Krishna Consciousness

Astronomers take peek at oldest event ever

Astronomers take peek at oldest event ever

1 day ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Astronomers have spied a gamma-ray burst from the universe's infancy, making it the oldest event ever witnessed and shedding light on cosmic origins, British and US scientists said Tuesday.

"This is the most remote gamma-ray burst ever detected, and also the most distant object ever discovered -- by some way," said Nial Tanvir at University of Leicester.

Gamma-ray bursts, the universe's most luminous explosion, happen when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. Their cores collapse into a black hole or neutron star, and gas jets, in a process still not fully understood, punch out in a spectacular surge into space.

The so-called "GRB 090423" explosion, which occurred when the universe was only 640 million years old -- some five percent of its current age -- was seen by the NASA Swift satellite on April 23.

Subsequent analysis by teams of scientists, utilizing the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, showed the satellite effectively looked back in time 13 billion years.

"Swift was designed to catch these very distant bursts," said Swift lead scientist Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"We?ve waited five years, and we finally have one."

The event's capture has the potential of illuminating astronomy in its quest to unravel the mysteries of the early universe.

"At its most basic level this discovery tells us that there were massive stars at this moment in cosmic history," said Andrew Levan at University of Warwick.

"But equally importantly we can use events like this to probe how the universe evolves when it is less than 5 percent of its current age."

Vedic Perspective

Bhagavad-gita 8.17 P              Attaining the Supreme
                             TEXT 17

                               TEXT

                      sahasra-yuga-paryantam
                     ahar yad brahmano viduh
                     ratrim yuga-sahasrantam
                     te 'ho-ratra-vido janah

                             SYNONYMS

   sahasra--thousand; yuga--millenniums; paryantam--including; ahah--day; yat--that; brahmanah--of Brahma; viduh--they know; ratrim--night; yuga--millenniums; sahasra-antam--similarly, at the end of one thousand; te--that; ahah-ratra--day and night; vidah--understand; janah--people.

                           TRANSLATION

   By human calculation, a thousand ages taken together is the duration of Brahma's one day. And such also is the duration of his night.

                             PURPORT

   The duration of the material universe is limited. It is manifested in cycles of kalpas. A kalpa is a day of Brahma, and one day of Brahma consists of a thousand cycles of four yugas or ages: Satya, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali. The cycle of Satya is characterized by virtue, wisdom and religion, there being practically no ignorance and vice, and the yuga lasts 1,728,000 years. In the Treta-yuga vice is introduced, and this yuga lasts 1,296,000 years. In the Dvapara-yuga there is an even greater decline in virtue and religion, vice increasing, and this yuga lasts 864,000 years. And finally in Kali-yuga (the yuga that we have now been experiencing over the past 5,000 years) there is an abundance of strife, ignorance, irreligion and vice, true virtue being practically nonexistent, and this yuga lasts 432,000 years. In Kali-yuga vice increases to such a point that at the termination of the yuga the Supreme Lord Himself appears as the Kalki avatara, vanquishes the demons, saves His devotees, and commences another Satya-yuga. Then the process is set rolling again. These four yugas, rotating a thousand times, comprise one day of Brahma, the creator god, and the same number comprise one night. Brahma lives one hundred of such "years" and then dies. These "hundred years" by earth calculations total to 311 trillion and 40 million earth years. By these calculations the life of Brahma seems fantastic and interminable, but from the viewpoint of eternity it is as brief as a lightning flash. In the Causal Ocean there are innumerable Brahmas rising and disappearing like bubbles in the Atlantic. Brahma and his creation are all part of the material universe, and therefore they are in constant flux.
   In the material universe not even Brahma is free from the process of birth, old age, disease and death. Brahma, however, is directly engaged in the service of the Supreme Lord in the management of this universe--therefore he at once attains liberation. Elevated sannyasis are promoted to Brahma's particular planet, Brahmaloka, which is the highest planet in the material universe and which survives all the heavenly planets in the upper strata of the planetary system, but in due course Brahma and all the inhabitants of Brahmaloka are subject to death, according to the law of material nature.

The source of "dark matter" : Visnu enters into everything--even into the minute atom

Vedic Perspective

Bg 9.8 P          The Most Confidential Knowledge           TEXT 8

                                   TEXT

                       prakrtim svam avastabhya
                       visrjami punah punah
                       bhuta-gramam imam krtsnam
                       avasam prakrter vasat

                             SYNONYMS

   prakrtim--material nature; svam--of My personal Self; avastabhya--enter in; visrjami--create; punah punah--again, again; bhuta-gramam--all these cosmic manifestations; imam--this; krtsnam--total; avasam--automatically; prakrteh--by the force of nature; vasat--under obligation.

                           TRANSLATION

   The whole cosmic order is under Me. By My will it is manifested again and again, and by My will it is annihilated at the end.

                             PURPORT

   This matter is the manifestation of the inferior energy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This has already been explained several times. At the creation, the material energy is let loose as the mahat-tattva, into which the Lord as His first Purusa incarnation, Maha-Visnu, enters. He lies within the Causal Ocean and breathes out innumerable universes, and into each universe the Lord again enters as Garbhodakasayi Visnu. Each universe is in that way created. He still further manifests Himself as Ksirodakasayi Visnu, and that Visnu enters into everything--even into the minute atom. This fact is explained here. He enters into everything.
   Now, as far as the living entities are concerned, they are impregnated into this material nature, and as a result of their past deeds they take different positions. Thus the activities of this material world begin.The activities of the different species of living beings are begun from the very moment of the creation. It is not that all is evolved. The different species of life are created immediately along with the universe. Men, animals, beasts, birds--everything is simultaneously created, because whatever desires the living entities had at the last annihilation are again manifested.

It is clearly stated here that the living entities have nothing to do with this process. The state of being in their past life in the past creation is simply manifested again, and all this is done simply by His will. This is the inconceivable potency of the Supreme Personality of God. And after creating different species of life, He has no connection with them. The creation takes place to accommodate the inclinations of the various living entities, and so the Lord does not become involved with it.

Across the Universe (Jai Gurudeva)

Vedic Perspective

SB 5.23.9   The Sisumara Planetary Systems    Text 9

                                         TEXT

                 graharksataramayam adhidaivikam
                 papapaham mantra-krtam tri-kalam
                 namasyatah smarato va tri-kalam
                 nasyeta tat-kalajam asu papam

                             SYNONYMS

   graha-rksa-tara-mayam--consisting of all the planets and stars; adhidaivikam--the leader of all the demigods; papa-apaham--the killer of sinful reactions; mantra-krtam--of those who chant the mantra mentioned above; tri-kalam--three times; namasyatah--offering obeisances; smaratah--meditating; va--or; tri-kalam--three times; nasyeta--destroys; tat-kala-jam--born at that time; asu--very quickly; papam--all sinful reactions.

                           TRANSLATION

   The body of the Supreme Lord, Visnu, which forms the Sisumara-cakra, is the resting place of all the demigods and all the stars and planets. One who chants this mantra to worship that Supreme Person three times a day--morning, noon and evening--will surely be freed from all sinful reactions. If one simply offers his obeisances to this form or remembers this form three times a day, all his recent sinful activities will be destroyed.

                             PURPORT

   Summarizing the entire description of the planetary systems of the universe, Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura says that one who is able to meditate upon this arrangement as the virat-rupa, or visva-rupa, the external body of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and worship Him three times a day by meditation will always be free from all sinful reactions. Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura estimates that Dhruvaloka, the polestar, is 3,800,000 yojanas above the sun. Above Dhruvaloka by 10,000,000 yojanas is Maharloka, above Maharloka by 20,000,000 yojanas is Janaloka, above Janaloka by 80,000,000 yojanas is Tapoloka, and above Tapoloka by 120,000,000 yojanas is Satyaloka. Thus the distance from the sun to Satyaloka is 233,800,000 yojanas, or 1,870,400,000 miles. The Vaikuntha planets begin 26,200,000 yojanas (209,600,000 miles) above Satyaloka. Thus the Visnu Purana describes that the covering of the universe is 260,000,000 yojanas (2,080,000,000 miles) away from the sun. The distance from the sun to the earth is lower planetary systems called Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Talatala, Mahatala, Rasatala and Patala. Below these lower planets by 30,000 yojanas, Sesa Naga is lying on the Garbhodaka Ocean. That ocean is 249,800,000 yojanas deep. Thus the total diameter of the universe is approximately 500,000,000 yojanas, or 4,000,000,000 miles.
Thus end the Bhaktivedanta purports to the Fifth Canto, Twenty-third Chapter of the Srimad-Bhagavatam, entitled "The Sisumara planetary System."

Could There Be a Planet Hidden on the Opposite Side of our Sun? Vedas Confirm Hidden Planet

The sun might seem like a pretty huge galactic blind spot, but we've already managed to glimpse behind it, and there's nothing there in the way of another Earth, says NASA scientist Michael Kaiser, "unless it's awfully tiny."

Kaiser is the project scientist for NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission, which in 2006 sent two golf-cart-size satellites into orbit around the sun to study the explosions on the solar surface that are a major factor in space weather. A few months after their launch, the two probes were angled such that they could see beyond the sun, but they found no planets lurking behind the big star.

Even if we couldn't see behind the sun, the gravitational pull of a roughly 100-mile-wide planet hiding there would noticeably affect the orbits of the other planets. And if astronomers had somehow missed that detail, Kaiser says, an unaccounted-for tug of gravity in the solar system would have disrupted the orbit of man-made satellites circling the Earth or interfered with intra-solar-system spacecraft. That hasn't happened, so unless beings on a hidden planet have invented both an invisibility cloak and a gravity-masking device, the other side of the sun is almost certainly just empty space.

