Daily news 15 January 2016 Comets can’t explain weird ‘alien megastructure’ star after all The weirdest star in the cosmos just got a lot weirder. And yes, it might be aliens. Known as KIC 8462852, or Tabby’s star, it has been baffling astronomers for the past few months after a team of researchers noticed its light seemed to be dipping in brightness in bizarre ways. Proposed explanations ranged from a cloud of comets to orbiting “alien megastructures”. Now an analysis of historical observations reveals the star has been gradually dimming for over a century, leaving everyone scratching their heads as to the cause. The first signs of this space oddity came from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, which continually watched the star’s region of the sky between 2009 and 2013. Most planet-hosting stars show small, regular dips in light when their planets pass in front of them. But Tabby’s star dipped erratically throughout the four years, sometimes losing as much as 20 per cent of its brightness. Space oddity In September, a team led by Tabetha Boyajian of Yale University, who lends the star its informal name, tried to make sense of this unusual signal. Ultimately they determined that dust from a large cloud of comets was the best explanation. A month later, the star made headlines across the globe thanks to a paper by Jason Wright of Pennsylvania State University and his colleagues, who suggested that “alien megastructures”, such as satellites designed to collect light from the star, could be responsible for the signal. Now Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University has discovered that the mystery goes even further. When Boyajian’s team studied the star, they looked at data from a Harvard University archive of digitally scanned photographic plates of the sky from the past century or so to see if the star had behaved unusually in the past, but found nothing. Schaefer decided this unusual star deserved a second look. He averaged the data in five-year bins to look for slow, long-term trends, and found that the star faded by about 20 per cent between 1890 and 1989. “The basic effect is small and not obvious,” he says. Starman To confirm the fade was real, Schaefer went to Harvard to look at the original photographic plates and inspected them by eye for changes, a skill few astronomers possess these days. “Since no one uses photographic plates any more, it’s basically a lost art,” says Wright. “Schaefer is an expert at this stuff.” Schaefer saw the same century-long dimming in his manual readings, and calculated that it would require 648,000 comets, each 200 kilometres wide, to have passed by the star – completely implausible, he says. “The comet-family idea was reasonably put forth as the best of the proposals, even while acknowledging that they all were a poor lot,” he says. “But now we have a refutation of the idea, and indeed, of all published ideas.” “This presents some trouble for the comet hypothesis,” says Boyajian. “We need more data through continuous monitoring to figure out what is going on.” What about those alien megastructures? Schaefer is unconvinced. “The alien-megastructure idea runs wrong with my new observations,” he says, as he thinks even advanced aliens wouldn’t be able to build something capable of covering a fifth of a star in just a century. What’s more, such an object should radiate light absorbed from the star as heat, but the infrared signal from Tabby’s star appears normal, he says. “I don’t know how the dimming affects the megastructure hypothesis, except that it would seem to exclude a lot of natural explanations, including comets,” says Wright. “It could be that there were just more dimming events in the past, or that astronomers were less lucky in the past and caught more dimming events in the 1980s than in the 1900s. But that seems unlikely.” There’s no doubt KIC 8462852 is behaving strangely, so something must be responsible, says Schaefer. “Either one of our refutations has some hidden loophole, or some theorist needs to come up with some other proposal.” Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1601.03256 Image credit: JPL-Caltech/NASA
David Bowie: Astronomers name lightning bolt constellation after space-obsessed singer The constellation is ‘somewhere in the vicinity of Mars’, according to the astronomers http://www.independent.co.uk/news/p...ion-after-space-obsessed-singer-a6819456.html
Daily news 12 January 2016 New rumours that gravitational waves have finally been detected A rumour that the world’s largest gravitational-wave observatory has caught the first whiff of its quarry is heating up. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time produced by massive bodies accelerating through space, such as pairs of neutron stars orbiting each other or the merging of two black holes. They were predicted as part of Einstein’s general relativity a century ago, but have yet to be seen directly. Finding them would confirm the final piece of his theory, and also give us a new way to view the universe, allowing us to probe distant objects that might otherwise be dark or obscured by interstellar dust. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) searched for such signals from 2002 to 2010 with no luck. Its more sensitive successor, Advanced LIGO or aLIGO, started collecting data on 18 September. Fresh sighting Barely a week later, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss at Arizona State University tweeted a rumour that the detector had already picked up a signal. Now Krauss claims that the original rumour has been confirmed by an independent source. “Stay tuned!” he tweeted. “Gravitational waves may have been discovered!! Exciting.” Off Twitter, however, Krauss was more cautious. The signal could have been a false one deliberately injected into the data to test the detection team. “I’m told this isn’t that,” Krauss told New Scientist. His source says that the LIGO collaboration is writing up a paper on the possible find. “That suggests it’s not a false signal – but who knows for sure?” The official word from the LIGO team is that they are still analysing the data from the first run, which should finish on 12 January. “It takes time to analyse, interpret and review results,” says spokesperson Gabriela González at Louisiana State University. “We expect to have news on the run results in the next few months.” “We’ll use something other than the rumour mill when we have a contribution to the discussion!” adds David Shoemaker at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Image credit: NASA/C. Henze
Sounds like a new, ninth planet in our SS has been discovered. So far the name is just "Planet X". Apparently it's far beyond Pluto and orbits the sun every 15k years. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016...eptune-sized-planet-lurks-unseen-solar-system
I don't know if New Horizons is even remotely heading in the right direction or if it can have it's course altered, but what are the chances that it could get a few shots of this new planet? Emma
With a 200AU orbit, and a 15K year orbit, chances are bad even if they knew where in its orbit it was. Probably a Hubble job.
