Astro Fact: Cosmic Time

     From the reference point of a human being here on Earth, space and time are pretty much independent of each other, when a world class runner competes they don't have any adjustments to make for the percentage of the speed of light the runner is going, nor any amount of gravitational anomaly or possible black holes interfering with data. In space, this is not the case as much.

This guy may have some problems with relativity though.

     Within the realms of deep space, almost everything that we care about moves fast and that can cause some problems with timing. For instance light moves incredibly fast, by the time you  have read this light could have made it to the moon and back a few times. While the moon is not all that far away at around 384400 km, when we send satellites out to the edges of the solar system (such as the Voyager probes and New Horizons) there can be significant signal delay as the message rushes its way out at the speed of light.
     In even deeper space when we see the stars we are actually looking into the past. For stars nearby this is not much of a problem, the Centauri system is only around 4.3 lightyears away, not all that far when compared to the millions of light years to other galaxies or the billions of light years out to the edge of the ever expanding universe. Still, these vast amounts of time and distance can cause problems especially when it comes to knowing exactly where and when and object is. Some day if we are to venture out beyond the reaches of our home system, communicating home will be very difficult unless we can break physics, which is unlikely.
     Even more bizarre is the idea that not only are deep space objects truly in a different location due to time, but our perspective of where they were at that time may be off due to gravity. Everybody has heard from a young age that black holes can bring in light, but what about the light that doesn't fall in? It turns out that this light can bend around a black hole (in fact it doesn't necessarily have to be a black hole, it can be just about any massive and heavy object such as a galactic cluster). When observed here on Earth, astronomers see this effect as a lensing of background objects.

     Each of those thin bent streams of light is actually a normal shaped galaxy somewhere behind the massive cluster in the foreground.
     So when it comes to space, you cannot simply ask "how far away is it" you must also remember that what we are seeing is a dynamic view of the past.

May the stars shine brightly in your skies.

A Baby In The Cosmic Basket

     When it comes to human experience in the cosmos, we have begun to accumulate a wide base of knowledge and as of a few weeks ago we have another important concept down. At long last we believe we have seen a new planet in the process of formation. While he have seen the destruction of stars, detected the effects of black holes, and "heard" the resonance of the big bang, we still not yet seen a planet forming, at least until now.

Artists Interpretation of a new planet around the young star T Cha

     The baby planet in question is around the star T Chamaeleontis (T Cha) and while it has not been precisely seen, there is evidence that a new planet is forming around the star. Usually when astronomers find a young star, they also find a basic cloud of dust circling the star. The difference between this star and all the rest is that astronomers have found two rings instead of one and it is a distinct possibility that this gap represents a planet.
      On the other hand there is the possibility that it is an elusive brown dwarf which would also clear up a band around a star.
     The true excitement through all of this is that we can actually detect these things; how far we have come in these past few decades in terms of what we can see is stellar at least (pardon the pun), those recent followers of my blog may remember the excitement over the Kepler results and the shear volume of data that brought back. Space is full of discoveries that we can make if we just focus the technology and realize that some discoveries are worth the time, effort, and tax dollars.
May The Stars Shine Brightly In Your Skies

tip of the hat to Science Daily

Astro Fact: The End Of The World

     In the merging of my space activities, astro facts have made the jump into this blog, for those unfamiliar they are little blurbs on basic and cool astronomy information. They are meant to inform and maybe stir some questions of your own all the while increasing your astronomy terminology.
     So here we go, your daily astronomy fact:

     Quite simply the world is not going to end in 2012, I can say this with confidence, nothing like the following picture is going to happen at the end of next year

cool, yes, realistic, hardly

     Doomsday prophecies come along every couple of years and up until now, NONE OF THEM HAVE HAPPENED, look around you, do you see the world, if yes, then doomsday has not happened, recently at least. Every hundred million years or so a large asteroid finds itself on collision course with Earth, but still none of these has ended life entirely.
     So what else do people harp on as a world ender? I have heard several people claim that a magnetic pole reversal will end the world. As a geologist I can say, yes, the poles do reverse, and they might be in the process of doing it now, on the other hand, this happens all the time, around every 700,000 years or so, plus while it may disrupt your compass, we live in an era of GPS and those will hardly be affected.
     Maybe yes, a solar flare coupled with a thinning protective layer could do us some damage, it has been observed that flares can damage electrical infrastructure and that was back in the mid 1800's, one like that could have some serious side effects these days, but nothing we couldn't get over. Same goes for any variety of other sun or magnetic based troubles.
     Finally, there is always talk of such shady names as Nemesis, but these are nothing other than bizarre musings that may be true, but probably aren't.

