The Ninth Planet and Giant Mirrors

It's busy up in space, so NASA have created this useful spread for us.


I'm a little underwhelmed by the hyperbole around Ceres, though.
Can't help feeling there's something - missing ?
Oh yes, the mysterious ' lights' in the Occator crater ?


Speaking of missing, they've 'found' a Ninth planet in our solar system - well, to be precise, the scientist responsible for the Pluto downgrade has allegedly found a new ninth planet, four times the size of Earth, with an orbit taking 10 - 20,000 years to loop around the sun.
Except, they haven't actually found anything.
Its existence is based on the unusual orbits of other bodies.
Beware the hype !

Orbits which supposedly prove the ninth planet exists ©Caltech / 

There is a live feed from NASA which allows you to watch the building of the Webb telescope
Hardly world shattering, but don't forget, when this thing gets to space, it will be able to see further than ever before, with its infra-red capabilities and position on the second Lagrange point at a distance of 1.5 million km from Earth.
Okay, October 2018 is the projected launch date from French Guiana, so a little wait yet,
although I'm sure citizen astronomers will be on the case already.

Znamiya 2.5             pic Triz Journal

Productivity bonus!
There once was an attempt to turn night to day, thus enabling more productive times on Earth - well, Cold - War era Soviet Russia.
Far from being a flakey idea, the man behind the huge space mirror created the spaceship docking system still in use today at the ISS.

In other non-news
There is a new allusion to illustrate quantum mechanics, which says that three pigeons can be put in two holes without the same pigeons occupying any hole.
Which is like saying that a thing does not exist until it is noted.
I think.
My problem with this example is why not have two pigeons in one hole without being in the same hole ?
Surely that is more quantum ?
Remaining in the realm of hypothesis and brain-ache , two strands of possible systems are being reconciled - yes, they have found common ground between string theory and looping quantum physics , which may close the chasm of incompatibility.
For the layman like myself, it just means that interstellar travel may be possible sooner .
Or at all.
My brain hurts.

Final words in a pointless post
In my endless drifting through the world of social media news aggregates (tough, repetitive work, but someone has to do it), I notice with dismay the new tendency to over-use superlatives.
It's almost as though everything is awesome incredible shocking.
I suppose in our news hungry modern world, these are the superlatives needed to grab attention.
I can't help thinking though, that ultimately something really amazing will be overlooked, and left ignored, swamped by a sea of viral puffery.
For those who wonder what 'puffery' means, it's pointless trivia like this :
Did you know that the Wikipedia article on Jesus has been edited more than 25,000 times?
That's more than the article on The Beatles (only 22,000 edits, approx}.
So it's true to say that Jesus is more famous than The Beatles, now.
Which is only slightly funny for a few people.
Oh well.

The Megastructure, The Mammoth, And The Canyon we've never seen

One of todays links is to a site where NASA store moon rocks and meteorites - appparently there is an expedition every year, where meteorites are sought and gathered from Arctic slopes.
I sigh, and wonder how I never heard of such a job when I was younger.
Which brings me conveniently to our recurring mystery star:

A few months back , there was a brief flurry* of media interest in what might conceivably be an alien mega-structure around a nearby star .
By nearby, I mean 1500 light years away.

Apparently it's not comets...

Astronomically, that's 'nearby'.
Anyway, I digress.
The point is that there is further uncertainty over the same star.
Although Keppler only has records of the star and its odd light fluctuations going back 4 years, photographic plates from previous observations have been found which trace back over a hundred years.
And light from the star was fluctuating back in 1890.
It's not the fluctuation itself that's significant, but the degree - up to 20 %, which is a lot.

The generally accepted theory was that the variance in light output was being caused by passing comets: but it has now been estimated that the amount of time involved would require 648,000 comets passing at regular intervals.
So that theory is abandoned .

KIC 8462852  artists impression pic via NASA/JPL/ Caltech

Excited, yet ?
Perhaps it's just me, but then I was actually crestfallen when SETI failed to intercept any signals from that direction.
So there is scope for further investigation, as all current theories are null and void.
Something is causing massive fluctuations in light from this star that cannot be explained by natural phenomenon.
And it's been happening regularly for over a hundred years.
Which is also confusing, as there is no apparent pattern to the variances.

It seems to be one single mechanism which is changing over time, causing the dramatic dimming of the star.
With no audible or visible wavelength signals discernible, however, if it is aliens, then they are being very quiet...

Meanwhile, back on Earth...

