Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? An Excerpt From Brother Guy Consolmagno’s Latest Book

Posted on by November 20, 2014
Cover of Brother Guy's Latest Book

Cover of Brother Guy’s Latest Book

Brother Guy Consolmagno and Father Paul Mueller have written a new book: “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: . . . and Other Questions from the Astronomers’ In-box at the Vatican Observatory”

Br. Guy provided me with the following from the book’s introduction:

Guy: Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?

That is one of the questions people ask us all the time here at the Vatican Observatory . . . along with questions about the Star of Bethlehem, the beginning and end of the universe, Galileo, Pluto, black holes, killer asteroids, and all the other topics astronomers always get asked about.

What is it about questions of this sort that raises such interest—and sometimes suspicion and fear—among so many people? Let’s face it, most people know we’re not likely to be running into any ETs anytime soon; nor is the exact nature of the Star of Bethlehem essential to any catechism or creed. But people care. They keep asking us. Why?

This book is about what’s behind those questions.

Father Paul Mueller, S.J.

Father Paul Mueller, S.J.

Paul: And this book is about what it’s like when science encounters faith on friendly, mutually respectful terms.

Do you think we should reject any results of modern science that seem to disagree with the Bible? Do you think that the Bible has greater authority than science, and that biblical faith should always get the last word over science? If so, this might not be the book for you. (But read on!)

Do you think we should reject anything in the Bible that seems to be at odds with modern science? Do you think that science has greater authority than the Bible, and that science should always get the last word over biblical faith? If so, this might not be the book for you. (But read on!)

Do you think that both science and faith should be taken seriously, but you struggle with how to hold science and faith together, with integrity? Do you find yourself tending to keep science and faith isolated from each other, in separate, watertight compartments, but you wish that science and faith didn’t have to “take turns” in your life? Then this book is for you. Read on!

Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J.

Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J.

Guy: The two of us writing this book are members of the research staff at the Vatican Observatory, the official astronomical research institute of the Catholic Church.

Paul: Our primary work is research. But since all of us at the Vatican Observatory are Jesuit priests or brothers, we are also in frequent contact with members of the general public—people who have questions and comments about science and faith, people who want to tell us about some discovery they’ve made or about some theory they’ve devised. And also people who just want to talk. We get a lot of e-mail!

Guy: I have more than seven hundred such e-mails in my files from the last five years. Some of the messages are a bit off-the-wall. But all of them come from people who want to take science and faith seriously, and many of our correspondents are people having trouble figuring out how to hold the two together with integrity and consistency.

This book is structured around a half dozen particular questions we’ve been asked time and again—questions that are interesting in themselves but that also tend to presuppose a conflict of some sort between science and religion.

We start with the question of Genesis versus the Big Bang, and we discuss how science and religion can have different but complementary ways of looking at the same issue. Then we discuss how scientific theories and ideas change and evolve over time—for example, we describe what happened recently when astronomers debated the status of Pluto as a planet. And we ask how religion can or should respond when science evolves and changes. To see how that might work—and what happened when it didn’t work well—we examine the case of Galileo’s encounter with the Church.

People of faith generally believe that God is somehow active in the world. We talk about how that can that be, in a universe that seems to be regulated and governed by inexorable scientific laws. People of faith often believe that we are somehow important in God’s eyes. We discuss how can that be, in a universe that is vast and ancient beyond human imagining . . . and that seems doomed to come to an inglorious end, eventually.

And, yes, as the title of the book promises, we also talk about whether we would baptize an alien: what could the message of Christ mean in a universe of countless planets and, for all we know, countless other races of intelligent beings?

Paul: So how do science and religion actually relate to each other? Do they have to operate in separate, watertight compartments? Is one of them supposed to complement and serve the other? Or is it possible to look at their similarities, differences, and connections not in terms of some preconceived notion of what should be the case, but by seeing how science and faith actually do—or don’t—work together? The conversation we have in this book reflects how science and faith can talk to each other.

