When Stars Collide, Hyperloop Pods, Propellors and Quantum Catapults

Apparently, half the missing matter in the universe has been found.

I breath a sigh of relief, as I'm sure we all do.

Personally, the idea of dark matter and black holes gives me a sense of deep dread.

All that nothingness...(shivers)

One hundred and thirty million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, two neutron stars collided.

In August, the signals from that event reached Earth, and became the first ever visual and gravitational record of such a cosmic cataclysm.

The visual and gravitational records arrived within 17 seconds of each other, which is pretty damn good for a journey spanning aeons* of time...

The image below looks underwhelming, but don't forget that you're looking at an event that took place long before we existed...

NGC 4993     When Stars Collide                   NASA/Swift

Personally, I'm still reeling with the simple fact that telescopes are time machines...

What we need is a quantum catapult, enabling us to cross the vast divide of space and time.

I'm working on it, but I need more elastic for the catapult.

It's a minor inconvenience - I'm sure Elon Musk could sort it out - speaking of whom, in a recent discussion of his hopes to use rockets as glorified 'airliners' on Mars, he displayed a masterful use of terms like 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' (rocket explodes) , and ' ...getting somewhere in thirty minutes by rocket...will be negatively affected if ...' you might die', is on the ticket.'

Fear not, though, as current tests for his (Earthbased)  hyperloop system are exceeding their own speed records, and it won't be long before intercity journey times are vastly reduced.

Google have expanded their maps to include places in our solar system: enjoy, but please don't confuse them with your own GPS...

'Propellor' imaged by Cassini    NASA

Remaining with our own corner of the cosmos, I found this article interesting, as it ponders a few discoveries of the belated (do we use this term for a spacecraft? ) Cassini, particularly the interesting 'propellors' created by moonlets in Saturns rings.

A world with moons named from figures of Greek mythos , including Janus, Pandora, Atlas, Dione and Prometheus is always worth revisiting, although my personal favourite is the little oddity known as Pan...

35km wide Pan...

Don't forget there is a little time left ( closing November 1,2017 )  to include your name on the Insight flight to Mars - get your boarding pass here

Not sure if I got a wing seat, knowing my luck, I'm probably in baggage...


...but I'll  see you there

* Using aeons as a fluid measurement

Moon Colonies, Telescopes On Volcanoes, And Ancient Collisions

It's all systems go for Elon Musk, who is eager to get people on Mars.
His latest suggestion, the BFR (no prizes for guessing the acronym) can accomodate 100 people and will be used to create a lunar staging post , apparently.
His words appear designed to steal a march on NASA, whose SLS was to be similar - but their hands are tied , certainly in regard to funding and bureaucracy.
The flipside of that coin is pressure from the Trump™  government to accelerate the process of putting people on Mars.
Taking a step back from the politics, I'd say that having a proven player in the field ( Musk has multiple succesful landings and relaunches of the Falcon 9 rockets to his credit, as well as the Space X cargo missions to the ISS) can only be a good thing.
My confusion stems from the 'space race' angle - given that NASA have already announced a joint mission with Roskosmos : I'm pretty sure that this is just muscle-flexing as a demonstration of the prowess of Space X, and the fact that NASA are no longer the only game in town.
After all, it can't possibly be a  new space race, given that Trump™ and Russia are allegedly on the same side...

The downside of this posturing is the lack of any realistic plan for a sustainable colony.
Colonising the moon would surely be the logical first step. Recent discoveries point to the existence of a great deal of water which could sustain life systems and provide fuel for further planet hopping.

Enough of my idle conjecture - the spirit of the Space Treaty of 1967 looms large in this picture
The moon is to all intents and purposes, a dead world-on the surface...which brings us to the mystery of the subterranean lava tubes, and a possible sub-surface body of water.

Artist impression - Alamy stock 'photo'

A fourth gravitational wave has been detected using the two observatories in the USA, and Virgo, an observatory in Italy - giving an image of the 3D shape of the wave, and allowing triangulation for the precise location of the event (the collision of two black holes 1.8 billion years ago).
Personally, I wish I could remember the location of objects I put down five minutes ago.

P.S. As I finish this piece, I learn that the creators of  LIGO have just deservedly received the Nobel prize for physics

  Solar activity affecting Mars     image NASA/GSFC/Univ. of Colorado

Recent solar flare activity caused fluctuations on Mars, and a resultant worry about safety for future explorers.
I wonder whether gravitational ripples contain similar disruptive potential - the one mentioned above involved a combined mass of 53x our own sun, a stupendous amount of energy .
At a distance of 1.8 billion light years, any effect here would probably be negligible - would you notice a tremor on a single sheet of paper on your desk ?


The James Webb Telescope has been pushed back to a spring 2019 launch, which, considering the original proposed date was 2011, is a wee bit late...
Staying on the subject of controversial telescopes, a proposed new telescope has fallen foul of indigenous Hawaiians. The dormant volcano Manua Kea is the proposed site for the telescope which will be capable of seeing 13 billion years into the past.
Despite protests, the telescope is going ahead.

