Tag: Real Science

GeekingScience: Small Town Universe

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Imagine living in a town where wi-fi and cell phones are illegal; where every person in the town works together to create the smallest electronic footprint possible. Does it sound like a science-fiction horror story where people are hiding from aliens (like in David Weber’s Safehold series) or a governmental overreach restricting information transformation?

It’s neither. Green Bank, West Virginia is the National Radio Quiet Zone for the most sensitive radio telescope in the world. The entire valley is monitored for excess electronic interference. And through everyone’s due diligence, we just might hear aliens sending out signals, their television shows reaching across the galaxy.

A documentary from 2024 is available on the subject. You can find the trailer on YouTube (posted below).

Geeking Science: N is for Noms

Erin Penn 4 Comments


ID 303497299 | Nasa Food © Stockvectorwin | Dreamstime.com

What is one thing all humans have in common?

We eat. Nom, nom, nom.

We need food at home, we need food at work, we need food at school, we need food at play, we need food on Earth…

We need food in space!

Most of us are familiar with the story of Tang (Cordell). And astronaut ice cream, a freeze-dried delight. Many of the modern hiking food packaging has come from innovations of getting food from here to orbit. Food weighs a lot, and humans, especially active humans executing space walks in Earth’s orbit, need a lot of food.

At this time, humanity has a good handle on getting take-out for field trips into orbit – from tubular scrambled eggs to three-D printing pizza.

Next problem to crack for the noming of noms in space: long-distance food. What happens when a quick resupply with a dip down into the gravity well of humanity’s crib isn’t available? What happens when we set up shop on the moon or maybe even take a road trip to Mars? Toward this end hydroponics and aeroponics have been tested on the International Space Station (ISS), the science of feeding all of humanity and feeding the distant humanity pushing innovation on both fronts. Doing it for an isolated spaceship alone in the dark is going to required next-level food innovations for space, and the resulting science will also help feeding people whose feet stay on the ground.

To that end, NASA is in the hosting a Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table.  This isn’t just recipes like they did for the 2021-2024 challenge; things that can be cooked in the particular conditions of no gravity, limited machines, air restrictions (think of all those Earth recipes with high altitude adjustments and multiple the tweaks needed by a thousand), etc. This is a full design challenge of a food system: things packed, things grown, things reused; a food system nutritious enough to prevent vitamin deficiencies and other health issues (scurvy anyone?) while not taking up too much duty time because during the long round trip everything outside the ship is going to try to kill the humans within the ship a lot, like a lot a lot.

“The challenge will officially conclude in September 2026 and has a total prize purse of $750,000.” Registration deadline is July 31, 2026. (NASA Mars to Table)

Interested in knowing even more? A small bibliography is below. I have also previously written about space food under Geeking Science: Do You Want Fries in Space and Geeking Science: In space they can’t hear you burp.

 

Bibliography

Cordell, Lyndsay. “Tang: The Orange Drink That Got Its Start From NASA.” Wide Open Country. 18 February 2021. (https://www.wideopencountry.com/tang-drink/ – last viewed 11/14/2023)

Hall, Loura. “NASA Back for Seconds with New Food System Design Challenge.” NASA. 13 January 2026. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/nasa-back-for-seconds-with-new-food-system-design-challenge/ – last viewed 1/16/2026.

Jones, Paul. “Aeroponics vs Hydroponics: In-Depth Comparison.” Seeds and Spades. 30 August 2023. https://www.seedsandspades.com/aeroponics-vs-hydroponics/ – last viewed 1/16/2026.

NASA. “Deep Space Food Challenge (2021-2024).” (undated). https://www.nasa.gov/prizes-challenges-and-crowdsourcing/centennial-challenges/deep-space-food-challenge/ – last viewed 1/16/2026.

NASA. “Mars to Table Challenge.” (undated). https://www.nasa.gov/prizes-challenges-and-crowdsourcing/marstotable/ – last viewed 1/16/2026.

