So I ask you to say the heroic chant of lift off with me "Poyekhali" or in english "Here we go"
And let us not forget his famous words from space
"I see no god up here"
Showing posts with label Space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Space. Show all posts
Monday, April 11, 2011
50 Years of Yuri!
As you may know! or for those of you who don't google have a lovely doodle today commemorating the 50 year aniversary of the flight of Yuri Gagarin, if you don't know who this man is check out our Previous post Link about the tragic story of Yuri Gagarin's friend Vladamir Komarov, and the heroic tale of Yuri Gagarin himself. The first man into space to return successfully!
So I ask you to say the heroic chant of lift off with me "Poyekhali" or in english "Here we go"
And let us not forget his famous words from space
"I see no god up here"
So I ask you to say the heroic chant of lift off with me "Poyekhali" or in english "Here we go"
And let us not forget his famous words from space
"I see no god up here"
Theory of Life in the Universe.
Adrian Kent of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, in Ontario, has come up with a new theory as too why we have yet to find extra-terrestrial life.
Kent's idea is that in terms of survival of the fittest (which is the commonly accepted theory of evolution), on a universal scale, the quietest species are the ones that thrive in the universe.
For example, we where unable to detect (and therefore destroy) microbial life for a very long time, them remaining quiet and undetectable left us (on the outside the more intelligent species) unable to do anything about them.
So on a galactic scale if a species can go relatively unnoticed by more dominant species then they are less likely to be taken over.. And so therefore according to survival of the fittest will continue to thrive.
My longstanding theory is that we are the first, there has always had to be a "First" and I believe that we are them, I only subscribe to this theory because it makes me feel special, like I am a pioneer.. but when I bring myself back to being a sane and happy human, I like to go grander and say that somewhere out there.. in the great expanse of space and time, there is a species like us, but thousands of years advanced, waiting to welcome us into our sci-fi fantasy.
Id just like to add to this post something that my friend mentioned after reading my draft of this..
He said that most scientists and even regular humans view first contact as being the most important date in the timeline of mankind, he also pointed out that the Gregorian calendar starts at 0 based on an the most important date to the Gregorian's (Gregorian's being Christians) and that the 0 is the year of Christs (birth or execution not sure here) but at any rate, he believes that the calendars should should logically start from 0 again, with 0 being first contact. so BC will be before contact and AC will be after contact.
What are your thoughts leave us a comment below, what do you think about alien life??
Friday, March 25, 2011
Ever wonder how they photoshop a galaxy?
This video is a timelapse photo of NGC-3982 A spiral galaxy in ursa major located nearly 70 million light years away.
Now you may think its cheating, having them photoshop color in, but remember, human eyes are weak and feeble, only able too see things in our so called "Visible spectrum" butterflies can see much further into the "Ultra violet spectrum" than we can even comprehend.
Hubble can see Further into Ultra violet and further into infra-red than we can because it takes in pure white light, unfortunately this means that the images come out in black and white because it can't selectively add color too the visible spectrum.
The image in this video is made up of 9 composite images taken across three of hubbles cameras.
There are three types of coloring they use..
It can be either
Representative,
Natural,
or
Enhanced.
Representative is false color to highlight certain elements
Natural is too show what it would look like if we where there
and Enhanced is in false color too highlight elements that would be invisible in the other two.
Now you may think its cheating, having them photoshop color in, but remember, human eyes are weak and feeble, only able too see things in our so called "Visible spectrum" butterflies can see much further into the "Ultra violet spectrum" than we can even comprehend.
Hubble can see Further into Ultra violet and further into infra-red than we can because it takes in pure white light, unfortunately this means that the images come out in black and white because it can't selectively add color too the visible spectrum.
The image in this video is made up of 9 composite images taken across three of hubbles cameras.
There are three types of coloring they use..
It can be either
Representative,
Natural,
or
Enhanced.
Representative is false color to highlight certain elements
Natural is too show what it would look like if we where there
and Enhanced is in false color too highlight elements that would be invisible in the other two.
The Curse of Dimensionality
Picture this..
say you have a square.. Perfectly flat.
2D cube
Now say you take that square and make it 3D perhaps not a cube, but just a tiny bit of height too it.. maybe a paper cut out of a square.
3D Cube projected in wire lay out
That square now has more weight (relative) and mass than the 2D square.
The same happens going from 1D to 2D and 3D to 4D, every time you add a dimension. You add mass to the object.
4D cube in wire layout
5D cube in wire layout
This is problematic because when you are talking about a multidimensional existence (parallel universes and such)
Different universes will have different perceived weight due to their increased mass.
