Oh NASA, not again :(

[VCH]

Since when does NASA let their scientists publish in non-peer reviewed journals?

 

 

 

Life in meteorites

 

 

I understand that nobody has disproven this guys claim. But the fact that the paper was not peer-reviewed suggests we shouldn't take it too seriously. The world leading journals Science and Nature would never pass a story like this over if it where credible.

 

Oh and Fox news broke the story. uhhg

 

I was exited for a few minutes though.

[Erebus the Black]

You missed the statement in the referred to page:

Quote:

Official Statement from Dr. Rudy Schild,

Center for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian,

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Cosmology.

 

Dr. Richard Hoover is a highly respected scientist and astrobiologist with a prestigious record of accomplishment at NASA. Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis. Our intention is to publish the commentaries, both pro and con, alongside Dr. Hoover's paper. In this way, the paper will have received a thorough vetting, and all points of view can be presented. No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough analysis, and no other scientific journal in the history of science has made such a profoundly important paper available to the scientific community, for comment, before it is published. We believe the best way to advance science, is to promote debate and discussion.

[*i]

NASA and people who work for NASA are two different things entirely. I work at a similar institution that, when it comes to publication, pretty much follows an academic freedom stance so long as there is nothing that is proprietary in there. That said, they have a big fat disclaimer on the cover page that says that this does not speak for my employer or the US government.

[VCH]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

You missed the statement in the referred to page:

Quote:

Official Statement from Dr. Rudy Schild,
Center for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian,
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Cosmology.

Dr. Richard Hoover is a highly respected scientist and astrobiologist with a prestigious record of accomplishment at NASA. Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis. Our intention is to publish the commentaries, both pro and con, alongside Dr. Hoover's paper. In this way, the paper will have received a thorough vetting, and all points of view can be presented. No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough analysis, and no other scientific journal in the history of science has made such a profoundly important paper available to the scientific community, for comment, before it is published. We believe the best way to advance science, is to promote debate and discussion.

They did the review after the paper was accepted for publication. I know the editors statement doesn't make that clear. But indeed there was no review beforehand.

Oh and there's this Press release from NASA:

"NASA is a scientific and technical agency committed to a culture of openness with the media and public. While we value the free exchange of ideas, data, and information as part of scientific and technical inquiry, NASA cannot stand behind or support a scientific claim unless it has been peer-reviewed or thoroughly examined by other qualified experts. This paper was submitted in 2007 to the International Journal of Astrobiology. However, the peer review process was not completed for that submission. NASA also was unaware of the recent submission of the paper to the Journal of Cosmology or of the paper's subsequent publication. Additional questions should be directed to the author of the paper. - Dr. Paul Hertz, chief scientist of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington"



And a real astrobilogists from NASA says Hoover is actually an engineer.

Here

[Erebus the Black]

I kind of lost you there, the only thing I did get from your post is that this article is 4 years old.

[darint]

In the peer review process an article is given to several experts in the field of study to examine the article and decide whether the claims made in the article are credible and advance the field of study. Sometimes they request revisions, further explanations, or even further experiments. In other cases they may accept or reject the paper outright.

 

In this case the "journal" decided to more or less accept the paper sight-unseen, because the topic was sufficiently sexy, and invite all of the field of study to chime in. They will then publish the paper and (presumably) selected comments both pro and con. This, in my opinion, is a blatant publicity-seeking joke on the part of the publishers of this "journal" and will not advance the field of study one whit. But they will no doubt get headlines, downloads, and interviews, which I suppose was really the whole point.

