Life in the Universe (4th Edition)
4th Edition
ISBN: 9780134089089
Author: Jeffrey O. Bennett, Seth Shostak
Publisher: PEARSON
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Textbook Question
Chapter E, Problem 3DQ
Extraterrestrial Life and Your Religion. Would the discovery of extraterrestrial life have any important implications for your own personal religious beliefs? Would it affect the current "official" beliefs (if any) of your religion? Explain.
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Which of the following is least reasonable regarding the difficulty in contacting extraterrestrial life using space flight and radio communication.
Group of answer choices
Space flight to the nearest star would take thousands of years with current technology.
Even if another intelligent civilization is within a few hundred light-years of us, conversations would be very slow with a turnaround time of decades or even centuries.
The spacecraft that NASA sent to Proxima Centauri a few years ago should be approaching its target within a decade or two, depending on solar wind conditions.
Earth has been broadcasting at radio wavelengths since the 1930's, so any civilization within a radius of about 100 light-years or so could have received the broadcast by now.
Without some major breakthrough, interstellar space flight is totally impractical.
200 years has passed and now it is year 2220. The Earth is out of basic resourcesas they have been drastically drained in the past 200 years. The president of theUnited World Council (UWC) has approved you and your crew’s Mission toMars. You will pilot the most advanced spaceship the world has ever known, theExcelsior! It will carry equipment that will help to transform Mars so as toresemble the Earth, especially so that it can support human life.Before the mission can launch a few items need to be figured out. What is thecapacity of the fuel tank? How long should the fuel burn to achieve escapevelocity (otherwise the Excelsior will be stuck in the Earth’s gravitational pull)?How long will it take the Excelsior to arrive at Mars?1. The ground crew is filling the fuel tanks. You know th
The principle cause of our intense interest in Mars in the decades before the dawn of the space age was that
Answers:
A.
a few astronomers believed that they saw evidence of an intelligent civilization on Mars.
B.
Mars has seasons just like the Earth and therefore should be inhabitable by humans.
C.
Mars has an unusual surface color and global dust storms, creating strange weather patterns.
D.
Mars has unusual orbital properties making our understanding of its motion around the Sun very difficult.
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- Which of the following seems least reasonable regarding life on Earth? Group of answer choices There is much scientific evidence suggesting that all creatures living on Earth today appear to have evolved from a common ancestor. Louis Pasteur discredited the concept of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that even bacteria and other microorganisms arise from parents resembling themselves. There is ample physical evidence that the earliest life forms on Earth were multicellular creatures, perhaps resembling some of our primitive fish. When the earth formed some 4.6 billion years ago, it was a lifeless, inhospitable place. Before the mid-17th century, most people believed that God had created humankind and other higher organisms and that insects, frogs, and other small creatures could arise spontaneously in mud or decaying matter About billion years into its development, the Earth it was teeming with organisms resembling blue-green algae.arrow_forwardFor which of the following reasons (select all that apply), is it useful/important to send rovers to other planetary bodies in our solar system? O a. The engineering innovations developed to produce successful/viable rovers and landers on other planets can help lead to developments in the technology used here on Earth that may have taken far more time to develop without the limitations provided by space travel to foreign worlds. O b. The data collected can help improve our understanding of the evolution/development of our solar system. O. Rovers/landers can be outfitted with various tools and equipment that can be used to inform of us of the geological histories of each of the planets they visit. O d. More direct probes of the planetary surface are possible to detect signs of the building blocks of life. O e. Rock samples can be used to calibrate our estimations of the age of the solar system.arrow_forwardIf we send astronauts to Mars, there will be a time delay anytime we send or receive messages to them here on Earth. Given that Mars is an average of 54.6 million km away from Earth, how long is this time delay for a 2-way 'round-trip' communication - sent to Earth, then back to Mars? (this might be important in emergency situations) answer choices a)About 4 minutes. b)About 30 seconds. c)About 10 seconds. d)About 6 minutes.arrow_forward