By Danny Freedman Posted 04.20.2009

Vedic Perspective

Srimad Bhagavatam Summary of Canto 5 Chapter Twenty-four
The Subterranean Heavenly Planets

   This chapter describes the planet Rahu, which is 10,000 yojanas (80,000 miles) below the sun, and it also describes Atala and the other lower planetary systems. Rahu is situated below the sun and moon. It is between these two planets and the earth. When Rahu conceals the sun and moon, eclipses occur, either total or partial, depending on whether Rahu moves in a straight or curving way.
   Below Rahu by another 1,000,000 yojanas are the planets of the Siddhas, Caranas and Vidyadharas, and below these are planets such as Yaksaloka and Raksaloka. Below these planets is the earth, and 70,000 yojanas below the earth are the lower planetary systems--Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Talatala, Mahatala, Rasatala and Patala. Demons and Raksasas live in these lower planetary systems with their wives and children, always engaged in sense gratification and not fearing their next births. The sunshine does not reach these planets, but they are illuminated by jewels fixed upon the hoods of snakes. Because of these shining gems there is practically no darkness. Those living in these planets do not become old or diseased, and they are not afraid of death from any cause but the time factor, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
   In the planet Atala, the yawning of a demon has produced three kinds of women, called svairini (independent), kamini (lusty) and pumscali (very easily subdued by men). Below Atala is the planet Vitala, wherein Lord Siva and his wife Gauri reside. Because of their presence, a kind of gold is produced called hataka. Below Vitala is the planet Sutala, the abode of Bali Maharaja, the most fortunate king. Bali Maharaja was favored by the Supreme personality of Godhead, Vamanadeva, because of his intense devotional service. The Lord went to the sacrificial arena of Bali Maharaja and begged him for three paces of land, and on this plea the Lord took from him all his possessions. When Bali Maharaja agreed to all this, the Lord was very pleased, and therefore the Lord serves as his doorkeeper. The description of Bali Maharaja appears in the Eighth Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam.
   When the Supreme Personality of Godhead offers a devotee material happiness, this is not His real favor. The demigods, who are very puffed up by their material opulence, pray to the Lord only for material happiness, not knowing anything better. Devotees like Prahlada Maharaja, however, do not want material happiness. Not to speak of material happiness, they do not want even liberation from material bondage, although one can achieve this liberation simply by chanting the holy name of the Lord, even with improper pronunciation.
   Below Sutala is the planet Talatala, the abode of the demon Maya. This demon is always materially happy because he is favored by Lord Siva, but he cannot achieve spiritual happiness at any time. Below Talatala is the planet Mahatala, where there are many snakes with hundreds and thousands of hoods. Below Mahatala is Rasatala, and below that is Patala, where the serpent Vasuki lives with his associates.

String Theory Confirmed in the Vedic Literature

Vedic Perspective

SB 3.12.47    Creation of the Kumaras and Others    Text 47

                                TEXT

                    sparsas tasyabhavaj jivah
                    svaro deha udahrta
                    usmanam indriyany ahur
                     antah-stha balam atmanah
                     svarah sapta viharena
                     bhavanti sma prajapateh

                             SYNONYMS

   sparsah--the set of letters from ka to ma; tasya--his; abhavat--became; jivah--the soul; svarah--vowels; dehah--his body; udahrtah--are expressed; usmanam--the letters sa, sa, sa and ha; indriyani--the senses; ahuh--are called; antah-sthah--the set of letters so known (ya, ra, la and va); balam--energy; atmanah--of his self; svarah--music; sapta--seven; viharena--by the sensual activities; bhavanti sma--became manifested; prajapateh--of the lord of the living entities.

                           TRANSLATION

   Brahma's soul was manifested as the touch alphabets, his body as the vowels, his senses as the sibilant alphabets, his strength as the intermediate alphabets and his sensual activities as the seven notes of music.

                             PURPORT

   In Sanskrit there are thirteen vowels and thirty-five consonants. The vowels are a, a, i, i, u, u, r, r, l, e, ai, o, au, and the consonants are ka, kha, ga, gha, etc. Amongst the consonants, the first twenty-five letters are called the sparsas. There are also four antah-sthas. Of the usmas there are three s's, called talavya, murdhanya and dantya. The musical notes are sa, r, ga, ma, dha, and ni. All these sound vibrations are originally called sabda-brahma, or spiritual sound. It is said, therefore, that Brahma was created in the Maha-kalpa as the incarnation of spiritual sound. The Vedas are spiritual sound, and therefore there is no need of material interpretation for the sound vibration of the Vedic literature, The Vedas should be vibrated as they are, although they are symbolically represented with letters which are known to us materially. In the ultimate issue there is nothing material because everything has its origin in the spiritual world. The material manifestation is therefore called illusion in the proper sense of the term. For those who are realized souls there is nothing but spirit.

Possible Earth-like planets found

By JENNIFER QUINN, Associated Press Writer Jennifer Quinn, Associated Press Writer – Tue Apr 21, 6:17 pm ET

HATFIELD, England – In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place. European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but realized that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life.

"The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone,'" said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland.

An American expert called the discovery of the tiny planet "extraordinary."

Gliese 581 e is only 1.9 times the size of Earth — while previous planets found outside our solar system are closer to the size of massive Jupiter, which NASA says could swallow more than 1,000 Earths.

Gliese 581 e sits close to the nearest star, making it too hot to support life. Still, Mayor said its discovery in a solar system 20 1/2 light years away from Earth is a "good example that we are progressing in the detection of Earth-like planets."

Scientists also discovered that the orbit of planet Gliese 581 d, which was found in 2007, was located within the "habitable zone" — a region around a sun-like star that would allow water to be liquid on the planet's surface, Mayor said.

He spoke at a news conference Tuesday at the University of Hertfordshire during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science.

Gliese 581 d is probably too large to be made only of rocky material, fellow astronomer and team member Stephane Udry said, adding it was possible the planet had a "large and deep" ocean.

"It is the first serious 'water-world' candidate," Udry said.

Mayor's main planet-hunting competitor, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, praised the find of Gliese 581 e as "the most exciting discovery" so far of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system.

"This discovery is absolutely extraordinary," Marcy told The Associated Press by e-mail, calling the discoveries a significant step in the search for Earth-like planets.

While Gliese 581 e is too hot for life "it shows that nature makes such small planets, probably in large numbers," Marcy commented. "Surely the galaxy contains tens of billions of planets like the small, Earth-mass one announced here."

Nearly 350 planets have been found outside our solar system, but so far nearly every one of them was found to be extremely unlikely to harbor life.

Most were too close or too far from their sun, making them too hot or too cold for life. Others were too big and likely to be uninhabitable gas giants like Jupiter. Those that are too small are highly difficult to detect in the first place.

Both Gliese 581 d and Gliese 581 e are located in constellation Libra and orbit around Gliese 581.

Like other planets circling that star — scientists have discovered four so far — Gliese 581 e was found using the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile.

The telescope has a special instrument which splits light to find wobbles in different wavelengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

"It is great work and shows the potential of this detection method," said Lisa Kaltenegger, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Vedic Perspective

  In each of those tracts of land, there are many gardens filled with flowers and fruits according to the season, and there are beautifully decorated hermitages as well. Between the great mountains demarcating the borders of those lands lie enormous lakes of clear water filled with newly grown lotus flowers. Aquatic birds such as swans, ducks, water chickens, and cranes become greatly excited by the fragrance of lotus flowers, and the charming sound of bumblebees fills the air. The inhabitants of those lands are important leaders among the demigods. Always attended by their respective servants, they enjoy life in gardens alongside the lakes. In this pleasing situation, the wives of the demigods smile playfully at their husbands and look upon them with lusty desires. All the demigods and their wives are constantly supplied with sandalwood pulp and flower garlands by their servants. In this way, all the residents of the eight heavenly varsas enjoy, attracted by the activities of the opposite sex.

                             PURPORT

  Here is a description of the lower heavenly planets. The inhabitants of those planets enjoy life in a pleasing atmosphere of clear lakes filled with newly grown lotus flowers and gardens filled with fruits, flowers, various kinds of birds and humming bees. In that atmosphere they enjoy life with their very beautiful wives, who are always sexually stimulated. Nonetheless, they are all devotees of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, as will be explained in subsequent verses. The inhabitants of this earth also desire such heavenly enjoyment, but when they somehow or other achieve imitation pleasures like sex and intoxication, they completely forget the service of the Supreme Lord. In the heavenly planets, however, although the residents enjoy superior sense gratification, they never forget their positions as eternal servants of the Supreme Being.
Srimad Bhagavatam 5.17.13 P      The Descent of the River Ganges

Searching for Other Earths

By Golda Akhgarnia

  

 

 From earliest times, humans have contemplated the existence of other Earth-like worlds in the universe.

Now, NASA is turning conjecture into conclusion with its Kepler Mission, a first attempt to determine whether planets similar to earth are a rare or common occurrence in our galaxy.

"This is an important project in NASA's astrobiology path," said San Diego State astronomy professor Bill Welsh, the only Kepler Participating Scientist from Southern California. "It's asking, are there other planets like ours out there? That's the first question we need to answer."

The Kepler telescope, which launched March 6, will survey approximately 100,000 stars over three and a half years. It will use photometry to find planets by detecting the very slight change in brightness (only 0.008%) that occurs when a planet passes in front of its host star. Mission team members expect it may find as many as 50 Earth-like planets and become a stepping stone for further NASA missions to study these planets with more powerful telescopes.

A select group

When NASA announced  in February 2007 that it was looking for astronomers to assist with a new mission, Welsh jumped at the opportunity to become one of only nine astronomers nationwide to join the Kepler Mission Science Team. While the main science working group is highly focused on detecting Earth-sized planets, the Participating Scientists carry out complementary research on the detection, characterization and understanding of extrasolar planets.

Welsh's task is to complete a meticulously detailed analysis of planets similar to Jupiter using a cutting-edge analysis tool written by fellow SDSU astronomy professor Jerome Orosz.  Although Welsh's work is not directly focused on finding Earth-size planets, his research will greatly enhance understanding of the planets and possibly even detect a few Earth-like planets or moons.  He and Orosz have worked closely for the last few years on extrasolar planet research, and Orosz is a paid consultant for the Kepler Mission under Welsh's grant.

