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Space travel could create language unintelligible to people on Earth
A new study looks at what would happen to human language on a long journey to other star systems.
12 July, 2020
Credit: NASA Ames Research Center
- Researchers proposes that language could change dramatically on long space voyages.
- Spacefaring people might lose the ability to understand the people of Earth.
- This scenario is of particular concern for potential "generation ships."
<p>Given the mounting crises of 2020, wouldn't it be nice to just get on a giant spaceship and leave this troubled planet behind? While we don't yet have a surefire candidate for the new Earth, and our tech is probably still decades if not centuries behind, proposals and achievements in interstellar travel are stacking up. A new study makes the fascinating case that if a group of humans were to venture out on a space journey that lasted generations, their language would likely change. It could evolve into something the people of the original Earth would not understand.</p><p>Let's say a contingent of people boards a so-called "<a href="https://www.universetoday.com/144894/what-is-a-generation-ship/" target="_blank">generation ship</a>," a fully-stocked world-onto-itself spacecraft that can sustain generations of humans in space, slowly traversing the heavens towards another possibly inhabitable planet like <a href="https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1629/" target="_blank">Proxima b</a> in the Proxima Centauri star system. We cannot yet build such a ship (which might have to fly for thousands of years) unless we invent some type of warp-drive or use antimatter as has been imagined in science fiction, but there have been some initial <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/144894/what-is-a-generation-ship/" target="_blank">studies</a> on the subject. </p>
<p>Such a journey could be subject to a variety of dangers and unforeseen circumstances like viruses, asteroids, computer malfunctions, you name it. New research, carried out by linguistics professors <span style="background-color: initial;">Andrew McKenzie from the University of Kansas and Jeffrey Punske of Southern Illinois University</span>, shows what might also happen is that the language of the travelers would mutate. The study highlights the fact that when communities become isolated from each other, conditions are ripe for language to transform. Over time, the spacefaring colonizers would not be able to understand their original language.</p><p>In the study, the linguists use examples of effects from long-distance voyages on Earth, like the changing languages of Polynesian island explorers, to show how much language can change, even within one's lifetime.</p><p>Professor McKenzie described a likely (and somewhat sad) scenario in a <a href="http://news.ku.edu/2020/06/30/without-care-lost-space-could-mean-lost-translation" target="_blank">press release</a>:</p>
<blockquote>"If you're on this vessel for 10 generations, new concepts will emerge, new social issues will come up, and people will create ways of talking about them," McKenzie explained, "and these will become the vocabulary particular to the ship. People on Earth might never know about these words, unless there's a reason to tell them. And the further away you get, the less you're going to talk to people back home. Generations pass, and there's no one really back home to talk to. And there's not much you want to tell them, because they'll only find out years later, and then you'll hear back from them years after that."</blockquote>
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<p>What might also happen is that the language of people on Earth would change. So it's possible, given the distance, and the dwindling reasons to communicate, that both parties might simply not be able to speak to each other as time passes.</p><p>One way to prevent this issue – have a member of the crew trained in linguistics or make other accommodations to remember the language of Earth. Thinking even further ahead, the professors propose that each new ship of people coming over to a faraway space colony would essentially contain "linguistic immigrants" and an effort would have to be made to train them in the changed language to help them avoid discrimination.</p><p>In case you're deadset on going to Proxima b, <a href="https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1806/1806.03856.pdf" target="_blank">recent research</a> found that using currently imaginable tech, such a trip would take 6,300 years and would need to start out with a crew of at least 98 people.</p><p>Check out the study, "<a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3747353" target="_blank">Language Development During Interstellar Travel</a>" in Acta Futura, the journal of the European Space Agency's <a href="https://www.esa.int/gsp/ACT/index.html" target="_blank">Advanced Concepts Team</a>.</p>
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We Are “Extragalactic Immigrants” from Faraway Galaxies, Discover Astrophysicists
Northwestern University researchers discover the unexpected origins of half the atoms in our bodies.
