Sciency Words is a special series here on Planet Pailly celebrating the rich and colorful world of science and science-related terminology. Today, we’re looking at the term:

ENTOMOPHAGY

If you want to live on Mars, you may have to get used to this term. It combines the Greek words for insect and eating. Yes, my friends, we’re talking about eating bugs.

Why Can’t We Eat Beef on Mars?

Keeping humans well fed will be one of the biggest challenges for Mars colonization (or frankly any long-term settlement off Earth). First off, you won’t have access to beef. Cattle require way too much grazing land.

The initial colony on Mars will likely only have a few small greenhouses to provide all their food. There simply won’t be room to spare for cows, pigs, or chickens. That also precludes having things like milk, cheese, and eggs.

It may be possible to raise fish on Mars. Loach and tilapia are sometimes included on the Mars diet menu. As a seafood fan, I’m all for that, but finding enough water for the required fish tanks could prove problematic.

Do We Really Need to Eat Insects?

Compared to more traditional barnyard animals, insects look like a much better option for feeding hungry colonists. Many insect species have already visited the International Space Station, so we know they’re okay with low or no gravity environments.

Insects don’t require much room. They can live in our tiny greenhouses and even help decompose plant waste like dead leaves, stems, and other inedible vegetable matter. In fact, we may have to bring insects with us anyway to help keep our plants healthy.

Best of all, insects convert almost everything they eat into insect protein. Very little nutrition is lost as it moves along the food chain.

So who else is ready to go to Mars and eat a handful of crickets?

Couldn’t We Just Be Vegans?

Plenty of people here on Earth survive without any animal protein whatsoever. No beef, chicken, dairy, tilapia, or even crickets. Some of these people assure me that they feel healthier on a vegan diet, and I have no reason to doubt them.

Maybe veganism would work on Mars, but the idea raises some concerns. With only a small number of greenhouses, the first colonies on Mars might not be able to supply a sufficiently diverse range of vegetables. Mission planners have therefore struggled to prepare a menu that doesn’t include at least some form of animal protein.

So entomophagy is something that both mission planners and science fiction writers alike might want to think about when designing future colonies on Mars or elsewhere.

Links

Entomophagy as Part of a Space Diet for Habitation on Mars from the Japanese Rocket Society.

Space Diet: Daily Mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) Harvest on a Multigenerational Spaceship from the Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics.

Predicting Mars Cuisine: Grasshoppers with a Side of Fungi from Space.com.

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Today’s post is part of Mars month for the 2015 Mission to the Solar System. Click here for more about this series.

 

Sciency Words is a special series here on Planet Pailly celebrating the rich and colorful world of science and science-related terminology. Today, we’re looking at the term:

YESTERSOL

In the course of my research, I sometimes stumble upon new words that just make me smile. Sol is the technical term for a Martian day, a period of roughly 24.6 hours. Knowing that, I’m sure you can guess what yestersol means.

The term yestersol was apparently coined during NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rover missions. Scientists and engineers assigned to those missions had to sync their work schedules to Martian time, screwing up their sleep cycles, eating habits, and no doubt many other aspects of their personal lives. This was necessary because the rovers could only operate during Martian daylight hours.

Additional new terms include “tosol” for today and several versions of tomorrow, such as “nextersol” and “solmorrow.”

In the distant future, Earth time may well be retained as an interplanetary standard, but each colonized world will probably develop its own version of local time, along with playful local terminology like yestersol.

Another timekeeping idea that made me smile appeared in Robert Zubrin’s book The Case for Mars. Zubrin suggests dividing Mars’s 687 day-long (or 669 sol-long) year into twelve months based on the twelve Zodiac constellations. So Martian months may end up having names like Sagittebruary, Leotober, or Cancricember.

These months would be significantly longer than Earth’s, but they could be made to correspond with Martian seasons in a manner similar to Earth’s calendar. Martian colonists may find that convenient. Also, who wouldn’t want their birthday (I mean birthsol) to be something like Sagittebruary the 49th?

When world building in science fiction, it can be tempting to either adhere to the familiar Earth calendar or try to impose some sort of intergalactic standard time on everyone. But it might be more fun (and perhaps more true to life) to think about how different communities spread across space might track time in their own unique ways, using their own colloquialisms like yestersol.

Links

Yestersol from Word Spy.