20 years of planning

Coincidentally, SDSU's ties to the Kepler Mission pre-date Orosz and Welsh. Kepler Principal Investigator Bill Borucki looked to SDSU adjunct astronomy professor Andy Young for guidance when he was getting started on this project back in the mid-1980s.

Borucki's idea of finding other planets through photometry was pushing the limits, but fortunately, Young was an expert in the field. He helped mentor Borucki through the difficult process of perfecting his technique for locating Earth-like planets.

Now Welsh is using his Kepler work as an opportunity to mentor current SDSU students. His astrobiology class watched the launch and answered NASA's request for essays explaining the importance of the Kepler Mission. The submissions were included in a DVD placed inside the Kepler spacecraft.

Blast off

Last month, Welsh attended the Kepler launch with other team members and their families. The crowd—close to 400 people—rode buses from Kennedy Space Center to their viewing spot five miles from the launch site. After much anticipation, the crowd cheered in unison as they watched the rocket successfully launch.

Although the final experience was joyous, Welsh had many anxious moments leading up to the launch. He described one night just before the event when, at 2 a.m., he suddenly had doubts about some of his computations. He spent three hours checking his results, not because anyone else questioned him, but because of his own high expectations.

"There's a lot of internal pressure—you know how important this is and you feel an obligation to do the best that can be done," he explained.

These days, Welsh is more relaxed as he watches Kepler's early successes. The telescope's dust cover was recently ejected, allowing starlight to enter Kepler's science instrument, the photometer.  Engineers will continue to calibrate the instrument using images of stars for another several weeks, after which science observations will begin.

Mission outcome

According to Welsh, there are two potential outcomes for the mission. One is the finding that there are many planets like Earth in the solar system, and therefore, life similar to ours may be common. The other is that Earth and life as we know it are indeed very rare.

Either outcome will have significant consequences, Welsh said. On one hand, scientists may hope to begin to detect other species and find that we are not alone in the universe; or, on the other hand, humans will realize just how important it is to preserve life and resources on our unique planet.

NASA will not begin to release results of the mission to Participating Scientists until extensive calibration and quality control have been completed, possibly sometime in the fall.  Welsh will work part-time on the mission this spring, then full-time starting this summer, making the most of his appointment, which will last at least three years.

"It is a privilege to be part of such an important and historic mission," Welsh said. "I am honored to have been selected to join the 45 or so Science Team members who will be working with the Kepler data to discover other worlds."

Vedic Perspective

Srimad Bhagavatam 5.23.3 Purport       The Sisumara Planetary Systems

According to the description of this verse, the hundreds and thousands of stars and the great planets such as the sun, the moon, Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter are not clustered together because of the law of gravity or any similar idea of the modern scientists. These planets and stars are all servants of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Govinda or Krsna, and according to His order they sit in their chariots and travel in their respective orbits. The orbits in which they move are compared to machines given by material nature to the operating deities of the stars and planets, who carry out the orders of the Supreme Personality of Godhead by revolving around Dhruvaloka, which is occupied by the great devotee Maharaja Dhruva. This is confirmed in the Brahma-samhita (5.52) as follows:

              yac-caksur esa savita sakala-grahanam
               raja samasta-sura-murtir asesa-tejah
             yasyajnaya bhramati sambhrta-kala-cakro
              govindam adi-purusam tam aham bhajami

   "I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, under whose control even the sun, which is considered to be the eye of the Lord, rotates within the fixed orbit of eternal time. The sun is the king of all planetary systems and has unlimited potency in heat and light." This verse from Brahma-samhita confirms that even the largest and most powerful planet, the sun, rotates within a fixed orbit, or kala-cakra, in obedience to the order of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This has nothing to do with gravity or any other imaginary laws created by the material scientists.
   Material scientists want to avoid the ruling government of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and therefore they imagine different conditions under which they suppose the planets move. The only condition, however, is the order of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. All the various predominating deities of the planets are persons, and the Supreme personality of Godhead is also a person. The Supreme Personality orders the subordinate persons, the demigods of various names, to carry out His supreme will. This fact is also confirmed in Bhagavad-gita (9.10), wherein Krsna says:

                      mayadhyaksena prakrtih
                       suyate sa-caracaram
                       hetunanena kaunteya
                       jagad viparivartate

   "This material nature is working under My direction, O son of Kunti, and it is producing all moving and unmoving beings. By its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again."
   The orbits of the planets resemble the bodies in which all living entities are seated because they are both machines controlled by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. As Krsna says in Bhagavad-gita (18.61):

                      isvarah sarva-bhutanam
                     hrd-dese 'rjuna tisthati
                     bhramayan sarva-bhutani
                       yantrarudhani mayaya

   "The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone's heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy." The machine given by material nature--whether the machine of the body or the machine of the orbit, or kala-cakra--works according to the orders given by the Supreme personality of Godhead. The Supreme Personality of Godhead and material nature work together to maintain this great universe, and not only this universe but also the millions of other universes beyond this one.
   The question of how the planets and stars are floating is also answered in this verse. It is not because of the laws of gravity. Rather, the planets and stars are enabled to float by manipulations of the air. It is due to such manipulations that big, heavy clouds float and big eagles fly in the sky. Modern airplanes like the 747 jet aircraft work in a similar way: by controlling the air, they float high in the sky, resisting the tendency to fall to earth. Such adjustments of the air are all made possible by the cooperation of the principles of purusa (male) and prakrti (female). By the cooperation of material nature, which is considered to be prakrti, and the Supreme personality of Godhead, who is considered the purusa, all the affairs of the universe are going on nicely in their proper order. prakrti, material nature, is also described in the Brahma-samhita (5.44) as follows:

             srsti-sthiti-pralaya-sadhana-saktir eka
              chayeva yasya bhuvanani bibharti durga
               icchanurupam api yasya ca cestate sa
              govindam adi-purusam tam aham bhajami

   "The external potency, maya, who is of the nature of the shadow of the cit [spiritual] potency, is worshiped by all people as Durga, the creating, preserving and destroying agency of this mundane world. I adore the primeval Lord Govinda, in accordance with whose will Durga conducts herself." Material nature, the external energy of the Supreme Lord, is also known as Durga, or the female energy that protects the great fort of this universe. The word Durga also means fort. This universe is just like a great fort in which all the conditioned souls are kept, and they cannot leave it unless they are liberated by the mercy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The Lord Himself declares in Bhagavad-gita (4.9):

                     janma karma ca me divyam
                     evam yo vetti tattvatah
                    tyaktva deham punar janma
                     naiti mam eti so 'rjuna

   "One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna." Thus simply by Krsna consciousness, by the mercy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one can be liberated, or, in other words, one can be released from the great fort of this universe and go outside it to the spiritual world.
   It is also significant that the predominating deities of even the greatest planets have been offered their exalted posts because of the very valuable pious activities they performed in previous births. This is indicated herein by the words karma-nirmita-gatayah. For example, as we have previously discussed, the moon is called jiva, which means that he is a living entity like us, but because of his pious activities he has been appointed to his post as the moon-god. Similarly, all the demigods are living entities who have been appointed to their various posts as the masters of the moon, the earth, Venus and so on because of their great service and pious acts. Only the predominating deity of the sun, Surya Narayana, is an incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Maharaja Dhruva, the predominating deity of Dhruvaloka, is also a living entity. Thus there are two kinds of entities--the supreme entity, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and the ordinary living entity, the jiva (nityo nityanam cetanas cetananam). All the demigods are engaged in the service of the Lord, and only by such an arrangement are the affairs of the universe going on.
   Regarding the great eagles mentioned in this verse, it is understood that there are eagles so big that they can prey on big elephants. They fly so high that they can travel from one planet to another. They start flying in one planet and land in another, and while in flight they lay eggs that hatch into other birds while falling through the air. In Sanskrit such eagles are called syena. Under the present circumstances, of course, we cannot see such huge birds, but at least we know of eagles that can capture monkeys and then throw them down to kill and eat them. Similarly, it is understood that there are gigantic birds that can carry off elephants, kill them and eat them.
   The two examples of the eagle and the cloud are sufficient to prove that flying and floating can be made possible through adjustments of the air. The planets, in a similar way, are floating because material nature adjusts the air according to the orders of the Supreme Lord. It could be said that these adjustments constitute the law of gravity, but in any case, one must accept that these laws are made by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The so-called scientists have no control over them. The scientists can falsely, improperly declare that there is no God, but this is not a fact.

Purport by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Early Martian Environment And Water Drive Search For Life Forms

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by Staff Writers Mars Daily
New Rochelle (SPX) Apr 17, 2009
Solar energy and winds, collisions with asteroids and comets, and changing magnetic fields have all altered the environment of Mars, a planet that may have been able to support life during its history, as documented in a special collection of papers published in the current issue of Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Compiled by Helmut Lammer, PhD, Senior Editor of Astrobiology, from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, this special paper collection features a report by Pham et al. that presents a semi-analytical model to evaluate the influence of impacts on the evolution of the carbon dioxide-based martian atmosphere.

The results of this study indicate that impacts alone cannot satisfactorily explain the loss of significant atmospheric mass since the Late Noachian (~ 3.7 - 4 Ga). In other words, if the martian atmosphere was much denser at about 4 Ga than at present, impact erosion was most likely not responsible for the removal of the atmosphere at that time.

Terada et al. present a 3-D model to assess the effects of exposure to solar energy and winds on ion escape on early Mars 4.5 Ga, and to demonstrate how ion erosion could have led to the loss of water that might have been present on Mars. Two reports, by Horvath et al. and Fendrihan et al., explore the existence and survival of two types of bacteria under martian surface and environmental conditions, and the types of habitats that might have existed to support these life forms.

"The results of Pham et al. and Terada et al. indicate that Mars should have lost its denser initial CO2 atmosphere very early," says Dr. Lammer, PhD, "and may have been cold and dry during most of its history. Leblanc and colleagues propose a new concept in exploratory missions with Mars Environment and Magnetic Orbiter (MEMO), which would gather data to help scientists understand how the martian surface, atmosphere, and magnetic field have evolved, and how those questions raised by Terada et al. and Pham et al. can be investigated."

