The Whole Earth Telescope, Snarky Submersibles, and Actual Spaceports

Further proof that we are living in the future with the normalisation of the sci-fi phrase ' spaceport '.
Not quite on a par with Mos Eisley, but slowly...
Canada is working towards its first ever spaceport , to be created in Nova Scotia.
Meanwhile NASA is re-purposing Cape Kennedy as a commercial spaceport , capable of supporting multiple launches from private companies .

Messier 87 imaged by Chandra xray observatory

The origins and appearance of black holes beyond supposition and CGI are totally unknown , but soon, we may have an actual image of one.

Using a group of ten telescopes known as EHT, scientists plan to finally get a look at the black hole at the centre of our galaxy .

They are so confident that they predict any image will be in the top ten of all time.
Whether that's the top ten of black hole images, I'm not sure - after all , there's no competition.
Enough of my cynicism , though - if that's not enough, they also aim to image the supermassive black hole (don't you just love these superlatives) at the centre of galaxy M87 .
This monstrosity is equal to 6.6 billion of our sun , and has eaten another galaxy in the last billion years.
Luckily, it's 50 million light years away, although, on a cosmic scale, that's probably too close.
The Event Horizon Telescopes should be functional from next month, April 2017, as soon as telescopes in the Antarctic and the Altacama desert are added to the circuit .

High in the Atacama desert, Chile, a lone rover scours the scorched plains in search of life.
With an average rainfall of less than 1mm a year, the Atacama is the driest place on Earth.
The intrepid rover has to drill into the surface to find those elusive microbes...
The signs are good for the probe KREX 2 , but will it be superceded by PUFFER ?
The rather nippy little ' puffer ' drones would surely be ideal foils for Krex2, or the slow, lumbering, Curiosity rover on Mars...
...speaking of Mars, it appears there may be health problems for humans travelling there.
Scientists are worried about the potential danger of long distance, deep space flight.
Even ' locally ' there could be health issues. 
Esa have started looking into the creation of living units for Mars...
By the way, if you are in the 'Twitter-sphere', a good source of images and entirely spurious / snarky comments is The Sarcastic Rover

Mars - a barren wasteland, or prime real estate ?

High above Mars, the joint ESA / Roskosmos endeavour , the Exomars Orbiter, has commenced its year long aerobraking which will enable it to settle into a circular orbit , some 400 km above the surface.

On the icy Saturnian moon Enceladus, there is evidence of heat beneath the surface in the South Pole - possibly an ocean which interacts with the moons core.
The obvious exploration candidate would be an AUV, possibly working with a surface - based probe as a signal relay.
Perhaps a different name though, eh ?

FUN FACT
Apparently, in naval terms, a submersible is also considered a boat, so the name Boaty McBoatface is perfectly acceptable, although I personally prefer ' Big Metal Floaty Thingy'

Cloud Cities, Dinosaurs & When Black Holes Align...

Visual of particle collsion in LHC

A theory currently doing the rounds holds that the Large Hadron Collider, in its newly turbo - charged state could be responsible for the rash of earthquakes we're experiencing lately.
I suppose it makes a change from the doom laden prophecies of gates to hell or black holes, but personally I think it's an attempt to sensationalise - as if human suffering and death wasn't enough, an unnatural explanation has to be found for tectonic activity.
Surely the logical ending of this assertion is the awakening of  Godzilla or some other  creature from the very bowels of our world ?
Anyway, I digress, but fingers are being pointed at the LHC .
Meanwhile, Cern have released 300 Terabytes of data from recent tests by the LHC for the use of any citizen scientist out there with a large storage capacity...

Another idea for consideration is the assertion that human ribs started as shark gills, which is almost certainly a theme in tales by H P Lovecraft .
Staying with the theme of the sea, a recent piece by Maddie Stone tells us a tale of Cold War paranoia, and the CIA attempting to salvage secret Russian technologies.
It's an intriguing piece, and the link is here .

Researchers are heading out for a sample.

New thinking tells us that the dinosaurs, rather than being wiped out enmasse by a comet, infact died out gradually, over millions of years, with the comet  merely serving as a full stop.
In fairness, this sounds more plausible - although I'm surprised there is not any clear evidence in the fossil record.
New evidence may be forthcoming with the imminent sample which is being taken from the Chicxulub crater ...........

Meanwhile, up on Venus...

The Venusian surface as captured by Venera 13. The probe lasted 2 hours...

We have avoided space in this post, but here's a little footnote.
There seems to be a ' buzz' around Venus at present - I'm not sure why,
Perhaps we're just jaded with all the Mars exploration.
After all , Matt Damon growing potatoes in a barren landscape may be close to reality, but it's not the exotic alien world stuff we hanker for; so there is talk of establishing cloud cities above Venus, thus avoiding the inconvenience of the molten temperatures on the surface (460°celsius), and the sulphur fumes in the air.
Anyway, wishful thinking aside, the real news is from old readings from the  ESA craft Venus Express* which discovered that Venus was colder at the Poles than we'd imagined, with temperatures dropping to - 157°c, much colder than anywhere on Earth .

Moving  further out towards Titan, it has been verified that it contains a lake of methane, with possible wetlands around its shoreline.
Covering over a million kilometres , with a depth up to 160 metres, and a slew of organic materials, it would certainly be a place to examine more closely - don't forget that the sea , known as  Ligeia Mare, is only one of three...

In the distant Kuiper Belt, it has been observed that the second largest dwarf planet Makemake has a little moon of its own, ( known as MK2 ) with a diameter of 100 miles.

Saturns moon Titan has a lake of pure methane    

Further out there...

