Space & Tech News

[waistingmytime]

2017 - The Year @NASA (Update)​

2017: A year of groundbreaking discoveries and record-setting exploration at NASA. The Moon became a focal point for the agency. NASA brought us unique coverage of the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in the U.S. in 99 years, announced the most Earth-size planets ever found in the habitable zone of a star outside our solar system, and more..

 

[W!nston]

Studies find evidence of a fourth dimension

Studies find evidence of a fourth dimension
By Mike Wehner, BGR January 10, 2018

We live in a three-dimensional reality. Because of that, it’s pretty hard to imagine what a four-dimensional reality might be like, but that isn’t stopping physicists from trying to figure it out. A pair of new research papers were just published in the journal Nature that explore the possibilities of a fourth dimension and, as difficult as any of this may be to comprehend, it seems the scientists are on to something.

The papers, which focused on two very different experimental approaches to detecting a fourth dimension, arrived at similar conclusions. But before we dive in to what the experiments attempted to prove, you have to have at least a vague understanding of what the research team was looking for. Buckle up, this is going to get weird.

Imagine a transparent cube, like the kind you used to scribble in your math notebook when you were bored in high school. Any one line of that cube exists in a single dimension. You can go back and forth and that’s it. Once it reaches a corner and connects to a second line, that’s the second dimension. Now you can go back and forth and up and down, which is exponentially more freedom than you had previously. When that line reaches another corner that exists perpendicular to it — giving the object what we think of as depth — now you’re playing with three spatial dimensions.

Our world exists in three spatial dimensions (as well as the dimension of time, but that’s not something you can see). What these newest studies are looking for is the effects of a fourth spatial dimension that can be detected within our three-dimensional world. We’d have no idea what it looks like or what kind of a reality a fourth dimension would offer, but if it does exist in the hidden background of our three-dimensional existence, science might be able to prove it’s there.

In one of the experiments, scientists studied the behavior of light particles moving through specially made glass that bounces light back and forth between its edges. By simulating the effects of an electrical charge via physical input, the team observed how the light behaved, watching for irregularities that could only be made possible if a fourth dimension was working behind the scenes.

The other experiment used supercooled atoms held in place on a grid made of lasers. Scientists call this setup a “charge pump,” and they use it test the flow of an electrical charge while monitoring how the atoms respond.

Both of the experiments yielded results that suggest that a fourth dimension really is all around us, even if we can’t see it. Science isn’t any closer to tapping into this hidden dimension, but knowing that it’s there is an important step toward painting a more complete picture of physics, and you can bet these won’t be the last experiments that toy with the idea.

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Two dimensional life forms would be unaware of our existence. Bacteria is a one example of that even though they are not truly 2 dimensional and add to that their microscopic size and the analogy weakens even further but it's just a general comparison not an exact one.

The concept of a fourth physical dimension is a mind-fuck to me so I'm happy there are those who can design ways to detect such a thing. I'll be happy to read about whatever it is they find.

Good job guys. Keep up the good work and keep us posted along the way.

:cheers:

 

[W!nston]

Propellantless propulsion system could keep satellites in orbit, reduce space junk
NewAtlas | By David Szondy | January 20, 2018

This system could be useful for satellites orbiting the Earth such as the Sentinel-1​

One of the main factors limiting the life of satellites is how much propellant they can carry to execute orbital corrections. Now scientists in Spain have come up with a propellantless propulsion system that also doubles as an electric generator. Using the Earth's magnetic field interacting with a 2-km long aluminum tether, the system could be used to dispose of space debris and boost the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS).

The recipient of two Spanish patents, the new propulsion system developed at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid is based on the principle of Lorentz drag. That is, using a long conducting tether that is lowered from a satellite and builds up an electrical potential as it passes through the Earth's magnetic field. Put simply, what this does is allow the satellite to convert the spacecraft's orbital momentum into electricity, causing it to lose altitude as its orbit decays. On the other hand, if electricity is pumped into the tether, this generates thrust, causing the satellite to increase in altitude.

The idea isn't a new one. In fact, variants of it have been tested over the past decades, but its application has been limited because the tethers have been complex, expensive, and very prone to contamination even in the vacuum of space. Where the new tether differs in that it consists of an aluminum tape only a few centimeters wide featur what is called a "low work" coating, which has enhanced electron emission properties when exposed to sunlight or heat.

"Space tethers have been investigated for decades and have flown in more than twenty space missions," says Claudio Bombardelli, from the UPM Space Dynamic research group and one of the inventors. "Our contribution to this technology comes from a strikingly simple design in which two lightweight aluminum tape deployed from a satellite without any active electron emitter are able to supply power and/or propulsion to a spacecraft. Besides, to make things more efficient, we thought about exploiting the photoelectric effect of the tapes exposed to sunlight. We believe that this is an extremely important simplification which can boost tether technology."

The researchers see the technology as having a number of applications. Aside from boosting the orbits of satellites and even the ISS, it could also be used as a way of deorbiting satellites when they reach the end of their service lives, or as an onboard power source. They are currently working on extending the existing patents into the European area and building small-scale prototypes.

