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Space News Update — July 7, 2020 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

Curiosity Mars Rover's Summer Road Trip Has Begun

Story 2:

Mystery of Solar Cycle Illuminated

Story 3:

Young Giant Planet Offers Clues to Formation of Exotic Worlds

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

NASA-TV Highlights

Space Calendar

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. Curiosity Mars Rover's Summer Road Trip Has Begun

Stitched together from 116 images, this view captured by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the path it will take in the

summer of 2020 as it drives toward the next region it will be investigating, the "sulfate-bearing unit." Credits: NASA/JPL-

Caltech/MSSS

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has started a road trip that will continue through the summer across roughly a

mile (1.6 kilometers) of terrain. By trip's end, the rover will be able to ascend to the next section of the 3-mile-

tall Martian (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it's been exploring since 2014, searching for conditions that may have

supported ancient microbial life.

Located on the floor of Gale Crater, Mount Sharp is composed of sedimentary layers that built up over time.

Each layer helps tell the story about how Mars changed from being more Earth-like – with lakes, streams and

a thicker atmosphere – to the nearly-airless, freezing desert it is today.

The rover's next stop is a part of the mountain called the "sulfate-bearing unit." Sulfates, like gypsum and

Epsom salts, usually form around water as it evaporates, and they are yet another clue to how the climate and

prospects for life changed nearly 3 billion years ago.

But between the rover and those sulfates lies a vast patch of sand that Curiosity must drive around to avoid

getting stuck. Hence the mile-long road trip: Rover planners, who are commanding Curiosity from home rather

than their offices at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, expect to reach the area in early

fall, although the science team could decide to stop along the way to drill a sample or study any surprises they

come across.

Depending on the landscape, Curiosity's top speeds range between 82 and 328 feet (25 and100 meters) per

hour. Some of this summer road trip will be completed using the rover's automated driving abilities, which

enable Curiosity to find the safest paths forward on its own. Rover planners allow for this when they lack

terrain imagery. (Planners hope for more autonomy in the future; in fact, you can help train an algorithm that

identifies Martian drive paths.)

"Curiosity can't drive entirely without humans in the loop," said Matt Gildner, lead rover driver at JPL. "But it

does have the ability to make simple decisions along the way to avoid large rocks or risky terrain. It stops if it

doesn't have enough information to complete a drive on its own."

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In journeying to the "sulfate-bearing unit," Curiosity leaves behind Mount Sharp's "clay-bearing unit," which

the robotic scientist had been investigating on the lower side of the mountain since early 2019. Scientists are

interested in the watery environment that formed this clay and whether it could have supported ancient

microbes.

Extending across both the clay unit and the sulfate unit is a separate feature: the "Greenheugh Pediment," a

slope with a sandstone cap. It likely represents a major transition in the climate of Gale Crater. At some point,

the lakes that filled the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) crater disappeared, leaving behind sediments that

eroded into the mountain we see today. The pediment formed later (though whether from wind or water

erosion remains unknown); then windblown sand blanketed its surface, building into the sandstone cap.

The northern end of the pediment spans the clay region, and though the slope is steep, the rover's team

decided to ascend Greenheugh back in March for a preview of terrain they'll see later in the mission. As

Curiosity peeked over the top, scientists were surprised to find small bumps along the sandstone surface.

"Nodules like these require water in order to form," said Alexander Bryk, a doctoral student at University of

California, Berkeley who led the pediment detour. "We found some in the windblown sandstone on top of the

pediment and some just below the pediment. At some point after the pediment formed, water seems to have

returned, altering the rock as it flowed through it."

These bumps may look familiar to Mars rover fans: One of Curiosity's predecessors, the Opportunity rover,

found similar geologic textures dubbed "blueberries" back in 2004. Nodules have become a familiar sight

throughout Mount Sharp, though these newly discovered ones are different in composition from what

Opportunity found. They suggest water was present in Gale long after the lakes disappeared and the mountain

took its present shape. The discovery extends the period when the crater hosted conditions capable of

supporting life, if it ever was present.

"Curiosity was designed to go beyond Opportunity's search for the history of water," said

Abigail Fraeman of JPL, who has served as deputy project scientist for both missions. "We're uncovering an

ancient world that offered life a foothold for longer than we realized."

