Water, water everywhere

When you look at a photo of Earth what is most noticeable is that our planet is blue. Not red like Mars or cloud covered like Venus. Our home is 71% covered in water and the oceans are rather deep. And so we may think, there's a lot of water, but that's not actually true.

If you collected all the water on the Earth into a sphere (oceans, icecaps, atmosphere, everything) the water sphere would have a diameter of 1,385 kilometers (about 860 miles), and span the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. It would have a volume of about 1,386 million cubic kilometers (roughly 332,500,000 cubic miles). And again this sounds big but a picture tells the real story:

Wow that looks small. How can we possibly fill the oceans from such a small drop? The answer is height. The water bubble is 860 miles high in the artist rendering. The deepest part of the ocean is just under 7 miles. The oceans are but a thin sheet of water compared to the water sphere.

Leadership Skills from Captain Kirk

As a long-time Star Trek fan, one of my favorite stops during a mid-west vacation last year was at the Future Birthplace of James T. Kirk in Riverside, Iowa. I love the time-travel irony - Future Birthplace indeed.

It's funny how often Star Trek pops up. The first space shuttle (experimental only alas) was called Enterprise.

At the Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio you can take your photo alongside lifesize images of all the Star Trek captains (pictured above). 

In college a roommate wrote a paper comparing McCoy, Spock and  Kirk to the Id, Ego and Super Ego respectively.

Natuarally a blog entitled Five Leadership Lessons From James T. Kirk, in Forbes magazine no less, caught my attention:

1. Never Stop Learning
Kirk’s reputation at the Academy was that of a “walking stack of books”. (Before the reboot in the recent movie which made him more of a rebel.) He defeated a Gorn in personal combat becuase he recalled how to make gun powder and a primitive gun in an age of phasers. He out-thought the "unwinnable" Kobayashi Maru test and beat it.

2. Have Advisors With Different Worldviews
The original Star Trek had a dynamic with Kirk, Spock and McCoy that was never again matched. Three very different worldviews working together, not always peacefully.

3. Be Part of the Away Team
It was never very realistic that Kirk led the Away Teams into danger alongside the red shirts. But it was fun and is often a sign of great leadership when the leader rallies the men from the front lines. The next generation was more typical with Picard on the ship and Riker (his #1) leading the Away Teams.

4. Play Poker, Not Chess
Life is more like poker with bluffs then the rigid rules of chess. Kirk was a master of the bluff and outthinking his opponent.

5. Blow up the Enterpirse?
Kirk's first love of his life was the Enterprise. But in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock he destroys it in order to defeat the Klingons and take their ship. Good leaders are driven by passion but that passion can lead to a dead-end if blindly followed, never changing. Great leaders know when to curb their passion, setting aside past successes that have reached their peak, and begin something new.

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Just like James T Kirk,

"we need to keep exploring and learning. We need to ensure that we encourage creativity and innovation by listening to the advice of people with vastly different opinions. We need to occasionally get down in the trenches with the members of our teams so we understand their needs and earn their trust and loyalty. We need to understand the psychology of our competitors and also learn to radically change course when circumstances dictate. By following these lessons, we can lead our organizations into places where none have gone before."
- Alex Knapp

Leap Day!

It's leap day! Because the earth goes around the sun in approximately 365 and 1/4 days, we must add a day to the calendar every 4 years. But a year is not exactly 365 and 6 hours days (it's 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds) so the Gregorian calendar adds a few more rules for leap year:

Occurs in years that are evenly divisible by 4, such as 2012 and 2016, unless the year is also divisible by 100 with the exception that years evenly divisible by 400 are leap years. So 1900 was not a leap year (multiple of 100) but 2000 was a leap year (multiple of 400).

The Julian calendar established in ancient Rome applied a leap day every 4 years, always. This over compensated by a tiny amount that accumulated over the centuries. By 1582 (395 leap years since 1 AD) the calendar had shifted by 10 days and Pope Gregory XIII decreed the new calendar rules described above and moved the calendar 10 days forward to correct for errors since the birth of Christ.