29 July, 2017
credit: Pixabay
<p class="p1">Not only are we made of stardust, but we may come from a galaxy far, far away. Astrophysicists discovered that up to half of the matter in our Milky Way galaxy comes from other, distant galaxies.</p> <p class="p1">The scientists used supercomputer simulations to make the surprising discovery that galaxies get matter through <strong>intergalactic transfer.</strong> Supernova explosions within one galaxy eject so much gas that it gets picked up by galactic winds that transport it to other galaxies. That way atoms get moved from one part of the cosmos to another.<span> </span></p> <blockquote>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1">“Given how much of the matter out of which we formed may have come from other galaxies, we could consider ourselves <strong>space travelers or extragalactic immigrants,</strong>” said <a href="https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/july/milky-way-origin-matter-galaxy/" target="_blank">Daniel Anglés-Alcázar,</a> a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern who led the study.<span> </span></span> </p>
</blockquote> <p class="p3"><span class="s1">He added that it’s likely a large amount of the matter in the Milky Way came from other galaxies after it got “kicked out by a powerful wind, traveled across intergalactic space and eventually found its new home in the Milky Way.”</span></p> <p class="p3"><span class="s1">This would have taken several billion years to accomplish, even if galactic winds can move at several hundred kilometers per second.</span> </p> <p class="p3"><span class="s1">Check out this animation illustrating the intergalactic transfer of gas:</span></p> <p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="046d20cc7a734e6a9200de457af97576"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6dUh_d7WJ-w?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span></p> <p class="p4"><span class="s2">Anglés-Alcázar developed advanced algorithms that mined the data generated by researchers from the <a href="http://fire.northwestern.edu/" target="_blank"><span class="s1">FIRE</span></a> (“Feedback in Realistic Environments”) project, led by Northwestern professor <a href="http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core-faculty/claude-andre-faucher-giguere.html" target="_blank"><span class="s3">Claude-André Faucher-Giguère</span></a></span><span class="s1">. The FIRE team created numerical simulations that resulted in realistic 3-D models of galaxies, from the Big Bang to the present. The algorithm by Anglés-Alcázar was able to quantify how the matter was transferred between the galaxies.</span> </p> <blockquote>
<p class="p7"><span class="s1">“This study transforms our understanding of how galaxies formed from the Big Bang,” <a href="https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/july/milky-way-origin-matter-galaxy/" target="_blank"><span class="s4">explained Faucher-Giguère,</span></a> a co-author of the study. “What this new mode implies is that up to one-half of the atoms around us — including in the solar system, on Earth and in each one of us — comes not from our own galaxy but from other galaxies, up to one million light years away.”</span></p>
</blockquote> <p class="p4">The team was able to track how gas from smaller galaxies ends up in the larger ones, like our Milky Way, where the gas forms stars. </p> <blockquote>
<p class="p7"><span class="s1">“Our origins are much less local than we previously thought,” pointed out Faucher-Giguère. “This study gives us a sense of how things around us are connected to distant objects in the sky.”</span> </p>
</blockquote> <p class="p3"><span class="s1">The findings provide unique insights into how galaxies grow. The scientists plan to test their results by collaborating with observational astronomers working on the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories.</span></p> <p class="p9">Check out the study <span class="s1">“The Cosmic Baryon Cycle and Galaxy Mass Assembly in the FIRE Simulations” <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/mnras/stx1517/3871367/The-Cosmic-Baryon-Cycle-and-Galaxy-Mass-Assembly?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank">here</a>. It is </span>published by the <span class="s4"><em>Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.</em></span></p>
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Scientists Discover Fast-Moving Galaxies That May Contradict Einstein's Theory of Gravity
Scientists discover unusual galaxies that raise questions about Einstein's theory of gravity and the existence of dark matter.
22 March, 2017
A present-day near-miss of two spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427, which is possibly comparable to the early flyby of the Andromeda Galaxy past our own Milky Way. Courtesy of © Gemini Image Gallery.
