It’s a little complicated, but stick with me; the announcement of a new discovery is coming!. (Same goes for the M2SUH, a hypothesis or new cosmology of the universe covered in the June 20 post, and completed in my new book “A Journey” to be released August 8, 2012!)
Saturn was at equinox in August of 2009. What this means is that the Sun was directly overhead at the planet’s equator at noon. An equinox comes about every 15 years for Saturn, which has an orbital period around the Sun of about 30 years. From the standpoint of the northern hemisphere for Saturn and its moon Titan, this is the Spring Equinox, in that the northern hemisphere (of both planet and moon) is moving into Spring, so this would be Saturn’s vernal equinox.
In 2006, prior to the equinox, a darkening of Titan’s entire northern hemisphere was observed in natural color pictures of the moon. Take a look and see if you can’t notice the darkened northern hemisphere.http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA11603.jpgNASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Could you see it?
Here is the Cassini explanation of this: “Scientists have found that the winter hemisphere typically appears to have more high-altitude haze, making it darker at shorter wavelengths (ultraviolet through blue) and brighter at infrared wavelengths. The switch between dark and bright occurred over the course of a year or two around the last equinox. Scientists are studying the mechanism responsible for this change, and will monitor the dark-light difference as it flip-flops now that the 2009 equinox has signaled the coming of spring and then summer in the northern hemisphere.”
Now fast forward past the equinox by two years (now that summer is approaching in the northern hemisphere), and this high altitude haze will start to migrate to the southern hemisphere. These views from NASA's Cassini spacecraft look toward the south polar region of Saturn's largest moon Titan (in the context image we are about to look at, the South Pole is toward the upper right.) Titan shows a depression within the moon's orange and blue haze layers near the North pole. Take a look at this context image for the picture we have posted today.http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA14913.jpg. The depression starts to happen a third of the way in from the edge of the picture. Don’t look for it yet, but soon we will see evidence of this seasonal dichotomy!
First thing, is to know that “the moon's high altitude haze layer appears blue here whereas the main atmospheric haze is orange. The difference in color could be due to particle size of the haze. The blue haze likely consists of smaller particles than the orange haze.” Now do look for it in this image which closes in on that region with a narrow angle camera. “The depressed or attenuated layer appears in the transition area between the orange and blue hazes about a third of the way in from the left edge of the narrow-angle image… This view suggests Titan's north polar vortex, or hood, is beginning to flip from north to south.”http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA14913_fig1.jpgSee the narrowing in that region! If you are having a little bit of trouble making this out, and take a look at the way it was at the North Pole before the equinox.http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA08137_modest.jpgwhere North is up. Those additional haze layers are moving toward the North.
Why go to all this trouble that I have put you through? On the Space Place we want a little bit of a deeper insight. Scientists extracted this phenomena possibly by first noticing the darkening of the northern hemisphere of Titan. That is not all they noticed. They noticed that the Moon itself appeared to be changing shape as it orbits Saturn!!!!
Now this has been validated with a huge find of a WATER ocean beneath Titan!!! I know you say, we have spent a lot of time talking about methane on Titan; in the lakes, in the atmosphere, perhaps released through cryovolcanism from active volcanoes. Methane can maintain those phases, liquid and vapor in Titan’s freezing temperatures, but the issue is what maintains the methane, which should long ago have dissipated in the atmosphere? And what about water on Titan? It’s frozen as hard as rock. However, beneath the surface is an ocean of undetermined depth, which has been discovered through sensitive measurements of the large tidal deformation of Titan’s surface, indicating the mantle is not solid; the presence of the ocean under the surface.http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia15607.html
Please read more about this! Scientists have wondered what maintains the methane in Titan’s atmosphere. “A liquid water ocean, "salted" with ammonia, could produce buoyant ammonia-water liquids that bubble up through the crust and liberate methane from the ice. Such an ocean could serve also as a deep reservoir for storing methane.” I know this may sound like the ocean is the reason for the methane and not the life astrobiologists have been hypothesizing is the possible source. But, now you have a world filled with organic compounds (as per its outer solar system location), and now a liquid ocean, water in the liquid state. It doesn’t take much to do the math. These are the ingredients for life. Thanks for following along on this journey on the Space Place!http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-190
June 26, 2012
Space Place members this not just another Mars post so read on!! I dare you, in the post below.
I truly hope that you are letting your friends know about M2SUH here on the Space Place. This is my and my husband astronomer David Meyer’s hypothesis about the origins of the universe. I hope you will consider it elegant, and that you will find it refreshing given that we have never been able to picture if you will, where our universe has been and where it is going.
I recall that when I first read Stephen Hawkings ideas on Hawking radiation and his no boundary proposal I wrote about them. I began writing when my children were very young and would write during the time they were away at school each day. The famed literary agent Scott Meredith read an essay of mine about cosmology. He told me that I had a future, specifically with him, if I made that aspect of my interests my career.
I had a lot to do otherwise, however. I went on to participate with (actually in a leading role) The Planetary Society programs which created infrastucture within nations to put students together with the space scientists within their own nations (this program ultimately landed students on the operation teams of Spirit and Opportunity), and to participate in educational programs in connection with Juno, Spitzer, and LCROSS at the Lewis Center for Educational Research. And anything I have mentioned so far came after my discovery of active volcanism on Io at Jet Propulsion Laboratory!
My book “A Journey; Science Essays on the Leading Edge of Discovery” written with Lynda Viken will be released on August 8, 2012. In that book, what I began here on LMSP (yes for you long-time members and our welcome newer members, this is Linda Morabito’s Space Place) in our June 20, 2012 post (take a look!) will be fully developed. Do read that post and then let’s journey toward that date. We are very excited, and there is much reason to be!
Okay, so you’ve seen Mars before, big deal! Yes, you recognize the tiny wonder sitting atop its delivery platform to a new world, and yes, another dry, desolate Mars landscape. Better the tiny rover than you! But, wait a minute, didn’t you hear the news? Let me share it with you. Mars has more water than Earth does. More water than Earth.
In space exploration, you can count on the fact that whatever was once believed will be replaced by the more wondrous and accurate reality, far beyond the musings the conjecture could ever evoke. And researchers have now shown that indeed, Mars mantle likely has 70 to 300 parts per million water, whereas the Earth’s mantle 50 to 300 parts per million water. That means the red planet’s mantle area has a very high water content. Mars is waiting for us all. Maybe if you are skeptical about its habitability, fine. But, I wish I could have you spend about an hour with your grandchildren’s children or grandchildren and ask them how they like it. Many will give you a first hand account of what is great about Mars and what is not so great, some compared to Earth, some who have never set foot on the planet Earth.
Space Place members, there is a lot going on right now!
First, please continue to direct the attention of your friends who are interested in cosmology or any science writers you know to the post below in which I describe the Morabito Sequential Universe Hypothesis. My hypothesis is a proposal for how our universe came into being, and reflects on some of the current mysteries of our time in cosmology, with new insights. There is one change, and that is in the name. It is the Morabito Meyer Sequential Universe Hypothesis (M2SUH) named for both myself and my husband David Meyer with whom I have collaborated on this.
The post dated June 20, 2012 begins the thinking, and my new Astronomy book “The Journey; Science Essays on the Leading Edge of Discovery” which will be released August 8, 2012, will include the full hypothesis. We are very excited about the concepts!
There is a very amazing depiction of all the verified exoplanet finds that you will definitely get a kick out of:http://xkcd.com/1071/Do note the predominance of the hot Jupiters which will give way once the Kepler finds continue to be confirmed, and the bias of our detection method of those amazing planets so close to their stars no longer prevails!
And, if that is not enough, what is characterized as “extremely rare life” has been found by researchers at the top of two volcanoes in Chile’s Atacama desert. As per the article, “Genetically, they’re at least 5 percent different than anything else in the DNA database of 2.5 million sequences.”
Our picture today shows three astronauts whose lives were saved by getting back to Earth after the Apollo 13 mission was aborted. How, or could that be accomplished for Astronauts on their way to Mars, when the completely unexpected has been unintentionally built into their craft, like what happened to Apollo 13?
"The crew of the Apollo 13 mission step aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima; (from left) astronauts Fred W. Haise, Jr., lunar module pilot; James A. Lovell Jr., commander; and John L. Swigert Jr., command module pilot. The Apollo 13 spacecraft splashed down at 12:07:44 pm CST on April 17, 1970.” Credit: NASA
Stay with us during this exciting time of discovery, here and many places on the Space Place!