Source: NASA Return to Contents

Stitched together from

28 images, NASA's

Curiosity Mars rover

captured this view

from "Greenheugh

Pediment" on April 9,

2020, the 2,729th

Martian day, or sol, of

the mission. In the

foreground is the

pediment's sandstone

cap. At center is the

"clay-bearing unit"; the

floor of Gale Crater is

in the distance.

Credits: NASA/JPL-

Caltech/MSSS

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2. Mystery of Solar Cycle Illuminated

Solar activity fluctuates in a rhythm of about eleven years, which is reflected among other things in the frequency of

sunspots. A complete magnetic period lasts 22 years. Scientists have long been puzzling over what causes this

cycle. It must be related to the conditions beneath the "skin" of our star: A layer of hot plasma - electrically-

conductive gas - extends from the surface to 200,000 kilometers below. The plasma within this convection zone is

constantly in motion. A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the University of

Göttingen and New York University Abu Dhabi has now succeeded in drawing the most comprehensive picture of

the plasma flows in north-south-direction to date. The researchers have found a remarkably simple flow geometry:

the plasma describes a single turnover in each solar hemisphere, which lasts for about 22 years. In addition, the

flow in the direction of the equator at the bottom of the convection zone causes spots to form closer and closer to

the equator during the solar cycle.

The number of sunspots on the visible solar surface varies; sometimes there are more, sometimes fewer. The

distance between two sunspot maxima is about eleven years, after 22 years the sunspots are again magnetically

polarized in the same way. During the maximum not only large sunspots appear, but also active regions. In

addition, impressive arcs of hot plasma reach far into the solar atmosphere, particles and radiation are hurled into

space in violent eruptions. At the activity minimum, however, the sun calms down noticeably.

“Over the course of a solar cycle, the meridional flow acts as a conveyor belt that drags the magnetic field along

and sets the period of the solar cycle”, says Prof. Dr. Laurent Gizon, MPS Director and first author of the new study.

“Seeing the geometry and the amplitude of motions in the solar interior is essential to understanding the Sun’s

magnetic field”, he adds. To this end, Gizon and his team used helioseismology to map the plasma flow below the

Sun's surface.

Helioseismology is to solar physics what seismology is to geophysics. Helioseismologists use sound waves to probe

the Sun's interior, in much the same way geophysicists use earthquakes to probe the interior of the Earth. Solar

sound waves have periods near five minutes and are continuously excited by near surface convection. The motions

associated with solar sound waves can be measured at the Sun's surface by telescopes on spacecraft or on the

ground.

Powerful flows: Ionized gas inside the Sun

moves toward the poles near the surface

and toward the equator at the base of the

convection zone (at a depth of 200

thousand kilometers or 125 thousand

miles).

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In this study, Gizon and his team used observations of sound waves at the surface that propagate in the north-

south direction through the solar interior. These waves are perturbed by the meridional flow: they travel faster

along the flow than against the flow. These very small travel-time perturbations (less than 1 second) were

measured very carefully and were interpreted to infer the meridional flow using mathematical modeling and

computers.

Because it is small, the meridional flow is extremely difficult to see in the solar interior. “The meridional flow is

much slower than other components of motion, such as the Sun’s differential rotation”, Gizon explains. The

meridional flow throughout the convection zone is no more than its maximum surface value of 50 kilometers per

hour. “To reduce the noise level in the helioseismic measurements, it is necessary to average the measurements

over very long periods of time”, says Dr. Zhi-Chao Liang of MPS.

The team of scientists analyzed, for the first time, two independent very long time series of data. One was provided

by SOHO, the oldest solar observatory in space which is operated by ESA and NASA. The data taken by SOHO’s

Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) covers the time from 1996 until 2011. A second independent data set was

provided by the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG), which combines six ground-based solar telescopes in the

USA, Australia, India, Spain, and Chile to offer nearly continuous observations of the Sun since 1995.

“The international solar physics community is to be commended for delivering multiple datasets covering the last

two solar cycles”, says Dr. John Leibacher, a former director of the GONG project. “This makes it possible to

average over long periods of time and to compare answers, which is absolutely essential to validate inferences”, he

adds.

Gizon and his team find the flow is equatorward at the base of the convection zone, with a speed of only 15

kilometers per hour (running speed). The flow at the solar surface is poleward and reaches up to 50 kilometers per

hour. The overall picture is that the plasma goes around in one gigantic loop in each hemisphere. Remarkably, the

time taken for the plasma to complete the loop is approximately 22 years – and this provides the physical

explanation for the Sun’s eleven-year cycle.

