Archive for the ‘The Universe’ Category
Credit: “Interstellar” Media Image – mashable.com
Yes, I’ll admit I’m a geek. I married one, too. So of course we felt it necessary to see “Interstellar.” We read up on it, exchanged speculations on the theories behind it, compared different viewpoints, opinions, reviews, all of that. After all of this effort, a sensible decision was cast to go and see it, already.
So last night, after first ducking into Target to purchase some chocolates to stick into our pockets so we wouldn’t have to pay the ridiculous price of $4.oo for a $1.oo candy bar, we went. It was great to go into a theatre filled with our kinds of people, equally geeky and completely silent during the showing, with only the rare murmur of approval over a spectacular scene.
Naturally, we weren’t disappointed. Both of us loved it and spent the ride home discussing it. And I could go on about this, that or the other thing regarding the vagaries of space-time travel and the physics behind it.
Why would I? You know all that anyway.
What got me were the small touches, the little hints of things to come and viewpoints either behind the characters or the writers who invented them. First on my list were the books on the shelves in Murph’s bedroom. How many of you took a good look at them? Here’s two that caught my immediate attention: “The Stand” and “Outlander.”
“Outlander” caught my eye because Diana Gabaldon wrote this book regarding a portal that transports a woman through time, and Stephen King’s “The Stand” because the human race is nearly killed off in that one. Both of those elements were the story in “Interstellar.”
Actually, books do figure prominently in the movie. Take, for example, the school district’s reliance on “corrected versions” of history. The moonwalk was all propaganda to economically bankrupt the Soviet Union. After all, the Soviets never made it to the moon, so that propaganda campaign must have worked. Yet Murph refuses to believe it all and listens to her father, who reinforces the truth.
All that talk about chemical compositions and how it affects environments and circumstances also gave me the goosies. The way how too much nitrogen in an atmosphere isn’t ideal or any atmosphere’s makeup is so sensitive to various forms of life made me smile.
But really, when you get right down to it, the use of time as a resource and element defined the film. Everything from the father Cooper as a younger man visiting his daughter Cooper as she lay dying, much older than he (all right, how many of you also knew that was Ellen Burstyn?), to the astronaut left behind for 23 years when Brand and Cooper seemed to be gone only minutes? Or the gradual shift of Earth from viable to slowly dying, which seemed to take both an interminable and finite amount of time?
I could go on about many, many more things about why we enjoyed “Interstellar” so much, but that would take time, so if you haven’t seen it, take the time and go!
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Credit: ESA, Artist’s Impression
OMG, this is a BFD!
I, along with everyone else who keeps their eyes on these things, shouted a big hoot of delight this morning when I saw Philae Lander put on a real showstopper of a landing on a duck-shaped comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko just after 11:00 am, EST in the USA. Released from Rosetta, it marked a real victory for a huge gamble that will reap large rewards for anyone who’s interested in the miracles of our solar system. I’m sorry, but I’m at a loss for words to describe what an amazing accomplishment this for the ESA, for science, and for our futures, so excuse the sap.
The New York Times posted a series of tweets that a very excited Philae, who couldn’t wait to touch down on the surface of 7P/C-G after journeying ten years to get there (do you blame it?). The newspaper also has a series of incredible photos that document the comet as detail its landing place.
What makes this such a special event?
Landing on a relatively small target from a great distance notwithstanding, it’s ESA’s and the world’s first opportunity to scientifically examine, up close, just exactly how a comet operates, what it sees, where it goes and what it does for a living. The pictures indicate that its shape isn’t anything to brag about, but again, it’s the first time anyone has ever set foot on such a heavenly object and it’s a premiere learning experience for all. NASA has also contributed three instruments to the lander mission, so what makes this even better its international, offworld educational opportunity.
Philae’s got a big job ahead of it. With only 64 battery hours to get through its tasks initially, it will depend upon solar batteries to provide it with power until March. That, and it has an awful lot of tweets to send us to let us know how it’s doing!