In honor of the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009 and the anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species, this issue of Astrobiology also includes papers describing the proposed Darwin Mission, which will take measurements on Earth-like planets outside our solar system.

"Though the final configuration of missions to study the spectra of Earth-like planets has not yet been decided," says Charles S. Cockell, PhD, Senior Editor of Astrobiology, and Professor at The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, "Darwin represents a very important step in a consolidated scientific and technical architecture for such a mission."

Vedic Perspective

Srimad Bhagavatam 5.16.20-21       A Description of Jambudvipa
                           TEXTS 20-21

                               TEXT

tavad ubhayor api rodhasor ya mrttika tad-rasenanuvidhyamana vayv-arka-samyoga-vipakena sadamara-lokabharanam jambu-nadam nama suvarnam bhavati; yad u ha vava vibudhadayah saha yuvatibhir mukuta-kataka-kati-sutrady-abharana-rupena khalu dharayanti.

                             SYNONYMS

   tavat--entirely; ubhayoh api--of both; rodhasoh--of the banks; ya--which; mrttika--the mud; tat-rasena--with the juice of the jambu fruits that flows in the river; anuvidhyamana--being saturated; vayu-arka-samyoga-vipakena--because of a chemical reaction with the air and sunshine; sada--always; amara-loka-abharanam--which is used for the ornaments of the demigods, the denizens of the heavenly planets; jambu-nadam nama--named Jambu-nada; suvarnam--gold; bhavati--becomes; yat--which; u ha vava--indeed; vibudha-adayah--the great demigods; saha--with; yuvatibhih--their everlastingly youthful wives; mukuta--crowns; kataka--bangles; kati-sutra--belts; adi--and so on; abharana--of all kinds of ornaments; rupena--in the form; khalu--indeed; dharayanti--they possess.

                           TRANSLATION

   The mud on both banks of the River Jambu-nadi, being moistened by the flowing juice and then dried by the air and the sunshine, produces huge quantities of gold called Jambu-nada. The denizens of heaven use this gold for various kinds of ornaments. Therefore all the inhabitants of the heavenly planets and their youthful wives are fully decorated with golden helmets, bangles and belts, and thus they enjoy life.

                             PURPORT

   By the arrangement of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the rivers on some planets produce gold on their banks. The poor inhabitants of this earth, because of their incomplete knowledge, are captivated by a so-called bhagavan who can produce a small quantity of gold. However, it is understood that in a higher planetary system in this material world, the mud on the banks of the Jambu-nadi mixes with jambu juice, reacts with the sunshine in the air, and automatically produces huge quantities of gold. Thus the men and women are decorated there by various golden ornaments, and they look very nice. Unfortunately, on earth there is such a scarcity of gold that the governments of the world try to keep it in reserve and issue paper currency. Because that currency is not backed up by gold, the paper they distribute as money is worthless, but nevertheless the people on earth are very proud of material advancement. In modern times, girls and ladies have ornaments made of plastic instead of gold, and plastic utensils are used instead of golden ones, yet people are very proud of their material wealth. Therefore the people of this age are described as mandah sumanda-matayo manda-bhagya hy upadrutah (Bhag. 1.1.10). In other words, they are extremely bad and slow to understand the opulence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. They have been described as sumanda-matayah because their conceptions are so crippled that they accept a bluffer who produces a little gold to be God. Because they have no gold in their possession, they are actually poverty-stricken, and therefore they are considered unfortunate.
   Sometimes these unfortunate people want to be promoted to the heavenly planets to achieve fortunate positions, as described in this verse, but pure devotees of the Lord are not at all interested in such opulence. Indeed, devotees sometimes compare the color of gold to that of bright golden stool. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu has instructed devotees not to be allured by golden ornaments and beautifully decorated women. Na dhanam na janam na sundarim: a devotee should not be allured by gold. beautiful women or the prestige of having many followers. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, therefore, confidentially prayed, mama janmani janmanisvare bhavatad bhaktir ahaituki tvayi: "My Lord, please bless Me with Your devotional service. I do not want anything else." A devotee may pray to be delivered from this material world. That is his only aspiration.

                    ayi nanda-tanuja kinkaram
                 patitam mam visame bhavambudhau
                    krpaya tava pada-pankaja-
                  sthita-dhuli-sadrsam vicintaya

   The humble devotee simply prays to the Lord, "Kindly pick me up from the material world, which is full of varieties of material opulence, and keep me under the shelter of Your lotus feet."
   Srila Narottama dasa Thakura prays:

        ha ha prabhu nanda-suta,     vrsabhanu-suta-yuta,
                      karuna karaha ei-bara
         narottama-dasa kaya,     na theliha ranga-paya,
                     toma vine ke ache amara

   "O my Lord, O son of Nanda Maharaja, now You are standing before me with Your consort, the daughter of Vrsabhanu, Srimati Radharani. Kindly accept me as the dust of Your lotus feet. please do not kick me away, for I have no other shelter."
   Similarly, Prabodhananda Sarasvati indicates that the position of the demigods, who are decorated with golden helmets and other ornaments, is no better than a phantasmagoria (tri-dasa-pur akasa-puspayate). A devotee is never allured by such opulences. He simply aspires to become the dust of the lotus feet of the Lord.

 

 

Alien Safari Part 4: Countdown to Alien Life

Seth Shostak: Thanks very much to all of our panelists for describing four different kinds of alien worlds. I’d like to hear their prognoses about when we might, if ever, find such worlds showing evidence for life. Are we talking about one year, 10 years, 100 years?

Tori Hoehler: The planet we’re most likely to find is a function of a couple of things. First of all, how frequently do each of those worlds occur? We have no idea how frequently life arises, but certainly Slime World is likely to be a lot more frequently occurring than Complex Life World. Probably every Slime World also will be a Subsurface Life World.

But this raises the next point, which is, how easy is it to see this life? The technology that you use to detect each one of these worlds will be quite different. As T.C. suggested, to find a Subsurface Life World you need to be able to dig beneath the ground, so you would need to send some sort of a probe. In the case of a Slime World, you would need very powerful telescopes flying in space to do the job correctly. I think it’s conceivable that when we fly the right sort of technology to find a Slime World, which may be 20 or 30 years from now, all of a sudden we’ll get a flood of data. When we can expect to find planets with life depends on when we can deploy the right technology.

Seth Shostak: Sounds like a bid for money. If we find Slime World in 20 or 30 years, that means many of us will still be around to see that happen. We’ll be slimed. T.C., you talked about cryptic life. What are the opportunities there?

T.C. Onstott: I totally agree with Tori on this. We have an opportunity in the next 20 to 30 years, if we have the programmatic drive to do it, to encounter and touch and feel subsurface life on Mars or Europa, and also the chance of detecting slime or even vegetative planets in other solar systems. It’s another proof of life out there. The only difference is that in one case you’re picking up an optical signal and in the other case you’re actually looking at the molecular structure. Combine that with the fact that scientists are getting very close to engineering life forms in the lab, it means that our lifetime is very special. We may not only encounter the signs of extraterrestrial life, but also understand the origins of our own life.

The Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer is a mission concept currently under study by NASA. TPF-I would study all aspects of planets outside our solar system, including their suitability as abodes for life. Image credit: NASA / T. Herbst (MPIA)

Seth Shostak: We have a horse race here, and there are several different horses that seem capable of crossing the finish line on the same time scale. Peter? Odds of finding complex life?

Peter Ward: Could I defer to Victoria Meadows? She knows this sort of thing far better than me.

Victoria Meadows: I think Tori has already given the number. You’re looking at the capability for missions like the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which is a proposed NASA mission. It has a sister mission concept in the

Darwin

mission from ESA. We’re hoping we can get those up in the next 20 years or so. And if we can do that, then we can definitely go after things like Complex Life World and Slime World. In the best of all possible worlds, within the next 20 years we’ll have the answer to whether or not those things are out there.

Seth Shostak: Jill, the other panelists say stupid life within 20 or 30 years.

Jill Tarter: I’m not so sure I believe that. For Slime World, or Subsurface World, or complex life without technology, the technologies we’re talking about to find them will have a reach into our galaxy of only hundreds of light years within the next 10, 20 or 30 years. It may not be enough, even if life is quite prevalent. There aren’t that many stars within the reach of these instruments. So our “first generation net” may not be successful in grabbing it. With respect to technology, the answer might well be “never.” Technology World might not be out there. It also might be that we’ve already detected it but we don’t yet recognize it. There are new things that are getting my colleagues really excited, new kinds of signals that are detected from the sky that we didn’t anticipate, and the theorists are being very fleet of foot to provide more prosaic explanations for them. But in fact it might turn out that they are evidence of another technology that we don’t yet recognize as such. And then with respect to the things that we can imagine, 21st century Earth on steroids, that kind of technology, you may be in the 20 to 30 year time scale if a thousand light years is a large enough reach. If you need to go farther because they are rarer, then the search will take longer. But the time it’ll take isn’t infinitely long, unless the answer is never.

The Hubble Space Telescope was used to create this image of NGC 3982, a spiral galaxy 68 million light years away. Looking at objects in space is also a look back in time, since it takes the light many years to reach us. If we find evidence for life in such galaxies, will that life still exist in the present day or be an echo of the past? Image credit: NASA/ESA/Stephen Smartt (University of Cambridge)

Seth Shostak: I assume you don’t think that’s the case.

Jill Tarter: I don’t know what the answer is. I think it’s worth looking.

Seth Shostak: Now it’s time to hear from the audience. Everyone is welcome to grill our panelists like a cheese sandwich.

Q: Do you think the human race will survive long enough to find intelligent life and make contact with it? And actually communicate, rather than just find it?

Jill Tarter: Just detecting the intelligent life out there might help us survive longer. Because if you can detect a technological signal, it means that it’s possible for technologies to last a long time. If the average length of a technological civilization is short in cosmic time scales, we’ll never detect it. I don’t expect cosmic salvation; I don’t think they’re going to come solve our problems. But it might put us into the realm of the long-lived technologies if we know that somebody else has done it. I think we ought to be working on our survival for many reasons, including learning about someone else out there.

