his week the 'unmanned' Blue Origin spacecraft, so called because it was
launched without a single man on board, returned to Earth after its epic
eleven-minute voyage to the Kármán line at the edge of space.
To the amazement of the technicians of Amazon's team, upon its return six
live aliens were found inside.
The aliens were described as female and almost human in appearance, but with certain strange, exaggerated features not observed in real humans. They were also found to be coated with a thick layer of pigmented organic material that concealed their true appearance.
Upon landing, the creatures tried to escape from the spacecraft; however, realizing they had somehow landed in the midst of a hundred or so Earth reporters with video cameras that just by luck happened to be at the landing site, they immediately slammed the door shut. Fortunately, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, a company famous for having invented the most useless search engine since Microsoft's “Search programs and files” button,* heroically clambered over the aliens' defensive trench, pried the door open, and forced the aliens out of the spacecraft.
Aliens exiting Blue Origin capsule (Image from blueorigin.com)
In space, nobody can see the stars twinkle
The aliens' understanding of astrophysics seems to be shockingly limited. One of them, Katy Perry, reportedly said she looked forward to seeing the stars twinkling while she was in space.
Ms Perry also said she prepared for the trip by reading a book on string theory. This is a highly laudable effort. Perry doesn't say which book she read, but I'd recommend reading Harold Erbin's String Field Theory first. Erbin focuses mainly on bosonic string theory and covers worldsheet path integral, conformal field theory, and BRST cohomology. Barton Zwiebach's book is also good. Maybe she should read both.
As for stars, the only reason they twinkle is that atmospheric turbulence creates disturbances in the light paths. That doesn't happen in space. But surely she knew that . . . I hope.
Possible life on an exoplanet maybe, some people believe
Also this week, the news media are gushing over a report by researchers at the University of Cambridge who analyzed data from the James Webb Space Telescope and claimed to detect dimethyl sulfide on a planet called K2-18b, which is an exoplanet rich in hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. The planet is eight times the size of Earth and 124 light years away.
The authors say it was a three-sigma detection, but it's a very low resolution spectrum. Gases emit a series of narrow lines that overlap with emissions from other gases. Even though such a big planet would have a thick atmosphere (which would cause line broadening), they'd need a lot higher resolution to know what that peak really means. An IR spectrum of a pure compound, even a solid, can contain dozens of peaks. So seeing two bumps in infrared spectra is not convincing evidence of detection. It's remarkable that they can get anything at all from this distance, and maybe it's the best we can do.
According to press reports, the presence of dimethyl sulfide might perhaps be produced by a teeming mass of living organisms. Dr Nikku Madhusudhan, the lead author, is a little more cautious, but says:
[S]ustaining DMS and/or DMDS [dimethyl disulfide] at over 10–1000 ppm concentrations in a steady state in the atmosphere of K2-18b would be implausible without a significant biogenic flux.
Dimethyl sulfide, written as (CH3)2S, is a liquid that boils at 99° F and possesses a foul order reminiscent of rotting meat. More research is needed.
Perchlorate and iron oxyhydroxides on old, boring Mars
NASA scientists also just say they found ‘evidence of life’ on Mars as well this week. That evidence turns out to be siderite (iron carbonate) rock, which the press reported as “large carbon deposits” in the Gale crater. . . sigh . . . the actual paper, of course, says no such thing, and there's no evidence so far in this paper or elsewhere of past life on Mars.
Carbonates, as the paper says, are formed whenever there's CO2 and water. On Mars, the counterion is mostly iron (though some starkeyite MgSO4·4H2O was found), whereas it's mostly calcium and magnesium on Earth. Congrats to Science for improving science literacy by making this stuff open source.
This molecule is unrelated to the mysterious molecule found years ago by the Mars Phoenix lander that was at first thought to have been produced by living organisms, but was later found to be perchlorate, an ordinary everyday molecule used as a rocket propellant. The possibility of contamination from the Phoenix lander, which also used perchlorate as a propellant, was dismissed as a coincidence because the lander also contained ammonium nitrate that was not detected, thus proving that, indeed, Carl Sagan was dead wrong and absence of evidence could be evidence of absence when funding is at stake.
The discovery of possible life maybe, perhaps, some people believe, maybe living on an alien planet was not related in any way to US President Trump's plan to cut NASA funding. It's amazing what scientists can suddenly discover when their funding is threatened.
* Technically, Barnes & Noble's search engine, which requires you to enter the exact title before it can find anything, is worse. However, Amazon's search engine is a lot more annoying as it finds hundreds of books that have absolutely no relevance to what you're searching for.
apr 17 2025, 8:23 am. revised and updated apr 18 2025, 6:06 am. partial desnarkification apr 19.