June 20, 2012
Space Place members, I hope that you will permit me one indulgence. As you know, we stick to science here at the Space Place, and some of you may insightfully know me as a stick in the mud when it comes to just throwing out ideas in regards to cosmology. Scientists demand evidence and the math needs to work out! That does not mean, however, that I am not interested in all manner of ideas and discoveries in terms of cosmology. We report on them with enthusiasm and vigor here on the Space Place. Let me repeat as I have countless times over the years now, that it is the ideas and responses of our members here that make the Space Place what it is! I have never been disappointed in that regard. The people who I have had the privilege of meeting here are explorers and researchers in many ways and multiple regards, and your perceptions about the exploration of the universe are profound. I will always spend time here.
But, I have never truly engaged in speculative science here at all. But, in writing my new book “A Journey, Science Essays on the Leading Edge of Discovery,” which will be released on August 8, 2012 this summer, something of a speculative nature has occurred to me. Okay, here’s the stick in the mud part, I always qualify statements and ideas which do not stem from the area I am working in active research as such. That is why I wrote my memoir first. I am not an expert in psychology, in the protection and treatment of children worldwide who have undergone trauma, or in religious studies. These are areas, however, I have had experience in. I do consider myself an expert in scientific discovery, because I made one. So, that aspect of my memoir comes from active participation and end-to-end knowledge. I wish that more of those of us in science would qualify their opinions and experiences in that same way, when commenting out of their area of active research. To give examples, Steven Hawking on aliens, and on God. Profoundly interesting stuff, but not in the areas of active research.
So, here is my qualification on what follows. It is purely speculative and not in line with our years of posts here, but I want to share this concept with our members here. Who would deserve to hear it more? Providing it is worth hearing at all, which some of you may question. That’s good, I do too. If so, perhaps some of my influence may have rubbed off just a bit; to put into perspective the need for reserved judgement on any of the published papers and proposed perspectives by researchers around the world. As an aggregate, the march toward greater understanding of the universe does indeed make quantum leaps, but as in the search for the theory of everything, baby steps forwards and backwards are likely part of the process.
So, here is my idea. Speculation wise, period. About the time I was reviewing the scientific conjecture on pre-planetary nebulae, as to why the material from these dying stars is ejected in lobes, an overview hit me. Accretion disks as the most massive objects in the universe feed and form, which range from stars (yes, they are massive) to supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, are ubiquitous! Resulting jets of material which are controlled and by electromagnetic fields, as charged particles are accelerated along twisted magnetic field lines resulting in jets (in the case of preplanetary nebulae, these are the breathtaking lobe displays, which shine excited by ultraviolet radiation from their stars) are also ubiquitous. The mechanism, that is to say, how exactly this accretion disk material gets to the point of traveling near to the speed of light is not well understood.
Along this line of reasoning, it took a great deal of thought to view supermassive black holes in a way that I had not before. Remember, this is speculation. We, at least I, think of black holes as a death product. But, perhaps that simply is not so. Perhaps they do indeed form at the centers of galaxies via dark matter and the original gas of the first galaxies upon which to feed. Hardly a death product! The supermassive black hole is the result of ordered structures coming into existence and one of them is the supermassive black hole which will regulate and evolve the galaxy! So, where am I going with all of this?
If the universe offers us clues which drive our curiosity and our research forward, there seem to be collapse, accretion disk formation (when material is available), jets forming at the onset of the lives of stars and galaxies, followed by running out of fuel upon which to feed, collapse, accretion disks forming when material is available, and jets once again, as in the case of stellar death as a black hole, or apparently stellar death as a white dwarf given the conjecture about preplanetary nebulae, and I don’t think there are many among us who would not consider that pulsars at a stellar mass in between those death products already mentioned, have beams along their magnetic poles.
Where am I going with this? I am very fond of the committee which awarded the Nobel Prize this time for the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe; that when presenting the background material for the discovery characterized that the nature of dark energy was such that it could indeed reverse and become an attractive force at some time in the future. I would ask you to consider a speculative idea which marks the beginning of the birth of a universe with an accretion disk around what is possibly a supersupermassive black hole, whose jets birth another universe. By the way, that would make two of them. Jets primarily exist at the poles, in this case of an entire universe which has collapsed, perhaps, which also received the material from a former one, once that material has fallen into an accretion disk, and is accelerated along the jets of the previous universe to a Big Bang of some new one. Ours, perhaps.
I should call this pure conjecture on my part, as the “Morabito Sequential Universe Hypothesis.” Implicit in this speculation, of course, are parallel universes, by virtue of the fact that there are two jets formed during the collapse or infalling of material from a previous universe into an accretion disk around the many combined black holes of a spent universe which has run out of the repulsive phase of dark energy, which has reversed. Perhaps it is at the point at which the jet from the previous universe no longer has enough fuel from the collapsed universe, our expanding plus accelerating universe reverses dark energy to begin that same trek toward collapse and birthing two more universes. In this way, all of the material of that universe, even the dark baryonic matter is recycled into energy of a Big Bang for another universe. The engine for this, gravitational potential energy around the largest black hole imaginable converted into kinetic energy and heat. The same heat which marked our Big Bang. In this way too, the supersupermassive black hole in the center of the collapsed universe regulates the growth of two new universes. Each universe has a go around in this way, in the cycle of life and death.
I have gotten that out of my system. I certainly hope the Morabito Sequential Universe Hypothesis is embraced, disproved, and abandoned, which could signal that it deserves its place among the cosmology ideas of our time. Back to covering current discoveries on our Space Place!
Hubble took this picture of a jet streaming out from the center of galaxy M87. As per Hubble, “After decades of study, prompted by these discoveries, the source of this incredible amount of energy powering the jet has become clear. Lying at the center of M87 is a supermassive black hole, which has swallowed up a mass equivalent to 2 billion times the mass of our Sun. The jet originates in the disk of superheated gas swirling around this black hole and is propelled and concentrated by the intense, twisted magnetic fields trapped within this plasma. The light that we see (and the radio emission) is produced by electrons twisting along magnetic field lines in the jet, a process known as synchrotron radiation, which gives the jet its bluish tint.” Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
June 18, 2012
To all the fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands of Space Place members, and especially of course for those members themselves fathers, I hope you had a wonderful Father’s Day in the U.S., and that same wish for our members all over the world!
I am asking you to not rush off right now, because this solar system body is just that; not out of our solar system. It’s just Titan. Not a galaxy, not a dead or dying star, not a galaxy cluster, or anything like that. Just Titan. In fact, Titan as seen in by radar; wavelengths which penetrate that amazing thick atmosphere nicely. Image: NOAA/NASA/ESA
So what’s new on Titan? Previously on the Space Place, we have concentrated on the methane lakes in the planet’s polar regions. We have seen a drop of liquid form on the Huygen’s lander camera, imaged by that camera. We have seen evidence of it raining on Titan, possible cryovolcanism speculation, all of which involved methane. Yes, Titan’s water cycle is likely a methane cycle, and even the volcanoes would erupt methane. But what is all that black in this image? Hydrocarbon lakes of course, yes methane too.
So what’s the big deal about this? Location. Location. Unlike lakes at the poles, in the chilly tropics of Titan, methane should just evaporate away, and be transported to the poles, but if it hasn’t, it is being resupplied, likely from an underground reservoir of methane.
And what’s the issue? Only that it would give life on Titan a lot more places to flourish. And, the suggestion of methane based life on Titan, which we have also reported about on the Space Place. If you have not already read this, I would: by Chris McKay, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field CA. (chris.mckay@nasa.gov) fromhttp://www.ciclops.org/news/making_sense.php?id=6431&js=1
“Recent results from the Cassini mission suggest that hydrogen and acetylene are depleted at the surface of Titan. Both results are still preliminary and the hydrogen loss in particular is the result of a computer calculation, and not a direct measurement. However the findings are interesting for astrobiology. Heather Smith and I, in a paper published 5 years ago (McKay and Smith, 2005) suggested that methane-based (rather than water-based) life – ie, organisms called methanogens -- on Titan could consume hydrogen, acetylene, and ethane. The key conclusion of that paper (last line of the abstract) was "The results of the recent Huygens probe could indicate the presence of such life by anomalous depletions of acetylene and ethane as well as hydrogen at the surface."
