Oh, let's (please) take a break from pondering our current crisis of civilization, and the now explicit war on science. Instead, this time, let us turn our heads to ponder the wonderful cosmos that our children will explore... if we manage to keep a great and brave and thoughtful civilization.
My own space news can be found at the bottom. A dinner gathering with cool topics. But first...
Fantastic! Cosmographists have plotted the velocities of hundreds of galaxies within 1.7 billion light years, including all of our galactic super-group. They subtracted the universal expansion and traced lines of a velocity field. We had already known that swarms of galaxies were converging on what’s called the “Shapley Attractor.” But this paper unveils a spectacular discovery named the Dipole Repeller! The DR is a region on the opposite side of our super-group that appears to have a repulsive effect on the velocity field, making the whole thing resemble the pattern of… well… a dipole. As illustrated in this remarkable video.
My own space news can be found at the bottom. A dinner gathering with cool topics. But first...
Fantastic! Cosmographists have plotted the velocities of hundreds of galaxies within 1.7 billion light years, including all of our galactic super-group. They subtracted the universal expansion and traced lines of a velocity field. We had already known that swarms of galaxies were converging on what’s called the “Shapley Attractor.” But this paper unveils a spectacular discovery named the Dipole Repeller! The DR is a region on the opposite side of our super-group that appears to have a repulsive effect on the velocity field, making the whole thing resemble the pattern of… well… a dipole. As illustrated in this remarkable video.
But…
but gravity isn’t supposed to have a repulsive “pole”, right? Well, there is a
void near the Dipole Repeller. So, could just an absence of matter explain… hey, I am
digesting this even as you are. Whoa.(Does anyone else see a resemblance to the human inner ear? Or a chambered nautilus?)
On a much smaller scale.... Here’s proof of an intermediate-mass black hole existing — weighing just 2,200 times the mass of the Sun.
A decaying binary orbit will lead a close pair of stars to collide, and calculations pin it down (maybe) to the year 2022, when a “red nova” may even be visible to the naked eye.
In Welcome to the Universe, An Astrophysical Tour, the incomparable Neil deGrasse Tyson gives you a personal tour through the marvels of the cosmos, delving into big picture topics such as quasars, cosmic strings, supermassive black holes, wormholes, time travel... and the possibility of intelligent life out there. Are we part of an infinite multiverse? Tyson illuminates and entertains with glimpses of the latest research into the scale and mysteries of the universe.
Download a free ebook: 101 Astronomical Events for 2017 -- from Universe Today. And from Space.com, see the Space Calendar for 2017: listing launches, sky events and more.
In Welcome to the Universe, An Astrophysical Tour, the incomparable Neil deGrasse Tyson gives you a personal tour through the marvels of the cosmos, delving into big picture topics such as quasars, cosmic strings, supermassive black holes, wormholes, time travel... and the possibility of intelligent life out there. Are we part of an infinite multiverse? Tyson illuminates and entertains with glimpses of the latest research into the scale and mysteries of the universe. Download a free ebook: 101 Astronomical Events for 2017 -- from Universe Today. And from Space.com, see the Space Calendar for 2017: listing launches, sky events and more.
== Marvels of our solar system ==
A
study published in Nature supports the growing consensus that Pluto may be one
of a dozen “roofed worlds” in the Solar System, where liquid water churns
beneath protective ice. (In the case of Titan, all of this lies below lakes of
methane, lapping at waxy shorelines.) Unlike Europa, Enceledus and other,
“inner” ocean moons, Pluto’s ocean is
likely to be “rather noxious, very cold, salty and very ammonia-rich—almost a
syrup," said William McKinnon, co-author of the study. Any ‘life’ that developed there would be very
different… though not quite as remarkable as any cryo-beings (or cells) that
might arise in Titanian lakes.
Utterly
cool image of the Earth – Moon system taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Amazing.
We are still a mighty and scientific people. Fight for that.
A
beautiful movie made by NASA using 100 images of Pluto taken by the New
Horizons craft. And yes, at risk of (necessary) repetition: you are a
member of a glorious, scientific civilization.
Cassini is going out gorgeously, providing closeups of Saturn’s hexagonal north-polar cyclone… and soon vivid ring shots.
Oh, did I mention that you are a member of a civilization which does this: Saturn's rings warped gorgeously by tiny moon, Daphnis?
NASA's Juno probe has sent back gorgeous new images of Jupiter, after its fifth orbit of the gas giant -- such as this swirling "pearl" storm.
NASA Langley’s concept of an ice shelter on Mars would transport a light, inflatable, double-walled dome, then fill the walls with water melted from nearby buried ores, which we now believe to be plentiful there. The concept would create an ideal radiation protection barrier, when the water re-freezes, and has an added advantage in the fact that it can be transported and deployed easily, then filled with water before anyone arrives. It would also serve as a storage tank for water or maybe even used for rocket fuel. Ideally it would be erected and filled robotically, before a human crew even left Earth.
Go Mark Watney! Footage from a cubesat experiment shows potato plants budding in weightlessness, in Mars-like soils, suggesting that a certain movie (and book) may have been on target in its optimism about growing food on the red planet. Providing you can wash out perchlorates and all that. We'll see.
Go Mark Watney! Footage from a cubesat experiment shows potato plants budding in weightlessness, in Mars-like soils, suggesting that a certain movie (and book) may have been on target in its optimism about growing food on the red planet. Providing you can wash out perchlorates and all that. We'll see.
The latest wonderful discoveries of our loyal robot on Mars – Curiosity.
This innovation may enable a rover on Venus! NASA Glenn Research Center built a computer chip that survived Venus-like conditions for an impressive 521 hours, almost 22 days. Conditions that will incinerate electronics with its 872ยบ F temperatures and seize mechanical components with its immense atmospheric pressures. At 90 times the surface pressure of Earth. In 1982, the USSR’s Venera 13 lasted 127 minutes on the Venus surface. Silicon Carbide transistors make the difference.
See the concept for a Venus sailing rover. We have even more baroque and weird projects, at NIAC!
Now... China is forging ahead as a major force in space, with plans for upcoming manned and robotic missions to the moon and Mars. Partnering with the government, startups such as ExPace and OneSpace aim to be the Chinese version of SpaceX -- with a rocket launch scheduled for 2018.
Now... China is forging ahead as a major force in space, with plans for upcoming manned and robotic missions to the moon and Mars. Partnering with the government, startups such as ExPace and OneSpace aim to be the Chinese version of SpaceX -- with a rocket launch scheduled for 2018.
== My dinner with Elon ==
 |
| Photo by Amber Heard |
Last time, I invited Astrid & Greg Bear and Vernor Vinge. This time, my sci fi colleagues Gregory & Elizabeth Benford and Steve Barnes, plus JPL senior planetary scientists Dave and Joy Crisp. The topic? Mars mostly (of course), plus artificial intelligence (AI) plus much else beyond the immediate horizon.
Elon served a great dinner and his five boys were terrific, well-mannered fellows. And the rest isn't 'news' so that's it.
== Coda ==
Did I remember to remind you to murmur, now and then "IAAMOAC"?
"I am a member of a civilization."
By most standards of wealth and thoughtfulness and accomplishment and gradually rising ethics and everything else, perhaps the first human civilization. Perhaps the first in the Galaxy to escape traps like feudalism.
If you have any notions of progress, of wanting your descendants to bestride the stars, then reject the blithering-dopey "cycles of history and "The Fourth Turning" and "we're all doomed" rants of those who would turn away from science and wonder.
IAAMOAC. Fight for it.
