Cosmos
gregladen | July 1, 2008.... died on this day in 1971.
They were Soviet cosmonauts. A breech in the capsule they were riding in occurred as it was separated from another part of the rocket during the initial phases of re-entry. The capsule depressurized and they were killed. Apparently, no one knew this had happened initially. The capsule landed as expected, and the three were found dead by the recovery crew.
More info here.
gregladen | June 24, 2008An utterly incomprehensible paper has been produced by a team of physicists, designed to make everyone feel better about the possibility that the Large Hadron Collider will produce black holes that will suck the Earth into themselves.
There is no effort whatsoever in this paper to speak to normal people. The most I can get out of it is that yes, black holes can form, and possibly very many of them, but it will take them longer to destroy the planet than it will take the sun to destroy the planet by exploding on its present schedule (of some billions of years from now). Which makes no…
gregladen | June 21, 2008Remember a while ago, I joked that NASA is twittering Phoenix? Well, either they were listening to me, I'm psychic, or .... or maybe it is just a totally obvious thing to do. Point is ... THEY ARE! Here.
gregladen | June 20, 2008 To stop this obnoxious flashing, just hit the ESC key! It's like gold, but better. It's ice! On Mars!
If there's ice, there is water. If there is water, there cold be life. Maybe.
I'm pretty sure the presence of H2O on Mars is not that surprising. But what are the chances of scooping up a robot-fist full of dirt and having visible chunks of ice right there, unless this stuff is actually very common?
NASA is reporting "Bright Chunks at Phoenix Lander's Mars Site Must Have Been Ice"
Bits, or more accurately, crumbs, of some whitish stuff was visible in the Martian soil, and then it…
gregladen | June 15, 2008Jason-1 Will Make its 30,000th Orbit
The Jason-1 spacecraft will make its 30,000th science orbit this week. Revolution number 30,000 will begin at 10:27 UTC (3:27 a.m. PDT) on June 14th, 2008 and will be completed at 12:19 UTC (5:19 a.m. PDT). From its vantage point 1,336 kilometers (830 miles) above Earth, Jason-1 uses its radar altimeter to precisely measure the topography of the ocean surface.
Jason-1 was launched December 7, 2001, as the follow-on to Topex/Poseidon, which successfully collected science data from 1992 to 2005. Both missions are a partnership between NASA and the French…
gregladen | June 14, 2008What are the chances that life evolved on other planets? 100%. What are the chances that some of THAT life evolved "intelligence"? Say 0.00001%. What is the chance that that life form is beaming messages to us? Zero. Nada. Zilch.
But...
What is the chance that intelligent live has junk TV, radio-transmitted music and other forms of EMF communication? Very very high. Therefore, the way to find extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe is to try to tune in their version of Days of Our LIves or MTV. Hey, we'll take the Milton Berle Show if we have to.
And now, finally…
gregladen | June 13, 2008 "We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time," says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts." The best job you'll ever love! Travel! Excitement! Join NASA on an amazing new venture. A trip of a life time.
To where you ask?
Why, THE SUN, of course!
The mission will be called Solar Probe+. Launch may happen as early as 2015.
Solar Probe will be a historic mission, flying into one of the last unexplored regions of the solar system, the Sun…
gregladen | June 13, 2008... of Martian Dirt.
Phoenix used its Robotic Arm to test a "sprinkle" method for delivering small samples of soil to instruments on the lander deck. Bigger picture here. The Phoenix Lander is preparing to sprinkle Martian soil onto a flat place for a microscope to look at.
"On Monday, Phoenix tested delivering Martian soil by sprinkling it rather than dumping it. The positive result prompted researchers not only to proceed with plans for delivery to the microscope, but also to plan on sprinkling a sample in the near future into one of the eight ovens of an instrument that bakes and…
gregladen | June 12, 2008Pluto is the ninth planet in our solar system. In our planetary mythology, it is the ninth planet, it is small, far away, cold, and there is an important cartoon dog named after it. But astronomers decided a while ago that Pluto is not a planet. That throws everything out of balance. Nine Planets is not just some number (nine, in this case) and the word "planets." It is a balanced equation, an iconic formula. Like the Holy Trinity. Or the Ten Commandments. Or the Three Stooges. Can you imagine a world in which there are only two stooges?
Well, Pluto has been given a kind of…
gregladen | June 11, 2008And this is the resulting divot::
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager took this image on Sol 14 (June 8, 2008), the 14th Martian day after landing. It shows two trenches dug by Phoenix's Robotic Arm.
