Welcome to the NAI Newsletter! The Newsletter is a compendium of announcements, events, updates, and news items related to the NAI and its research. If you have news items or suggestions you can send them to the editor, Marco Boldt at: Marco.Boldt@nasa.gov.
Newsletter for November 15, 2006
- Director's Corner
- NSF Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) Call for Proposals
- ROSES-06 Amendment 19: New proposal opportunity for History of the Scientific Exploration of Earth and Space
- NAI Director's Seminar 11/27: Formation of Habitable Planetary Systems: Are We Normal?
- Conditions for the Emergence of Life on the Early Earth: Special Issue
- High Lakes Expedition Report: Drilling into Arctic Permafrost
- The HFSP (Human Frontier Science Program) Journal - Call for Papers
Director's Corner
In the first of these columns I wrote about addressing the challenges to astrobiology. One way of addressing those challenges is to have a compelling “story.” The story of astrobiology answers the question “What is astrobiology?” The astrobiology community came together in the late 1990’s to answer this question in the first Astrobiology Roadmap. Here’s what they said:
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and destiny of life in the universe. It uses space technologies to address some of the most profound questions of human kind: How did life begin? Are there other planets like Earth? and What is our future as terrestrial life expands beyond the home planet? These questions are age-old. But now, for the first time in human history, advances in the biological sciences, space exploration and space technology make it possible for us to answer them.
They went on to summarize the disciplines of astrobiology and the missions and facilities that would make contributions, and finished this way:
By harnessing the power of knowledge and technology, astrobiologists seek to discover the intricate chain of cause-and-effect that determines how life originates and evolves, and the resultant implications for the destiny of worlds.
Later in the Roadmap the three profound questions addressed by astrobiology were rephrased as
1. How does life begin and evolve?
2. Does life exist elsewhere in the universe?
3. What is life’s future on Earth and beyond?
This articulation of what astrobiology is all about has largely survived the test of time. The second Astrobiology Roadmap, developed by the community in 2002-2003, preserves the three rephrased questions and only slightly modifies the one-sentence definition to read
Astrobiology is the study of the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.
Still, I wonder if this captures the full significance of astrobiology. I believe that astrobiology is at the cutting edge of a change in world view as potentially profound as was the Copernican Revolution nearly 500 years ago. That revolution did not just replace a geocentric with a heliocentric cosmology, it ultimately overturned previous concepts of knowledge, authority, and governance. It established that humans could seek and discover truth by means of their own faculties and inventions without recourse to ecclesiastical interpretation of scripture. Once this was resolved, it was only one more step to argue that people could govern themselves without recourse to the divine right of kings. When John Locke made that connection between scientific and political thought almost 150 years after Copernicus, he laid the foundation for another Revolution, that of the American colonies against the English monarchy.
How could astrobiology have implications as momentous as those of the Copernican Revolution and the Enlightenment, I hear you ask. I don’t know and neither does anyone else. But I think about it this way. For roughly the last century we have sought to understand the nature of the universe using the principles of physics, chemistry, and geology as applied through subdisciplines such as astrophysics, space physics, geophysics, geochemistry, and cosmochemistry. We have in turn used the technologies that support these disciplines: the telescopes and detectors of astronomy; the elemental and mineralogical probes of meteoritics and geochemistry; the accelerators of particle physics, to name just a few.
We are now beginning to integrate biology into our understanding of the universe by posing questions that can only be addressed by applying biology alongside the more traditional disciplines. We now know that we cannot understand the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere or oceans without understanding the impact of biological processes. We now have ample reason to believe that there are billions of other planets in our galaxy and that a broadened and more general concept of biology may be necessary to understand future observations of some of them. We now question why the physical constants of the universe seem to have values within narrow ranges that permit the existence of life. And we are beginning to use the tools of modern biology to understand how we might detect life on other worlds and how life might have begun on this one.
Integrating biology into our quest for knowledge about the universe implicitly reflects an extension of our concept of the scope of universal processes. It has been common to hear the origin and evolution of the universe described as starting with the Big Bang and continuing through the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets. Now we speak of it continuing through the development of life and even intelligence. We speculate that the development of life in some form may indeed be a universal process and search for evidence that it may have evolved into intelligence somewhere beyond Earth.
An excellent statement of this perspective was written for a 1996 workshop: “The study of Origins follows the 15 billion year long chain of events from the birth of the Universe at the big Bang, through the formation of the chemical elements, of galaxies, stars, and planets, through the mixing of chemicals and energy that cradled life on earth, to the earliest self-replicating organisms and the profusion of life.” The results of this workshop on “The Search for Origins” were presented to then Vice-President Al Gore, leading to a Presidential initiative called the Origins Program that included funding to add the Astrobiology Institute to the Exobiology Program, beginning today’s Astrobiology Program.