Peter Ward: The average mammal species lasts about 5 million years. Modern humans have been around for 200,000 years. If we are average, we’ve got 4.8 million years left. But my favorite species, the

Nautilus

, has been around for 500 million years, so there’s no reason that we couldn’t be here until the

end of the sun

, if we play our cards right.

Jill Tarter: The Nautilus didn’t invent nuclear weapons. (laughs)

Vedic Perspective

Srimad Bhagavatam 5.16.1  A Description of Jambudvipa
                               TEXT

                             rajovaca

uktas tvaya bhu-mandalayama-viseso yavad adityas tapati yatra casau jyotisam ganais candrama va saha drsyate.

                             SYNONYMS

   raja uvaca--Maharaja Pariksit said; uktah--already been said; tvaya--by you; bhu-mandala--of the planetary system known as Bhu-mandala; ayama-visesah--the specific length of the radius; yavat--as far as; adityah--the sun; tapati--heats; yatra--wherever; ca--also; asau--that; jyotisam--of the luminaries; ganaih--with hordes; candrama--the moon; va--either; saha--with; drsyate--is seen.

                           TRANSLATION

   King Pariksit said to Sukadeva Gosvami: O brahmana, you have already informed me that the radius of Bhu-mandala extends as far as the sun spreads its light and heat and as far as the moon and all the stars can be seen.

            PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

   In this verse it is stated that the planetary system known as Bhu-mandala extends to the limits of the sunshine. According to modern science, the sunshine reaches earth from a distance of 93,000,000 miles. If we calculate according to this modern information, 93,000,000 miles can be considered the radius of Bhu-mandala. In the Gayatri mantra, we chant om bhur bhuvah svah. The word bhur refers to Bhu-mandala. Tat savitur varenyam: the sunshine spreads throughout Bhu-mandala. Therefore the sun is worshipable. The stars, which are known as naksatra, are not different suns, as modern astronomers suppose. From Bhagavad-gita (10.21) we understand that the stars are similar to the moon (naksatranam aham sasi). Like the moon, the stars reflect the sunshine. Apart from our modern distinguished estimations of where the planetary systems are located, we can understand that the sky and its various planets were studied long, long before Srimad-Bhagavatam was compiled. Sukadeva Gosvami explained the location of the planets, and this indicates that the information was known long, long before Sukadeva Gosvami related it to Maharaja Pariksit.

The location of the various planetary systems was not unknown to the sages who flourished in the Vedic age.

Alien Safari Part 2: Life Above and Below

 Summary (Feb 09, 2009): At the most recent NASA Astrobiology Science Conference, a panel of scientists discussed different types of planets where we might find alien life. In the second part of this series, T.C. Onstott digs beneath the surface to look for life, and Peter Ward weighs the odds of finding complex life in space and time.

---

Life Above and Below

Seth Shostak: Our next speaker is T.C. Onstott. He is a Princeton University geochemist, and one of Time magazine’s “100 most influential people of 2008.”

T.C. Onstott investigates life deep underground. Credit: Princeton University

T.C. Onstott: I’ll be talking about Subsurface World. Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of those places within our solar system where we might expect to find Subsurface World.

By analyzing the DNA within a bacterium, we can figure out the metabolic pathways an organism can have. We discovered one particular organism 3 kilometers beneath the surface in South Africa. This organism is capable of living without any interaction with the photosphere above. It’s deriving all of its nutrients from the surrounding minerals, and it contains all that it needs to survive within that environment. It doesn’t need any other micro-organisms. It is a one-world environment. The other interesting aspect about this is that the radiation from the environment, just the normal decay of radiogenic isotopes, is sufficient to maintain this organism indefinitely. So it never does achieve any type of entropic death. There is enough chemical energy provided by the decay of uranium to oxidize water and the production of reducing compounds to keep the system going.

So we have proof that life can exist without photospheric influence, and it can exist for billions of years, and that means the chances are good that life could exist beneath the surface of Mars. The environment on the surface of Mars at one time may have supported life, but now it’s a difficult place for life to exist. Beneath the surface, where we anticipate finding liquid water, organisms such as this could exist. But what happens when the surface has never been habitable, as in the case of Europa or Saturn’s moon Titan?

When we look at the bacteria deep beneath the surface on Earth, it turns out that life is deeply rooted from an evolutionary point of view. That means it’s very primitive. If we look at the history of life on Earth, we have fossils of microorganisms from 3.45 billion years ago. A billion years prior to that, some abiogenic formation of pre-biotic compounds was occurring. In between those two events, it was either a fortunate series of extraordinary events that led to life, or it may be a very common occurrence. If you believe it was a common occurrence, then we should anticipate finding life on other planets and other solar systems, even other planets within our own solar system.

Phospholipid vesicles (also known as liposomes). The formation of such organic compartments is thought to have been extremely important for the origin of life on Earth. Credit: David A. Weitz/Harvard University

The question is, can this life occur within the subsurface with no input from, for instance, meteorites or sunlight? One early process important for life is compartmentalization -- the formation of some type of organic vesicles. On the surface of the planet, all hell is breaking loose, and it’s hard for life to evolve there. What if the nursery is at depth?

In South Africa, you find hydrocarbon vesicles occurring from 3 kilometers depth, and if you take a look at these in detail, the sizes of the vesicles are small but variable. If you look at them on the inside, you see their mineralized surfaces sandwiching a layer of organic carbons. So there are processes taking place beneath the crust of South Africa which appear to be abiogenic. In fact, the deeper we go, the more we lose the signature of DNA life forms, and the more we see abiogenic processes occurring. A question that remains is, could life originate in the subsurface? We haven’t proven this, but it’s a line of investigation that we can pursue for the next few years.

James Kasting defined the 'habitable zone' of a solar system as a function of the distance away from different types of stars. The 'habitable zone' is where liquid water exists on the surface of a planet – it’s where we would expect to find life existing. But in a subsurface universe, where life can originate and remain in the subsurface, that habitable zone is much larger. So, in fact, dark life, or life that exists without photosynthesis, could be the dominant life form in the universe. But the only problem, of course, is how do you see it or detect it? The planets are truly not visible. In that regard, there’s not much we can do other than detect a few trace gasses. It is difficult to determine whether or not you’re seeing atmospheric biomarkers that reflect some microbial process at depth. The only way we can find Subsurface World is to actually go there and collect samples.

Seth Shostak: Our next speaker is Peter Ward from the University of Washington. He is a paleontologist, and a popular science author.

Paleontologist Peter Ward. Credit: The Seattle Times

Peter Ward: I want to talk about planets that would have complex life, and ask what is it about them that got them to that state. How long do they last, and how does it end? I wrote a book called “Rare Earth” with Don Brownlee, and the follow-up book was called “The Life and Death of Planet Earth.” The first one sold a bunch of copies. The second one only sold about three because it was so depressing. I mean, who wanted to know about the end of the Earth? And yet, both books are really about one thing: The Earth in space and time.

If we’re trying to find what a complex life-inhabited world might look like in space, we immediately think of our own planet. We have continents, we have oceans, and we believe that continents and oceans combined are necessary to maintain that habitability which we all enjoy. But we know that there are other aspects that are needed as well, such as the geometry of our solar system. For instance, you need a good Jupiter to reduce the impact rate of comets and asteroids on our particular planet. But in other solar systems we find bad Jupiters, because they have migrated in close to their star and disrupted the inner solar system by doing so, or have a highly elliptical orbit around a star that is also disruptive. So maybe the systems that have complex life would have a Jupiter in a less than highly elliptical orbit at a great distance from the star itself.

No one is talking about manned missions to Venus, and why is that? Because the temperatures there are hundreds of degrees Centigrade above what any sort of complex life on this planet could survive. Venus is a case where we would not expect complex life. And Mars - we hope there are microbes, but we certainly don’t think there will be higher complexity.

If we are ever lucky enough to get a signal from other complex life, I think it’s going to be so difficult to figure out that particular signal. Just consider the difficulties we encounter communicating between Macs and PCs.

Planet consumed by an expanding Red Giant star. The sun will become a Red Giant in about 5 billion years.

But we’re not just talking about complex life in space. We need to think about it over time as well. Early in the Earth’s history the conditions would not have allowed for complex life.

This is a very strange squeeze that any complex life-inhabited planet is going to have. Over time, the gaseous atmospheres change, and what we call the habitable zone narrows and shrinks because of changes in the atmosphere. And so you’re running a race. You only have a finite amount of time in which a planet can have complexity.

For Earth, we expect our solar system will change radically as our sun becomes a red giant about 5 billion years from now. After our star goes red giant and then collapses upon itself, we end up with a very different type of system of life on Earth.

I like to think of life on Earth as an Oreo, and complex life is the white middle, but you’ve got this nasty black world of the first microbial age, and we expect to be followed by another slime world in a second microbial age. So while planets like Earth seem ideal for complex life, there is a time limit for that life, and before and after that time you wouldn’t expect to have complexity.

The time of complex life on Earth has had numerous mass extinctions. Most of the creatures that have ever lived on our planet have gone extinct. The age of animals seems to be about halfway over.

Artist’s representation of a massive asteroid colliding with Earth.

By old age, we think planets with complex life can also suffer accidents, just like you and I can. We see this in Earth's history. The famous K-T mass extinction was caused by an enormous asteroid colliding with the planet 65 million years ago. If comet

Hale-Bopp

had hit us when it passed by a decade ago, there would have been an extinction far greater than the one that killed the dinosaurs.

It is not only asteroids and comets that are dangerous to planets. The planets are perhaps dangerous to themselves. Tectonic processes that lead to huge eruptions of lava on the Earth’s surface, so-called flood basalts, also can cause mass extinctions. 250 million years ago one species survived such a

catastrophe

, and that particular reptile led to the evolution of mammals.