11D cube
Now say all dimensions appear universally but we cannot perceive any but 2 and 3 then the universe would have infinite mass as mass increases every time you add on a new dimension.
and it would have virtually no middle as 1D and 0D are imperceivable too the human mind.. BUT HANG ON, I hear you say.. You can perceive 1D..
Well no you can't sorry to say..
Imagine the smallest thing you can think of, thats 3D..
Tiniest flattest thing... Well its 3D too, everything we can perceive is 3D, accept when we look at something displayed upon something..
For example the image on your computer monitor is 2D.. The monitor is 3D the pixels are 3D but what you are viewing is a 2D image..
We can perceive this because it has length and height..
But if you take away either of these it would not be a straight line, because even a straight line has some height or some width, it would be an infinitly receding point in existence, being ever smaller than is capable.. Thus it is out of our knowledge to perceive it.
Thought you might find some geometry interesting on this the day of the NSW State election!
say you have a square.. Perfectly flat.
2D cube
Now say you take that square and make it 3D perhaps not a cube, but just a tiny bit of height too it.. maybe a paper cut out of a square.
3D Cube projected in wire lay out
That square now has more weight (relative) and mass than the 2D square.
The same happens going from 1D to 2D and 3D to 4D, every time you add a dimension. You add mass to the object.
4D cube in wire layout
5D cube in wire layout
This is problematic because when you are talking about a multidimensional existence (parallel universes and such)
Different universes will have different perceived weight due to their increased mass.
11D cube
Now say all dimensions appear universally but we cannot perceive any but 2 and 3 then the universe would have infinite mass as mass increases every time you add on a new dimension.
and it would have virtually no middle as 1D and 0D are imperceivable too the human mind.. BUT HANG ON, I hear you say.. You can perceive 1D..
Well no you can't sorry to say..
Imagine the smallest thing you can think of, thats 3D..
Tiniest flattest thing... Well its 3D too, everything we can perceive is 3D, accept when we look at something displayed upon something..
For example the image on your computer monitor is 2D.. The monitor is 3D the pixels are 3D but what you are viewing is a 2D image..
We can perceive this because it has length and height..
But if you take away either of these it would not be a straight line, because even a straight line has some height or some width, it would be an infinitly receding point in existence, being ever smaller than is capable.. Thus it is out of our knowledge to perceive it.
Thought you might find some geometry interesting on this the day of the NSW State election!
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Shuttle Life program by Bill Nye
Shuttle Life
See the link above.. Click it..
Why click it you may ask??
Because it is a link to planetary.org which you should visit every day regardless..
But that link is special because it goes to the page for the shuttle life program.
What is the shuttle life program?
Well basically they want too put a whole bunch of funky microbes onto a space shuttle and launch it into space..
See how the organisms survive, too see if life really could have come from outer space on a rock from a distant planet..
But doing things like this is expensive, so they want moneys.. Well deserved moneys..
The planetary society was founded by the legendary CARL SAGAN, and is now founded by the amazing Bill Nye the science guy!
Donations can be anything but as incentive they have incentives for certain amounts, including a signed image of bill nye!!
See the link above.. Click it..
Why click it you may ask??
Because it is a link to planetary.org which you should visit every day regardless..
But that link is special because it goes to the page for the shuttle life program.
What is the shuttle life program?
Well basically they want too put a whole bunch of funky microbes onto a space shuttle and launch it into space..
See how the organisms survive, too see if life really could have come from outer space on a rock from a distant planet..
But doing things like this is expensive, so they want moneys.. Well deserved moneys..
The planetary society was founded by the legendary CARL SAGAN, and is now founded by the amazing Bill Nye the science guy!
Donations can be anything but as incentive they have incentives for certain amounts, including a signed image of bill nye!!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
See that? thats mercury and jupiter
See those two white dots, no don't try and clean your monitor they are suposed to be there,
That my friends is mercury and jupiter.. This wonderful image was taken in sweden only a week ago, if you are lucky enough to be in the northern hemisphere, head somewhere with clear skys at sunset this month.. and check out that amazing view.
More supernova
This is an image of N 63A a remnant left behind from a supernova located in the LMC which to us laymen is the large magellanic cloud which is the fourth largest galaxy in our local group.. what is our local group you ask, well lets get technical.
Lets start small and get big
Ok so it starts with our planet being part of the solar system, which surrounds a star. Many stars make up a sector of a galaxy in our case the spiral arm.
Add many sectors you get a galaxy ranging anywhere up to 100 million light years across.