Furthermore, sunspots emerge closer to the equator as the solar cycle progresses, as is seen in the butterfly

diagram. “All in all, our study supports the basic idea that the equatorward drift of the locations where sunspots

emerge is due to the underlying meridional flows”, says Dr. Robert Cameron of MPS. “It remains to be understood

why the solar meridional flow looks like it does, and what role the meridional flow plays in controlling magnetic

activity on other stars” adds Laurent Gizon.

Source: Max Planck Institute Return to Contents

Driving force:

Helioseismology was used to

measure the Sun’s meridional

flow. This flow controls the

evolution of the global

magnetic field and the

number of sunspots.

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3. Young Giant Planet Offers Clues to Formation of Exotic Worlds

This animation shows a type of gas giant planet known as a hot Jupiter that orbits very close to its star. Finding more of these

youthful planets could help astronomers understand how they formed and if they migrate from cooler climes during their lifetimes.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

For most of human history our understanding of how planets form and evolve was based on the eight (or nine)

planets in our solar system. But over the last 25 years, the discovery of more than 4,000 exoplanets, or planets

outside our solar system, changed all that.

Among the most intriguing of these distant worlds is a class of exoplanets called hot Jupiters. Similar in size to

Jupiter, these gas-dominated planets orbit extremely close to their parent stars, circling them in as few as 18 hours.

We have nothing like this in our own solar system, where the closest planets to the Sun are rocky and orbiting

much farther away. The questions about hot Jupiters are as big as the planets themselves: Do they form close to

their stars or farther away before migrating inward? And if these giants do migrate, what would that reveal about

the history of the planets in our own solar system?

To answer those questions, scientists will need to observe many of these hot giants very early in their formation.

Now, a new study in the Astronomical Journal reports on the detection of the exoplanet HIP 67522 b, which

appears to be the youngest hot Jupiter ever found. It orbits a well-studied star that is about 17 million years old,

meaning the hot Jupiter is likely only a few million years younger, whereas most known hot Jupiters are more than

a billion years old. The planet takes about seven days to orbit its star, which has a mass similar to the Sun's.

Located only about 490 light-years from Earth, HIP 67522 b is about 10 times the diameter of Earth, or close to that

of Jupiter. Its size strongly indicates that it is a gas-dominated planet.

HIP 67522 b was identified as a planet candidate by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which

detects planets via the transit method: Scientists look for small dips in the brightness of a star, indicating that an

orbiting planet has passed between the observer and the star. But young stars tend to have a lot of dark splotches

on their surfaces — starspots, also called sunspots when they appear on the Sun — that can look similar to

transiting planets. So scientists used data from NASA's recently retired infrared observatory, the Spitzer Space

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Telescope, to confirm that the transit signal was from a planet and not a starspot. (Other methods of exoplanet

detection have yielded hints at the presence of even younger hot Jupiters, but none have been confirmed.)

The discovery offers hope for finding more young hot Jupiters and learning more about how planets form

throughout the universe — even right here at home.

"We can learn a lot about our solar system and its history by studying the planets and other things orbiting the

Sun," said Aaron Rizzuto, an exoplanet scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who led the study. "But we will

never know how unique or how common our solar system is unless we're out there looking for exoplanets.

Exoplanet scientists are finding out how our solar system fits in the bigger picture of planet formation in the

universe."

Migrating Giants?

There are three main hypotheses for how hot Jupiters get so close to their parent stars. One is that they simply

form there and stay put. But it's hard to imagine planets forming in such an intense environment. Not only would

the scorching heat vaporize most materials, but young stars frequently erupt with massive explosions and stellar

winds, potentially dispersing any newly emerging planets.

It seems more likely that gas giants develop farther from their parent star, past a boundary called the snow line,

where it's cool enough for ice and other solid materials to form. Jupiter-like planets are composed almost entirely of

gas, but they contain solid cores. It would be easier for those cores to form past the snow line, where frozen

materials could cling together like a growing snowball.

The other two hypotheses assume this is the case, and that hot Jupiters then wander closer to their stars. But what

would be the cause and timing of the migration?

One idea posits that hot Jupiters begin their journey early in the planetary system's history while the star is still

surrounded by the disk of gas and dust from which both it and the planet formed. In this scenario, the gravity of

the disk interacting with the mass of the planet could interrupt the gas giant's orbit and cause it to migrate inward.

