Rendezvous with Ultima Thule, Rogue Satellites, Underwater Explorers, And Sabotage In Space

SUBSEA:  Nautilus explorer                image : NASA

NASA are using an underwater robot to examine signs of life around a volcanic vent off the coast of Hawaii . Known as the SUBSEA project, it is a test for similar probing on Enceladus , one of the most likely places to harbour* life beyond Earth. It's exciting stuff, much more ' hands on' than previous NASA proposal ' ELF', which rather delicately proposes to search for amino acids and methane traces in the plumes of water at the Souh pole of Enceladus. The heat is on, though, with  billionaire Yuri Milner proposing a commercial explorer to launch much sooner - after all, the prize for first place may be a place in the history books, for the discovery of life on other worlds...

The hole in the Soyuz ferry- ship MS 09

The world of space is normally free of espionage (except in film and scienti - fictions),but recent news  has set conspiracy theorists into overdrive - there is a tiny hole in the hull of the Soyuz capsule docked at the I.S.S.  Is it sabotage by a political enemy? Damage from a micro-meteorite ? A warning shot fired by an invading force of microscopic aliens ? My personal feelings are that there is a very embarrased maintenance person somewhere, (who realises that using chewing gum to cover the hole might have been the better option) , but I'm just glad that we don't have a trigger - happy 'space - force' up there...ahem.

Speaking of objects orbiting the Earth, the Aeolus satellite is now in place, and has begun taking critical readings to increase our accuracy when reporting stormy weather - to do this, the satellite fires an ultraviolet laser beam earthwards ( full details in the link ) . Currently, the satellite is in ' test' mode, so no advance warnings or news on the current barrage of typhoons / hurricanes, sadly.

Typhoon Mangkhut                                       image ©2018 EUMETSAT

Meanwhile, there is allegedly a rogue satellite conducting odd manoeuvres overhead, causing concern to both France and the USA . Perhaps we are heading for an active ' ...space situational awareness', to use the new gobbledy-gook.

Further out in space...(the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, to be precise),
the Dawn explorer is now swooping down to give us closer images (24 miles high instead of 240) of
the intriguing dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt.

Much closer shot of the salts around Occator on CERES                      image NASA/ JPL/Caltech/MPS/DLR/IDA

Speaking of objects floating in space, the Japanese craft Hayabusa 2 is preparing to release its 'hopping rovers' for touchdown on asteroid Ryugu on the 21st September 2018
Also, the first image of ' Ultima Thule '  has been taken by New Horizons in advance of its New Years Day flypast 2019 . Formerly known as MU69, the kuiper belt object was renamed in a public vote , although the highest ranked suggestion was 'mjolnir' ** - Thor's hammer.

Thors hammer won the public vote, but Tiramisu ranked highly, too

The decay of the Higgs Boson particle into 'bottom quarks' has been observed which confirms the model of  standard physics, and leads us closer to the elusive world of quantum physics. Just reading the article has given me a headache, but I'm sure it is perfectly rational to someone ...similarly, the news that entanglement of 18 qbits has been achieved, which strikes me as a very important development, but my pea-brain closes down when expressions like 'Hilbert Space' are used. If you are at all interested in the idea of the quantum multi-verse, then you may like this piece on how the brain allegedly visualises in 11 dimensions...



Thanks For Reading My Waffle !

G

* See what I did there ? Feeble, I know, but times are hard
** Sorry, my keypad won't let me add the umlaut Alt 0246

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.