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In the historical imagination, astronomers look through telescopes and photonic wisdom flows at the speed of light. By taking what they can, they passively receive information about distant stars and planets. These objects are fixed and their conditions cannot be changed.

But not all astronomy works like that. For example, planetary and exoplanet scientists don’t just wait for the data to come to them: They also build miniature versions of other places on Earth using the appropriate geological landscapes, gravel crushers, and simulation rooms. In these simulacrums, they see, feel, and control worlds—or at least metaphors for them—to decipher parts of the universe they’ll probably never visit.

While embodying the untouchable, the physical and the intangible, they create not only similes but also ways of envisioning these planets as real places.

“Throughout science, we always reason by comparison,” said Pascal Lee of the Mars and SETI institutes. “And so there’s something very fundamental in the approach to using analogs.”

Its methods are in line with scientific traditions that value both laboratory-based research and direct contact with nature.

“It really makes sense for planetary scientists whose phenomena have been removed in time and space to think about how simulation and replication would be able to study what is still far away,” said anthropologist Lisa Messeri of Yale University. Author of Placing Outer Space, “because that’s what science has been doing for hundreds of years.”

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The most direct arrow between this world and those beyond is the “terrestrial analogue”, a physical location on Earth that resembles an aspect of another world – usually the moon or Mars. This relevance can take the form of geological formations such as lava tubes or sand dunes, or it can be an entire region with lunar or Martian features. Atacama Desert in Chile or volcanoes in hawaii.

Dr. Lee leads the Haughton-Mars Project, an analog research facility on Devon Island, a desolate, barren Arctic outpost in Nunavut, Canada. “There’s an incredibly wide range of features similar to what we see on the Moon and Mars,” he said.

The island is cold and dry, filled with valleys and canyons, and features a 14-mile-wide crater left over from a cosmic impact. It’s the same size as Shackleton Crater on the Moon’s South Pole, where NASA plans to send astronauts this decade.

During dozens of field campaigns, the Haughton research station provided a permanent place where scientists could pretend to be on the moon or on Mars, study similar geology, test equipment for future missions, and train people to participate.

“It’s kind of a turnkey operation,” said Dr. Lee notes, however, that it’s not like an Airbnb that anyone can come and use. A core habitat facility transforms into a series of tents for geology, astrobiology, medicine, and administrative and repair work. ATVs and Humvees support travel and simulate rovers while a greenhouse stands alone.

Dr. Lee spent 23 summers at the resort, eating canned sardines in the cold on day trips away from the base camp. But in 2020 and 2021, the pandemic forced him to skip his annual journeys to the other world on earth. He longed for simplicity and solitude.

Dr. “You’re the population of Devon Island while you’re there,” said Lee, like a lone astronaut.

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Still, there are times when scientists don’t need to go for an analog: They can bring it home in the form of simulants or a material resembling the surface of the moon or Mars.

Mars, for example, is covered with sand and dust, which together are called regolith. It makes travel difficult and can also block solar panels, clog filters and trap moving parts. To determine how robotic rovers, power supplies and other equipment will withstand these red planet challenges, scientists need to test them against something similar before embarking on the journey.

That’s why in 1997 NASA developed a dusty substance called JSC-Mars 1, based on data from the Viking and Pathfinder missions. It is made of material found in the Pu’u Nene cinder cone volcano in Hawaii. There, lava once seeped into the water and eventually formed regolith-like particles.

NASA scientists later developed this material while preparing the Mars Phoenix lander and fabricated the Mars Mojave Simulant. It originates from the lava beds of the Saddleback volcanic formation in California’s Mojave Desert.

The testing process isn’t foolproof, though: Phoenix collected a lot of icy soil samples on Mars in 2008.stickyIn the words of NASA, moving from the scoop to an analysis tool. A year later, the Spirit rover was stuck in the sand forever. Its sister robot Opportunity disappeared when a dust storm covered its solar panels, a fate that also hindered the more recent InSight mission.

Today, private companies use NASA’s data and recipes for special simulation materials. This “add to cart” version finds its way into science fair projects, alien cement, and otherworldly garden soil. The founder of such a company, Mark Cusimano, Garden of Marssays it’s his hobby to grow a red planet glory garden using Saddleback’s soil. He says growing “a weird little radish or carrot inside” is satisfying.

