Pluto Is a Geologically Active World, But We Don't Know Why

Umm... what?

Where the heck would energy for active geology come from way out there?

Pluto Is a Geologically Active World, But We Don't Know Why

Beautiful: Hebes Chasma on Mars

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/marsexpress/377-260208-2149-6-co-01-HebesChasma_H1.jpg

RIP Arthur C Clarke

 

 

 

Arthur C Clarke meant a lot to me as a kid. Not just books like "Childhood's End" or "Rendezvous With Rama," but really cool stuff like his "Mysterious Universe" show.

The guy invented communications satellites. Enlightened the world with Kubrick with 2001. And showed a little kid in small town Alberta that there's a whole universe out there.

http://trekmovie.com/2008/03/18/rip-arthur-c-clarke/

Lego Discovery from 2001

 

 

This is awesome. Simply awesome.

http://www.truedimensions.com/lego/customs/2001/index.htm

Cool Rockets

These look very, very sweet. For Gabe or Zack. Sure, for the boys. 

http://www.coolrockets.com/

Sunshine

 

 

 

When you think of the word sunshine, it typicaly evokes warm, cozy feelings. Cats napping. Quiet, lazy afternoons.

Not so in Sunshine, the brilliant SF movie just out on DVD. It's played by a utterly convincing international group of actors in the movie, suggesting a truly international effort by mankind to "fix" something with the sun.  What that something is we never find out, but it's going out, and quickly. Earth is dying, and the only hope of saving it is to chuck a manhattan-sized cube of something exotic into the sun and re-ignite it, forming a "sun within the sun".

The sun is of course the star of the movie. Somehow it becomes a living, breathing character. Life sustaining yet so powerful that it can vaporize you if you're inside the orbit of Mercury, where the movie takes place.

The movie is not without it's problems. Artificial gravity is used, but all the other technology is just a decade or two ahead of our time. The spaceship seems quite conventional and convincing (great effects) but yet it can stop, orbit the sun, match orbits with another spaceship, and resume it's course.

But it doesn't distract you from this excellent movie. Well worth a look -- sci-fi at it's best. 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/

Star Trek Casket

 

 

 

OK, if you have to go, this is the way to do it. Just like Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

I'm serious. 

http://www.eternalimage.net/st_page.html

Water Found In Extrasolar Planet's Atmosphere

Amazing... SETI's going to get a real kick in the ass from the planet hunters soon.

Scientists have, for the first time, conclusively discovered the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our Solar System, according to an article appearing in Nature.

They made the discovery by analysing the transit of the gas giant HD 189733b across its star, in the Infrared using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Giovanna Tinetti, ESA fellow at the Institute d’Astrophysique de Paris, and colleagues from around the world, targeted planet HD 189733b, 63 light-years away, in the constellation Vulpecula.

The planet was discovered in 2005 as it dimmed the light of its parent star by some three percent when transiting in front of it.

Using Spitzer, Tinetti and the team observed the star, which is slightly fainter than the Sun, as its starlight dim at two infrared bands (3.6 and 5.8 micrometres).

Had the planet been a rocky body devoid of atmosphere, both these bands and a third one (8 micrometres), recently measured by a team at Harvard, would have shown the same behaviour.

Instead, as the atmosphere absorbed less infrared radiation at 3.6 micrometres than at the other two wavelengths indicating the presence of water vapour.

“Water is the only molecule that can explain that behaviour,” says Tinetti.

 

http://pressesc.com/01184180642_water_extrasolar

Terraforming Mars and Venus

How to terraform Mars and Venus

As distinguished from previous proposals for large-scale planetary engineering projects employing passive, explosive, orbital mechanical or biological agents to terraform various planets of the Solar System, the present paper offers an alternative means: Machine self-replicating systems (SRS). Terraforming via SRS involves the deposition of a small "seed" unit near the surface of the body to be altered, which then self-replicates into a giant factory complex capable of undertaking permanent modification of the target environment. SRS terraforming methods are suggested for Mars and Venus.

http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/TerraformSRS1983.htm

Pic of the Outer Universe -- Thousands Of Galaxies

We are nothing... wow.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/96664main_galaxy_string_4.jpg

More Evidence For A Wet Mars

 

 

 

More and more evidence of past, and perhaps present, water on Mars.

The new findings by the joint research team provide strong evidence that ragged, kilometre-high features on the planet's surface are actually the shorelines of the ancient seas.

