the cause of northern lights
Geomagnetic storms are found to be the cause of the northern lights.
On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or aurora borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky.
A team led by University of California, Los Angeles, scientist Vassilis Angelopoulos confirmed that the observed storm about 80,000 miles from Earth was triggered by a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. Every so often, the Earth’s magnetic field lines are stretched like rubber bands by solar energy, snap, are thrown back to Earth and reconnect, in effect creating a short circuit.
Plutoids
Pluto was downgraded from a planet to a plutoid not long ago and now the third such object has been named Makemake (pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh).
Pluto, Makemake and a third object — dubbed Eris — are all classified as plutoids, as well as dwarf planets. The solar system’s largest asteroid Ceres is also a dwarf planet, but not in the plutoid class because its orbit, which falls in the belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, is smaller than that of the more distant Neptune.
Originally designated 2005 FY9, the object was nicknamed “Easterbunny” by its discoverers before officially being named Makemake after the Polynesian creator of humanity and the god of fertility, the IAU said.
“We consider the naming of objects in the solar system very carefully,” said Brown.
Discovering Life on Mars: Bad News?
Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University thinks so:
Discovering traces of life on Mars would be of tremendous scientific significance: the first sign of extraterrestrial life ever detected. Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we’re not entirely alone in this vast, cold cosmos.
They shouldn’t. To the contrary, if we discovered traces of some simple extinct life form – a bacterium, some algae – it would be bad news. If we found fossils of something even more advanced, like the skeleton of a small mammal, it would be horrible news. The more complex the life we found, the more depressing. Scientifically interesting, yes, but dire news for the future of the human race.
Here’s the basic argument: There is a conspicuous silence “out there,” and this suggests that there is a “Great Filter” (Robin Hanson’s term and idea). This means that the filter may lie in our past (as a highly improbable step in the early development of life) or in our future (as a highly improbable leap needed for a civilization to populate the galaxy and survive extinction. Bostrom’s argument holds that finding evidence of even simple life on Mars would tend to place the GF in out future. And, as he also points out, there may be filters in our past and future.
I have to say that I would still be excited and pleased to hear that life–simple or complex–is or was present on Mars. If we decide to see everything in terms of our potential survival as a species, who needs the threat of a Filter to see our prospects as slim? In many ways I think we have the most to fear from our own egos–our sense of dominion over a galaxy we can’t even reach. News of other life elsewhere may itself be a step that leads to just the sort of curiosity we need to get through the next Great Filter.
the earth sounds like squirrels
Earth emits an ear-piercing series of chirps and whistles that could be heard by any aliens who might be listening, astronomers have discovered.
Cat Under Glass
No animals were harmed in the making of this image: Timmy voluntarily explored a glass dome that was lying on its side on a table. He didn’t get stuck and seemed delighted to be carried around in it. I think he thought it was a new kind of paper sack, and he always gets into bags and boxes when the opportunity arises. We have now decided that his middle name should be Laika.
Walken in Space
Alien Encounter
Yesterday Our Man on the Road, Cooper Renner, continued his southern California odyssey: from the Palm Springs area to San Diego by way of the city of Temecula.
During Jon’s and my wandering-in-the-desert year, we drove a 1966 Chevy Impala we called the Desertmobile. It was in Temecula that we were stopped by a state trooper who asked whether we had aliens in the trunk.
poop in space
In case you’ve been wondering how astronauts shit. For a more recent account, read this, but really, wouldn’t you rather crap in a bag taped to your ass?
Robot Footprint on Mars
communication by neutrino
The SETI project scans the skies for radio signals from intelligent life elsewhere. Perhaps we are looking for the wrong technology. The United States is building a neutrino detector in Antarctica called IceCube to detect naturally occurring neutrinos. Neutrinos pass easily through most matter and are relatively noise free, allowing for the ability to send a very clean signal.
The beauty of directed beams of neutrinos at the energy levels considered here is that their signal would clearly signal the presence of an extraterrestrial civilization, there being no known natural mechanism for making neutrinos in only this energy range. The authors estimate that properly encoded data could accumulate at a rate of roughly 1000 pages per year. If any civilizations have taken this course and are actively transmitting to us, we can sit back and wait for the result, for the neutrino detectors coming online should soon discover their signatures.
See also Wired, Physics World.
Dream
Last night I dreamed I was watching a a small plane writing with white smoke on a blue sky. What was it writing?
Fuck, man~how’s it going?