Wieger Wamelink, an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, “Food for Mars and the Moon” project, growing crops such as peas and potatoes. It is currently working on a complete farming system, including bacteria, worms and human feces. Dr. Wamelink said the idea was “to grow boldly where no plant has grown before.” Today, Mars is on Earth. Tomorrow, maybe Mars itself.

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It takes some time to mimic the more exotic solar system spots, so scientists often head to simulation rooms—essentially test tubes where they recreate the conditions of other worlds. The idea dates back to the 1950s, when a military scientist was brought to the United States from Nazi Germany. low pressure chambers sometimes called “Mars Jars” To find out if biology will survive under Martian conditions.

Today, researchers like Tom Runčevski of Southern Methodist University in Dallas are looking elsewhere: Titan, Saturn’s moon, currently the only world in the solar system other than Earth with liquid masses on its surface.

Dr. “I always personally talk about how hostile and terrible Titan is,” Runčevski said. Lakes and seas float with ethane. Benzene is snowing and methane is falling. But if you look through the fog, You will see Saturn’s rings.

Although the European space probe Huygens parachuted to its surface in 2005, Titan’s spectacular hostility, in its entirety, is elusive from a hospitable planet like this one. Dr. “Titan is a world,” Runčevski says. “It’s very difficult to study a world from Earth.”

But he’s trying, creating what he calls “Titan in a Jar” in his lab.

Dr. You can’t see Saturn’s rings under Runčevski’s jars. But you will learn about the organic compounds and crystals that occupy its most famous moon. In fact, inside the jars – test tubes – Dr. Runčevski will put in a drop or two of water and then freeze it to mimic a small version of Titan’s core. It will add a few drops of ethane to it, which will immediately condense, making mini moon lakes. After that, it will add other organic compounds of interest such as acetonitrile or benzene. It will then suck in air and adjust the temperature to Titan’s temperature, about minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit.

NASA plans return to Titan A nuclear-powered quadcopter named Dragonfly in 2027. Dr. By monitoring the crystals and structures that form in its jars, Runčevski hopes to help scientists interpret what they saw when the robotic explorer arrived in 2034. “We can’t send a full lab,” he said, so they have to rely partially. in world laboratories.

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In a lab at Johns Hopkins University, Sarah Hörst has worked with NASA and Dr. He does a similar study to Runčevski’s. But test tubes also extend to simulate hypothetical exoplanets or worlds orbiting distant stars.

Dr. Hörst initially moved away from the outer planets, as details were scant. She remembers thinking, “I got pampered from the solar system.” But a colleague convinced him to fake something hypothetical. worlds. “We’ve put together this possible planetary matrix,” he said. Their fictional atmospheres are dominated by hydrogen, carbon dioxide, or water, and their temperatures range from about minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit to 980 degrees Fahrenheit.

Test tubes start with the main components that can make up an atmosphere set to a certain temperature. He pours this mixture into a soda bottle-sized chamber and exposes it to energy – UV light or electrons from a plasma – which breaks down the first molecules. Dr. “They go around the room making new molecules, and some of these new molecules also break down,” said Hörst. This cycle repeats until the energy source is cut off. Sometimes this process produces solid particles: an otherworldly haze.

Finding out which potential exoplanets are producing smoke could help scientists point telescopes at spheres where they can actually observe. Also, haze can affect a planet’s surface temperature, making the difference between liquid water and ice or evaporation, and can shield the surface from high-energy photons – both of which affect a planet’s habitability. Atmospheres may or may not provide the building blocks of life and energy.

Despite his initial hesitations, Dr. Hörst became attached to the planets he cultivated in the laboratory. They look familiar, albeit fictional. Usually when he walks into the office he can tell what kind of experiment is being run, because different plasmas glow different colors. “Oh, we should be making Titan today because it’s a little purple,” or ‘We’re making this particular exoplanet, which is kind of blue,’ he said.

Compared to the landscapes of Devon Island, a handful of regolith-like ones, and even a test tube satellite, Dr. Hörst’s lab planets lack physicality. They do not represent a particular world; they do not take shape; they are just an ethereal atmosphere with no ground to stand on. But it makes sense: The farther an astronomer wants to look from Earth, the blurrier his creations become. Dr. “I think the fact that exoplanet simulations are more abstract is a very clear reminder that these are not places you can go to,” Messeri said.

Still, Dr. He remembers the days when his Hörst lab simulated scorching planets: Then, the room heats up an entire corner of the room. Exactly that little world that is nowhere else warms this place.