Add a bunch of galaxies you get a group,
add a few groups you get a cluster,
add a few clusters you get a supercluster,
add a few superclusters and you have our universe.
This is an image of the LMC as seen by the hubble space telescope.
and in the LMC is a binary star system that went supernova together
and there it is, viewed falsely in Xray light and in Optical light.
These images are distributed under the creative commons license according to wikipedia.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Stars fusing
Two stars may have been caught going into a hypothesized act I like to call STAR FUSION POWER! I'm not sure if thats a good name but lets stick with it.
Basically V1309 was discovered back in 2008 when it started letting out extremely bright solar flares, and so a group of researches decided to see what they could find, luckily a project researching dark matter has had their eye in that area of the sky for a while.
So after trolling through over 2000 images section by section, they came upon the conclusion that V1309 was originally a "contact binary star" which is science slang for two stars that circle each other so close that they are touching, which sounds extremely awesome and it is, problem being that eventually they star transferring mass until eventually (tens of millions of years later) they merge to make one larger star. The amazing thing is that although the merger takes tens millions of years to prepare, the physical merger takes only a few years, the core merger happens in less than a week..
That week was in late august 2008, up to this moment it was doubling in brightness every 19 days, however in late august 2008 its brightness increased by a factor of 300 in only 10 days.
Its final burst happened at the end of that month with the most luminescent burst so far in its life time, this burst happened when the cores of the two stars finally merged, making the new star more than 10,000 times brighter than the original star and more than 30,000 times brighter than our sun.
This new star is spinning outrageously quickly, and is throwing off huge amounts of matter into space making the star almost impossible too see, however when this matter clears we may get our first view of a merged contact binary star.
via
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/71387/title/Two_stars_caught_fusing_into_one
Basically V1309 was discovered back in 2008 when it started letting out extremely bright solar flares, and so a group of researches decided to see what they could find, luckily a project researching dark matter has had their eye in that area of the sky for a while.
So after trolling through over 2000 images section by section, they came upon the conclusion that V1309 was originally a "contact binary star" which is science slang for two stars that circle each other so close that they are touching, which sounds extremely awesome and it is, problem being that eventually they star transferring mass until eventually (tens of millions of years later) they merge to make one larger star. The amazing thing is that although the merger takes tens millions of years to prepare, the physical merger takes only a few years, the core merger happens in less than a week..
That week was in late august 2008, up to this moment it was doubling in brightness every 19 days, however in late august 2008 its brightness increased by a factor of 300 in only 10 days.
Its final burst happened at the end of that month with the most luminescent burst so far in its life time, this burst happened when the cores of the two stars finally merged, making the new star more than 10,000 times brighter than the original star and more than 30,000 times brighter than our sun.
This new star is spinning outrageously quickly, and is throwing off huge amounts of matter into space making the star almost impossible too see, however when this matter clears we may get our first view of a merged contact binary star.
via
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/71387/title/Two_stars_caught_fusing_into_one
A MATCH MADE IN THE HEAVENS from Science News on Vimeo.
Robonaut
ROBONAUT HAS LANDED
The robonaut has finally been unpacked aboard the ISS.
Unfortunately he will not be activated until May.
Robonaut as I see it is the next step too an evil robot army.
For those of you who are curious what the robonaut is well he (it?) is one of four current robonaut models, they are basically robot astronauts designed to help astronauts in their daily tasks, and eventually on too things astronauts can't do, like go outside... which is something astronauts often have difficulty with what with the ISS being in space and all.
Astronauts are still able to go outside with suits, but robots could be ready much faster, and lets face it we dont mind risking robots as much as we mind risking humans.
Reference:
http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/default.asp
MESSENGER
Only a few hours ago the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging or the MESSENGER space craft for short, entered orbit around Mercury, and is unique in being the only spacecraft ever to do so!
Now I know some of you out there are thinking, how did we make a spacecraft that can survive the extreme temperature that is found that close to the sun? Well it all starts with the orbit, the MESSENGER flies in as close as 200 kilometers to the surface of mercury and then flies away more than 15,000 km from the surface, it does all of this every 12 hours. The flying away is what keeps it cool enough to continue working its sensors.
The MESSENGER will look for chemical signs of volcanic activity on mercury.
VOLCANIC ACTIVITY ON MERCURY?? I hear you cry, well indeed, scientists believe that there is volcanic activity on the surface and the MESSENGER is at the end of its 6 and a half year journey to discover if this is true.