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
The extraterrestrial is my brother
The Catholic church has allowed for belief in extraterrestrials and John Ratzinger is the creepiest pope ever.
sit on your ass for $5k a month
NASA is studying the effects of lying in bed for 90 days in order to understand the effects of zero gravity on astronauts during long stays in space.
The most photogenic places on earth
When astronauts take pictures of the planet, four places get photographed the most: the Bahamas off the coast of Florida, the Himalayas of Nepal, north of India, the Canadian and U.S. Rockies, and the Peruvian and Chilean coasts in South America.
Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job?
How did the missile make a right angle turn after entering the exhaust port? How could a missile shot in the vacuum of space–that would tend to keep going in the same direction as it was released, according to the laws of physics–be *sucked* into an *exhaust* pipe? “Exhaust” means to exhale or blow out… Wouldn’t the missiles have been blown awry of their target rather than sucked in? If it had been an intake pipe, then the “bending” path of the missiles could be plausible. Why have these discrepancies never been investigated, let alone explained?
i have a bum jedi outfit
If you don’t laugh at Dave Hil: Jedi Master, then I regret to inform you that you are either a defective person or bitter that you can’t attend a local Jedi school.
More on the economics of space
I posted about the implications of trading with aliens and Paul Krugman on interstellar trade. Here’s more on the economies of space:
Money has no value in space. When seven astronauts are living together in a cramped atmosphere the psychology of small isolated groups kicks in. Whoever has squirreled away the most M&Ms, tortillas or coffee has the most bargaining power. Those are items that are most prized at the end of a mission if someone runs short in their own stash. Astronauts’ meals are color coded on shuttle missions — and reliable sources tell ABC News some astronauts aren’t above switching the colored dots on their dehydrated meals if they have run out of say, lasagna, on day six and have way too much creamed spinach left.
cows in space
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have for the first time found the telltale signature of methane, an organic molecule, in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.
Arthur Clarke’s 2001 Diary
In memorial of Arthur Clarke at his passing, Coudal linked to the diary Clarke kept while working on 2001: A Space Odyssey with Stanley Kubrick.
After various false starts and twelve-hour talkathons, by early May 1964 Stanley agreed that “The Sentinel” would provide good story material. But our first concept, and it is hard now for me to focus on such an idea, though it would have been perfectly viable — involved working up to the discovery of an extraterrestrial artifact as the climax, not the beginning, of the story. Before that, we would have a series of incidents or adventures devoted to the exploration of the Moon and Planets. For this Mark I version, our private title (never of course intended for public use) was “How the Solar System Was Won.”
Here are some of Clarke’s aphorisms, known as his Three Laws:
1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. Corollary: When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2) The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to venture beyond them into the impossible.
3) Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Update: A few quotes from the diary:
October 17. Stanley has invented the wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease.
December 21. Much of afternoon spent by Stanley planning his Academy Award campaign for Dr. Strangelove. I get back to the Chelsea to find a note from Allen Ginsberg asking me to join him and William Burroughs at the bar downstairs. Do so thankfully in search of inspiration.
May 2. Strange and encouraging how much of the material I thought I’d abandoned fits in perfectly after all.
Interstellar Trade
I posted about the implications of trading with aliens a few weeks ago. Here’s Paul Krugman on the subject in 1978.
This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed with the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.
(links to a pdf)
moon museum
Now I find out there was already an entire Moon Museum, with drawings by six leading contemporary artists of the day: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, Forrest “Frosty” Myers, Claes Oldenburg, and John Chamberlain. The Moon Museum was supposedly installed on the moon in 1969 as part of the Apollo 12 mission. I say supposedly, because NASA has no official record of it; according to Frosty Myers, the artist who initiated the project, the Moon Museum was secretly installed on a hatch on a leg of the Intrepid landing module with the help of an unnamed engineer at the Grumman Corporation after attempts to move the project forward through NASA’s official channels were unsuccessful.
Time Lapsed Total Lunar Eclipse - February 20, 2008
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=IVkkCVh5t0E[/youtube]
Microsoft WorldWide Telescope
Rex, bless his soul, was nice enough to post about an incredible video on new Microsoft technology which will change the way we view the universe: imagine Google Earth for space. There is no software released yet but there is a website.
You are required to watch the video. It’s the rules.
transcripts from the national press club presentation
For those who would rather read the transcripts from the video I posted this weekend, I found the page. You can read each report in pdf format at your leisure. Here’s a brief excerpt from James Penniston, TSgt. USAF Ret., who was stationed at RAF Bentwaters.
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