The third hypothesis maintains that hot Jupiters get close to their star later, when the gravity of other planets

around the star can drive the migration. The fact that HIP 67522 b is already so close to its star so early after its

formation indicates that this third hypothesis probably doesn't apply in this case. But one young hot Jupiter isn't

enough to settle the debate on how they all form.

"Scientists would like to know if there is a dominant mechanism that forms most hot Jupiters," said Yasuhiro

Hasegawa, an astrophysicist specializing in planet formation at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not

involved in the study. "In the community right now there is no clear consensus about which formation hypothesis is

most important for reproducing the population we have observed. The discovery of this young hot Jupiter is

exciting, but it's only a hint at the answer. To solve the mystery, we will need more."

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed

by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church,

Virginia; NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for

Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT's Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in

Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the

mission.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was retired on Jan. 30, 2020. Science data continues to be analyzed by the science

community via the Spitzer data archive located at the Infrared Science Archive housed at IPAC at Caltech in

Pasadena, California. JPL managed Spitzer mission operations for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in

Washington. Science operations were conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at IPAC at Caltech. Spacecraft

operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Source: NASA Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

This is the time of year when the two brightest stars of summer, Arcturus and Vega, are equally high overhead

at the end of twilight. Arcturus is toward the southwest from the zenith, Vega is toward the east.

Arcturus and Vega are 37 and 25 light-years away, respectively. They represent the two commonest types of

naked-eye star: a yellow-orange K giant and a white A main-sequence star. They're 150 and 50 times brighter

than the Sun, respectively — which, combined with their nearness, is why they dominate the evening sky.

THURSDAY, JULY 9

After dark, the lowest star of the Summer Triangle shines high in the east-southeast. That's Altair, a good three

or four fists at arm's length lower right of bright Vega and lesser Deneb.

Before the waning gibbous Moon rises in late evening to light the sky, look left of Altair by hardly more than a

fist at arm's length for the compact little constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin.

FRIDAY, JULY 10

Jupiter and Saturn rise in twilight now. Mars is a fire-beacon high in the southeast in early dawn, and Venus

passes just 1° from Aldebaran on Saturday and Sunday mornings July 11th and 12th. See the scenes for three

of them above, at right.

SATURDAY, JULY 11

If you have a dark enough sky, the Milky Way now forms a magnificent arch high across the whole eastern sky

after nightfall is complete. It runs all the way from below Cassiopeia in the north-northeast, up and across

Cygnus and the Summer Triangle in the east, and down past the spout of the Sagittarius Teapot in the south-

southeast.

Source: Sky and Telescope Return to Contents

TUESDAY, JULY 7

Three doubles at the top of Scorpius. The head of

Scorpius — the near-vertical row of three stars upper right

of Antares — stands highest in the south right after dark.

The top star of the row is Beta Scorpii or Graffias, a fine

double star for telescopes.

Just 1° below it is the very wide naked-eye pair Omega1

and Omega2 Scorpii, not quite vertical. They're both 4th

magnitude. Binoculars show their slight color difference;

they're spectral types B9 and G2.

Left of Beta by 1.6° is Nu Scorpii, another fine telescopic

double. Or rather triple. High power in good seeing

reveals Nu's brighter component itself to be a close

binary, separation 2 arcseconds.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8

At the end of these long summer twilights, check the sky

low in the northwest and north. Would you recognize

noctilucent clouds if you saw them? They're the most

astronomical of all cloud types, being formed on meteor

dust very high in the upper atmosphere. They're fairly

rare, though they've been growing more common in

recent decades as Earth's atmosphere changes.

The solar system's two largest planets are paired in the evening all this summer.

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ISS Sighting Opportunities (from Denver)

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Wed Jul 8, 1:34 AM 1 min 20° 20° above NNE 10° above NE

Wed Jul 8, 3:09 AM 2 min 12° 10° above NW 12° above N

Wed Jul 8, 4:47 AM 1 min 11° 10° above NNW 11° above N

Thu Jul 9, 2:21 AM 2 min 15° 13° above NW 15° above N

Thu Jul 9, 3:59 AM < 1 min 11° 10° above N 11° above N

Fri Jul 10, 1:34 AM < 1 min 19° 19° above NNW 17° above N

Fri Jul 10, 3:11 AM < 1 min 10° 10° above NNW 10° above N

Fri Jul 10, 4:47 AM 2 min 16° 10° above NNW 16° above NNE

Sat Jul 11, 00:48 AM 1 min 17° 17° above NNE 11° above NNE

Sat Jul 11, 2:23 AM 1 min 11° 10° above NNW 11° above N

Sat Jul 11, 4:00 AM 1 min 13° 10° above NNW 13° above N

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Time Zone)