Martian Language: Where Curiosity Can Take You from A Way with Words.

Workdays Fit for a Martian from the Los Angeles Times.

Long Day at the Office as Scientists Get in Sync with Mars from the Sydney Morning Herald.

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Today’s post is part of Mars month for the 2015 Mission to the Solar System. Click here for more about this series.

 

Sciency Words is a special series here on Planet Pailly celebrating the rich and colorful world of science and science-related terminology. Today, we’re looking at two related terms:

OPPOSITION AND CONJUNCTION

Admit it: you want to go to Mars. Despite all the radiation and sandstorms and saltwater, you still kind of want to do it. But which way is it to Mars? Bonus credit if you can point in the correct direction right now without checking a smartphone app.

Mars, like pretty much everything in space, is a moving target. Sometimes, it’s fairly close to Earth. Other times, it’s all the way on the far side of the Sun. To make life slightly easier, astronomers have special terms to describe the positions of other planets relative to Earth.

Opposition: Earth and Mars, as pictured above, are on the same side of the Sun, almost perfectly lined up. In this situation, Mars is said to be “in opposition.”

Conjunction: Mars is now on the far side of the Sun, basically as far from Earth as it can get. Mars is now said to be “in conjunction.”

In my mind, these terms would make more sense the other way around. Mars should be in opposition when it’s on the opposite side of the Sun, don’t you think? But I’m guessing this all originates from a more geocentric view of the Solar System. Opposition, therefore, gets its name because the Sun and Mars are on opposite sides of the Earth.

What about Mercury and Venus? Since neither can be on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun, they’re never in opposition. Instead, astronomers use slightly different terms.

Superior Conjunction: Venus, as pictured above, is on the opposite side of the Sun as viewed from Earth. This is called a “superior conjunction.”

Inferior Conjunction: Venus is now on the same side of the Sun as Earth. This is an “inferior conjunction.”

Of course, all this terminology can be shifted around if you want to take the perspective of a planet other than Earth. From a Venusian point of view, Earth could be in opposition or conjunction, and Martians could observe Earth to be in superior or inferior conjunction.

Knowing where planets are in relation to each other is critical for interplanetary voyages. Next week, we’ll start planning a Martian vacation, keeping an important question in mind: would you rather travel to Mars when Mars is in opposition or conjunction?

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Today’s post is part of Mars month for the 2015 Mission to the Solar System. Click here for more about this series.

Today’s post is part of a special series here on Planet Pailly called Sciency Words. Every Friday, we take a look at a new and interesting scientific term to help us all expand our scientific vocabularies together. Today’s term is:

THE GAIA PRINCIPLE

The Gaia principle (named after the Greek word for Earth) has taken on a lot of new agey, pseudo-religious connotations. We hear about life forces, Mother Earth, and the spiritual connection we humans have (or ought to have) with our planet. That’s all very interesting, but let’s set that aside for now.

As a scientific concept, the Gaia principle or Gaia hypothesis is primarily credited to James Lovelock. In the 1960’s and 70’s, while working for NASA, Lovelock wanted to understand why Earth is so tailor-made for life while other planets, especially Mars, are not.

According to Lovelock’s hypothesis, once life takes root on a planet, it fundamentally changes the environment around it. As life evolves, so too does the planet, with the planet’s environment becoming increasingly favorable to life and life becoming increasingly well adapted to the planet’s environment.

Today, all life forms on Earth exist in a symbiotic relationship with each other and with the planet, actively (though unwittingly) maintaining the planet’s life-friendly conditions. It’s almost as though Earth has become a single organisms with countless individual “cells” working to maintain homeostasis.

A strict interpretation of the Gaia principle would tell us that if life fails to alter its environment, if it fails to spread out and establish a vast and complicated planetary biosphere, then it will wither and die.

Scientists are currently searching for evidence of life on Mars. Specifically, they’re looking for microbial life eking out an existence, perhaps only in one limited region of the planet.

Whether or not we accept the Gaia principle and how strictly we choose to interpret it has major implications for what we can expect scientists to find on Mars. Because if it’s all or nothing when it comes to life on other planets, as the Gaia principle suggests, then Mars looks pretty darn close to nothing.

So what do you think of the Gaia principle, and how likely do you think it is that we’ll find life on Mars?

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Today’s post is part of Mars month for the 2015 Mission to the Solar System. Click here for more about this series.