Filed under: Art, Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Humor, Phil Plait, Science, Space
Via Phil Plait, a glimpse into how far woo can go wrong:
Orbiter crashing into the moon
There is a Japanese lunar orbiter named Kaguya that is scheduled to crash into the moon today at about 2:30 pm ET. Scientists hope to learn something about the moon’s composition by observing the debris that is kicked up.
In many traditions, including astrology, the moon represents the feminine. It is the yin, the intuitive, the emotions. Women are connected to the moon by their menstrual cycles while they are fertile, and all beings, including the earth herself, are affected by the pull of the tides.
* * *
Did these scientists talk to the moon? Tell her what they were doing? Ask her permission? Show her respect?
Wow.
Just . . . wow.
Believe it or not, I got similar comments from a number of people when I did my “Paint the Moon” project back in 2001. I don’t know if Ms. Harvey was one of the people who contacted me, but I did hear from people who were really worried that we were going to somehow ‘insult’ or harm the Moon by pointing laser pointers at it. I mean, I expected a fair number of folks who would miss the whole point of it being an art project, but some of these people were seriously lacking in any sense of scientific reality, who were actually worried that our little laser pointers would destroy the Moon or something.
Wow. Sometimes I think I am not nearly cynical nor pessimistic enough, to paraphrase Lily Tomlin.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Ballistics, Cassini, Depression, Enceladus, Guns, Health, NASA, Phil Plait, RKBA, Saturn, Science, Space
Man, I still feel like someone beat me with a bag of nickels.
I wonder if this is just an effect of having subjected myself to a lot of blast shock over a four day period? Shooting a lot of the ‘real world’ guns (we test something on the order of 40 with all the different ammos available from the previous tests) wasn’t such a big deal. But some of them – particularly the Bond derringers in the larger calibers – were just brutal to shoot 20 – 30 times in a row. And the blast from the short barrels of the chop tests could knock your teeth loose.
Anyway, I ache everywhere. And I’ve been fighting a mild depression for the last couple of days. At first it was just masked by being tired (the tests were hard, and I got too little sleep). Also, I figured that the emotional energy it took to be in close proximity to several other people constantly over five days time was a component – don’t get me wrong, I like everyone involved in the testing a lot, but I am just not used to being with people that much. But I have now had some time to recover, and I should be past the worst of that.
So, a little post-project blues. Or maybe the blast shock, repeated several thousand times, has something to do with it. I dunno. I’ll write more tomorrow, in the meantime take a few minutes to enjoy these great images of the Saturn system from the Cassini spacecraft, courtesy of the Boston Globe’s Big Picture series.
Jim Downey
(Via Phil Plait.)
Filed under: Astronomy, NASA, Predictions, Science, Space, Titan, Writing stuff
Well, the Advanced Survey Array from Communion of Dreams just got another step closer, and here’s a bit of insight into how I came up with much of the whole idea for the novel:
Telescope blasts into space to find other Earths
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA’s planet-hunting telescope, Kepler, rocketed into space Friday night on a historic voyage to track down other Earths in a faraway patch of the Milky Way galaxy.
It’s the first mission capable of answering the age-old question: Are other worlds like ours out there?
Kepler, named after the German 17th century astrophysicist, set off on its unprecedented mission at 10:49 p.m., thundering into a clear sky embellished by a waxing moon.
From NASA’s site on the mission:
The Delta II rocket carrying the Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft lifted off on time at 10:49 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The spectacular nighttime launch followed a smooth countdown free of technical issues or weather concerns.
Kepler’s mission: to peer closely at a patch of space for at least three-and-a-half years, looking for rocky planets similar our own. The spacecraft will target an area rich with stars like our sun, watching for a slight dimming in the starlight as planets slip through the space between.
“Kepler is a critical component in NASA’s broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,” said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars.”