NASA Space Tech. “Introducing NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge: Mars to Table.” 13 January 2026. (available on YouTube, embedded in article above)

Geeking Science: Life as We Don’t Know It

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Predicted 3D structures of the ancestral nitrogenase DDKK complex from oldest to modern.
University of Wisconsin-Madison/Holly Rucker

The challenge for finding life OutThere is the chances of it looking like “Life As We Know It” is vanishingly small. That is because only a small portion of the life on Earth timeframe has been “Life as We Know It.” (And I am going to ignore the life at the bottom of the ocean which isn’t even part of the photosynthesis cycle in a parallel existence with “real” life for this discussion.)

Earth formed somewhere around 4.5 billion years ago, give or take 15 minutes. Single-celled life started in the 4.2 billion years ago. Photosynthesis, creating oxygen, somewhere around 3 billion years ago. (A lot of the search for life on other planets is looking for oxygen.) Multicellular life somewhere around 1.5 billion years ago. The first edge of “Life as We Know It” with plants and animals is around 600 million years ago. Mammals 220 million years go; something close to human 20 million years ago; humans as we know them between 300,000 and 800,000 years ago. (Wikipedia)

The expression “not in a million years” doesn’t even apply to all of Homo sapiens existence yet.

So how do we find life OutThere? How will we recognize the blueprint? Not just of intelligent life, but any life…a planet with the potential to function as a second Earth. We are talking about landing on and exploring a planet in the “life zone” orbit and not in the perfect 10% window where we would have a chance of recognizing “Life As We Know It.” We are much more likely to find a planet in the 1.5 to 4.5 billion year window where there might be single-celled life, or photosynthesis, or (if we are very lucky) the start of multicellular life.

Equally important from an exploring point of view is not only finding life, but taking a planet that doesn’t have a mature biosphere with plants and animals and develop it from life-not-as-we-know-it to life-as-we-know-it so it can be settled – the gold standard of “terraforming”.

Well, we might be one step closer. A group of scientists working together from

One. Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Two. Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Three. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA
Four. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

(See Rucker et.al)

dialed back the clock billions of years (yes, B as in billions) to get the modern nitrogenases precursors. Nitrogenases are organisms that take atmospheric nitrogen (N₂) and make it into something which plants and animals can use.

If you work with plants, you are familiar with their need for nitrogen. A lot of modern nitrogenases exchangers live in the root systems of plants, other just free-wheel through life without the symbiotic partnerships. (Gronstal) For nitrogen to be a building block for “Life as We Know It” it needs to be broken apart into singular nitrogens (modernly we (the plants and animals of Earth) like it attached in stuff like hydrogen; ammonia – NH3 is very tasty.)

“Because nitrogen fixation is critical for life as we know it, scientists believe that nitrogenase must have evolved early in life’s history, at a time when only single-celled microorganisms existed.” (Gronstal)

If we ever terraform, we will need these early nitrogen fixers to set up the building blocks for “Life as We Know It.” And until then, looking at rocks from other planets (like, say Mars and its leopard spots (see Geeking Science: A Leopard Never Changes Its Spots, but Life Might (1/15/2026)) to find signs of life.

I’m ready to find signs of life. How about you? Ready to Geek some Science?

Bibliography

Gronstal, Aaron. “Resurrecting Ancient Enzymes in NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth.” nasa.gov. 30 January 2026. https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/planetary-science/astrobiology/resurrecting-ancient-enzymes-in-nasas-search-for-life-beyond-earth/ – Previously viewed 2/6/2026.

Rucker, Holly R.; Kunmanee Bubphamanee, Derek F. Harris, Kurt Konhauser, Lance C. Seefeldt, Roger Buick & Betül Kaçar. “Resurrected nitrogenases recapitulate canonical N-isotope biosignatures over two billion years.” nature communications. 22 January 2026. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-67423-y – Previously viewed 2/6/2026.

Mahon, Elise. “Resurrected ancient enzyme offers new window into early Earth ad the search for life beyond it.” phys.org. 22 January 2026. – Previously viewed 2/6/2026.

Wikipedia. “Timeline of Human Evolution.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution – Previously viewed 2/9/2026.

Wikipedia. “Timeline of Life.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_life – Previously viewed 2/9/2026.