For a laugh, check out xkcd’s comic on the event.
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For those of you who weren’t awake, aware or available, there was a full eclipse of the moon last night. Now, I’m also one of those who, for various reasons, wasn’t able to cast my eyes skyward and catch the moon at its best. Sometimes the moon just doesn’t seem to take into consideration that many of us are located on the wrong side of the globe (or clock) to be able to glimpse at the glowing red orb up in the nighttime sky.
Thank goodness for Slooh.
If ever anyone wanted to be an astronomer and didn’t have the time, patience or ability to go to school for astrophysics, yet wanted to partake of the universe in an engaging and useful way, then Slooh is for you. It’s a membership organization and it isn’t cheap, but anyone will have access to high-powered telescopes in the Canary Island and Chile, plus get in on a myriad of missions. The universe is literally at your desktop.
As a participant, one also joins a community of like-minded individuals who cast their eyes skyward share what they observe. Also, one gets in on all kinds of neat stuff that NASA offers, too. In fact, Slooh engages NASA and a community of citizen astronomers to help with its near Earth asteroid project. So if you see something, you can say something!
I’ve included the below link for those how want to experience the eclipse and/or get a taste of what Slooh can do for you. Enjoy!
http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/slooh-covers-the-total-lunar-eclipse-of-october-2014-as-it-slides-across-the-pacific-ocean
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I know, I know, one more thing about the universe and you’re going to scream, right? However, this one is absolutely gorgeous! I’ve only watched it about 100 times…
http://www.upworthy.com/scientists-mapped-8000-galaxies-surrounding-us-and-found-this-amazing-discovery?c=huf1
See, I guess what intrigues me the most is that space, for all its vastness, has a certain order. According to the scientists at the University of Hawaii, galaxies are but bit players in the universe. They live in gorgeous threads of light, continuing throughout time, without regard to limits of distance.
Our home base, The Milky Way, is barely a studio apartment in a vast expanse of housing, just like any small flat in a giant city – one singular home amongst millions. Yet those apartments are structured within a building, positioned on city blocks, within the confines of an area. Some areas are more concentrated than others, while other sections of the city are more spread out.
The Milky Way is similar, in that respect, as it’s placed on a long street headed towards a more densely packed region. All galaxies are subject to gravity, and are forced towards or away from a center. As habitants of earth, we are subject to constant motion: our planet rotates as it travels around the sun, as part of a solar system that lives in its galaxy that travels toward other galaxies in a cluster that is part of a larger network, all moving towards or away from a center.
To consider the endless possibilities of our universe is to feel very small indeed!
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Credit: ee.princeton.edu
Here’s another wonderful video from Dennis Overbye at The New York Times. In it, he explains how time and light partner up to offer a show from nature centuries after it occurred.
Light, in space, is literally a living memory of events long past. There’s a profound statement at the accompanying article’s end, stating that even the light on our face shine forever.
Can you imagine? That glorious day at the beach where you smiled at the sun as it reflected on the waves and your face? That’ll live on, in the shape of light rays. And so, whatever light touches, it has the ability to record and send off our particular experiences. Using light to record humanity? There’s been speculation with sound waves and how others out there will find us via our words, sounds, broadcasts. How would they make sense of our pictures? They’d arrive apart, since light travels so much faster than sound ever could.
Now imagine if both the sound and light waves intersected, but with completely different meanings. Light from the 16th century paired with sounds from this one – this jumbled mess as message. Who would read it? How might it be interpreted?
Light is absorbed when it encounters obstacles, such as black holes. Light waves, from a fairly concentrated source on Earth traveling outward, face the possibility of reaching entirely different destinations. Some of those particles risk absorption, but others fly free. A patchwork image received by an off world interpreter might wind up with a Swiss cheesy image not entirely accurate of what it was meant to represent. Perhaps, too, that’s what we might receive here at the home planet.