Soil from the right trench, informally called "Baby Bear," was delivered to Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, on Sol 12 (June 6). The following several sols included repeated attempts to shake the screen over TEGA's oven number 4 to get fine soil particles through the screen and into the oven for analysis.
The trench on the left is informally called "Dodo" and…
gregladen | June 2, 2008 Surveyor 1 Lunar Lander On June 2, 1966, a robot alien sent from the United States landed on The Moon. This was the first US "soft landing" on Moon (the Soviets had a previous soft landing, known as Luna 9, four months earlier).
Surveyor transmitted 11,237 photographs to earth.
gregladen | June 1, 2008A video that purportedly shows a living, breathing space alien will be shown to the news media Friday in Denver.
"It shows an extraterrestrial's head popping up outside of a window at night, looking in the window, that's visible through an infrared camera," he said. The alien is about 4 feet tall and can be seen blinking, Peckman said earlier this month.
An instructor at the Colorado Film School in Denver scrutinized the video "very carefully" and determined it was authentic, Peckman said.
source
I'm confused, but I think we are going to get to see the Alien this coming Friday. Unless, of…
gregladen | May 28, 2008This just in from NASA:
This image shows a ghostly ring extending seven light-years across around the corpse of a massive star. The collapsed star, called a magnetar, is located at the exact center of this image. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope imaged the mysterious ring around magnetar SGR 1900+14 in infrared light. The magnetar itself is not visible in this image, as it has not been detected at infrared wavelengths (it has been seen in X-ray light).
Personally, I think what we've got here is one of these:
But NASA says different. Their story:
Magnetars are formed when a giant star ends…
gregladen | May 28, 2008Every few minutes I get an email from NASA telling me which button they've pressed on the Phoenix Robot, recently landed on Mars. And I'm only slightly exaggerating. OK, I'm exaggerating a lot.
The latest: Phoenix has been commanded to move its arm:
Scientists leading NASA's Phoenix Mars mission from the University of Arizona in Tucson sent commands to unstow its robotic arm and take more images of its landing site early today.
The Phoenix lander sent back new sharp color images from Mars late yesterday. Phoenix imaging scientists made a color mosaic of images taken by the lander's…
gregladen | May 27, 2008This:
Is a picture of Phoenix landing on Mars, taken from above.
One always wonders where the camera operator is during these things....
PASADENA, Calif. -- A telescopic camera in orbit around Mars caught a view of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suspended from its parachute during the lander's successful arrival at Mars Sunday evening, May 25.
The image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks the first time ever one spacecraft has photographed another one in the act of landing on Mars.
Meanwhile, scientists pored over initial…
gregladen | May 19, 2008Quirky Pulsar System Challenges Theories of Binary Formation; Observing Stem Cells at Work; Large scale carbon sequestration
Quirky Pulsar System Challenges Theories of Binary Formation
From a Cornell Press Release:
An ongoing sky survey using the Cornell-managed Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico has turned up a massive, fast-spinning binary pulsar with a mysterious elongated orbit, researchers say.
The pulsar and its companion star challenge currently accepted views of binary pulsar formation and give researchers a new opportunity for understanding the fundamental properties of highly…
gregladen | May 16, 2008"Rock star physicist" Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive project. ... Physicist Brian Cox has two jobs: working with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and explaining big science to the general public.
gregladen | May 14, 2008 Emperor Han Aidi Keep an eye on the hanging tree. There will be a fresh astronomer hanging there soon. Mark my words.
This story is sometimes told:
During the reign of a particular emperor in China, the role of the historian was becoming more significant. An historian sat in the Emperors throne room and recorded events, as faithfully as possible, and the Emperor paid close attention to this process.
One day, the Emperor sentenced a man to be beheaded, and the man was executed immediately. However, it was not entirely clear that this was an act of justice or an act of anger. The…
gregladen | April 28, 2008And by this, I mean really, really big...
This was sent to me by my colleague Christian Reinboth in Germany. This video was created by Mike (Metafis), a retired PC support guy, who has also been kind enough to comment below.
.... It shows a massive zoom (315 times) into the famous Mandelbrot set. The astonishing thing is this (and I am quoting the filmmakers): You would need a monitor 2^316 times the size of a normal one to view the whole of the first frame by the time you get to the last frame. That's approx 2^176 times the size of the known universe.
Here it is: