This is so cool I had to share- OMG Space. I just love things that really put the vastness of space and the unfathomable sizes of objects like the sun (which is literally a tiny spec compared to some stars) into a perspective/scale that our feeble human brains can comprehend. OMG Space does just that. Start at the top and just scroll. And scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll until you get to Mercury. Then you realize “holy shit, I’m only at the first planet!” Then keep doing that. Resist the urge to just click on the planet at the bottom. The point isn’t getting to each planet, it’s the vast space between. If you’re not utterly amazed by that sense of scale and size, then you must not have a pulse. Seriously.
(Via Yewknee)
Some fantastic news from NASA today: The astoundingly successful and productive Kepler Mission has been extended through 2016! This is a huge relief for space nerds like me who eagerly watch science news blogs for the next big news item from missions such as Kepler. As you may know, Kepler is a space telescope which looks for planets in other star systems. Most specifically, the mission is looking for earth-like planets in other star systems. The mission has already racked up over 1,000 potential planets, and I have absolutely no doubt that it will find and confirm the first true earth-twin in these next 4 years. There was a lot of concern over the future of the mission due to recent NASA budget cuts- many thought the mission might not get funding to extend it even till 2014, so getting funding till 2016 was actually a pleasant surprise. The funding will, however, be up for review again in 2014. Still, this is a huge relief because Kepler has already seen what could be earth-twins, we just have to wait for a second transit to occur to confirm the initial observation. Since these are truly earth-like planets, it takes them roughly one earth year to orbit their parent star. The major worry was the mission would be ended before a second transit could be observed to confirm the planets’ existence. Thankfully we no longer have to worry about that, and it’s only a matter of time before the holy grail of planet-hunting is found.
(Via Universe Today and Bad Astronomy)
Sun ejects biggest solar flare since last year- HD video
March 8, 2012
On March 7 at just after midnight UTC, the Sun released a massive solar flare and coronal mass ejection towards earth. The CME hit us a few hours ago and from what I can tell the aurorae are ongoing from it. You can keep up with the progress at Spaceweather.com. I’m sure there will be some awesome photos from it in the coming days. This one was powerful enough to disrupt satellite communications, but nothing major has happened so far, that I know of. The main reason for this post, though, was to share this space porn HD video of the actual flare. Just wait till they show the zoomed-in shot. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. Oh, and be sure you set it to full HD!
Remember back in the 90s and early aughts when SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) had those screensavers you could install that would process chunks of radio telescope data, looking for interesting signals? It would quietly download the data packets, process them, and send them back to SETI. That project has long since been canceled, but its successor is even cooler- SETI Live. The latest version of it just launched yesterday, and it literally allows you to visually analyze real data from the Allen Telescope Array. As I understand it, there are parts of the radio spectrum that are crowded by our own human-made signals. Even the most sophisticated computer software has a hard time distinguishing between something that’s manmade and something that’s extraterrestrial in origin, so they need human eyes to make the distinction. The project is part of Zooniverse, which has many other projects that allow the general public to take part in real scientific research and experiments. So sign yourself up and get to analyzing- you never know what you’ll find, especially now that they’re aiming the radio telescopes at stars known to have planets orbiting them!
Now sit back and enjoy this eye candy: yet another gorgeous timelapse video created from photos of earth at night taken from the International Space Station. I could literally watch stuff like this all day. There have been several of these created thus far, but this one just might be the best yet. It’s like crack for your eyes…
(Via Universe Today)
The Sun is alive: auroral displays are on the rise
January 24, 2012
Credit: NASA
As I’ve mentioned before, our Sun is steadily heading toward the peak of its next 11-year sunspot cycle. The peak is expected in 2013. That means we can expect a steady increase in aurorae as well, because sunspots lead to solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and when those happen to be aimed at earth, we get dazzling displays near the north and south poles. Sometimes those displays can even be seen as far south as Tennessee. Over the weekend there was a massive solar flare and CME, one that released the same amount of energy as millions of nuclear bombs, and it headed straight for earth. The blast of particles reached earth last night/this morning and created an astonishing auroral display, which was captured by many photographers at various locations. Here are a few blog posts and other links I’ve come across today showing some of those photos as well as explaining the physics of what actually causes the upper atmosphere to glow when bombarded by these particles.
Spectacular Aurorae Erupt Over Norway (Discovery News) Absolutely breathtaking photos by Bjørn Jørgensen.
Huge Solar Flare Seen By Solar Dynamics Observatory (Space.com)
The Sun Aims a Storm Right at Earth! (Bad Astronomy) Good explanation of the science behind the aurorae.
Can Solar Flares Hurt Astronauts? (Universe Today) Good explanation of why the flare/CME poses little risk to astronauts onboard the ISS.
So there has been some excitement and confusion lately over a signal discovered by SETI researchers after they aimed one of their radio telescopes toward “objects of interest” discovered by the Kepler mission. These are possible exoplanet discoveries, but they’ve yet to be confirmed by other telescopes. (These are called Kepler Objects of Interest, or KOIs.) Until now, SETI researchers have been blindly aiming their telescopes all over they sky listening for possible alien radio signals. Now that the Kepler team has a few KOIs that might be habitable, it makes sense for SETI to narrow their search and start listening specifically in the direction of those KOIs. Well, they did just that, and they found an interesting signal! One that is clearly not just natural background noise. But, that signal is almost definitely interference from one of our own satellites, because the signal still shows up even when they aim the radio telescopes away from the exoplanets. So, don’t let anyone fool you- SETI has NOT discovered an alien radio signal.
