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With all the attention on Asteroid 2005 YU55, I wanted to talk more about the likelihood of an impact event taking out human beings and other forms of life on Planet Earth. The last asteroid to hit Earth was the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 60 million years ago called the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. This is pretty bad news because it means that another asteroid is due soon. What needs to be pointed about Asteroid 2005 YU55 is that it travels on an elliptical path and regularly passes the terrestrial planets. This is concerning because we have just started identifying it and it could be getting closer and closer to the Earth every time it travels on its orbit. But astronomers say that it is not a collision threat for the next 100 years even though they have placed it on the potentially hazardous list.

The Comet Shoemaker Levy-9 splitting and colliding with Jupiter in the summer of 1994 has made people realize that defense against asteroids is important. Asteroid mitigation strategies have improved considerably. Nuclear weapons are one of the best strategies to utilize in avoiding a collision. Something that I find fascinating is the use of focused solar energy. This would need a space station to be constructed next to the Earth which has a system of gigantic lens and magnifying glasses. This station would then be moved in the direction of the Sun.
Still, there are several issues with these avoidance strategies right now. There are numerous problems with asteroid capture as we do not have enough information on our solar system’s orbital features. Even the smallest disparities in approximations for planetary velocity and mass can be the reason for a manifold of amendments in the asteroid deflection process.
It is also interesting to note what people in the United States thought was the chances of asteroids hitting this planet. 31 percent of Americans thought that an asteroid will collide with Earth by the year 2050, but 61 percent disagreed according to both the Pew Research Center and the Smithsonian survey in the spring of 2010.[1]
Speaking of asteroids, they do not always have to be considered a bad thing. Asteroid mining is a popular method to solve the problems that we have on Earth. It has been speculated that asteroids have trillions of dollars’ worth of minerals and metals buried in them.  

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NASA doesn’t just study outer space. It also uses its high tech aircraft to monitor large scale events here on Earth as well. Recently, there was a good example of this in the news.
 
Using their DC-8 research plane, NASA officials were able to report an enormous iceberg the size of New York City forming in the Antarctica region. The iceberg is expected to be approximately 300 square miles in size! It is breaking off the Pine Island Glacier and will contribute significantly to rising sea water.
 
The polar regions are much more sensitive to global warming than are the temperate and tropical regions of the Earth and the rise in average global temperature has caused an accelerated melting of the Pine Island Glacier. Even if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow, there is enough built up in the system to affect the melting rate of the Antarctica Ice for more than 2000 years.
 
This is alarming to think about but also difficult for a human who only has an average lifespan of 70-100 years to really fully understand or fully appreciate. Worrying about what is going to happen several generations from now is just too difficult for the average human being to deal with.
 
The detection of this iceberg forming is part of a NASA mission called Operation IceBridge. They will continue to monitor the situation and will make periodic reports to the public. NASA is also conducting similar missions over Greenland with the DC-8 research plane. Both polar regions have been greatly affected by global warming.

There have been lots of places in the Solar System that have been proposed as being habitable for organic life. There are 8 places that are frequently suggested and five of these are moons. Large bodies of underground liquid oceans are widely thought as conceivable. Any forms of life there may have developed in the same way as species found around deep sea vents here on Earth.

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Looking closer to home at the other terrestrial planets has revealed that there may be chances of smaller forms of life. Venus, for instance, may have microbes in the unwavering cloud layers 50 kilometers beyond the surface according to scientists. This speculation is backed by the observation of hospitable climates and chemical disequilibrium.  Life on Mars has been a subject of discussion for a long time. Liquid water is believed to have been present on the Red Planet earlier in its history. A breakthrough happened when methane was found in the Martian atmosphere and NASA scientists are attempting to determine its biological or abiotic cause. Another important discovery occurred in July 2008 when laboratory tests on a soil sample by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander had found water. The Mars Global Surveyor’s images display an indication of liquid flows on the cold surface of Mars that could have even been in the last decade.