I am not entirely alone in thinking that we are at an epochal change in the development of human thought. Joel Primack, a cosmologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Nancy Ellen Abrams, a lawyer, writer, and former Fulbright scholar with a long-term interest in the history, philosophy, and politics of science, have written a book entitled “The View from the Center of the Universe.” They begin with the ongoing scientific revolution in cosmology, but arrive at the same conclusion I have reached starting with astrobiology. Their view is that “Today’s scientific revolution is as powerful as the revolution wrought by Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, but few people yet realize this. Historical shifts of such magnitude are rarely visible until later. The average person who was Copernicus’s or even Newton’s contemporary would not have fully appreciated the implications of overturning the medieval cosmology.”
If we are indeed at such a pivotal time in the development of human thought and culture, and if astrobiology indeed embodies some of the most salient concepts of this revolution, then it behooves us to tell the story of astrobiology in these striking terms. This may be the most important answer not only to the question “What is astrobiology?” but also to the question “Why does astrobiology matter?”
NSF Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) Call for Proposals
The National Science Foundation (NSF) invites proposals for the Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI). See Program Solicitation NSF 07-510 at: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07510/nsf07510.htm This solicitation addresses major instrument acquisition or instrument development that is too costly for support through other NSF programs. NSF limits institutions to three submissions, two for instrument acquisition and one for instrument development.
ROSES-06 Amendment 19: New proposal opportunity for History of the Scientific Exploration of Earth and Space
With this amendment to ROSES-2006, NASA establishes a new program element in Appendix E.5 entitled “History of the Scientific Exploration of Earth and Space.”
The primary objective of the History of the Scientific Exploration of Earth and Space (HSEES) program element is to engage, inform, and inspire diverse public audiences by sharing historical knowledge about NASA’s scientific exploration of the Earth and space and by communicating NASA’s unique contributions to the advancement of Earth and space science during the past 50 years. An essential component of communicating to the public is accurate, complete, well-written histories about the scientific exploration of space. The HSEES program element solicits proposals to produce accurate, complete, interpretive, and readable histories of major activities in NASA’s scientific exploration of Earth and space as supported by the Science Mission Directorate and its predecessor organizations since the establishment of NASA. This program element is broadly defined to include cooperative international activities in which these NASA organizations played a significant role. Notices of Intent to propose are due December 15, 2006, and proposals are due February 15, 2007.
On or about October 26, 2006, Amendment No. 19 to the NASA Research Announcement "Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) 2006" (NNH06ZDA001N) will be posted on the NASA research opportunity homepage at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ (select “Solicitations” then “Open Solicitations” then “NNH06ZDA001N”).
Questions may be addressed to Dr. T. Jens Feeley, Management and Policy Division, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC 20546-0001; Telephone: (202) 358-1714; Email: jens.feeley-1@hq.nasa.gov.
NAI Director's Seminar 11/27: Formation of Habitable Planetary Systems: Are We Normal?
Speakers: Sean Raymond (University of Colorado) and Avi Mandell (Goddard Space Flight Center)
Date/Time: Monday, November 27, 2006 11AM PST
Abstract:
For a planet to be potentially habitable over long timescales, it must 1)
have a stable orbit in the "habitable zone" (HZ); 2) have sufficient mass to
sustain plate tectonics and maintain an atmosphere; and 3) have a substantial
water content. Habitable planets are thought to form from a swarm of rocky/icy bodies in
circumstellar disks, and it is this process which determines whether these
"habitability criteria" will be met. We will review this process in the context of the
formation of Earth and the Solar System, and examine the conditions needed
to form habitable planets around other stars. Of particular importance is the
presence and location of giant planets, which form more quickly than terrestrial
planets and can strongly influence the final stages of terrestrial planet
formation. We discuss models of terrestrial planet formation in systems with different
configurations of giant planets, and we derive limits on habitable planet formation that
suggest that about one third of the known sample of giant planet systems could harbor
a potentially habitable planet. The formation and final characteristics
of habitable planets formed in these simulations depend strongly on the
dynamics of the giant planets, and we predict the existence of a large variety
in the masses, orbits and compositions of Earth-like planets around other
stars.
For participation instructions and more information, please visit: http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/seminars/seminar_detail.cfm?ID=95
Conditions for the Emergence of Life on the Early Earth: Special Issue
Special Issue, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (B).
Organised and edited by Charles Cockell, Sydney Leach and Ian Smith
Published August 2006
Living entities exhibit the three fundamental characteristics of metabolism, growth and reproduction, and are capable of evolutionary adaptation to their environment. Understanding how life having these characteristics emerged on Earth within 1 billion years of its formation is both a fascinating scientific problem and a pre-requisite for predicting the presence of life elsewhere in the universe. The origins of the biotic raw materials, the physical and chemical conditions on the early Earth permitting development, first to primitive life forms and subsequently to more complex forms of life were all subjects for lively debate at the Discussion meeting. Recent advances in several areas were reported, including possible new modes of formation of cellular structures, new metabolic and self-assembly processes, and tests of Darwin’s conjecture that life might have started in a warm little pond. The meeting demonstrated the mutual dependence of the wide range of subjects discussed and, by highlighting unsolved problems, new avenues of research were suggested.
