Extra-terrestrial life – the next 10 years

5 years ago if you had told me I would be travelling to astronomy clubs to give lectures I would have laughed at you. But last Monday I was in Galway to talk to the astronomy club there about whether the universe is a machine for creating life.

Though when I give the talk again, which I may do next week in Cork, the title ought to be “Extra-terrestrial life – the next 10 years”. I started by saying that I didn’t intend to talk about extra-terrestrial intelligence, despite knowing from audience questions on previous occasions that this is what tends to arouse most interest. I quoted Paul Davies as saying that he wouldn't be surprised if there is no life of any description in the universe except here on Earth. Despite holding that view, Davies is head of the SETI post-detection committee (*). He will be the first to be informed if (despite his doubts) ET does actually call.

Interrogating the Martian microbe
Are you related to LUCA?

I strongly recommended his book The Eerie Silence.

I used a tree of life diagramme to show that all Earth life is related, and ultimately descended from a single-cell organism which lived 3.8 billion years ago. The cell rejoices in the name LUCA – the last universal common ancestor. I then suggested that number 1 on the list of developments to look out for, is this: if a microbe should be discovered on Mars, will it turn out to be related to LUCA? I  showed the interrogation room where an answer to this question will be demanded of the Martian microbe.

If the answer is yes, Paul Davies may be right. Life may consist of just us and a few stray cousin microbes in the solar system. If not (something which Paul Davies admits he secretly hopes for) then we can conclude that life will be abundant in the universe.

Other forthcoming developments that I suggested the audience keep en eye on were

1 – Mars exploration : NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission which should arrive 2012, and a decision on whether to fund a Mars sample return mission.

2 - Synthetic biology – will it provide insights on life: what life is, where to look for it?

3 – Lake Vostok (Antarctica) – scientists are drilling through 4km of ice to test the cold dark waters beneath. Next year may see the success of this project – will Lake Vostok provide insights into possibilities for life on icy moons such as Europa?

4 – Decisions on solar system moon missions, eg a Jupiter Europa orbiter.

5 - Cambrian Explosion – this was the event 543 million years ago where evolution invented the idea of body parts – heads, guts etc. A fluke occurrence, or inevitable? This ongoing debate has something to say about the prospects for complex life elsewhere (always supposing that there’s any life at all elsewhere).

* He is chair of the Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Just discovered SourceWatch

Just discovered SourceWatch which bills itself as a “collaborative, specialized encyclopedia of the people, organizations, and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch profiles the activities of front groups, PR spinners, industry-friendly experts, industry-funded organizations, and think tanks trying to influence public opinion on behalf of corporations or government.”

US based I think.  It seems right on to me but I should welcome an independent endorsement. Can't be too careful with internet information.

Is the Tea Party a form of fascism?

Just got round to reading The Guardian of 10th September, where it reports that the Taxpayers Alliance in Britain, a lobby group for low taxes and small government, is taking advice from Freedom Works, one of the well-funded organisations behind the Tea Party.  Taxpayers Alliance founder Matthew Elliott wants to organise mass anti-union demonstrations next time there’s a tube strike in London.

A working definition of fascism is a mass movement mobilised in the interests of big business.  Fascist movements take steps to hide their pro-business aims from supporters by adopting anti-business slogans.  Think of the anti-Wall Street rhetoric of the Tea Party.

There's a video of an hour-long Noam Chomsky lecture on this, on, off all places, the Veterans Today website (Military Veterans and Foreign Affairs Journal). He says “Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error,” and “I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio, and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering here at home.”  He talks about the bitter the class war relentlessly waged by the US business community, a business community which, he says, is unusual amongst industrial societies for being intensely class conscious. The date is April this year.

Amongst the aims of Freedom Works are to "Fight The Left ...[and to create] a grassroots juggernaut capable of going toe-to-toe with the unions, extreme enviros, and the MoveOn.org's of the world." 

According to the The Guardian, Freedom Works has received funding from the tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. The Guardian also reports that local branches of Freedom Works' sister organization, Americans for Prosperity have also received tobacco money and oppose smoke-free workplace laws and cigarette taxes. 

Information in the two preceding paragraphs from SourceWatch. See my comment on this.