Tiny Bubbles, In My Space-Time

Yeah.  So this is pretty awesome.  Make it so.

Researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) are carrying out lab-scale experiments to create tiny space-time warps with an aim to eventually achieving “Star-Trek”-style interstellar space travel.

According to the Alcubierre warp drive theory, proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994, a spaceship could travel faster than light inside a bubble of negative energy that deforms the space-time continuum, compressing it in front of the craft and expanding it behind.

Harold “Sonny” White, from JSC’s advanced propulsion physics laboratory Eagleworks, attended the 100 Year Starship Symposium in Houston on Sept. 14 to present his lab’s findings.

White’s team is testing out mathematical equations relating to the physics of cosmic inflation using an instrument called the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer, which uses a laser to create little warp bubbles.

“We’ve initiated an interferometer test bed in this lab, where we’re going to go through and try and generate a microscopic instance of a little warp bubble,” White said, according to a July article in Roundup, JSC’s biweekly publication.

“And although this is just a microscopic instance of the phenomena, we’re perturbing space-time, one part in 10 million, a very tiny amount.”

Cannot.  Stop.  Headbanging.  Over how awesome this is.  Sure, it'll be generations or so before we end up doing anything practical with this, if it even works at macro scales without obscene amounts of energy, or at all, or without tearing a dimensional rift into the Chaos Realms and making the walls bleed.

But still!  Science!

Fly Him To The Moon One Last Time

Arguably the most famous astronaut in human history has passed.  Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, died this afternoon at the age of 82, after undergoing heart surgery earlier this month.

"We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures," Armstrong's family said in a statement obtained by CNN affiliate WKRC.

Armstrong underwent heart surgery this month.

"While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves," his family said.

"For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."

Many Americans and even the history books omit how Armstrong earned his wings saving the Gemini 8 crew some three years earlier.  After the first successful docking of a spacecraft in orbit, the Gemini 8 capsule nearly met with disaster.

As Gemini 8 tumbled wildly at 17,500 miles per hour, Armstrong decided the problem had to be a stuck thruster. He and Scott shut off each of the spacecraft's 16 orbital maneuvering system thrusters one at a time. Thruster Number 8 did not respond.

"All we've got left is the reentry control system," Armstrong told Scott. Armstrong believed those thrusters, more powerful than standard thrusters because they positioned the spacecraft for reentry, would override the stuck thruster.

"Press on," Scott said.

Both astronauts wavered on the edge of losing consciousness. At first, nothing happened. After turning the system off, then on for a second time, the reentry thrusters responded.

Armstrong guided the capsule to a water landing in the Pacific where the Navy deployed to snag the reentry vehicle.  His quick thinking and cool head made him the obvious choice as mission commander when the Apollo 11 mission launched in 1969, where he became the first man on the moon.

Here's to you, Neil.  Not very many people get to be the first person on another celestial body.

Last Call

Science.  It works, bitches.

Space, The Final Frontier

Faith in an orderly universe that will function long after I'm gone:  restored.

Miner 2049er

Zandardad flags down this Space.com article on Planetary Resources, Inc., a new startup with one out-of-this-world business plan and star-powered backers like Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron.

A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.

Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.

"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. "They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

Turns out there's a lot of hard money in space rocks, folks.

Platinum-group metals — ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum — are found in low concentrations on Earth and can be tough to access, which is why they're so expensive. In fact, Anderson said, they don't occur naturally in Earth's crust, having been deposited on our planet over the eons by asteroid impacts.

"We're going to go to the source," Anderson said. "The platinum-group metals are many orders of magnitude easier to access in the high-concentration platinum asteroids than they are in the Earth's crust."

And there are a lot of precious metals up there waiting to be mined. A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said.

Telescope prospecting could begin in a few years and extraction could begin in as soon as 12-15 years by some estimates.  It's easiest to grab the low-hanging fruit first and drag near-Earth asteroids into a stable orbit around the Moon.  There, unmanned spacecraft could mine the space rocks for tasty metals.  Entirely possible to see this stuff get underway in my lifetime.

And some of these space rocks are worth tons of water, too.  Considering population growth on the planet and a growing shortage of potable water as the decades advance, good ol' aqua celestia from giant orbital ice cubes could be a valuable resource in the near-future.

Besides, if sci-fi writers are to be believed, you kinda want to invest in the ground floor of a venture like this.  Weyland-Yutani Corporation, anyone?

California Rock Concert

The annual Lyrid meteor shower had some extra kick in it this year as northern California was front and center for one heck of a celestial sound test.