Darkness is the absence of light. What gives some light waves the ability to survive while others terminate, creating darkness? Or is darkness merely another form of light? Is it light that the eyes on this planet have not evolved to discern? What forms out there might interpret our version of light as darkness?
Just a little something for your minds to unravel as you attempt to rest your weary brains for the night.
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The New York Times had an excellent article on the possibilities of life Out There. You know, all that space that the universe occupies. According to Carl Sagan, there was no reason not to expect life that was comparable to humans. But if you asked the competition, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, we were it. Sure, it was reasonable to expect primordial soup in other locales, with perhaps a few vegetables thrown in for variety, but Mayr was steadfast in his beliefs that the chances for humanlike life anywhere but here was slim to nil.
Naturally, there’s also that school of belief that attests to aliens living among us, including the abductees who’ve been tested and probed. Those unexplained sightings of strange ships hovering over dark highways in remote locations – that can’t be fake, eh? There has to be something real under Area 51, right? After all, why do they protect it so fiercely?
If you ask me, I’d bet the rent on life existing outside our little blue dot. Compare it to the lottery. The higher the stakes, the more players become involved. Eventually, a number’s picked and a winner is paraded before cameras as the newest bazillionaire. On occasion, though, there’s more than one winner, and regularly three or four. I’m no mathematician, but what are the chances that several people will bounce into the local gas station, drop $20.00 on gas and another $3.00 bucks for a few Powerball tickets and all come out winners? It happens. So why not expect life on other planets?
Carl Sagan maintained that sound waves generated from TV and radio drifted out among the stars would signal to intrepid space voyagers our existence. That was detailed in Contact. Those sound waves possess properties that cause them to stretch and grow as they wander further from their source. By the time those waves are detected, what discernible information remains attached to these signals would be challenging to interpret. But then again, the right exoplanetary scientist might find them an intriguing prospect: thin signals meaning what? A project to research, to turn heads into another direction to discover their source? Our planet, uncovered at last?
What’s to say there isn’t a planet with inhabitants who share the dreams of finding others, only to be told the possibilities are so incredibly remote it isn’t worth a bother?
Here’s how I see it: out there, far from Earth, a soul ponders what bioforms rose and prospered elsewhere in the abyss of space. Technologically advanced to send out space probes, this soul launches a machine capable of seeking clues, if not evidence. Time passes, the soul dies, but other scientists take this soul’s place and keep on with the vigil. Eventually, the machine wanders so far away from its home planet that even its trail of crumbs grows cold. After a great deal of time, the machine is lost to memory and passes into legend, but the language on the foreign planet evolves to the point where even the legend transforms into a mystery and eventually forgotten. Meanwhile, life on that planet succumbs to its own evolution as its inhabitants face other issues that seem more pressing or trivial, but interest in further explorations has shriveled as it’s become necessary to focus on the lack of rain, food, or a dwindling resource that is elemental to the stability of life on said planet. Or, life for the other planet’s inhabitants is fulfilling, and therefore interest plummets because all needs are met and exceeded. Curiosity fades as the inhabitants indulge in The Good Life and place high importance cultivating perpetual happiness.
On a peaceful September morning, blue skies except for drifting patches of cumulus clouds, a flash streaks across the sky. Whatever caused it crashes into a suburb of a medium-sized city, resulting in a fair amount of damage to both the landscape and the object. Upon cautious examination, its solid core leads Earth scientists to believe it’s not merely silicon. Placed in the hands of a particularly observant scientist, a barely imperceptible vibration reveals a secret only a sensitive hand would notice. “Hey,” says the Earth scientist, “I think we got something here…”
No alien spaceships, no apocalyptical force, only a simple device, badly damaged and time-worn, offers a clue to a glorious civilization similar to our own, whose own culture is seemingly lost to the wastelands of space and disbelieving souls.