What happens if you're born on a Leap Day? In the comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance,  Frederic celebrates his 21st birthday and his release from apprenticeship to a band of kind-hearted pirates. Or so he thinks. He learns that he was born on a leap day with a birthday only every 4 years and won't be 21 for another 63 years.

In reality the UK recognizes March 1 as the birth date in non-leap years for someone born on Feb 29.

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For the super picky, there is also a Leap Second. Every few years astronomers add 1 second to atomic clocks to keep them 100% on track with the sun. Normal clocks ignore the extra second.

What Moon is That?

"Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise."
-Bad Moon Rising by Creedance Clearwater Revival

I've always loved Astronomy so one of my daily stops for great images and a daily dose of science is Astronomy Picture of the Day. Occasionally they'll have a picture of a full moon and describe it as the Hunter's Moon or the Wolf Moon. Huh? Who made up these names?

Throughout history civilizations have marked time according to the moon. The Algonquian confederation of Indians (from New England to the Great Lakes) used these names to track the seasons:

Jan. Wolf Moon

Feb. Snow Moon

Mar. Worm Moon

Apr. Pink Moon

May Flower Moon

June Strawberry Moon

July Buck Moon

Aug. Sturgeon Moon

Sep. Harvest Moon

Oct. Hunter's Moon

Nov. Beaver Moon

Dec. Cold Moon

Early settlers of New England like the idea of giving names to the Full Moon so they adopted the custom with some changes:

Jan:  Old or Ice Moon
Feb:  Wolf, Hunger, Storm, Candles Moon
March: Lenten, Crow, Crust, Sugar, Sap, Chaste, Death Moon
April:  Egg (Easter), Fish, Seed, Waking Moon
May: Milk, Corn Planting, Corn, Hare Moon
June: Flower, Honey, Rose, Hot, Planting Moon
July: Hay, Thunder, Mead Moon
Aug Grain, Red, Green Corn, Lightning, Dog Moon
Sept: Fruit, Corn, Barley Moon
Oct: Harvest, Travel, Dying Grass, Blood Moon
Nov: Hunter's, Frost, Snow Moon
Dec: Oak, Frost, Winter, Yule Moon

It's not so obvious from the list but some moons got changed from one month to the next like Hunter's from Oct to Nov. The lunar orbit of 28 days makes the full moon shift on the calendar and drift relative to the equinox's (start of spring, summer, fall, winter).

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There are 12.37 full moon in a year so one out of every three years will have 13 full moons. The extra moon is called the Blue moon? It was mistakenly thought from an error in the 1946 Sky & Telescope that the second month in the same month was "Blue". But the correct definition is that when a "season" (fall: Oct-Dec, winter:Jan-March, etc) has four moons, the 3rd moon is Blue. Horrible definition but it must have made sense to someone who made it up.

Out of This World

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
-Mark Russell

I'd like to end this year with an amazing image from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. The large moon in front is called Dione. In the background you can see Saturn’s rings on the left, nearly edge-on, and two more moons as well: Epimetheus, only 130 km (70 miles) across, and Pandora, slightly smaller at 104 km across.

Pandora was discovered in 1980 by the Voyager 1 probe, Epimetheus was discovered by astronomers in 1966. Dione was discovered long ago in 1684 by the astronomer Cassini (for whom the space probe is named). At 1122 km in diameter, Dione is the 15th largest moon in the Solar System and is more massive than all known moons smaller than itself combined.

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This so reminds me of covers of Sci-Fi magazines of the 1950's with an imaginary sky of a planet far away but this is real and Cassini is there; seven years imaging Saturn and its moons.

May 2012 bring amazement and wonders and joy to one and all.

Bonus Image

Another excellent photo from Astronomy Picture of the Day. You may recall that a lunar eclipse is caused by the moon passing through the Earth's shadow but this multiple-exposure really makes that shadow visible. (And gives one a feeling for the size of the moon compared to Earth)

Astrology is geocentric?