As he always does, Dr. Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy lays out the truth on this. Universe Today has an excellent post on it as well.
Kepler finds earth-sized alien planets/Some amazing volcano photos
December 21, 2011
Credit: NASA
The Kepler team at NASA announced yet another exciting discovery yesterday: the first confirmed earth-size alien planets, Kepler 20f and 20e. The mission has found other exoplanets that pretty close to earth-size, but these two are by far the closest yet. What really befuddled me about this announcement was that that in addition to those two smaller, rocky worlds, there are three bigger gas-giant or super-earths in this system as well. No only that, but all five of these exoplanets’ orbits would fit inside our own Mercury’s orbit around our sun! That’s a lot of planets crammed into a tiny area! Of course that also means that these planets are scorching hot- far too hot to be habitable. But, it’s very reassuring to confirm that Kepler can positively identify alien planets that are earth-size and even tad bit smaller (Kepler 20e is about 87% the size of earth). As usual, Dr. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a very good explanation of the whole thing. And I’ll also point you toward this article on space.com about the likelihood of us finding a true earth-twin within the coming year.
And now I will simply tell you to go take a look at this amazing set of volcano photographs and have a a few eyegasms. You’re welcome.
The Higgs boson: progress made but nothing conclusive yet
December 13, 2011
You’ve no doubt already seen or heard mention of this breaking news elsewhere, but I simply must weigh-in: This morning physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced that they are making significant progress toward discovering the Higgs boson, or what many tend to call “the God Particle.” They really are on the verge of making a discovery that will change the face of physics forever, and vastly improve our understanding of the building blocks of EVERYTHING in the universe, and how the universe came into existence. The announcement does not mean that they have found the Higgs, just that they’ve seen a series of spikes in activity (the few nanoseconds right after a particle collision) within the predicted mass range for the Higgs. They’ve narrowed its mass down to a pretty small range with a fairly high degree of certainty because they’ve amassed quite a bit of data, and the chances that this is just a statistical fluke are getting lower and lower. Still though, the certainty is not high enough for physicists to claim an actual discovery. This elusive Higgs boson is the last missing “link” in the most widely accepted theory of particle physics- The Standard Model. If the Higgs is finally confirmed to exist within the range of mass predicted by the Standard Model, then this theory will essentially become rock-solid.
*Steps onto soapbox.*
But the beauty of science and the scientific method is that it will be just as exciting, if not MORE exciting, if the Higgs is proven to either exist outside the predicted range of mass or not exist at all! Science relies strictly on data, and if the data shows something not predicted then you go back to the drawing board and keep trying until you have a theory that fits the reality of the data. That method is infallible, and that is why I love science.
*Steps down from soapbox.*
For more-
the Guardian has been posting live updates to their story.
But BBC News has the best coverage I’ve seen.
Kepler finds potentially habitable exoplanet 2.4x size of earth
December 5, 2011
Should’ve gotten to posting this earlier today but I was waaay too busy.
Very exciting news in the science world today- NASA’s Kepler mission has been very busy lately, finding exoplanets left and right. Problem is, those observations have to be followed-up and duplicated by other telescopes, usually ground-based. Thus, it takes a while to fully confirm the existence of an exoplanet discovered by Kepler. Finally though, they’ve found one that is close to earth’s size, and orbits a star similar to our sun within its habitable zone. It’s not quite the “holy grail” of planet hunting because the planet is 2.4 times the size of earth, but it’s getting us ever-closer to the discovery of a true earth-twin. This is awesome. It’s only a matter of time…
Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
For more, check out this article on Space.com, or this article on Discovery News.
Mars Science Laboratory launches/other badassery
November 30, 2011
That is video of the final separation of NASA’s new Mars Science Laboratory rover (named Curiosity), sending it on its way to Mars. The probe launched successfully this past Saturday atop an Atlas V rocket, and will reach Mars in August of 2012. If you follow this blog you’ll know that I’ve mentioned this probe excitedly before- that’s because this is the biggest, boldest of all the robotic rovers we’ve sent to Mars. It’s about the size of a small SUV and it will be looking for evidence of conditions that may have been conducive to the development of microbial life, past and present. Important distinction: the probe is NOT searching for life itself, just for evidence that the planet may have been habitable in the past or maybe even the present. August 2012 will be a tense month for NASA and all following this probe’s progess, because the final landing stages are immensely tedious and complex. (See the landing animation below.) For now though, we just sit and wait as the probe zips through space and the engineers make the final adjustments to its trajectory. For some more expert commentary on this mission, check out Bad Astronomy or Universe Today.
Since I probably won’t be posting again until this Friday’s “A Few Good Shows” post, here are a couple more videos full utter badassery:
“Jetman” Yves Rossy flies alongside fighter jets on his jetpack. It doesn’t get much cooler than that…
Nothing like some shirtless 9-year-olds totally nailing “Crazy Train”
steve cross loves music and science 