Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“THE SECRET LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE” by Nathalie A. Cabrol (Published by Simon & Schuster. Marketed in New Zealand by HarperCollins, $NZ30). ;  “NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT – The Misadventures of a Kiwi Soldier” by Dario Nustrini (Published by HarperCollins, $NZ39.99)

Let me make a very obvious statement. I am not a scientist of any sort, and I would be totally lost if I were to attempt reading a genuine scientific treatise. For one thing, I would be floored by the necessary terms and jargon that science requires. But this does not mean that I am completely ignorant of scientific developments, scientific discoveries and for that matter scientific controversies. How do I know such things? Not by academic treatises, but by reading good popularisation written by scientists. In this matter “popularisation” does not mean “dumbing down”. It means good information passed on by scientists to lay people like me (and let’s ignore the fact that there are – alas – bogus non-scientific writers who produce unscientific clap-trap – see my think-piece on this blog U.F.O.s and My Tin-Foil Hat).  

Sub-titled “An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life” The Secret Life of the Universe is the work of a genuine scientist. Nathalie A. Cabrol is an astrobiologist – that is, an astronomer who specialises in seeking signs of life in our solar system and beyond. This does not necessarily mean searching for intelligent life. It means searching for any form of life beyond planet Earth – even if that means tiny, microscopic building-blocks of life. And of course there is also the quest for water beyond planet Earth. Inevitably, Cabrol uses some scientific jargon – which slowed me down in some of my reading – but not so impenetrable as to miss their meaning. Read slowly and carefully.

In her opening Chapters, Cabrol introduces us to exoplanets – meaning planets moving around suns far beyond our solar system. They have been detected by the most modern telescopes and radio telescopes. Astronomers have so far discovered at least 3,800 stars with planets circling about them in our galaxy. This leads her to discuss how vast our galaxy alone is, and how planets were formed and how they will probably die. One theory on how Earth was formed, embraced by many astronomers, is the Theian theory. This is the idea that another huge planet, now dubbed Theia, crashed against the embryonic Earth creating the Moon and its tilt. This was mere thousands of millions of years ago. But, more to the point of the search for life in the universe, the crashing of two planets could mean how the earliest building blocks of life were passed on from one planet to another. In fact, there are many theories about how life is passed from one planet to another. One is the Panspermia theory which says that dust was scattered about the universe, seeding minute elements that could develop over eons and become minute forms of life. But this doesn’t tell us where minute life came from. Another theory sees life beginning with biochemistry; not to mention the idea that life began in the hot springs in the deep sea.

However Cabrol lays down some universal laws about life, telling us that thanks to recent astronomical work “…the elementary compounds that make the life we know, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur… are common in the universe. It is no accident that we are made of them… Organic molecules and volatiles are found at the surface of Mars, in the geysers of Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus, in the atmosphere of Triton, in Triton’s stratosphere and on comets…. Much further away still, nearly two hundred types of prebiotic complex organic molecules were detected in interstellar clouds near the centre of our galaxy. They included the kinds that could play a role in forming amino acids – the building blocks of the life we know. Granted that organic molecules are not life, but they are the elemental building blocks life uses for its carbon and hydrogen backbone, and they are everywhere.” [Chapter 1, Pg. 14] She also makes it clear that “When it comes to the environments in which life could have originated, we can only test various hypotheses to the best of our current abilities: warm, cold, acidic, alkaline, and anywhere in between, and see how the chemistry works out. But there, too, a transition from prebiotic chemistry to life appears possible in more than just one scenario, as demonstrated by the various theories.” [Chapter 2, Pg. 42]

Having set down these universal facts, in the following five chapters Cabrol proceeds to take us through the possibility of life on planets and their moons in our solar system. Mercury, nearest to the sun, is brushed aside. Being closest to the sun, Mercury is essentially scorched and cooked by the sun – an arid rock where even the most microscopic life is improbable. Cabrol turns to the “solar habitable zone”, meaning warmed by our sun enough to nurture life, but not so cold as to be inhabitable. In the habitable zone are Venus, Earth and Mars. Obviously Earth is teeming with life, so no more need be said. Venus is shrouded in steam and clouds. 96% of Venus’s atmosphere is carbon-dioxide, which does not encourage life. Possibly vestiges of life might once have existed on Venus. But we have to remember that slowly, over millions of years, the sun expands; and in this long process the growing heat would have destroyed such life as there might have been on Venus. Also discouraging Venusian life are Venus’s winds, which constantly run at 360 kilometres per hour. Incidentally, Venus spins in the different direction from most planets.