A loud boom similar to the sound of an explosion has been heard over much of northern California apparently as a result of an ongoing meteor shower, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The newspaper, citing Stefanie Henry, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento, said the sound had been produced by a meteor apparently breaking up above the Earth, sending the sound reverberating across the area.

The National Weather Service received reports of the sound across northern California early on Sunday, and even as far south as Orange County, the report said.

Though the peak of the shower was Saturday evening, beams of light will likely still be visible for several days, The LA Times said.

It appears as if one meteor broke up close enough to the Earth's atmosphere to set off a sonic boom in NorCal, which was heard all the way out in neighboring Nevada.  Heck of a light show too out in the high desert last weekend.

No word if anyone got superpowers from any meteor fragments, though.

My Favorite Martians

So, saw John Carter this weekend, and I have to say it was pretty impressive for a Disney action flick. Edgar Rice Burroughs's world comes to CGI life and it's a hell of a ride.  Carter, played by Friday Night Lights Taylor Kitsch, is a brooding Confederate vet, tired of war after it cost him his family.  In the Arizona Territory the US Government wants him to fight for the country against the Apache nation and he resists (violently).  His escape leads him into a series of events that put him on Mars, smack in the middle of a civil war between a moving city-state crawling across the blasted landscape and the last free city-state left. 

Mars is known as Barsoom by the natives, including the red-skinned human inhabitants, and the 9 foot tall reptilian four-armed Tharks, and Carter is even less inclined to find himself in yet another civil war under any circumstances.  Only the problem is being used to Earth's gravity, John is a titan on Barsoom, where he can make 100-foot leaps and smash people to flinders with his relative super-Barsoomian abilities.  Everyone wants John Carter to fight for them, including the beautiful Princess Dejah Thoris (played by Lynn Collins), the vicious Sab Than (played by The Wire's Dominic West) and the Tharks led by Tars Tarkas (voiced by Willem Dafoe).

Things get a hell of a lot more complicated when Carter discovers that a group of powerful Barsoomians with advanced technology are behind this civil war and their leader Matai Shang (played by Mark Strong) is pulling the strings.  It's a fun film, high on adventure and not terribly preachy about the horrors of war, but the entire movie shows that even when Burroughs was writing these stories a hundred years ago that the horrors of war will always be a rich source of material for entertainment.

We're just wired that way.  John Carter is worth a early bird matinee show at least.

Solar Babies

The Sun has had enough of your crap, Earth.  Take that.

U.S. politics had its "Super Tuesday" yesterday, and so did the sun, says Joseph Kunches from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

That's because the sun had two solar flares associated with two coronal mass ejections. Coronal mass ejections involve massive amounts of energy and charged particles shooting out of the sun, and can cause problems if directed at Earth, as was the case over the last couple of days.

This event may stir up a geomagnetic storm, and lead to disruptions to high-frequency radio communications, global positioning systems and power grids, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said Wednesday. The peak of the storm is expected to hit Thursday morning; it may gradually diminish by Friday morning.

One of these coronal mass ejections is the strongest since December 2006, NOAA said. The equivalent of 10 billion tons of highly charged particles are hurtling at a rate of 3 million to 4 million miles an hour toward Earth. NASA says the leading edge of this coronal mass ejection will hit Earth at 1:25 a.m. E.T. (give or take seven hours).

The sun is currently in a cycle of increased sun spots. This is part of an 11-year cycle that is expected to peak over the next year. The magnetic field in a sunspot stores energy that is released in solar flares. These flares are intense bursts of radiation that get ejected into space.

Which is funny, because I would have pegged this year to be the peak of gas ejected into space, with the election and all.   NASA footage of unusual solar activity below:



Sun keeps trying to kill me, man.  KILL ME.

Last Call

To the moon, Alice!

As he says, Newt Gingrich thinks grandiose thoughts. Today’s pitch to Florida’s Space Coast: a lunar base within the next eight years.

“By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American,” he said. According to Newt, the base would be used for “science, tourism, and manufacturing” and create a “robust industry” modeled on the airline business in the 20th century.

From there, Gingrich suggested moving towards a Mars mission by the end of the next decade. He proposed setting aside 10% of NASA’s budget in prize money for private research into interplanetary exploration.

“I accept the charge that I am grandiose,” he said. “Because Americans are instinctively grandiose.”

This is actually a pretty awesome idea...until you see the budget cuts in non awesome moon base parts of our spending Newt will need in order to do this.  And considering how much Newt plans to lower revenues by cutting taxes on the rich with his flat tax shell game, the odds of being able to afford a moon base on NASA's budget is about as likely as I would be needing a pap smear in the next month.