When the Moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars; then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars.
-lyrics from "Aquarius" by the 5th dimension

While looking at a list of the top 40 news stories shared in Facebook this year, I noticed that three of the 40 were about the Zodiac signs changing (or not changing). I recall hearing something about the signs being a month off but didn't pay much attention at the time since I do not believe in Astrology. But many Americans do.

The CNN story, "No, your zodiac sign hasn't changed" (#3 on the Facebook list) nicely explains the confusion that occurred. On Jan. 10, 2011 the  Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article in which a Minneapolis astronomer affirmed that due to a wobble in the earth's axis over thousands years, the sun has shifted one whole month in the zodiac. So when the astrology page say it's the "month" of Leo, the Sun is really in Cancer. Some astrology believers refused to accept this,

“I’ve known myself to be a Sagittarius, I believe, since I was born. So to come up now with some new sign? It’s unacceptable!”

The same astronomer also pointed out that there is a 13th constellation, Ophiuchus (Ooh-FEE-yew-kus), the Serpent Bearer, between Scorpio and Sagittarius. The sun in only in Scorpio for 1 week.

Astrologers were flooded with concerned phone calls. Is it true? Is the sun not where it's supposed to be according to the Zodiac calendar? Will everyone have to change?

The answer is ... Yes, the sun is not where you expect it to be AND no, you don't have to change. 

Huh?

The answer lies in ancient history. The original zodiac, invented by the ancient Babylonians (or ancient Hindus according to wikipedia), is sidereal, meaning based on the sun's position with the stars. So if you were born under the sign of Leo, the sun really was in Leo. But the earth has slowly wobbled under the pull of the moon and the sidereal calendar has shifted by one month.

However, the Astrology tables used by Western cultures today were created in the 2nd century AD by astronomer/astrology Ptolemy. In this tropical zodiac system the start of Aries is fixed to one solar equinox (March 21), and Libra at the other equinox in September. He knew about the sidereal drift and chose to ignore it by basing the calendar on the equinox (when the day is exactly 12 hours light & dark) instead of the sun's position in the sky.

So which system is "better"? Most "Western" astrologers are sticking with the tropical system but some are making money publishing books about the sidereal system or the 13th constellation.

CNN quotes astrologer Jeff Jawer, "When we look at the astrology used in the Western world, the seasonally based astrology has not changed, was never oriented to the constellations, and stands as … has been stated for two millenniums ... Astrology is geocentric. It relates life on Earth to the Earth’s environment, and seasons are the most dramatic effect, which is why we use the tropical zodiac."

Bottom Line

That "Astrology is geocentric" sounds like an oxymoron - a self contradicting phrase. But when you think about it, the statement is true. Astrology is about the position of the sun and planets from the earth's viewpoint. Or at least it used to be 2000 years ago. As an amateur star gazer I find some value in the sidereal calendar but fail to see the astrological value of the tropical calendar based on the earth's seasons with Aries associated with the start of Spring and Libra with the start of Fall regardless of where the sun is.

Total Perspective - You Are Here

"In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."
-Douglas Adams

In Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, the Total Perspective Vortex is allegedly the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected. The Vortex gives a momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here." The machine was originally invented by one Trin Tragula in order to annoy his wife. Because she was forever nagging him for having no sense of proportion, he decided to invent something that would show her what having a sense of proportion really meant. Unfortunately the shock of being placed in the Vortex destroyed her brain, but Trin Tragula's grief was tempered by the knowledge that he had been right and she had been wrong.

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Now I don't want to destroy your brain but consider this photo. EVERY dot is a entire galaxy.

Frame Dragging

“In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you.”

- Frank Wilczek

Pardon me as I dive into some deep physics today. I'm blogging this in the hope that I too will understand it.

You may be aware that Einstein's General Relativity predicts that a massive object like the earth or Sun will bend the space around it causing light rays to be slightly deflected in their path. This was first demonstrated in 1919 with a photo of stars observed near the Sun during a total eclipse. Today "gravitational lensing" is used to see very faint galaxies near the origin of the Universe.