Bob: I started collecting meteorites over three decades ago. Brother Guy got me interested in the Science of Meteorites after attending one of his lectures at a Science Fiction Convention. In 2011, my wife asked me to give a lecture about meteorites in her classroom; I had to do a LOT of research.

This led to me writing my Asteroids lecture in 2013. Brother Guy and Rik Hill got an annoying number of emails from me when I was doing that research.

Brother Guy spent a wonderful evening at our home on 15 Nov. 2014. We grilled burgers and brats, and had Vernor’s ginger ale, Vlasic pickles, and apple crisp. We chatted with him for hours about all manner of things – his new book, the Vatican Observatory, our kids. We also found out that until age six, he lived in the same neighborhood as my wife, Connie!

Related Links:
* http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/%E2%80%98would-you-baptize-extraterrestrial%E2%80%99-author-qa-vatican-astronomers-guy
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20588641-would-you-baptize-an-extraterrestrial
* http://wgntv.com/2014/11/18/brother-guy-consolmagno-on-the-real-message-behind-would-you-baptize-an-extraterrestrial/

Video: ‘Would you baptize an Extraterrestrial?’ A public lecture by Brother Guy Consolmagno

David J. Eicher’s New Book: Comets! Visitors From Deep Space

Posted on by November 18, 2014
Cover of David J. Eicher's book about comets.

Cover of David J. Eicher’s book about comets.

David J. Eicher, editor of Astronomy Magazine, has written a new book: “Comets! Visitors From Deep Space.”

David posted the following excerpt from the book on “Dave’s Universe” – his blog at Astronomy.com

“Come to think of it, that’s one of the things that struck me as a teenager, lying out in that field, gazing up at Comet West. Suddenly, after I learned a little about what comets are, it hit me. They hammer home the immensity of the cosmos. Yes, they are relatively nearby. But seeing them move from night to night — changing their place against the backdrop of the stars glistening behind them — is extremely powerful. I think it triggers something deep within the soul.

And that seems always to have been the case. The earliest records of cometary observations are from China and date from about the year 1000 B.C. Similar observations may have been made by inhabitants of the marshy land in southeastern Mesopotamia known as Chaldea. By about 550 B.C., Greek philosophers recorded comets as wandering planets. In his scheme of spherical shells making up the cosmos, Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) wrote in Meteorology (ca. 330 B.C.) that comets are residents of the lowest such sphere and called them “dry and warm” atmospheric exhalations.

Comet West. Credit: Neels Raath 18 Jan 2007

Not only were comets viewed as local phenomena, but for centuries they were also taken as portents of doom, omens of some impending event, usually a disaster. Only with the writings of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and Roger Bacon (ca. 1214–1294) did the notion that comets may not be lurking in Earth’s atmosphere begin to step forward. But further intellectual work on the subject would really have to wait until the world emerged from the gloomy deep freeze of the Middle Ages.”

Source: http://cs.astronomy.com/asy/b/daves-universe/archive/2014/11/17/book-excerpt-comets-by-david-j-eicher.aspx

My family was fortunate enough to see comet Hale-Bopp; I’m thrilled my daughters got to witness and appreciate the spectacle of a beautiful comet, without all the doom, gloom, and omens. I’m saddened that comet ISON disintegrated – I was really hoping for it to be the “Comet of the Century” the media was endlessly saying it was going to be, and to have it “wow” a new generation.

Comet Hale-Bopp. Credit:NASA 1997

I’ve included several slides about comets in my asteroids lecture; the close relationship between comets and asteroids is fascinating!