There is a hidden canyon beneath the ice of  Antarctica, twice as long as the Grand Canyon, and possibly culminating in a lake covering 480 square miles.
It appears that it was created in a time when Antarctica was free of ice, long ago.
However,that 'long ago' is a movable feast, as another recent discovery in the Siberian permafrost is a mammoth bearing signs of attack by ancient hunters.
Given its age and location, it seems to indicate that our ancestors were further North, some 10,000 years before our previous guesstimate: pushing back the date of humans crossing the Bering Strait into what is now North America.
Are we all immigrants from the dawn of time?




* A link to the original 'Invisible Words' post which mentions it in October last year. Not essential reading, just to say - hey, we're ahead of the curve - stay with us!

Farewell then, David Robert Jones Bowie

Did you get swept up in the deluge of online Bowie mourning?
I know that I did - I used to hang out in Brixton and - blah, blah you get the picture.
The fact is, he cannot be ignored.
Perhaps it's generational - I found that I was suddenly hearing tunes from his back catalogue which triggered memories and moments from my past.

I was too young to appreciate the use of Space Oddity to accompany moonshot footage on tv.
Or the fact that it was his first transatlantic hit.
Later in life, I conducted walking tours which took in Trident Studios, where it was recorded.
I loved pointing out the humble anonymity of the place, tucked away in the back streets of London.
I could go on, but I won't.
Not yet, anyway.
I've always loved music, and Bowie was always there, flirting with genres and genders, re-inventing himself, and breaking boundary walls .
He initially identified himself as a folk musician, but he was so much more - refusing to be tied to a narrow definition of the term.
My first real introduction to the strangeness was through a babysitter who was older, and therefore party to these mysteries which confused my thirteen year old self - I only knew that Bowie was popular, and had played an alien in a film.

British lobby poster    

I remember seeing images of the character and his family with dark lenses for eyes, and thinking how strange they looked, but how sad it was that he should fall all the way to Earth with no spaceship.
Even worse, that he'd have to live as a 'normal' human being.

 Man Who Fell To Earth. Dir Nic Roeg 1976

Somehow, in my young mind, the shots of Bowie on the distant world got confused with the music and the stylised photographic imagery on the cover of StationtoStation .
I didn't get it, and felt like one of the cavemen he sang about in 'Life on Mars'.

In later, more cynical, punk - infused times, he was still there, still relevant, although I steered clear of 'Let's Dance', as I considered it 'bubblegum pop' .
At the time, I preferred his theme to the Paul Schrader film,' Cat People'.
The music of David Bowie was often like that - if there was something you didn't like, there was always an alternative somewhere.
For me, it was the era mentioned here, with bits of Diamond Dogs , Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, 'Heroes' , Hunky Dory...
I didn't like ' The Lodger' , but 'Scary Monsters and Super Creeps' hit the spot for me.
Tin Machine passed me by, but by that time his immense back catalogue towered over any lesser projects - and he moved into acting, following his early experience in 1967 , and later as the alien Thomas Newton ( see above ), then his impressive  stage performance as ' The Elephant Man'.
He returned to the silver screen with roles in 'Just A Gigolo', 'The Hunger', ' Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' , and the Goblin King in Labyrinth.
As I grew up, he was almost omnipresent, yet never seemed 'over-exposed' - not in the way I find so many media figures these days.
Perhaps it was his gift for transformation that kept him 'fresh' - though he was also very selective, never appearing in a film just for the sake of being seen.

He was also a huge influence on the New Romantic scene, predating it, and including many prominent figures from there in the video of Ashes To Ashes, his 'sequel' to Space Oddity.
I'm sure the flamboyant post-punk dressing - up thing would be claimed by Malcolm McLaren, but he was inspired by the New York Dolls , who were cross - dressing way back when - which brings me conveniently to Transformer.
I'd picked up on the Velvet Underground, and enjoyed (?) their sonorous melodies but wasn't so enamoured of Lou Reeds solo output - except that one album.
Transformer was great.
When I realised it was produced by Bowie, I gained a renewed respect for both artists.

David Bowie      ©Tom Colbie

Reading back through this labyrinth (no pun intended) of words, I realise that it's just  another one of the untold thousands of tributes to a true legend, who is tightly interwoven in the memories of so many that his passing cannot be ignored.
So I'll keep it brief, and say farewell.
Thank you, Mr Bowie.
Safe Journey Home.