<p class="p1">A discovery of fast-moving galaxies, <strong>10 million light years wide,</strong> may cause physicists to re-examine Einstein’s theory of relativity. A team from University of St. Andrews in Scotland found the enormous ring of galaxies speeding away from our galaxy much faster than existing physics modeling predicts. In fact, the scientists believe the galaxies are moving so quickly that <a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2017/title,1168412,en.php" target="_blank">they are calling</a> this expansion “<strong>a mini Big Bang</strong>”.</p> <p class="p3"><span class="s1">Dr. Hongsheng Zhao and PhD student Indranil Banik co-authored the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stx151" target="_blank">study</a>, which came from investigating 54 galaxies in what’s called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Group" target="_blank">the Local Group</a>” of the Universe. The scientists explain their unexpected conclusions by proposing that at some point 7 to 11 billion years ago the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy came so close to our own Milky Way Galaxy that they created a “tsunami-like wake,” scattering smaller galaxies out of the way.</span> </p> <blockquote>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1">“If Einstein’s Gravity were correct, our Galaxy would never come close enough to Andromeda to scatter anything that fast,” <a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2017/title,1168412,en.php" target="_blank">said Dr. Zhao</a>.</span></p>
</blockquote> <p class="p3"><span class="s1">Instead, the scientists say the speeds of the galaxies support a near-miss scenario, a topic they’ve studied in <a href="https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/160480-andromeda-may-have-collided-with-milky-way-10-billion-years-ago" target="_blank">previous papers</a>.</span></p> <blockquote>
<p class="p5"><span class="s1">"The high galactocentric radial velocities (GRVs) of some Local Group galaxies must have been caused by forces acting on them that our model does not account for," <span class="s2"><a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stx151" target="_blank">write the researchers.</a></span></span> </p>
</blockquote> <p class="p7"><span class="s1">According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, if there was such a near-collision, the galaxies would have merged. </span> </p> <p class="p8"><span class="s1">Why didn’t that happen? Zhao and his team think the answer might be that a big idea used by scientists to address inconsistencies with Einstein’s theory may be wrong - the proposed existence of <em>dark matter. </em>This</span><span class="s1"> hypothetical and yet unobserved substance, along with similarly theoretical <em>dark energy</em> might be making up 95% of the known universe. But could dark matter not exist at all or does our idea of it need to be reworked?</span> </p> <blockquote>
<p class="p5"><span class="s1">"Such an event only makes sense in the context of certain modified gravity theories, where galaxies <strong>lack</strong> massive dark matter halos and their associated dynamical friction in close encounters, which would otherwise cause a merger,” <span class="s3"><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06559" target="_blank">explain the scientists.</a></span></span></p>
</blockquote> <p class="p3"><span class="s1">Another reason the scientists think the galactic near-miss sped up the galaxies they observed lies in the unusual pattern of how the galaxies are moving.</span></p> <blockquote>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1">“The ring-like distribution is very peculiar. These small galaxies are like a string of raindrops flung out from a spinning umbrella. I found there is barely a 1 in 640 chance for randomly distributed galaxies to line up in the observed way. I traced their origin to a dynamical event when the Universe was only half its present age,” <a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2017/title,1168412,en.php" target="_blank">said Banik</a>.</span></p>
</blockquote> <p class="p3"><span class="s1">Further research is needed to prove the team's conclusions and </span><span class="s4">Dr. Zhao is applying for grants to create detailed computer simulations of the ring of galaxies and their potential origin.</span><strong> </strong></p> <p class="p11"><span class="s5">You can read the research published in two papers, </span><span class="s6">here in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stx151" target="_blank"><span class="s7"><em>Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society</em></span></a>, and on <span class="s7"><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06559" target="_blank">arXiv.org.</a></span></span><strong> </strong></p>
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Astronomers Discover a Massive Galaxy Made Mostly of Dark Matter
Astronomers find a galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter.
31 August, 2016
A team of astronomers, led by Yale University’s Professor Pieter van Dokkum, has located a galaxy comprised almost fully of dark matter.
