Part 1) Previous episode:
UFOs are REAL!

The book — Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Bases (audio)
The book’s pitch is that even though the Roswell crash is considered the identifying event of Area 51, it’s merely the tip of the iceberg!

• Nuclear authority given to civilians, with Top Secret clearance!
• Even the President didn’t know what was going on — Clinton had to make a committee to investigate.
• When the bombs dropped on Japan, Congress learned from news reports.
• Video of underground atomic test

Declassified Photos: https://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/area-51-declassified-4968/Photos#tab-Photos/2
Nat’l Geographic – Area 51 Declassified: https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/area-51-declassified/

Part 2) Previous Episode:
Planet Zarmina

So many issues with the concept of this planet supporting life, that it’s become kind of a given to ignore it and focus our attention elsewhere.
– Tidally locked
– Off-axis orbit prevents spectrometry

• In February of this year, the Kepler experiment announced the existence of over 1,200 “candidates” for extrasolar planets.
• In March, they extrapolated their findings as a ratio:
  • “Roughly one out of every 37 to one out of every 70 sunlike stars in the sky might harbor an alien Earth.”
    • Given the size of our galaxy, this would indicate BILLIONS of potentially Earth-like planets.

Other neat discoveries have been made:

• A system with 6 HUGE planets, within the radius of Venus’ orbit
  • Current theories on planetary accretion and formation do not explain how this could happen at all.
• A new math technique may allow for the detection of alien forests
  • Uses the relative brightness of the surface to determine the presence, and amount, of shadows.
• A planet with the density of solid lead
  • 60% larger than Earth, but 8x more massive!
  • Orbits its star once every ~18 hours.
• A gallery of artist renditions of the strangest exoplanets found so far.

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Tonight’s Show Notes & Download Below:

September 29th –

• A scientist has found an Earth-like planetoid orbiting a sun only ~20 LY away.
• One of the only planets found to sit in the “habitable zone” around its star (where temperatures are favorable to human life, and water can appear in liquid form).
• It’s been called “Zarmina” after the discoverer’s wife.

io9 kinda took the story and ran with it, coming up with many follow up stories, and interviews with the discoverer.  My favorite though is the collection of “post-colonization” pictures.

But should they have gone so far as this?  Scientists discover planetoids on a pretty regular basis these days, many of which have a remote (sometimes VERY remote) chance of supporting SOME kind of life… just not human life.

One big thing we DO know about Zarmina that might make it uninhabitable:
It’s tidally locked, meaning it has no day/night cycle — one side always faces the sun, the other always faces away.  This leads to huge temperature variations, and high winds at all times scouring the surface of the planet.

One big thing that leaves it a mystery:
It does not orbit between us and its sun, so it’s impossible to use Atomspheric Spectrometry to determine the contents of its atmosphere (measuring the way light bends as it passes through the planet’s atmosphere).

NOTE:
There are THREE planets within the habitable region in this star’s system (Gliese 581).  The only reason Zarmina is receiving such attention, is because the scientist that discovered it went on record as saying he “believes there is life on this planet.”  But belief and facts are two very different things.

That said… it’s nice to dream!

So, how would we get there?

• Based on current propulsion techniques, it would take a probe launched TODAY approximately 180,000 years to reach Zarmina.
• Using a theoretical anti-matter drive (not warp drive mind you!) it’s estimated a ship fitted with this engine could reach speeds of about 92% the speed of light.  This trip would only take about 22.4 years.
• However, due to Time Dilation from traveling so incredibly fast, the astronauts on board would only feel like 6.1 years had passed.
• (These calculations also assume accelerating and decelerating at speeds that would cause Earth-like gravity on board.)
• Even with an incredibly efficient Anti-Matter drive, you would still need 530x as much fuel as the mass of the rest of the ship, just to make a one-way trip.  Meaning, if the ship was ferrying 200 tons of people and supplies, it would need 106,000 tons of matter/anti-matter fuel just to get to Zarmina.
• Link to the complete math.

Our instruments and methods used to detect extra-solar planets continues to get better and better each year.  Several prominent scientists feel there is a more-than 75% of us discovering an Earth-like planetoid by the year 2013.

But we’ll still have to figure out a way to get there…..