Of Centaurs and Snowballs

Centaurs and scattered disk objects  (artist impression obv.) NASA/JPL

A new word in use for space phenomena which I recently stumbled across, is 'centaurs'.
Far from being mythical half-human, half horses, they are objects which exist beyond Neptune .
Think of snowballs with a dirty core of compacted ice - that's right, the kind that those bad kids used to throw.
Now scale them up to about 60 miles wide: they are Solar System bad kids - every now and again they veer off into a trajectory which brings the potential for collision with Earth.
The name refers to the shared qualities they exhibit, being a cross between asteroids and comets.
They become comets when their orbit is disturbed by gravity from one of the gas giant planets.
The rate of this tends to be low, however, say once every 60,000 years or so.

If you want a collision scenario, then you'd need to assess the scale of each one, and the likelihood of it heading to Earth, then more complex maths to deduce whether it would land directly on the home of your enemy- or at least the wicked witch.
Just saying...

...back to the centaurs.
The first such thing was discovered and named '2060 Chiron'  back in 1977.
NASA has gathered much new data on these objects from NEOWISE, giving a slightly clearer insight into these icy hybrids that lurk (mostly) between Neptune and Jupiter.

Beyond their erratic nature, and the fact that they have literally distant cousins (Scattered Disk Objects), there is not much to say, and they are certainly not half-human, half-horse: but it is in keeping with the habit of naming space phenomenon after classical figures: one example being the moons of Mars, named after two brothers from Greek mythology,  Deimos  and Phobos.
Not to be too flowery, they evoked dread and terror.
Suitably gnarly for satellites of Mars, the God of War.
Our entire solar system is a lesson in classical Greek Mythos.

Back to the centaurs .
Whilst I was researching these things, I input a query attempting to identify the first such object found and named .
I ended up with a reference to Harry Potters first encounter with centaurs in The Philosophers Stone.
Serendipity ?
Or do Google have a new algorithm sponsored by J K Rowling ?
Has her ubiquitious creation co-opted information on all mythical creatures?
Further delving revealed that yes, the tales of the young wizard do indeed involve many elements of creatures from folklore.
At first I was indignant that everything seemed ' branded' , or at least, tainted by association with the fictional world of Harry Potter.
Then I remembered the works of others including Robert Anton Wilson , Alan Moore and the late Terry Pratchett , where reality and fiction were often so finely intertwined that it was almost impossible to separate the two - infact it became undesirable, as the blend helped to create a more exciting reality, filled with fantastical potential.
It seems as though , with the availability of online knowledge and unchecked facts, there is immense potential for someone to live in an entirely constructed world, where the prevailing reality can be meshed with the idiosyncracies / glitches in the matrix which are readily available , whereas once they required actively seeking out.
Of course, this raises the question of consensus reality.
All of which leads me to a very odd place, and I'm not sure I should continue as it is far too deep and philosophical for the likes of myself.
Besides, it's way too early to consider quantum reality and parallel universes.
So I ' harrumph ', and sit back, removing my reading glasses and wondering what my original point was - oh yes, the potential for a 'centaur' to become an apocalyptic doom comet on a fiery mission to decimate Earth..
I sigh, and open my dusty, neglected book of folklore* instead.




* The excellent, exhaustive volume 'Lore Of The Land', by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson

Festive Musings, and why The Future is Now

I've been tweaking this post since Boxing Day, in the vain hope that I will suddenly become excited about something.
Gazing outside (there is a small window in this shed) , I notice how un-seasonal the landscape is .
It's really not conducive to the festive feeling.
The festive feeling manifests in many different ways -
One of my brothers, ensconced in a world of 24 / 7 sun and fun, sends photos of Santa hats and champagne on the beach , but whereas that normally conveys a sense of irony, this year, it is lost.
This year has no festive feeling.

There are no snowmen.
There is no frost on the ground.
It's not even proper bloody cold.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not overly attached to sub-zero temperatures and breath freezing in the air and scraping the ice from car windscreens.
But it makes a mockery of the seasonal cards with wrapped - up people scurrying through blizzards of snow , heading home, no doubt for a warming glass of festive punch .
I haven't even seen a robin, so normally associated with Xmas here in Blighty.

Robin pic from here     ©Andy Hay

With a sigh, I turn back to the pile of papers and printouts which litter my desk in the shed.
A piece about the new Star Wars film briefly catches my eye, as it is pinned by a dart to the noticeboard.
I shrug, doubting that my opinion would make a dent on the fannish slavering that surrounds the re-vamped franchise.
Best stick to what I usually do, then.
Perhaps if I wore a silly hat from a cracker, I'd feel more festive.