"The biggest challenge is its manufacturing because the tether should gather very specific optical and electron emission properties," says Gonzalo Sánchez Arriaga, Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Bioengineering and Aerospace Engineering Department at UC3M. "We have been awarded very recently a small research grant by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain to investigate promising materials. We are also coordinating an international consortium and submitted a FET-OPEN R&D proposal to the European Commission. The FET-OPEN project would be foundational because it considers the manufacturing and characterization of the first low work function tether and the development of a deorbit kit based on this technology to be tested on a future space mission. If funded, it would be a stepping stone to the future of low-work-function tethers in space."

The inventors say that they have also contacts ESA, experts in the United States and Japan, as well as the Spanish company SENER about the new technology.

The video below discusses the new space tether.

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This could be big. One interesting use mentioned in the article is how it could be used to help reduce space junk.

 

[W!nston]

Spacex test fires its falcon heavy rocket for the first time

SPACEX TEST FIRES ITS FALCON HEAVY ROCKET FOR THE FIRST TIME
wired dot com | By Obin Seemangal | 01.24.1801:02 PM

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When it launches, the Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful lift vehicle in the world.SPACEX

THE LONG-AWAITED FALCON Heavy rocket roared to life on Wednesday at 12:30 pm Eastern, as SpaceX fired up the 27 Merlin engines that power the triple-booster rocket at Kennedy Space Center. Perched atop what CEO Elon Musk claims will be the most powerful lift vehicle in the world is the billionaire’s Tesla Roadster, which will launch toward a Mars elliptical orbit on the Falcon Heavy’s upcoming maiden flight.

The firing lasted a whopping 12 seconds, creating a mountain range of exhaust plumes that surrounded the facility and rattled the space coast with over 5 million pounds of thrust power. A loud rumbling lasted most of the firing, capped by a giant boom.

SpaceX rolled out the Falcon Heavy to Launch Complex 39A earlier this month in advance of the test fire, amidst reports that SpaceX’s previous satellite delivery, Zuma, may have not made it to orbit. (The Air Force has since confirmed that the company is not responsible.) The Falcon Heavy remained at 39A over the last two weeks, as SpaceX planned and then pushed back the test, day by day.

First, sensors picked up an issue with ground equipment during a dress rehearsal. Then further delays pushed the static fire to January 19, but SpaceX competitor ULA first had to launch a mission for the Air Force from a nearby pad at Cape Canaveral. When that launch was scrubbed, SpaceX was pushed and then delayed again due to the government shutdown. No launch providers can operate at the Cape without personnel and assistance from the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing—who finally returned to work after after President Trump signed a bill on Monday ending the government shutdown. Soon after, sources confirmed that SpaceX would run a full wet dress rehearsal on Wednesday at pad 39A followed by a static fire of the Falcon Heavy.

Launch Complex 39A has a legacy of hosting the world’s most powerful rockets—at least the most powerful of their eras. The Saturn V was launched from the pad with the crew of Apollo 11, and later would host flights of the Space Shuttle program. But because previous vehicles were primarily test-fired elsewhere, Cape Canaveral has never seen a hold-down fire as powerful as the one conducted with Falcon Heavy.

The engine test was contained to pad 39A’s flame trench, built to withstand the acoustics, heat, and vibration produced by the rocket. (SpaceX compared the Falcon Heavy’s power to that of 18 Boeing 747s taking off at the same time.) Musk claims that the world’s next-most powerful rocket, the United Launch Alliance Delta-4 Heavy, is dwarfed by the Falcon Heavy’s capability by a “factor of two,” and SpaceX advertises as much on their website. According to ULA, the Delta-4 Heavy can generate up to 2.13 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

Musk has been publicizing the Falcon Heavy since 2011, when he unveiled plans for the rocket at a press conference in Washington, DC, floating the idea that SpaceX could launch as soon as 2013. But development delays, a failure of the Falcon 9 during a NASA launch in 2015, and the disaster at Pad 40 in September 2016 set the company’s plans back.

After leasing what Musk calls the “Times Square” of launch pads, SpaceX built a large hangar at the base of Launch Complex 39A to house its boosters and began manufacturing a new strongback—the device that transports, erects, and launches rockets—that could manage the 230-foot-tall Falcon Heavy. The facility also required upgrades to electrical systems and the water-based sound suppression system to accommodate the enormous vibration created by a heavy-lift vehicle.

Last summer, at the ISS R&D conference in Washington, Musk attempted to manage expectations for the Falcon Heavy’s maiden flight, which is planned before the end of the month. Simply not destroying Pad 39A would be a “win” for SpaceX, he said, let alone making it to orbit. Even just firing the Falcon Heavy’s 27 engines was going to be complex despite its makeup of proven hardware. “It actually ended up being way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought,” Musk said. “At first it sounds real easy. You just stick two first stages on as strap-on boosters. How hard can that be? But then everything changes.”

The Falcon Heavy demo vehicle is comprised of a brand-new central core booster and two previously flown Falcon 9 boosters. About eight minutes after the rocket’s anticipated liftoff from pad 39A, if all goes according to plan, SpaceX hopes to fly back the core booster to Of Course I Still Love You, a robotic landing ship parked in the Atlantic ocean. The two side boosters will be flown back almost simultaneously to Cape Canaveral for touchdowns at Landing Zone 1 and the newly completed Landing Zone 2. The event will be a reminder of the Space Shuttle era when loud back-to-back sonic booms jolted Cape Canaveral during both launch and landing.