It was this mission that I used as the basis for the Advanced Survey Array – specifically, the idea that such an array would need to be situated somewhere which would be shielded in order to allow the greatest possible sensitivity in the search for likely planets for colonization. Why? Well, here’s a bit from the Wikipedia entry for the Kepler mission:
Kepler is not in an Earth orbit but in an Earth-trailing solar orbit 950 miles above the Earth[11][12] so that Earth will not occlude the stars which are to be observed continuously and the photometer will not be influenced by stray light from Earth. This orbit also avoids gravitational perturbations and torques inherent in an Earth orbit, allowing for a more stable viewing platform. The photometer will point to a field in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra, which is well out of the ecliptic plane, so that sunlight never enters the photometer as the spacecraft orbits the Sun. Cygnus is also a good choice to observe because it will never be obscured by Kuiper belt objects or the asteroid belt.[9]
So, the ASA needed to be somewhere where it would be isolated & stable, as the Kepler observatory is somewhat isolated and stable – and that led to the idea of creating an electromagnetic “bubble” around Titan (where I wanted to situate the novel), caused by . . . what? It was at this point that I came up with the idea for the super-conducting ‘Tholan gel’, and from there . . . well, read the book. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers.
Anyway, glad that Kepler finally got off the ground – and I’m looking forward to the data which comes from it!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Failure, Government, ISS, movies, NASA, Phil Plait, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Star Trek, Survival, tech, Travel, UFO
This item made the news yesterday:
Scientists eye debris after satellite collision
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites — one American, the other Russian — smashed into each other hundreds of miles above the Earth.
NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the unprecedented crash and whether any other satellites or even the Hubble Space Telescope are threatened.
The collision, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, was the first high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft, NASA officials said.
Wow: two satellites have collided in orbit, destroying both. This is the first time such a major collision has ever occurred.
The satellites were Cosmos 2251, a Russian communication relay satellite that’s been defunct for a decade, and an Iridium satellite, one of a fleet of communication satellites launched by Motorola in the late 90s and early 2000s.
* * *
There have been collisions in space before, but never from such large satellites — the Iridium bird was about 700 kg, and the Cosmos was about the same — and never resulting in a total wipeout like this. Again, if I have my numbers about right, the explosion resulting from the energy of impact would have been about the same as detonating a ton of TNT.
I had to chuckle at this comment in that thread at Bad Astronomy:
But wouldn’t the impact have made a new, ever more powerful hybrid satellite? It would have an over-arching need to communicate and would do so in Russian. The only way to make it stop broadcasting a constant barrage at us would be if it mistook someone for its designer at Motorola and then. . . Oh wait, this isn’t Star Trek.
No, not at all. When you have two large satellites, each moving at something on the order of about 5 miles a second hit one another at nearly right angles, then you don’t get any kind of hybrid. You get a mess. As in a debris cloud of upwards of a thousand bits and pieces of space junk, some of it substantial, most of it still moving at thousands of miles an hour, and all of it dangerous.
I’ve written previously about the threat of real ‘UFOs’ to our space exploration. From the quoted article in that post:
The reason is life-and-death. Since Mercury days, NASA engineers have realized that visual sightings of anomalies can sometimes provide clues to the functioning — or malfunctioning — of the spaceships that contain their precious astronauts. White dots outside the window could be spray from a propellant leak, or ice particles, flaking insulation, worked-loose fasteners (as in this latest case) or inadvertently released tools or components.
Whatever the objects might be, they pose a threat of coming back in contact with the spacecraft, potentially causing damage to delicate instruments, thermal tiles, windows or solar cells, or fouling rotating or hinged mechanisms. So Mission Control needs to find out about them right away in order to determine that they are not hazardous.
Right now the bulk of that debris cloud is about 250 miles higher than the ISS. But it will slowly drift closer (the effect of atmospheric drag – even at that altitude, it will slow anything in orbit, meaning that the item in question will drop to a lower orbit). At some point, this could be a real threat to the space station.
