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For a planetary surface to boast extensive areas of both land and water, a delicate balance must be struck between the volume of water it retains and the capacity of its oceanic basins. Each of these two quantities may vary substantially across the full spectrum of water-bearing worlds. Why the Earth’s values are so well balanced is an unresolved and long-standing conundrum. In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Ed. Oxford University Press) the author, Fergus Simpson of the Institute of Cosmos Science at the University of Barcelona, has constructed a statistical model – based on Bayesian probability – to predict the division between land and water on habitable exoplanets.
This model predicts that most habitable planets are dominated by oceans spanning over 90% of their surface area (95% credible interval). This conclusion is reached because the Earth is in close proximity to the waterworld limit, a regime where the existence of our species would no longer be viable. “A scenario in which the Earth has less water than most other habitable planets would be consistent with results from simulations, and could help explain why some planets have been found to be a bit less dense than we expected” explains Simpson.
In this paper, the ICCUB researcher finds that the Earth’s finely balanced oceans may be a consequence of the anthropic principle – more often used in a cosmological context - which accounts for how our observations of the Universe are influenced by the requirement for the formation of conscious life. “Based on the Earth’s ocean coverage of 71%, we find substantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that anthropic selection effects are at work” explains Simpson.
To test the statistical model the ICCUB researcher has also taken some feedback mechanisms into account such as the deep water cycle or the erosion and deposition processes. Also, he proposed a statistical approximation to determine the diminishing habitable land area for planets with smaller oceans, as they become increasingly dominated by deserts.
In this study Simpson focuses on the selection effect involving a planet’s ocean coverage. “Our understanding of the development of life may be far from complete, but it is not so dire that we must adhere to the conventional approximation that all habitable planets have an equal chance of hosting intelligent life”, Simpson concludes.
For a planetary surface to boast extensive areas of both land and water, a delicate balance must be struck between the volume of water it retains and the capacity of its oceanic basins. Each of these two quantities may vary substantially across the full spectrum of water-bearing worlds. Why the Earth’s values are so well balanced is an unresolved and long-standing conundrum. In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Ed. Oxford University Press) the author, Fergus Simpson of the Institute of Cosmos Science at the University of Barcelona, has constructed a statistical model – based on Bayesian probability – to predict the division between land and water on habitable exoplanets.
This model predicts that most habitable planets are dominated by oceans spanning over 90% of their surface area (95% credible interval). This conclusion is reached because the Earth is in close proximity to the waterworld limit, a regime where the existence of our species would no longer be viable. “A scenario in which the Earth has less water than most other habitable planets would be consistent with results from simulations, and could help explain why some planets have been found to be a bit less dense than we expected” explains Simpson.
In this paper, the ICCUB researcher finds that the Earth’s finely balanced oceans may be a consequence of the anthropic principle – more often used in a cosmological context - which accounts for how our observations of the Universe are influenced by the requirement for the formation of conscious life. “Based on the Earth’s ocean coverage of 71%, we find substantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that anthropic selection effects are at work” explains Simpson.
To test the statistical model the ICCUB researcher has also taken some feedback mechanisms into account such as the deep water cycle or the erosion and deposition processes. Also, he proposed a statistical approximation to determine the diminishing habitable land area for planets with smaller oceans, as they become increasingly dominated by deserts.
In this study Simpson focuses on the selection effect involving a planet’s ocean coverage. “Our understanding of the development of life may be far from complete, but it is not so dire that we must adhere to the conventional approximation that all habitable planets have an equal chance of hosting intelligent life”, Simpson concludes.
Links
- Article reference: Fergus Simpson. ‘Bayesian evidence for the prevalence of waterworlds’. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, April 2017. Doi: http://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx516
- Press release by the University of Barcelona
- Press release by the Royal Astronomical Society
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Will Earth-like planets be found to have Earth-like oceans?
Catalan version
The upcoming February 9th and March 3rd the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) will host 152 catalan students to participate in the International Masterclasses on Particle Physics.
During the coming weeks, high-school students around the world are invited to nearby research institutes and universities for a day-long program to experience life at the forefront of basic research. These International Masterclasses give students the opportunity to become particle physicists for a day. During a Masterclass, participants work with data from experiments at CERN´s Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, under the supervision of physicists. The Masterclasses this year will attract students from 50 countries worldwide.
Scientists at about 210 universities and laboratories in 50 countries worldwide host International Masterclasses at their home institutions. New participants in the program come from Russia, Georgia, and Bangladesh. The worldwide participation reflects the international collaboration in particle physics. To simulate a real scientific working environment, each Masterclass ends with a video conference, where student groups from different countries connect with two moderators at CERN or Fermilab (Batavia, Illinois, U.S.) to combine and discuss their results. They can also pick their moderators’ brains in a Q&A section. Most video conferences end with a multiple choice quiz on particle physics. More than 60 physicists have volunteered to moderate the video conferences at CERN or Fermilab.
International Masterclasses are led by Technical University Dresden and QuarkNet, in close cooperation with the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG). IPPOG is an independent group of outreach representatives from countries involved in the research at CERN and other leading research laboratories. The group’s goal is to make particle physics more accessible to the public.
For further information:
The upcoming February 9th and March 3rd the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) will host 152 catalan students to participate in the International Masterclasses on Particle Physics.
During the coming weeks, high-school students around the world are invited to nearby research institutes and universities for a day-long program to experience life at the forefront of basic research. These International Masterclasses give students the opportunity to become particle physicists for a day. During a Masterclass, participants work with data from experiments at CERN´s Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, under the supervision of physicists. The Masterclasses this year will attract students from 50 countries worldwide.
International Masterclasses
Particle physics is one of the most important emerging fields in science. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC in summer 2012 led to a huge media echo and large public interest. International Masterclasses meet this interest and offer high-school students the chance to explore this field of cutting-edge physics by working with recent, authentic data from experiments at the LHC. The basic idea of the annual program is to let students work as much as possible like real scientists. Four experiments - ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb the one in which ICCUB researcher participate- have made data available for educational use within the program.Scientists at about 210 universities and laboratories in 50 countries worldwide host International Masterclasses at their home institutions. New participants in the program come from Russia, Georgia, and Bangladesh. The worldwide participation reflects the international collaboration in particle physics. To simulate a real scientific working environment, each Masterclass ends with a video conference, where student groups from different countries connect with two moderators at CERN or Fermilab (Batavia, Illinois, U.S.) to combine and discuss their results. They can also pick their moderators’ brains in a Q&A section. Most video conferences end with a multiple choice quiz on particle physics. More than 60 physicists have volunteered to moderate the video conferences at CERN or Fermilab.
International Masterclasses are led by Technical University Dresden and QuarkNet, in close cooperation with the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG). IPPOG is an independent group of outreach representatives from countries involved in the research at CERN and other leading research laboratories. The group’s goal is to make particle physics more accessible to the public.
The International Masterclasses at ICCUB
At the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) this activity has been held since 2005 under the name of Taller de Física de Partícules. Over 1400 students from all over Catalonia have attended so far. This year, 152 students from 150 high school instituteswill attend one of the sessions, which will be held on February 9th and March 3rd at the Physics Faculty of the UB, headquarters of the ICCUB. The program will include several talks about particle physics, exercices with real data from the LHCb experiment, in which ICCUB researchers participate, and an international video conference with other institutes to share results. The students will also have the opportunity to visit the laboratories of the Faculty of Physics.
For further information:
Taller de Física de Partícules: www.lhc.cat/taller.php
International Masterclasses: www.physicsmasterclasses.org
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More than 150 High-school students dive into Particle Physic
Licia Verde, ICREA researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (IEEC-UB) will launch this new edition
Barcelona 8 November 2016. The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB, IEEC-UB) begins a new series of ICCUB Colloquia with a talk by Licia Verde, ICREA researcher at ICCUB, on the development that Cosmology has experienced in the last few years, as well as the challenges and new opportunities that have opened up for the future.
Throughout the last twenty years, Cosmology has experienced a dramatic progress. Several independent observations have allowed the definition of a model for the Big Bang which, complemented with an initial inflation period, describes the evolution of our Universe during the last 13,772 million years based on a few parameters and in a very accurate way.
Licia Verde (Venice, 1971), ICREA researcher at ICCUB (IEEC-UB), is one of the most highly cited authors according to the Highly Cited Researchers list published by Thompson Reuters in 2015. She has worked at the University of Princeton and at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been visitor researcher at the University of Harvard, the Imperial College London and CERN, among others. Among other recognitions, she has been awarded the Gruber Prize of Cosmology 2012 and an ERC starting grant (2009).
Since the beginnings of her career, Licia Verde has contributed to the development of present-day Cosmology in a very relevant way thanks to her participation in some of the most important space surveys, among them the NASA project Wilkinson Microwave AnisotropyProbe (WMAP, 2001-2012) and the SDSS-III Collaboration project Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS, 2000-2016), recently finished. WMAP measured the whole sky temperature of the microwave background with an unprecedented precision, which allowed the definition of the current Standard Model of Cosmology. BOSS has determined the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies and quasars by measuring distances on a cosmological scale covering half the history of the Universe since the Big Bang, and it has established the relationship between these distances and the expansion of the Universe.