[*i]

If you do a little bit of digging, you will find the "Journal of Cosmology" is not a reputable journal, despite its prestigious sounding name. I'll quote PZ Meyers on his blog post:

 

Quote:

But even worse, the paper claiming the discovery of bacteria fossils in carbonaceous chondrites was published in … the Journal of Cosmology. I've mentioned Cosmology before — it isn't a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth. It doesn't exist in print, consists entirely of a crude and ugly website that looks like it was sucked through a wormhole from the 1990s, and publishes lots of empty noise with no substantial editorial restraint. For a while, it seemed to be entirely the domain of a crackpot named Rhawn Joseph who called himself the emeritus professor of something mysteriously called the Brain Research Laboratory, based in the general neighborhood of Northern California (seriously, that was the address: "Northern California"), and self-published all of his pseudo-scientific "publications" on this web site.

[Dantius]

Frankly, most everything NASA's done in the past decade has been a way of waving their arms and screaming "LOOK AT ME I'M STILL RELEVANT LOOK LOOK LOOK LOOK!", but for whatever reason it's not working. I don't understand why the single most powerful and ("respected and" used to go here) well-funded space exploration organization has to convince us it's still relevant instead of just going and doing things that make it so (see what I did there), but apparently they've decided it's crucially important to the NASA mission.

 

EDIT: This slipped in before I read *i's post. If this isn't a NASA guy in a NASA journal, it does rather undercut this specific instance, but my point about NASA doing just this kind of stuff still stands. Remember the arsenic based life forms found on Earth everybody made a big deal about and then nobody mentioned ever again? Like that.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

I don't understand why the single most powerful and ("respected and" used to go here) well-funded space exploration organization has to convince us it's still relevant instead of just going and doing things that make it so (see what I did there), but apparently they've decided it's crucially important to the NASA mission.

NASA has been on a death spiral in importance ever since the first Bush put his vice president, Dan Quayle, as the White House representative. The two shuttle disasters and delays in launching haven't helped. NASA has always been one of the first agencies to take budget cuts.

[Alorael at Large]

Space exploration is technically difficult, very expensive, and not likely to lead to any immediate and obvious applications. It's a great thing for public PR, so governments like it. It's really costly, so governments then turn around and slash budgets.

 

—Alorael, who considers NASA's mission similar to any basic research. It needs to be balanced with its literally astronomical costs, but it also needs to be done. If space research isn't funded, all the discoveries that can come out of it will go undiscovered. Is that a huge loss? There's now way to know without discovering.

[Triumph]

Within my lifetime, I haven't (as a common layman ) had the sense that NASA had much of goal. Before my time, there was the goal of getting to the moon. I would argue that NASA has, in a sense, been in decline ever since them. For a while, setting up the International Space Station was a goal, but not one that ever seemed to capture popular imagination, nor one that has yielded exciting results. Whatever NASA is *actually* doing, my perception of it is an organization without an particular objectives anymore. The shuttle disasters and the fumbles with Mars rovers or whatever certainly didn't help the agency's image either.

 

Perhaps part of how we think of NASA is shaped by the tremendous excited and prestige associated with it earlier in the 20th century. There is a sense of decline because NASA and space exploration once induced so much excitement and interest, and now NASA does not. Were it some other research-focused entity, one that never garnered the headlines the lunar landing did, we would not now think of it as being in decline.

[Dantius]

I can't remember who exactly, but one of the best quotes on NASA was something to the effect of:

 

Originally Posted By: SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE

NASA's greatest accomplishment, in all its history, was making space exploration boring.

[Callie]

I remember being excited when I heard that NASA might send missions to Titan, but my interest has declined significantly. There was also talk of sending man to Mars, but the excitement just isn't there because there's already so many pictures of it and there was quite a bit of publicity about the Mars rover, and as Alorael noted, it's costly.

 

This cartoon comes to mind when reading this thread:

 

[*i]

In addition to space flight, NASA does plenty of good basic science and engineering. The problem is that part tends (exceptions abound of course) not to have quickly realizable applications unlike other science and engineering labs in the US, where you can expect to get something into general use in a few years. Astrobiology, cosmology simulations, and observational astrophysics are great things that will hopefully benefit us down the road, but that's a long way into a hypothetical future. I don't begrudge them for trying to hype some of their neater stuff, because everyone else does it too: they just don't get the same media attention as Oak Ridge, for example.