So we are taken to a more likely planet – Mars. Smaller than both Venus and Earth, Mars was once regarded as most likely to bear life – perhaps intelligent life. There were tales about canals on Mars etc. But a few sweeps around the small planet by Viking 1 and 2 in 1975 definitively destroyed such fantasies. The country that takes greatest interest in Mars is now China. Mars could have once been habitable as there were organic molecules there – but Mars lost its atmosphere. There may have been water on the surface of Mars 100 million years ago and there still is volcanic activity on Mars. There are on Mars mudstones [mud petrified] that suggest that eons ago there were lakes in the planet. Referring to NASA’s Viking explorations of Mars, Cabrol remarks:  “It gave us the first in-depth view of the history of a planet where everything looked incredibly familiar: ancient channels and dry lake beds, polar caps, dune fields, volcanoes, and lava flows now frozen in time. There is no need to invent new words to describe Mars. Its landscapes are very Earth like and yet so different, a red planet with blue sunsets, where rovers have sunken their wheels in the dirt for the past couple of decades now.”   [Chapter 4, Pg. 67] Further she notes of Mars: “Despite hostile conditions on the surface today, all data converge to show that Mars is on the high-priority list of worlds where life could have developed and survived over time. The new findings encourage us to think we are on the right path.” [Chapter 4, Pg. 86] It is quite feasible that Mars in its formation sent dust to Earth, in effect one factor seeding Earth.

So much for Venus, Earth and Mars, the three planets in the habitable zone.

Turning to the [apparently] largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter is essentially a bubble of gas – not a planet where there is firm ground and therefore not a place where life could develop. But Jupiter is surrounded by many moons, and it is they which Cabrol examines in detail. She remarks “Earth is only one of many ocean worlds in our solar system.” Jupiter’s moon Juno is covered in ice [NOT H2o], with possibly water deep under its crust [water is not one of the building-blocks of life, but it is needed to nurture life]. Possibly Jupiter’s small moon Ganymede carries water, but it is most likely to be found in the moon Europa.

The planet Saturn has not been examined as closely as its largest moon Titan. Titan  has been examined by NASA’s Huygens probe in 2005, which forced its way through Titan’s thick atmosphere and landed, despite the moon’s very strong winds. Later the Cassini voyage circled around Titan and examined it in detail: “Cassini completed over one hundred close flybys of the giant moon, mapped its surface, and continued to make detailed studies of the atmosphere. The detection of large gravity tides seemed to confirm the presence of a layer of liquid water underneath an icy crust, kilometres below the lakes and seas of methane sitting on the surface.”  [Chapter 6, Pg. 118] But does this mean water as we know it? Triton has some forbidding aspects – nor least that it revolves so slowly that each of its seasons takes 17 years. There will be more searches for prebiotic signals in future landings but as yet there is there is no evidence of signs of life. As for other objects in our solar system, the dwarf planet Ceres [in the asteroid belt] appears to carry water, Pluto’s moon Charon carries water and possibly that there is water underneath the surface of our Moon.

At which point you will reasonably ask why a book about finding life should be so concerned with water. Remember that over millions of years, the sun will expand and swallow planet by planet. Our Earth is in the habitable zone now, but it won’t be habitable forever. Our [very distant] descendants will find Earth becoming hotter and hotter. Could it be [and this is only speculation] that our descendants will then seek out moons in our solar system to which they can move … and they will need water. Science fiction? Maybe, but reasonable.