What you might not know is that General Relativity becomes even stranger when the massive object is rotating. The spinning mass creates a drag on space that gives it a very small twist (about 1 part in 1 trillion). Scientists are very good at measuring small amounts like this and recently verified gravitational Frame Dragging with a specially built satellite circling the earth called Gravity Probe B.

Recently a physicist from the University of Warwick applied Frame Dragging in an unusual way to explain an old problem in physics, the“Charge Parity violation” (also called “CP violation”).  CP-symmetry states that the laws of physics should be the same if a particle were interchanged with its antiparticle (C symmetry), and left and right were swapped (P symmetry). The discovery of CP violation in 1964 in the decays of neutral kaons resulted in the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1980 for its discoverers James Cronin and Val Fitch.

CP-violation answers one of the Big Questions in physics. Why is there something rather than nothing? Or put another way - where is all the antimatter? The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter (thus keeping a balance and allowing something to come from nothing). But over time the matter and antimatter would destroy each other. That is not what happened; our universe is mostly matter.

CP-violation "explains" that the universe has a bias for matter. Riddle solved. But unfortunely no one could explain why CP-violation exists - until now.

We live in a galaxy that rotates. "The spin of our galaxy has a twisting effect on our local space that is a million times stronger than that caused by the spin of the Earth," according to Dr Mark Hadley, of the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick. Our galaxy creates a Frame Drag that gives a preferential spin to local space and so favors matter spinning one way instead of antimatter spinning "against the grain." This is a testable theory which could change physics if true.

Another recent study looked at thousands of galaxies and found a 7% difference in the number of galaxies that spin clockwise vs those that spin counter-clockwise. The was too large for chance according to the authors of the study. They said this proved that the universe itself is spinning and influencing everything inside it. If true then there may be a Frame Drag from the spinning universe twisting all of space and time.

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There are still deep mysteries left to solve about the nature of reality itself. 

I wonder if galaxies that spin opposite of ours would favor antimatter over matter?

Yuri's Night

"I saw for the first time the earth's shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. . . the feelings which filled me I can express with one word—joy."

— Yuri A. Gagarin

Today, April 12, is the 50 anniversary of mankind entering the space-age and according to MSNBC the "whole world" will be celebrating Yuri's Night. That was news to me and who the heck is Yuri? The answer is Yuri Gagarin (Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин), the first human in space by completing one orbit around the Earth.  After re-entry, Gagarin ejected from the craft and landed safely by parachute. Yuri Gagarin became a worldwide celebrity, touring widely abroad with visits to Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan, Finland, and the United Kingdom to promote the Soviet coup of being the first country to put a human in space with Vostok 1. [What? No US tour? :-) ]

In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Gagarin was ranked as the #6 most popular space hero, tied with Star Trek's fictional Capt. James T. Kirk.

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Coincidentally (?) April 12 is also the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle mission. In a way that's depressing. We've accomplished so little in space in 50 years (or even the past 30). The exploits of science fiction like 2001, A Space Odyssey or Star Trek seem so very far away.

Apophis

Apophis

Astronauts talking from the movie Deep Impact...
Mark: How do we set the nukes inside the comet and get out before they blow?
Orin Monash: We don't.
Andrea: Look on the bright side. We'll all have high schools named after us.

One of the open questions in science is, "Where are all the aliens?"  Given the immense number of stars and all the planets we are busily detecting, it just does not make sense that we are alone. There are four popular theories that I know of:

1. Stay hidden or else the militaristic aliens will get you
2. Intelligent machines eventually take over each planet
3. Periodic supernova sterilize regions of galaxies
4. Civilization is wiped out by a meteor impact

We know that Earth has been hit by meteors in the past - some of them were pretty big as in Arizona and the Yucatan. NASA takes seriously the chance that it will happen again by tracking the path of all known asteroids.

