications such as charge coupled devices (CCD's) and high resolution imaging cameras, have not only found various applications in many industrial applications, but have also led to spin-offs in fields such as medicine (X-rays, imaging e.t.c), military sciences, GPS and radio communications, engineering, software technology et cetera, that are of economic significance.

The main reason is that astronomical problems are challenging, and,that the universe offers a unique laboratory in which the laws of science can be tested under extreme conditions-conditions that are impossible to replicate here on earth-(and one does not need permission from anybody to access this laboratory!), astronomy, therefore, seeds curiosity among people, and this curiosity intertwined with attempts to confront 'real' world problems has lead to new technological inventions.

A good example to illustrate this is the Square Kilometer Array: Since it's inception 2005, the South African government through it's South African Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Project has given over 400 bursaries to South African and African students to obtain PhDs and Msc's in areas as diverse as engineering, technology, astrophysics, cosmology, radio astronomy etc (see www.ska.ac.za). Besides this, cutting-edge technologies have also been developed, and, are being developed, new road networks have been created, data link, storage and analysis skills and networks have put in place among others, and above all a vibrant network of enthusiastic young engineers, radio astronomers, technicians and software developers has been created, here in Africa, and the number continues to grow... And with a major portion of the SKA set to be build in South Africa and it's 8 African partner countries (including Kenya), the scientific heat is increasing and the scientific, economic, technological and social benefits that Africa stands to gain are enormous...

From improved infrastructure, better technology, growth of African companies and enterprises, establishment of international links and skills transfer, to an increase in high-skilled people and a highly motivated future young mathematically and science oriented generation, these are just a few of the many possible gains that Africa is likely to experience from an international project of this magnitude. It is also important not to also forget that 'everything' in future is headed towards looking into space: weather monitoring, agriculture, defense, nuclear testing, astro-mining and geology, good science; countries are gearing towards utilizing space for these and many more socio-economic activities. Ignoring space sciences in going into the future, therefore, will not only put a passive nation in the receiving end but will also leave it buried in yesteryear technologies...