This is from Mike Brown and his team, who demoted Pluto and discovered nearly all other dwarf planets alongside Sedna and Eris. He is a credible source and it sounds like, from going into a bit of the paper, that the results of the observation and study are at 3.8 sigma results. 3.8 sigma results is something like .010% chance that it was a random variation observed rather than a large, potential Neptune sized ice ball (which was their purpose). I'm not much of a math geek, so someone else can chime in, but 3.8 sigma is 3.8 standard deviations from the mean. That's pretty good odds that it wasn't a random occurrence observed. In my opinion, there's a good amount of undiscovered dwarf sized planets, and possibly larger, in our solar system. Anything as large as Saturn has/will be discovered with WISE, but finding the smaller ones is a bit more daunting of a task. Additionally, it looks like the James Webb Space Telescope will be incapable of observing the potential 9th planet, though I may be incorrect about that statement. If any spacecraft were to be able* to take a picture of it, it would be Voyager 1. Launched in '77, it's a good 133 AU into it's trip. Planet X is estimated somewhere between 200 to 1000 AU away. Odds are it's at its aphelion, meaning it's probably on the latter end of that estimate. 3.5 AU a year with everything lined up would take ~150 to 250 years to reach it. I suspect New Horizons would be incapable of spotting it within our lifetime. Eventually? Maybe. Planet X is very far away. It seems to be very cold, giving little infrared radiation off. It is giving off next to nothing for light. It also has gravitational pulls over objects that are even farther away, leaving us with even less to study. We'd have to pinpoint it to a tee, knowing exactly where it is at what time during its oddly shaped orbit to catch a glimpse of it.
Unfortunately, the JWST has a very small line of sight in a massive sky. Considering JWST's angular resolution of .1 arcseconds, Planet X would have an angular size of 2.1 at 900 AU away. It would be nothing more than specks as the JWST would have a very tough time resolving it into a disk shape without the proper modifications (I'm sure there are modifications available, I am just unaware of them).
Theoretical discovery announced just a week after David Bowie's death. They HAVE to name it after him. Dibs on naming it Ziggy.
Documentary that glosses over some of the leading theories regarding if or how there was anything before big bang. Found on reddit, pretty mind-blowing stuff.