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Credit: JPL
(Click on the below link for a VERY COOL video!)
http://nyti.ms/1g2QQ0W
Used to be that naming planets was a fairly simple task. The Ancients looked up towards the skies, observed that a handful of stars travelled across the sky (and, in fact, planet means “wanderer”) and gave them a suitable name that reflected what they saw.
For example, Mars, glowing red in the heavens, was named for the Roman god of war. And it wasn’t just the Romans who considered this planet the embodiment of conflict and challenges, many cultures and their languages also saw fit to give it this distinction. The Greeks called it Ares, Hindus call it Mangela, Hebrews call it Ma’adim, in Sanskrit it is known as Angaraka, and in Babylon one would notice the rising and setting of Nergal.
With the advent of stronger telescopes, more planets within our solar system were discovered, though not bright enough to spot with the unaided eye (mostly – if you know where to look on an incredibly clear night in the middle of a very dark, dark field with absolutely no chance of any interfering light from any source, you might see Uranus, but that depends on other conditions, too). I’ve seen Jupiter’s four bright moons, through a telescope but with my own eyes, too (but you have to cover up Jupiter with a magazine to see them; it’s much less of a challenge to spot them even with birding binoculars or a decent pair of opera glasses).
Nowadays, we have a problem of riches. Thanks to the hard work of astronomers, astrophysicists and others trained to observe the telltale signs of wobble and movement, there are over a thousand planets at our disposal. Sure, they’re ridiculously far away and chances are you’ll never see any of them though your backyard reflector. But you might see the star they’re rotating, and imagine what kind of life lives upon these exoplanets, as they’re called.
Do you want to blow your mind? The New York Times has an amazing interactive graphic that’ll keep you busy for hours. I can’t even find the words to describe how amazing this chart is, but if you check it out, make sure you scroll down to the end. I won’t give away what’s there, except you’ll gasp and say, “hmm! The ones found are the result of NASA’s Kepler mission that have confirmed planets rotating around stars. If you click on some of the graphics on the above link, up will come information about the planet and its sun.
Of course, it’s impossible to find appropriate names for this batch that seems to be growing daily. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been attempts. The International Astronomical Union is sponsoring a contest for that very purpose. Have any ideas? Here’s your chance to honor a hitherto anonymous planet with a memorable, catchy handle, just as you would a baby.
Trouble is, what would the inhabitants of said world think?
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Credit: NASA
Clearly, we’ve grown bored with the Earth. It’s that lover one always strives to please, yet somehow no matter what one does, it’s never right. In the end, one gives up and goes elsewhere to find love and acceptance. Its inhabitants have, in equal parts, loved and abused it, ignored its warnings and acted surprised when it fought back. In the end, we all know it’ll get its way and beat us, but no one who borrows time trodding on its grassy plains and thick muddy fields ever thinks about that prospect.
Instead, our eyes shift upward, looking elsewhere for a better situation and a second chance.
Ever since the discovery of exoplanets, or those outside of our own solar system, space explorers have been determining which of those planets will host life and, optimistically, life that we can identify, and, how we’re going to to meet up one day. Average citizens, whose off-world opportunities are rather limited, have to rely on imagination and conjecture to supply possibilities. After all, those alien spaceships have to come from somewhere, right? They can’t all be bad. Those Antarians from the movie “Cocoon” did benefit the forgotten population of greying Floridians, even supplying a ride back to Antarea to seniors deserving of a new life.
Closer to home, it’s simpler to take advantage of our backyard planets and subsequent moons. Once humans figured out what planets actually were, they’ve also contemplated living upon them.
Take, for instance, the moon. Relatively ancient technology got us there and back for a short visit way back when. Nowadays, it’s entirely feasible to build a craft to ship us there en masse to create a colony there, given its relative nearness. We already know there’s a supply of water and rare earth elements just hankering to be mined. Nearly every genre of science is hankering to conduct experiments there, driven by desire, curiosity and the uniqueness of the lunar environment. Americans, Russians, as well as private interests all have plans in the works to get up there by the 2020s and make a homestead claim.