Regularly Scheduled Programming

NASA TV Schedule for Week of July 6

Live Programming

July 7, Tuesday

12:30 p.m. – International Space Station Expedition 63 in-flight event with the New York Times, Fox News with

Bill Hemmer and USA Today and Station Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA and NASA astronauts Doug Hurley

and Bob Behnken (All Channels)

July 9, Thursday

12:15 p.m. – International Space Station Expedition 63 in-flight educational event with the Artemis Student

Challenge using pre-recorded questions and NASA astronaut Bob Behnken (All Channels)

July 10, Friday

11 a.m. - SpaceCast Weekly (All Channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Jul 07 - Atira Asteroid 2017 XA1 Closest Approach To Earth (0.328 AU)

Jul 07 - Online Lecture: More Things in the Heavens - Infrared Exploration with the Spitzer Space Telescope

Jul 07 - Online: Teaching Space With NASA -Exploring Mars Science With the Perseverance Rover

Jul 07-08 - Virtual: RHESSI Meeting

Jul 08 - Starlink 9 (60)/BlackSky Global 5 & 6 Falcon 9 Launch

Jul 08 - Jilin-1 High Resolution-02A, 02B, 02E (Jilin-1 Gaofen-02A, 02B, 02E) Kuaizhou-11 Launch

Jul 08 - Aten Asteroid 2013 ND15 (Venus Trojan) Closest Approach To Earth (0.906 AU)

Jul 08 - Webinar: Artemis Accords - A Model for Space Settlement International Protocols?

Jul 08-10 - NASA Exploration Science Virtual Forum

Jul 08-10 - Online: Molecular Origins of Life

Jul 08-10 - Space Port Area Conference for Educators (SPACE), Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Florida

Jul 09 - Virtual: NASA Science Mission Directorate Public Town Hall

Jul 09 - Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences Teleconference: Discussion with Europa Clipper Mission

Jul 09 - Virtual: 1st Plenary Surface Topography and Vegetation (STV) Workshop

Jul 09 - Online Lecture: A Day in the Life of the Deep Space Network

Jul 09 - Webinar: Is This Drought Normal? How EO Data can Help you Understand Drought Hazard and Benchmark your Risk

Jul 09 - Live Chat: Space Junk

Jul 09 - Webinar: So What If There Is Life On Mars?

Jul 09 - Seminar: On the Flaring of Thick Disc of Galaxies, Barcelona, Spain

Jul 09 - George Darwin's 175th Birthday (1845)

Jul 09-10 - International Conference on Computational Astrophysics and Visualization (ICCAV 2020), Prague, Czech Republic

Jul 09-10 - International Conference on Extragalactic Astronomy Research (ICEAR 2020), Prague, Czech Republic

Jul 09-10 - International Conference on Experimental Neutrino Physics and Cosmology (ICENPC 2020), Prague, Czech Republic

Jul 09-10 - Biannual Conference: Molecular Origins of Life, Munich, Germany

Jul 09-17 - Online: 6th Indo-French Astronomy School (IFAS6): Spectroscopy - Treasures in the Voxels

Jul 10 - Apstar 6D CZ-3B/G2 Launch

Jul 10 - Webinar: The Emerging Space Nations

Jul 11 - Parker Solar Probe, 3rd Venus Flyby

Jul 11 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 MU1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.048 AU)

Jul 11 - AMSAT South Africa Space Symposium 2020, Midrnad, South Africa

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

Researchers Foresee Linguistic Issues During Space Travel

An image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Tarantula Nebula in three wavelengths of infrared light, each

represented by a different color. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

It lacks the drama of a shape-shifting alien creature, but another threat looms over the prospect of

generations-long, interstellar space travel: Explorers arriving on Xanadu could face problems communicating

with previous and subsequent arrivals, their spoken language having changed in isolation along the way.

Therefore, a new paper co-written by a University of Kansas linguistics researcher and published in a journal

affiliated with the European Space Agency recommends that such crews include, if not a linguist, members

with knowledge of what is likely to occur and how to adapt.