May The Stars Shine Brightly In Your Skies (well beyond Dec. 21 2012)

thanks to everybody who has pointed these out including my radio team at MIR

Bringing Everything Together Into One

xkcd.com

     Just a housekeeping note, you may have noticed that the format and image of this blog has changed a bit in the past few weeks. Like a black hole sicks in everything that it can, so too does this blog tie in several of my current projects including the "Our Place In The Universe" internet radio show and The Stars Above Mines column in the Oredigger.

     What does it mean, now you will be able to find all you want spacewise, at least hopefully quite a bit spacewise, here including the return of the famous star fact of the day.

May The Stars Shine Brightly In Your Skies

My Oh My Space Budget Feels So Cold

     We live in desperate times, still these times do not warrant cutting our links to the future. 

from smbc-comics.com

     The federal government released their planned 2012 just a day or two ago and I have been severely put down by it. First off, NASA budget was not cut, but instead frozen at the level it is currently at, around $18.7 billion (here are the specifics from NASA themselves). Thats a nice sum of money, enough for some research, a few launches here and there, but it lacks enough to build momentum for where we should be going in the next decade. 

     We have the minds, we really do, and we have the willing masses. 

     I am curious, how much do you think NASA should be funded?

Seeing Deep Into Our Own System

     What if I told you that everything you knew about the solar system was wrong? Well thats a bit extreme, but what if I told you that there may be another gigantic beast of a planet sitting on the outer extremes of the solar system, you would be skeptical, as would I. Skepticality is important in times like these where unbelievable claims can be thrown out and received just because they are sensational, just look back in the past at the the cold fusion scandal (here's a bit of a history if it has escaped your memory) sensational claims get a sensational amount of press.
     But I digress, a few researchers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have announced recently that there may be a huge planet sitting out in the Oort Cloud. For those unfamiliar with the districts of our fine solar system, the Oort Cloud is a hypothetical sphere of dust and ice balls that surrounds the whole system and is very very far away. It has been cited as the source of comets outside the much closer Kuiper Belt. The idea of a planet sitting far out in those reaches is not new, we find small Pluto sized planets out there all the time now, and the idea of a Neptune sized planet is not that absurd, but a planet up to four times the mass of Jupiter, you have to be kidding me.
     If Tyche (article) really does exist it has some serious ramifications for the concepts of solar system formation and may explain some mysteries of the solar system. It would also be sweet addition to the solar menagerie, a possible target for the space program many generations in the future, but mind you this is all if it exists.
     What really irks me about all of this though is the absurd hype being used. Gizmodo, a fairly respectable entity, used an altered version of this image: 

     Though they mention at the bottom of the article that it is an altered image and the comparison is off, its way at the bottom in gray italics as though they don't really want to make light of that. Other articles don't even mention that there is a significant chance that their data is off or they are interpreting it wrong, they just hastily let the reader assume that it is true.
      We will know sometime in the next few years if this planet exists, but for now, I am not keeping my hopes up.
May The Stars Shine In Your Skies!

What We Are Looking For and How Do We Find It?

     When it comes to planets outside our own, to put it precisely we are looking for another Earth. For planets nearby, we can see what they are made of and though there is some possibility to colonize them, it would be nearly impossible to make them like Earth.
     The main ingredients that come into building a suitable planet are as follows: there needs to be an atmosphere with a large amount of oxygen and not to many toxins, there needs to be habitable land that can support plant life preferably, some sort of harvestable structural resource to make a settlement, and water that exists in multiple phases, though it is fine if there is no ice. Beyond these there are a few subtle features like a differentiated and molten core to support a magnetosphere and a differentiated atmosphere, but if the planet has all of the features from the first list, it is likely that the other main features are accounted for. What we are looking for for these is a planet within the "Habitable Zone," an area around a star where its not too hot and not too cold.
     So how do we know where a habitable zone is. Mostly it depends upon the star, for example the following picture illustrates the difference in the habitable zones of our own fair system and the heavily populated Gliese 581 system.

