Mars has an Effect on Earth

 Mars' gravity has an effect on Earth's orbit and oceans

We are all too familiar of the Moon's effect on our planet. It's relentless tug causes our tides but even Mars, which is always at least 55 million km's away, can have a subtle effect too. A study has revealed a 2.4 million year cycle in the geological records that show the gentle warming and cooling of our oceans. The records match the interactions between the orbits of Earth and Mars over the longest timescales. These are known as the 'astronomical grand cycles' but to date, not much evidence has been found. Earth and Mars don’t just circle the Sun. They also tug on each other. Because the planets sit tens of millions of miles apart, that pull is comparatively weak. Still, gravity’s impact is ever present, and over eons, the effects build up until they become measurable in surprising ways. Scientists call the tiny tugs between Earth and Mars gravitational perturbations. About every 26 months, the planets reach an opposition, when they move closest to each other. During those moments, Mars gives Earth’s orbit a slight nudge. That nudge doesn’t “steer” Earth in any dramatic way. Over millions of years, though, it can slightly change the shape of Earth’s orbit and the way Earth tilts. Those slow changes can alter how much sunlight reaches Earth over long stretches of time, and that can affect climate patterns.

The rhythmical rising and falling of the oceans has been well documented. Even the Sun at an average distance of 150 million km's exerts enough of a pull to enhance the effect from the Moon, giving us the spring and neap tides. The Moon's influence is easy to understand due to its proximity, the Sun's too due to its enormous mass but Mars is a different story. After all, it's about half the size of Earth and even at its closest is about 55 million km's away. Ocean scientists watch the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) closely. Many people call it an ocean “conveyor belt.” It transports warm water from the tropics toward the Northern Hemisphere and helps move heat into the deep ocean. Some scientists warn that it could weaken sharply in the coming decades. We know there are at least two separate mechanisms that contribute to the vigor of deep-water mixing in the oceans. Even if a big circulation pattern slows, smaller-scale mixing can still keep deep water from going stale. Eddies can move water around, help distribute oxygen, and keep heat from getting locked into one layer for too long. This will potentially keep the ocean from becoming stagnant even if Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slows or stops altogether.

As Earth and Mars orbit around the Sun, their interactions, or rather the gravitational pull from each upon each other are cyclical. These are the astronomical grand cycles and for Earth and Mars they cycle every 2.4 million years. A study used geological records from the deep sea and to their surprise found a connection between the astronomical grand cycles, global warming patterns and deep ocean circulation. They found a 2.4 million year waxing and waning of deep ocean currents and that seemed to link to increased climate. Researchers at the University of Sydney used satellite data to map sediment accumulation on the ocean floor across millions of years. They found gaps in the seafloor record. Those gaps can appear when stronger deep currents disrupt normal sediment deposition. “The gravity fields of the planets in the solar system interfere with each other, and this interaction, called a resonance, changes planetary eccentricity, a measure of how close to circular their orbits are,” explained study co-author Dietmar Müller, a geophysics professor at the University of Sydney.

A definite link emerged but it should be noted that ocean currents are not the only cause of global temperature changes. The current temperature increases have a much stronger link to the human emission of greenhouse gasses. The paper was authored by Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz and Professor Dietmar Muller from the University of Sydney and Associate Professor Slah Boulila from the Sorbonne University. They reached their conclusion following analysis of the deep-sea sediment records acquired from over half a century of drilling data from hundreds of sites worldwide. The 2.4 million year cycle they found can only have been caused by the interactions between Earth and Mars. Resonance between Earth and Mars changes Earth’s orbital eccentricity in a repeating way. At certain points in that cycle, Mars’ gravitational pull draws Earth slightly closer to the Sun. Th position increases solar radiation and warms the climate. Earth then drifts back again. The full pattern repeats about every 2.4 million years. “Our deep-sea data spanning 65 million years suggests that warmer oceans have more vigorous deep circulation,” explained Adriana Dutkiewicz, the study’s lead author and a sedimentologist at the University of Sydney.

The researchers also emphasized one point that matters right now. This slow, million-year cycle does not explain today’s rapid climate warming. Human greenhouse gas emissions heat the planet on a much shorter timeline and through a different physical cause. The interaction of the gravitational field of the two planets means periods of higher incoming solar radiation every 2.4 million years and with it, an increase in global temperatures. Their analysis of the sediments showed breaks in the sedimentary deposits which related to periods of warmer temperatures and more vigorous deep ocean circulation. The deep ocean moves constantly. It carries heat, salt and dissolved gases around the planet. It also shapes the ocean floor. When deep currents run stronger, they can disturb sediment and leave uneven records behind. Scientists call these cycles “astronomical grand cycles.” During stronger phases, the deep ocean can develop powerful eddies which reaches the abyssal depths and erode sediment that had quietly piled up. We tend to think of the deep ocean as something passive. A cold, slow place where stuff settles and sits. This study flips that. The deep ocean has a pulse, and that pulse runs to a beat set tens of millions of miles away. Mars and Earth, locked in their slow gravitational back-and-forth, leave fingerprints on the seafloor every 2.4 million years.