For more information: http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/index.cfm?page=1308
High Lakes Expedition Report: Drilling into Arctic Permafrost
src="images//image001.jpg" align=left
hspace=12>NAI investigators, led by T.C. Onstott and
S.M. Pffifner of the IPTAI Team, along with scientists from the Geological
Survey of Finland and University of Waterloo, Canada, and Michigan State University recently completed a scientific
drilling expedition into deep permafrost of the Canadian Arctic. The drill
site was in the High Lake mining property (67°22'N, 110 50'W) located in an
Archean, mafic volcanic belt and frozen to a depth of ~400 meters. The
properties contain significant Cu/Zn sulfide deposits that form surficial
gossans of brightly pigmented iron oxides (Figure 1). Mineralogical and
microbiological samples of the surface gossan deposits were collected for
comparison with subsurface samples. The goal of the drilling project was to
delineate gradients in salinity, gas concentration, pH, pe, microbial
abundance, diversity and activity across the permafrost/subpermafrost front and
to isolate pristine subpermafrost brine for future studies. Using a 75 mm
diameter, triple barrel wire line tool and following aseptic QA/QC protocols
200 meters of core were collected from the lower boundary between permafrost
and saline water. Fresh water heated to 80oC was used to remove
cuttings and from keeping the drill rods from freezing to the uncased frozen rock
(Figure 2).
src="images/image002.jpg" align=right
hspace=12>At 400 PSI bit pressure the rate of penetration was ~30 m/day.
Anomalies in water conductivity or gas concentrations in the drilling water
were absent during penetration of the permafrost. Various measurements
including the rate of freezing at the bit were used to indicate the down-hole
temperature and when the permafrost zone had been traversed. The cores and
drilling water were processed on site in an anaerobic glove bag (Figure 3) and
stored refrigerated or frozen until transport back to labs. Core samples were
collected for lipid, DNA, sulfate reducing activity, geophysical, geochemical,
physical, isotopic, and pore water and gas chemical and isotopic analyses.
Once coring reached 485 m depth, the drill rods were removed and casing was set
to a depth of 290 m to protect the borehole from melt water draining from
above. Water was bailed from the hole in order to lower the water table into
unfrozen conditions and to remove contaminating drilling water. After bailing,
the borehole water salinity increased, the water level was at 446 m depth and
the influx of subpermafrost brine was ~1 L/hour. Within 24 hours the borehole
iced closed at 125 m depth capturing the down-hole probe. An attempt to drill
out the ice failed. Vapor condensation either from the subpermafrost water and/or
from atmospheric moisture caused the ice plug. Technical plans are in
progress for a drilling campaign in Spring, 2007 to attempt removal of the ice
plug. If ice drilling is successful then the borehole will be isolated with a
packer system and long-term monitoring of the subpermafrost microbial community
will be possible.
src="images//image003.jpg" align=left
hspace=12>
The HFSP (Human Frontier Science Program) Journal - Call for Papers
HFSP Publishing is launching a new journal for scientists doing high quality, innovative interdisciplinary research at the interface between biology and the fields of physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, or engineering.
The journal offers scientists a truly interdisciplinary peer review
system involving scientists from different disciplines doing interdisciplinary research.
The HFSP Journal publishes primary research articles as well as Commentaries and Perspectives, which will highlight up and coming developments in interdisciplinary research in a language and format accessible across scientific disciplines.
Website: http://hfspj.aip.org
Recently Published Research from the NAI
Organic Hazes on Early Earth and Titan
Researchers from NAI's Unviersity of Colorado, Boulder and University of Arizona Teams have published a new study in PNAS this week about the atmospheres of both present day Titan and early Earth. For Titan, their experiments modeled conditions measured by the Huygens probe from NASA's Cassini mission, and CO2 was added to model the early Earth conditions. They conclude that organize haze can form over a wide range of methane and carbon dioxide concentrations.
Astrobiology EPO, Undergrads, Grads, Postdocs
AGU Astrobiology Session on Biofilms
The NAI is providing support for a special session at the upcoming American Geophysical Union meeting, Dec. 11 - 15, 2006 in San Francisco, entitled, "Biofilms in the environment: Adaptive roles, microbe-mineral interfaces, and contributions to global biogeochemical cycles". For more information see: http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/sessions5?meeting=fm06&part=B11A&maxhits=400 or contact D'Arcy R. Meyer-Dombard, drmd@MIT.EDU, and Matt Schrenk, mschrenk@ciw.edu.
Thermophiles 2007 - First call
The 9th International Thermophiles Conference will be held from 24th to 27th of September 2007 in Bergen, the "Gateway to the Fjords of Norway". The conference will cover all aspects of microorganisms living at high temperatures.
Registration and abstract submission will open on January 15, 2007.
For more information: http://sites.web123.no/AtlanticReiser/uib/Thermophiles2007/