“Now there seems to be evidence for all three of these on Titan. Clark et al. (2010, in press in JGR) are reporting depletions of acetylene at the surface. And it has been long appreciated that there is not as much ethane as expected on the surface of Titan. And now Strobel (2010, in press in Icarus) predicts a strong flux of hydrogen into the surface.
This is a still a long way from "evidence of life". However, it is extremely interesting…
“On Earth organisms (like humans) can react O2 with organic material to derive energy for life's functions. On Titan organisms could react H2 with organic material to derive energy. The waste product of O2 metabolism on Earth is CO2 and H2O; on Titan the waste product of H2 metabolism would be CH4. As a result of the Cassini mission, there is now abundant evidence for CH4, even in liquid form, on Titan...
“McKay and Smith (2005) predicted that if there were life on Titan living in liquid methane then that life should be widespread on the surface because liquid methane is widespread on the surface. We have direct evidence that the surface of Titan at the landing site of the Huygens Probe near the equator was moist with methane, and radar and near-infrared imagery from Cassini have revealed extensive polar lakes on Titan, both north and south. Methane-based life would have a lot of environments in which to live.
“Again, this is analogous to Earth. Life is widespread on Earth because it uses water and water is widespread on Earth… “McKay and Smith (2005) predicted that Titanian life at the surface would consume near-surface hydrogen and that this might be detectable. The depletion of hydrogen is key because all the chemical methods suggested for life to derive energy from the environment on Titan involve consumption of hydrogen (McKay and Smith 2005; Schulze-Makuch and Grinspoon 2005). Acetylene, ethane, and solid organic material could all be consumed as well. Acetylene yields the most energy, but all give enough energy for microorganisms to live.”
So in all our searches beyond the shores of Earth for the existence of life, it could very well be in our back yard, in our own solar system, as it likely is (my opinion.) Have you ever considered this, what might life forms based on something other than our Earth chemistry be like, especially beyond primitive life forms? And what constitutes primitive? I am wondering if we will not only have difficulty in identifying life throughout the universe, but we may also have trouble identifying how sophisticated that life is. Who will decide if that life has cognizance in the areas which have profound meaning to us at least; history, science, self-reflection even with respect to the greater universe potentially, and how will we be able to know?
Wishing you a wonderful and thoughtful day on the Space Place!
June 12, 2012
Space Place members, wow, a lot to catch up on thanks to Dave! First of interest to me more than most, probably; I so well recall the F ring of Saturn. What made it special was that Voyager discovered it. And, that it was braided. Yep, braided. It has been so rarely mentioned since those days of its discovery. Now a student of mine brought to my attention the fact that all the “strangeness” of the F ring can be accounted for by snow balls. Half-mile wide snowballs punch holes in the ring. Sounds like Alice down the rabbit hole, but all true!! There are about 500 of these snowballs seen so far in Cassini pictures. http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/Streaking-Snowballs-in-Saturns-F-Ring-150172695.html Now back to our posted image of two galaxies whose supermassive black holes are more correlated in size to their galaxy’s overabundant dark matter mass, rather than to the central bulge size. It has been long surmised that the growth of star formation around a supermassive black hole will in turn increase the growth of the supermassive black hole and in fact the respective masses are in about the same proportion for all galaxies. However, now it is apparent to researchers that these two galaxies grew very slowly in terms of star formation; so in essence the galaxies are underweight. What is not underweight is the amount of dark matter these galaxies have, and feeding on gas even before stars got started in the galaxies, these massive black holes grew to outsize the regular matter in their respective galaxies and break that proportionality rule. Interesting, indeed! Specifically, the supermassive black hole kept the galaxy underweight. If you might wonder how the amount of dark matter is measured in these galaxies, the temperature of the gas which keeps things in equilibrium, opposing gravity’s desire to collapse the galaxy in, is a measure therefore of how much mass is present. Dark matter has not only the majority in these undermassive galaxies, but the overwhelming majority of the mass, growing the black holes along with them, even before the stars came to be. Wow, something quite elucidating about these exceptions as we move a bit closer to understanding the role of supermassive black holes. They definitely came first in these examples, which calls that area of mystery out! Stars came later, and were beat to the punch by the supermassive black hole’s growth. None of it was possible without the presence of that much dark matter. The debates are being settled just a bit more with each new discovery. In order from left to right in the posted image, Galaxies NGC 4342 and NGC 4291. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Bogdan et al; Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/ NASA/NSF). Chandra gets the credit for this good stuff! To read more, see http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/H-12-191.html Amazing news abounds! Neutrinos do not travel faster than the speed of light. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/neutrinos-cant-beat-light/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29
Space Place members, I reference a very big new discovery in this post, so do read on.
As we ready my new book “A Journey” for publication, there are several things I am reminded of. First, I am writing the book with Lynda Viken, who is the most gifted technical person I have had the pleasure to work with. I hope that in all your technical work, you have access to an amazingly gifted person like Lynda. I have truly had the greatest fortune in that area, having both Dave and Ryan available to assist with technical issues over the years, and now Lynda. I am also reminded about the need to look back, and the need to look forward.
As we look back at our astronauts who repaired the International Space Station when our Shuttle program was still active, I hope we will, as a society, keep our eye on the prize. The prize is commitment to the exploration of the universe, and understanding all that we can about the universe in which we live. We had perhaps at one time believed that there were few areas of Earth that had not been explored. We now realize that kind of thinking does not bear the slightest veracity when it comes to our true situation on this pale blue dot.
The frontiers of research are nearly infinite right here on Earth; our search for cures to diseases which affect millions of people, our search to unify or improve our models of the physical world and the four forces of nature, our search to comprehend and understand the true nature of our climate change, although a very big step was taken there in the correlation with biodiversity of life in the oceans on Earth with “neighboring” supernova explosions, which put carbon dioxide as an after-effect from (increase or decrease of life in the oceans correlated to cool temperatures) of the effects of cosmic rays, rather than a driver of the climate change. Should you think that I am just referring to research areas as our new frontiers, consider that we have only known since the late seventies about the third branch of life on Earth called Archae, found now countless places on this Earth. A kind of life that would survive so well in the hostile environments we have found on other planets in our own solar system.
Beyond that, we are now cognizant of the fact that our frontier does not stop at our atmosphere. We are pioneers and our history is filled with exploration from the Polynesian navigators to those who wanted to discover a new world, such as Magellan. Exploration is in our blood and the price is always very, very high. But, exploration can be characterized as a positive good in the overall ability of people to accomplish great strides for humanity in this infinite universe. That precisely is how preposterous it would be to imagine we have explored our little world completely; our little world with infinite discoveries yet to come upon it, is inextricably linked with the infinity which surrounds us.
Looking back is important too, and our post today is reminder and includes some facts I did not know when captioned by National Geographic.“When renovations or repairs are needed on the International Space Station, it's up to astronauts to do the job. Before donning a special pressurized suit and heading out on a spacewalk, though, they must first spend over two hours decompressing in order to avoid the bends. Once their spacesuits are on, the astronauts must spend another hour breathing pure oxygen before they can step outside.”
And finally, looking back has yielded a remarkable discovery which I was unaware of. The ghostly remnants of our galaxy’s jets when the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole was an AGN, have been found! Those amazing jets, announcements of feeding black holes were once ours as much as any of those we see from galaxies afar! One of my students alerted me to this! It will be quite a journey in and of itself to have the new astronomy book “A Journey” released on August 8, 2012, as we plan. Enjoy this announcement of the jets which once were, now found; look back as we did, and at the same time, forward, once again. http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/05/29/Astronomers-see-active-Milky-Way-past/UPI-97281338319086/
Wishing our members a wonderful day on the Space Place!
June 6, 2012
We lost a giant today! Ray Bradbury. I would like to say just a few words here about Ray in tribute to a man I loved. Ray, as you may know, wrote a few words of introduction for my memoir, “Parallel Universes, A Memoir from the Edges of Space and Time.” I believe that “A Journey” upcoming this summer, will be a breakout work for me. Ray would have loved that, and in my heart I wish he had lived to see that. But, men like Ray have an impact on people, which is as vast as the ocean. And, I am sure that if you have ever lived or stayed by the sea, you can tell no matter what happens in human affairs, the ocean and its tides go on, constantly, in some reassuring way that tells us that what we do here on Earth matters a great deal, but that the good that we do, lives on or goes on as the ocean far beyond our short lives here.
