POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Part II – The State of Life in the Solar System and Exoplanets

NOT using thepanel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in SanJose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire fromeducation)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree withthe BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But nottoday. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimesreviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up thespirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

Grinspoon was appointed to a new NASA post in July of 2023. Formerly (or STILL?) Senior Scientist at Planetary Science Institute is now the new Senior Scientist for Astrobiology Strategy. 
"Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe. As Senior Scientist for Astrobiology Strategy at NASA Grinspoon will serve as the Agency's senior leader for astrobiology, spearheading efforts from NASA Headquarters to ensure significant progress is made in the field."
After reading LONELYPLANETS: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life (2003) by David Grinspoon, his words sparked several thoughts and speculations. Hedoes, of course, have a “doctor” in front of his name, but it appears that hedoesn’t use it very often. He also has the endorsement of Neil deGrasse Tyson –the quintessential FACE of astronomy and the immediate successor to CarlSagan.

Tyson said of Grinspoon’s book “…brings together what has never beforebeen synthesized…he is a planetary scientist as well as dreamer, born of thespace age.” Now, that was in 2003. 

As is apparent to anyone who reads my blog, I LOVE aliens! I writeabout aliens! I do (guardedly) believe that there is intelligent life “outthere, somewhere” – HOWEVER, I don’t believe that we have any real proof yetand that it is, at this point, an intellectual and philosophical exercise. In fact, I (with all due respect) believe that astrobiology is an...imaginary science. Though I suppose genetic engineering was imaginary once, long ago...

Be that as it may, I’ve only read the first 20 or so pages of Grinspoon’sbook and skimmed his website (http://funkyscience.net/),but I find myself looking forward to following this guy for some time to come!

I’m a bit overhalfway through the book now (page 198) and I’ve placed an order for my owncopy through a Half-Price Books near me. I’m even (*gasp*) dog-earing myLibrary copy for later transfer to the book when I get it.

Couple of things Inoticed thus far: the book is old. Published in 2003, (TWO FREAKING DECADES AGO!!!) it was most likelywritten in 2002. This was substantially BEFORE the Kepler Telescope was launchedinto an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit in 2009, and absolutely FOREVER before the Webb Space Telescope. 
Six years later, Keplercelebrated the discovery of its 1000th confirmed exoplanet. Anotherthree years followed Kepler sweeping more and more prizes into its discovery bin.Then “On October 30, 2018, after the spacecraft ran out of fuel, NASA announcedthat the telescope would be retired. The telescope was shut down the same day,bringing an end to its nine-year service. Kepler observed 530,506 stars anddiscovered 2,662 exoplanets over its lifetime…” (Anyone else hear a faint echoof “…its five-year mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new lifeand new civilizations, to boldly go where no [one] has gone before!”?)

Despite the age ofthe book and now that I’ve read half of its 416 pages, I’m puzzled by Grinspoon’snot mentioning “hot Jupiters”. With statements like: “In the hot regions nearthe Sun, it snowed flakes of metal androck. Farther out, around the present orbit of Jupiter, it was cold enough for icesto form: both the familiar snowflakes of water ice that adorn winter on Earthand more exotic snow of frozen methane and ammonia.” (page 82); and “Theinitial segregation of material by temperature, which made metal and rock nearthe Sun, and ice farther out, has been preserved.” (page 83). He obviously doesn't mention the Grand Tack model of the solar system (Proposed in 2018, it states "In planetary astronomy, the grand tack hypothesis proposes that Jupiter formed at a distance of 3.5 AU from the Sun, then migrated inward to 1.5 AU, before reversing course due to capturing Saturn in an orbital resonance, eventually halting near its current orbit at 5.2 AU.")

Why is that? HeDOES mention the discovery that the star 51 Pegasi had a planetary companion.That happened in 1995 (embarrassingly, this story doesn’t start until page 209and as I mentioned, I’ve only just today reached page 198!). After thisaccount, Grinspoon goes on to marvel at the discovery of some hundreds ofextrasolar planets (!), having only a faint idea that Kepler would soon blowthat number out of the water.