About the ICCUB Colloquia series
The ICCUB Colloquia series is a program of talks given by internationally renowned scientists about cutting-edge topics in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle and nuclear physics. Throughout the academic year 2016-2017 several conferences are planned, by speakers such as Licia Verde (Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, ICCUB, IEEC-UB), Lisa Randall (Harvard University), Romain Quidant (Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, ICFO) and Guilllem Anglada-Escudé (Queen Mary University of London). They will take place one Thursday a month at the Physics Faculty of the University of Barcelona, the headquarters of the ICCUB, and will be addressed to both physics students and researchers, and those in related fields. The colloquia are also followed by an afternoon meeting between students and postdoctoral fellows and the speaker.
About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB)
The ICCUB is an institute belonging to the University of Barcelona. It was created in 2006 and has been awarded the certification of Unity of Excellence María de Maeztu. The center is devoted to fundamental research in the fields of Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Particle and Nuclear Physics, and collaborates in several international projects at both scientific and techonological levels. The ICCUB brings together numerous professors and reseachers of the Department of Quantum Physicsand Astrophysics, appointed to the Physics Faculty, besides ten ICREA researchers and research staff from other departments and faculties. The ICCUB is also one of the four units which constitute the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC).
The ICCUB has an important role in international projects such as the Gaia Mission of the European Space Agency, the LHCb Experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located in CERN, the international collaboration Sloan DigitalSky Survey (SDSS-III), or the gamma ray telescope projects MAGIC and CTA.
Colloquim by Licia Verde: Thursday 10 November, Physics Faculty, University of Barcelona. More information.
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A talk about the evolution and future of Cosmology opens a n
Our planet, the Earth, is not a fair representation of other life-bearing planets, while mankind is not a fair reflection of intelligent species, concludes a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and authored by Fergus Simpson, researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB, IEEC-UB).
Using a statistical calculation, Simpson estimates that most sentient extra-terrestrial species exceed 300 kg, similar to the mass of an adult polar bear. This result is based solely on the premise that, on average, physically larger organisms possess smaller populations. Following a similar line of reasoning, Simpson also finds that the majority of planets which host life are smaller than the Earth. These results represent the first tangible insights into the nature of alien life.
“This result arises for the same reason that you are likely to be living in a country with over six million people, despite most countries possessing a lower population”, says the University of Barcelona researcher. “When it comes to groups —argues Simpson—, we should expect to be in a highly populated one, not an ordinary one. Larger planets are capable of hosting bigger populations, so this suggests that the Earth is abnormally large”. In much the same vein, smaller species are able to sustain larger populations, since each individual requires less energy and less space. “This indicates that we are likely to be the ants among intelligent species”, points out Simpson. In reaching this conclusion the researcher does not make any assumptions about the way evolution progressed on other planets, or whether there is any correlation between body size and intelligence.
The implications extend beyond the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). Primitive forms of life are a pre-requisite for the development of sentient species, so our expectation of their habitats are also shifted. This could help decide which exoplanets are selected to look for chemical signatures of life in their atmospheres.
To calculate the expected size of a sentient alien, the author exploits the fact that on average, bigger organisms need more energy to survive. This striking trend, known as Kleiber’s law, can be seen across all forms of life, from bacteria to whales. A fundamental limitation on a species’ population size is imposed by its energy requirement, in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics. This suggests that the tendency for larger species to possess lower population densities is a universal one, and not a unique feature of life on our planet.
Article reference:
F. Simpson. ‘The Size Distribution of Inhabited Planets'. MNRAS Letters, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Oxford University Press. Doi: 10.1093/mnrasl/slv170
More information
http://www.facebook.com/Phys.Cosm/
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Are Earth-like planets our best bet for finding extra-terres
The ICCUB member Jordi Torra is the new director of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), since last July. He is Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Barcelona, where he gained his doctorate in Physics in 1984. Doctor Torra is a member of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), one of the research centers that form the IEEC. He has been the principal researcher in several scientific projects and has published over a hundred papers. He currently leads the Spanish group taking part in the ESA’s Gaia mission.
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Jordi Torra, new director of the Institute of Space Studies
In an article published today in Nature, CMS and LHCb collaborations describe the first observation of the very rare decay of the B0s particle into two muon particles, which are similar to electrons but heavier. A research team from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) participate in these experiments of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This rare subatomic process happens about four times out of a billion decays, but it has never been seen before.
