The Asteroid With Two Moons, Water On Mars, Distant Sounds, and The Octopus Invasion

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

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.

'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 ...

Space Waste and an Aurora Called Steve...

Opportunity heat shield         NASA

There is a crater on Mars , recently imaged by the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, which contains detritus from the 2004 landing of Opportunity.
I got to thinking that we have already begun leaving our waste on other worlds
The moon has over 70 space vehicles, including buggies and landers, golf clubs, discarded boots, flags, and various - over 100,000 pounds of debris.
I looked for statistics regarding waste on Mars, but beyond this list, it gets into alien conspiracy territory, so I quickly back-tracked.
Let's not forget the ring of debris orbiting our own planet - some 500,000 pieces (according to NASA in 2013).
Add to this the many Russian Verbera modules on Venus - although I imagine they've been cremated and crushed to a pulp, so at least there should be no trace...
Mercury didn't escape so lightly in 2008 , when the Messenger craft impacted, creating a whole new crater.

Mercury imaged by Messenger               NASA

Currently surveying Titan for the last time, Cassini will eventually descend into Saturn, although given the toxic nature of the atmosphere, it will almost certainly be destroyed - and let's not forget the two Voyager craft, heading into deep space, followed by New Horizons, which achieved the most distant rendezvous yet with its flypast of Pluto, and following its encounter with MU69 in 2019, will become so much hi-tech driftwood floating through the heavens.
Our faltering steps into space have already left quite a trail , like a bored passenger tossing trash out of a car window on a long drive.
We humans are a messy bunch, but until we get the bill from the Intergalactic Sanitation Engineers, we'll be none the wiser.

On a lighter note , a new discovery in the majesty of the aurora ; a trail of green and purple lights which have been given the name of Steve.
No mushrooms required.


G

Giant Otters, Rogue Worlds, And Extrasensory Moments

A new theory tells us that planet Earth may have been hit by a rogue world long ago - infact, during the Late Heavy Bombardment  (yes, there really was such a thing!)
Apparently , the planets of our solar system were originally in a different order, but scattered like balls on a snooker table after a strong break: except , very slowly.
So where is the culprit planet , the cosmic cue - ball that set everything in motion ?
Apparently it is now debris, adrift in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter - well , that's the theory.

Meanwhile, in a laboratory...

The image below is from an article about scientists managing to maintain a substance as liquid below its freezing point.
Shrödingers substance ?
It is solid and it's not at the same time.
Quantum , anyone ?
I may have mentioned my theory that the world has been distinctly weird since the upgrade and restarting of the Large Hadron Collider in 2015, and I still believe that is true .
Well, as true as anything can be in this weird new reality where terms like post - truth and alternative truth are commonly used...


A recent study finds evidence of widespread synaesthesia, with many more people than expected attesting to have experienced the sensory crossed wires of synaesthesia.
I think it is a result of our constant use of multimedia - and as we progress to a world of communication by symbols and gestures, isn't it inevitable ?
Still - a new sense can only be good...

Giant otters once roamed the Earth .
Fossil specimens found in China have proved perplexing - mostly because why would an otter be so big ?
Seeking some form of context, I followed a timeline
This puts the giant otters in the Miocene era, a time when mammals became well established, giant sloths were nibbling leaves on the tree tops. sabre - toothed cats roamed the land, and giraffes and hyenas appeared for the first time
I imagine the only real threat came from the sabre-toothed cats - being the size of a wolf would be an advantage.
Which brought me to thinking of evolutionary adaptions - we are now capable of creating unique lifeforms
Adding two letters to the genetic code of e. coli microbes might not lead to a Jurassic Park scenario , but it's a start.
I had to interrupt my palaentological detective work, as it was yet another online rabbit hole; a depository of amazing information, but also a bottomless mine of trivia - sigh.
Time to get back to the world of hard facts, I thought - not idle speculation.
Difficult though, as I learned that the universe is probably the playground of super - intelligent robots.
Will we ultimately create AI that is self replicating , and determined to conquer the cosmos ? - if so, does that reality already exist ?

Eagle crater pic NASA / JPL - Caltech

It's now thirteen years since the Opportunity rover landed on Mars and crawled out of a crater to begin exploration of the Red planet.
Still going strong, it has surpassed all expectations.
Its companion , Spirit , sadly ceased contact in 2010 , but both rovers exceeded expectations, lasting way beyond their original remits.
Opportunity was to last 90 sols , but it still operates, albeit with a software upgrade to its flash memory storage in 2015, just before it entered Marathon Valley.
It is currently the longest operating offworld explorer ever - so let's get those medals ready...


Until next time !

Ancient Computers , Frozen Poles, Duck Bay and Quantum Games

It's that time of year again , with winter making everyone feel cold and frosty.
Just to reassure us that it could be worse, scientists have succeeded in lowering the temperature of an object to a smidgeon above absolute zero  (smidgeon is not a scientific term and is probably not even in the Oxford dictionary)
 Anyways, the point of my ramble is that I was about to elaborate on this feat of freezing which somehow involves quantum motion , when I realised that the piece failed to give an actual temperature attained.
Or any detail of the actual frozen object.

Scientists attempt the discovery of absolute zero...

Was it a metal pole against which scientists had to stand with their tongues attached ?
The closest temperature I could find was from a previous article, this time making the discovery in an italian laboratory - which included a recorded temperature and a picture of the deep-frozen equipment used.
On my journey through the rabbit-hole of the interweb , I discovered that the average temperature of space holds at a steady -270.45 ° kelvin....thanks to the all - pervasive background microwave radiation (which conjures the image of a scientist opening a microwave door to reveal his instant noodles and the sudden cries of joy from next door as his colleagues finally receive a radio signal from deep space.)

Over two thousand years ago, an intricate device was created on the Greek island of Rhodes .
Discovered in a shipwreck in 1900, its mechanism and purpose has intrigued and mystified many for decades.
The Antikythera mechanism has finally been replicated, albeit virtually.

Moving on from what is technically the oldest computer in the world, you too can help with the advancement of quantum computing by playing an online game that involves complex geometries.
I gave it a go, but hey, I am a simple human - for those who are keen to advance our knowledge in this field, here is a link to Mequanics via gizmodo

Image of Victoria crater by Opportunity rover , 2006

Space has been thin on the ground in this post ; to address this, here are some images from Mars. Above is the view from ' Duck Bay' imaged by the Opportunity rover, as it entered the Victoria crater.
Below is my current favourite image, which again shows the Victoria impact crater on Mars, with superimposed Opportunity rover for some kind of scale .
The images below were taken by the Mars Reconaisance Orbiter - I almost forgot that we have a camera orbiting another world...then I remembered that we have cameras dotted throughout the solar system...

NASA / JPL / MRO

Until next time, thanks for stopping by !