References:
www.Sciencenews.org
www.CTV.ca
Now I know some of you out there are thinking, how did we make a spacecraft that can survive the extreme temperature that is found that close to the sun? Well it all starts with the orbit, the MESSENGER flies in as close as 200 kilometers to the surface of mercury and then flies away more than 15,000 km from the surface, it does all of this every 12 hours. The flying away is what keeps it cool enough to continue working its sensors.
The MESSENGER will look for chemical signs of volcanic activity on mercury.
VOLCANIC ACTIVITY ON MERCURY?? I hear you cry, well indeed, scientists believe that there is volcanic activity on the surface and the MESSENGER is at the end of its 6 and a half year journey to discover if this is true.
References:
www.Sciencenews.org
www.CTV.ca
Feel the love for the eco dome?
Mars,
We spent billions of dollars getting up the ISS, why not the same funding to get to mars.
TerraForm or Eco Dome?
_____________________
A common debate and question..I say, why not both?
We start with the eco dome to get colonists on the planet and then we terraform from there.
Think about any colonization what do you do?
you build a base of operations..
The eco dome could serve as that base and provide a place for scientists to study martian conditions and work out possible means of terraforming.
Power
______
The planet like earth can support geothermal energy and solar energy..
for building an eco-dome that would be enough energy and then if teraforming is going to happen then nuclear is a cost effective and simple solution.
electric rovers can charge of stations that connect to these power supplies.
Oxygen
_______
We can then set up a processing plant which can take the natural Oxygen/Carbon mix that is in the atmosphere of the planet, and convert them into breathable air. This processing plant filters air into the eco-dome which we fill with high oxygen producing plants. Alternatively to taking oxygen and combining it with carbon, we could take water from the ice caps and via electrolysis take out the oxygen, the remaining hydrogen can then be used as fuel.
Modulation
_________
I firmly believe that the eco-dome will need to be modular to allow for expansion if it is non-modular then the eco-dome will remain the same size and colonization cannot happen, it will fall into a purely research based facility, although this is all well and good, the eventual goal should be colonization and eventually a strong human presence on mars.
Pressurization
____________
Any colony on mars pre teraforming needs to have a high pressure, but this allready happens with most structures that go beyond surface earth, IE Submarines and Space shuttles.
Transport to mars
________________
The current journey to mars takes between 6-9 months, which is relatively long time to wait to get anything done, if we want to be there in ten years almost 1 year of that is transporting there, so we only have 9 years planning and construction time..
However at the same time, America to the moon took from 62-69 not even ten years..
I strongly believe we can make this happen, im no engineer I cant give you schematics or details, but I see no reason we cant be there before 2020, accept money..
Its still a long way off.. But if everyone had these ideas then we very well could be there..
We spent billions of dollars getting up the ISS, why not the same funding to get to mars.
TerraForm or Eco Dome?
_____________________
A common debate and question..I say, why not both?
We start with the eco dome to get colonists on the planet and then we terraform from there.
Think about any colonization what do you do?
you build a base of operations..
The eco dome could serve as that base and provide a place for scientists to study martian conditions and work out possible means of terraforming.
Power
______
The planet like earth can support geothermal energy and solar energy..
for building an eco-dome that would be enough energy and then if teraforming is going to happen then nuclear is a cost effective and simple solution.
electric rovers can charge of stations that connect to these power supplies.
Oxygen
_______
We can then set up a processing plant which can take the natural Oxygen/Carbon mix that is in the atmosphere of the planet, and convert them into breathable air. This processing plant filters air into the eco-dome which we fill with high oxygen producing plants. Alternatively to taking oxygen and combining it with carbon, we could take water from the ice caps and via electrolysis take out the oxygen, the remaining hydrogen can then be used as fuel.
Modulation
_________
I firmly believe that the eco-dome will need to be modular to allow for expansion if it is non-modular then the eco-dome will remain the same size and colonization cannot happen, it will fall into a purely research based facility, although this is all well and good, the eventual goal should be colonization and eventually a strong human presence on mars.
Pressurization
____________
Any colony on mars pre teraforming needs to have a high pressure, but this allready happens with most structures that go beyond surface earth, IE Submarines and Space shuttles.
Transport to mars
________________
The current journey to mars takes between 6-9 months, which is relatively long time to wait to get anything done, if we want to be there in ten years almost 1 year of that is transporting there, so we only have 9 years planning and construction time..
However at the same time, America to the moon took from 62-69 not even ten years..
I strongly believe we can make this happen, im no engineer I cant give you schematics or details, but I see no reason we cant be there before 2020, accept money..
Its still a long way off.. But if everyone had these ideas then we very well could be there..
The known universe
I love this video, always good to watch when feeling down, puts the whole universe into perspective.
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