Seating myself before my trusty old Remington, I lean back, stretch, and crack my knuckles.
And so it begins...

As we head towards the end of 2015, fantastical research abounds all around us.
From a sci-fi app to predict future crimes  (shades of Philip K Dick) to the creation of matter from light ,we are spoiled for moments of wonder.
It's almost enough to melt my cynical heart.
Of course, there is no light without darkness, so this piece cautions against the Fitbit obsession.

We also have the ongoing Ceres and Comet 67p images arriving regularly and New Horizons still dutifully downloading images from the Pluto flyby in July 2015, some of which are being painstakingly fashioned into 3-d anaglyph images , courtesy of the dedicated people at planetary. org
I also hear rumblings of a projected meeting of quantum and relativity branches of physics.
As they are apparently in contradiction, hopefully any meeting will be on neutral territory.
Except, by dint of appearing in the area, it will no longer be neutral.
Oh well...

Space x returns !

On the practical level, I was pleasantly reminded that the future is now,  when I watched the footage of the first successful landing / return of a spacecraft  (okay, just a returning thruster, but even so - in one visual display, the commercial viability of re-usable rockets was displayed.)


Meanwhile back in the Inner Solar System...

On the auspicious date (well, Stateside ) July 4th 2016, the NASA  probe 'Juno' will enter orbit around Jupiter after a five year journey (New Horizons reminds us that it travelled for ten years before arriving at Pluto) - and butting in from somewhere out in inner space, the Japanese probe Akatsuki reminds us that it had to wait five years in limbo before it could retry its Venus insertion (pause for mildly offensive double entendre).

China continues to send data from Jade Rabbit, or Yutsu. still sampling lunar regolith  , from a new-ish crater in the area known as Mare imbrium (new-ish meaning 3 billion years old instead of 4).
The diversity of mineral content  tells us a tale of evolution beyond our own, apparently - ( the general assumption being that the moon was once part of Earth but separated when Earth was struck by a wandering planet about the size of Mars.)
It also tells us that large quantities of Titanium and Hydrogen 3 exist on the moon, so it has the potential for mining fuel for rockets.

Suddenly I am distracted by the sound of happy banter nearby, and I turn away from my musings on outer space.
It's not actually happy banter - it's more of a heated debate.
Specifically , it's the neighbours arguing about the sheer impracticality of hoovering up pine needles as opposed to the benefits of an artificial tree.
I sigh, and switch on the S.A.D. light.
'Tis the Season, after all...

The Smell Of Space and a Magic journey...

The Horsehead Nebula is some 1500 light years away, and is instantly recognisable.
It is a nursery for new stars, and as such, contains many unusual features including unknown molecules - one recently discovered was so alien that it cannot exist in a stable form on Earth (although scientists at the University of Cologne did manage to create a sample that was stable for a few seconds, proving that the theoretical particle could exist).

Horsehead Nebula                          NASA.gov

The molecule is C3H+ ,  and has been detected through the wonder of radio astronomy.
Specifically the IRAM telescope in the Sierra Nevada.
They have isolated the wavelength on which this molecule transmits (89.957 gigahertz).
They can even tell you what it smells like - it is in the benzene family...
On that note, there was a news piece a few years ago where they announced the smell of space.
Apparently it's a mixture of seared steak and hot chrome.
Space smells like a cosmic motorbike parked up at a roadside barbeque.

The fact that they essentially deduced the nature of this molecule via the radio wavelength it transmits on, makes my brain ache.


In other news, a recent burst of gamma rays from distant galaxy PKS 1441+25 took scientists by surprise.
Because these powerful gamma rays had been travelling in a straight line for 7.6 billion years, which is half the age of the known universe.
Approximately.
These gamma rays set out from a supermassive black hole at the centre of PKS 1441+25 some 7.6 billion years ago, and have travelled in a straight line, uninterrupted by cosmic debris or radiation (I wish my wi-fi was that good) through untold events and timelines (including the creation of our world , 2 billion years into the journey) , kept travelling forward through time and space ( meanwhile, we had five mass extinctions and an ice age leading to the rise of mammals and humans ) and eventually reached our solar system on the outer edge of the milky way,  travelled past the Oort cloud and Pluto and Neptune and Uranus and Saturn and Jupiter and Mars and our moon and finally reached our  humble planet where the signals were picked up by Fermi and an array of radio telescopes that only started operation 3 years ago - how's that for timing ?
Specifically, the signals arrived in April 2015.
Quite a catch for a set of data from high energy particles ejected from a black hole 7.6 billion light years away...

