A couple of days ago, a large asteroid named Florence flew past Earth, frighteningly close.
I didn't panic though as ' frighteningly close', in space/media terms is apparently 4.4 million miles away.
Phew, huh?
The media made much of the fact that it was the largest ever asteroid to pass by so close, and no doubt, some cultists and survivalists prepared for the Endtimes.
NASA even got footage that shows the asteroid had two moons !
I never thought that an asteroid would have any form of moon, but I suppose it depends on the size of it, and the strength of its gravity/magnetic core.
In other news, a further cluster of radio signals known as FRBs have been detected .
Emanating from the source FRB121102, a galaxy some 3 billion light years distant, the significance and origins are unknown - although one fanciful idea is that they represent the launch of deep space craft.
If that is true, then they left when our world was just beginning to host single - celled life forms...
by my own calculations, if they have been able to maintain their course, then technically, they are here already.
In which case, our only hope of survival is that they forgot why they left their home galaxy 3 billion years ago.
Meanwhile, in the rings of Saturn...
We are getting close to what's billed as the 'Grand Finale' , when Cassini plunges into the atmosphere of Saturn , bringing to an end its incredible voyage of discovery.
I shall be watching on September 15th, until we lose contact.
I'll miss the news from Cassini.
Is it a thing that we now humanise robot explorers ?
I feel a simiar empathy with Curiosity.
I remember the tense landing, billed as 'seven minutes of terror'.
Since then, I've been acutely aware of the reality of the lonely rover which is tirelessly cataloguing the environs, atmosphere and geology of Mars
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| Lest we forget: Image from Opportunity Sol 4824 |
Curiosity even has its own Twitter feed (shameless plug also for the Sarcastic Rover, which blends world - weary cynicism with wry political comment).
As well as Curiosity, let's not forget Opportunity , still trundling around Mars, long after landing on the 'Red Planet'.
Landing in 2004, both Opportunity and the Spirit rover had a projected three months of exploration on Mars.
Spirit lasted six years, and Opportunity, not to be upstaged by Curiosity, is still trundling around the Endeavour crater.
The next Mars launch will be Mars Insight, a static explorer tasked with sub-surface examination, which will launch in May 2018, followed by the Exo-Mars rover in 2020.
It's all systems go for Mars, we'll soon have many explorers / orbiters in action there, spurred on by the fact that water, one of the key ingredients for life, has been spied on Mars.
Let that sink in.
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| 'briny water-flow' on a Mars hillside NASA/ JPL / Caltech / Univ. of Arizona |
Meanwhile, back on Earth...++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The largest x-ray machine in the world recently started up in a 38 mile complex of tunnels beneath Hamburg.
Boasting 37,000 pulses a second, it will be used to examine the process of photosynthesis, unravelling the mystery of how light becomes energy - also how antibiotics are formed, and what happens deep inside the sun.
Apparently, octopus (octopi?) are taking over the worlds oceans
On the subject of water, scientists have apparently succeeded in quantum communication in sea-water.
Okay, so the test was only over a ten foot distance, but even so ...