The discovery in deep space of a series of supermassive black holes in the centre of disparate galaxies which appear to be aligned has caused uproar , defying the odds of being a random occurence, and hinting at a far larger ' structure' to the known universe.
For me this is fantastical territory, leading as it does to the nature of filaments in space , as though part of some immense neural network...just a step away from the question of intelligent design.
At present, it's still a theory until further experiments, but even so, the galaxies in question are hundreds of millions of light years apart, yet seem to follow a pattern.

Will we ever see the true nature of the scaffolding that supports the universe ?
Currently having its mirrors uncovered, our James Webb Space Telescope will see further than ever before, taking us tantalisingly close to the ' Big Bang' - well, only a few hundred million years after the event.
On that note, I take my leave -

Computer simulation of filaments and voids

*The Venus Express is now no more, but outlived its expected 500 days of  Venus monitoring , and continued exploration for a further eight years.

Lightsails, Femme Fatales, Martian Maps and Matters of Faith

Photonic propulsion is very much in the news , being touted as a way of taking a crew to Mars in good time (in practical terms, about five weeks) at a potentially large ( 30% ) proportion of the speed of light.
Its simplicity (solar power) makes it economical, and its potential for upscaling makes it suitable for interstellar use - no more rockets laden with heavy fuel - it is seriously threatening the much touted SLS as a means of travel.
I imagine that light sails could become quite a common mode of travel within our solar system. It is environmentally friendly, using a renewable power source , it ticks all the boxes - the only down side to carrying humans would be the sheer scale of the thing - small is beautiful seems to be the key at present, with the possibility of tiny satellites being made of smartphones !


The excitement from the recent discovery of gravitational waves continues with news that radio telescopes can be set to do likewise, and NANOGrav are now monitoring 54 pulsars (which can witness the collision of binary black holes ).

Further news tells us that the source of a mysterious FRB has been found to be a galaxy some 6 billion light years away - it is possibly a collision from two neutron stars.
Nothing greatly exciting then - and this info comes to us from the Parkes observatory in Australia.
Last year, they told us excitedly of a massive radiation burst from deep space - which turned out to be the microwave oven next door.
Ahem.

Artist impression of AIM        image ©ESA

One craft heading into space soon (well, 2020) is the Asteroid Impact Mission - now that  ESA have proved that it is possible to land on an asteroid (although sadly, there is no more word from the lander  Philae), they have decided to launch the Asteroid Impact Mission , which along with the NASA  DART* mission will test our capability for deflection of rogue asteroids from potential collision with Earth - infact, for lovers of morbid scenarios in which doom arrives from space in the form of an errant asteroid, 30th June is Asteroid Day, raising awareness of the threat of potential global destruction.

So hurrah for that -
Any excuse for a fun day off...

Our Galaxy                           pic byESA

An indepth new view of the milky way reveals more of everything.
The view was taken by ATLASGAL - APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy.
Almost makes the DART * acronym ( Demonstration of Autonomous Reconnaisance Technology) seem simple...

Meanwhile, back on Mars...

If you watched 'The Martian' wishing you were there (despite the deadly irradiated landscape) , then you can get the next best thing - an ordinance survey map of the planet !
Yes, the standard piece of kit for any fell walker in the uk now covers the Red Planet too.
Did you know that the O.S. department in the U.K. was spawned by the volume of accurate measurements required for the building of the Embankment in London ?

Remaining on (virtual) Mars, apparently tomatoes or even strawberries would make good first crops, rather than the humble potato.
I'm not sold on the logic, although the water content of tomatoes might be a bonus on such a dry, arid world.

 Back on Earth - 

Preserved in amber, and 15 million years too late to be a crop on Mars (although I'm sure a mad scientist may see opportunity for disabling the populace), is a beautiful , but deadly strychnos flower, the ancestor of strychnine and cyanide ,  much admired by the Borgias, for example.

Lucrezia Borgia

The online world is a battlefield.

Everyone thinks they have the answer, and social media is full of opinions - like this one.
Of course, in this topsy - turvy world we now live in , we get extremes - hence the re-appearance of  Flat-Earthers .
Ahem.
I'm sure there are those who deliberately 'farm' strong opinions - certainly on FB, after all it adds a degree of interest to any newsfeed - and people like the opportunity to air their views; we tend to surround ourselves with like - minded friends, and so are often ' preaching to the converted', whereas a wider audience involves fresh opinions and input.
Of course, occasionally things descend into the 'trolling' level of personal insults , but that is generally the response from someone who feels cornered and threatened - either through a lack of ability to reason or to argue a point, or just through playing 'devils advocate'.
This pointless waffle brings me neatly to a potential image for debate - a map of the world according to the  friendliness of nations !
I was in two minds about including the map purporting to show nations according to how welcoming they are, on the grounds that it may be biased , and lets not introduce political favour - but although this is generated in the U.S.A, it doesn't favour that country - infact the U.S.A. is about halfway - Canada seem to be the friendly guys here - and speaking of friendly (and outwardly hostile) , this link takes you to a map showing hostilities worldwide - if you drill down to the original site, you can manipulate the dates etc, for greater accuracy. It's obviously incomplete, and very Euro-centric, but even so, a rather grim rendition of battles mostly around us.

It's almost midnight here (GMT), and the candle is guttering here in the shed, so I shall post this piece, and repair to the great beyond.
It's almost impossible to know when to stop at the moment, as there is an abundance of space related stuff out there - perhaps it's the season, or just an exponential increase, following high profile stuff like Ceres and the asteroid landing and last years Pluto flypast.
What I'm saying is goodnight, and watch the sky, and this space !
TTFN !

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