You might be able to survive for a bit longer than you think.
August 01, 2019
If the sun suddenly blinked out of existence, you'd have nothing to worry about — for the first eight minutes, anyway. After that, all hell would likely break loose. Still, it wouldn't be the instantaneous end to life on Earth that you might think.
When the Lights Go Down
Light takes roughly eight minutes to reach Earth from the sun. For that reason, if the sun disappeared, we'd still see it in the sky for another eight minutes. But what about gravity? The sun is the anchor point of the solar system — at 333,000 times the mass of Earth, it exerts a hefty pull that keeps the planets locked in their orbits. If all that gravitational force disappeared, it would still take us eight minutes to feel it. That's because, according to Einstein's theory of relativity, gravity travels at the same speed as light. So go ahead, watch the rest of that Netflix episode. You'll be golden for another eight minutes.
Chaos Creeps in Slowly
After that, though, Earth still wouldn't be snuffed out. Electricity would still work, and it would still take up to an hour for the light from our planets to be reflected back to Earth, so there would be a peaceful glow in the sky. With no sunlight, photosynthesis would stop, but that would only kill some of the plants—there are some larger trees that can survive for decades without it.
Within a few days, however, the temperatures would begin to drop, and any humans left on the planet's surface would die soon after. Within two months, the ocean's surface would freeze over, but it would take another thousand years for our seas to freeze solid. By then, however, the atmosphere would collapse, radiation would seep in, and Earth would be an inhospitable wasteland drifting aimlessly through space. Lucky for you, the sun is showing no signs of disappearing any time soon.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA - MAY 30: The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches into space with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (R) and Doug Hurley aboard the rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on May 30, 2020 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The inaugural flight is the first manned mission since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011 to be launched into space from the United States. (Photo by Saul Martinez/Getty Images)
Photo by: Saul Martinez
Saul Martinez
We Have Liftoff: Congratulations to NASA and SpaceX
By:
Leah Weber
Here's to NASA, SpaceX, Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, and all of the engineers, scientists, and staff involved with the Saturday, May 30th historical launch.
May 30, 2020
At 3:22P ET the SpaceX Crew Dragon Spacecraft powered by the resuable Falcon-9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39a. This mission is carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley towards the International Space Station.
We celebrate NASA, SpaceX, Astronauts Bob and Doug, and all of the engineers, scientists, and staff involved with the Saturday, May 30th historical launch.
The whole world was watching today as we entered this new realm of space travel. Everyone is sending their well wishes to all involved.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - MAY 16: NASA space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 16, 2011 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. After 20 years, 25 missions and more than 115 million miles in space, Endeavour is on its final flight to the International Space Station before being retired and donated to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Capt. Mark E. Kelly, Gabrielle Giffords's husband, will lead mission STS-134 as it delivers the Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-2) to the International Space Station. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Just how lucky are we on Earth? What were the chances that life would arise, let alone lead to intelligence?
June 17, 2020
These are vexing scientific questions, and using a new statistical approach, researchers have found a potential answer: we might be kind of, sort of, maybe a little bit luckier than average.
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Does extraterrestrial life exist out in the universe? Have aliens visited us? Astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter discusses how he does believe there's intelligent life out in the universe but doesn't think they have visited us on Earth.
Our Answers are Guesses
It's hard to estimate the chances of life and intelligence arising on any given planet because we only have one and only one example of life and intelligence arising on a planet. But while this single data point isn’t as useful as multiple data points, it can still come in handy. Whatever your estimate of life appearing and evolving to intelligence includes, it must confront the bare-naked fact that it happened here, once.
And there's even more nuance to our little petri dish called planet Earth. As far as our best fossil evidence can tell, life arose very early on in the Earth's history, less than 500 million years after the formation of the planet itself. For all intents and purposes life appeared as soon as conditions were favorable enough for life to appear (geologically speaking).
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3d illustration of cell division, cell membrane and a splitting red nucleus.
