Space

Thu - August 2, 2007

Awesome new Nasa Pics

Go here to get an image of the Earth in super high-res, a mosaic digitally stitched together from many smaller pictures.

Posted at 09:31 AM

Thu - June 28, 2007

Nighty-Night, New Horizons

The New Horizons spacecraft will fall asleep even as it continues hurtling toward the edge of our solar system. Even though most of its systems will be shut down, its velocity will remain unchanged and it will enjoy a slow 5-revolutions-per-minute spin. The craft will hibernate for 75% of the next eight years on its way to Pluto.

That is so cool. It really fires my imagination.

Read the whole article by Emily Lakdawalla here.

Posted at 11:19 PM

Sat - May 26, 2007

Holes on Mars

Several cave mouths have been identified on Mars' surface. Even at highest image enhancement, absolutely nothing is visible inside that hole. What's down there?

Posted at 08:58 AM

Fri - May 25, 2007

Postcards from the Future

This looks like my kind of movie. The trailer below actually made me a little teary-eyed.

Posted at 09:40 AM

Mon - April 23, 2007

Like A Scene From Star Wars

Today's NASA astronomy picture of the day looks like a scene that might have been taken directly from a high-budget sci-fi flick, though its significance is all the higher for it being a scene snapped of actual reality.

Posted at 09:30 AM

Wed - April 18, 2007

Raffle To the Stars

Sign me up! I'd pay $50 for a 1 in 400,000 chance to spend a week on the space station, you bet.

In other news, the first book of my trilogy set in the Forgotten Realms today reached the 20% milestone. Only 4/5ths left to write (of the first one; I guess I'm only 6.7% of the way through the trilogy, but that way lies madness...).

Posted at 01:46 PM

Tue - April 17, 2007

The (space elevator) Runner Stumbles

Damn and double damn.

Good luck Liftport. I was and am pulling for you.

Posted at 08:27 AM

Tue - March 27, 2007

Hexagons on Saturn

A bizarre six-sided feature encircling the north pole of saturn.

Posted at 11:31 AM

Tue - February 20, 2007

How To Exceed C, the Speed of LIght

This post by cosmologist Sean Carroll gave me a fun idea, fun like my post about detecting advanced extraterrestrials, with a different twist. Neither idea is scientific in the sense that they could be tested by technology we now possesses; indeed, they are better presented as the plot and counter-plot to a science fiction story. Anyhow...

The idea: Perhaps the acceleration of the expansion of our local universe due to dark energy is actually the direct byproduct of some far more advanced civilization's method of getting around the light speed ‘barrier.’ We can see with our own observations it is not impossible for expanding space time to drag distant objects to ‘velocities’ faster than light with respect to each other’s far-removed locations. Could a sufficiently advanced civilization gain control over such a process? Are we seeing the after-effects of such an effort gone amuck with the acceleration of expansion, an environmental disaster of cosmological scale?

Posted at 10:42 AM

Thu - January 18, 2007

SETI proposal

Ready yourself for some wild speculative leaps.

I was listening to some coverage from the recent CES show concerning the implementation of one of Tesla's ideas, 'beamed power.' Apparently some company has created a device which manages to harvest some portion of the radio field emitted by a cell-phone-like transmitter, allowing it to retain its charge indefinitely within some small radius of the transmitter.

Ok, that's cool, but indulge me as I jump into pure science fiction for a moment, perhaps even fantasy. You may have recently heard that contrary to all expectations, the expansion of the universe is accelerating, not decelerating, as everyone thought. No one knows why this is, but the culprit behind the accelerating expansion has been labeled dark energy. Dark because we don't know what it is.

Another label might be 'zero point energy,' although this is merely a different label. Anyhow, what's clear is that even 15 billion or so years after what we think of as the universe's creation in the Big Bang, energy is still being added to the universe, so much so that gravity can't hold the thing from expanding faster and faster.

Now, what if there were a sufficiently advanced race of extraterrestrials who figured out how to tap 0-point/dark energy, kind of like those cell phones that can tap electromagnetic waves? Ok, yeah, you may have even read about such a thing in one or two science fiction books. But consider, what would be the repercussions of an advanced, spreading, long-lived civilization that relied on tapping 0-point energy?

Merely this: local regions of space time where the universe isn't accelerating its expansion, or at least accelerating its expansion quite so quickly. The energy that would normally have gone into expansion is instead being leached to power quantum-star virtual accelerators, or something.

There you go, SETI researchers, get out there and start looking for localized regions of space-time which aren't expanding as quickly as the bulk of the universe. Perhaps you'll have discovered a marker for an alien race, albeit one so far advanced from us we'd probably be quite embarrassed to actually encounter them.

Posted at 09:12 AM

Wed - December 27, 2006

Here's to the New Year

And a little humor from xkcd to ring us in ...

Posted at 07:23 PM

Wed - October 25, 2006

Is there Anybody Out There?

It is fascinating to think about the possibility of intelligent life other than humanity. A formalized equation, Drake's, seeks to parse the possibility with mathematical rigor. But what if one of the constants of Drake's Equation is less than 1? That's what PZ Meyers thinks, and others. If true, then even our own intelligence is incredibly unlikely, and the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in this galaxy, anyhow, is vanishing small. I find his arguments at least credible.

Posted at 09:27 AM

Tue - October 17, 2006

Move Over Scouts; Here Come the Galaxy Explorers

If not for my time in the Boy Scouts, I wouldn't have the career I have now. Why? Well, because Boy Scouts introduced me to D&D. It was the place I went outside of school hours and during the summer months to play D&D during middle school. That strong interest in D&D and the platform the scouts provided to explore that interest led to lasting friendships and my current career, despite a valiant attempt at molecular biology on my part in college.

That's a pretty big plug for the scouts, I suppose, though perhaps not in quite the manner they would appreciate. The point is that the extracurricular club to which I belonged, the scouts, served to strengthen both my interest and my talent in literature and game design.

Wouldn't it be great if there were something analogous to the Boy and Girl Scouts that strengthened and developed a child's interest in science and technology, an interest that would stick with that child through their developmental years and help define or at least inform their future career? I think you can guess where I'm going here...

Take a look at the Federation of Galaxy Explorers. Better yet, listen to this audio snippet on the Space Show where the founder of the explorers describes the group and all the fantastic things they've accomplished. If you have children and want to foster their interest in math, science, and technology, consider enrolling them in the Galaxy Explorers, if you have a local chapter, or consider founding a local chapter as described on the Galaxy Explorers website.

Posted at 03:04 PM

Sun - September 17, 2006

Anousheh Ansari First Woman Space Tourist

Check out Anousheh Ansari's blog, which describes her preparations for launch into space. If the name "Ansari" sounds familiar, then it is because you remember the Ansari X-Prize, which was the competition ultimately won by Burt Rutan's SpaceShip One. As I'm writing this, the Soyuz launched 11 minutes ago, and Anousheh is off, out of Earth's sphere and into space! (nasa TV)

UPDATE: Out of the Cradle's Rob Wilson makes a good point: Calling Anousheh Ansari a 'tourist' is disrespectful of the many hurdles and difficult training she finished to reach where she is now.

Posted at 09:19 PM