Presently all eyes are on asteroid, Apophis. In 2004, NASA scientists announced that Apophis, an asteroid larger than two football fields, could possibly smash into Earth in 2029. After taking more measurements, NASA decided that Apophis will pass by the Earth on April 13, 2029 at a distance of five earth widths. Very close! The moon is about 30 earth widths away.

This year Russian scientists have predicted that the 2029 fly-by will alter the orbit of Apophis in such a way that it will collide with Earth in 2036. NASA is not convinced. They put the odds of this happening at 1 in 250,000. About the same odds as a person being hit by lightening in a given year. (Though I have seen various odds for lightening 1/250K, 1/500K, 1/750K per year per person.)

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You can bet that when Apophis makes its next fly-by in late 2012 it will be extensively observed with ground-based telescopes and radars. If improved calculations put it on a destructive path, NASA will have 24 years to find a way to alter the asteroid’s orbit. Unlike the movies, blowing it up with nuclear bombs is not a good solution - this just changes the impact from one big rock to many smaller rocks. The best hope is to nudge it or push it into a safe orbit.

All things great and small

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

- Cecil Frances Alexander

Recently the Astronomy Picture of the Day website featured a classic science film from the 1960's that is now available on YouTube. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110201.html  The film is called Powers of 10 and zooms out at a steady pace to show the universe and then zooms in again down to the subatomic level. It's a wonderful thing to watch for a sense of scale.

When watching note the following.

1. It takes many powers of 10 beyond the solar system until the stars in the background begin to move. The empty space between stars is immense.

2. Once the stars do move, we quickly reach the level of galaxy and just another power of ten or so for nearby galaxies. The universe is dense with galaxies.

3. Since the 1960's science has expanded its view of the universe by quite a bit. Today the film could go on for a few more powers of 10 and show the amazing weblike filaments that galaxies form when viewed from far away.

4. On the small scale note the empty space from 10^-9 to 10^-13, from the electron shell to the inner nucleus. The nucleus is like our solar system, busy locally, then a LOT of nothing until we reach the next atom/solar system, at which point things appear crowded again.

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The film notes at the end that it traveled 40 orders of magnitude from quarks to the known universe. How curious that we fall in the middle with approximately 20 powers of 10 below us and above us.

What is Truth?

Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"
- John 18:38

Here is a clever quote that ties in with yesterday's topic of paradoxes vs knowing all things..

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened"

- Douglas Adam, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Over 2000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Euclid proposed five laws (Axioms) that could be used to prove "all" of geometry.

1. Any two points define a unique straight line
2. A straight line can be extended infinitely far
3. A center and a radius define a unique circle
4. All right angles are equal to one anothe.

These first four laws are simple and "obviously" true. The fifth law is not so simple:

5. The parallel postulate: If a straight line crosses two other straight lines and makes the same interior angles on the two lines, then the two lines are parallel, meaning they will never cross if infinitely extended.

These five Axioms worked very well as the basis for all of anceint Geometry. But the fifth law bothered mideval mathematicians. It is so wordy and complex compared to the others. Could it be simplified? Not really. Is it necessary? Yes, if you want to prove anything interesting. Could it be proved from the first four laws. No.

One method of proof is called "Proof by Contradiction". Geometrists said, suppose law 5 is false and the two lines do meet. Does this result in something impossible or inconsistent? To their surprise, it was consistent and created a stranger and more bizzare universe of mathematics. Today we call this non-Euclidean Geometry. The easiest example is a sphere or globe. The equator crosses all longitude lines at right angles so longitudes are "parallel" but contrary to Axiom 5 they meet at the north and south poles.

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It turns out that the fifth law is only true on perfectly flat surfaces and is independent of the first four laws which are "universally" true. So if asked if the parallel postulate is "true" the answer is, "it depends". This is an instance of a statement which can be true or false - both modes describes a different reality, both cases equally "real".