Ray was kind, beyond any possible expression I can make. Ray was gentle and fascinated by every person he met; he was anxious to make acquaintances, he was anxious to say hello. That is the mark of a caring person and an active mind that never, never became lesser throughout his years. I knew Ray only in his later life; it was my privilege to have put on his 82nd Birthday party and to have shown him a cake that was so far out, it was thrilling. An entire globe of Mars, in the thinnest chocolate that was imaginable. Had I known how thin that chocolate shell of the planet was, beneath its surface decorations, I would never have taken a less than troubled breath during the entire affair at The Planetary Society. Others who loved him all attended, from a precious young girl, a student who has gone on to do state-of-the-art plasma research at UCLA to our beloved Angie Dickinson, the famous actress who loved him too.
I wish every person who reads this had had an opportunity to meet Ray, to have him enrich your life with his warmth. And, yes, Ray, I will see you on Mars one day, with your ashes in a can of Cambell’s soup, and your spirit will be there to welcome me. God blessed you in life and because of your gifts, we indeed were blessed.
June 5, 2012
Space Place members, please see our May 31 post for a little background on the Transit of Venus. That happens today! Combine that with the fact that in our back yard, two adult squirrels and four baby squirrels are frolicking with a bunny rabbit, who loves to kiss the babies, and it doesn’t get any better than this! Well, maybe it does!
Here on the Space Place, we are very much about the educations of young people and I would like to bring your attention to a story which as people who care about the future of science and the futures of young people will likely bring tears to your eyes. First, here is a brief overview of quantum entanglement. “Making a measurement on one entangled particle affects the properties of the other instantaneously. Image by Patrick L. Barry.” Courtesy Science@NASA http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/23jan_entangled.html
Now, picture a little boy about 3 years old traveling across country with his father, and his father proposes math problems along the way. The child of course begins to soar, which is what will always happen when a child is told by an adult that math and science matters enough for them to spend time on it. Then, when the boy is still very young, his father dies unexpectedly, and the child tells himself that his education doesn’t matter anymore.
Next, the grandfather tells the boy that he should change his mind about that, because A’s don’t matter. Yes of course they are good, but a person can do much better than an A.
This young man, now 18, has published a breakthrough paper on quantum entanglement moving us forward to the day when computers will employ it.
What happens when something like this goes right? First, a child is made happy by the pursuit of education and valuing knowledge when conveyed to him as important by an adult. Next, life dishes out a great sorrow for this boy. And, once again, it is the value of knowledge and education as conveyed to him by an adult, that helps make him whole again.
Wishing you a fabulous day of safe observation of the transit of Venus and a moment of observations of all the gifts we have been given on this Earth as well.
Space Place members, I truly wish I had more time, but my Astronomy students have finals this week. I just want you to see something no one has ever seen before, a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy being ejected completely out of the galaxy! X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Civano et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Optical (wide field): CFHT, NASA/STScI
Why is this important?
First, it is another confirmation of the existence of gravity waves, as predicted by Albert Einstein. We have indirectly seen evidence of them in systems of binary neutron stars whose obits around one another are decaying by orbital energy carried off by gravitational waves. Now, this new confirmation that the fabric of spacetime could have been so distorted by the collision of two supermassive black holes when two galaxies collided to product this new one, that the resulting gravitational waves were powerful enough to kick the merged supermassive black hole on its way completely out of the galaxy at the speed of several million miles per hour!
Make no mistake, we are talking about an object the mass of a million of times the mass of our sun receiving enough of a kick to send it out of the galaxy completely!!!
And therefore another reason this observation is so important! The implication is that there could be supermassive black holes, free and existing between the galaxies which have suffered just this fate with no indication of them otherwise. The implications are staggering!
What will be left behind at the galaxy center then? An extremely bright cluster of stars (the other bright object in the visible image of the galaxy center), and that’s it!
That is what the inset pictures are all about, how the visible data was revealing two bright spots, but the X-ray data was not aligned precisely on the galaxy, so it wasn’t clear what was exactly happening by the data obtained to date, when Chandra stepped in to clear things up!
Yes, it’s possible that three supermassive black holes were involved and what might have been the smallest was ejected, or that the data instead shows two supermassive black holes spiraling in toward one another in the aforementioned effect described at the onset of my post, however, the data truly favors that you are witnessing the kick of a supermassive black hole millions of time the mass of our Sun that will send it into intergalactic space, revealing an entirely new class of object potentially which inhabits the space between galaxies. Wow! The sky is never the limit on the Space Place!
Space Place members, this is the Pinwheel Galaxy M101 and yes, this is an extraordinarily beautiful image. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/m101/m101.jpg Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR & UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI
But, I would like you to understand what you are seeing here. This is a galaxy whose breathtaking spiral arms (the Pinwheel is about 70% larger than our breathtaking Milky Way) are asymmetric because of a close encounter in its past with another galaxy. When that happens, the gravitational effects upon the HII (molecular hydrogen) regions spawns the conditions for gravitational collapse within these cold, dense regions and star formation goes viral!
Some of the stars which form are massive, and because they are, fusion begins rapidly in their cores, and they burn through their lives at temperatures which allow for only a short lifetime (fusion rates go as the fourth power of temperature), and their deaths are rapid. Then, they collapse in supernova explosions with black holes at their hearts.
When that happens, they are never heard from again, unless they begin to feed upon a binary companion. When they do, we learn of their existence through X-rays emitted from high temperature processes of black hole meals, and the conditions which accompanied the creation of those black holes. Look closely at this breathtaking image and understand that we are allowed to see black holes feed. As per Chandra, “The hottest and most energetic areas in this composite image are shown in purple, where the Chandra X-ray Observatory observed the X-ray emission from exploded stars, million-degree gas, and material colliding around black holes.”
“The red colors in the image show infrared light, as seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope. These areas show the heat emitted by dusty lanes in the galaxy, where stars are forming.” So, what is the red exactly then? It’s infrared. The dusty lanes are heated by the stars forming within them. And, so, we can “see” the existence of stars forming by the heating of the dust which permeates their birthplaces.
“The blue areas are ultraviolet light, given out by hot, young stars that formed about one million years ago, captured by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX).” The signature of young, hot stars is that these youths send out enough ultraviolet radiation to destroy even their own birthplaces. Why did these stars form a million years ago? Because their formation rate is indeed so very fast, and they are so very young by the timescales of this universe.
What else should we be thinking about in that context? Indeed, yes, one million years ago, but in a snapshot of what happened 21 million years ago. Why? Because M101 is 21 million light years from Earth, and it took this snapshot that long to reach these great observatories involved in this breathtaking cosmic composite.
Don’t feel bad that they are dead now, because planets in M101 which may harbor life and are observing their universe are seeing our Sun as it was 21 million years ago as well. Our planet Earth went on to be our home after that.
And finally, “The yellow component is visible light, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Most of this light comes from stars, and they trace the same spiral structure as the dust lanes seen in the infrared.” Stellar birth, stars, gas, stellar death, all along the spiral arms of a huge, majestic spiral, whose processes were accelerated by a gravitational encounter with another galaxy, which it survived as a spiral. It exemplifies the processes which are part of the star formation engines within galaxies, which rule the universe, until the material from which those lives spring forth is no more.
Happy to read the wealth of astronomy news on the Space Place!
May 31, 2011
Space Place members, looking forward to getting out of the solar system a bit in upcoming posts, but nevertheless, there is a lot going on here! We have had a lot of fun with the recent annular solar eclipse, but up and coming are back-to-back partial lunar eclipses and a transit of Venus (take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus,_2012 if you would like a good overview!) We will keep you posted on both of these as you watch a portion of Earth which was helping itself to the view of the annular eclipse just so many days ago. This is how it looks from space, as the shadow of the Moon falls upon the Earth! http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1205/earthspot_mtsat_2249.jpg image credit Image Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, NASA, EUMETSAT, NERC Satellite Receiving Station, U. Dundee
Pretty soon, on June 4 we will return the favor, as our own shadow of Earth will fall upon the Moon, but only partially! That 5 degree tilt of the Moon’s orbit to the orbit of our Earth around the Sun (the apparent path of the Sun due to our orbit is called the ecliptic) will not permit the perfect line-up which would yield a total lunar eclipse this full Moon!