Following what SpaceX hopes will be a successful demonstration of the Falcon Heavy, the company has four listed missions flying atop the rocket on its manifest. Three are relatively routine satellite deliveries that could have been launched on the ESA’s Ariane-5 and the ULA Delta Heavy. And one the Air Force notably decided to take a risk on by purchasing a still-untested Falcon Heavy for their STP-2 satellite bundle launch. The Planetary Society, founded by Carl Sagan and now headed by Bill Nye, will fly its Lightsail 2 spacecraft as a secondary payload on the Air Force’s mission. How will a Falcon Heavy mission differ from one flown on a Falcon 9? Far heavier payloads going to geostationary orbit––over 22,000 miles above Earth’s surface—and beyond. The Falcon Heavy can lift 50,000 pounds to that destination, 37,000 to Mars, and a little under 8,000 to Pluto according to SpaceX.

“While Falcon 9 can accomplish the vast majority of space industry missions, Falcon Heavy will round out all the possibilities for launching spacecraft into LEO, GTO, and beyond—including planetary exploration like Europa or Mars,” explains Phil Larson, a former White House and SpaceX communications official. “It will give NASA and the Pentagon more options for accomplishing their missions for less, and will open up the possibilities for missions that previously were thought unachievable.” That is, if it can launch at all.

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[W!nston]

Are We Living Inside A Black Hole?

Are We Living In A Black Hole?
National Geographic | By Michael Finkel | February 19, 2014

A surprising spiral shape in the nearby active galaxy NGC 1433, shown above, indicates material flowing in to fuel a black hole. A jet of material flowing away from the black hole has also been observed.​

Let's rewind the clock. Before humans existed, before Earth formed, before the sun ignited, before galaxies arose, before light could even shine, there was the Big Bang. This happened 13.8 billion years ago.

But what about before that? Many physicists say there is no before that. Time began ticking, they insist, at the instant of the Big Bang, and pondering anything earlier isn't in the realm of science. We'll never understand what pre-Big Bang reality was like, or what it was formed of, or why it exploded to create our universe. Such notions are beyond human understanding.

But a few unconventional scientists disagree. These physicists theorize that, a moment before the Big Bang, all the mass and energy of the nascent universe was compacted into an incredibly dense—yet finite—speck. Let's call it the seed of a new universe. (See also: "Origins of the Universe.")

This seed is thought to have been almost unimaginably tiny, possibly trillions of times smaller than any particle humans have been able to observe. And yet it's a particle that can spark the production of every other particle, not to mention every galaxy, solar system, planet, and person.

If you really want to call something the God particle, this seed seems an ideal fit.

So how is such a seed created? One idea, bandied about for several years—notably by Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven—is that the seed of our universe was forged in the ultimate kiln, likely the most extreme environment in all of nature: inside a black hole. (See "Star Eater" in this month's National Geographic magazine.)

Multiverses Multiply

It's important to know, before we go further, that over the last couple of decades, many theoretical physicists have come to believe that our universe is not the only one. Instead, we may be part of the multiverse, an immense array of separate universes, each its own shining orb in the true night sky.

How, or even if, one universe is linked to another is a source of much debate, all of it highly speculative and, as of now, completely unprovable. But one compelling idea is that the seed of a universe is similar to the seed of a plant: It's a chunk of essential material, tightly compressed, hidden inside a protective shell.

This precisely describes what is created inside a black hole. Black holes are the corpses of giant stars. When such a star runs out of fuel, its core collapses inward. Gravity pulls everything into an increasingly fierce grip. Temperatures reach 100 billion degrees. Atoms are smashed. Electrons are shredded. Those pieces are further crumpled.

The star, by this point, has turned into a black hole, which means that its gravitational pull is so severe that not even a beam of light can escape. The boundary between the interior and exterior of a black hole is called the event horizon. Enormous black holes, some of them millions of times more massive than the sun, have been discovered at the center of nearly every galaxy, including our own Milky Way.

Bottomless Questions

If you use Einstein's theories to determine what occurs at the bottom of a black hole, you'll calculate a spot that is infinitely dense and infinitely small: a hypothetical concept called a singularity. But infinities aren't typically found in nature. The disconnect lies with Einstein's theories, which provide wonderful calculations for most of the cosmos, but tend to break down in the face of enormous forces, such as those inside a black hole—or present at the birth of our universe.

Physicists like Dr. Poplawski say that the matter inside a black hole does reach a point where it can be crushed no further. This "seed" might be incredibly tiny, with the weight of a billion suns, but unlike a singularity, it is real.

The compacting process halts, according to Dr. Poplawski, because black holes spin. They spin extremely rapidly, possibly close to the speed of light. And this spin endows the compacted seed with a huge amount of torsion. It's not just small and heavy; it's also twisted and compressed, like one of those jokey spring-loaded snakes in a can.

Which can suddenly unspring, with a bang. Make that a Big Bang—or what Dr. Poplawski prefers to call "the big bounce."

It's possible, in other words, that a black hole is a conduit—a "one-way door," says Dr. Poplawski—between two universes. This means that if you tumble into the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, it's conceivable that you (or at least the shredded particles that were once you) will end up in another universe. This other universe isn't inside ours, adds Dr. Poplawski; the hole is merely the link, like a shared root that connects two aspen trees.