Numerous Bolide Events Between 1994 and 2013

Posted on by November 18, 2014
Map of bolide events from 1994-2013. Yellow=Daytime, Blue=Nighttime. Sizes are proportional to the optical radiated energy in gigaJoules.Image Credit: Planetary Science

Map of bolide events from 1994-2013. Yellow=Daytime, Blue=Nighttime. Sizes are proportional to the optical radiated energy in gigajoules.Image Credit: Planetary Science

A map released by NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Program reveals that small asteroids frequently enter and disintegrate in the Earth’s atmosphere with random distribution around the globe. Released to the scientific community, the map visualizes data gathered by U.S. government sensors from 1994 to 2013. The data indicate that Earth’s atmosphere was impacted by small asteroids, resulting in a bolide (or fireball), on 556 separate occasions in a 20-year period. Almost all asteroids of this size disintegrate in the atmosphere and are usually harmless. The notable exception was the Chelyabinsk event which was the largest asteroid to hit Earth in this period. The new data could help scientists better refine estimates of the distribution of the sizes of NEOs including larger ones that could pose a danger to Earth.

Finding and characterizing hazardous asteroids to protect our home planet is a high priority for NASA. It is one of the reasons NASA has increased by a factor of 10 investments in asteroid detection, characterization and mitigation activities over the last five years. In addition, NASA has aggressively developed strategies and plans with its partners in the U.S. and abroad to detect, track and characterize NEOs. These activities also will help identify NEOs that might pose a risk of Earth impact, and further help inform developing options for planetary defense.

The public can help participate in the hunt for potentially hazardous Near Earth Objects through the Asteroid Grand Challenge, which aims to create a plan to find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them. NASA is also pursuing an Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) which will identify, redirect and send astronauts to explore an asteroid. Among its many exploration goals, the mission could demonstrate basic planetary defense techniques for asteroid deflection.

For more information about the map and data, go to: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov
For details about ARM, and the Asteroid Grand Challenge, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Media Contact
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Source: JPL Press Release 2014-397, November 14, 2014

See Also:

JPL NEO Discovery Stats: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/

Nearly 12,000 NEOs have been discovered as of 18 Nov. 2014

Cumulative total known near-Earth asteroids versus time. The blue area shows all near-Earth asteroids while the red area shows only large near-Earth asteroids (those with diameters roughly one kilometer and larger). Credit: JPL


Philae Lander Drifting Across Comet 67P

Posted on by November 17, 2014
Philae lander drifting across the comet. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Philae lander drifting across the comet. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

These incredible images show the breathtaking journey of Rosetta’s Philae lander as it approached and then rebounded from its first touchdown on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014.

The mosaic comprises a series of images captured by Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera over a 30 minute period spanning the first touchdown. The time of each of image is marked on the corresponding insets and is in GMT. A comparison of the touchdown area shortly before and after first contact with the surface is also provided.

The images were taken with Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera when the spacecraft was 17.5 km from the comet centre, or roughly 15.5 km from the surface. They have a resolution of 28 cm/pixel and the enlarged insets are 17 x 17 m.

From left to right, the images show Philae descending towards and across the comet before touchdown. The image taken after touchdown, at 15:43 GMT, confirms that the lander was moving east, as first suggested by the data returned by the CONSERT experiment, and at a speed of about 0.5 m/s.

The final location of Philae is still not known, but after touching down and bouncing again at 17:25 GMT, it reached there at 17:32 GMT. The imaging team is confident that combining the CONSERT ranging data with OSIRIS and navcam images from the orbiter and images from near the surface and on it from Philae’s ROLIS and CIVA cameras will soon reveal the lander’s whereabouts.

The insets are provided separately via the blog: OSIRIS spots Philae drifting across the comet

Source: http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/11/OSIRIS_spots_Philae_drifting_across_the_comet 17/11/2014 3:00 pm

New Horizons Spacecraft to Wake Up for Pluto Encounter

Posted on by November 17, 2014
Artist’s impression of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, currently en route to Pluto. Operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory are preparing to “wake” the spacecraft from electronic hibernation on Dec. 6, when the probe will be more than 2.9 billion miles from Earth. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

Artist’s impression of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, currently en route to Pluto. Operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory are preparing to “wake” the spacecraft from electronic hibernation on Dec. 6, when the probe will be more than 2.9 billion miles from Earth. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft comes out of hibernation for the last time on 6 Dec. 2014. Between now and then, while the Pluto-bound probe enjoys three more weeks of electronic slumber, work on Earth is well under way to prepare the spacecraft for a six-month encounter with the dwarf planet that begins in January.

