Amphibious Drones, Ancient Extremophiles and Superbugs in Space

Amphibious drones are go...

It's hotting up - big money prizes for first team to the moon , and the first to explore the deep sea.
The deep sea contest has a one-day time restriction, and it's got to be done by amphibious drone.
This could be useful for imminent  exploration of other worlds - but as I studied this article, I learned that we have only explored 5% of our own oceans. 
That stopped me in my tracks - mainly because at this point in our jaded , world-weary 21st century we must have explored everywhere on Earth ?
Nope, most of the oceans remain unknown.

Who knows what lurks...           detail from Carta Marina 1572

Exploration is underway in Antarctica , deep inside icy caverns where conditions are similar to Europa (ok, not that similar - temperatures on Europa would be way more frosty at -160°c )
Harsh environments provide serious challenges for exploration , and so JPL have a development facility for monitoring extreme environments , where they are developing robots that can crawl, scurry and climb .
I also learned that there is a department of planetary protection within NASA - is this a conflict of interest ?
Or is it a genuine watchdog for the many exploration methods that are being developed?

Perhaps the most bizarre news in terms of biological matters is that the MRSA bug - the 'superbug' as it was termed by the media in the uk when it created a scare recently, ( ...a bug that you could catch in hospital that was immune to all medicines!) is being sent to the ISS.
We are assured that it will be subject to serious, high-level containment - but anyone with a working knowledge of sci - fi knows how that plays out...

Apparently, space is being upgraded to broadband or something similar , with wider bandwidth enabling bigger images and information packets to be transmitted across the cold vacuum of space.
I'm glad, because I always have problems with my dial-up connection to Pluto.*
Which reminds me that there are many who won't know what I mean by ' dial-up' - and now, I feel old.

...meanwhile, down here on Earth,

  Strange life forms have been discovered embedded in crystals in a system of caves in Naica, Mexico
Dating back some 50 000 years, the living microbes are proof of the resilience of life in extreme environments (the Naica caves are 58°c, 99% humidity).
They are complex microbes, and their DNA differs as much from us , as we differ from mushrooms.
The specimens have been revived in a restricted environment (a lab)
So, that's all right, then , it's not as if we could ever be invaded by rocks...

* At the time of writing, it's 86 years since the discovery of sometime planet Pluto, so, happy birthday!

From The Great Attractor To The Fountains of Enceladus

This is the closest thing to a cosmic xmas wreath, so...merry festive !

Apparently dark shadows in craters on Ceres conceal frozen water ice, something which the Dawn explorer is looking into (no pun intended) - the famous  highly reflective white patches are salt , and the craters conceal what could be ice water from which the salt has come; more evidence of a briny, subsurface ocean .
Given the sheer amount of subsumed salt on the surface, I'd wager it wasn't far beneath the surface.
It's almost a given that our solar system is full of worlds with hidden oceans.

A recent trend seems to be the coupling of serious information with crude humour , and the headline of this article continues the tradition.
Anyway, Uranus exhibits unusual rotation in the southern latitudes , rotating some 15% faster than the rest of the gas giant.
This seems to be the result of an unusual object deep inside the planet.
Very little is known about the gas giants , so this, along with the current Juno explorer , could help greatly increase our knowledge.

Scientists have measured the smallest sliver of time ever , so brief (850 zaptoseconds*) , that they can see an electron emerge from an atom which got me thinking ; how can they create a ' sliver ' of time?
Can they therefore stop time ?

A new Antarctic exploration has begun with an attempt to drill  down deep and uncover the oldest ice on Earth, yielding evidence from millions of years ago.
From the microscopic to the macrocosmic - the discovery of galactic infrastructure
(we are part of a supercluster called Laniakea) means that we  are potentially the tiny building blocks of an even greater universe .
This has implcations for many things, including our understanding of time; speaking of which, go see  Arrival...

Enceladus water plumes     image NASA / Cassini

The next journeys to Saturns moons Enceladus and Titan, will be to find evidence of life.
Nasa have an explorer lined up called Enceladus Life Finder, or ELF, to be funny.
Not to be outdone, ESA will be exploring with a craft named E2T , which isn't quite so snappy, but it will be amazing to see two flybys intent on uncovering evidence of life.
The focus will be on the jets of water seen emitting from the southern polar area of Enceladus. Coupled with a low altitude camera survey of the surface, it is hoped that enough information will be gleaned to establish for once and for all the possibility that even microbial life does or did exist in those subsurface oceans.

Meanwhile, on Mars...

Slightly closer to home - well, Mars anyway, is on target for the 2020 Exomars thing, with the addition of a drill capable of taking samples from a depth of two metres below the surface in the ongoing search for biosignatures...

High above the Earth...

...even closer to home is the ISS, and NASA are mooting a new form of parachute braking system to enable two way journeys of science payloads.
Plans are already afoot for a new space station, with the mooted NASA / Roskosmos collaboration scheduled for 2024 . By this time, such operations should be quite commercialised , and a joint exploration of Mars is also planned - to which end, the new Orion is being put through its paces.

Out there, somewhere...

Apparently,the Great Attractor is our destiny .
Whats going to happen is a secret though-
It's 200 million light years away, so we won't be getting spoilers for a long time.
No one knows what the great attractor is, except that it has the mass of 200 billion suns, and is drawing us inexorably towards it
So it's pretty irresistible
Pun was not intended

I am posting this as we approach the end of  2016, for better or worse.
Personally, I think it's for the better, as this year has been relentless and miserable .
I do intend to write a couple more blogposts by the end of this year, but they may be more 'Earthbound' than recent posts.
I'm scratching my head though - perhaps I should just get a new blog.
Decisions, eh ?

Until soon, take care !





* Apparently its very short. I trust New Scientist not to prank me.