And beyond that, it is a further complication to *any* effort to get into something other than a low Earth orbit. Currently we have something like tens of thousands of bits of “space junk” that have to be tracked – and while all of it will eventually fall back into the atmosphere and burn up, it can present a real danger. If we’re not careful, we could encase ourselves in a shell of so much junk that it would basically eliminate the possibility of travel beyond our planet for decades.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Faith healing, Health, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech
(A time-delayed post while I am off to the urban jungles of the Northeast. Pray for me. – JD)
(Fortune Small Business) — It may sound like quack medicine, but electricity can help cuts and wounds heal faster. Studies published in the journal Nature in 2005 confirmed it: Our cells work like tiny chemical batteries. Wounds short-circuit them, and a jolt of voltage helps heal them.
Now a small medical company hopes to cash in, with the world’s first over-the-counter electric bandage.
Vomaris Innovations, based in Chandler, Ariz., recently went to market with the Prosit adhesive bandage, which uses microscopic batteries mounted on a flexible membrane to pass a tiny amount of current – 1.2 volts – over the affected skin. Though the process isn’t understood entirely, Vomaris founder Jeff Skiba, 55, won FDA approval for use of the Prosit in hospitals after an impressive array of clinical trials showed that it jump-started healing for all patients.
“The process isn’t understood entirely…” Well, I can tell them. It’s obvious.
[Spoiler alert.]
Clearly, what happens is that somehow the mild voltage charge across the skin manages to create a slight weakening of the supression field all around us caused by the alien artifacts surrounding our solar system, thereby allowing our natural psychic abilities to work properly and heal ourselves quickly. It’s all explained completely in the later chapters of Communion of Dreams. I swear, when will these people just simply read my book? It’s all explained in there.
Sheesh.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Art, Astronomy, General Musings, NASA, NPR, Science, Space
The rocket blasted off with a huge spread of flame and hurled the men into space. They became the first earthlings to watch their home planet grow smaller and smaller and smaller, until it was floating far away and tiny in the darkness.
From this morning’s NPR coverage of the Apollo 8 mission to orbit the Moon 40 years ago. Most of the world remembers it best thanks to Earthrise, the iconic image from the mission, which gave us all a new perspective of our fragile little home.
It’s a good story. As I said elsewhere in a discussion of my memories from the event, I expect there will be few other such moments in my life.
Jim Downey
One of those odd bits of news from one of my favorite parts of the world:
Councillor: ‘I watched six UFOs over North Wales’
A SHOTTON man is baffled after witnessing SIX UFOs in one night.
Town councillor William Barton saw the strange spectacle in the town’s skies last Friday evening at about 7.44pm.
He rushed to grab his binoculars and called on neighbours to show them the phenomenon.
Coun Barton, of Mill View, said: “They seemed to come from the Ewloe area and float towards Shotton. There were about six of them and they appeared and then vanished for a while.
But here’s the fun part:
Coun Barton says the objects appeared to be flying higher than 1,500ft, which means they would have been breaking air traffic regulations.
Well, we can’t have *that*. And I love this:
A spokesman for Air Traffic Control at Liverpool John Lennon Airport said: “Nothing out of the ordinary was seen at this time.”
How cool is it that there’s a John Lennon Airport, eh?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Astronomy, Fermi's Paradox, Marketing, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Survival, Writing stuff
Yeah, I know I said I’d try and get a nice cheery travelogue up next. Oh well. This has more relevance to Communion of Dreams, which is ostensibly the focus for this blog, anyway, right?
Right. So, here: seems that researchers have for the first time clearly determined the extinction of a mammal to have been caused by disease.