When the cycle peaks, the abyss gets restless. Currents pick up. Eddies churn. Sediment that had been quietly stacking up for ages gets swept aside. It’s a strange thing to imagine, a planet you can barely see in the night sky helping stir the bottom of our ocean. None of this rewrites what’s happening to Earth’s climate now, and the researchers are clear about that. Mars isn’t behind the heat we’re feeling. That’s on us, and on a timeline measured in decades, not millions of years. The result helps us to understand how deep ocean eddies are key to warming ocean temperatures. Understanding these can help us to understand and model future periods of warming. It may even go some way to mitigate a temporary cessation in ocean currents due to a change in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. This drives the Gulf Stream which helps to keep Europe and other temperature countries the nice warm climate it has become accustomed to in our world.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Name

 

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Potential signs of life on distant planets

   Faraway world could be home to life, signs sound exciting   

Astronomers can’t visit neighboring planets, let alone distant star-forming regions. So, how do they see what is out there? Astronomers observe the cosmos with telescopes that collect all different wavelengths of electromagnetic energy. For astrochemistry, they typically use radio telescopes. These satellite-dishlike instruments are used to “see” radio waves, which have wavelengths much longer than the human eye can perceive. likewise, JWST is so powerful that it can analyse the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere from the light that passes through from the small red Sun it orbits. K2-18b is two-and-a-half times the size of Earth and is 700 trillion miles, or 124 light years, away from us - a distance far beyond what any human could travel in a lifetime. It was found that the atmosphere seems to contain the chemical signature of at least one of two molecules which are associated with life: dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and dimethyl disulphide (DMDS). On Earth, these gases are produced by marine phytoplankton and bacteria.

     

 

Astronomers can use telescopes to find specific molecules in the atmospheres of neighboring planets, in nebulae, clouds of interstellar dust and gas, hundreds or thousands of light-years away, or in galaxies beyond the far reaches of the Milky Way. So far, astronomers have found more than 350 molecules in the spaces between and around stars in just under a hundred years, the first such molecule was reported in 1937. Each year, the cosmic chemical stockroom grows by anywhere from a handful to a couple of dozen new finds. Many of these molecules are precursors to biomolecules, meaning they might provide hints about life’s origins elsewhere in the cosmos. Scientists have found new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life. A team studying the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b has detected signs of molecules which on Earth are only produced by simple organisms. This is promising that chemicals associated with life have been detected in the planet's atmosphere by Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). But independent astronomers stress that more data is needed to confirm these results.

With this ongoing boom in astrochemical census data, there is a lot to be excited about. Sometimes, however, this excitement can be premature. Finding molecules in places people will likely never visit is no simple task, so vetting and sometimes correcting these observations is a continual process, especially for molecules whose signals aren’t as strong. The Taurus molecular cloud is a relatively close star-forming region at 450 light-years away. It has been the site of many astromolecule discoveries. The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia is a radio telescope which has been used in the discovery of many astromolecules. When molecules freely tumble around as gases in space, they rotate, and this motion releases energy in the form of photons, or electromagnetic particles. Different types of rotations require different levels of energy. Each photon carries that energy with it to a telescope, which records its signal. The more photons of a given energy, the stronger the signal. If a radio telescope records all of the expected signals for a given molecule, its spectrum, then astronomers can confidently say that they have detected that molecule. Infrared telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, or telescopes that detect visible light, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, can also be used for astrochemistry. Both kinds of telescopes, however, collect chemical signals, which are often more difficult to distinguish from one another.

 This is the strongest evidence yet there is possibly life out there and can realistically say that we can confirm this signal in the coming years. Researchers were surprised by how much gas was apparently detected during a single observation window. The amount we estimate of this gas in the atmosphere is thousands of times higher than what we have on Earth. So, if the association with life is real, then this planet will be teeming with life. If we confirm that there is life on K2-18b, it should basically confirm that life is very common in the galaxy. This is a very important moment in science, but also very important to us as a species. If there is one example, and the universe being infinite, there is a chance for life on many more planets. Behind every discovery of a new molecule in space is months or even years of work to capture a chemical’s “fingerprints,” or its spectrum. Computer models of astrophysically interesting chemicals are used to predict what their spectra would look like. In the lab, the chemicals are injected into a glass tube held under vacuum to mimic conditions in space. Using sensitive instruments, we can record what a radio telescope would see if it were looking at only that molecule. Astronomers had already found some of these molecules in space, but team was also looking at molecules that we predicted might exist somewhere in space.

