[Kabar-indonesia] Big bang pushed back two billion years [+Life After Earth]

[Joyo at aol.com]

also: NYT: Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond
This Terra Firma

New Scientist magazine
Issue 2563 / August 4, 2006

Big bang pushed back two billion years

By Zeeya Merali

Our universe may be 15% larger and older than we
thought, according to new measurements of the distance
to a nearby galaxy.

Researchers led by Alceste Bonanos at the Carnegie
Institution of Washington, US, used data from
telescopes including the 10-metre Keck-II telescope in
Hawaii, US, to measure the distance to a pair of stars
in the Triangulum Galaxy.

The team used light, velocity, and temperature
measurements to calculate the true luminosity of the
two stars, which eclipse one another every five days.
By comparing this intrinsic luminosity to their
observed brightness, the team calculated that the
galaxy lies 3.14 million light years away from us.
Surprisingly, this is about half a million light years
farther than previously thought.

Measuring astronomical distances is not simple.
Distant, bright objects, for example, can look the
same as closer, dim ones. So astronomers have built a
ladder-like system that starts by using several
independent methods to accurately determine the
distance to nearby objects. They then use these
measurements to define a more distant cosmic
yardstick, and so on.

“In every step, you accumulate errors,” says team
member Krzysztof Stanek at Ohio State University in
Columbus, US. “We wanted an independent measure of
distance – a single step that will one day help with
measuring dark energy and other things.”

Hubble constant

Gauging distances by observing a binary star has cut
out those extra steps, says team member Norbert
Przybilla at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg,
Germany. "This is the farthest distance that anyone
has been able to measure directly," he told New
Scientist. "It's the cutting edge of what can be done
with these telescopes."

Earlier measurements were based on calculations using
the Hubble constant, a measure of the expansion rate
and age of the universe. The new observation implies
that the value used for the constant is off by 15%,
says Przybilla.

That suggests the universe is 15% larger, and 15%
older than previously thought. Recent estimates have
put the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years, and
the new research suggests it may actually be 15.8
billion years old.

"Our result hints that there may be something
interesting happening with the Hubble constant," says
Przybilla. But he cautions that the study reports only
one distance measurement. "We need to follow this up
with more measurements."

--------------------------------------------------------------

The New York Times 
August 1, 2006

Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond This Terra
Firma

By RICHARD MORGAN

When the dust settles after World War III, or World
War IX, humanity will still want to grow pineapples,
rice, coffee and other crops. That is why in June on
an island in the Norwegian Arctic, all five
Scandinavian prime ministers met to break ground on a
$4.8-million “doomsday vault” that will stockpile crop
seeds in case of global catastrophe.

While it boasts the extra safety of Arctic
temperatures, the seed bank is just the latest
life-preservation plan to reach reality, joining
genetic banks like the Frozen Ark, a British program
that is storing DNA samples from endangered species
like the scimitar-horned oryx, the Seychelles Frégate
beetle and the British field cricket.

To a certain group preoccupied with doomsday, these
projects are laudable but share a deep flaw: they are
Earth-bound. A global catastrophe — like a collision
with an asteroid or a nuclear winter — would have to
be rather tame in order not to rattle the test tubes
in the various ark-style labs around the world. What
kind of feeble doomsday would leave London safe and
sound?

Cue the Alliance to Rescue Civilization, a group that
advocates a backup for humanity by way of a station on
the Moon replete with DNA samples of all life on
Earth, as well as a compendium of all human knowledge
— the ultimate detached garage for a race of packrats.
It would be run by people who, through fertility
treatments and frozen human eggs and sperm, could
serve as a new Adam and Eve in addition to their role
as a new Noah.

Far from the lunatic fringe, the leaders of the
alliance have serious careers: Robert Shapiro, the
group’s founder, is a professor emeritus and senior
research scientist in biochemistry at New York
University; Ray Erikson runs an aerospace development
firm in Boston and has been a NASA committee chair;
Steven M. Wolfe, as a Congressional aide, drafted and
helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, which
mandated that NASA plan a shift from space exploration
to space colonization, and was executive director of
the Congressional Space Caucus; William E. Burrows, an
author of several books on space, is the director of
the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting
Program at N.Y.U.

President Bush has already proposed a Moon base. “He
just needs to be told what it’s good for,” Dr. Shapiro
said. Dr. Shapiro has written a number of books on the
origins of life on Earth, as well as “Planetary
Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life Beyond Earth,”
where he unveiled the civilization rescue project.

In 1999, the same year the book came out, Dr. Shapiro
wrote an essay with Mr. Burrows for Ad Astra, an
astronomy journal. There, they formally laid out their
plan for the rescue alliance, beginning by warning
that “the most enduring pictures to come back from the
Apollo missions were not of astronauts cavorting on
the Sea of Tranquillity, nor even of the lunar
landscape itself.”

“They were the haunting views of Earth, seen for the
first time not as a boundless and resilient colossus
of land and water,” they continued, “but as a
startlingly vulnerable lifeboat precariously plying a
vast and dangerous sea: a ‘blue marble’ in a black
void.” A conversation shortly after the essay was
published, Dr. Shapiro recalled, resounded with the
earnest imagination of science fiction drama:

Dr. Shapiro: “We’ve got to use space to protect
humanity!”

Mr. Burrows: “By God! Yes!”

The concept is not new, but there is some fresh
momentum. Mr. Burrows’s new book, “The Survival
Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth,” is due out
this month. And the physicist Stephen W. Hawking, who
is not part of the group, began arguing this summer
that human survival depends on leaving Earth.

The mission of the Alliance to Rescue Civilization has
also attracted the support of Col. Buzz Aldrin, the
second man to walk on the Moon, who now devotes much
of his time to the idea of Martian colonization.

“It takes a big reason to go to the Moon, because,
frankly, it’s a lousy place to be,” Colonel Aldrin
said in a telephone interview. “But this is exactly
the kind of planning as a human race we need to secure
our future.

“But the A.R.C. idea isn’t ahead of its time because
it’s needed right now. It’s a reasonable thing to do
with our space technology, sending valuable stuff to a
reliable off-site location. NASA is certainly not
bending backwards to do it. It’s the private people
like A.R.C.”

Born and raised within walking distance of the Bronx
Zoo — and he walked that distance often — Dr. Shapiro
developed an early interest in biodiversity. He frets
over the frailty of civilization and the planet, but
he is not a pessimist. He compares the Moon-base idea
to a safe-deposit box.

“It makes sense to protect the things you value,” he
said. “But we, as a civilization, we don’t have
anything like that.” The trouble with doomsday, Dr.
Shapiro argues, is that it is almost always rendered
in popular culture as grandiose, though in reality,
many minor incidents present substantial everyday
threats.

In 1918, an influenza strain killed some 30 million
people; a possible new bird flu strain spurs
contemporary panic. In January 2003, a computer virus
shut down airlines, banks and governments. That same
year, a tree fell on power lines outside Cleveland,
resulting in a blackout for much of the Northeast.
Doomsday can be understated.

“But I’m not here to predict doomsday; I’m here for
sanity,” Dr. Shapiro said. “When we’ve gained what
we’ve gained, we should fight to keep it.

“And, worst-case scenario, if it’s all for nothing,
we’ll have a nice museum.”

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