My other troubleis that when discussing Venus, he makes virtually no mention of the fact thatit has a retrograde rotation when compared to the rest of the planets (I don’tcount Uranus among those having a retrograde rotation. That gas giant’srotation is retrograde only becauseits “north” pole is actually south of its “equator” (the Solar Equator, if youwill. That is, the planets and minor planets orbit the Sun orbit in the samedirection on pretty much the same plane. Confused? OK, this is how I explain itto my astronomy classes. Imagine your head is the Sun. If you stick your armsout and start to turn slowly in (ignoring the direction at this time) and stuckball bearings of increasing sizes on your arms with duct tape at increasing distancesfrom your head, you would have a basic illustration of the Solar System as itturns in space. Imagine then, that each of the ball bearings are turning the samedirection: except for Venus. It rotates in the opposite direction of everyoneelse – and it turns VERY, VERY slowly. When you reach Uranus, let it keepspinning in the same direction, but tip its north pole 98 degrees (90 degreesis like a “90 degree angle” or as you may remember from geometry or trigonometry,a “right angle”.) Uranus is tipped MORE than that…but it’s still rotating thesame direction as it did when it was upright…but now it’s spin, relative to theother planets, is backwards (aka “retrograde”).

At any rate, Dr.Grinspoon talks about what it is that has created Venus’ hellish conditions andwhile he does include its location (closer to the Sun than Earth), the factthat the Sun is brighter and hotter today than it was when the Solar systemformed), and a peculiar venology (it can’t be “geology” and “aphrodology” justsounds weird…) that includes a sort of cyclical disruptive plate tectonics (pages171-173); he doesn’t mention the slow, retrograde rotation. By slow, I meanthat a “day” on Venus is 243 Earth days; and the Sun would rise in the west andset in the east…eventually.

It could be that Ihaven’t reached those pages yet, so we’ll see.

Perhaps thebiggest “kick-in-the-teeth” is that he clearly lays out what happened to alterour Solar system longer ago than 65,000,000 years: “As the planets approachedtheir final sizes, giant also-rans, the contenders that could have beenplanets, came hurtling down to Earth (and Mercury, Venus, etc.) at speeds oftens of thousands of miles per hour. These final giant impactors left a trailof destruction throughout the solar system, stripping Mercury of its outer rockmantle, leaving Venus spinning backward, and knocking Uranus on its side And inan event as propitious for us as it was random, a Mars-size protoplanet smackedinto the young, still-forming Earth, splashing a massive ring of vaporized rockinto Earth orbit, which quickly condensed to make out singular, giant Moon.” (page82)

If any of you everread the first book of my proposed series HEIRS OF THE SHATTERED SPHERES:Emerald of Earth (which is serialized here https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/starting in January or so…), I have a slightly more fantastic explanation forthe current state of the Solar system. Emerald Marcillon’s mother, Nhia Okon,explains to a group of high-ranking military brass:

“The evidencewe’ve gathered so far clearly indicates that a massive object, probably amicroscopic black hole, grazed Uranus and tipped it on its side….A fleet ofinvading interstellar warships, using black-hole-energy technology probablyexperienced a disastrous explosion shortly thereafter. Debris swept through thesolar system, probably missing Saturn but raining down on Jupiter and settingoff the Great Red Spot hurricane…The worst was yet to happen…Mars had shallowoceans that teemed with microscopic life forms. A large rock, possibly anasteroid knocked from a stable orbit and carried on the shockwave of theexplosion, slammed into the planet, blowing away much of its air allowing theoceans to boil away under low pressure…Another asteroid carried on theshockwave struck off the coast of what would one day be the Yucatan Peninsula.The dinosaurs and thousands of other life forms, already environmentally andgenetically stressed, were launched into extinction…This is the world of analien, probably sauroid intelligence native to the planet we now call Venus.They were aggressive and powerful. Spreading through our solar system, we haveevidence that they conquered beyond it. The invasion fleet had come to put astop to it….But the accident that destroyed the fleet and saved the sauroidsfrom certain invasion, next threatened them with the mindless destruction ofchance…An object nearly large enough to split Venus in half hit the sauroidmoon, knocking it cleanly out of Venus’ orbit, where it drifted until the suncaptured it again, the molten scar on its surface glowing red hot for nearly acentury. The world we call Venus was pounded by meteorites sleeting through thevacuum of space. A second monstrous object was large enough to reverse Venus’rotation…The solar system had been reshaped and the intelligences on the new,second planet of the shattered star system were extinct. We are the heirs ofthose shattered spheres. We are the ones who must piece together the details.We are the ones who must find the bits of technology that we can use to go tothe stars...”

I’ll leave youwith this, and I’ll continue next time.

Links: PSI's David Grinspoon Appointed to New NASA Post (spacedaily.com)Resources:
Part 1:http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-philosophy.html,http://www.openexoplanetcatalogue.com/

Part III: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/possibly-irritating-essays-part-three.htmlImage: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HvBJ-0Cc1G4/UuMOA98-RJI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/r5JUlNiN2Tw/s1600/Unknown-4.jpeg