Here’s a couple of fascinating things I just learned. I wanted to provide links to these articles but, alas, you can only get to the article if you have a subscription to Chemical & Engineering News, and I doubt everyone does.
1) How can the squid, with its very soft body, not manage to hurt itself with that tough beak?
The article says “you can imagine the problems you’d encounter if you attached a knife blade to a block of Jell-O and tried to use that blade for cutting. The blade would cut through the Jell-O at least as much as the targeted object”.
Turns out, the beak’s stiffness gradually from the tip to the base. In fact, the base is some 100 times more flexible than the tip, which reduces impact on the cheek tissue near the beak’s base.
2) Organic Brew found on Enceladus.
Usually, when scientists speak of finding life elsewhere in the solar system, they are speaking of Mars, Titan or Europa. So, it’s quite a find to have discovered that parts of Saturn’s satellite Enceladus are about 63 degrees (F) warmer than previously thought. And, there are water vapors and organic chemicals near the southern polar region, a recent Cassini flyby found. These molecules are present some 20x more dense then was expected and include such compounds as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
Some smart guy at JPL said: “We have quite a recipe for life on our hands, but we have yet to find the final ingredient, liquid water”.
I just think it’s pretty cool that we’re exploring the universe and yet we still manage to find surprises in our own back yard.
I still find it very interesting that when scientists talk about finding “life” on places other than Earth, it is always assumed that it MUST be life as we know it. It must be life that evolved as we did, with liquid water. Anyone with a little imagination, a little science background and access to some old Star Trek shows can figure out that life could possibly exist in forms that are not like us. I don’t think the Crystaline Entity or The Borg are too far fetched at all. Remember when Dr. McCoy patched up the silicone based being with a little plaster? None of these beings needed any water…
Right, I thought the same thing. It’s funny, even in Star Trek, most of the humans look very much like humans. Moreso than even other intelligent life on earth (dolphins, elephants) look like humans.
In their defense though, if a planet is discovered with liquid water on it, then scientists feel that life could at least be there since it’s such an integral part of ‘life as we know it’. I mean, if one planet has a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere with liquid water and another has a methane atmosphere with liquid metal, it’s not that life couldn’t possibly be on the latter planet, only that we know the former one is more likely to have life.
“…only that we know the former one is more likely to have life.”
How so?
David–
My choice of words was very poor for that last comment. What I should have said is that we think one is more likely to have life, because we know life exists in at least one environment (Earth) like that.
As an example, let’s say there are two planets equidistant from us, and we know one has a methane atmosphere and the other one has a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere. With our finite budget, we would be more likely to investigate the N2/O2 planet, believing that life is more likely there. In fact, that is what we have done – exploring Mars more thoroughly than Venus because it is more hospitable to life as we know it.