I mean, we could totally have USA MOON BASE GO! if we didn't want to fund, you know, Social Security and Medicare.  Which I think is his point.

Get Better Soon, Doc

Dr. Stephen Hawking missed his 70th birthday event, but here's hoping he gets better soon.  The world need more people like him.

British scientist Stephen Hawking was forced to miss a scientific debate to mark his 70th birthday Sunday due to ill health but sent an upbeat message saying he was living at a “glorious time”.

As scientists and media gathered at Cambridge University for a symposium to mark Hawking’s birthday, vice-chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewic announced: “Stephen has been unwell and was only discharged from hospital on Friday.”

But in a pre-recorded message, the physicist urged participants to focus on his glittering career and the future of science rather than his struggles against illness.

“It has been a glorious time to be alive and doing research in theoretical physics,” he said.

“We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” he argued. “I don’t think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.”

Tell that to the Republican Party.  Please.

Hot Pair On The Market

NASA's Kepler project continues to come up with awesome data, like these two Earth-sized planets orbiting a star like our own Sun.

The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are the smallest planets outside the solar system confirmed around a star like the Sun, NASA said in a statement.

The planets are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.

"This discovery demonstrates for the first time that Earth-size planets exist around other stars, and that we are able to detect them," Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in the statement.

The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth.

Kepler-20f is slightly larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets are in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

Being able to detect Earth-sized planets in distant solar systems is pretty important if your goal is finding other Earth-like planets out there.  We're not going to find anyone waving back I suspect in my lifetime, but at some point in human history we're going to find something out there, somewhere.

That is if we don't blow ourselves up, cook our atmosphere, or flood the planet first.  Even money on which happens first down the road.

Last Call

NASA's Kepler planet-finding project has hit pay dirt, and planet Kepler-22b looks like it would probably a great place to vacation.

NASA has found a new planet outside Earth's solar system that is eerily similar to Earth in important aspects.

Scientists say the temperature on the surface of the planet is about a comfy 72 degrees (22 Celsius). Its star could almost be a twin of Earth's sun. It probably has water and land.

It was found in the middle of the habitable zone, making it the best potential target for life.

The discovery announced Monday was made by NASA's Kepler planet-hunting telescope. This is the first time Kepler confirmed a planet outside Earth's solar system in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold habitable zone. This is the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. The planet is estimated to be 2.4 times the size of Earth, which would make it the smallest found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star like our sun.

Twice before astronomers have announced planets found in that zone, but neither was as promising. One was disputed; the other is on the hot edge of the zone.

I'm sure if we behave ourselves, the GOP may let NASA exist long enough so that we can build a really big slingshot to lob a rock with a digital camera strapped to it at Kepler-22b.  Unfortunately, we're going to have to end Social Security and breathing in order to do it...unless we can convince the job creators that the planet's rich in Unobtanium.

The six-legged tigers and giant blue cat people may object, however.  Or the legion of dormant, life-hating robots.  Or the weeping angel statues everywhere.  Or the deadly plants.  Or the viruses.  Or...well, there's got to be a catch, dammit.

That New Mars Rover, He's A Curious Cat

After Saturday's launch, the NASA Curiosity Mars rover is on its way to the red planet to do some exploring.

"I think this mission is an important next step in NASA's overall goal to address the issue of life in the universe," lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology, told reporters shortly after the launch.

The car-sized rover, nicknamed Curiosity, is expected to touch down on August 6, 2012, to begin two years of detailed analysis of a 96-mile (154-km) wide impact basin near the Martian equator called Gale Crater.

The goal is to determine if Mars has or ever had environments to support life. It is the first astrobiology mission to Mars since the 1970s-era Viking probes.

Scientists chose the landing site because it has a three-mile-high (4.8-km high) mountain of what appears from orbital imagery and mineral analysis to be layers of rock piled up like the Grand Canyon, each layer testifying to a different period in Mars' history.

The rover has 17 cameras and 10 science instruments, including chemistry labs, to identify elements in soil and rock samples to be dug up by the probe's drill-tipped robotic arm.

I'm hoping that NASA's willing to share some feed from the Curiosity lab when August rolls around.  I'm not sure if we'll get a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime, but this is certainly going to be a vital step in that eventual process.  Imagine what different events in 2000 could have led to in our efforts to explore our solar system instead of two wars and a financial crisis.

Godspeed, my mechanical friend.  New tag: I'm The Best At Space!