Nevertheless, as per NASA, “A broad stretch of lunar terrain around the southern crater Tycho will fall under the shadow of Earth, producing the first lunar eclipse of 2012. At maximum eclipse, around 4:04 am PDT, 37% of the Moon's surface will be in the dark.” And, “The eclipse is visible in North and South America, Australia, eastern parts of Asia and all across the Pacific Ocean. On the Atlantic side of the United States, the eclipse occurs just as the Moon is setting in the west--perfect timing for the Moon illusion.” To learn more about taking a bite out of the strawberry Moon visit http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/28may_strawberry/
And, by the way, please take a look at this APOD posting, next time you think of a destination in our solar system, which might support the search for life! http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120524.html Astonishing, isn’t it? I have heard this said, and agree with it, when our Sun begins to heat up as it approaches old age, Europa is the logical place to go!
I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop here, and will be back for a great view of galaxy M101 which I would like to explore in depth with you, as well as an update on Astronomy news! See you soon! Wishing you a wonderful day on the Space Place!
May 27, 2012
Space Place members, something about the diffuse red, white, and blue colors of this preplanetary nebula reminded me of the backlit flag at the beginning and end of the movie Saving Private Ryan. This is the Egg Nebula (Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA)
We don’t know a lot about this preplanetary nebula phase of some Sun-like stars when they are very close to their final manifestation in death. We have spent a lot of time on the Space Place exploring preplanetary nebulae. The consensus seems to be that one like this can only come about if there is a binary star system at the center of the nebula, as NASA states, rather than a single star.
The light here, specifically four searchlight beams of light coming from the nebula, is escaping because jets coming from the star carved ring-shaped holes in the thick cocoon of dust around the star.
These jets seem to mark the birth of stars, as a solar nebula collapses into a star and a stellar system which will more than likely include planets, comes into existence. Then, at death, under the circumstances we think leads to this brief stage, jets come again. They mark the birth of stars, the death of stars, and generations come and go because of the sacrifices made by the generations before.
We salute the men and women who have served and now serve our country, and some of whom have made the ultimate sacrifice so that generations to come may enjoy lives of greatest potential. I want to thank those who are our heroes, which include my husband Dave, a retired Air Force pilot. May you and your family enjoy this Memorial Day and keep close in your hearts the heroes who have kept that light alive.
May 26, 2012
Space Place members, lots of interesting stuff and cool pictures at end of this, so read on! I was very fortunate when working for NASA, that most things I did had direct relevance and application to ongoing milestones to meet deadlines in software development or science return on a space mission. In fact, when I left NASA work for a time in my career, I did do some non-NASA engineering for a while. I often sensed that I missed the type of work that had such a direct and immediate application to exploration missions.
We must tip our hats to the engineers who take a look at things; do a study, even if in retrospect at an aspect of a mission which might have held a different result. A study that asks for example, what if? This is where I found the picture of Astronauts William Anders, James Lovell, and Frank Borman (left to right), courtesy: NASA.
Wired has taken a look at a moment in space history like that, and published a science blog by a historian about two NASA engineers who asked the question what would have happened on Apollo 8 if when the CSM (Command and Service Module) fired its Service Propulsion System (SPS) main engine for Trans-Earth injection (TEI) after its 10th orbit of the Moon, and the SPS had failed.
The historian’s name David S.F.Portree, and the two engineers were A. Haron and R. Raymond, and their paper was entitled Consumables Affecting Extended CSM Lifetime in Lunar Orbit. (Translated that means what would have happened if the Astronauts were marooned in Lunar Orbit.) They completed their study on December 31, 1968. It is amazing how the author points out that if such a thing as they were investigating had happened, Apollo 8 astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders would have already been dead by then.
Portree does the reader the favor of putting Apollo 8 into context, although he is so detailed oriented that the material is very dense. I enjoy distilling it a bit for the reader who may not on the surface have such an appreciation as another engineer might. But, here’s the point, once the Command and Service Module had been tested in low-Earth orbit in October 1968, two more successively strenuous tests of each of the craft involved in a lunar landing and return to Earth were to have taken place before what Apollo 8 actually accomplished in lunar orbit. And, it is no small point that Apollo 8’s mission left behind the Lunar Module (LM) particularly because it did not exist. Waiting for it in the successively strenuous test missions originally planned, would have caused the goal of landing on the Moon by the end of 1960 to be forfeited. Low Earth orbit testing of the LM, and all high Earth orbit testing was completely sacrificed for schedule. It is no wonder the first lunar orbiting test of the CSM including an ability to make it back to Earth via the firing of the CSM’s SPS was considered for what might have happened if it failed.
Here’s what would have happened if the SPS had not ignited for the TEI burn as conveyed to us by Portree. First, it would have already performed flawlessly in two correction burns so that the Apollo 8 CSM would enter the correct orbit of the moon, and a third time as well to slow it down to allow the moon to capture it into orbit. But if it had not burned correctly on Christmas day of 1968 to escape the Moon’s gravitational pull, the CSM would have run out of lithium hydroxide canisters to remove carbon dioxide exhaled by the crew who were breathing pure oxygen. Sound familiar? Remember Apollo 13, when this began to happen on that crippled craft?
Ok, back to the Apollo 8 study. In 96 hours after failing to escape the Moon’s orbit, the crew would have suffocated on December 29. The author points out that that if you want a look at the lithium hydroxide canisters which would have been used up by then, it’s really hard to find a good picture of them. Their existence is apparently best imaged in one which was modified with duct tape and a plastic bag to permit its use in the LM Aquarius and save the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts!
Through the technical insight by additional research using reports of the nature of the one they were creating, engineers Haron and Raymond were able to extend the Astronauts’ lives to New Years Eve, and when they stretched to the edges of known knowledge on the Apollo 8 systems’ performance, they could not conclusively say they could have engineered the survival time of the Astronauts to 3 weeks. But, that is the point, with each new study, with each new question answered; engineers fit together the workings of success, even if that knowledge pertains to surviving failure.
I ask you to consider the value of engineering and how answering questions, even hypothetical ones, lends to putting together the pieces of an enormous puzzle and moving humanity forward. It was a small study, done quickly, by people who had the background and worked a lifetime to have it (beginning in elementary school.) It may sound a bit trivial to say this, but it isn’t. We need engineers and we need that expertise now to engineer our exploration of the universe. Some of the work behind the scenes might never surface except for the interest of the historian and all of us. Never mind what happened on Apollo 13 when the LM Aquarius’ decent engine was used in place of a SPS to speed their return to Earth. Or what happened on Apollo 16 when one of the SPS’ components malfunctioned, even before the LM was on the Moon. Options existed, but once the go ahead for the landing was made, the engineers decided to move the TEI up a day, because should the SPS have not managed the burn for TEI, the engineers would have time to think!!
Space Place members in Europe and the U.K., I wanted to let you know my hard copy first book, my memoir “Parallel Universes, A Memoir from the Edges of Space and Time” will be available on Amazon in your country in about a week! I hope that all our Space Place members will continue to sign on to be listed as members of our Space Place in the second book, an astronomy book, “A Journey; Essays on the Leading Edge of Discovery” to be released in August. Just go to events on the Space Place here to sign on! Wishing all of you a wonderful weekend on the Space Place!
Don’t you wish your vacation photos looked like this?
May 22, 2012
Space Place members, a new and we hope successful beginning of the The Commercial Crew & Cargo Program to extend human presence in space by enabling an expanding and robust U.S. commercial space transportation industry began this morning with the launch of the SpaceX Falcon9 and Dragon capsule. The posted image is The Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 Tuesday morning. Image credit: NASA TV. This is a demonstration flight to the ISS, which will later rendezvous with the ISS to safely deliver its cargo!
Elon Musk is the founder, CEO and chief designer of SpaceX. The launch happened three days after the rocket aborted its previous attempt to launch.
Alan Lindemoyer, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program, said that there were still a thousand things that had to go right before… “ it is allowed to approach close enough to the orbiting laboratory to allow the station's robotic arm to grapple it and connect it to the station.” So the mood is cautious optimism.
We join with this venture in our hopes of seeing that mission’s ultimate stated result, which is to be part of extending human presence in space. Along with NASA’s heavy lifter rocket, the overarching goal is to extend human presence beyond low Earth orbit. It is extremely hard to boldly go where no one has ever been before, if you can’t get there! We tip our hats to the SpaceX Team and recognize the magnitude of the challenges ahead.
Space Place members, hello! I have been secluded for a couple of days, grading mathematics finals for students!! Yes, I love Math, but not of course as much as Astronomy! But, one is essential to understand the other, as you know! It is a very good thing that the partial solar eclipse yesterday came to me, which such eclipses can easily do! Or should I say, you can easily view such an eclipse many places without much effort!
