Space

RuBisCo Stars, Frank Drake and the "Riddle of Life" December 4, 2009. One of the great advantages of Scientific Blogging is the immediate feedback that is possible, and even a kind of conversation between reader and author. On November 16, I posted an email from Joe Davis in which he described a remarkable effort to send a message from Earth to three nearby stars and any of their planets that might harbor intelligent life. Joe and I were gratified that his post was read by Seth Shostak, Jill Tarter and Frank Drake, all associated with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. We…

Our satellite hits the road-- even before it gets built!  I will be presenting a short talk on "Project Calliope: Science and Social Media" at the winter AAS meeting in Washington DC on January 7, 2010.  The session is 'Innovations in Teaching and Learning'.      We present the 'Project Calliope' picosatellite to explore how to use social media to initiate, fund, and engage in scientific research. 'Project Calliope' is a sonified ionospheric detector being launched in 2010 on the "TubeSat" platform. It has no federal or academic contribution, and relies on '…

The word on the street is that Jesus is pretty t'd off at NASA.1 What mortal sin2 did the space agency allegedly commit? The non-biological reproduction of an RNA component in a laboratory, of course. NASA scientists reproduced uracil in a lab under conditions found in space, according to Astrobiology. Uracil is one of the components of the genetic code that makes up ribonucleic acid (RNA); RNA is mainly known for its role in protein synthesis. In other words, NASA was able to create a building block of life in the lab. Jesus bringing the divine hate. But why would that piss off Jesus? First…

While today we're pretty darned certain there is no intelligent life on Mars, in the early 20th century, it was still an open question.  So-- about four decades before the publically known Project Ozma search-- the Navy stepped up to find out.  Well before SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Project Ozma, Area 51, or even the 1938 radio hoax 'War of the Worlds', the Navy was looking for Martians. The DC Examiner reports that the Navy,Chief of Naval Operations Edward W. Eberle requested, via telegraph, a 3-day listening period to seek out Martians.  The…

1571 was also interesting. Galileo Galilei was then seven years old. Johannes Kepler was born on December 27. There were two solar eclipses, a total on January 25 and an annular on July 21-22. Four, one partial and three penumbral, lunar eclipses occurred on August 5 and February 10, July 7, and December 31, respectively.  Antoine Caron painted in early 1570s this painting that you can view at The Getty Center in Los Angeles. Its title is Dionysius the Areopagite Converting the Pagan Philosophers but some people call it Astronomers Studying…

An elevator to space? No, this isn't a reprise of Charlie and Chocolate Factory. As I mentioned in a blog back in January, an elevator into space is the end goal - a 100,000 km long tether anchored to the Earth as a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions. At the time suggestions included microwave or laser power beamed up from the Earth's surface. Now, thanks to a group named LaserMotive, the dream is closer to becoming reality. An AP article noted that a robot powered by a ground-based laser beam climbed a long cable dangling from a helicopter on Wednesday toqualify for prize money in…

Hello. See the giant structure in 2D and also in 3D. The positions of the galaxies in the newly found structure are shown in red in the second and third images. Other galaxies in "blue" are located in front or behind "the Giant."  To relate to the size of things, consider first the Whirlpool Galaxy for example. This bright galaxy is 23 million light years away and 75,000 light years across.   Credit: NAOJ. The new find is 65.2 million light years wide and at over 6.7 billion light-year distance. In other words the Giant is about 300 times…

Scientists used a pair of gravity-measuring satellites, GRACE, to look at Amazon river basin water levels and, hopefully, better predict future water storage and runoff.  The twin GRACE satellites measure the mass distribution of the Earth between the two satellites, and accumulating these measurements over time lets us know how the Earth's mass shifts around.  A team led by Shin-Chan Han compared this data with simulations to look at, basically, how water is stored, released, and sloshes about within the Amazon river basin.  They compared the data with simulations. 'Water…

Dust samples collected by high-flying aircraft have found relicts from the ancient cosmos, according to scientists from the Carnegie Institution. This stratospheric dust includes minute grains that likely formed inside stars that lived and died long before the birth of our sun as well as material from molecular clouds in interstellar space. This 'ultra-primitive' material likely drifted into the atmosphere after the Earth passed through the dust trail of comet Grigg-Skjellerup, giving scientists a rare opportunity to study cometary dust in the laboratory. Comets are thought to be repositories…

Way back when, there was an excellent film loop called "Powers of 10".  Created by Charles and Ray Eames, it can now be found at the conveniently-named powersof10.com website.  The video is elegant, starting with a couple having a picnic and then simply pulling back the camera one order of magnitude-- one power of 10-- to reveal the entire country, world, solar system, galaxy, the finally universe. In the IMax movie "Cosmic Voyage", Morgan Freeman narrates an update of it.  It is, to my mind, the single most effective astronomy video ever.  I make a point to show it for…