Earthly Phytoplankton
We spent a lot of this program talking about the announcement that molecules which are associated with life here on Earth have been found in the atmosphere of an exoplanet that's 124 light years away. I'm skeptical of the claim, but the detection of anything that far away is pretty interesting. We also went on a bit about mid-Spring starting late this afternoon. I plan to update this Web page, so it might be a good idea to come back to look for the update.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday May 14, 2025, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. We had an LSB meeting this past Wednesday night, April 9, 2025, and it was dominated by the actions of the Pacifica National Board (PNB) in having a California judge allow a a certain faction to hijack the Pacifica bylaws! ore to come.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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I've read in a number of sources about a paper that was published on April 16, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters by some scientists who have been using the next generation space telescope, which is unfortunately named after a homophobe, that they have found some telltale signs of life on a distant planet. I'm not so sure about that claim.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy in the United Kingdom have been studying the atmosphere of K2-18 b, a planet that's about 124 light years away and which orbits a red dwarf star in the constellation Leo. The planet is in the red dwarf's so-called habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet. This is also called the Goldilocks Zone.
K2-18 b is estimated to be around eight or nine times as massive as the Earth and the scientists are thinking that it may have a lot of water on its surface. The scientists believe that they have detected the molecular profiles of a couple of gases — dimethyl sulfide and dimethyl disulfide. Now, on Earth these gas molecules are generated by living organisms, phytoplankton [tell about it] that live in the ocean, and the researchers are suggesting that their presence in the atmosphere of K2-18 b potentially indicates that there's microbial life on that exoplanet. Yeah, microbe farts.
The leader of the Cambridge scientists, Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan, said that the discovery was a, revolutionary moment,
while emphasizing that they still need more evidence to be sure about this.
On Earth those chemicals are produced by phytoplankton in the ocean. They are what give the oceans their main noticeable odor, unless people have been dumping crap into that part of the sea in which case some other microbes are stinking up the place. So most of us would have smelled those chemicals. But it's also possible for those chemicals to be produced by processes that are not going on inside living organisms. And I'm reading that the planet may be covered by water and have a mostly hydrogen atmosphere. That's very different from the Earth's atmosphere, and organic chemistry may be a little bit different there. The same scientists have previously detected carbon dioxide and methane in that exoplanet's atmosphere. These are common molecules that are created from their constitute atoms colliding in space without any life being present.
Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan said at a press conference about this discovery that, This is a transformational moment in the search for life beyond the solar system, where we have demonstrated that it is possible to detect biosignatures in potentially habitable planets with current facilities,
Dr. Madhusudhan said, according to Reuters. He added, We have entered the era of observational astrobiology.
One of the big things about this discovery is that it shows what the next generation space telescope can do. It's able to detect molecular signatures on an exoplanet 124 light years away. That would have been pure science fiction a few decades ago.
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Mid-Spring begins later today, April 19, 2025, at 5:53 PM (ET) this afternoon, if you're listening to us via broadcast radio. Mid-Spring is usually a very nice time of year with lots of flowers blooming and warming weather. Of course if you have hay fever you may not think of that as a nice time. The forecast high temperature for today is about 80° F. We are approaching the Middle Third of the year which is made up of the months of May, June, July and August, my favorite time of year.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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