Andrew McKenzie, associate professor of linguistics at KU, and Jeffrey Punske, assistant professor of linguistics

at Southern Illinois University, co-wrote the article “Language Development During Interstellar Travel” in the

April edition of Acta Futura, the journal of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team.

In it, they discuss the concept of language change over time, citing such earthbound examples of long-

distance voyages as the Polynesian island explorers and extrapolating from there.

It might seem far-fetched, but the authors cite language change even during their own lifetimes with the rise

– no pun intended – of uptalk.

They write that “it is increasingly common for speakers to end statements with a rising intonation. This

phenomenon, called uptalk (or sometimes High Rising Terminal), is often mistaken for a question tone by

those without it in their grammars, but it actually sounds quite distinct and indicates politeness or inclusion.

Uptalk has only been observed occurring within the last 40 years but has spread from small groups of young

Americans and Australians to most of the English-speaking world, even to many baby boomers who had not

used it themselves as youth.”

“Given more time, new grammatical forms can completely replace current ones.”

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Imagine trying to chat with Chaucer today. Even improvements in translation technology might not be enough.

“If you're on this vessel for 10 generations, new concepts will emerge, new social issues will come up, and

people will create ways of talking about them,” McKenzie said, “and these will become the vocabulary

particular to the ship. People on Earth might never know about these words, unless there's a reason to tell

them. And the further away you get, the less you're going to talk to people back home. Generations pass, and

there's no one really back home to talk to. And there's not much you want to tell them, because they'll only

find out years later, and then you'll hear back from them years after that.

“The connection to Earth dwindles over time. And eventually, perhaps, we'll get to the point where there's no

real contact with Earth, except to send the occasional update.

“And as long as the language changes on the vessel, and then at an eventual colony, the question becomes,

‘Do we still bother learning how to communicate with people on Earth?’ Yes. So if we have Earth English and

vessel English, and they diverge over the years, you have to learn a little Earth English to send messages

back, or to read the instruction manuals and information that came with the ship.

“Also, keep in mind that the language back on Earth is going to change, too, during that time. So they may

well be communicating like we'd be using Latin — communicating with this version of the language nobody

uses.”

The authors also point out that an adaptation in the form of sign language will be needed for use with and

among crew members who, genetics tell us, are sure to be born deaf.

In any case, they write, “Every new vessel will essentially offload linguistic immigrants to a foreign land. Will

they be discriminated against until their children and grandchildren learn the local language? Can they

establish communication with the colony ahead of time to learn the local language before arrival?

“Given the certainty that these issues will arise in scenarios such as these, and the uncertainty of exactly how

they will progress, we strongly suggest that any crew exhibit strong levels of metalinguistic training in addition

to simply knowing the required languages. There will be need for an informed linguistic policy on board that

can be maintained without referring back to Earth-based regulations.”

If a study of the linguistic changes aboard ship could be performed, it would only “add to its scientific value,”

McKenzie and Punske concluded.

Source: University of Kansas Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Stellar Fireworks Celebrate Birth of Giant Cluster

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Y. Cheng et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello; NASA/ESA Hubble.

Explanation: Most stars in the universe, including our Sun, were born in massive star clusters. These clusters are the building blocks of galaxies, but their formation from dense molecular clouds is still largely a mystery. The image of cluster G286.21+0.17, caught in the act of formation, is a multi-wavelength mosaic made out of more than 750 individual radio observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and 9 infrared images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The cluster is located in the Carina region of our galaxy, about 8000 light-years away. Dense clouds made of molecular gas (purple ‘fireworks streamers’) are revealed by ALMA. The telescope observed the motions of turbulent gas falling into the cluster, forming dense cores that ultimately create individual stars. The stars in the image are revealed by their infrared light, as seen by Hubble, including a large group of stars bursting out from one side of the cloud. The powerful winds and radiation from the most massive of these stars are blasting away the molecular clouds, leaving faint wisps of glowing, hot dust (shown in yellow and red). “This image shows stars in various stages of formation within this single cluster,” said Yu Cheng of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and lead author of two papers published in The Astrophysical Journal. Hubble revealed about a thousand newly-formed stars with a wide range of masses. Additionally, ALMA showed that there is a lot more mass present in dense gas that still has to undergo collapse. “Overall the process may take at least a million years to complete,” Cheng added.

Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory Return to Contents