     Notice how the zone is much closer to the star since the star is significantly closer to the star than it is in our own system.

     As for finding a planet with actual atmosphere and water, it is currently impossible unless the system is extremely close (and with the discovery of new brown dwarfs, there may be some very "local" systems). It will be up to future technology to determine which worlds have dry land, which have oceans, and which ones we would feel perfectly at home on.

     For now I will also leave this amazing Sagan video to highlight the importance of this wonderful planet we are part of.

May The Stars Shine Brightly In Your Skies!

What Happens On A Busy Day In The World Of Planetary Sciences

     In the world of planetary sciences there are days where nothing happens, researchers sit around refreshing their searches, looking deeper at some old Hubble data, or building new models of systems. On the other hand there are days like today. Earlier today I mentioned how we find planets beyond our own solar system and I pointed my finger at Kepler for being one of the better resources we have.
     All I can say is HOLY COW!!!! Kepler returned data from its recent scan of the skies and has revealed a staggering 1200(ish) new planets in our own galaxy! 1200 in a portion of only one-millionth of the total galaxy!
     Since I am not an expert on this I would suggest following this link: BadAstronomy's coverage of the event

May the stars shine brightly in your skies

Reaching Out With Science

from the greatest webcomic ever xkcd

     Scientists walk a precarious line between appeasing the publics views and causing mental revolts. From the eyes of someone who hopes to one day assist in the upwards progress of humanity the public is scary, one day they are interested in a topic and the next day they are crying for your head on a plater. For instance back late last fall, a NASA researcher claimed to have discovered life on Earth that used arsenic instead of phosphorous.
It was quite the hulabaloo and the scientific journalism world jumped all over it as though it were the find of the century. As it would be, within the next few days certain skeptical scientists started picking holes in the idea, much as always happens and the media sided with those that were fighting the idea that arsenic was really used by these life forms. For someone in the public it looked like science was wrong and couldn't get its act together.
     So where else are there problems. Well when you happen upon a revolutionary idea that the public is unhappy about, you have to do some convincing. While the following video is unrelated to planetary sciences, it touches greatly upon to need for scientists and skeptics to look onto themselves and their behavior to better how they are viewed. Warning it is about half an hour long but is well worth the time.

 

May the stars shine brightly in your skies!

Here Planet Planet Planet...

     Distant planets are incredibly difficult to find, so thus to better understand them it is incredibly important to obtain some knowledge of how we find them. To get an idea of just how difficult it is to find new planets, despite living within our own solar system, it took well into the 1800's to find the 3rd and 4th largest planets and to this date we are still finding planets on the outer rim of our home.
     So if it takes so much effort to find those bodies that are right under our nose on a galactic scale,  how do we find planets that are magnitudes of distance further away. Luckily for us, we know where the stars are, we do not need to find stars like we do with the menagerie of dwarf planets that circle our sun. There are multiple ways in which a planet can affect the star which it circles around, for instance if a planet is large enough and the star is close enough to us, we can observe slight alterations in its spin. Imagine it like a top, if there is a slight flaw on the edge of the top, at some level the top will wobble slightly.
      There are of course better ways, the primary of which involves monitoring the amount of light produced by a star.  Watch this video about the Kepler mission to find planets in the habitable zone from NASA.


 

     So you will have noticed that the problem with the Kepler mission is that we don't get pictures. People inherently want visible data in order to feel an affirmation of their goals so it is the goal of scientists to fill the knowledge deficit with society. The main question with this is can we actually get pictures of these bodies and the simple answer is yes. Back in between 2004 and 2006 Hubble was used successfully used to capture an image of Fomalhaut-b. While it was known that there was the possibility of planets in this system, the picture marks the first time that humanity has been able to see another planet.
   

May the stars shine brightly in your skies!