And what about all of us, here in our own universe? We might be the product of another, older universe. Call it our mother universe. The seed this mother universe forged inside a black hole may have had its big bounce 13.8 billion years ago, and even though our universe has been rapidly expanding ever since, we could still be hidden behind a black hole's event horizon.

 

[W!nston]

Are We Living in a Hologram?

Are We Living in a Hologram?
Space,com | By Paul Sutter, Astrophysicist | January 29, 2018 07:17am ET

In the late 1990s, theoretical physicists uncovered a remarkable connection between two seemingly unrelated concepts in theoretical physics. That connection is almost inscrutably technical, but it might have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of gravity and even the universe.

To illustrate this connection, we're going to start at — of all places — a black hole. Researchers have found that when a single bit of information enters a black hole, its surface area increases by a very precise amount: the square of the Planck length (equal to an incredibly small 1.6 x 10^-35 meters on a side).

At first blush, it may not seem all that interesting that a black hole gets larger when matter or energy falls into it, but the surprise here is that it's the surface area, not the volume, that grows in direct proportion to the infalling information, which is totally unlike most other known object in the universe. For most objects that we're familiar with, if it "consumes" one bit of information, its volume will grow by one unit, and its surface area by a only a fraction. But with black holes, the situation is reversed. It's like that information isn't inside the black hole, but instead stuck to its surface.

Thus, a black hole, a fully three-dimensional object in our three-dimensional universe, can be completely represented by just its two-dimensional surface. And that's how holograms work.

A black hol-ogram

A hologram is a representation of a system using fewer dimensions that can still pack in all the information from the original system. For example, we live in three (spatial) dimensions. When you're posing for a selfie, the camera records a two-dimensional representation of your face, but it doesn't capture all the information; when you later examine your handiwork and choose your filter, you can't, for example, see the back of your head, no matter how you rotate the picture.

Recording a hologram would preserve all that information. Even though it's a two-dimensional representation, you would still be able to examine it from all three dimensional angles.

Describing a black hole as a hologram might provide a solution to the so-called black-hole information paradox, the puzzle of where the information goes when matter is consumed by a black hole. But that's the subject of another article. The black-hole-as-hologram concept is also a good example to keep in your head as we make the big jump — to consider the entire universe.

Living on the boundary

The correspondence between the seemingly unrelated branches of physics that I teased at the beginning of this piece is another application of holographic techniques and goes by the incredibly dense name of AdS-CFT.

The AdS stands for "anti-de Sitter," a particular solution of Einstein's general relativity that describes a completely empty universe with a negative spatial curvature. It's a pretty boring universe: It contains no matter or energy, and parallel lines eventually diverge due to the underlying geometry. While it may not describe the universe we live in, it is at least some sort of universe, so that's a start — and this somewhat bland model of the universe has the necessary mathematical properties to make the connections theorists needed.

The other side of the correspondence is a framework called conformal field theory. Theoretical physics is lousy with field theories; they're the hammers that scientists use to pound a lot of quantum nails, used to describe three of the four forces of nature. Electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force all have field-theory descriptions, and in the past half century, we've had a lot of practice in using them.

Now that we've gotten the definitions out of the way, let's dig in to why this connection is so important.

Say you're trying to solve a really hard problem, like quantum gravity, using string theory, which is an attempt to explain all the fundamental forces and particles in the universe in terms of tiny vibrating strings. It's such a hard problem, in fact, that nobody has found a solution for it despite trying for decades. The AdS-CFT correspondence tells us that it might be possible to use a holographic technique to save us a world of headaches.

Instead of trying to puzzle out quantum gravity in our three-dimensional universe, AdS-CFT allows us to switch to an equivalent problem at the boundary of the universe, which is a) only two dimensions, and b) doesn't contain gravity.

That's right: There's no gravity on the boundary. The nearly impossible-to-crack mathematics of string theory get replaced with a set of merely insanely difficult field-theory equations. Then, you can find a solution to your problems there, without any pesky gravity getting in the way, and transport your solution back into the normal three-dimensional universe and make predictions.

Not so fast on that shortcut

This sounds like a wonderful idea, a way to cheat nature by cirventing gravitational machinations. And it just might turn out to be a brilliant way to "solve" quantum gravity. But as of right now, there are a few catches. For one, we don't live in an anti-de Sitter universe. Our universe is full of matter, radiation and dark energy, and has almost perfectly flat geometry. Is there a similar correspondence that works in our real universe? Perhaps, and theorists are working hard to find it.

Second, the "boundary" taken for the AdS-CFT correspondence is the cosmological horizon — the limit of what we can see in our observable universe. That would be fine, except that we live in a dynamic space-time with an ever-growing cosmos, and that boundary is always changing — something that's not handled very well in current theories.

Lastly, when you make the jump from a fully described anti-de Sitter universe to a simpler boundary model where conformal field theory applies, the new sets of equations are solvable only in principle. They can still be — and frequently are — fantastically, perniciously, frighteningly, heartbreakingly difficult to solve. So just because you've short-circuited gravity doesn't mean you're out of the weeds yet.