The Weekly Weinersmith podcast has a good episode on American astrophysics, NASA, its funding, and the happenings within congress about it. Episode 2
NASA’s Opportunity rover was supposed to last 90 days on Mars. Yesterday was its 12th anniversary Michael Seibert, lead spacecraft systems engineer on the Mars Exploration Rover Project, says he expected to be on the team six months not years on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 at JPL. The Mars Rover, Opportunity, will celebrate its 12th year on the red planet Jan. 24. SARAH REINGEWIRTZ — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER By Jason Henry, San Gabriel Valley Tribune The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s greatest minds expected its two identical Mars Exploration Rovers to last 90 days before dust clouded their solar arrays and drained their power. On Sunday, one of those NASA rovers, Opportunity, rolled into its 12th anniversary on Mars. It’s now a veteran of surviving the harsh Martian landscape that most believed would limit its lifespan to months, not years. Opportunity’s sibling, Spirit, landed weeks earlier and lasted six years. “Twelve years is a very long time to have this sort of a continuous presence,” said Matt Golombek, Mars rovers project scientist. “For a science team to be this involved, on a daily basis, for this long on Mars, is pretty much unprecedented.” The golf-cart sized solar-powered robot is showing its age. Its joints ache and lock, two of its scientific instruments no longer work, and it suffers bouts of amnesia caused by faulty flash memory. Opportunity moves at a turtle’s pace, and maybe slower now in its old age, but it keeps moving. In the past two years, it broke the record for the longest distance traveled on another planet and completed a full marathon’s distance. Today, its odometer is just shy of 27 miles total. Opportunity, the precursor to the car-sized and equally resilient Curiosity Rover, launched in late 2003 and arrived on Mars on Jan. 24, 2005. No other rover mission operated as long in NASA’s history, yet its team members still find it enthralling. “Every day, you’re looking at images that no one has ever seen before,” said John Callas, project manager. “In that sense, it’s always new, it’s always fresh.” KEEPING IT MOVING Opportunity isn’t steered by joystick, and it’s nothing like driving a car. The scientists at JPL in La Cañada Flintridge send code to the rover — with a 20-minute delay — to execute commands. That meant planning out Opportunity’s actions daily in the beginning. A Mars day, called a Sol, lasts about 40 minutes longer than on Earth. In California, the team’s schedule shifted and blackout curtains were installed, according to Callas. “You’re essentially permanently jet lagged,” Callas said. Some worked in the middle of the night, while others gave up their weekends to keep an eye on the twin rovers. As the mission extended, they planned actions on two- and three-day intervals to return employees’ to a more normal schedule, Callas said. JPL uses a test rover on Earth to plan out more complicated movements. JPL built inclines to put the duplicate rover through its paces when Opportunity reached its first crater. “The rovers were never designed to go up or down steep slopes,” Callas said. “We didn’t want it to be a ‘Thelma and Louise’ suicide mission.” Endurance Crater gave Opportunity a chance to photograph deeper and older geology. The crater goes further into the planet’s history the deeper it goes, Callas said. When Opportunity buried all six wheels in a Martian dune in its first year, the scientists at JPL spent five weeks trying to extricate the robot. On Earth, they buried the test rover in sand and diatomaceous earth, a crumbly soil used in pool filters. It took 629 feet of wheel rotations to move Opportunity one meter out of the trap. In 2009, Spirit, on the other side of the planet from Opportunity, similarly became stuck, but it was unsuccessful in getting free. It eventually ran out of power, sending its final communication in March 2010. JPL continued to use its arm for science up until it shut down. NASA used software updates over the years to improve the rover’s movements and visual detection capabilities. One upgrade made Opportunity more selective in its photography, another updated its hazard detection and gave it more autonomy. A NEVER-ENDING MISSION Both Callas and Golombek joined the mission in the beginning, with Golombek selecting the landing site 15 years ago. For some on the team, Opportunity preceded and inspired their careers. The team’s youngest member was 11-years-old when Opportunity launched. Lead spacecraft systems engineer Mike Seibert, 33, was a third-year undergraduate studying aerospace at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He recalled buying 3-D glasses to look at the images coming back from Opportunity and Spirit. Three days after graduation, he landed an interview at JPL. Now 10 years and several title changes later, he’s still working on the mission, his first straight out of college. “They dangled a Mars rover in front of me, and I lost my mind very quickly,” he said. “We’re all kind of emotionally invested in this mission.” Seibert said he’d only leave Opportunity to follow his dream of becoming an astronaut. He’s never seen Opportunity in person — it left before he graduated — but he hopes to someday pay it a visit. “I hope that’s a selling point — I’m familiar with the planet,” he said. SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES The science done by Opportunity and Spirit changed age-old views of Mars from an eternally desolate planet to one that may have been more Earth-like than previously believed. Opportunity’s landing zone, dubbed Eagle Crater in Mars’ Meridiani Planum, put it practically on top of geological evidence of the Red Planet’s watery past. The rover during its mission found evidence that very salty water likely existed above the surface. It peeked into four craters where it studied salt flats, meteorites and rock compositions. Opportunity travels roughly 600 meters a day, but it’s rarely in a straight line. The rover might spend weeks, months or years in the same areas. It took the rover nearly three years — with several detours — to reach what NASA calls its “long term goal,” a 13-mile wide crater named Endeavour. At Endeavour, Opportunity found minerals that suggested Mars may have had less acidic and more life-friendly bodies of water billions of years ago, a shift from the mission’s earlier discoveries that suggested a wet but a much less habitable planet. THE NEXT STEPS Opportunity’s extensions cover two-year cycles, with the rover funded through the end of 2016. In the last review cycle, Opportunity received the highest rating of any ongoing Mars mission, including Curiosity. JPL is working on the next extension proposal. Emily Lakdawalla, a senior editor at the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, called the years of extensions and operation a testament to the rover’s construction and JPL’s careful piloting. She said she suspects Opportunity will continue to receive funding as long as it remains operational. “Generally speaking, if you have a spacecraft that is functional, that is responding to you, that is already at a distant planet, it is worth it to continue to put what effort you can in to get science out of it,” she said. Lakdawalla said she writes a blog post every year about NASA’s aging Mars technologies, where she warns that a mechanical failure or operator error could end the missions at any time. “I keep on betting against them, and I keep being wrong,” she said. “I’m extremely happy to be wrong about that.”