Tectonics can be fatal, but plate tectonics also helps keep our particular planet stable and allows for complexity. Venus is as nasty as it is because it doesn’t have plate tectonics. It has a stagnant lid and the surface melts every 300 to 500 million years.

All kinds of complexity are necessary to keep our planet within the series of constraints that allows complex and fragile animals such as us to exist. As we head out into space, we realize that not only is the number of possible Earths small, but we have to find the possible Earth in that brief Oreo of time when it can have complexity.

Vedic Perspective

Srimad Bhagavatam 5.16.1 Purport by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami 

A Description of Jambudvipa  Chapter Sixteen
                  
   While describing the character of Maharaja Priyavrata and his descendants, Sukadeva Gosvami also described Meru Mountain and the planetary system known as Bhu-mandala. Bhu-mandala is like a lotus flower, and its seven islands are compared to the whorl of the lotus. The place known as Jambudvipa is in the middle of that whorl. In Jambudvipa there is a mountain known as Sumeru, which is made of solid gold. The height of this mountain is 84,000 yojanas, of which 16,000 yojanas are below the earth. Its width is estimated to be 32,000 yojanas at its summit and 16,000 yojanas at its foot. (One yojana equals approximately eight miles.) This king of mountains, Sumeru, is the support of the planet earth.
   On the southern side of the land known as Ilavrta-varsa are the mountains known as Himavan, Hemakuta and Nisadha, and on the northern side are the mountains Nila, Sveta and Srnga. Similarly, on the eastern and western side there are Malyavan and Gandhamadana, two large mountains. Surrounding Sumeru Mountain are four mountains known as Mandara, Merumandara, Suparsva and Kumuda, each 10,000 yojanas long and 10,000 yojanas high. On these four mountains there are trees a banyan tree. There are also lakes full of milk, honey, sugarcane juice and pure water. These lakes can fulfill all desires. There are also gardens named Nandana, Citraratha, Vaibhrajaka and Sarvatobhadra. On the side of Suparsva Mountain is a kadamba tree with streams of honey flowing from its hollows, and on Kumuda Mountain there is a banyan tree named Satavalsa, from whose roots flow rivers containing milk, yogurt and many other desirable things. Surrounding Sumeru Mountain like filaments of the whorl of a lotus are twenty mountain ranges such as Kuranga, Kurara, Kusumbha, Vaikanka and Trikuta. To the east of Sumeru are the mountains Jathara and Devakuta, to the west are Pavana and Pariyatra, to the south are Kailasa and Karavira, and to the north are Trisrnga and Makara. These eight mountains are about 18,000 yojanas long, 2,000 yojanas wide and 2,000 yojanas high. On the summit of Mount Sumeru is Brahmapuri, the residence of Lord Brahma. Each of its four sides is 10,000 yojanas long. Surrounding Brahmapuri are the cities of King Indra and seven other demigods. These cities are one fourth the size of Brahmapuri.

NASA and SETI are Feverishly Searching for ET

To: President Obama, NASA and the American people
From: Bob Krekorian - Former NASA SETI Signal Detection Analyst

The NASA Astrobiology Conference in April, 2008 had as one of its topics, Future SETI: Technologies, Techniques and Strategies. Its premise was that after five decades of negative results from radio and optical SETI searches, there should be new approaches to the problem like detecting the biosignature of an extra solar planet. This premise regarding SETI is not supported by reality. In actual fact, very little systematic radio or optical SETI exploration has been performed.

The search for an extraterrestrial civilization is one of the most intellectually stimulating and potentially rewarding pursuits open to humanity. Many ideas have been put forward speculating on the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, their number in the galaxy and their longevity. For those civilizations that become technological and do not self destruct, it is reasonable to assume that some number reach long lifetimes and are still scientifically curious. An interstellar beacon, which has as its sole purpose, communication with other contemporary technological civilizations in the galaxy is quite plausible under these circumstances.

What would be the motivation to construct such a beacon? Perhaps there is an altruistic code in the galaxy to preserve the history of all civilizations, past and present? Perhaps there would be interest in contacting new technological civilizations like us, knowing that there is a time window (hundreds of years) after the discovery of radio when some societies disintegrate because of sociological and environmental factors. In all likelihood, we would not be the first civilization that they have made contact with, thus finding one could be the gateway to many contacts. What could they expect to learn from finding one more? They may know a lot and have great understanding of science but the Earth`s civilization with its unique biology and history will be a new one for them to put into the larger context of life in the universe. Maybe they will ask for pictures and sounds from our culture? Maybe they will ask for detailed data on our solar system? This seems far more practicable and feasible than sending out an armada of spaceships to explore other star systems. In a way, we would be their interstellar space probes.

When one considers all the concatenated probabilities connected with the formation of planet Earth, its composition, its stable environment over geological timescales that allowed complex life to flourish, the inescapable conclusion is that millions of sun-like stars will have to be examined to find one that is transmitting an artificial signal. That means the search volume of space could extend from one to two thousand light years. The NASA Kepler Mission which was just launched, will for the first time, give us hard empirical data on the number of Earth-like planets in habitable zones, their orbital stability in multiple star systems and the types of stars that have them. This will be crucial in defining the SETI search space.

If a targeted radio search is the SETI strategy of choice and detection sensitivity is essential, a search of millions of stars would take centuries to complete. And even if one of these stars is indeed broadcasting, detection could be missed because our detection sensitivity was just not good enough or interstellar scintillation degraded the signal during the observation time frame or the observation is not coincident with the duty cycle of the beacon or we are not sensitive to the particular type of signal structure being transmitted.

Based on the above considerations, it is logical (logic flows from causality) to expect that our galactic colleagues will make the detection problem for the contact as simple and straightforward as possible. Universality of the laws of physics and the logic of mathematics will govern their strategy to maximize the probability of detection.

I have come up with new thinking in how the interstellar communication link would be achieved. If my ideas are scientifically sound, it is quite possible to make a detection within a decade using existing telescopes and signal processing capabilities. The expectation is that the contact/acquisition signal will be an address (pointer), like in the C programming language. It will direct contactees to where the actual communication channel is located. The exact frequency channel of the beacon transmitter may be known, however our astronomical capabilities might be insufficient to receive the text of the extraterrestrial transmission.

The charter of NASA includes a statement, the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space. Some of us who were with NASA for the Oct 12, 1992 (500th anniversary of Columbus discovering the Americas) SETI inauguration remember the worldwide interest and excitement created by what the agency was doing. Can we not rekindle this exploration spirit with a new generation of Americans?

NASA already has in place many of the resources needed to begin the search. The NASA SETI project was based on the 1977 NASA SP-419 report. See the conclusions from the report, Yahoo [NASA sp-419] which is still valid today. The 1993 congressional mandate to end United States funding for SETI is no longer in effect. Proposals for SETI grants are now being accepted by NASA and the NSF, but NASA is the proper federal agency to carry out a comprehensive search. The agency should form a small exploratory group, uninhibited by past orthodoxy and take a fresh look at the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Bob Krekorian

Vedic Perspective

Life Comes From Life
Srila Prabhupada. Yes. And, moreover, if in this inferior energy there are so many wonderful varieties of life, just think how wonderful are the superior varieties of life in the spiritual world. Even in this material universe, the inhabitants of some planets are far superior to those on other planets. For example, people on earth practice mystic yoga for achieving wonderful powers, but people on the planet called Siddhaloka have these great yogic powers naturally. On earth it is natural that a bird can fly; but we cannot, except with costly machines. However, on such planets as Siddhaloka, the residents can fly even from one planet to another without machines. They can go to other planets simply at will. Even on earth there are some yogis who can take their bath early in the morning in four places at once--Jagannatha Puri, Ramesvara, Hardwar and Dvaraka. One yogi friend used to visit my father in Calcutta. The yogi told him that when he (the yogi) would simply sit down and touch his guru, he would travel from Calcutta to Dvaraka in two minutes. That is yogic power. So what are today's airplanes? Durvasa Muni traveled all over the universe and up to Vaikuntha within one year. According to modern calculations, certain planets in this universe are more than forty thousand light-years distant from the earth. This means it would take forty thousand years to reach these planets if you traveled at the speed of light. Even if they had the means, how could the astronauts live for forty thousand years? So, why are they so proud?

The Search for the Solar System's Lost Planet

By

Clara Moskowitz

 Staff Writer

posted: 13 April 2009 09:42 am ET

The solar system might once have had another planet named Theia, which may have helped create our own planet's moon.

Now two spacecrafts are heading out to search for leftovers from this rumored sibling, which would have been destroyed when the solar system was still young.

"It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago — and that it collided with Earth to form the moon," said Mike Kaiser, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Theia is thought to have been about Mars-sized. If the planet crashed into Earth long ago, debris from the collision could have clumped together to form the moon. Many scientists figure that indeed some large object crashed into Earth, and the resulting debris coalesced to form the moon. It is unclear though if that colliding object was a planet, asteroid or comet.

In any case, the debris that would have spun out from the two slamming bodies would have mixed together, and could explain some aspects of the moon's geology, such as the size of the moon's core and the density and composition of moon rocks.

Scientists are hoping NASA's twin STEREO probes, launched in 2006, will be able to discover leftover traces of Theia that may finally help close the case on the birth of our moon.

So far, signs of Theia have proved elusive to telescopes searching from Earth. But the STEREO spacecraft are set to enter special points in space, called Lagrangian points , where the gravity from the Earth and the sun combine to form wells that tend to collect solar system detritus.

"The STEREO probes are entering these regions of space now," Kaiser, a STEREO project scientist, said. "This puts us in a good position to search for Theia's asteroid-sized leftovers."

By visiting the Lagrangian points directly, STEREO will be able to hunt for Theia chunks up close. The nearest approach to the bottoms of the gravitational wells will come in September and October 2009.

"STEREO is a solar observatory," Kaiser said. "The two probes are flanking the sun on opposite sides to gain a 3-D view of solar activity. We just happen to be passing through the L4 and L5 Lagrange points en route. This is purely bonus science."

Scientists think Theia may even have formed in one of these gravitational points of balance from the accumulation of flotsam that had built up there.

