The search for life

On Monday this week, Nasa — which is on a roll exploring Mars — found some other interesting clues suggesting life could have existed on the planet, billions of years ago. The hints are in the shape of little, rounded pebbles — exactly the sorts you’d expect to find on the beds of our Earth’s 117 million lakes.

The pebbles indicate there was flowing water on the planet once… and lots of it — enough to shape rocks and more importantly, move them. Deducing how far they were moved by a current will allow our world’s experts to determine how stable water was on the mysterious red planet, currently moving in an orbit around the Sun 225 million kilometres away from us.

But all this talk about water, pebbles and current on Mars has allowed chairs to be handed over to a specific community who have been, so far, ignored from rooms discussing applied, quantifiable and justifiable science. Alien hunters, or the people who shoot the grainiest videos ever. However, to be fair, there are two types of ET hunters — the serious ones — including entire government-backed apparatuses — and then we have Hollywood, Scientology and Tom Cruise, who believe we are in truth, advanced, immortal beings residing in alien bodies.
 
Earth-like Mars and the intensifying search for life

Let’s move on to our philistine neighbour, China. Again, on Monday, it emerged the communist nation is building the world’s biggest radio telescope capable of picking up the faintest ‘unnatural’ signals from deep space. This “listening device” will be 500 metres across when completed and will be called FAST — short for five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope.

“It is like identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm,” Nan Rendong, the chief scientist of the FAST project, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency. The system is worth millions in dollars and is literally, a shot in the dark given how long the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute has been at it, with no luck.  And back on Mars itself, Nasa is doing its best to track the origin of the water — a possible key to uncovering evidence of life — current or extinguished.

In an infinite Universe, there must be other life — stephen hawking, Scientist

Richard Zurek, Chief Scientist from the Mars Programme Office at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains: “Early in its history, billions of years ago, Mars was more Earth-like with liquid water present on its surface. That is the most likely time for life to have gotten started on the planet, a time similar to when life may have started on Earth. The question is:  Would such life be able to adapt as the conditions for liquid water on the surface of Mars became less favourable over time?”

“We need to find the source of that water. If there is life on Mars today, it is more likely that it would prefer a source of water which is not as briny as the flows indicated by the recent discovery of salts,” he adds.

So, how much of the Mars surface has been mapped?

“Essentially, all of the planet has been mapped at moderate spatial resolution of about 6 m/pixel (able to resolve features that are  20 metres across). When we see interesting places in that data, we ‘zoom in’ with a higher resolution camera, which can detect metre-sized objects. We have covered just over two per cent of the planet at that resolution, roughly proportional to the area of India when compared to the land area of the Earth, of course. The coverage is scattered over the planet and not concentrated in just one place. We look at places where there appears to be something changing, like the recurring slope lineae, those narrow streaks that darken, grow and fade, which appear to be due to the action of liquid water and like other phenomena: new gullies, sand dune movement, changing frost. Repeated coverage gives us stereo and helps us detect those changes with time.”

Heads and tales: The massive heads at Easter Island — known as the moai. Many believe they have alien origins

Zurek continues: “The tilt of the Martian rotation axis is very similar to that of Earth, so Mars has seasons just like Earth’s, except that the seasons on Mars are almost twice as long because of the longer Mars year.  With its thin atmosphere and greater distance from the Sun, water is much less likely to stay in a liquid form on Mars. Fresh water would either freeze due to the low temperatures or boil away due to the low surface pressure.  Add salts to that water, however, and it can stay liquid for a greater part of the day and for more days in the warm season.  The salts detected by the Mars orbiters are particularly effective at keeping water liquid when they are in suspension. Even so, Mars has a more extreme environment than the highest deserts on Earth.” However, he’s not very confident there’s proof pointing at the existence of a civilisation.

“I believe that intelligent life would have colonised the surface of the planet, building structures like roads and buildings. We have seen no evidence of that even though we can see things as small as the Curiosity rover and its tracks.”

Which is why true science and modern tech — instead of relying on ancient texts and mythology hinting at alien technologies and ancient visitors — could hold the key to discovering extra-terrestrial life.

Why we need to look

Man’s search for companion life — hopefully — is ever-expanding and evolving. At the tip of the spear is SETI — freshly infused this year with $100 million from Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. The new boost will be called Breakthrough Listen — a composite involving several radio telescopes situated in the US and Australia scanning “around one million stars in the Milky Way and a hundred nearby galaxies”.

Bedrock of information: A Nasa image shows a view from the “Kimberley” formation on Mars taken by the Curiosity rover. The strata in the foreground dip towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating flow of water toward a basin that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed.

Milner’s open letter supporting the project has been co-signed by leading lights of our time — including Stephen Hawking. “In an infinite Universe, there must be other life,” Hawking had said at the project’s launch event. There is no bigger question. It is time to commit to finding the answer.

And despite the size of his investment, Milner is not over-enthusiastic about striking gold. “It’s quite likely that we won’t find anything. But in 10 years’ time, there will be even more advances and we can work out the best strategy for the next 10 years of the project, and then maybe the next 10 after that,” he says.

Overall then, the science points skywards as experts and sceptics maintain there lies no hint in the ground beneath us. But with Mars currently opening up hundreds of possibilities — thanks to a car-sized lonely rover — it’s time for us to acknowledge that the truth, is really out there.

Ranging the Rover: A shot of Curiosity on the surface of Mars

The Ancient astronauts

There’s a school of thought which believe aliens have always existed and that they had made contact first. It’s called the ‘Ancient Alien Theory’ — about how mankind was visited by intelligent life forms — capable of flight — who then helped us innovate, cultivate and construct. Theorists believe these beings even helped man construct the pyramids — amongst other objects.

Interestingly, almost every culture, from the Mayans to ours, has had the myth of technologies way ahead of their time. The Vimanas, for example. At this year’s Indian Science Congress, a disastrous attempt was made to push the theory forward by Captain Anand J. Bodas who in a paper claimed flying machines existed in India 7,000 years ago. He went to the extent of describing dimensions and a radar guidance. “They were jumbo planes with 40 small engines. The craft’s radar system (known as rooparkanrahasya) was advanced enough to show shapes of oncoming objects.” Another interesting addition was the gear these ancient pilots wore. “The pilot’s clothes came from vegetation.” Basically suggesting Ravana flew Sita in business class, at high speeds, while dressed as a turnip.

Bodas’ paper was so controversial that experts filed an online petition seeking a cancellation of the Congress. “It was all rubbish,” says Kurush Feroze Dalal, the Assistant professor of archaeology at Mumbai University’s Centre for Extra-Mural Studies.

“Archaeologists have not found evidence to prove the existence of such ancient technology. The whole paper was based on fraudulent text and given the lack of scientific data, those supporting a theory arrived at a convenient answer — a leap of faith, suggesting there were such machines. Meanwhile, the only mention of ancient flight was in the Ramayana,” says Prof. Dalal.

He continues: “There’s also no evidence suggesting intelligent beings helped build the pyramids. Excavations near the monuments have proven there existed a colony of thousands of tenacious workers hired to build the structures. It was mankind all the way, not some s**t like extra-terrestrial overlords.”