Go Hard-Core with Science!

By the time you read this, I'll be at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference 2019 in frigid Melbourne, AU. For the past month or so I have been so focused on getting my writing career together for this, that I haven't had any chance to science at all. AT ALL.

So, while I'm off being an author, you can get your science on.

Science is this beautiful, wonderful pursuit by the human race as they explore their world and the universe, from the smallest known particle to the largest mega-structure their marvelous minds can conceive.

Because you are a human being, do not be afraid to go hard-core when it comes to science. You don't need a fancy degree or even a knowledge of the vocabulary to dip in your toe.

But you must dip in your toe. Follow it with your foot, and then plunge right in. Do not make the mistake that oh-so-many online denizens do of learning one little factlet from some meme someone posted to their Facebook timeline and running with it, never more choosing to research deeper. That's just irresponsible and leads to issues like Flat Earthers, Anti-Vaxxers and the "Mobile Phones Cause Cancer" crowd.

There's a lot of hard-working, dedicated scientists out there who are doing the hard research. When they do, they publish their results so everyone can have access to them and see what their work is on.

And yes, you can read these papers as well (or their abstracts at least).  Abstracts are free. Sometimes the papers are behind paywalls. Sometimes they're free-and-easy access on arXiv.org.

DO NOT BE AFRAID TO LOOK AT THESE PAPERS! Do not think that they are limited to just scientists. You can read them too. If you come across a word you are unfamiliar with, the Dictionary is your friend. Consider it leveling up by learning new vocabulary. It's not that scientists are being deliberately obtuse; quite the opposite--they are aiming for precision. English is one of those beautiful languages with hundreds of thousands of words (okay, most of them obscure) that precisely define something. When a scientist chooses a particular word, it defines and constrains the  meaning to an exact definition.

So, how do you find these papers?  For astronomers and astrophysicists, we use a database called...

The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System

Here's a good place to start your search.

Say you wanted to see what's been published regarding Water on Mars in the past few years?

I put in a range of dates from 2016 up to next month. My keywords were "water on Mars".  I hit the search button.

These were my results. It pulled up 1,605 papers that had anything to do with water and Mars. Now, some of the titles make even my eyes glaze over, but I trawled through until I found something interesting.

I was torn between "Squeezing Marsquakes Out of Groundwater" and "Follow the Oxygen: Comparative Histories of Planetary Oxygenation and Opportunities for Aerobic Life". 

Hmm, which one to choose?  Best way is to read the abstract.

An abstract is kind of like a back-cover blurb that gives away the ending of the story. Most useful if you're trawling through looking for a paper about a particular topic.

After reading both abstracts, I chose to have a closer look at Follow the Oxygen.

Here's the abstract: 

Aerobic respiration—the reduction of molecular oxygen (O2) coupled to the oxidation of reduced compounds such as organic carbon, ferrous iron, reduced sulfur compounds, or molecular hydrogen while conserving energy to drive cellular processes—is the most widespread and bioenergetically favorable metabolism on Earth today. Aerobic respiration is essential for the development of complex multicellular life; thus the presence of abundant O2 is an important metric for planetary habitability. O2 on Earth is supplied by oxygenic photosynthesis, but it is becoming more widely understood that abiotic processes may supply meaningful amounts of O2on other worlds. The modern atmosphere and rock record of Mars suggest a history of relatively high O2 as a result of photochemical processes, potentially overlapping with the range of O2concentrations used by biology. Europa may have accumulated high O2 concentrations in its subsurface ocean due to the radiolysis of water ice at its surface. Recent modeling efforts suggest that coexisting water and O2 may be common on exoplanets, with confirmation from measurements of exoplanet atmospheres potentially coming soon. In all these cases, O2accumulates through abiotic processes—independent of water-oxidizing photosynthesis. We hypothesize that abiogenic O2 may enhance the habitability of some planetary environments, allowing highly energetic aerobic respiration and potentially even the development of complex multicellular life which depends on it, without the need to first evolve oxygenic photosynthesis. This hypothesis is testable with further exploration and life-detection efforts on O2-rich worlds such as Mars and Europa, and comparison to O2-poor worlds such as Enceladus. This hypothesis further suggests a new dimension to planetary habitability: "Follow the Oxygen," in which environments with opportunities for energy-rich metabolisms such as aerobic respiration are preferentially targeted for investigation and life detection.

Oh-kay... lots of big scary words if you're not an astrobiologist. But once you look them up, you'll see that Lewis, Vlada, Kevin and Woodward were being rather precise when they wrote the abstract.

Let's take bits of this apart and see what it really means:

"Aerobic Respiration..." - essentially, breathing oxygen, specifically, life forms breathing oxygen. While they gave a very detailed definition (and they had their reasons for it), essentially, the whole sentence is about how breathing oxygen is the preferred method of using oxygen in our metabolisms here on Earth.

"Aerobic respiration is essential..."  Advanced lifeforms like us and the cats in our laps need to breathe oxygen. Lots of oxygen on our planet means lots of life.  

"O2 on Earth is supplied by..."  photosynthesis. We all know that from Third Grade science. Plants make the oxygen we breathe.

But what if we could manufacture oxygen a different way? Do we need plants? Do we even need life, or can we source plentiful oxygen from a non-living method--an abiotic one that doesn't require a life's metabolism?  "...that abiotic processes may supply meaningful amounts of O2 on other worlds."  

The big question is, which came first? Oxygen or photosynthesis? If there's plenty of oxygen on another world produced abiotically (by a method not dependent on life, like a tree), could it be that this is what could allow multi-cellular life (like amoebae and rats and elephants) to be developed on other worlds? This is what the authors are thinking.

Until recently, space exploration has been dancing to the tune of "Follow the Water". Maybe it should be "Follow the Oxygen".

"This hypothesis is testable..." is music to every scientist's ears. Everyone loves a good idea, especially if it can be proven or disproven. Someone came up with an idea, and a way of proving it (or disproving). This is what makes science so groovy.  [end abstract]

Reference

Ward LM, Stamenković V, Hand K, Fischer WW (2019) Astrobiology, 19, 6   (Yeah, that's ApJ referencing style.)

Now, if only the article wasn't behind a paywall (or you are a university student whose library has e-subscriptions to Astrobiology magazine (Vol. 19, No. 6 is the issue this appears in). Maybe I should have gone for "Paleo-Rock-Hosted Life on Earth and the Search on Mars: a Review and Strategy for Exploration" instead. Here's a link to the full article. It's about rock-eating life bigger than a single cell. It happened on Earth a long time ago. Maybe it's also happened on Mars. "These findings suggest that rock-hosted life would have been both more likely to emerge and be preserved in a martian context," the authors say.