Living in a hologram

So do we live in a hologram? Even if the AdS-CFT link proved fruitful for tackling quantum gravity, if we were able to find a way to navigate the challenges and make this technique relevant for the universe we live in, it doesn't mean that we actually live in a hologram. It's a mistake to make the jump from "AdS-CFT provides a handy way to solve gravitational problems" to "our universe with gravity in three dimensions is an illusion, and we really live in a two-dimensional boundary with no gravity."

A mathematical contrivance, as handy as it may be, doesn't necessarily dictate our views of the fundamental nature of reality. If holographic principles are useful for solving problems, it doesn't necessarily mean that we live in a hologram. And even if we did live in a hologram, we wouldn't necessarily be able to tell the difference anyway.

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I think we do live inside a black hole. It would explain a lot of things. The shape of our universe as for instance:

Full-sky temperature map taken by NASA'a Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe at 94 GHz: 2006 version. Temperature range of ±200 mK is shown
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And then there is the strange case of Gravity compared to other cardinal forces of physics.

I'm not physicist but this theory makes sense to me - and I say that with tongue firmly planted in cheek. I won't pretend I fully understand the implications of it all but some how this seems 'logical' to quote a certain pointed-ear gentleman.

 

[W!nston]

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket somehow survived a landing in the Atlantic

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket somehow survived a landing in the Atlantic Ocean
theverge | by loren grush | january 31, 2018

This afternoon, SpaceX launched its second Falcon 9 rocket of the year from Florida, but the company chose not to land the booster after takeoff and instead dispensed it in the ocean. In a weird twist, the Falcon 9 still managed to survive its fall into the deep sea waters and is bobbing intact in the Atlantic. Now, the company will try to salvage the floating rocket by towing it back to shore somehow, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

This afternoon’s launch sent a heavy satellite into a high orbit for the government of Luxembourg. Typically for missions of this kind, SpaceX will try to land the Falcon 9 on one of the company’s autonomous drone ships in the ocean after launch. However, SpaceX announced before the flight that it wouldn’t try to recover this rocket, even though this particular rocket has landed before. The company didn’t give a reason why, though there was speculation that the decision had to do with this Falcon 9 being an older iteration of the rocket. Plus, SpaceX likely needed its Florida drone ship for the upcoming Falcon Heavy launch next week. (The company’s other ship is over in California).

But though there wasn’t a drone ship in place to catch the Falcon 9’s fall, the rocket still went through all the steps of landing: it re-ignited its engines three times in a series of landing burns to lower itself down gently to Earth. In a tweet, Musk revealed that the rocket was actually testing out a very high powered landing technique with the rocket, and the company didn’t want to hurt the drone ship during the fall. It seems clear SpaceX did not expect the rocket to survive, but it now has to figure out how to bring the hardy vehicle back home.

Who knows what type of condition the Falcon 9 will be in when it gets back, though. Salty sea water has been known to cause damage to spacecraft before, and it seems doubtful this rocket will fly again. But if it does, it will have definitely defied the odds.

 

[W!nston]

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch gets a spacesuit-clad 'Starman'

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch gets a spacesuit-clad 'Starman'
endgadget | by steve dent | february 5, 2018

The debut launch of the Falcon Heavy will be a serious and complex affair, but SpaceX boss Elon Musk is trying to boost the fun level to maximum. Not only is he using a cherry red Tesla Roadster as ballast for the first test, he's placed a dummy wearing SpaceX's stylish new space suit in the driver's seat, according to a new Instagram post. "Starman in Red Roadster," Musk wrote, a reference to the fact that the EV will supposedly be blasting David Bowie's Space Oddity.

SpaceX's pressure spacesuit will eventually be used by astronauts during trips to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Crew Dragon Capsule. They'll keep astronauts alive if there's a depressurization or other problem aboard the Dragon, but aren't meant for spacewalks. The launch aboard the Falcon Heavy figures to be the suit's first trip into space, but as with the Roadster, it's likely just for cosmetics and fun, not any serious testing.

The launch is already tricky, with Musk saying at one point that the odds of success were about 50/50. On Saturday, though, SpaceX amped up the degree of difficulty, confirming that it will attempt to land all three of the Falcon Heavy's booster rockets. Two will alight on land at the Kennedy Space Center, and the other will set down on SpaceX's Of Course I still Love You droneship in the Atlantic.

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I am excited and anxious to see this launch tomorrow!

This launch will be remembered as a milestone in space exploration.

There's the new launch vehicle, the Tesla payload, a Starman and the landing of 3 sections of the rocket. It's gonna be epic!

 

[W!nston]

Starman Is On His Way To Mars And Beyond!

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If you haven't already heard SpaceX successfully launched Starman today.

The launch, engine burns, engine shut-offs, booster separations and the Cherry Red Tesla with Starman at the wheel are all on this Youtube video.

I wasn't at home at the time but we did pull the car over and watch it on my iPhone live streaming all the way from space!

Incredible is all I can say and that really doesn't describe it. This was an historic moment. Starman is on his way to Mars and beyond.

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[W!nston]

SpaceX Starman February 6, 2018

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Elon Musk, like most guys of our generation, remembers the movie Heavy Metal with the astronaut driving home through space in his corvette ...

 

[W!nston]

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[trencherman]

Are We Living in a Hologram?
Are We Living Inside A Black Hole?

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.