<p>The scientists first overlooked this galaxy, dubbed<strong> Dragonfly 44</strong>, because while it’s very large (nearly the size of the Milky Way), it’s also very dim and has relatively few stars.</p> <blockquote>
<p>“Very soon after its discovery, we realized this galaxy had to be more than meets the eye. It has so few stars that it would quickly be ripped apart unless something was holding it together,” <a href="http://news.yale.edu/2016/08/25/scientists-discover-dark-milky-way" target="_blank">said Pieter van Dokkum</a>.</p>
</blockquote> <p>By using some of the world’s most powerful telescopes at the <a href="http://www.keckobservatory.org/recent/entry/scientists_discover_massive_galaxy_made_of_99.99_percent_dark_matter" target="_blank">Keck Observatory in Hawaii</a> and by analyzing star velocities, the astronomers came to a startling conclusion. </p> <blockquote>
<p>“Amazingly, the stars move at velocities that are far greater than expected for such a dim galaxy. It means that Dragonfly 44 has a huge amount of unseen mass,” <a href="http://news.yale.edu/2016/08/25/scientists-discover-dark-milky-way" target="_blank">said the research paper’s co-author <strong>Roberto Abraham</strong></a> of the University of Toronto.</p>
</blockquote> <p>How much mass exactly?</p> <p>The scientists estimate Dragonfly 44’s mass to be similar to the Milky Way's at <strong>1 trillion times the mass of the Sun</strong> or more precisely <strong>2 tredecillion kilograms</strong> (which is a 2 followed by <strong>42 zeros</strong>). That’s a lot of zeroes! </p> <p>But only <strong>1%</strong> of this mass is made up stars and “normal” matter. The rest of it seems made of dark matter.</p> <p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODQwNzk2OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NzU0MDc4OH0.9SyWd3anq28J1XDES4CkE0MadEhjyc34Rbj-X0hkeSI/img.jpg?width=980" id="99a97" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f7faf6fec4a1ee666b795247a0b090e6" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image"></p> <p><em><strong>The dark galaxy Dragonfly 44</strong>. The image on the left is from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Only a faint smudge is visible. The image on the right is a long exposure with the Gemini telescope, revealing a large, elongated object. Dragonfly 44 is very faint for its mass and consists almost entirely of dark matter. (Images by Pieter van Dokkum, Roberto Abraham, Gemini, Sloan Digital Sky Survey)</em></p> <p><em>What dark matter is no one knows for sure. It’s hypothesized to make up <strong>85-90%</strong> of the universe.</em></p><em> <blockquote>
<p>“We have no idea how galaxies like Dragonfly 44 could have formed,” pointed out Abraham. “The Gemini data show that a relatively large fraction of the stars is in the form of very compact clusters, and that is probably an important clue. But at the moment we’re just guessing.”</p>
</blockquote> <p>There have been other galaxies found that seem to be made mostly of dark matter, but this new one is about <strong>10,000 times more massive</strong> than any of them.</p> <p>Next on the agenda? Figure out the nature of dark matter. </p> <blockquote>
<p><span>“</span><span>This has big implications for the study of Dark Matter. It helps to have objects that are almost entirely made of Dark Matter so we don’t get confused by stars and all the other things that galaxies have. The only such galaxies we had to study before were tiny. This finding opens up a whole new class of massive objects that we can study.</span><span>Ultimately what we really want to learn is what dark matter is. The race is on to find massive dark galaxies that are even closer to us than Dragonfly 44, so we can look for feeble signals that may reveal a dark matter particle,” explained Professor Van Dokkum.</span></p>
</blockquote> <p>Notably, studies on the mysterious dark matter have recently <a href="http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/scientists-possibly-find-fifth-force-of-nature" target="_blank">revealed a potential fifth force of nature.</a></p> <p><a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8205/828/1/L6" target="_blank">You can read the research paper on Dragonfly 44 here</a>, in the <em>Astrophysical Journal Letters</em>.</p></em>
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