Team of scientists worked to adjust the computer inputs over and over until the simulated spectra matched the experimental data. When simulated spectra matched the experiments, that meant that the simulated spectra reliably modeled what a molecule’s fingerprint looks like in space. Reliable model spectra allow astronomers to detect chemical features at frequencies beyond what they can measure in the laboratory. The laboratory measurements are done precisely so that astronomers can be confident in their detections. Even with powerful radio telescopes and thorough experiments, some detections aren’t quite as clear as astronomers would like them to be. Sometimes, the signals are too faint for astronomers to be totally confident that they represent the molecules they think they do. Other times, there are too many molecule signals crowded together, causing different signals to blend. Scientists have detected molecules relevant to biological processes back on Earth in comets and the atmospheres of other planets. These detections are exciting, but most scientists exercise caution to avoid jumping to conclusions because those molecules generally can exist outside of living things.

Sometimes, however, the excitement overshadows the caution and leads to premature conclusions. Scientists often get excited when new molecules, especially biologically relevant molecules, are potentially present, and they want to share those findings with the world. Some researchers are also concerned about being the first to publish a new result, especially because a lot of telescope data is publicly available after a brief proprietary period. Perhaps one of the most exciting nondiscoveries in astrochemistry was that of glycine in interstellar space more than 20 years ago. Glycine is the simplest amino acid, a type of molecule essential for life as we know it. Finding this molecule in a nebula would change how scientists think about the evolution of life’s ingredients. Later studies showed that key signals were missing in the initial report of glycine. As a result, astrochemists now generally agree that glycine had not been found in star-forming nebulae. More recently, another molecular discovery has been scrutinized: the potential detection of phosphine in Venus’ atmosphere. Unlike with glycine, scientists have not yet agreed on whether phosphine, which is associated with some biological processes on Earth, is indeed present on Venus.

Initial reports of phosphine on Venus spurred chatter about biosignatures and evidence of potential life on Earth’s much hotter sister planet. However, later studies by other scientists couldn’t confirm the initial results. Over the past five years, scientists have continued to try to confirm or definitively refute Venusian phosphine. When reading about discoveries of new molecules in interstellar space or on other planets, how can you be confident in the detections you are reading about? It’s important to watch out for flashy headlines that claim signs of life have been found elsewhere in the universe. Molecule discoveries that rely on only one or two signals being detected are generally less reliable than those based on five or more signals. For discoveries which tease hints of life on other worlds, other scientists are almost certainly going to try to reproduce the results. If you wait a few months for the initial fanfare to die down, you can do a web search to see what new results have come out to support, or refute, the original claim about the discovery. 

The research suggests K2-18b could have an ocean which could be potentially full of life - though he cautioned scientists "don't know for sure". The team's work will continue to focus on looking for life on other planets: "Keep watching this space." There are lots of "ifs" and "buts" at this stage. Firstly, this latest detection is not at the standard required to claim a discovery. For that, the researchers need to be about 99.99999% sure that their results are correct and not a fluke reading. In scientific jargon, that is a five sigma result. These latest results are only three sigma, or 99.7%. Which sounds like a lot, but it is not enough to convince the scientific community. However, it is much more than the one sigma result of 68% the team obtained earlier, which was greeted with much scepticism at the time. Even with that certainty, there is still the question of what is the origin of this gas. On Earth it is produced by microorganisms in the ocean, but even with perfect data we can't say for sure that this is of a biological origin on an alien world because loads of strange things happen in the Universe and we don't know what other geological activity could be happening on this planet that might produce the molecules. Suggesting life may exist on another planet was "a big claim if true". So we want to be really, really thorough, and make more observations, and get the evidence to the level that there is less than a one-in-a-million chance of it being a fluke. 

Everything we know about planets orbiting other stars comes from the tiny amounts of light that glance off their atmospheres. So it is an incredibly tenuous signal that we are having to read, not only for signs of life, but everything else. With K2-18b part of the scientific debate is still about the structure of the planet. These alternative interpretations have also been challenged by other groups on the grounds that they are inconsistent with the data from JWST, compounding the strong scientific debate surrounding K2-18b. Decades from now, we may look back at this point in time and recognise it was when the living universe came within reach. This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we're alone in the universe is one we're capable of answering.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Name