Having dealt with our puny little solar system, in her last five chapters Cabrol turns to the bigger picture of our galaxy and whether there are any signs of life therein. Astronomers are now able to detect distant suns which, in the way they “wobble”, reveal that they have planets circling around them. It is possible that there are between 20-trillion to 80-trillion planets in our galaxy alone, the odds therefore being that life must exist far from our solar system. AI systems are able to detect not only stars with planets, but stars very many light-years away. The gas giants we know [like Jupiter] may have small rock cores carrying a form of life… but we do not know. Nevertheless Cabrol says “The laws of physics and chemistry are universal and the building blocks of life on Earth are abundant and common, and though they might not be exactly the same elsewhere, the odds suggest that many more analogue blueprints of the process of life could exist in the universe, in the same way synonyms provide different means to convey the same information in grammar. Now we just have to figure out ways to test this hypothesis and see how it may help us to search for life beyond our planet.” [Chapter 12, Pg.249]

Remembering that some suns are well on the way to dying and other suns are newly bred, it is possible that there are not only signs of life but there may be ancient  civilisations in our vast galaxy with whom we have not yet connected… but of course this is only [reasonable] speculation. In the meantime, the SETI project has now for over six decades been attempting to detect extra-terrestrial techno-signatures; and there are many discussions among astrobiologists about what sort of extra-terrestrials might be interested in us… but so far nobody has met an extra-terrestrial. In her very last chapter, Cabrol deals with the possibility that the whole universe teams with life, but not intelligent life. In her epilogue, she discusses the decline of Earth in its pollution and constant loss of species… and pessimistically, she says that it is very unlikely we human beings will ever find an alternate home.

In putting together this synopsis, I have grossly simplified Nathalie A. Cabrol’s complex theses, and I admit that I found it harder to understand her ideas once I got into the last five chapters. That is why I wrote comparatively little of those chapters. For all that, The Secret Life of the Universe is an enlightening book and certainly one that reminds us of our status in the order of things.

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And in the immortal words of Monty Python, now for something completely different. Nothing Significant to Report, subtitled “The Misadventures of a Kiwi Soldier” is Dario Nustrini memoirs of six years in the New Zealand army before he resigned and was honourably discharged. He joined when he was 19 and was discharged when he was 25. Most of those six years were taken up with training.

            As it begins, Nothing Significant to Report is almost a breezy, rollicking tale, but eventually moves into darker things. Dario Nustrini (his name came from his Italian forebears) divides his tale into four sections.

First there is “Basic Training” at Waiouru, which involves getting used to being messed about, first by corporals then by NCO’s. There are such things as almost having to wear the wrong sized uniform; marching, marching and more marching; the inevitable incompetent barracks fool who always does everything wrongly; beginning to fumble with rifles before getting used to them; route marches and other necessities. Dario Nustrini is attracted to the signals corps. All this is told in humorous tone – yarns about doing things wrongly, cracking jokes and of course swearing as often as possible. Rough Kiwi jokers in short, with laughing camaraderie.

Then there is “Corps Training and Beyond” down south at Linton and Burnham Camp, which at least has a bar where young soldiers can booze in their off hours. Nustrini becomes an Electronic Warfare Operator [meaning signals] and now has the onerous task of carrying around heavy equipment in marches and field manoeuvres. There is much training in mountains and bush in the South Island and tales of twerps who have to be shown how signals work. And then there are lectures on wars going on elsewhere… especially Afghanistan.

“Fun and Games” (of course the title is ironical) deals with his being sent to various allied countries, including Canada for a while, to understand more about signals. His craft is honed in New Zealand, including having to know how to set up a site for sending and receiving signals, with camouflage and other cover. There is one tale of him and his team being ordered, at night, to penetrate the Auckland Zoo without being detected – a tale that ends in laughter. On brief leave there are [largely] harmless capers about picking up girls. And there are further exercises with the Australian Army in Exercise Listening Redback. Both Australia and New Zealand are readying to join the U.S.A. and U.K. to fight in Iraq.

And so to “Around the World”, which happens to be the shortest section of Nothing Significant to Report. In Iraq, Nustrini is mainly together with the Aussies and the Yanks. Naturally there are the discomforts of active military life, with barely sanitary barracks and of course much danger. There are many fire-fights. He has respect for the Iraqi soldiers who are fighting against the terrorist ISIS, but he gradually becomes disillusioned with army life. After just this one “deployment”, when he returns to New Zealand he resigns, is discharged and leaves the army.

While much of Nothing Significant to Report is written tongue-in-cheek and making light of army life, its humour is only fitful. Nustrini’s admiration for his comrades is real, but the comedy is sometimes strained and slowly falls away. Still, the life in barracks seems painfully real.