In the 1960s, Carl Sagan and other astronomers figured out situations for supposed amino acid-based macroscopic life in Jupiter’s atmosphere. This was due to certain observations made of the gas giant’s atmosphere. The existence of life is questionable, though, as more research has shown that the atmosphere may not allow for the type of encapsulation that is needed for molecular biochemistry. Ganymede, the Largest moon of Jupiter, and Callisto, another one of Jupiter’s moons, are thought to have underground oceans.
Another interesting moon of Jupiter is Europa that has liquid water underneath its thick ice layer. This could again have microbes and less complex plant forms. This is based on the investigations of Earth’s hydrothermal vents. Europa could also possibly contain aerobic macro fauna by means of the oxygen produced by cosmic rays that hit the ice on its surface.
The moons of Saturn are other possible candidates. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and it is the only known moon with a significant atmosphere. The Cassini–Huygens mission discovered the first liquid lakes present outside of our planet. This mission was also important because it allowed for speculation of the presence of organisms that take in hydrogen, ethane and acetylene to produce methane.
The Cassini mission also detected geysers ejecting ice and gas on another moon of Saturn called Enceladu. Moreover, the probe identified carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. This is monumental because these elements are vital for life in the universe.
Although, humans have made several strides into finding out about the Solar System with the Voyager and other space probes, there is still no confirmation of life.

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Friday Night Lights took on an entirely new meaning on Friday, Oct. 28. Apparently, humans are not the only ones interested in football. It seems the aliens are too.
During a conference football game between Scottsdale high school rivals the Horizon Huskies and the Notre Dame Prep Saints, at least four bright lights appeared in the sky southeast of Horizon High School’s football field.
The Huskies had just scored a touchdown when fans noticed the unusual lights in the sky. Four or five lights appeared, moving quickly across the sky. The coaches and some players witnessed the sight as well, although their main focus was the game, which the Saints eventually won.
When he saw the lights, Huskies’ head coach Steve Casey joked to an assistant coach that the aliens had come to watch the two teams play. He saw four or five lights appear before one disappeared. Other witnesses also claim the lights would disappear and reappear, hover in the sky, and dance back and forth.
There are several theories as to the source of the lights. Some say the lights were common Chinese lanterns. Others attribute the lights to either helicopters or planes. I’ve even heard that the lights were from an Arizona skydiving team.
Whatever the source, the Oct. 28 sighting is not the first time that unexplained lights in the sky have appeared near a football game. On Sept. 3, the University of Notre Dame was playing the University of South Florida when a UFO was sighted. On Oct. 23, less than one week before the sighting in Scottsdale, an unidentified flying object was filmed by a television camera crew in New Orleans during the NFL’s Sunday Night Football matchup between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts.

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Video of 51D_l82B4KI

 

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The U.S. government’s new Cybersecurity Initiative, which has included a sea change in the military’s scope, includes cyberspace as a military theater, just like air, land, and sea. What this means is that any cyber attack by another nation is equivalent to an “opening salvo” on a battlefield. A recent development then, in which the U.S. accused China of attempting to hack American environmental monitoring satellites, has potentially serious implications for U.S. – China relations.
The U.S. China Economic and Security Review Committee released a statement on Monday reporting satellite disruptions that was indicative of Chinese interference, but stated that the disruptions had “not been traced to China.” Instead they simply pointed to the similarities, stating that “the techniques appear consistent with authoritative Chinese military writings.” These writing include instructions to disabling enemy space systems. The committee’s report will be officially delivered to Congress on November 16th.
Beijing responded aggressively, deriding the report and accusing the U.S. of viewing China with “colored lenses”. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei dismissed the issue, saying, “This report is untrue and has ulterior motives. It’s not worth a comment.”
The satellites in question were not physically tampered with, and no information was breached, as they don’t receive or transmit any data. The satellites, LANDSAT-7 and TERRA AM-1, experienced interference from signals sent from a ground station in Norway. The signals were sent in 2007 and 2008. The committee’s draft report to Congress stated, “Access to a satellite‘s controls [from a ground station] could allow an attacker to damage or destroy the satellite. An attacker could also deny or degrade as well as forge or otherwise manipulate the satellite’s transmission.”
This is just the latest incident in which the Chinese have been accused of cyber attacks on U.S. government and public networks. Beijing, in turn, has denied or ignored every accusation. As these situations continue, particularly against targets pertaining to national security, there’s a potential for escalation between the U.S. and China. Unfortunately, responding to and preventing cyber attacks is much easier than figuring out who exactly is attacking. This anonymity provides other nations interested in U.S. intelligence and strategy a kind of “plausible deniability” that makes it incredibly difficult for foreign policy levers to work. The U.S. can’t sanction a nation that they don’t actually have proof of attacking them. To use the analogy of the “opening salvo” from the beginning of this article, it’s a bit like being surrounded by a defensive wall with no look outs in hundred-front war. The wall stops much of the various enemy’s operations, but every time a mortar comes over the wall, there’s no way of telling who launched it.

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Usually you have to travel to far north places like Alaska, Greenland, and Iceland to experience the razzle-dazzle spectacle of the Aurora Borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights. However, last week an unusually strong electromagnetic storm produced these amazing lights in the skies over 20 southern states. Brilliant swirls of greens, reds, and oranges were seen as far south as northern Alabama. This is a once in a lifetime viewing opportunity for many people who never venture to the far north. It is even rare to find see these lights in the northern states but to see them in Alabama is almost unheard of.
 
The Aurora Borealis is created by a stream of charged particles carried in a stream of solar wind from the sun. As this nears the magnetic field of the Earth, these charged particles are drawn in and interact with the thermosphere in our atmosphere to produce the dazzling dancing lights we see in the sky. Some cultures put special significance in the Northern Lights. For example, the Japanese believe that if conception takes place under the Northern Lights, good luck will follow that child.

The Aurora Borealis is one of the best shows put on by Mother Nature. It is so spectacular in fact, many people plan their entire vacation around seeing the Northern Lights. There’s a popular natural hot springs area north of Fairbanks Alaska where you can soak and relax in the outdoor hot pools and view the Northern Lights. It’s always been a dream of mine to go there one day but being to walk out my front door last Monday night and view the Aurora Borealis right in my neighborhood was truly a special event I’ll never forget!

The Fermi paradox is the seeming inconsistency between the high chances of intelligent life that have been suggested and the lack of evidence for, or communication with, these extraterrestrial beings.

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There are interesting theories as to why there has been no evidence or contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Some of them are as follows.
 
Rare Earth Hypothesis
 
This is opposed to the principle of mediocrity which is backed by famous astronomers like Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. This hypothesis basically argues that complex life forms on this planet evolved due to a very unique arrangement of astrophysical and geological events.
 
The nature of intelligent life is to destroy itself and others
 
Nuclear war, biological warfare or a Malthusian catastrophe would cause intelligent life to destroy themselves prior to or just after gaining radio and space flight technology. Self-destruction is an enigmatic result of evolutionary attainment from a Darwinian point of view.
The very characteristics that force people to consume resources, increase their life expectancy and produce offspring would cause them to be more aggressive and make them more likely to exterminate each other as well.
 
Extraterrestrial Civilizations are too distant in time and space
 
When intelligent life is several thousand light years apart, it is conceivable that either life forms may be wiped out before any real communication can be made. The other thing is that the chances of two or more complex forms of life thriving during the same time are quite poor.
 
We have not been looking long enough  
 
On a cosmological scale, the entire epoch of modern human existence is much too minuscule. Radio technology has only been around since the start of the previous century. If aliens had visited or come close to the Earth before the existence of people, they may have observed a dead planet and not realized what was to come in the future.
 
