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Journalism of Courage
This week was big in the search for aliens. A NASA study looking for life beyond the solar system has discovered 17 exoplanets that could have oceans of liquid water beneath their icy shells. Much closer, in our solar system, the space agency found the presence of a key ingredient of life and powerful energy sources that can trigger it. We also spoke to humpback whales.
But what do humpback whales have to do with aliens? On the face of it, not much. But researchers at SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence), the University of California Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation found a way to communicate with the sea-dwelling giants. This “close encounter” could help us develop “intelligence filters” that will come in use if and when we get in touch with an alien intelligence.
Humpback whales are quite intelligent, and they have complex social systems. They even make tools and communicate with each other using songs and different types of songs. Essentially, there is a chance that an alien intelligence might see us as their equivalent of humpback whales.
The researchers played a recorded humpback “contact call” in the sea using an underwater speaker, and a whale called Twain approached and circled their boats. The whale responded to each playback call and matched the interval variation between each signal.
Based on the current limitations of our technology, the researchers worked on the assumption that intelligent alien life forms will attempt to contact us and will target human receivers. The behaviour of the humpback whales, which can be thought of as intelligent non-humans, supports this assumption.
All of that is interesting, but chances are, if we find alien life, it will look less like ET and more like bacteria or other simpler life forms. Even on our planet, all life finds its origins in the ocean. This means that planets and other celestial bodies with large oceans are excellent candidates to go look for space bacteria. And a NASA study found 17 excellent exoplanet candidates.
The 17 distant planets could have a thick icy shell that covers vast tracts of subsurface ocean. Based on research, there is a possibility that the water on those planets might occasionally erupt as geysers through the icy shell. Subsurface oceans like that could harbour life if they also meet other conditions like the presence of some essential elements and an energy supply.
Deep within the oceans of our planet, there are entire ecosystems that thrive in complete darkness. Living near the bottom of the ocean, many species get their energy and nutrition from hydrothermal vents that spew out heat and many chemicals.
And we don’t even need to go that far. There are worlds within our solar system that could also potentially host life. Like Jupiter’s moon Europa. A separate NASA study published recently found that the giant plumes of water vapour and ice grains thrown out by Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus contain organic compounds, some of which are essential to life as we know it.
Essentially, we have found some key ingredients for life and a powerful source of energy that could fuel it on Enceladus. But if alien life exists in these subsurface oceans, how will we find out about them? Surely, space algae is not setting up radio transmitters to speak to us. The American space agency once again comes in handy with a new technology they have been developing — swimming robots.
Some day in the future, NASA imagines that a swarm of cellphone-sized robots could swim through the water under the kilometres-thick ice shells of Europa or Enceladus, looking for alien life. These robots would be packed withing narrow ice-melting probes that will cut through the ice and send the little swimmers into the water.