 

I wouldn't be too harsh on NASA for this specific publication. If they are like their sister organizations, they only review the documents for administrative and legal restrictions, and not technical content before approving release. It is the responsibility of the authors to stake their personal credibility and potentially their careers with the technical worth. The good news is such spectacular failures tend to "self-correcting" in this respect.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Within my lifetime, I haven't (as a common layman ) had the sense that NASA had much of goal. Before my time, there was the goal of getting to the moon. I would argue that NASA has, in a sense, been in decline ever since them. For a while, setting up the International Space Station was a goal, but not one that ever seemed to capture popular imagination, nor one that has yielded exciting results. Whatever NASA is *actually* doing, my perception of it is an organization without an particular objectives anymore. The shuttle disasters and the fumbles with Mars rovers or whatever certainly didn't help the agency's image either.

The Mars rovers are a pretty funny thing to be upset with NASA about, considering that after a few initial problems they lasted much longer than they were designed to.

[VCH]

I understand that NASA distanced themselves from this publication. But I don't think most journalists will give them that credit.

 

As one of my friends said "to truly explore space, we need to get the corporations involved". Meaning that we need greed to drive space exploration, just like it did for exploration of the Earth.

 

[Student of Trinity]

Corporations are involved in space exploration. Always have been. Everything that's been sent to space, at least from Europe or North America, was made by some for-profit corporation — on a contract from some government agency.

 

And that's how corporate involvement is likely to stay. Nobody is keeping corporations un-involved. If there were potential profit in space, they'd be there on their own. Since there's not, nothing can get them there, except paying them with tax money, which is what is done.

 

Private corporations have put up communications satellites, because that can make money. Otherwise, it's hopeless. Space as a business proposition has far too high an entry cost.

 

I do imagine that someday human civilization will spread into space. And once people are out there, they will do business. But I think it will happen very slowly, with research stations that gradually grow. I doubt there will ever be any bonanza in space that makes people immigrate there en masse.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I doubt there will ever be any bonanza in space that makes people immigrate there en masse.

Getting away from the rest of us? If it ever becomes as commonplace as ocean travel once was in the sixteenth century, then people will flee Earth for non-economic reasons.

[Student of Trinity]

Right, I'd say. But not in enormous droves.

 

Well, not in proportionally enormous droves. Even a very small proportion of the late 21st century population of Earth might be a respectable pre-modern cultural mass.

[VCH]

What I meant was we need to have some way to make money off of space exploration, so the corporations no longer need to depend on the government for money.

 

Otherwise there is not a strong incentive to do much of anything. As I said the possibility of finding new wealth drove the exploration of the world. It must also drive space exploration.

[Student of Trinity]

What I was saying is, there is no way to make money off space exploration. Except, that is, among people that are already in space. But now that I look at the numbers, maybe you have a point.

 

The cost of getting up the gravity well is high; I would have said it was prohibitive, so that nothing is worth bringing back from space. But maybe you just have to bring the right stuff.

 

To get a pound of anything out of Earth's gravity takes about 3 million 30 million Joules of energy. The cheapest source of energy on Earth is still gasoline; burning a pound of gasoline gives bit over 20 million Joules. So what you want is to launch some vehicle out of Earth gravity, send it out to harvest some valuable stuff, and bring the stuff back through Earth's atmosphere. Your vehicle has to be able to collect the stuff and protect it from reentry heat.

 

In principle I guess you could try to make a big heat shielded shell that can hold a huge volume of valuable stuff from space but doesn't weigh much itself. But as a rough guess, I'd think you'd be lucky to be able to haul back down safely anything much above the launch weight of your vehicle.

 

Even so, then, since oil holds about four times roughly the energy you need to lift things into space, the value range you're talking about is roughly that of oil. Anything worth much more by weight than oil might be worth bringing back from space.