 

[waistingmytime]

Using Disequilibrium Biosignatures to Detect Exoplanet Life
Saw This On SciTechDaily dated JANUARY 24, 2018

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Future telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (right) will observe the atmospheres of distant planets to seek evidence of life. Earth (top left) has several gases in its atmosphere that reveal the presence of life, primarily oxygen and ozone. The new study finds that for the early Earth (bottom left), the combination of abundant methane and carbon dioxide would provide an alternative sign of life.NASA/Wikimedia Commons/Joshua Krissansen-Totton



As NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and other new giant telescopes come online they will need novel strategies to look for evidence of life on other planets. A University of Washington study has found a simple approach to look for life that might be more promising than just looking for oxygen.

The paper, published January 24 in Science Advances, offers a new recipe for providing evidence that a distant planet harbors life.

“This idea of looking for atmospheric oxygen as a biosignature has been around for a long time. And it’s a good strategy — it’s very hard to make much oxygen without life,” said corresponding author Joshua Krissansen-Totton, a UW doctoral student in Earth and space sciences. “But we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket. Even if life is common in the cosmos, we have no idea if it will be life that makes oxygen. The biochemistry of oxygen production is very complex and could be quite rare.”

The new study looks at the history of life on Earth, the one inhabited planet we know, to find times where the planet’s atmosphere contained a mixture of gases that are out of equilibrium and could exist only in the presence of living organisms — anything from pond s to giant redwoods. In fact, life’s ability to make large amounts of oxygen has only occurred in the past one-eighth of Earth’s history.

By taking a longer view, the researchers identified a new combination of gases that would provide evidence of life: methane plus carbon dioxide, minus carbon monoxide.

“We need to look for fairly abundant methane and carbon dioxide on a world that has liquid water at its surface, and find an absence of carbon monoxide,” said co-author David Catling, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. “Our study shows that this combination would be a compelling sign of life. What’s exciting is that our suggestion is doable, and may lead to the historic discovery of an extraterrestrial biosphere in the not-too-distant future.”

The paper looks at all the ways that a planet could produce methane — from asteroid impacts, outgassing from the planet’s interior, reactions of rocks and water — and finds that it would be hard to produce a lot of methane on a rocky, Earth-like planet without any living organisms.

If methane and carbon dioxide are detected together, especially without carbon monoxide, that’s a chemical imbalance that signals life. The carbon atoms in the two molecules represent opposite levels of oxidation. Carbon dioxide holds as many oxygen molecules as it can, while the carbon in methane lacks oxygen and instead has oxygen’s chemical adversary, hydrogen.

“So you’ve got these extreme levels of oxidation. And it’s hard to do that through non-biological processes without also producing carbon monoxide, which is intermediate,” Krissansen-Totton said. “For example, planets with volcanoes that belch out carbon dioxide and methane will also tend to belch out carbon monoxide.”

What’s more, carbon monoxide tends not to build up in the atmosphere of a planet that harbors life.

“Carbon monoxide is a gas that would be readily eaten by microbes,” Krissansen-Totton said. “So if carbon monoxide were abundant, that would be a clue that perhaps you’re looking at a planet that doesn’t have biology.”

The authors agree that oxygen is a good way to look for signs of life, but think that this new combination is at least as likely to pop up through the new telescopes’ sights.

“Life that makes methane uses a simple metabolism, is ubiquitous, and has been around through much of Earth’s history,” Krissansen-Totton said. “It’s an easy thing to do so it’s potentially more common than oxygen-producing life. This is definitely something we should be looking for as new telescopes come online.”​

 

[W!nston]

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster will overshoot Mars, land in asteroid belt

Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster will overshoot Mars, land in asteroid belt
mashable | by mark kaufman | 12:00pm 02-08-2018

After spending six hours orbiting Earth, Elon Musk's outer space Tesla rocketed deeper into space.

SpaceX originally planned for the vehicle to land in a solar system orbit that would at times bring the Roadster near Mars, but it appears the Tesla will overshoot these expectations and travel well beyond the red planet, and into the asteroid belt.

Elon Musk announced last night on Twitter that the cherry red payload and its Starman passenger "exceeded Mars orbit." This doesn't mean that vehicle is already there, as it will take months for the Roadster to travel some 600,000 miles into space. Rather, this is the vehicle's estimated trajectory.

As the SpaceX trajectory map illustrates, the Roadster is expected to swing past Mars and approach the orbit of the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres, which at 567 miles in diameter, is considered a "dwarf planet.

It's somewhat remarkable that the last stage of the Falcon Heavy rocket demo mission — which was largely considered a success — worked at all. During a press conference last night at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, Musk expressed concern whether the final and "third stage" of the rocket would ignite.

But after being pelted with energized particles in a highly-radiated zone around Earth called the Van Allen belts, the rocket ignited — and performed better than SpaceX engineers envisioned.

This last stage of the mission was the least important, as SpaceX had already proven that their three-rocket Falcon Heavy worked and could successfully bring a payload into space. Additionally, two of the three rocket boosters had returned to Earth in a spectacular dual landing:

Still, the final stage certainly wasn't insignificant, as SpaceX illustrated to potential customers that it could send payloads to orbits beyond the red planet.

It's uncertain where exactly the Tesla Roadster, and its Starman mannequin, will more precisely end up. But astronomers are interested, and trying to figure it out.

