Within a year, we have been able to see our solar system as never before. In November 2014, the Philae Probe of the Rosetta spacecraft landed on the halter-shaped Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In April 2015, the Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around the largest of the asteroids, Ceres (590 miles in diameter), orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. And in July, the New Horizons mission made the first flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto, making it the most distant solar-system object to be visited. Other spacecraft continue to investigate other planets.
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I realize I’m privileged to have access to some of the world’s cutting edge science, but last week was particularly special with a visit to University College London to hear a mixture of astrophysicists and astrobiologists talk to journalists about their cutting edge work,organized by the ABSW, the Association of British Science Writers, of which I’m a member.
Now we all know scientists can sometimes waffle, but this brave half-dozen weren’t allowed that luxury. The format for the talks was a pecha kucha – born in Japan, you have 20 slides, each lasting for exactly 20 seconds, to get your point across. That’s 6 minutes, 40 seconds (and not a second more) to say who you are, what you do and pitch for a place in the science columns of Britain’s newspapers.
First up, Giovanna Tinetti asked what exoplanets are actually made of. For those out of the loop, exoplanets are those orbiting other stars, far beyond out own solar system. We weren’t sure such things even existed until the 1990s, but nowadays there are more than 700 confirmed cases, with hundreds more candidates awaiting confirmation. recently some astronomers have gone so far as to sayy that every star in our galaxy must have planets orbiting.The most productive way to search for these faraway worlds is by using the Kepler Space Telescope. Looking back along a populous spiral arm of the Milky Way, this other Hubble is a study in concentration, staring fixedly at a single window on the stars, watching for the most minute variation in their light. And by analying this light – the chemical clues hidden within the spectra, scientists like Giovanna can tell what planets hundreds of light years away are made from. She’s looking for those that are habitable. Soon, New Earth need not be a thing of science fiction stories, especially if Giovanna’s plans for ECHO, the Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory, are approved by ESA (the European Space Agency).
Ofer Lahav, Professor of Astronomy at UCL, chose to talk about dark energy, the mysterious entity that apparently makes up three quarters of out universe, but which we didn’t even know was there until 1998. For me the most incredible, unexpected discovery of the last fifty years has been that the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing. No one expected this. Everyone wants to know why, but Ofer was impressively agnostic in his views. Either an entity we call dark energy permeates space itself, acting as Einsteins cosmological constant, or the best theories we have are very wrong. Once upon a time our best theory was Newton’s, but it couldn’t explain why Mercury orbited the Sun the way it did. Along came Einstein, General Relativity and a revolution in science. With the dark energy anomaly, are we on the cusp of another such paradigm shift?
Remember the disgusting, voracious insectile aliens from the "Alien" movies -- and how their blood was a kind of corrosive slime that burned holes into whatever it touched? Turns out that -- well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me answer the question in my title. What I'm researching right now: Caves.
Here's the wildest info I've come across. Just within the last two decades, speleologists (cave scientists) have discovered a new form of life in some very unusual caves. There are a few caves with a highly sulfuric ecosystem -- the sulfuric acid is so concentrated, in fact, that it's close to battery acid. Cavers have to wear protective clothing to keep from being burned, and respirators so they aren't killed by poisonous sulfur gas. (What nervous twitches the families of these scientists must have!)
So, we have a highly toxic environment in these caves, too toxic for most known life forms. And yet there are microbes that dwell and thrive in these conditions. Generically they are called extremophiles. Some of these microbes form a kind of slimy matrix to live in, and threads of this slime hang like rubbery stalactites from the walls and ceilings. Called "snotties" (for obvious reasons) these microbes are giving scientists some new clues to possible life
beyond our earthly boundary. Talk about thinking outside the box.
So, what am I doing with this information? I don't know yet. That's the great thing about being a writer. I'm just following an intriguing trail to see where it takes me. At the moment my trail is leading me deep into a rather terrifying cave. If I don't make it back out ... send help!
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Could they use snotties as bioremediation tools to clean up Superfund sites? My research for one book often leads me to a subject for another book. And once I came out of a cave with an idea for a story. Ah, research -- endless fun!
Excellent, nature never ceases to amaze. I think that‘s a typo on the slimy string-things... My husband does astrobiology research and according to one of his cave-dwelling colleagues, they are “snotites,” as in stalactites. We‘re planning to join her for some lavatube exploration this fall... yay!!