Photo by: CHRISTOPH BURGSTEDT/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
CHRISTOPH BURGSTEDT/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
3d illustration of cell division, cell membrane and a splitting red nucleus.
Intelligence is Hard
On the other hand, intelligence took an extremely long time to appear: four and a half billion years until humans arose and started asking about their origins. This is so late in the history of the Earth that it's basically the last chance for intelligence. In just a few hundred million years, our sun will grow too hot to support liquid water on our planet, erasing all potential for a new intelligence to arise.
In other words, life appear quickly, but intelligence didn’t come around until the very last chance.
So, is life in general very common and easy to form, and life appeared early in the Earth's history because that's exactly what life does? Or is life incredibly rare, and the Earth got exceptionally lucky? And on the other end, is intelligence a precious thing in the cosmos, explaining why it took so long for it to show up? Or is intelligence relatively common too, and Earth just experienced a case of very bad luck over the past four billion years?
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Classical style library that's the best known symbol of Manhattan's Ivy League university. (This is from a 15 megapixel original, but it has been significantly downsized so that the faces of the people in it will be unrecognizable for RF purposes.)
Photo by: peterspiro
peterspiro
Research is Hard, Too
To you answer these questions, researchers at Columbia University turned to a statistical modeling with a technique called Bayesian inference. This technique doesn't just take a model at face value, it folds in the facts that we know - the fact that life appeared early and intelligence appeared late.
The researchers had to pick a particular model to describe the chances of life and intelligence appearing on the planet. And the particular model that they picked assumes that there is a constant chance in any given chunk of time for life and intelligence to appear. What we don't know is that constant chance. It could be that once conditions are favorable, life has a 10% chance of appearing in any given hundred million years. Or 90%. Or 1%. And likewise, for intelligence.
Yes, it is a model and no, it's not perfect. But it's a start, and it helps us answer some very basic questions.
To simplify the calculations and eliminate as much ignorance as possible, the researchers compared a few distinct scenarios: life is common and so is intelligence; life is common, but intelligence is not; life is rare and so is intelligence; and life is rare but intelligence easily follows from it.
Given the fact that life appeared early, but intelligence appeared late, this model tells us some useful things. For example, the hypothesis that life is rare doesn’t jibe with the fact that life showed up basically as soon as possible on Earth. And conversely, if intelligence were easy, what took us so long to get here?
Putting it all together, combining the model with our admittedly limited data, the researchers found that if we were to rerun the clock and start the Earth back again the same way it was billions of years ago, there's a three to one chance that life would appear again.
And as for intelligence? That's slightly less favorable, with a 3-2 to chance that intelligence never arises even with life flourishing for billions of years.
So far this model can’t be applied to estimating the chances of finding extraterrestrial creatures, since it's targeted to our history here on Earth… but it's a start.
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of How to Die in Space.
Whether you can see it from home or stream it online, here are some of May's wonderous celestial events.
May 06, 2020
Every month there are numerous celestial and cosmic events that are definitely something to look at! And Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona brings the sky and space to us at home!
Eta Aquarid - May 4th & 5th
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A rare Green Fireball meteor from the Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower around 5 a.m. in Babcock Wildlife Management Area near Punta Gorda, Florida
Photo by: Diana Robinson Photography
Diana Robinson Photography
Every single year around the beginning of May, the Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower is visible in the night sky. Meteors are leftover bits of comet and broken parts of asteroids that remain in the Earth's orbital path. This particular meteor shower is fast and hard to catch, but you can check out Lowell's coverage of this annual meteor shower here!
Flower Supermoon - May 7th
Rise of Super Moon in Riga, Latvia
Photo by: Shutterstock/Sergei25
Shutterstock/Sergei25
The last supermoon of 2020 is happening in May. This full moon appears larger and is a bit closer to earth that full moons during other months. Lowell teaches us about the Flower supermoon here!
