Christian Schoon: author, reader, critter-wrangler

Just a quick acknowledgment that a landmark, and largely unnoticed, moment in human history is very nearly upon us: the first ape-made objects ever launched from Earth are close to entering interstellar space. The NASA/JPL people won’t know for sure that it’s happened until it happens. But, after some 30-plus years of cruising smartly along, Voyagers 1 and 2  are on the threshold of poking their little antenna-noses out of the Solar System proper and boldly going you-know-where. Really an awesome and momentous achievement… our first baby step toward the stars. Bravo to all who helped these dauntless explorer-droids on their journey. (And cheers also to an American public which, in the distant past, believed that this sort of scientific endeavor was  worth their tax money…. Oh? We can’t afford it? Tell the obscenely non-taxed Exxon Mobil guys that as they wave goodbye and vanish into their private helicopters en route to Monte Carlo.)

(Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Artist’s imagining of Gliese 581d, an exoplanet 20 light-years from us. It’s in the constellation Libra. Image Credit: NASA

Astrobiology Magazine reports that the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) boffins pulled off a first – and can now report back that the six-planet (minimum) solar system around the star Gliese 581 isn’t pumping out large-scale radio signals in our direction. (Dang.) This was the first use of a long baseline telescope array – basically, just using several ‘scopes located some distance from each other — in such a narrowly targeted search of a specific system. By using the separate ‘scopes, the scientists get results as if they were gathering data with one, single gimongous ‘scope. Let’s them get more info for their ‘scoping bucks.

Anyway, the Gliese 581 story caught my eye because it’s one of the star systems supporting intelligent life in my books — Gliesians are short, squatty-but-endearing  amphibious-type little guys who tend to get work as ship’s stewards on the ginormous Indra-craft plying the spacelanes of the Local Systems Accord.The first book will be out in early 2013 and you’ll get the full scoop then.

While the recent scan of the system didn’t see any radio output, that doesn’t mean there’s no life on Gliese’s planets. It just means the locals aren’t using a 300-meter Arecibo-style radio telescope to broadcast with. Fainter signals, like Earth’s present TV and radio broadcasts for instance, wouldn’t have been picked up by the SETI scan. So,  the possibility of little froggish Gliesians sending out their steward’s uniforms to be dry-cleaned in preparation for their next tour of duty aboard the LSA Starliner Helen of Troy remains a perfectly legit scenario… in my universe.

…and here’s a quick follow up article to the post yesterday (see below “NASA astronauts implore the god Apollo…”) about some students who heeded the call & staged their own little car-cleansing event to help NASA avoid moving back into mom & dad’s house.