“New Horizons is healthy and cruising quietly through deep space – nearly three billion miles from home – but its rest is nearly over,” says Alice Bowman, New Horizons mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. “It’s time for New Horizons to wake up, get to work, and start making history.”

Since launching in January 2006, New Horizons has spent 1,873 days in hibernation – about two-thirds of its flight time – spread over 18 separate hibernation periods from mid-2007 to late 2014 that ranged from 36 days to 202 days long.

In hibernation mode much of the spacecraft is unpowered; the onboard flight computer monitors system health and broadcasts a weekly beacon-status tone back to Earth. On average, operators woke New Horizons just over twice each year to check out critical systems, calibrate instruments, gather science data, rehearse Pluto-encounter activities and perform course corrections when necessary.

Position of the New Horizons Spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL/John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Position of the New Horizons Spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL/John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

New Horizons pioneered routine cruise-flight hibernation for NASA. Not only has hibernation reduced wear and tear on the spacecraft’s electronics, it lowered operations costs and freed up NASA Deep Space Network tracking and communication resources for other missions.

Ready to Go!

Next month’s wake-up call was preprogrammed into New Horizons’ on-board computer in August, commanding it come out of hibernation at 3 p.m. EST on Dec. 6. About 90 minutes later New Horizons will transmit word to Earth that it’s in “active” mode; those signals, even traveling at light speed, will need four hours and 25 minutes to reach home. Confirmation should reach the mission operations team at APL around 9:30 p.m. EST. At the time New Horizons will be more than 2.9 billion miles from Earth, and just 162 million miles – less than twice the distance between Earth and the sun – from Pluto.

After several days of collecting navigation-tracking data, downloading and analyzing the cruise science and spacecraft housekeeping data stored on New Horizons’ digital recorders, the mission team will begin activities that include conducting final tests on the spacecraft’s science instruments and operating systems, and building and testing the computer-command sequences that will guide New Horizons through its flight to and reconnaissance of the Pluto system. Tops on the mission’s science list are characterizing the global geology and topography of Pluto and its large moon Charon, mapping their surface compositions and temperatures, examining Pluto’s atmospheric composition and structure, studying Pluto’s smaller moons and searching for new moons and rings.

New Horizons’ seven-instrument science payload, developed under direction of Southwest Research Institute, includes advanced imaging infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers, a compact multicolor camera, a high-resolution telescopic camera, two powerful particle spectrometers, a space-dust detector (designed and built by students at the University of Colorado) and two radio science experiments. The entire spacecraft, drawing electricity from a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator, operates on less power than a pair of 100-watt light bulbs.

Charon orbiting Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Charon orbiting Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Distant observations of the Pluto system begin Jan. 15 and will continue until late July 2015; closest approach to Pluto is July 14.

“We’ve worked years to prepare for this moment,” says Mark Holdridge, New Horizons encounter mission manager at APL. “New Horizons might have spent most of its cruise time across nearly three billion miles of space sleeping, but our team has done anything but, conducting a flawless flight past Jupiter just a year after launch, putting the spacecraft through annual workouts, plotting out each step of the Pluto flyby and even practicing the entire Pluto encounter on the spacecraft. We are ready to go.”

“The final hibernation wake up Dec. 6 signifies the end of an historic cruise across the entirety of our planetary system,” added New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. “We are almost on Pluto’s doorstep!”

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory manages the New Horizons mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is the principal investigator and leads the mission; SwRI leads the science team, payload operations, and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. APL designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft.

Source: Headline from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory News Nov. 13, 2014

Philae Lander Completes Main Science Mission Before Entering Hibernation

Posted on by November 15, 2014

Philae’s first touchdown seen by Rosetta’s NavCam. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

Rosetta’s lander has completed its primary science mission after nearly 57 hours on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

After being out of communication visibility with the lander since 09:58 GMT / 10:58 CET on Friday, Rosetta regained contact with Philae at 22:19 GMT /23:19 CET last night. The signal was initially intermittent, but quickly stabilized and remained very good until 00:36 GMT / 01:36 CET this morning.