Space, as we're all keenly aware, is quite large and aptly named, so even in the asteroid belt it's no certainty that the Roadster will smash into a massive space rock (these objects are spaced pretty far apart).

On the other hand, there's a good chance the sports car will be floating through our solar system for millions, if not billions, of years. So there's ample time for a collision — perhaps even with Mars.

********** ********** **********​

This story just keeps getting better and better. I just wish Starman's camera feed could have gone on for ever!

 

[W!nston]

A Journey Around Earth in Real Time

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[waistingmytime]

Two Asteroids Flew Safely Past Earth This Week
Science News, Feb 9, 2018


2018 CC and 2018 CB — two small asteroids recently discovered by NASA-funded astronomers — safely flew past our planet this week.



Asteroid 2018 CC is estimated to be between 50 and 100 feet (15 and 30 m) in size.
Its close approach to Earth came Tuesday (February 6) at 12:10 p.m. PST (3:10 p.m. EST) at a distance of about 114,000 miles (184,000 km).






Of potentially greater interest is 2018 CB, which safely flew past Earth today (February 9) at around 2:30 p.m. PST (5:30 p.m. EST).

Its closest approach to our planet was at a distance of about 39,000 miles (64,000 km), which is less than one-fifth the distance of Earth to the Moon.

2018 CB is estimated to be between 50 and 130 feet (15 and 40 m) in size.

“Although 2018 CB is quite small, it might well be larger than the asteroid that entered the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, almost exactly five years ago, in 2013,” said Dr. Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Asteroids of this size do not often approach this close to our planet — maybe only once or twice a year.”

Both asteroids were discovered by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey on February 4, 2018.​

 

[waistingmytime]

Scientists discover almost 100 new exoplanets
Technical University of Denmark - February 15, 2018

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After detecting the first exoplanets in the 1990s it has become clear that planets around other stars are the rule rather than the exception and there are likely hundreds of billions of exoplanets in the Milky Way alone. The search for these planets is now a large field of astronomy.
Credit: ESA/Hubble/ESO/M. Kornmesser​

"We started out analyzing 275 candidates of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets. In turn 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries," said American PhD student Andrew Mayo at the National Space Institute (DTU Space) at the Technical University of Denmark.

"This research has been underway since the first K2 data release in 2014."

Mayo is the main author of the work being presented in the Astronomical Journal.

The research has been conducted partly as a senior project during his undergraduate studies at Harvard College. It has also involved a team of international colleagues from institutions such as NASA, Caltech, UC Berkeley, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Tokyo.

The Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 to hunt for exoplanets in a single patch of sky, but in 2013 a mechanical failure crippled the telescope. However, astronomers and engineers devised a way to repurpose and save the space telescope by changing its field of view periodically. This solution paved the way for the follow up K2 mission, which is still ongoing as the spacecraft searches for exoplanet transits.

These transits can be found by registering dips in light caused by the shadow of an exoplanet as it crosses in front of its host star. These dips are indications of exoplanets which must then be examined much closer in order to validate the candidates that are actually exoplanets.

The field of exoplanets is relatively young. The first planet orbiting a star similar to our own Sun was detected only in 1995. Today some 3,600 exoplanets have been found, ranging from rocky Earth-sized planets to large gas giants like Jupiter.

It's difficult work to distinguish which signals are actually coming from exoplanets. Mayo and his colleagues analyzed hundreds of signals of potential exoplanets thoroughly to determine which signals were created by exoplanets and which were caused by other sources.

"We found that some of the signals were caused by multiple star systems or noise from the spacecraft. But we also detected planets that range from sub Earth-sized to the size of Jupiter and larger," said Mayo.

One of the planets detected was orbiting a very bright star.

"We validated a planet on a 10 day orbit around a star called HD 212657, which is now the brightest star found by either the Kepler or K2 missions to host a validated planet. Planets around bright stars are important because astronomers can learn a lot about them from ground-based observatories," said Mayo.

"Exoplanets are a very exciting field of space science. As more planets are discovered, astronomers will develop a much better picture of the nature of exoplanets which in turn will allow us to place our own solar system into a galactic context".

The Kepler space telescope has made huge contributions to the field of exoplanets both in its original mission and its successor K2 mission. So far these missions have provided over 5,100 exoplanet candidates that can now be examined more closely.

With new, upcoming space missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, astronomers will take exciting new steps toward characterizing and studying exoplanets like the rocky, habitable, Earth-sized planets that might be capable of supporting life.

 

[W!nston]

A new form of light could power next-gen quantum computers

A new form of light could power next-gen quantum computers
endgadget | by steve dent | 02 19 2018

Photons are among the most ubiquitous, but loneliest particles in the quantum world -- they're always around us, but never interact with each other. Scientists from MIT and Harvard have managed quite a feat then, by observing groups of three photons interacting and sticking together to create a new weird form of light. The research is purely experimental for now, but could enable researchers to entangle photons, a key part of building quantum computers.

When you throw certain elements together like hydrogen or oxygen, they can bond in pairs or even triplets, forming O2 (oxygen) or O3 (ozone), for instance. Shine two flashlights together, however and ... crickets. The photons simply pass through each other like phantoms and there's no reaction whatsoever. That's because they have no mass or charge, though they can become highly energized in the form of X-rays or gamma rays.