"Computer models show that Theia could have grown large enough to produce the moon if it formed in the L4 or L5 [Lagrangian] regions, where the balance of forces allowed enough material to accumulate," Kaiser said. "Later, Theia would have been nudged out of L4 or L5 by the increasing gravity of other developing planets like Venus and sent on a collision course with Earth."

Vedic Perspective

Isopanishad 14                             
All the material planets--upper, lower and intermediate, including the sun, moon and Venus--are scattered throughout the universe. These planets exist only during the lifetime of Brahma. Some lower planets, however, are vanquished after the end of one day of Brahma and are again created during the next day of Brahma. On the upper planets, time is calculated differently. One of our years is equal to only twenty-four hours, or one day and night, on many of the upper planets. The four ages of earth (Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali) last only twelve thousand years according to the time scale of the upper planets. Such a length of time multiplied by one thousand constitutes one day of Brahma, and one night of Brahma is the same. Such days and nights accumulate into months and years, and Brahma lives for one hundred such years. At the end of Brahma's life, the complete universal manifestation is vanquished.
   Those living beings who reside on higher planets like the sun and the moon, as well as those on Martyaloka, this earth planet, and also those who live on lower planets--all are merged into the waters of devastation during the night of Brahma. During this time no living beings or species remain manifest, although spiritually they continue to exist. This unmanifested stage is called avyakta. Again, when the entire universe is vanquished at the end of Brahma's lifetime, there is another avyakta state. But beyond these two unmanifested states is another unmanifested state, the spiritual atmosphere, or nature. There are a great number of spiritual planets in this atmosphere, and these planets exist eternally, even when all the planets within this material universe are vanquished at the end of Brahma's life. There are many material universes, each under the jurisdiction of a Brahma, and this cosmic manifestation within the jurisdiction of the various Brahmas is but a display of one fourth of the energy of the Lord (ekapad-vibhuti). This is the inferior energy. Beyond the jurisdiction of Brahma is the spiritual nature, which is called tripad-vibhuti, three fourths of the Lord's energy. This is the superior energy, or para-prakrti.

STEREO Hunting For Ancient Planet

Posted on: Friday, 10 April 2009, 07:25 CDT

NASA's twin STEREO probes are entering a mysterious region of space to look for remains of an ancient planet which once orbited the Sun not far from Earth. If they find anything, it could solve a major puzzle--the origin of the Moon.

"The name of the planet is Theia," says Mike Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's a hypothetical world. We've never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago—and that it collided with Earth to form the Moon."

The "Theia hypothesis" is a brainchild of Princeton theorists Edward Belbruno and Richard Gott. It starts with the popular Great Impact theory of the Moon's origin. Many astronomers hold that in the formative years of the solar system, a Mars-sized protoplanet crashed into Earth. Debris from the collision, a mixture of material from both bodies, spun out into Earth orbit and coalesced into the Moon. This scenario explains many aspects of lunar geology including the size of the Moon's core and the density and isotopic composition of moon rocks.

It's a good theory, but it leaves one awkward question unanswered: Where did the enormous protoplanet come from?

Belbruno and Gott believe it came from a Sun-Earth Lagrange point.

Sun-Earth Lagrange points are regions of space where the pull of the Sun and Earth combine to form a "gravitational well." The flotsam of space tends to gather there much as water gathers at the bottom of a well on Earth. 18th-century mathematician Josef Lagrange proved that there are five such wells in the Sun-Earth system: L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5 located as shown in the diagram below.

When the solar system was young, Lagrange points were populated mainly by planetesimals, the asteroid-sized building blocks of planets. Belbruno and Gott suggest that in one of the Lagrange points, L4 or L5, the planetesimals assembled themselves into Theia, nicknamed after the mythological Greek Titan who gave birth to the Moon goddess Selene.

"Their computer models show that Theia could have grown large enough to produce the Moon if it formed in the L4 or L5 regions, where the balance of forces allowed enough material to accumulate," says Kaiser. "Later, Theia would have been nudged out of L4 or L5 by the increasing gravity of other developing planets like Venus and sent on a collision course with Earth."

If this idea is correct, Theia itself is long gone, but some of the ancient planetesimals that failed to join Theia may still be lingering at L4 or L5.

"The STEREO probes are entering these regions of space now," says Kaiser. "This puts us in a good position to search for Theia's asteroid-sized leftovers."

Just call them "Theiasteroids."

Astronomers have looked for Theiasteroids before using telescopes on Earth, and found nothing, but their results only rule out kilometer-sized objects. By actually entering L4 and L5, STEREO will be able to hunt for much smaller bodies at relatively close range.

"The search actually began last month when both spacecraft rolled 180 degrees so that they could take a series of 2-hour exposures of the general L4/L5 areas. In the first sets of images, amateur astronomers found some known asteroids and new comet Itagaki was imaged just a couple of days after the announcement of its discovery. No Theiasteroids however."

Hunting for Theiasteroids is not STEREO's primary mission, he points out. "STEREO is a solar observatory. The two probes are flanking the sun on opposite sides to gain a 3D view of solar activity. We just happen to be passing through the L4 and L5 Lagrange points en route. This is purely bonus science."

"We might not see anything," he continues, "but if we discover lots of asteroids around L4 or L5, it could lead to a mission to analyze the composition of these asteroids in detail. If that mission discovers the asteroids have the same composition as the Earth and Moon, it will support Belbruno and Gott's version of the giant impact theory."

The search will continue for many months to come. Lagrange points are not infinitesimal points in space; they are broad regions 50 million kilometers wide. The STEREO probes are only in the outskirts now. Closest approach to the bottoms of the gravitational wells comes in Sept-Oct. 2009. "We have a lot of observing ahead of us," notes Kaiser.

Readers, you may be able to help. The STEREO team is inviting the public to participate in the search by scrutinizing photos as they come in from the spacecraft. If you see a dot of light moving with respect to the stars, you may have found a Theiasteroid. Links to the data and further instructions may be found at

sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil.

Let the hunt begin!

Vedic Perspective

Srimad Bhagavatam 5.16.20-21     

A Description of Jambudvipa
                           TEXTS 20-21

                               TEXT

tavad ubhayor api rodhasor ya mrttika tad-rasenanuvidhyamana vayv-arka-samyoga-vipakena sadamara-lokabharanam jambu-nadam nama suvarnam bhavati; yad u ha vava vibudhadayah saha yuvatibhir mukuta-kataka-kati-sutrady-abharana-rupena khalu dharayanti.

                             SYNONYMS

   tavat--entirely; ubhayoh api--of both; rodhasoh--of the banks; ya--which; mrttika--the mud; tat-rasena--with the juice of the jambu fruits that flows in the river; anuvidhyamana--being saturated; vayu-arka-samyoga-vipakena--because of a chemical reaction with the air and sunshine; sada--always; amara-loka-abharanam--which is used for the ornaments of the demigods, the denizens of the heavenly planets; jambu-nadam nama--named Jambu-nada; suvarnam--gold; bhavati--becomes; yat--which; u ha vava--indeed; vibudha-adayah--the great demigods; saha--with; yuvatibhih--their everlastingly youthful wives; mukuta--crowns; kataka--bangles; kati-sutra--belts; adi--and so on; abharana--of all kinds of ornaments; rupena--in the form; khalu--indeed; dharayanti--they possess.

                           TRANSLATION

   The mud on both banks of the River Jambu-nadi, being moistened by the flowing juice and then dried by the air and the sunshine, produces huge quantities of gold called Jambu-nada. The denizens of heaven use this gold for various kinds of ornaments. Therefore all the inhabitants of the heavenly planets and their youthful wives are fully decorated with golden helmets, bangles and belts, and thus they enjoy life.

                             PURPORT

   By the arrangement of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the rivers on some planets produce gold on their banks. The poor inhabitants of this earth, because of their incomplete knowledge, are captivated by a so-called bhagavan who can produce a small quantity of gold. However, it is understood that in a higher planetary system in this material world, the mud on the banks of the Jambu-nadi mixes with jambu juice, reacts with the sunshine in the air, and automatically produces huge quantities of gold. Thus the men and women are decorated there by various golden ornaments, and they look very nice. Unfortunately, on earth there is such a scarcity of gold that the governments of the world try to keep it in reserve and issue paper currency. Because that currency is not backed up by gold, the paper they distribute as money is worthless, but nevertheless the people on earth are very proud of material advancement. In modern times, girls and ladies have ornaments made of plastic instead of gold, and plastic utensils are used instead of golden ones, yet people are very proud of their material wealth. Therefore the people of this age are described as mandah sumanda-matayo manda-bhagya hy upadrutah (Bhag. 1.1.10). In other words, they are extremely bad and slow to understand the opulence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. They have been described as sumanda-matayah because their conceptions are so crippled that they accept a bluffer who produces a little gold to be God. Because they have no gold in their possession, they are actually poverty-stricken, and therefore they are considered unfortunate.
   Sometimes these unfortunate people want to be promoted to the heavenly planets to achieve fortunate positions, as described in this verse, but pure devotees of the Lord are not at all interested in such opulence. Indeed, devotees sometimes compare the color of gold to that of bright golden stool. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu has instructed devotees not to be allured by golden ornaments and beautifully decorated women. Na dhanam na janam na sundarim: a devotee should not be allured by gold. beautiful women or the prestige of having many followers. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, therefore, confidentially prayed, mama janmani janmanisvare bhavatad bhaktir ahaituki tvayi: "My Lord, please bless Me with Your devotional service. I do not want anything else." A devotee may pray to be delivered from this material world. That is his only aspiration.

          ayi nanda-tanuja kinkaram
           patitam mam visame bhavambudhau
          krpaya tava pada-pankaja-
           sthita-dhuli-sadrsam vicintaya

   The humble devotee simply prays to the Lord, "Kindly pick me up from the material world, which is full of varieties of material opulence, and keep me under the shelter of Your lotus feet."
   Srila Narottama dasa Thakura prays:

ha ha prabhu nanda-suta, vrsabhanu-suta-yuta,karuna karaha ei-bara  narottama-dasa kaya, na theliha ranga-paya,toma vine ke ache amara

   "O my Lord, O son of Nanda Maharaja, now You are standing before me with Your consort, the daughter of Vrsabhanu, Srimati Radharani. Kindly accept me as the dust of Your lotus feet. please do not kick me away, for I have no other shelter."
   Similarly, Prabodhananda Sarasvati indicates that the position of the demigods, who are decorated with golden helmets and other ornaments, is no better than a phantasmagoria (tri-dasa-pur akasa-puspayate). A devotee is never allured by such opulences. He simply aspires to become the dust of the lotus feet of the Lord.