Yesterday’s eclipse created a ring of fire, or was annular many places in the world. Our Moon subtends the same angular distance in the sky as seen from the Earth as does our Sun, two bodies of extremely different sizes. It is simply a coincidence of nature, based upon their distance from the Earth.
We do not of course get some kind of solar eclipse with every New Moon; a phase of the Moon which lights the other half of the Moon as seen from our perspective, thus showing us only a “dark Moon.” New Moons do not “appear” at all monthly, because only the “other side” of the Moon from our perspective is receiving the light from the Sun. Of course New Moons rise and set with the Sun. But, the orbit of the Moon is inclined about 5 degrees with the plane of our own orbit around the Sun, so each New Moon phase - the only time it is possible to cast a shadow of the Moon upon the Earth – the Moon will not necessarily precisely line up with the direction to the Sun, as seen from Earth.
When it does, a lot of variables will determine which kind of eclipse takes place. Even when things line up directly as seen from some parts of the Earth, the Moon may not have the precise angular size of our Sun, if it is for example closer to its apogee position in its orbit around the Earth. We have spoken recently about our perigee Moon, which turned out to be the largest of the year for 2012. Since that was a couple of weeks ago, our Moon’s angular size has decreased to not fully being able to occult the Sun, leaving what is termed a ring of fire around the edge, where the Sun’s “surface” the photosphere can be seen. Such was the effect yesterday along a path which stretched across China, southern Japan, and the north Pacific Ocean. These were regions which saw a ring of fire at eclipse maximum, an effect known as an annular eclipse.
Here, as can be seen by the above pictures in our master bathroom in California, we experienced only a partial eclipse when the eclipse geometry reached the west coast of the U.S. A 200 wide mile path saw the annular display in the U.S., however, and stretched from Southern Oregon and Northern California all the way to Texas!
What are all those images of what appears to be a crescent? That’s the eclipse, partial here in the High Desert in California, and projecting from the multiple slits where string passes through holes in the horizontal slats of our window blinds! (One of those houses which has a very large window by the bathtub!) So, fortunately, as I was consumed by students’ “interpretation” of reduced row echelon form of augmented matrices to solve systems of equations, the eclipse was projected many places in our home; on walls, doors, and our grandson’s shirts they were wearing when they faced the direction of the Sun through such window blinds.
Dave tells the story of how he has seen hundreds of such images on the side of a building when Sunlight passed through the small “viewing holes” made by the leaves of trees during an eclipse. Yesterday, when we finally did go outside as it became slightly darker, Dave projected the image of a phase of the eclipse, which at that time was a “happy face smile of fire,” through a hole he formed with his fingers. That way the little neighbor girl could see the eclipse. He focused the crescent on his car’s license plate knowing that she would see it there, since the license plate was bathed in sunlight!
One world, one Moon, and multiple images of our true place in space garnered from the geometry of the moment in regards to our star! One world, multiple moons in this breathtaking picture from Cassini, featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day recently! Jupiter’s rings are seen edge on, and small moons Epimetheus and Prometheus are in the background of Dione. Look how dark little Epimetheus is compared to Dione!http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1205/dionerings_cassini_1012.jpg Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA
I promise to not wait until after to help you enjoy the transit of Venus which is coming up on June 5, where Venus, not our Moon, will pass in front of the Sun. Venus’ some 6 hour trek across the face of the Sun will not happen again as seen from Earth in anybody’s lifetime who is on Earth now. Once again, you will not want to look at the Sun directly, ever, for this event or any other. But, I am sure where you are, there will be places and ways to enjoy this!
So glad to be back, and wishing you all a wonderful day on the Space Place! My math classes will be web enhanced next semester, and so I will not be secluded for grading Math exams next year at this time. Perhaps I will miss that aspect of the past, paper associated with students’ work, rather than the manifestation of ones of zeros configured into the artificial intelligence of machines. We are changing, as are the bodies of the solar system, and the universe around us, constantly in a march toward the future, in our current place in this universe! By the way, if you enjoy the writing of Brian Greene, join him as interviewed by Wired onhttp://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/geeks-guide-brian-greene/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29 (I protest, I am not just a hologram!)
See you back here soon, and don’t forget to get your name into my book by clicking on the events tab above. Many people who are friends on Facebook have signed up and responded to their individual invitations to get their names into “A Journey” as Space Place members. The honor is mine when they have confirmed that invitation. Space Place members, facebook won’t let me invite you individually, but I do and have on the events of our Space Place. That is your individual invitation, so please respond. You have a month and a half to respond. I will be “secluded” during that time finishing that work for its early August release, but not secluded from the Space Place!
May 15, 2012
Space Place members, fantastic results from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer! We have spent a great deal of time on the Space Place understanding the death processes of stars! But, that is when stars die of natural causes. I’m afraid to say it, but yes, stars can be murdered and pass before their time.
How does such a massive object meet such an untimely death? At the hands of something far more massive!
First, and picture this, the outer layers of the majestic star are torn off by this assailant. And next, the core is destroyed! Like any such death, it is violence which ends the life. The culprit is a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, and this “crime” was observed by NASA’s GALEX mission. GALEX was in fact searching for such an event, and working with Earth-based observations and other great observatories, researchers are now sure of the most direct evidence ever acquired of the destruction of the star at the hands of the black hole!
This star, we now know, had a helium core, and outer layers of hydrogen. Depending upon its mass, it is likely that this star would have fused its mostly helium core to carbon before its final natural death, in a process which affords the star a return to a little more stable lifetime, once it indeed begins to die. In fact, it is surmised that the star was in fact beginning its trek toward natural death, as a red giant, and that its expanded outer layers were first stripped away by the supermassive black hole at its galaxy’s center.
This is forensics in a sense, because after that, not only was its remaining helium core detected by a ultraviolet flash as the supermassive black hole ate it, but the escaping helium of the core was also detected as part of it was flung at great speed from the galaxy!
It’s not clear to me whether the signature of the escaping helium was detected in material which researchers have recently come to understand is sent at high speed away from a galaxy whose central black hole is feeding, or an actual part of the jetted material which emerges along twisted magnetic field lines along the poles of the black hole. (Recent finds by researchers have acknowledged the various ways some material escapes a black hole’s feeding.) But, as astronomers pieced together the evidence of this murder, they knew they had attained a rare witnessing material drop below the black hole’s event horizon, and other of the victim’s remains accelerated away from the scene of the crime. What an awesome find by GALEX!
“This computer-simulated image shows gas from a tidally shredded star falling into a black hole. Some of the gas also is being ejected at high speeds into space. Astronomers observed a flare in ultraviolet and optical light from the gas falling into the black hole and glowing helium from the star's helium-rich gas expelled from the system. To see the computer simulation movie, visit:http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/18/video/b/ Credit: NASA, S. Gezari (The Johns Hopkins University), and J. Guillochon (University of California, Santa Cruz)” GALEX also imaged a galaxy at a distance of about 60 million light years, called the Great Barred Spiral. Here it is in the unltraviolethttp://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA07901.jpg Ultraviolet image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365, which is a member of the Fornax Cluster of Galaxies.Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSC
We have also talked a great deal on the Space Place how difficult it has been for us to see what our own Milky Way galaxy looks like from the “outside” since we are on the inside looking out. As previously mentioned on the Space Place, as of 2011, two researchers are quite sure that our grand Milky Way has two spiral arms, just like this Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, imaged by GALEX, although that galaxy is unbelievably twice as large as our own. So, knowing we have the incredible symmetry and awesome appearance of this also breathtaking spiral, everyone stay still, smile, and look at the camerahttp://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/screen/potw1037a.jpg ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/ R. Gendler, J-E. Ovaldsen, C. Thöne, and C. Feron and have a wonderful day on the Space Place!
Space Place members, be sure and visit our events and make sure you are a part of my new Astronomy book to be released in late July and early August!
May 13, 2012
A second post today, to wish all our Space Place members who are themselves Mothers, a Very Happy Mother's Day!! And to the mothers, wives, sisters, daughters of Space Place members, a Very Happy Mother's Day as well!
This post's picture will be the cover photo for "A Journey" my newly released book! More than two years ago, Linda Morabito's Space Place was created as a group, but then was automatically changed from join to like quite a while back by Facebook, along with many other changes that happen on Facebook! As a result, I cannot directly invite all Space Place members to be part of the book, but I can direct you to our events(the tab above), and you can learn about it there! Please take a look!