To get the photons together, then, the researchers beamed a very weak laser through a dense cloud of rubidium atoms cooled to a hair above absolute zero. Instead of exiting randomly one at a time as you'd expect, they bound together in pairs or triplets, creating some form of entanglement. In addition, the normally mass-less photons gained some weight, as well -- a fraction of an electron's mass, but it's something.

The heftier photon "molecules," if you like, were considerably less nimble, too. Rather than moving at their regular 186,000 mile per second pace, they were moving 100,000 times slower, less than SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster is at the moment, by my calculation.

How did this happen? When passing through the listless rubidium atoms, the photons passed on some of their energy. However, because of something called the Rydberg blockade, adjacent atoms can't be excited as much, and the less-agitated atom and a photon formed a hybrid called a "polariton." As the photons skipped between polaritons, they interacted with each other in ways they normally wouldn't, and some were still stuck together when they exited the cloud. This happenned slowly on a quantum scale, about a millionth of a second from entry to exit.

It's not the first time scientists have got photons together; some of the same team managed to get pairs of photons hooked together in 2013. The new discovery, however, marks the first time that three photons have been forced to interact.

The research is not just interesting to particle physicists, but it could eventually pave the way to new types of quantum computers used to crack cryptographic codes and solve difficult equations. The photon triplets are essentially entangled, so they could be used in "qubit" processors or for transmitting information over long distances. Having multiple photons entangled would allow for more robust, powerful systems. "The interaction of individual photons has been a very long dream for decades," said lead author and MIT professor Vladan Vuletic.

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As Mr. Spock might say ... "fascinating"

 

[trencherman]

Fascinating indeed! Even more promising than the discovery of laser.

In 1958, a hitherto unknown engineer at Hughes Labs, Theodore H. Meiman, succeeded in forcing a bar of synthetic ruby to emit a sabre of red light by subjecting it to repeated exposure to bursts of high intensity light. He called the set up a laser, an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. It was announced to the general public two years later. I was in senior year of high school in 1963 and turned in a technical paper mostly lifted from an article about this device in Fortune magazine. Nobody in my class has ever heard of it. The first time they would learn about it was in 1964, in the 007 movie Goldfinger where it was used, first to threaten to dissect James Bond beginning from where it was going to hurt most, at the crotch, and to force open the metal door of Fort Knox. It has since found its way into multitude of civilian, military and medical applications as most everybody knows.

 

[waistingmytime]

TIANGONG-1: CHINESE SPACE STATION IS ABOUT TO COME CRASHING DOWN TO EARTH, BUT DON’T PANIC
Newsweek - March 7, 2018​

A rogue Chinese space station is hurtling through space on a collision course with Earth. The Tiangong-1 station has been making headlines since China ceased communications with the spacecraft back in 2016. With re-entry predicted just a few weeks from now, should we be worried?

Probably not, is the short answer.

The Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research and development company, predicts the chance of being hit by a piece of falling Tiangong-1 debris is about a million times smaller than winning the lottery. And that’s if you’re in the most likely region that parts of Tiangong-1 will land.

The Long March II-F rocket carrying China’s Tiangong-1 lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Gansu province, China, on September 29, 2011. China’s rogue space station is hurtling through space on a collision course with Earth. But getting hit by Tiangong-1 debris is about a million times less likely than winning the lottery.​

Big Planet, Small Station
In 2001, the 140-ton Russian Mir space station fell through the skies above Fiji, its charred remains landing in the South Pacific Ocean. The re-entry harmed no one.

Like the Russian station, much of Tiangong-1 will burn up in the atmosphere, reports Chinese news agency Xinhua. At just 9 tons, the spacecraft is far smaller than Mir.

Some parts of the station may survive the fall, however. Wired reports that pieces as heavy as 100 kilograms (220 pounds) might make it down to the ground.

These might seem big, but even large chunks of the craft will pale in comparison to the size of the Earth’s surface. According to a map produced by the Aerospace Corporation, re-entry could occur across about two-thirds of the planet’s surface, in line with the spacecraft’s flight path.

The zone of greatest risk cuts right through the heart of mainland U.S. from Northern California and Oregon all the way to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

But even in this higher-risk region, the chance of being hit by debris is about a million times smaller than the chance of winning the Powerball jackpot, the Aerospace Corporation reports.

Because most of Earth’s surface is covered by water—including the regions most likely to be hit by falling debris—and because vast swaths of land are uninhabited or barely inhabited, the likelihood of a person being hit by falling space debris of any kind is tiny, Wired reports.

A Dubious Jackpot
Lottie Williams from Tulsa, Oklahoma, has the dubious honor of being the only known person ever hit by a piece of space junk. In 1997, she was struck by a piece of charred mesh believed to have come from a returning Delta II rocket. Luckily the mesh was not heavy and just tapped her shoulder, leaving her unharmed but incredibly surprised.

If you’re still not conviced you'll be safe, you have about three weeks to take cover. Tiangong-1 is due to re-enter some time between March 29 and April 9, ESA reports.

While it probably won’t be dangerous, the re-entry should be spectacular. A team from NASA and other space organizations filmed the Japanese Hayabusa’s 2010 reentry over central Australia. They captured, exploding streaks of light like shooting stars over the skies from NASA’s DC-8 airborne laboratory.


Watch the footage here:

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