In 1899, an English ship stopped at Christmas Island, near Australia. Within nine years, the island’s entire native rat population had gone extinct, and scientists have wondered ever since what exactly happened.Now, researchers led by an Old Dominion University scientist think they have unraveled the mystery – and, they say, the lessons of Christmas Island apply today to issues such as disease, invasive species and the law of unintended consequenceTurns out, says ODU biology professor Alex Greenwood, that a British black rat had stowed away on the ship in a bale of hay. Upon reaching the island, the rat – or several rats – escaped on land and spread a “hyperdisease” among the native population.“Anyone who has ever tried to kill a rat – let alone a whole population – knows how hard that can be,” Greenwood said in an interview Monday. “That’s what made Christmas Island so fascinating for so long. Imagine, a whole species – especially one as tough as a rat – gone within 10 years of exposure!”
OK, for those of us who are non-biologists, this may be something of a surprise: why wouldn’t extinction occur due to disease? But the prevailing theory has long been that it was virtually impossible that a disease would wipe out all members of a species – and that any survivors would pass on their immunity to their descendants, thus continuing the Darwinian arms race. To determine that this has happened – and to a robust and fast-reproducing species such as a rat – is real news.
Which touches on an older item I came across recently:
Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction
Jason G. MathenyAbstract: In this century a number of events could extinguish humanity. The probability of these events may be very low, but the expected value of preventing them could be high, as it represents the value of all future human lives. We review the challenges to studying human extinction risks and, by way of example, estimate the cost effectiveness of preventing extinction-level asteroid impacts.
* * *
3. Estimating the Near-Term Probability of Extinction
It is possible for humanity (or its descendents) to survive a million years or more, but we could succumb to extinction as soon as this century. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. President Kennedy estimated the probability of a nuclear holocaust as “somewhere between one out of three and even” (Kennedy, 1969, p. 110). John von Neumann, as Chairman of the U.S. Air Force Strategic Missiles Evaluation Committee, predicted that it was “absolutely certain (1) that there would be a nuclear war; and (2) that everyone would die in it” (Leslie, 1996, p. 26).
More recent predictions of human extinction are little more optimistic. In their catalogs of extinction risks, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees (2003), gives humanity 50-50 odds on surviving the 21st century; philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that it would be “misguided” to assume that the probability of extinction is less than 25%; and philosopher John Leslie (1996) assigns a 30% probability to extinction during the next five centuries. The “Stern Review” for the U.K. Treasury (2006) assumes that the probability of human extinction during the next century is 10%. And some explanations of the “Fermi Paradox” imply a high probability (close to100%)of extinction among technological civilizations (Pisani, 2006).4
I haven’t spent the time to look up the entire paper and read it, though I have followed this topic in the (popular) scientific news for most of my adult life. It is, in fact, one of the reasons why I decided to write Communion of Dreams – to explore the idea of humanity on the brink of extinction (as well as to examine Fermi’s Paradox, as I have written about previously). Just as most people seem to prefer ignoring their own mortality, we as a species seem to prefer ignoring the possibility of our own extinction. Even the vast majority of Science Fiction (including my own) written with humankind facing the possibility of extinction is resolved with some kind of salvation – it’d just be too bleak for most readers, otherwise.
And that doesn’t sell.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, NASA, National Geographic, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Titan
I’m still playing catch-up, so just found this news item of interest on the National Geographic site – an excerpt:
But a new study reports faint signs of a natural electric field in Titan’s thick cloud cover that are similar to the energy radiated by lightning on Earth.
Lightning is thought to have sparked the chemical reactions that led to the origin of life on our planet.
“As of now, lightning activity has not been observed in Titan’s atmosphere,” said lead author Juan Antonio Morente of the University of Granada in Spain.
But, he said, the signals that have been detected “are an irrefutable proof for the existence of electric activity.”
OK, the piece is actually about how Titan is known to have all the necessary “prebiotic” conditions needed for the beginning of life as we know it, and how electrical activity from lightning on the moon could provide the spark to initiate life.
But I thought it a bit fun to speculate that the electric field detected is actually evidence of the tholin superconducting gel at the heart of Communion of Dreams.
Another travelogue from my recent trip later today, if things come together as I hope.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 