Communication barriers
 

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It could be that human beings would need to develop better instruments that help in communicating with extraterrestrial life. There is also a lot of luck that would need to be involved. For instance, earth observers would have to listen at the right frequencies from the precise regions of space or anticipate that intelligent life in the universe would send fixated messages in the direction of Earth.
 
Alien life differs considerably from life on Earth
 
In the science fiction novel, Contact, Carl Sagan wondered for a moment if extraterrestrial life could have a way of thinking that could be faster than humans. The psyche of aliens may differ from humans in such a way that they may not get the language and other ideas that may be specific to Earth.
Another issue is if extraterrestrial civilizations have not become technologically advanced enough. It is hard with the current methods to distinguish intelligent life from other life forms if a planet with life was found.
 
The zoo hypothesis
 
This is very interesting notion that alien life may not want to meddle with the development of life forms on the Earth. According to this theory, aliens may only contact Earth after humans passed certain technological abilities like becoming proficient in interstellar travel.

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With today’s launch of China’s Tiangong 1 unmanned spacecraft, China places another arrow in its quiver of global competition. The Chinese government has been aggressively pursuing a number of high-profile national initiatives, including a network of high-speed rail, greatly increased global presence in the solar energy market, and a plan to build their own space station. The Tiangong 1 is the first in a several stage process that will ultimately leave China with a fully functioning, and solely supported space station to rival the now nearly a decade old international space station run jointly by the U.S., Russia, and several other countries. This move comes at a time when the U.S. has closed its publicly funded manned-space travel program with NASA, moving more towards a privatized model. Russia’s program, likewise, has seen a number of recent setbacks with equipment failures and glitches. As this second decade progresses, we may see further emergence of China as a leader in space science and technology.
“Its name … speaks for a dream home the Chinese have long envisioned in the sky. In Chinese folklore, a heavenly palace often refers to the place in outer space where deities reside,” the official Xinhua radio station announced, according to Reuters. The Tiangong 1 is an unmanned spacecraft supporting a science laboratory, and is the first stage of the Chinese space station’s orbital construction. The second phase will happen in several weeks, when the next component is launched aboard Shenzhou 8 and the two are fit together. “Space docking tests conducted with the Tiangong 1 will provide experience for the building of a permanent manned space station around 2020,” reported a mission spokeswoman.
The launch was widely broadcast around China, lauded as a major success for the Chinese people and the perfect event to give greater importance on October 1st, China’s National Day. However, recent incidents with China’s rapidly developing rail system has thrown a shadow over Tiangong’s launch. In July a high-speed rail collision killed 40 people, and last week another train collision injured 200. Despite that, many people are hopeful for the future, and China shows a greater vision for its nation and its place in the world.
Other than China’s proposed building of a space station by 2020, they’ve also announced plans for a manned mission to the moon, and a moon rover that will explore the lunar surface much as we’ve done on Mars. By comparison, President Barack Obama has announced plans for manned space flight, a public/private cooperation between NASA and a number of corporations. His proposal includes another manned mission to the moon by 2025, and a possible manned mission to Mars by 2030. However, NASA won’t even be testing their touted deep-space mission rocket until 2017. Though the U.S. presence in space is still unmatched, China seems to be pressing their economic advantage toward a greater presence as well.