Artists impression of Fermi 

This is where my rudimentary understanding of science breaks down.
Now that these incredibly powerful particles have been interrupted by noting them, is their journey at an end?
Or do they continue to travel as invisible particles through the Earth and onwards?
Do they end up in the furnace of our sun, their energy transmuted by alchemy into another form ?
Are we into quantum territory, where their observation means that they cease to be gamma rays at all ?
And why all the questions ?

The science behind all this leaves me deeply impressed, but the clincher for many, in this Age of Acronyms, is surely that the Earth based telescopes which detected the particles , are known as the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cerenkov  telescopes , or MAGIC .
A name to conjure with,..

On that note, I shall take my leave, and bid you

 A Very Merry Festive Holidays to All !

Final Vinyl ? Everything Is Retro !

I decided to write this after reading a comment on an article which basically rubbished the current resurgence of vinyl records.
The main thrust of the piece was that the resurgence of love for vinyl recordings was driven by ' men of a certain age' reliving their halcyon days, and the piece pointed to examples such as boxed sets of Pink Floyd and the like.
Personally, I find it restores my faith in humanity to see records and cover sleeves back again - okay, disclosure - I am a man of a certain age , but I know many people, including millenials, who love the thrill of vinyl.
It's sad that most of the little indie record shops I used to frequent have gone the way of all things, especially with the encroaching 'homogenisation' of our high streets.
I give thanks for every indie shop that still trades , especially now.
It would also be too easy to bemoan the sudden interest in vinyl records by the supermarket chains, for instance - after all, they only ever stocked the top twenty and a dull array of reliable 'oldie' favourites (and let us not forget the Pick of the Pops albums which offered fairly bland cover versions of mainstream hits...)
Rather than decry the beginnings of a resurgence in old style music love , we should embrace it - and accept that here, in the 21st © , everything is retro.
It's just - weird to see the revival of what, until fairly recently, was the normal...

In the style of the old 'Dansette' players...

As the u.k. charts began to fill with novelty records and acts throughout the Eighties / Nineties , pop began to paint itself into the corner*, and when the Top of the Poppers had started covering punk songs, you knew the writing was on the wall.
And it wasn't graffiti .

In the UK, we can also blame shows like TOTP, with forced miming and bad choreography (although my rampant adolescent hormones were very forgiving).
There were many more issues as the industry grew top heavy with hangers - on and self-appointed 'taste-makers' (hello Mr Cowell).

Ribald and risque outside, nearly but not quite covers inside...

 I've written before on the subject , so I'm not going there again, but I'm genuinely pleased to see this resurgence of actual records , and a new appreciation of them.
After all, it can only be for the greater good - more vinyl pressing plants means more cover art so more print / repro places, more graphic designers, more jobs in record sales / distribution...basically more opportunities in an increasing creative market.

I don't consider myself an audiophile, and I won't slavishly buy everything committed to vinyl - not even by one artist, as I'm not a completist.
The medium is the message, though , and vinyl is tactile and real in a way that an mpeg will never be.

For me, the interest is in seeing how long the integrity is maintained - i.e., without the payola and coke - fuelled distortion that accompanied big music corporate f..kovers.

At the present time, it seems to be in the hands of those who remember the simple pleasures of album covers and their sleevenotes, which often added to the experience.
Of course, there is still the mainstream, with its dwindling côterie of ' stars' , a revolving parade of mix 'n' match personalities feted by brands.
Whether it's Miley or Gaga or RiRi or Taylor or Bieber or Murs, it's all a bit meh , if you ask me.
If anything, the current trend for the revival of stars from yesteryear keen to prove themselves outside of the rarefied corporate environs, is a welcome antidote.

Recent plugs have appeared in my newsfeeds showing excellent quality packages, in which the artwork is as much part of the experience as the music.. .
So let's hear it for hearing it , loud and proud.

 P. S....I know I said I'm not an audiophile, but I am worried about the heavy arms of the new decks - rumour has it that the Crosleys of this world will gouge your grooves, man.
So dig out the old school decks.
- and keep music live.

Lots of live stuff... pic© Uncut / M. Hunt, probably

* I realise that this is a shallow summary of a very complex thing, but this is not a dissertation.
 As I said at the beginning, this piece was 'inspired' by the negative comments of a troll on social media .
It's not supposed to be definitive, but it's my defence of the burgeoning trend for vinyl records.
Let's take them beyond the 'hipster' fad.