 

I doubt there's any saffron in space. But rare earth minerals? Maybe ... If we can find that stuff in asteroids, we might get commercial space mining.

 

Huh.

 

Of course, there's always opals in Gefjon. But you're better off just disabling pirate carriers and boarding them. At several hundred thousand credits each, you'll be rich in no time.

[Aran]

As a rule of thumb, if it sounds like something out of a Dan Brown novel, take it with a grain of salt.

[Lord Safey]

To make any money off it you have to drive the cost of space travel. Right now the cost of traveling back and forth from space, will eat any profit you would have made and then some(excluding the occasional research project or communication satellite).

[Niemand]

@SoT: Are you sure you didn't drop a factor of ten? I'm getting ~3e7 J to blast a one pound object to infinite distance starting from ~sea level. (That is, assuming that you magically apply your energy to instantly put the object at escape velocity, rather than accelerating over time with a rocket, which necessitates accelerating some of the fuel as well.)

 

The binding energy for an object at the Earth's surface should be E_b = -g * R * m, where R is the Earth's radius and m is the object's mass. The energy to free the object is just -E_b, and with g=9.81 m/s^2, R=6.36e6 m, and m=.45 kg, E_b=-2.83e7 J.

[Student of Trinity]

Yeah, I lost a factor of ten. Thanks; I corrected the post above.

 

The point still stands, inasmuch as I wasn't working to within a factor of ten, anyway. In principle, stuff worth, say, a hundred or a thousand times more than oil by weight might be worth trying to bring back from space. We're fighting very low efficiency factors with present technology. Putting something into space seems to cost a few hundred million, even though it weighs much less than a hundred thousand tons. So commercializing space does seem prohibitive at present. But it might not be permanently crazy.

[Lord Safey]

While I am uncertain how feasible this may or may not be I think this: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=22108

might make some good food for thought.

[Alorael at Large]

It's tempting to think of space as the final frontier, but it's wrong. Traveling to a new land is just that: land. In space, there's basically nothing. You can't farm it; you can't even breathe it. Maybe you can mine it, but it's almost certainly more efficient to do it with machines.

 

The cost of getting people into space is huge. The cost of keeping people in space is huge. There's no foreseeable way to reduce those costs except by footing that bill up front so individuals or groups can make a go of it. And there's very little enticement to space; it's kind of like Earth, but more empty, hostile, and unpleasant. Microgravity can only be fun for so long.

 

Even if there is pressure to leave—intolerance, overcrowding, oppressive government, whatever—there's really nowhere to go. Starting at the end of the 15th century, sailing across the Atlantic made sense. Once you arrived, you were on land and could do your land things. The barriers to becoming even slightly independent on another planet or artificial habitat are much, much higher. The sacrifice involved is greater.

 

—Alorael, who can only imagine that government funding would put research groups in space, and that research groups would slowly collect hangers-on until they eventually became commercial centers in their own right. Maybe the same could be true of space-mining boomtowns. The biggest barrier, though, might be that the drop in quality of life from 21st century or later Earth living to space is likely to be huge. Just imagine getting internet access with minutes of delay!

[Dantius]

You could grow hydroponic wheat on the moon and the shoot it back to Earth with a giant cannon as a metaphor for how much worse the government is at managing resources than individuals.

 

No, wait, I'm confusing Heinlein with reality again. My bad.

[VCH]

What about Helium-3?

 

It's apparently worth (as of 2006) roughly $4 billion per ton.

 

Russia has or had plans for mining it on the Moon by 2020.

[Dintiradan]

Well, you learn something new every day. I had no idea noble gases were priced by the ton.

[Student of Trinity]

Yeah, that's the kind of thing. Affectionately known as 'threelium' by people who studied its superfluid properties at low temperatures.