Experts have debated the issue since the 1970s, when the Viking spacecraft located the features which seemed much like coastal formations on Earth...

On Earth, by comparison, similar shorelines remain relatively flat in comparison to sea level, casting doubt on the theory that the features marked the borders of an ancient ocean.

But Mitrovica argues that those dramatic topographical differences can be explained by the theory that the planet's spin axis shifted sometime in the past 2 to 3 billion years, deforming the shorelines and causing the geographic ups and downs.

A major shift of mass, possibly triggered by a volcanic eruption, caused the pole to wander about 50 degrees towards its current location, dramatically warping the topography and the ancient shorelines, he told CTV.ca.

 

 

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070613/mars_study_070613/20070613?hub=TopStories

Puddles Found On Mars?

 

 

There appears to be a little contraversy over the images, but it looks like the real thing -- you can even see ripples in the water and small stones through it.

A new analysis of pictures taken by the exploration rover Opportunity reveals what appear to be small ponds of liquid water on the surface of Mars.

The report identifies specific spots that appear to have contained liquid water two years ago, when Opportunity was exploring a crater called Endurance. It is a highly controversial claim, as many scientists believe that liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars today because of the planet’s thin atmosphere.

If confirmed, the existence of such ponds would significantly boost the odds that living organisms could survive on or near the surface of Mars, says physicist Ron Levin, the report's lead author, who works in advanced image processing at the aerospace company Lockheed Martin in Arizona.

Update: Looks like they're wrong. According to this site, it's probably just silt:

 

It's pretty easy to debunk this... just start off with a raw blue-biased 257 of the area... find a nearby rock imaged in 456'o-colour, and then use it as a baseline for balancing up the 257... do that and you get something a bit like this, not scientific, not accurate, but makes the cool clear, blue waters of Barsoom evaporate faster than Paris Hilton's hopes of another early release...

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12026-mars-rover-finds-puddles-on-the-planets-surface.html

Travel Close To C Possible?

 

 

This sounds too good to be true, and I think would entail hitching a ride on a massive celestial object... interesting, nonetheless...

The field equation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has never before been solved to calculate the gravitational field of a mass moving close to the speed of light. Felber's research shows that any mass moving faster than 57.7 percent of the speed of light will gravitationally repel other masses lying within a narrow 'antigravity beam' in front of it. The closer a mass gets to the speed of light, the stronger its 'antigravity beam' becomes.

Felber's calculations show how to use the repulsion of a body speeding through space to provide the enormous energy needed to accelerate massive payloads quickly with negligible stress. The new solution of Einstein's field equation shows that the payload would 'fall weightlessly' in an antigravity beam even as it was accelerated close to the speed of light.

Accelerating a 1-ton payload to 90 percent of the speed of light requires an energy of at least 30 billion tons of TNT. In the 'antigravity beam' of a speeding star, a payload would draw its energy from the antigravity force of the much more massive star. In effect, the payload would be hitching a ride on a star.

"Based on this research, I expect a mission to accelerate a massive payload to a 'good fraction of light speed' will be launched before the end of this century," said Dr. Felber. "These antigravity solutions of Einstein's theory can change our view of our ability to travel to the far reaches of our universe."

http://www.physorg.com/news10789.html

Dark Matter Stars

 

 

...a team of researchers from the US think that dark matter wasn’t just interacting through its gravity, it was right there in the thick of things. Their research is published in the paper “Dark matter and the first stars: a new phase of stellar evolution“. Particles of dark matter compressed together began to annihilate, generating massive amounts of heat, and overwhelming this molecular hydrogen cooling mechanism. Hydrogen fusion was halted, and a new stellar phase - a “dark star” - began. Massive balls of hydrogen and helium powered by dark matter annihilation, instead of nuclear fusion.

If these dark stars are stable enough, it’s possible that they could still exist today. That would mean that an early population of stars never reached the Main Sequence stage, and still live in this aborted process, sustained by the annihilation of dark matter. As the dark matter is consumed in the reaction, additional dark matter from surrounding regions could flow in to keep the core heated, and hydrogen fusion might never get a chance to take over.

Dark stars might not be so long lasting, however. The fusion from regular matter might eventually overwhelm the dark matter annihilation reaction. Its evolution into a regular star wouldn’t be halted, only delayed.