Humans attach great meaning to the color red. Anger, temptation, danger and naughtiness are all meanings associated with it – just about everything we’re not supposed to have and desperately crave. I’m assuming that’s the subliminal reason why Mars is so magnetic. After all, this red planet practically begs someone to come hither. Probes coyly hint at the richness of Mars’ treasures. Water’s there, too, although not behaving the way we’d like it to be, adding more to its mystique. And like a forbidden love, the more determined we are to have it, the more money it costs to secure it. I’ve no doubt there’ll be a batch of humans trying to tame the Wild Red Planet’s surface, but it’ll come at a price, no one will be happy, but we’ll be never be satisfied until we at least have a first date. Then we’ll see.
Until then, I’m going to bide my time and see what openings Virgin Galactic has in the near future. I might want to book a ride.
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I can’t seem to get enough of this stuff.
Dark matter illustrated and explained for you:
Recently astronomers have used a cosmic web imager to visualize simulations of dark matter,
showing how the the large scale structure of the universe grows and the nests in which galaxies are hatched.
Click on the link – I can’t seem to get the video up on the blog for some reason!
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What’s your preferred method of space travel? Is it this?
Or this?
I know, I know. Pretty hard to decide which one to choose.
Allow me to provide you with a clearer example. This is a depiction of the first equation:
CorvinZahn – Gallery of Space Time Travel (self-made, panorama of the dunes: Philippe E. Hurbain)
This is the second:
Credit: Allen McC
Give up? Here’s a clue: There’s a connection between this:
…and the space it occupies.
And the answer is…WORMHOLES!
Okay, okay, maybe I’ve gotten a bit esoteric for you. I’ll get simple.
The first mathematical equation is otherwise known as traversable wormhole, or one that allows you to move from one end of the universe to the other. The second one represents a Schwartschild wormhole that, for the most part, is a black hole that allows travel usually in one direction, but also connects one universe to the other.
The definition of a wormhole is a method within the theory of relatively of moving from one point in space to another without crossing the space in between. To properly explain a wormhole properly means one has to drag out the big guns (i.e. Einstein) and spew forth a lot of verbiage that’s guaranteed to gloss over the heartiest of eyeballs. A short history of the term is this: Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen came up with the basic principles of wormholes and their relation to time and space in the 1935 and called their concept the “Einstein-Rosen” bridge. John A. Wheeler, an American theoretical physicist coined the term wormhole in 1957.
Science fiction writers have jumped on the concept ever since. Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke, Iain M. Banks, John G. Cramer, Stephen Baxter and many, many others have all used wormhole technology to develop their plots, as well as popular shows as the Stargate franchise.
With wormholes, one easily solves the problem of traveling great distances in short times, as long as you don’t exceed the speed of light (a wormhole no-no). Just about anything can travel through them as well. The mightiest of space vehicles right down to tiny gnats can zoom through distant reaches to discover, conquer or just make new friends. It’s a simple device that captures everyone’s imagination because it’s so freeing and limitless. Need to get someplace? Hook up to a wormhole, and in seconds, you’re there.
In Stargate SG-1, the cast would travel so quickly through these things that bullets came flying right out of the gate, thanks to the wormhole. Conversely, robotic probes made their way out into the new planet, seeking information regarding conditions. True, a proper stargate was needed to connect two points together. It wasn’t without its risks, either. Wormholes invite all sorts of malfeasance, if one isn’t careful. Evil characters often took advantage of this plot device and wreaked havoc, threatening Earth and its inhabitants over and over again.
Next time you look up at the sky and gaze at the stars, think about this: somewhere out there lurks a bridge to another time. One day, maybe soon, some thing might be transversing it to visit.
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Moon, Stars and Beyond 