This amazing picture caught my attention some years back. Several yellow stars emerge from the dust around them through Hubble's Infrared Camera! Something to behold!http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2002-13-f-full_jpg.jpg Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA
Wishing you and your family a wonderful Mother's Day anywhere in the world that you are!
May 12, 2012
An important announcement for Space Place members, and here is a breathtaking picture taken by Hubble!http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1205/omega_hubble_3047.jpgIt is the center of the Omega Nebula, Image Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (UCSC/LO), M.Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), ACS Science Team, and ESA.
What I love about the recent Astronomy Picture of the Day post, is that it describes the dark filaments in this amazing picture as created in either, supernova explosions or lost from the atmospheres of giant stars which are dieing and not able to keep their outer atmospheres a part of what will become simply a collapsed stellar core! It feels like as we gaze upon the dust filaments, we are watching the life which comes from death in the universe, as generation upon generation of stars light worlds such as ours, from which our lives have sprung.
Now, for our announcement! My new astronomy book “A Journey” will be released in late July or Early August, and it is in good part a tribute to the Space Place here. What that means is a tribute to our members here! Today, I will create one of three events over the next two-and-a-half months. These events are NOT actual events, but if you respond that you will attend any of these events, then your name will be included as a Space Place member in the book!
The events are simply to get your name in the book, you do not have to attend anything!!!
Those who respond that they will attend the first event, are saying yes, include my name in your new astronomy book! The second and third events, which I will send out at the end of June and just before the book is released, will give others the chance to think about it a little bit, and once you have said you will attend one of these events, you do not have to say yes again for your name to appear in the book!
This book will be a searchable by topic astronomy book into the science essays I have written, which give you context and background on the latest finds and discoveries in Astronomy! There could be no better way to thank you for being part of this community than to make you part of the book!
You should receive the first event announcement later today!
May 10, 2012
NASA held its news conference today to share information about discoveries made at Vesta, the enormous asteroid, by the Dawn spacecraft.
Imagine this, what if you had visited Legoland and seen many objects made out of Legos, like for example, a giant space shuttle model, or the model of a village with buildings made out of Lego’s just about big enough for the little people you are taking there for the fun, to actually enter. But, what if, what if you and your children had never seen an individual Lego, one of the small parts used to build the objects, all by itself?
Vesta has been shown by Dawn to be a differentiated body, one that was fully molten during its formation. There is evidence that it had a magna ocean beneath its surface. Any such body was likely prevented from becoming a full fledged planet because of the orbital resonance Jupiter has with many of the asteroids in the asteroid belt. Gravitational tugs add up and clear out areas there, and the debris will be sent this way or that, but cannot continue to flourish and build planets. Indeed, objects like Vesta were the building blocks, of Earth for example. It’s just that Vesta, one of the largest sources of meteorites which strike Earth, now confirmed by Dawn, is the only one of its kind that survived to tell the tale of such objects. It is an individual Lego the likes of which we have never been able to see up close, until now. The only one of its kind….
With gratitude to the entire Dawn team!! We tip our hats to them and await a dwarf planet encounter with the first asteroid ever discovered, and the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres!!
And by the way, scientists have confirmed that yes, those quasars in the early universe probably put a halt to star formation in their galaxies! Too much of a good thing, the thing that makes stars form in galaxies, and supermassive black holes feed and grow, can change the prospects for the formation of stars from then on, in the entire galaxy; until things settle down a bit. I am detecting a new thematic wave of discoveries, where like in all life it is the degree of a factor which changes the entire picture of things. Recently, my grandson Robert having eaten three different types of chocolate embedded in a chocolate Sunday admitted, that there is such a thing as too much chocolate. His little brother makes no such admission at the age of 4. However, with age and wisdom, we are beginning to see that so many things, perhaps including the number of supernova explosions in our vicinity is good for the biodiversity of life on Earth, as long as there aren’t too many really close explosions. As in all of life, perhaps, it is a matter of the smallest margins, and it could be we find ourselves in this state of existence by countless measured factors, any of which could produce a far different result.
Pertaining to the image, from NASA: Artist's Concept - Active Black Hole Squashes Star Formation “The Herschel Space Observatory has shown that galaxies with the most powerful, active, supermassive black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes.
”Supermassive black holes are believed to reside in the hearts of all large galaxies. When gas falls upon these monsters, the materials are accelerated and heated around the black hole, releasing great torrents of energy. In the process, active black holes often generate colossal jets that blast out twin streams of heated matter.
”Inflows of gas into a galaxy also fuel the formation of new stars. In a new study of distant galaxies, Herschel helped show that star formation and black hole activity increase together, but only up to a point. Astronomers think that if an active black hole flares up too much, it starts spewing radiation that prevents raw material from coalescing into new stars.
”This artistically modified image of the local galaxy Arp 220, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, helps illustrate the Herschel results. The bright core of the galaxy, paired with an overlaid artist's impression of jets emanating from it, indicate that the central black hole's activity is intensifying. As the active black hole continues to rev up, the rate of star formation will, in turn, be suppressed in the galaxy. Astronomers want to further study how star formation and black hole activity are intertwined.
”Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech”
May 10, 2012
NASA held its news conference today to share information about discoveries made at Vesta, the enormous asteroid, by the Dawn spacecraft.
Imagine this, what if you had visited Legoland and seen many objects made out of Legos, like for example, a giant space shuttle model, or the model of a village with buildings made out of Lego’s just about big enough for the little people you are taking there for the fun, to actually enter. But, what if, what if you and your children had never seen an individual Lego, one of the small parts used to build the objects, all by itself?
Vesta has been shown by Dawn to be a differentiated body, one that was fully molten during its formation. There is evidence that it had a magna ocean beneath its surface. Any such body was likely prevented from becoming a full fledged planet because of the orbital resonance Jupiter has with many of the asteroids in the asteroid belt. Gravitational tugs add up and clear out areas there, and the debris will be sent this way or that, but cannot continue to flourish and build planets. Indeed, objects like Vesta were the building blocks, of Earth for example. It’s just that Vesta, one of the largest sources of meteorites which strike Earth, now confirmed by Dawn, is the only one of its kind that survived to tell the tale of such objects. It is an individual Lego the likes of which we have never been able to see up close, until now. The only one of its kind….
With gratitude to the entire Dawn team!! We tip our hats to them and await a dwarf planet encounter with the first asteroid ever discovered, and the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres!!
And by the way, scientists have confirmed that yes, those quasars in the early universe probably put a halt to star formation in their galaxies! Too much of a good thing, the thing that makes stars form in galaxies, and supermassive black holes feed and grow, can change the prospects for the formation of stars from then on, in the entire galaxy; until things settle down a bit. I am detecting a new thematic wave of discoveries, where like in all life it is the degree of a factor which changes the entire picture of things. Recently, my grandson Robert having eaten three different types of chocolate embedded in a chocolate Sunday admitted, that there is such a thing as too much chocolate. His little brother makes no such admission at the age of 4. However, with age and wisdom, we are beginning to see that so many things, perhaps including the number of supernova explosions in our vicinity is good for the biodiversity of life on Earth, as long as there aren’t too many really close explosions. As in all of life, perhaps, it is a matter of the smallest margins, and it could be we find ourselves in this state of existence by countless measured factors, any of which could produce a far different result.
Pertaining to the image, from NASA: Artist's Concept - Active Black Hole Squashes Star Formation “The Herschel Space Observatory has shown that galaxies with the most powerful, active, supermassive black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes.
”Supermassive black holes are believed to reside in the hearts of all large galaxies. When gas falls upon these monsters, the materials are accelerated and heated around the black hole, releasing great torrents of energy. In the process, active black holes often generate colossal jets that blast out twin streams of heated matter.
”Inflows of gas into a galaxy also fuel the formation of new stars. In a new study of distant galaxies, Herschel helped show that star formation and black hole activity increase together, but only up to a point. Astronomers think that if an active black hole flares up too much, it starts spewing radiation that prevents raw material from coalescing into new stars.
”This artistically modified image of the local galaxy Arp 220, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, helps illustrate the Herschel results. The bright core of the galaxy, paired with an overlaid artist's impression of jets emanating from it, indicate that the central black hole's activity is intensifying. As the active black hole continues to rev up, the rate of star formation will, in turn, be suppressed in the galaxy. Astronomers want to further study how star formation and black hole activity are intertwined.
”Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech”
May 9, 2012
Space Place members, some of my students have finals this week, so I am sorry to not have made it here sooner! Want to share with you the delight that Spitzer has given the world by imaging exoplanets; not the infrared mission envisioned when Spitzer was first launched and conceived.
Now, it has imaged a water world! A super Earth tidally locked to its star, boiling its atmosphere away; a water world, dark on the side facing away from its star and boiling away from the heat on the side facing the star! You have to love this! We can’t make things like this up!
What I take issue with is that the article states that there would be no life on this world; I believe that the science writer must mean, no life as we know it! Take a look at this fabulous report from science newshttp://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/article00303.html
Here is the credit for our image today: Artist's concept of the planet 55 Cancri e (JPL / NASA)
On one of our Space Place postings, I remember a researcher’s conjecture on the nature of these super Earths, that perhaps they were the cores of worlds like Jupiter and Saturn. Again, conjecture, but I never forgot that proposed insight into the nature of these abundant worlds conspicuous by their absence in our own solar system!
Now, back to our discussion of dark matter! I am not saying that our recent post on the discovery of regular matter, which apparently lies in a very thin plane, albeit unbelievably large plane orthogonal to our galaxy’s disk is indeed the true nature of actual dark matter, but one wonders if the results of studies which have isolated dark matter through gravitational lensing would be consistent with that. Seems to me it’s possible, but completely in the category of conjecture upon conjecture.
However, what about these even newer results, also reported on during the time period of that recent discovery.http://www.universetoday.com/94680/the-case-of-the-missing-dark-matter/ missing dark matter in our galaxy which would of course not include the extended aforementioned mass. We live in very interesting times in science right now!
And also, NASA will have a news conference Thursday about results concerning asteroid Vesta! I will not be able to attend via the Internet at that time, so I promise to report in summary on this!
Wishing all our members, a wonderful day, on the Space Place!
As per ESO’s website “This image of the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s belt, shows clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The submillimetre-wavelength observations, made with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope and shown here in orange, use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed. They are overlaid on a view of the region in visible light. Credit:ESO/APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO)/T. Stanke et al./Igor Chekalin/Digitized Sky Survey 2”
The particular Wired article Dave pointed me to on giant lava coils on Mars highlights what HiRISE has found on Mars; what happens when two lava flows move past one another at different speeds or directions. Do take a look at the unusual coil features which have formed on the Martian surface from this phenomenon, apparently much larger than the size of such coils formed in Earth’s past, as well.http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2012/04/lavacoils2.jpg
I’d like to take a moment, and recall that in the United States yesterday we had a national day of prayer. I have no idea if such a day occurs in the nation where you live. Here, we pray for our nation, our leaders, our future as a people. As a scientist who once viewed the world purely through the eyes of science, I recall reading an article that said, people who were hospitalized and indicated they had a good number of people praying for them, statistically speaking, did a lot better than people who didn’t. Interesting. I found it so, even back then, as a very young astronomer.
Even to those who tend to still view the world purely through science, I think we often find, as I did as a young scientist that the sum of the parts in our life experiences is greater than the whole. Very often what we encounter in the universe, on the scales of our personal lives is very much greater than might be revealed in just looking at things above the resolution that reveals the complexity and amazing detail to our own existence.
In that regard, over the last many years, my family seems to have encountered far more challenges than statistically likely. Indeed, it is unlikely for example that someone might win a lottery, statistically speaking, but for those that do, it’s very real, and the statistics tend to fade at that point, I would imagine. I have considered and wondered over a long period of time now why the challenges seem to follow one after another without much break in between over scales of years. Perhaps the wisest among us is humbled by many things we see and find in the universe.
After much consideration, I believe that it would make sense for me to ask that you do take a moment to keep us in your thoughts and prayers. I would feel honored and blessed as well to ask that you would consider doing that. I have made many a wonderful friend here on the Space Place and am never disappointed by the level of inquiry, in-depth consideration, and high importance the members here give to their interest in the scientific wonders of this universe. I often am very thankful for the people here at the Space Place.
Please tell your friends to join us here is this great adventure through the universe. And please if you will consider including us in your thoughts and prayers over the next several months. My next book, an astronomy book, plans a very special tribute to those who find themselves here on the Space Place because of their interest in science. More on that later, as we consider a universe that there are statistically speaking likely billions of worlds with water on their surfaces in our own galaxy; I am not sure the Space.com article reflects new findings, but is a nice summary of what are upon closer inspection wonders of this universe to come.http://www.space.com/15433-alien-life-red-dwarfs-habitable-planets.html
Wishing all of our members a wonderful day in their nations, and with their families and friends, in their individual lives.
May 2, 2012
What is missing in this picture of beautiful spiral galaxy M74?
Shortly we will take a breathtaking closer look at the spiral, but for now, what don’t you see? A good answer might be dark matter.
You don’t see dark matter because of the characteristics we have prescribed to it. It does not interact with regular matter and emits no light. Is there any chance dark matter is like the emperor’s new clothes? You don’t see the emperor’s new clothes, because the clothes are not really there.
I have always had a sense that what we think we know will give way to profoundly new understanding as humans mature in their existence long enough to have searched for a better theory; a higher level of understanding about the universe. Dave on the other hand is just plainly skeptical of many new findings. Indeed, when the first “pictures” of dark matter came into existence through inference via gravitational lensing, Dave was skeptical. I wondered how he could be. Clearly there was more mass there than can be seen.
You would think our knowledge of our own galaxy would lead the way on what might be happening in other similar galaxies. But, indeed, we haven’t even a clue of what might be found within our own solar system, let alone our galaxy. We will need to explore the Kuiper Belt to find what else might orbit our Sun, perhaps objects like Pluto, but many, many times its mass and size?. Objects that are too faint to be imaged; too far away.
That is not to say that astronomers haven’t searched for regular matter as the source of what makes the outer edges of our spiral rotate faster than they should, implying the presence of much more matter in our galaxy than can be accounted for by luminous regular matter. Indeed the same goes for clusters of galaxies. Their content implied by their rotation rates, requires an even greater component of mass there than can be seen.
What if there were a previously unnoticed component of matter, just regular matter, associated with our own galaxy? This is what a professor in astronomy at the University of Bonn believes he and his team have found. In fact, what if this component of our galaxy were to extend out to one million light years from the center of our galaxy? Oh come on, you are saying now, our galaxy is only about 100,000 light years across! One million light years is an interesting distance, but could not possibly have anything to do with our galaxy! It reminds me of when I first saw evidence of active volcanism on Io, but the structure of what I was seeing (an overexposed plume) was too large, I first believed, to have anything to do with Io.
This researcher Marcel Pawlowski has a lot to say about the implications of a structure that large that is part of our galaxy, and lies in a plane perpendicular to our galaxy’s disk!!!! He is saying forget your foolish notions of galaxy evolution from the time of the early universe, logically resulting in collisions of galaxies, to produce the galaxies we have now, in the way we have believed until now. What I am conveying is that the Milky Way has a very high number of satellite galaxies which formed “out there in the same way as our own galaxy,” and then collided with us.
Perhaps not? What if there was a galaxy collision of that ilk in our galaxy’s past, and then the pieces of that galaxy with which we collided were stripped away, and then that material began a life of its own? This material perhaps formed our galaxy bulge, began forming globular clusters, some of which are very young in this enormous previously unseen structure of our galaxy, they began forming other small galaxies which we call our satellite galaxies. Wow! And would that make enough unseen mass to account for the dark matter we see now? This stable structure that extends unimaginably far from us, yet is part of us?
The reason I have picked this particular picture of M74: The Perfect Spiral Credit: Gemini Observatory, GMOS Teamhttp://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0305/m74_gemini_big.jpg is that this spiral shows evidence of a recent supernova explosion (you will notice it). We are perhaps undergoing a paradigm shift in understanding climate on Earth in regards to biodiversity on Earth related to supernova explosions in our galaxy, please see our recent post on this, and now a possible paradigm shift in regards to the emperor’s new clothes? Only time, and continued dedication to solving these great science mysteries of our age, will tell. Space Place members from active science researchers, to astronomy educators and enthusiasts, to amateur astronomers, to parents dedicated to their children’s education are doing their part to inspire the next generation of astronomers, by conveying that the quest to understand the universe around us is exciting and directly relevant to our existence on Earth.
