Touching The Sun, Mission To Alpha Centauri, For Whom The Signals CHIME

This blog was hurriedly assembled to mark the launch of the historic Parker Solar Probe

Delayed lift-off ...

24 hours later 

The probe finally launches  aboard Delta IV Heavy

Today saw the re-scheduled* launch of the Parker Solar Probe, as it now bravely heads for the sun on a one - way mission to gather new information about our mighty star .
It is hoped that a working knowledge of the mysterious 'solar wind' can be gained - not least an understanding of why the temperature four million miles away is approximately 200 times hotter than the surface temperature of  the sun itself (a mere 5700 degrees C).
The mission is a vindication of scientist Eugene Parker, who first proposed the idea of the solar wind many decades ago (in the 1950s), but was refuted - until 1962, when the Mariner 2 craft reported a strong solar wind on its journey to Venus.
The solar wind extends beyond the end of our solar system , and was only recently breached by Voyager 1, which became the first human-built craft to enter interstellar space in 2012...
 The Parker Solar Probe will be the closest ever human - made object to the sun, dwarfing the previous record of approx 28 million miles.
Four million miles may seem like a considerable distance from the heat of the sun, but don't forget that the nearest planet, Mercury, is an average of 35 million miles away , and still gets daytime surface temperatures of 450 degrees celsius...
The Parker Solar Probe will become the fastest moving human built object ever, when it reaches a blistering (literally) 430,000 miles an hour at its fastest and closest approach to Sol in December 2024  , aided by a gravity 'slingshot' from Venus.
Part of its payload is a list of over one million names of people who applied to 'travel' - being superstitious, I thought it smacked of 'solar sacrifice', so my name is only on a boarding pass on the Insight craft...

Artist impression of the Parker Solar Probe                 image: NASA

In Other News...

 A meteorite that dates from a mere 2.5 million years after the ' Big Bang' has potentially changed the understanding of the formation of volcanic rock throughout the galaxy.

NASA has chosen the nine astronauts who will fly the next crewed missions to launch to the I.S.S. beginning next year. It feels like the next logical step, as all eyes look to the stars - well, Mars. Personally, I think it more likely that we are practicing for the eventual mining of asteroids, an untapped market worth an estimated three trillion dollars.; but then, I'm just an old cynic...

Staying with NASA, plans are afoot to send a mission to an exoplanet by way of marking the hundredth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which landed the first humans on the moon.
The exoplanet candidate for this mission is part of the Alpha Centauri system, a mere four light years from here.
Hopefully, by the anniversary date of 2069, the small technical hitches (speed of light travel, deceleration, etc) will have been eradicated. The idea was mooted at a conference by Anthony Freeman of JPL, who then said the plans were " Nebulous" (laughter emoji)

                                                       Andre Renard / Dunlap Institute, CHIME

In other news, a brand new radio telescope in British Columbia, Canada has detected an FRB (180725A ) emanating from some 3 billion light years away.  The amount of energy required to send a radio signal over such a distance is phenomenal; one source equated it with moving a load weighing a million tons - okay, that means it's probably a couple of black holes colliding, or a pulsar, but even so...
What also makes this FRB so unique is that it has a low frequency of 580 mhz, rather than the standard 700 mhz. Exactly what this implies, I'm not sure, but I hope that the aliens using the signal as a carrier beam are friendly...
On this note, I repair to my safe room, and take my medications...
Until next time, I hope all is well in your corner of the multi-verse !


* These things happen - flocks of birds, meteors, Godzilla, that sort of thing

The Dunes of Mars, Bennu, Blazars and Cats in Boxes

It's official - being in space can alter your DNA !
Expect returning astronauts to resemble giant rubber - suited monstrosities of yore
Actually, nothing so dramatic, but there is evidence of unexpected alterations .
This could have major implications for long, manned journeys - to Mars, for instance.
Speaking of which, a recent image shows the dunes in the northern hemisphere of Mars - fun facts; whilst perusing the photos, I became aware that there are different kinds of dune - I am guilty of thinking how one pile of sand was pretty much like another.

Mars - Pahrump Hills - Curiosity                  pic NASA /JPL-Caltech

The image below had me confused for some time, and shows the problem of pictures without objects of reference for scale ; to be fair, Mars is rather short of monuments and landmarks to judge scale by - I thought that this was just a close up of a dry riverbed with cracked mud...but apparently some of the thin ridged areas are 16 storeys high.

Mars image by HI RISE        NASA/ Caltech / University of Arizona

A new test for biosignatures has been developed, which is 10,000 times more sensitive than those onboard Curiosity.
The article which mentions this discovery also name-checks Europa as a suitable target for testing, In preparation of which, this piece describes a proposed lander for Europa .
Personally, I'm disappointed that it looks so - underwhelming.