 

Maybe someday people will terraform Mars or Venus, and there'll be large populations there, and reason for lots of interplanetary trade. Lots compared to none, that is. I have a hard time imagining it will ever be large compared to trade on a planet.

 

The real reason to travel would be if we could get to another habitable world. Then there might be immigrants, much like the early European settlers of the Americas. But there wouldn't be too many if it took generations to get there. How many folks want to voluntarily accept life in prison without parole, which is what life on a generation ship would probably be like, just so that the great-grandchildren they might never see could try to live on a new planet?

[Lord Safey]

Terraforming Venus, main issus is the we can't find any water their, other wise just dump some heat resistant cyno bacteria and wait a bit would be enough to terrafroming it. They would in theory slowly convert the greenhouse gases to something breathable. That throw something between venus and the sun to bring the amount energy reaching venus to earth like levels. The hardest part in this is bringing vast oceans of water to Venus.

 

Mars on the other hand in theory has everything it needs for life to live accept for heat.

 

Currently the best bet is for self supporting self contained habitat structures one these worlds. As far as I can tell their would be plenty of volunteers for such missions. Even with no prospects of going back. The main issue is the idea of sending some to such a life, even if the want it.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

The hardest part in this is bringing vast oceans of water to Venus.

And bringing the surface temperature down below the boiling point of said water. And making the atmosphere breathable and non-corrosive, not to mention thin enough so you don't get crushed.

Quote:

Mars on the other hand in theory has everything it needs for life to live accept for heat.

And a breathable atmosphere. And a decent magnetic field. And any natural protection from the occasional worldwide dust storm.

Quote:

Currently the best bet is for self supporting self contained habitat structures one these worlds. As far as I can tell their would be plenty of volunteers for such missions. Even with no prospects of going back. The main issue is the idea of sending some to such a life, even if the want it.

Until technology improves dramatically, I'd advise against it. The odds of someone going on such a mission and staying even relatively sane are approximately nil. Also, it would be a good idea to fix this world's problems before tinkering too much with another one.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Quote:

Currently the best bet is for self supporting self contained habitat structures one these worlds. As far as I can tell their would be plenty of volunteers for such missions. Even with no prospects of going back. The main issue is the idea of sending some to such a life, even if the want it.

Until technology improves dramatically, I'd advise against it. The odds of someone going on such a mission and staying even relatively sane are approximately nil. Also, it would be a good idea to fix this world's problems before tinkering too much with another one.

While I, too, dream of pipes, I find it unlikely that we'll ever "fix" this planet's problems. As such, we should try to look to go to try to spread out, to avoid putting all our eggs in one basket, so to speak. I agree, however, that our focus should be terrestrial until we have the technology to seriously make plans for other worlds.

[Dintiradan]

You're all forgetting that the Soviets set up a base on Mars long ago.

[*i]

Originally Posted By: VCH

What about Helium-3?

It's apparently worth (as of 2006) roughly $4 billion per ton.

Russia has or had plans for mining it on the Moon by 2020.

Helium-3's most useful application in neutron detectors because of its chemical and nuclear properties. The price is so high right now because of a shortage since we have not been manufacturing nearly enough tritium in nuclear reactors to keep up with demand. If supply increases, price will, of course, drop. Mining the moon is a ridiculously uneconomical compared to inserting targets in nuclear reactors, making tritium, and waiting for it to decay into helium-3.

There is talk about using helium-3 as fuel for nuclear fusion since it produces very little radioactive byproducts. Only under that condition could mining the moon be a practical avenue. Sadly, nuclear fusion with helium-3 is significantly more difficult than the easiest fusion reaction, and we are only just approaching the ability to design a physics experiment, not a workable reactor, that ignites a deuterium-tritium plasma in something resembling to a steady state condition.

[Erebus the Black]

Of course, a nuclear meltdown on the dark side of the moon would be less dangerous than one on Earth's surface, especially with hydrogen reactors.