 

http://www.universetoday.com/2007/05/08/how-dark-matter-might-have-snuffed-out-the-first-stars/

Pic of the Earth -- Through Saturns Rings

 

 

Spectacular pic -- you can actually see the disc of the Earth through Saturn's rings. Taken by Cassini.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17524

Say Goodbye To Reality

Local realism is wrong, say quantum physicists. Not only is the universe strange, it doesn't exist -- at least the way we think it does -- when we're not looking at it.

This is a stunning achievement in science. There are no hidden variables in nature. Consciousness is part of the framework of the universe. We have a direct causal relationship with the fundamental nature and existence of our reality.

Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra "hidden variables". Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism -- giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it.

Some 40 years ago the physicist John Bell predicted that many hidden-variables theories would be ruled out if a certain experimental inequality were violated – known as "Bell's inequality". In his thought experiment, a source fires entangled pairs of linearly-polarized photons in opposite directions towards two polarizers, which can be changed in orientation. Quantum mechanics says that there should be a high correlation between results at the polarizers because the photons instantaneously "decide" together which polarization to assume at the moment of measurement, even though they are separated in space. Hidden variables, however, says that such instantaneous decisions are not necessary, because the same strong correlation could be achieved if the photons were somehow informed of the orientation of the polarizers beforehand.

Bell's trick, therefore, was to decide how to orient the polarizers only after the photons have left the source. If hidden variables did exist, they would be unable to know the orientation, and so the results would only be correlated half of the time. On the other hand, if quantum mechanics was right, the results would be much more correlated – in other words, Bell's inequality would be violated.

Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell's inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics.

Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization.

They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism."

However, Alain Aspect, a physicist who performed the first Bell-type experiment in the 1980s, thinks the team's philosophical conclusions are subjective. "There are other types of non-local models that are not addressed by either Leggett's inequalities or the experiment," he said. "But I rather share the view that such debates, and accompanying experiments such as those by [the Austrian team], allow us to look deeper into the mysteries of quantum mechanics."

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/4/14

Water Found in Extrasolar Planet's Atmosphere

Excellent, another sign that life is pervasive in the universe. Maybe we'll discover it in my lifetime.

Astronomers have detected water in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system for the first time.

The finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal, confirms previous theories that say water vapor should be present in the atmospheres of nearly all the known extrasolar planets. Even hot Jupiters, gaseous planets that orbit closer to their stars than Mercury to our Sun, are thought to have water.

The discovery, announced today, means one of the most crucial elements for life as we know it can exist around planets orbiting other stars.

“We know that water vapor exists in the atmospheres of one extrasolar planet and there is good reason to believe that other extrasolar planets contain water vapor,” said Travis Barman, an astronomer at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona who made the discovery.

HD209458b is a world well-known among planet hunters. In 1999, it became the first planet to be directly observed around a normal star outside our solar system and, a few years later, was the first exoplanet confirmed to have oxygen and carbon in its atmosphere.

HD209458b is separated from its star by only about 4 million miles (7 million kilometers)—about 100 times closer than Jupiter is to our Sun—and is so hot scientists think about it is losing about 10,000 tons of material every second as vented gas.

"Water actually survives over a broad range of temperatures," Barman explained. "It would need to get quite a bit hotter to completely break the water molecules apart."

 

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070410_water_exoplanet.html

Great Solar System Comparative Pic

 

A giant image of 88 objects in our solar system, including 11 planets and 21 moons -- all the known objects bigger than 200 miles in diameter.

http://kokogiak.com/solarsystembodieslargerthan200miles.html

Smallest Life Form Discovered

In a mine in California, scientists found the smallest bacteria so far discovered -- living in conditions as acidic as battery acid. Why this fascinates me is that one of the problems with the ALH84001 Martian meteorite with potential nanobacteria in the 20-100 nanometer range is that they were too small. The bacteria found in California were in the 200 nanometer range, only twice as big as the artifacts in ALH84001.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/23/MNGETN57UQ1.DTL

Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time

Very well written account of the history of Einstein's last unconfirmed hypothesis: gravity waves. He postulated that they would be small but detectable and strangely enough be in the audio frequency range.

This book is lots of fun and gives an insider account of the still unfinished search for these waves. From the foibles of Joseph Weber's first mistaken reports of gravity wave detection to the construction of the massive $365M LIGO detector.
http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Unfinished-Symphony-Listening-Space-Time/dp/0425186202/ref=pd_rhf_p_1/102-2845328-8416163