Final image from Rosetta

Special Snowflakes Melt - The Mediocrity Principle

For those who ponder whether we are alone in the universe, some bright sparks have combined the Fermi Paradox and the Mediocrity Principle , deducing that we are still some 1500 years from our first contact with aliens.
Not only that, but the fact is we're not special. 
'The Mediocrity Principle', basically means that we are not alone in the universe, and there are probably so many versions of humanity that we really are quite banal.
Bit of a blow for the schools of thought that say we are all special snowflakes.
So, perhaps we should get over it, and embrace our galactic banality.
Only then will we make contact with other, equally banal but possibly more technically advanced, aliens.
Personally, I find it oddly discomforting that a think - tank exists to remind us of our ordinariness...
...but 1500 years before we meet another (supposedly dull) race of beings?
The mind boggles...are we watching the galactic equivalent of  paint - drying ?
Mediocrity, indeed.
So, how will we know when we finally encounter these aliens ?
After all, if, like us , they are not special or unique, surely it's possible that we might totally miss them ?
Or will we identify them by their shapeless grey clothing with no distinguishing features ?
Will they look alike ?
Shall they all be named Derek ?
Apologies to any readers named Derek.
How can a technologically advanced race seem dull ?
Are they beyond the world of strong emotions ?

Provenance unknown

Some time ago I mentioned the discovery of a star with the mysterious property of intermittent flickering.
A kickstarter to pay for precious telescope time observing ' Tabbys star ' has just been successfully funded - so we are much closer to the truth of the mysterious star thanks to public crowdfunding - I think this is a great idea, even though it will almost certainly prove to be anti - climactic, with no evidence of sci - fi / aliens whatsoever.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

A highly improbable  ' Dyson sphere'

Interesting trivia regarding LIGO - which is tasked with registering gravitational waves generated by the merging of black holes and suchlike - apparently, the equipment is so sensitive it can be affected by passing clouds.
To avoid too much ' background noise' , some people have mooted that perhaps it should be set up on the far side of the moon - but won't that signal be messed up by the secret alien moon-bases ?

Just kidding.
Or...

Solar Sails, Ripples in Spacetime, and Holidays on Distant Moons

Of course, the big news this week is the proof of the existence of Gravitational Waves .
The dedicated team at LIGO made the announcement on Thursday, 11th Feb.
Some of those involved have made the search their lifes work , and the initial team was assembled back in 1975.
It brings to a conclusion the decades of speculation (and false signals), and the vindication of Albert Einsteins prediction , over a hundred years ago.
It also tells us that 'spacetime' is flexible, and not rigid, as a medium: this will fuel all manner of sci-fi conjecture.
This is a truly amazing revelation , which will lead to game - changing discoveries.
It enables us to better understand gravity, but also opens a whole new realm of exploration.
In essence, visual wavelengths have been used to observe stellar phenomenon - but this discovery brings the dimension of sound into play.
The initial sound of the  two black holes merging which led to this discovery has already been timestretched into an ambient, hour - long piece - it is essentially a rising scale on a cosmic keyboard up to middle C - (maaan).
The number crunching is mind blowing in itself - the gravitational wave began with two black holes colliding 1.3 billion years ago, unleashing an energy equivalent to the observable universe x50 - but which ultimately only affected the measuring devices by one ten thousandth the width of the nucleus of an atom.
Cue my mind melting.
We are dealing with next level science here, way beyond my own ability to fathom : infact, it's so far out, that I found myself drawn to the human element of the story - Dr Ron Drever, one of the earliest members of the team, could not join in the celebrations as he is now in a nursing home in Edinburgh, suffering with dementia.
His colleague, Dr  Rainer Weiss maintains that it was Dr Drevers creative genius that helped to propel the discovery.

Planetary Society LightSail

Solar Sails

In the last post, I extolled the virtues of nuclear fusion, and have decided to redress the balance by writing up solar sails, which are unrivalled as a means of distance travel through deep space .
I don't want to get bogged down in the arguments for and against , but certainly in terms of deep space, the solar sail has the edge.
Although the force employed (photons) is very small, the push is continuous, so the acceleration is constant.
It's been estimated that a craft with a 1300 foot sail could travel 1.3 billion miles a year, and leave our solar system within ten years
The only real issue for deep space travel would be the need for a huge laser firing photons at the sail, in lieu of sunlight.
In 2010, the Japanese craft Ikaros employed a solar sail 46 feet wide, and recently (albeit with limited success) the Planetary Society unfurled a larger sail.
The sheer scale of the sails required for interstellar journeys is incredible, and would create quite a visual impact in the darkness of space.
Attempts to guess the fastest method of travel to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) give us a possible 9 years using a massive solar sail (600 miles / 945 km diameter) .
Nine years travel may sound a lot , but Proxima Centauri is 4 light years distant, so 9 years is actually pretty fast - well, unless you compare it to your daily commute.
Quite apart from the sheer scale of the thing, it would need boosting from a giant laser once it leaves the area of influence of our sun, so for now at least, this is in the realms of sci-fi.

©NASA

In Other News...

NASA have released a series of retro 'travel' posters extolling the virtues of 'space breaks'- if you were uncertain as to choosing a holiday on Enceladus as opposed to Titan, for instance.
I think they are great, although my past playthroughs of the computer game ' Bioshock ' gives  me reservations about such Art Deco styling.

Bioshock

Apparently, an asteroid heading our way on March 5th could fly past Earth at a distance of 11,000 miles, which is a mere whisker (in cosmic terms).
The comet in question ( designated 2013 TX68 ) - was only discovered three years ago, and as such, has no given name.
There is a one in 250 million chance of impact, hardly enough to cause sleepless nights - but then, what about the comets we didn't discover yet ?
Goodnight