I still can't believe that the CERN is getting more press than the ITER.

[*i]

Nuclear fusion reactors cannot meltdown. The reason nuclear fission reactors, specifically current generation light-water reactors, can is that the fuel immediately after operation has enough radioactivity from fission fragments that it would heat it up to melting without cooling. Fusion reactors would not have this issue. Also no one is proposing fusion reactors on the moon; the helium-3 would be shipped for use on Earth.

[Erebus the Black]

True. However if there were to hit the reactor a quake at it's heart it might cause it to rupture and release a swirling vortex of plasma for a few seconds or minutes melting/evaporating anything in its path.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Nothing is perfect. I'm sure we could come up with a situation in which anything is deadly. A wind turbine could break off and smash your house. I guess wind power is the work of the devil.

[Erebus the Black]

You're trying to cause drift, aren't you?!

Read back a bit and you'll see I was just saying why a reactor on the moon is safer than one planet-side.

[The Ratt]

I don't see how it can be safer, no matter what planet you are on, if it's the same design as the one on earth, unless less gravity makes accidents more or less likely to occur. Causing less damage to life and monetarily is a different story.

[*i]

Quote:

True. However if there were to hit the reactor a quake at it's heart it might cause it to rupture and release a swirling vortex of plasma for a few seconds or minutes melting/evaporating anything in its path.

Far shorter than that. What would happen once the delicate balance of magnetic fields are lost (faster than the structural damage) is what is called a disruption, where the plasma would rapidly destabilize, deposit its energy in the wall, and that would be that. Granted, this would be bad because the first wall would be heavily ablated and possibly melted, but the scenario you posit just can't physically happen.

Worst that could happen is a tritium release, which would be a radiological concern in the immediate vicinity of the plant. Thankfully, tritium diffuses away quickly and its health effects can be mitigated by drinking lots of fluids.

[Student of Trinity]

Hey, it depends on how much plasma there is. Enough plasma, it blows right through the wall and has plenty left to swirl out. And for an efficient reactor, you do want a lot of plasma.

[*i]

That's true, although not from the designs I've seen. The pressures are far too low for such a thing.

[msazad]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

NASA has been on a death spiral in importance ever since the first Bush put his vice president, Dan Quayle, as the White House representative. The two shuttle disasters and delays in launching haven't helped. NASA has always been one of the first agencies to take budget cuts.

share of the Federal budget != importance
Technical advances means more can be achieved with less.

The Shuttle was a money pit. The most important thing it did was Hubble. This was a much better use of funds than Appolo or the ISS but was still way too costly.

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Within my lifetime, I haven't (as a common layman ) had the sense that NASA had much of goal. Before my time, there was the goal of getting to the moon. I would argue that NASA has, in a sense, been in decline ever since them.

What NASA has done since Appolo was so much more important than that putting people on the Moon (what has that achieved exactly?). You have no idea!
NASA has a communication problem. Science in general has a communication problem in the USA.

Originally Posted By: Triumph

There is a sense of decline because NASA and space exploration once induced so much excitement and interest, and now NASA does not.

Let's be honest: it's not space exploration that induced so much excitement but the pointless competition with the USSR. Now the cold war is over and NASA has naturally fallen way down the priority list behind such grand endeavors like Operation Iraqi Liberation.

[msazad]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

How many folks want to voluntarily accept life in prison without parole, which is what life on a generation ship would probably be like, just so that the great-grandchildren they might never see could try to live on a new planet?

I would of course. Lots of people would. I don't understand why there is the slightest doubt about this in your mind. And not only for a settlement attempt. I'd be worth it just for an expedition. People give their lives for much less worthy causes all the time.
A prison without screws in which you raise children ain't a prison.

Humanity may never be able to launch a manned interstellar expedition to a worthy target anyway. It would be so costly that sending a machine that can raise human children might be less of a stretch. If humanity ever shoots for the stars, it will definitely start with machines.