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It seems that every 8-10 years there’s the imminent threat of another asteroid heading toward the planet, potentially wiping out life on Earth. This decade that asteroid is 99942 Apophis, a near-earth asteroid that is expected to pass very close to Earth in about eighteen years and, although missing us, it will pass through a strange gravitational “keyhole” that will slingshot the space boulder back around to possibly collide with our planet seven years later. This has prompted scientists in China and the U.S. to propose measures to divert the asteroid away using a tried and true tactic for diverting other earth-bound objects moving at high rates of speed; smashing things into them.
According to an article in Wired, researchers at Beijing’s Tsinghua University have developed a plan for diverting Apophis before it enters that 600 mile-wide space “keyhole” that will turn the asteroid back on itself. The plan is to take a solar-sail satellite already in a retrograde orbit and allow it to orbit directly with the planet, significantly speeding it up. The researchers believe that the 10 kg satellite, given a year of lead time, will successfully impact the 45 million ton, 1,600 foot wide asteroid with significant enough force to divert it from passing through the keyhole.
However, astrophysicists with the European Space Agency want to do one better, saying that Apophis provides a low-danger opportunity to study asteroid impact for future near-earth asteroids. The probability of Apophis actually impacting either Earth or the moon was downgraded by NASA in 2009 to a 1 in 250,000 chance. That said, your chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 14 million. The proposal, called the Impact Mitigation Preparation Mission would send two spacecraft toward Apophis, the Orbiter and the Impacter. The Impacter would collide with Apophis to divert it from Earth’s gravitational “keyhole”, while the Orbiter would stand by to study the effects. The Orbiter will study trajectory and behavior prior to impact, and immediately after impact, and may provide clues on how best to manipulate future impact hazards. Seats on the Orbiter are selling like hot cakes. Seats on the Impacter, not so much.
Apophis was, at one time, rated the highest ever on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, the only scale to measure the relative threat of space bodies actually impacting with Earth. However, in 2006 the likelihood that the asteroid would actually hit the moon or Earth was downgraded, and again in 2009. In 2013 Apophis will be passing within 9 million miles of the planet, allowing scientists to better calculate how 2029 and 2036 might shake out. In any case, it could provide the TV shot Mythbusters with their highest rated episode yet.

    

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A recent report released by a handful of scientists was based on a “scenario analysis” of an alien invasion. In this scenario, it looks at the likelihood that aliens would “wipe out” the human race because of our hand in global warming… just as plausible a reason as any other, I suppose. After all, there have been a lot of alien invasion movies where the motive wasn’t know, and now we can point to an easy culprit: climate change. In fact, it’s the very fact our rapidly expanding populations that would incite the aliens to this carnage. It’s remarkable, as Megan McArdle of Atlantic Monthly pointed out, “how often the aliens in science fiction just happen to be preoccupied with the exact same political issues that obsessed intellectuals of the era when the fiction was written.”

     Not really of course, because every issue are framed within our own social and cultural perceptions. That said, the authors do make an interesting case for their scenario. According to the report, the authors see now as the crux of our civilization’s expansion; a critical moment in which the changing composition of our atmosphere might act like a “beacon” to sentient alien species interested in our planet. Because we often study other planet’s atmospheric compositions through the radiance of their light spectrums, alien species may be conducting those exact studies on our planet and, seeing the climate’s composition changing very rapidly, may come to our weary planet’s rescue.
    One of the other variables in this scenario is our civilization’s expansion. As we grow quickly, we may be, “prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth.” Again, a pretty humanistic view, but hey, we’re playing a game of hypotheticals here, right? Still, the authors envision that a, “preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilization may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand.” Thus, aliens would attempt to wipe out our species before we were able to, say, achieve widespread space travel because we would become much more able to protect ourselves. I suppose that’s plausible given he fact that private industry is now driving space travel in this country and one of the authors, Jonathan Adler, is connected to NASA who recently had to abandon their federally-funded manned-space travel programs. Perhaps this is the work of someone a little bitter at that fact?
     Whatever the reasons for the so-called “study”, it does make for some diverting reading, and it gives sci-fi lovers the world over one more motive to attach to all of those seemingly arbitrary alien-invasion films. Of course, Adler-and-Team aren’t the first scientists to publicly wonder about a possible alien invasion. Famous physicist Stephen Hawking one paralleled a possible alien invasion to the European invasion of the American continent in the 15th and 16th centuries. I suppose, if I’m going to play the game, I have to acknowledge the fact that the best things we have to offer is an organism-rich planet. Should our species lose that bargaining chip, it might not play out well with out invaders.