The analysis is based on data taken at the LHC in 2011 and 2012, when ICCUB research team was designing and implementing two lines of the trigger system to select muon pairs among every proton-proton collision of the LHCb experiment. Moreover, ICCUB research team participated in the definition of the physical phenomena used to distinguish the signal indicating this important decay, as well as in the definition of the control channels that measure process paces.
Eugeni Graugés, ICCUB researcher and head of the UB group that collaborates in the LHCb, explains that “from an experimental perspective, the result has a profound impact: it delimits many possible theories beyond the Standard Model because it hinders validation as the energy regime required is far from the one which has been studied today by means of particle accelerators”.
“From a theoretical perspective, our present knowledge of the Universe is based on two main pillars: the Standard Model and the Cosmological Model, both of them widely studied at ICCUB”, affirms Lluís Garrido, ICCUB director and member of the LHCb experiment. “However, present particle model does not explain dark matter and energy of the current cosmological model, so new theories are being suggested”, says the researcher. “Measurements obtained from the LHCb experiment constitute an important filter to these new models as they must support this remarkable result”, concludes Garrido.
A rare decay
The B0s and B0 are mesons, in other words, non-elementary unstable subatomic particles composed of a quark and an antiquark, bound together by the strong interaction. Such particles are produced only in high-energy collisions —at particle accelerators, or in nature, for example in cosmic-ray interactions.
The two collaborations first released their individual results for B0s meson decay in July 2013. While the results were in excellent agreement, both fell just below the 5 sigma statistical precision historically needed to claim an observation. The combined analysis easily exceeds this requirement, reaching 6.2 sigma. This is the first time that CMS and LHCb have analysed their data together.
This exciting result is a major milestone in a search conducted by many experiments over almost three decades, and has important implications in the search for new particles and phenomena beyond the Standard Model, when the LHC physics run restarts in the next weeks.
More than seven hundred scientists from sixty-nine research centres from seventeen countries participate in the experiment LHCb. In Spain, besides ICCUB research team, a group of researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela also participates in it. In total, two hundred Spanish scientists and technicians collaborate in LHC experiments, supported by the National Center for Particle, Astroparticle and Nuclear Physics (CPAN).
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CMS and LHCb experiments reveal new rare particle decay
An international team of astronomers has observed in realtime the formation of jets of matter and energy that the supermassive star W75N(B)-VLA2 has been ejecting during its formation process.
The research project published in Science journal was led by Carlos Carrasco González (UNAM, Mexico) and carried with the collaboration of researchers from l'Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICCUB), l'Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (ICE-CSIC) and l'Institut d'Astrofísica d'Andalusia (IAA-CSIC).
The study is particularly interesting since it is the first time scientist capture in realtime the whole process. This fact has allowed to observe the transition from the first regime in which the star ejects matter in a very spheroidal way (in all directions) and a second regime in which the star directs the jets in a preferred single direction.
For more information read the full press release:
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1st realtime observation of the development of stelar jets d
Què tenen a veure els acceleradors de partícules amb la lluita contra el càncer o la caracterització d'obres d'art? I el llenguatge amb què ens comuniquem per Internet o els sistemes d'encriptació per al comerç electrònic amb les partícules subatòmiques?
Aquestes són algunes de les aplicacions de la física que s’expliquen a "La física a les nostres vides" , una exposició itinerant en què es mostren al públic els principals beneficis i desenvolupaments tecnològics sorgits de la recerca bàsica.
"La física a les nostres vides", ha estat produïda pel Centre Nacional de Física de Partícules, Astropartícules i Nuclear (CPAN) i arriba a Catalunya mitjançant l'Institut de Ci[encies del Cosmos (ICCUB). La mostra, es podrà visitar a l'Atri Solar de la Facultat de Física (Diagonal, 645) des del 14 de gener fins a l'11 de març.
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Exposició "La física a les nostres vides"
For the most unexpected discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than slowing as had been long assumed, the Supernova Cosmology Project Team, to which Pilar Ruiz-Lapuente belongs, has been awarded with the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2015.
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Mª Pilar Ruiz-Lapuente is awarded the Breakthrough Prize in
ICCUB participates actively in the CENSAT (Centre d’Aplicacions Civils de Petits Satèl·lits) initiative which was started last June in the framework of the Barcelona Knowledge Campus.
This project impulsed by the city council, and other research institutions such as UB, UPC, University of Florida, and the "Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya", aims at producing scientific and comercial applications with the help of satellite and microsatellite technology.
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ICCUB participates and promotes CENSAT initiative