The Universe is HUGE

When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here." - The Total Perspective Vortex from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy



Click for larger image

The image above might look like the night sky but it's much, much bigger. The 250 billion stars of our Milky Way Galaxy fall along the blue fuzzy bar in this computer plot. The white dots in this image are not stars, they are galaxies. Each of the 1.6 million white dots represents a known galaxy, each with hundreds of billions of stars. The total number of stars visible to us exceed 70 sextillion (7 x 10²² ).

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For me it is hard to see a picture like this and assume that we are alone. That all this exists and we are the only life amongst 70 sextillion stars?

Truth is stranger than fiction

“Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one's own being” - Carl Jung

Here are two pictures from one of my favorite websites, Astronomy Picture of the Day. What is it about orbiting particles that they flatten out and form a disk? Consider the solar system - the planets, asteroids, and most comets all lie in the same flat plane aligned with the equator of the sun. Why not spin about the sun at all angles? Two other examples are easier to visualize. The rings of Saturn are very thin as show in this photo. Note also the cool shadow of the rings on the planet.

Here's a photo of a distant galaxy that we see exactly on edge instead of the typical view from above with spirals. Observe how thin the galaxy is with a thin ribbon of bright stars.

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In college I studied mathematics up to a Doctoral Candidate level. (I did not complete a thesis, though I tried twice over two years. Both times another university disproved what I was asked to prove by my advisor.)  And yet the hardest "math" classes I attended were physics classes. One class used tensor (i.e. 3-D) calculus to study the curvature of space about black holes. Reality can get very weird when gravity and spinning are combined.

Last night I saw a film clip of the famous physicist, Richard Feynman, who was asked "why" magnets push on each other. He said he could not explain it unless you already had a solid grounding of physics. Not because he was a poor teacher but because the magnetic force is so fundamentally an aspect of the universe that there was nothing to compare it to as an example. One could compare it to the push/pull of the electrical force but physicists now know that magnets and electricity are the same force so this is merely comparing magnets to itself. He could over-simplify and say the force was like rubber bands. But then if you were to ask him why rubber bands snap back he'd have to admit that, at the lowest level, it was the electrical force behind the pull so we're back to explaining in circles.

This reminds me of the conundrum, how do you explain the taste of salt? What can you compare it to? 

Often we paint Science and Religion as opposites but as Feynman observed, science is built upon basic principles, statements of reality that must be accepted in order to work at higher levels of reality. One could think of these principles as a type of "faith". For example, do we really know that quarks exist? By theory they can never be observed in isolation only through their interaction. How different is this from Faith when defined as belief in something unseen (but felt)? Believers will say they have felt the interaction of God.

I was going to appease scientists by saying that Science differs from Religion in that the fundamental principles change over time as we learn more about reality through experiments and observations. We no longer believe that everything is made of earth, fire, air and water. We've moved from a particle theory of atoms to wave-particle duality. There is some evidence that the physical constants of the universe may not be constant after all but change over time or space. Scientists see themselves as willing to change theories when presented with the "facts".

But what is truth? Science, like Religion, can be influenced by majority opinions - is global warming real? If real is it man made? Scientists argue over this just like theologians with conflicting evidence and with as much venom and anger and emotions. Is string theory real? Is the universe 11 dimensions? What exactly is gravity? We don't really know how the universe works at its lowest levels but one can pick a theory and choose to believe it. Much like picking a Church to follow with its own unique rules and explanations for reality.

I'm ready for my closeup

“Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.” - Les Brown

On Nov 4th NASA's Deep Impact space probe visited the nucleus of   comet Hartley 2. This was the 5th time in history a probe has visited a comet.

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This photo was taken at a distance of 700 kilometres of a comet which is only 1.5 kilometres across. This is equivalent to photographing a person from over a half mile away. That quite a telephoto lens!

Supernova

"Space: the final frontier" - Star Trek

Check out this YouTube clip of a supernova filmed by the Hubble Space telescope over a period of two years. http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/09/can_explosions_move_faster_tha.php

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When I look at this I think, "it must be an artist rendering or a computer simulation." But we really have come a long way in our ability to see astronomical events.

P.S.

Happy Anniversary to my wonderful wife!