The tiny blue smudge in the centre is our solar system...

The illustration above shows our solar system compared to the largest black hole yet found.

Don't fret, it's not actually swallowing us - it is 12.1 billion light years away , thankfully.
Of course, given its immense size and the voracious appetite of black holes, it may well munch its way here, like a giant Pacman*...
This supermassive black hole is part of an immense quasar - if it were 280 light years away from us, it would give us heat equivalent to the sun.
I am now feeling small and insignificant , still banjaxed by all the big numbers involved , so in order to preserve my sanity, I will extricate myself from the event horizon of this monstrosity (diameter of 236.7 billion kilometres)

In a previous post , I mentioned the exciting project which would use lightsails powered by sunlight to achieve incredible speeds reaching 20% the speed of light, and enabling exploration of Alpha Centauri within a mere 20 years.
The caveat to that was the lack of a braking system - obviously a craft travelling at 60,000 km/s without brakes could have a problem with landing...
It turns out they have worked out a way to slow the craft down - although this will also affect the overall speed, bringing it down to a 95 years journey rather than a mere 20 years, so it becomes a generational thing.
Which means if you're travelling with Virgin Galactic , don't get a return.
Unless they solve longevity, too.
Which maybe connected to this earlier piece.
Longer telemeres, longer life ?

More immediate space exploration is the Bennu mission which aims to return sample material from an asteroid to Earth, with contact planned for 2018.
The Bennu-Rex explorer is also tasked with discovering whether Earth has any 'trojan' asteroids following its orbit.
This could unlock details of our distant past , as potential asteroids would likely be composed of material dating from Earths creation.
This little ' side-mission' is happening now ( Feb 2017)

If, like me, you've been struggling to understand quantum mechanics, there is now  a Ladybird guide to the strange , but inevitable realm.
Before you ask, the answer is no - I still don't understand it .
Cats in boxes ?
Yes - and no.
At the same time.
That's quantum .

Until next time, keep it ...erm...in a state of flux.



* Showing my age here, is Pacman still a thing ?

The Wandering World , The Galaxy From Nowhere, and Other Oddities

Statue of Yuri Gagarin erected near Admiralty Arch, London

On the anniversary (12th April 1961) of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space, we had an announcement from Stephen Hawking ,Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg (?) of project  'Breakthrough Starshot ,' an expedition to nearby star system Alpha Centauri, which will use a light sail, a powerful laser, and photons of sunlight to attain incredible speed - 20 % the speed of light, no less - taking a tiny microchip to its destination in a mere 20 years - a long journey to us, but a mere blip in cosmic terms (using conventional fuels would take 30 thousand years).
Momentous news, and just the kind of far - sighted thinking we need right now to escape our own earth-bound political struggles.

Breakthrough Starshot will boldly go...

The media is pushing the angle that it's the biggest attempt to discover aliens, ever.*
Well, I suppose it sells copy .
To be honest, the hyperbole would have you believe that the mere presence of our tiny solar sail would induce aliens to rush to appear on camera, take a selfie, etc.
The assertion that a tiny camera on a tiny sail is our most elaborate attempt to contact extraterrestrials is laughable.
I would point them to the wealth of online information, but it's not my job to educate lazy journos...

Mistakes mean we're only human, after all - for instance - they just discovered  a galaxy next to our own.
Researchers in the University of Cambridge discovered the galaxy , ( known as Crater 2 ) during recent observations.
A galaxy which has been there since forever.
The defence is that it is a very dim galaxy.
And you know how tricky it is to spot something that is quite dark.
Especially in the dark.
So we completely missed it until just now.
Oops

IN OTHER NEWS...

Hybrid star/ worlds...

A university in Canada (Western Ontario) , have discovered an orphan world  - a brown dwarf, no less- with the name 2MASS , for short (possible rapper delusions) , wandering around in our neighbourhood.
It is a relatively youthful world, too, at a mere 200 million years old compared to our own 4 billion.


In a first, the Saturn system explorer Huygens - Cassini has detected cosmic particles from beyond our own solar system,
Cassini also analysed the particles revealing a mixture of minerals, rather than the expected ice.

In other maybe news, it seems the Large Hadron Collider may have discovered a new particle.
Hopeful at best, we must await further testing and won't have final word until this summer - but it would be a first , and could involve further advances in some new fields, so fingers crossed

*A more sober observation regarding potential first contact from Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that initial contact would probably involve a mathematical exchange, perhaps a solution to a simple abstract problem, before we get down to discussing cosmic matters.