Physicist: Universes pop up ad infinitum

Stanford Report, April 1, 2009

Physicist: Universes pop up ad infinitum

 BY DAN STOBER

Alexander Vilenkin

If you've seen one Big Bang, you definitely haven't seen them all, according to physicist Alexander Vilenkin, director of Tufts University's Institute of Cosmology. Vilenkin is the invited speaker for this year's Hofstadter Lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Physics Department. He will speak on April 6.

According to Vilenkin, the Big Bang that produced our universe is but one of an infinite number of universes that pop up from nowhere, mere bubbles in a larger universe of universes that is itself expanding at unimaginable speeds.

And that scenario, Vilenkin says, leads to an astonishing conclusion. With an infinite number of universes, all possible arrangements of space, matter and time will occur an infinite number of times.

"A striking consequence of the new picture of the world is that there should be an infinity of regions with histories absolutely identical to ours," Vilenkin has written. "That's right, scores of your duplicates are now reading copies of this article. They live on planets exactly like Earth, with all its mountains, cities, trees and butterflies. There should also be regions where histories are somewhat different from ours, with all possible variations." There should be countless regions, for example, where Al Gore became president of the United States.

The implication of these insights, the physicist said, can be depressing. Homo sapiens is not special in the universe; in fact, we're not even unique. That's a big step down from the days when humans considered themselves, literally, as the center of the universe.

Born in the former Soviet Union, Vilenkin received his undergraduate degree in 1971 from Kharkov State University. He was drafted into the army and then worked at various jobs, including night guard at a zoo, while doing physics research in his spare time. He immigrated to the United States in 1976 as a Jewish refugee.

He is an authority on what's known as the inflation theory of the early universe and the author of the popular book Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes. It holds that universes pop forth from emptiness and then expand so fast that in a tiny fraction of a second a region the size of an atom is blown to dimensions much greater than the entire observable universe. In our local universe, this "inflation" ended about 14 billion years ago, and the energy that drove the expansion went to ignite a hot fireball of particles and radiation that we call the Big Bang. As the fireball expanded (at speeds much slower than inflation, yet fantastic by Earthly standards,) it cooled down, allowing stars to form. Gravity then pulled the stars together into the galaxies that still shine in our night sky.

Our galactic home, the Milky Way, will eventually meet its demise in one of two ways, Vilenkin said in an interview with the Stanford Report. Most likely is the collision of the Milky Way with the Andromeda galaxy, due to happen in a few billion years. But it is also possible that before then our own bubble universe will collide with another bubble.

If that collision occurs in our neighborhood, we'll never see it coming, Vilenkin said. It would be a very sudden, catastrophic ending. On the other hand, a bubble collision in the far reaches of our universe might do us no harm. We may even spot one of these bubble universes colliding with ours in the cosmic distance. But, as Vilenkin says, "It wouldn't look like much."

Such a collision would appear as a slight ripple in the otherwise extremely uniform cosmic radiation background. "It would look like a hot or cold spot in this background," he said. "There would be a little round spot where the density of radiation would be a little dimmer than elsewhere." Observers have already spotted an unexpected cold spot, he noted, "So, who knows—it could be the signature of a collision."

As cosmologists push on into the earliest micromoments of the Big Bang, the question inevitably arises, "What existed before the Big Bang?" The answer usually is "nothing," since there was neither space nor time before the beginning.

But Vilenkin has a more nuanced answer. If the laws of nature dictate how the universe could spontaneously pop out of nothingness, and if there is an elegant mathematical description of those laws, then perhaps the laws and the equations existed before the creation itself.

It's scientists' revision of an old question: "Where was God before God created the universe?"

Vedic Perspective

Bhagavad-gita 9.6 Purport         

The Most Confidential Knowledge

For the ordinary person it is almost inconceivable how the huge material creation is resting in Him. But the Lord is giving an example which may help us to understand. Space is the biggest manifestation we can conceive. The cosmic manifestation rests in space. Space permits the movement of even the atoms and on up to the greatest planets, the Sun and the Moon. Although the sky (or wind or air) is great, still it is situated within space. Space is not beyond the sky. 
   Similarly, all the wonderful cosmic manifestations are existing by the supreme will of God, and all of them are subordinate to that supreme will. As we generally say, not a blade of grass moves without the will of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Thus everything is moving under His will: by His will everything is being created, everything is being maintained, and everything is being annihilated. Still He is aloof from everything, as space is always aloof from the activities of the atmosphere. In the Upanisads, it is stated, "It is out of the fear of the Supreme Lord that the wind is blowing." In the Garga Upanisad also it is stated, "By the supreme order, under the superintendence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the moon, the sun and the great planets are moving." In the Brahma-samhita this is also stated. There is also a description of the movement of the sun, and it is said that the sun is considered to be one of the eyes of the Supreme Lord and that it has immense potency to diffuse heat and light. Still it is moving in its prescribed orbit by the order and the supreme will of Govinda. So, from the Vedic literature we can find evidence that this material manifestation, which appears to us to be very wonderful and great, is under the complete control of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This will be further explained in the later verses of this chapter.

Why ET's genetic code could be just like ours

A new thermodynamic analysis suggests that 10 of life's 20 amino acids must be common throughout the cosmos

Monday, April 06, 2009

One of the great outstanding questions in biology involves the evolution of the genetic code and the fact it relies on 20 amino acids. How did this system evolve and why use 20 amino acids and not some other number? Today, Paul Higgs and Ralph Pudritz at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, put forward an answer which has profound implications for the nature of life on other planets.

We know that amino acids are common in our solar system and beyond. Various first experiments to recreate the conditions in the Earth's early atmosphere have produced 10 of the amino acids found in proteins. Curiously, analyses of meteorite samples have found exactly these same 10 amino acids. Various researchers have noted this link but none have explained it.

Now we know why, say Higgs and Pudritz. They have ranked the amino acids found in proteins according to the thermodynamic likelihood of them forming. This turns out to match the observed abundances in meteorites and in early Earth simulations, more or less exactly.

That's a neat piece of work. They go on to argue that the first genetic codes must have evolved to exploit these 10 prebiotic amino acids. The other amino acids which are all bigger and generally more difficult to synthesise must have been incorporated later. At any rate, Nature had settled on the full 20 we see today by the time the earliest common ancestor of all organisms on the planet first emerged, at least 3.5 billion years ago.

Higgs and Pudritz are not the first to suggest that the first genetic code consisted of 10 prebiotic amino acids but all previous arguments have differed in various ways. What's impressive about their argument is that it is underpinned by the powerful theoretical machinery of thermodynamics.

The implications of this are huge. Thermodynamic arguments are as valid on Earth as they are in interstellar gas clouds, where evidence of amino acids has already been seen. What's the betting that these amino acids are the same as the prebiotic 10 that Higgs and Pudritz finger?

These same thermodynamic arguments should also hold on Earth-like planets elsewhere in the cosmos. And if that's the case, then ET may not be so alien after all, as Higgs and Pudritz imply with the extraordinary conclusion to their paper:

"The combined actions of thermodynamics and subsequent natural selection suggest that the genetic code we observe on the Earth today may have significant features in common with life throughout the cosmos."

A thermodynamic Basis for Prebiotic Amino Acid Synthesis and the Nature of the First Genetic Code

Vedic Perspective

SB 4.20.35-36 P Lord Visnu' s Appearance in the Sacrificial Arena of Maharaja Prthu

   In modern so-called scientific society the idea is very prevalent that there is no life on other planets but that only on this earth do living entities with intelligence and scientific knowledge exist. The Vedic literatures, however, do not accept this foolish theory. The followers of Vedic wisdom are fully aware of various planets inhabited by varieties of living entities such as the demigods, the sages, the Pitas, the Gandharvas, the Pannagas, the Kinnaras, the Caranas, the Siddhas and the Apsaras. The Vedas give information that in all planets--not only within this material sky but also in the spiritual sky--there are varieties of living entities. Although all these living entities are of one spiritual nature, in quality the same as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, they have varieties of bodies due to the embodiment of the spirit soul by the eight material elements, namely earth, water, fire, air, sky, mind, intelligence and false ego. In the spiritual world, however, there is no such distinction between the body and the embodied. In the material world, distinctive features are manifested in different types of bodies in the various planets. We have full information from the Vedic literature that in each and every planet, both material and spiritual, there are living entities of varied intelligence. The earth is one of the planets of the Bhurloka planetary system. There are six planetary systems above Bhurloka and seven planetary systems below it. Therefore the entire universe is known as caturdasa-bhuvana, indicating that it has fourteen different planetary systems. Beyond the planetary systems in the material sky, there is another sky, which is known as paravyoma, or the spiritual sky, where there are spiritual planets. The inhabitants of those planets engage in varieties of loving service unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead, which include different rasas, or relationships, known as dasya-rasa, sakhya-rasa, vatsalya-rasa, madhurya-rasa and, above all, parakiya-rasa. This parakiya-rasa, or paramour love, is prevalent in Krsnaloka, where Lord Krsna lives. This planet is also called Goloka Vrndavana, and although Lord Krsna lives there perpetually, He also expands Himself in millions and trillions of forms. In one of such forms He appears on this material planet in a particular place known as Vrndavana-dhama, where He displays His original pastimes of Goloka Vrndavana-dhama in the spiritual sky in order to attract the conditioned souls back home, back to Godhead.