Blazing Star

Ev'ry man, has a flaming star
A flaming star, over his shoulder
And when a man, sees his flaming star
He knows his time, his time has come- Elvis, lyrics to Flaming Star

Here's an image that amazes me. A neutron star moving so fast it creates a shockwave in the interstellar gas. Not something I want to see over my shoulder or anywhere near our solar system.

From Billion-Year Old "Black Widow" Pulsar Ripping Through Milky Way at 1 Million KPH,

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I'm reminded that reality can be stranger than fiction. The universe has some very weird celestial object never imagined by the creators of Star Trek or Star Wars. Here's another oddity from DailyGalaxy.com

This faint pinwheel spiral is a rare binary star system called LL Pegasi. The spiral is a "pre-planetary nebula" which is being stirred up by partner star.

Distant planets observed

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

It seems not so very long ago that astronomers were only able to deduce the existence of planets around other stars by observing wobbles in the star's motion. But telescope technology has improved and we are now starting to see extra-solar planets. Here is the first photo of a distant planet, 500 light-years away, photographed in 2008 but only recently confirmed.

The star pictured is similar in size to the sun but a million times younger, just a few million years old instead of Sol's 5 billion. The planet (upper-left) is about 8 times the size of Jupiter and still glowing hot from creation.

Odd Items in Space

For here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the world Planet Earth is blue
- lryics from David Bowie’s Ground Control to “Major Tom”

New Scientist reports that the next Space Shuttle mission will carry a piece of the apple tree that Newton sat under when an apple on the head led to a theory of gravity. The wood chip is on loan from the Royal Society of London which is celebrating its 350th anniversary of dedication to science.

Other unusual objects that have flown into space include:

1. Metal shielding on the Mars rovers made from World Trade Center scrap after 9/11

2. A 400 year-old lead tag bearing “Yames Towne” to honor the founding of the Jamestown colony in the US. The space shuttle Atlantis flew the tag across the Atlantic in a matter of minutes in low-earth orbit; compared to the many months the original voyage took.

3. When Apollo 11’s Eagle landed on the moon, it carried a piece of wood and cloth from the original Wright brother’s plane.

4. The ashes of the man who discovered Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, are now flying to Pluto aboard NASA's New Horizons probe and should arrive in 2015.

5. Voyager 1 and 2 have both flown past the planets and out of the solar system. Each carries a record of voices from around the world (and instructions to aliens on how to play the record).

6. Movie items in space include Buzz Lightyear on the space station and Luke Skywalker's lightsaber for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.

7. Apollo 15 took several hundred collector stamps and stamped them “cancelled” on the moon. This caused a furor over who would profit from selling them and NASA had to change the rules on what was allowed in space.

Pluto discover, Clyde Tombaugh, is not the only person with his ashes in space.
Others include:

Timothy Leary, “Tune in, Turn on, Drop Out” proponent of LSD (1997 orbit)

Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek (1997 orbit)
(the ashes of his wife, Majel Barrett, who played “Nurse Chapel “ and the voice of all Star Trek computers, will fly into deep space in 2012 alongside additional ashes from Gene.)

Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, co-discover of the Shoemaker comet that crashed in Jupiter (1999 moon probe)

James Doohan, “Scotty” of Star Trek (2007 suborbital). Doohan will also accompany the Roddenberry’s on the 2012 deep space probe.

Each year a company called Space Services (formerly Celestis) launches a “symbolic portion” of ashes of anyone for a fee.
$ 700 for a rocket that returns to Earth
$2,500 for orbit
$10,000 for the moon starting in 2011
$12,500 aboard a deep space probe

Bottom Line

The New Scientist space item gallery includes this interesting tidbit:

Madalyn Murray O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, once “the most hated women in America” for her successful lawsuit to stop school prayer, also sued NASA in 1970 after the Apollo 8 crew read verses from the Book of Genesis while in space. She argued that government employees should not promote religious ideas. The Supreme Court threw the case out on the grounds that it had no jurisdiction in outer space.