In that time, the lander returned all of its housekeeping data, as well as science data from the targeted instruments, including ROLIS, COSAC, Ptolemy, SD2 and CONSERT. This completed the measurements planned for the final block of experiments on the surface.

First comet panoramic, 13 Nov. 2014. Credit ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA

In addition, the lander’s body was lifted by about 4 cm and rotated about 35° in an attempt to receive more solar energy. But as the last science data fed back to Earth, Philae’s power rapidly depleted.


“It has been a huge success, the whole team is delighted,” said Stephan Ulamec, lander manager at the DLR German Aerospace Agency, who monitored Philae’s progress from ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, this week.

“Despite the unplanned series of three touchdowns, all of our instruments could be operated and now it’s time to see what we’ve got.” Against the odds – with no downwards thruster and with the automated harpoon system not having worked – Philae bounced twice after its first touchdown on the comet, coming to rest in the shadow of a cliff on Wednesday 12 November at 17:32 GMT (comet time – it takes over 28 minutes for the signal to reach Earth, via Rosetta).

Philae’s instruments. Credit: Copyright ESA/ATG medialab

The search for Philae’s final landing site continues, with high-resolution images from the orbiter being closely scrutinized. Meanwhile, the lander has returned unprecedented images of its surroundings.

While descent images show that the surface of the comet is covered by dust and debris ranging from millimeter to meter sizes, panoramic images show layered walls of harder-looking material.  The science teams are now studying their data to see if they have sampled any of this material with Philae’s drill

“We still hope that at a later stage of the mission, perhaps when we are nearer to the Sun, that we might have enough solar illumination to wake up the lander and re-establish communication,” added Stephan.

From now on, no contact will be possible unless sufficient sunlight falls on the solar panels to generate enough power to wake it up. The possibility that this may happen later in the mission was boosted when mission controllers sent commands to rotate the lander’s main body with its fixed solar panels. This should have exposed more panel area to sunlight.

Rosetta’s trajectory after 12 November. Credit: ESA

The next possible communication slot begins on 15 November at about 10:00 GMT / 11:00 CET. The orbiter will listen for a signal, and will continue doing so each time its orbit brings it into line-of-sight visibility with Philae. However, given the low recharge current coming from the solar panels at this time, it is unlikely that contact will be re-established with the lander in the near future.

Meanwhile, the Rosetta orbiter has been moving back into a 30 km orbit around the comet. It will return to a 20 km orbit on 6 December and continue its mission to study the body in great detail as the comet becomes more active, en route to its closest encounter with the Sun on 13 August next year.


Over the coming months, Rosetta will start to fly in more distant ‘unbound’ orbits, while performing a series of daring flybys past the comet, some within just 8 km of its center.

Data collected by the orbiter will allow scientists to watch the short- and long-term changes that take place on the comet, helping to answer some of the biggest and most important questions regarding the history of our Solar System. How did it form and evolve?  How do comets work? What role did comets play in the evolution of the planets, of water on the Earth, and perhaps even of life on our home world.

“The data collected by Philae and Rosetta is set to make this mission a game-changer in cometary science,” says Matt Taylor, ESA’s Rosetta project scientist.

Fred Jansen, ESA’s Rosetta mission manager, says, “At the end of this amazing roller coaster week, we look back on a successful first-ever soft-landing on a comet. This was a truly historic moment for ESA and its partners. We now look forward to many more months of exciting Rosetta science and possibly a return of Philae from hibernation at some point in time.”


More about Rosetta
Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its Member States and NASA. Rosetta’s Philae lander is provided by a consortium led by DLR, MPS, CNES and ASI.

Original article: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Pioneering_Philae_completes_main_mission_before_hibernation  (15 November 2014)

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