- After completing this Lecture Tutorial, students should be able to: distinguish between scientific hypotheses and nonscientific ideas. Part 1: Comprehension of Hypotheses A scientific hypothesis needs to (1) be supported by the majority of current data and (2) be testable. An alien on Earth is wondering why a rubber ball falls back down to the ground after it is thrown into the air. It comes up with several ideas about the ball. a. Gravity is pulling the ball to the ground. b. A mystical force that cannot be measured is pushing the ball down. c. Earth's magnetic field is pulling on the rubber ball. 1. Which statement is NOT a hypothesis because it is not testable? a b c 2. Which statement is NOT a hypothesis because it is not supported by current data? a b c 3. Which statement IS a scientific hypothesis? a b c Part 2: Application to Dinosaur Extinction Below are possible scenarios explaining the extinction of the dinosaurs. a. Dinosaurs were killed off by a virus. b. A large meteorite…arrow_forwardWhich of the following is not considered a likely solution to the question of why we are not currently aware of an extraterrestrial civilization? Group of answer choices There is no civilization because civilizations are not common. The civilization is probably undetectable to us because it makes use of technologies that do not obey the known laws of physics. There is no galactic civilization because civilizations do not leave their home worlds. There is no civilization because most civilizations destroy themselves before achieving interstellar travel. The civilization is deliberately avoiding contact with us.arrow_forward25. When Mars is 90 million km from Earth, a) How long would it take for a radio wave from a video camera mounted on the back of a Mars Rover to tell ground control on earth that the Rover is about to go over a cliff? b) How long would it take for a radio signal from Earth to reach the Rover saying "STOP". c) Why do our Mars Rovers have to be "intelligent" enough to figure out how to deal with obstacles themselves?arrow_forward
- Tutorial A radio broadcast left Earth in 1923. How far in light years has it traveled? If there is, on average, 1 star system per 400 cubic light years, how many star systems has this broadcast reached? Assume that the fraction of these star systems that have planets is 0.50 and that, in a given planetary system, the average number of planets that have orbited in the habitable zone for 4 billion years is 0.40. How many possible planets with life could have heard this signal? Part 1 of 3 To figure out how many light years a signal has traveled we need to know how long since the signal left Earth. If the signal left in 1923, distance in light years = time since broadcast left Earth. d = tnow - broadcast d = 97 97 light years Part 2 of 3 Since the radio signal travels in all directions, it expanded as a sphere with a radius equal to the distance it has traveled so far. To determine the number of star systems this signal has reached, we need to determine the volume of that sphere. V, = Vb…arrow_forwardTutorial A radio broadcast left Earth in 1925. How far in light years has it traveled? If there is, on average, 1 star system per 400 cubic light years, how many star systems has this broadcast reached? Assume that the fraction of these star systems that have planets is 0.30 and that, in a given planetary system, the average number of planets that have orbited in the habitable zone for 4 billion years is 0.85. How many possible planets with life could have heard this signal? Part 1 of 3 To figure out how many light years a signal has traveled we need to know how long since the signal left Earth. If the signal left in 1925, distance in light years = time since broadcast left Earth. d = tnow - tbroadcast d = light years Submit Skip (you cannot come back)arrow_forwardAccording to modern science, Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and written human history extends back about 10,000 years. Suppose the entire history of Earth is represented with a 100-meter-long timeline, with the birth of Earth on one end and today at the other end. a. What distance represents 1 billion years? b. How far from the end of the timeline does written human history begin? a. 1 billion years is represented by meters of the timeline. (Type an integer or decimal rounded to the nearest tenth as needed.) millimeters from the end of the timeline. b. Written human history begins about (Type an integer or decimal rounded to the nearest hundredth as needed.)arrow_forward
- In this chapter, we identify these characteristic properties of life: life extracts energy from its environment, and has a means of encoding and replicating information in order to make faithful copies of itself. Does this definition fully capture what we think of as “life”? How might our definition be biased by our terrestrial environment?arrow_forwardSuppose astronomers discover a radio message from a civilization whose planet orbits a star 35 lightyears away. Their message encourages us to send a radio answer, which we decide to do. Suppose our governing bodies take 2 years to decide whether and how to answer. When our answer arrives there, their governing bodies also take two of our years to frame an answer to us. How long after we get their first message can we hope to get their reply to ours? (A question for further thinking: Once communication gets going, should we continue to wait for a reply before we send the next message?)arrow_forwardWhy do we think we would be able to decode a message deliberately sent to us by an alien civilization? Group of answer choices The message will probably be in video format, allowing us to watch it even without knowing the alien language. We can assume that aliens will also have 10 fingers and 10 toes and therefore that they can send a message that relies on this fact. They undoubtedly have already received our television broadcasts and would therefore be likely to send the message in English. The aliens presumably know the same laws of mathematics and physics as we do and therefore could develop a simple code based on these laws.arrow_forward
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