Also today is the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. RIP. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-was-like-to-witness-the-challenger-disaster/
They would've been unconscious almost immediately after depressurization. They very well could've survived the initial explosion but not been awake at least when they impacted the ocean.
Some of them survived the initial explosion according to reports because their personal oxygen packs (there in case of a depressurization) were manually turned on. They found 4 of these packs and 3 were turned on. With that having been said, they would have lost consciousness soon after due to pressure and then would have died during impact.
I remember that I was in Mr Chamberlain's 4th grade class when it happened. They wheeled in a tv for us to watch it live.
Elon Musk Says SpaceX Will Send People to Mars by 2025 by KEITH WAGSTAFF Nobody can accuse Elon Musk of not shooting for the stars. The SpaceX and Tesla founder said this week that he personally wants to visit space within the next five years and thinks that his company will send somebody to Mars by 2025. Speaking at the StartmeupHK Festival in Hong Kong this week, Musk said that he had already taken parabolic flights to prepare for space, but had not done much else. "I don't think it's that hard, honestly," he said. "It's not that hard to float around." Personal space travel ambitions aside, Musk also talked about how important it was for mankind to reach Mars. He said that SpaceX is planning to reveal its next-generation spacecraft at September's International Astronautical Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico. That could be the next step toward eventually sending human beings to the Red Planet — something Musk said he thinks will happen by 2025. It's an ambitious goal considering that NASA's current plan is to send humans to Mars in the 2030s. Related:Antarctic Fungi Survive for a Year in Mars-Like Conditions on Space Station Regardless of who gets there first, Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also to inspire people. "This would be an incredible adventure," he said. "It would be exiting and inspiring, and there need to be things that excite and inspire people."
Spacey, science-y interplanetary drive-type stuff coming out of Germany. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/03/merkel_creates_hydrogen_plasma Spoiler German Chancellor fires hydrogen plasma with the push of a button Fusion reactor fires up after 10 years of construction Angela Merkel has witnessed the first hydrogen plasma being created by the Wendelstein 7-X fusion reactor experiment as part of Germany's push to take the lead in future power generation. Chancellor Mutti, as she is known by the German electorate, fired up the device, which then pushed a 2-megawatt pulse of microwave heating onto a small amount of hydrogen, turning it into plasma. If all goes to plan the device will be enhanced to produce 20 megawatt pulses capable of sustaining plasma for up to 30 minutes. "With a temperature of 80 million degrees and a lifetime of a quarter of a second, the device's first hydrogen plasma has completely lived up to our expectations," said Dr. Hans-Stephan Bosch from the Max Planck Institute, which operates the device. The Wendelstein 7-X has created 300 batches of six-million-degree helium plasma for the last two months, primarily because this performs the useful task of burning up any dust and impurities that were left in the device after its construction. Now the boffins are moving on to hydrogen. Most fusion chambers follow a Soviet-designed tokamak design, a doughnut-shaped device that uses strong electrical current to hold the plasma in place. But Wendelstein 7-X is a stellarator, developed initially in the US, which uses magnetic coils to keep the plasma from burning its way out of the reaction chamber. The stellarator design does have an advantage over tokamaks, in that it can operate continuously, whereas the alternative design can only operate in pulses without auxiliary equipment. The Wendelstein 7-X is the largest stellarator in the world and has cost Germany €370m ($410m) so far. The machine uses a ring of 50 superconducting coils, some 3.5 metres (11.5 feet) high, capable of holding 30 cubic meters (1060 cubic feet) of ultra-thin plasma in place. While it's not capable of producing fusion power itself, the design is a test case to show that a stellarator could be used in future fusion projects. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator