There is nothing in Big Bang theory to rule out the notion of artifacts lingering from before the Big Bang. Cosmologists are in the habit of using the term "everything" here, but that's out of semantic convention rather than scientific necessity.
It is possible, though extremely improbable, that dark matter is an artifact from pre-big bang. There is nothing to support this, but there's nothing (to my knowledge or a chatbot's) to disqualify it, either.
It's impossible to imagine how anything could escape the singularity and the bang. But at this point, whatever dark matter is will be extremely unimaginable, because it doesn't seem to fit at all into anything we know (we've been working hard at it for decades, with literally no advance). Whatever it turns out to be will be highly unlikely and probably tear some big chunk of our understanding.
So if it's not as I suggest (and it almost surely isn't), it will be something equally outrageous. And once you pass a certain point of improbability, strange things happen. I wrote a paper on this (PDF link).
When there are no logical alternatives, moons really might be made of green cheese (to paraphrase the old logician's phrase). Past a certain threshold, it's most logical to ask "cheddar or stilton?"
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Friday, February 6, 2026
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Explaining the Excitement Over Total Eclipses
It’s a life-changing experience. Unforgettable. Do whatever you need to do to be there, whatever the expense. People endlessly testify to the profound and transformative nature of total eclipses, while I’ve been skeptical. It gets darker. You wear uncomfortable eye protection, peering through essentially black duct tape. Then it gets lighter again. Unless one grafts on some woo-woo New Age significance, it’s hard to understand why it would be some big deal.
But these are smart people. Folks not prone to effusive testimonial. So I’ve been eager to investigate. During my previous total eclipse, as a child in the early 1970s, I remember staring into a cardboard box at a tiny crescent which struck me as bogglingly unimpressive. I contemplated myself as a wrinkled, wheezing, bleary-eyed geezer viewing the next one in the unimaginably futuristic year of 2024, if I’d somehow live that long.
Well, yesterday the enfeebled geezer hunkered down in a Haitian cheesecake store in Dallas on the central line slated to get four minutes plus of life-changing TOTALITY.
I’m a big fan of Val’s Cheesecakes to begin with. Plus, they were making griot (fried goat), which I love, plus a special blackout eclipse cheesecake, draped in chocolate, which in itself would deliver the superlatives this cosmic event was promised to deliver, inoculating any disappointment. Also, I’m sort of a minor Haitian celebrity, having played for a stretch with Tabou Combo, the legendary compa band. Haitian cab drivers ask to take selfies with me. It’s a thing.
When people find it hard to explain a transformative experience in words, it’s generally a matter of reframing. Especially with scientific types, who are often locked into a certain perspective, so, when their ground shifts, they struggle to express it in their familiar geeky jargon. Since framing is my fascination, I had traveled far to try to understand. So me and the other Haitians anxiously awaited the magic hour, while, across the street, two workers welded a broken gate, oblivious to it all despite their $200 helmets that were surely the fanciest eye protection in town.
Partial eclipses I know about...and dislike. I have a particular aversion to having my eyes dilated. Like everyone, I dislike the feeling, but I particularly hate how the world looks. I’m no fan of the unique lighting of partial eclipses, either, which turn everything sickeningly beige. A bit like sunset, but with the sun vertical, rather than filtered through layers of horizon atmosphere to produce sweeping color bursts. It’s a ghastly otherworldly beige - like you’re on Europa - which my higher functions deem disgusting, and which my more visceral functions deem off and wrong and yuck. I understand why birds and beasts get so freaked. I’m edgy, myself.
But I’d been assured that totality’s different. Like, totally. As I mused about this, things turned much darker with jarring suddenness. So sudden that we Haitians were surprised to observe streetlights turning on. It was no longer the mild amusement of watching a bite disappear from the Sun. It was a whole other thing. Nothing like the ultimate consummation of a partial eclipse. It’s a smash cut. A black-out - literally. A never-before-experienced segue, a doorway to oblivion. Even lightning has foreshadowing - roiling dark clouds and ozone and such. This comes out of nowhere.
All of a sudden we (and by “we”, I mean the broadest possible we) were presented with a sci-fi glistening knob above us, in what we’d previously thought of as the sky. If you told me it was falling straight toward me, I’d have believed you, staring blankly upward like a hen in a downpour.
There are countless Zen proverbs about how a painting of the moon is not the moon. A poem about the moon is not the moon. Abstract isn’t a paler shade of concrete; it’s a discrete realm. We imagine that we know what an eclipse is, but we really only know paintings and poems. That’s not knowing.
Indulge, please, a digression. This nicely conveys the visceral gut-punch of Actuality colliding with expectation. I never expected the hoariest show biz shaggy dog joke to shed light on the mystery of eclipses, but….
And even that shouldn’t be so startling. After all, we experience other tizzying WTFs in the course of our lives. You bump into your landlord in a Malaysian grocery. Four coins fall, all of them landing on end. The Mets win the World Series. Etc.
But those things are only surprising because you’ve calculated odds and assessed outcomes - a cold, mental, abstract process propagated by the same 150 neurons which yawn at eclipses. Squarely oblivious mental accountants look up startled from their slide rules upon spotting some nerdy aberration. That's all.
The tizzying WTF of an eclipse is not propositional. You don’t have to think about it. The 150 neurons are summarily outvoted by the remaining 36 trillion cells. This is visceral, not intellectual.
It’s a whole other thing in the sky, and while it’s instantly identifiable via intellectual pattern-matching, it feels like something you weren’t supposed to see; like God revealing some bit of stagecraft; like an aberrational leaking-over from some other reality. It feels wrong, and beautiful, and we weren’t by any means prepared by a lifetime of photographs and cultural references. We falsely imagined we knew eclipses, just like Herbie felt well-prepared to speak his line.
The surprise is that we’re so surprised. There’s no other element. No mysterious smoky cloud of juju provoking all those testimonials and avowals. Just a phenomena that’s infinitely gorgeous (yet normal) and infinitely surprising (yet expected). And a tectonic reframing spurred by intense surprise - and by the heady paradox of the collision of bland expectation with the splendor of immediacy. Of actuality. With complacency dislodged and perspective unfrozen, anything is possible. We start fresh. It's a screen wipe. We are free, and have always been thus.
The canon has fired. Not “canon fire” as some empty phrase, but an actual skin-tingling gut-wallop. You are dislodged; your continuity disrupted. And in that very moment, you peer upwards to behold startling beauty. We are moved like we’re moved by great art.
I wrote here that “Art is any human creation devised to induce a reframing of perspective.” This time isn’t human, but it very much fits the bill. And, as with the best art, beauty cradles you in your vulnerable discontinuity.
To experience totality for yourself, the next eclipse is, oh god, kill me now, in fricking Portugal in 2026. This is how my life works!
But these are smart people. Folks not prone to effusive testimonial. So I’ve been eager to investigate. During my previous total eclipse, as a child in the early 1970s, I remember staring into a cardboard box at a tiny crescent which struck me as bogglingly unimpressive. I contemplated myself as a wrinkled, wheezing, bleary-eyed geezer viewing the next one in the unimaginably futuristic year of 2024, if I’d somehow live that long.
Well, yesterday the enfeebled geezer hunkered down in a Haitian cheesecake store in Dallas on the central line slated to get four minutes plus of life-changing TOTALITY.
I’m a big fan of Val’s Cheesecakes to begin with. Plus, they were making griot (fried goat), which I love, plus a special blackout eclipse cheesecake, draped in chocolate, which in itself would deliver the superlatives this cosmic event was promised to deliver, inoculating any disappointment. Also, I’m sort of a minor Haitian celebrity, having played for a stretch with Tabou Combo, the legendary compa band. Haitian cab drivers ask to take selfies with me. It’s a thing.
When people find it hard to explain a transformative experience in words, it’s generally a matter of reframing. Especially with scientific types, who are often locked into a certain perspective, so, when their ground shifts, they struggle to express it in their familiar geeky jargon. Since framing is my fascination, I had traveled far to try to understand. So me and the other Haitians anxiously awaited the magic hour, while, across the street, two workers welded a broken gate, oblivious to it all despite their $200 helmets that were surely the fanciest eye protection in town.
Partial eclipses I know about...and dislike. I have a particular aversion to having my eyes dilated. Like everyone, I dislike the feeling, but I particularly hate how the world looks. I’m no fan of the unique lighting of partial eclipses, either, which turn everything sickeningly beige. A bit like sunset, but with the sun vertical, rather than filtered through layers of horizon atmosphere to produce sweeping color bursts. It’s a ghastly otherworldly beige - like you’re on Europa - which my higher functions deem disgusting, and which my more visceral functions deem off and wrong and yuck. I understand why birds and beasts get so freaked. I’m edgy, myself.
But I’d been assured that totality’s different. Like, totally. As I mused about this, things turned much darker with jarring suddenness. So sudden that we Haitians were surprised to observe streetlights turning on. It was no longer the mild amusement of watching a bite disappear from the Sun. It was a whole other thing. Nothing like the ultimate consummation of a partial eclipse. It’s a smash cut. A black-out - literally. A never-before-experienced segue, a doorway to oblivion. Even lightning has foreshadowing - roiling dark clouds and ozone and such. This comes out of nowhere.
All of a sudden we (and by “we”, I mean the broadest possible we) were presented with a sci-fi glistening knob above us, in what we’d previously thought of as the sky. If you told me it was falling straight toward me, I’d have believed you, staring blankly upward like a hen in a downpour.
There are countless Zen proverbs about how a painting of the moon is not the moon. A poem about the moon is not the moon. Abstract isn’t a paler shade of concrete; it’s a discrete realm. We imagine that we know what an eclipse is, but we really only know paintings and poems. That’s not knowing.
Indulge, please, a digression. This nicely conveys the visceral gut-punch of Actuality colliding with expectation. I never expected the hoariest show biz shaggy dog joke to shed light on the mystery of eclipses, but….
A washed-up actor lives in squalor, his career on its last legs. Problem: he can never remember lines. His agent’s on the phone (perhaps his last-ever call), exultant at having found his troubled client the perfect role.So you figured that having seen twelve million eclipse photos - and possessing some scientific understanding of the process - had prepared you. But then you look up and there’s this terrifying, wrong, insanely beautiful throbbing artifact in the sky which 150 of your neurons placidly identify and categorize while your guts and toes and limbic system gasp “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?”
“All you gotta do, Herbie, is get on a plane, be at the theater by 8:45, and open the second act. And the good news is you have one line - one single line, Herbie! - to speak. Do you have a pen so you can write this down? Ok, here’s your line: “Hark, is that a canon I hear?” Got it, Herbie? Can you do this? Put down the phone, pack a bag, and the car service will be there in ten minutes to bring you to the airport. What’s the line, Herbie? I wanna hear you say it!”
“Hark, is that a canon I hear?” replies Herbie, with a trace of the dashing elan which had burnished his sterling reputation before it all fell apart.
Herbie hangs up the phone and showers, magisterially proclaiming “HARK! Is that a canon I hear???” He dries himself, packs his bag, and bounds down the steps, saucily asking “HARK! Is that...a...a...canon I hear?”
In the backseat of the car service, Herbie’s preparation continues. “Hark is...that...a canon I hear?” Over and over. Herbie is laser-focused on the task. This is his last chance, and, by golly, he’s determined to ride it to a glorious come-back.
On the flight, he runs every permutation. “Hark: is that a canon I hear??” “Hark is that! A canon, I hear!”
Plane lands, Herbie gets in the cab, the driver floors it to the theater. He’ll barely arrive in time for his big entrance, but he’s more than ready, having honed the line to a thespian high sheen. “HARK is that a canon I hear!! Herbie magnificently intones. He’s back!
Cab screeches to a halt in front of the backstage door, and Herbie bounds out. The assistant director, waiting in the doorway, barks to hurry up and slip on the costume. Herbie is calm, controlled, confident, ready. Finally, the stage manager screams “Go!” and shoves Herbie on stage, into the spotlight, just as an immense explosion rocks the theater. Centerstage before the expectant crowd, Herbie hollers “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?”
A surprise within the greater surprise is that you can remove your glasses during totality, because total eclipses totally block the sun (except its corona, which can’t hurt you so long as you don’t get close).We have experience with cool sky stuff. We’ve seen meteors. Planetary conjunctions. Particularly nice sunsets. Maybe aurorae. This should be like that, only even cooler and stranger. But no. It’s rivetingly unfamiliar, and however we reach, we find nothing to compare it to. This isn’t a cooing “wow”, but a tizzying “WTF”.
And even that shouldn’t be so startling. After all, we experience other tizzying WTFs in the course of our lives. You bump into your landlord in a Malaysian grocery. Four coins fall, all of them landing on end. The Mets win the World Series. Etc.
But those things are only surprising because you’ve calculated odds and assessed outcomes - a cold, mental, abstract process propagated by the same 150 neurons which yawn at eclipses. Squarely oblivious mental accountants look up startled from their slide rules upon spotting some nerdy aberration. That's all.
The tizzying WTF of an eclipse is not propositional. You don’t have to think about it. The 150 neurons are summarily outvoted by the remaining 36 trillion cells. This is visceral, not intellectual.
It’s a whole other thing in the sky, and while it’s instantly identifiable via intellectual pattern-matching, it feels like something you weren’t supposed to see; like God revealing some bit of stagecraft; like an aberrational leaking-over from some other reality. It feels wrong, and beautiful, and we weren’t by any means prepared by a lifetime of photographs and cultural references. We falsely imagined we knew eclipses, just like Herbie felt well-prepared to speak his line.
The surprise is that we’re so surprised. There’s no other element. No mysterious smoky cloud of juju provoking all those testimonials and avowals. Just a phenomena that’s infinitely gorgeous (yet normal) and infinitely surprising (yet expected). And a tectonic reframing spurred by intense surprise - and by the heady paradox of the collision of bland expectation with the splendor of immediacy. Of actuality. With complacency dislodged and perspective unfrozen, anything is possible. We start fresh. It's a screen wipe. We are free, and have always been thus.
The canon has fired. Not “canon fire” as some empty phrase, but an actual skin-tingling gut-wallop. You are dislodged; your continuity disrupted. And in that very moment, you peer upwards to behold startling beauty. We are moved like we’re moved by great art.
I wrote here that “Art is any human creation devised to induce a reframing of perspective.” This time isn’t human, but it very much fits the bill. And, as with the best art, beauty cradles you in your vulnerable discontinuity.
To experience totality for yourself, the next eclipse is, oh god, kill me now, in fricking Portugal in 2026. This is how my life works!
Monday, January 27, 2020
Relativistic Illumination Fronts
Any hardcore sloggers out there want to go on a rabbit-hole dive? I was graced by a reply from an eminent astronomer when I inquired about a very fringey (yet scientifically legit) interest of his. He offered a link (to an old lecture of his that's difficult but graspable without math). And the link, which is GREAT, leads to more links (including a preceding lecture that's simpler and that he considers a prerequisite).
The topic is a very Slog-ish conjecture: If you swing a laser pointer around fast enough, the light moves faster than light (there's no mass, so it's cosmically okay). And since it's light, information can be transmitted (and transmitting information faster than light is something we thought couldn't be done, and opens up huge huge huge possibilities, [joke] even beyond much better cell service[/joke]. Not the standard blink-the-flashlight sort of information, which requires fixing on your target (which means it'd happen, duh, at the speed of light). But the shadows and anomalies arising from the faster-than-light registration of the swinging laser pointer from, like, the surface of the moon are trippy as all get-out to consider even if you don't sit through the video lecture linked above.
You just know what I'm thinking, don't you? Per my series on the Visualization Fallacy (which bailed out of the eponymous fallacy early in the very first installment, as I began eagerly pursuing a dangling thread leading to a new view of cosmology), there are framing issues here. Cosmology is going to get super-into reframing (aka Subjectivity). Quantum mechanics was just the first small nudge in that direction.
The topic is a very Slog-ish conjecture: If you swing a laser pointer around fast enough, the light moves faster than light (there's no mass, so it's cosmically okay). And since it's light, information can be transmitted (and transmitting information faster than light is something we thought couldn't be done, and opens up huge huge huge possibilities, [joke] even beyond much better cell service[/joke]. Not the standard blink-the-flashlight sort of information, which requires fixing on your target (which means it'd happen, duh, at the speed of light). But the shadows and anomalies arising from the faster-than-light registration of the swinging laser pointer from, like, the surface of the moon are trippy as all get-out to consider even if you don't sit through the video lecture linked above.
You just know what I'm thinking, don't you? Per my series on the Visualization Fallacy (which bailed out of the eponymous fallacy early in the very first installment, as I began eagerly pursuing a dangling thread leading to a new view of cosmology), there are framing issues here. Cosmology is going to get super-into reframing (aka Subjectivity). Quantum mechanics was just the first small nudge in that direction.
Friday, September 8, 2017
Cassini's Death Plunge
Cassini, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, was so great. I'll miss it. See a terrific overview (with well-chosen links and photos) here.
The following is the current schedule (subject to adjustment; updates posted here) for Cassini's final depth plunge into Saturn's atmosphere.
Why the death plunge? NASA takes way greater pains than you'd imagine to avoid infecting bodies like Titan and Europa - which might host primitive life or building blocks thereof - from microbes which, believe it or not, might remain intact despite twenty years in the harsh vacuum of space. By crashing into Saturn, the immense gravity and atmospheric pressure will ensure safe disposal. As for the metals, fuel, etc., there's nothing to Cassini that Saturn doesn't already boast in profusion.
In its final week, Cassini will pass several milestones en route to its science-rich Saturn plunge. (times below are predicted and may change slightly; see https://go.nasa.gov/2wbaCBT for updated times.)
The following is the current schedule (subject to adjustment; updates posted here) for Cassini's final depth plunge into Saturn's atmosphere.
Why the death plunge? NASA takes way greater pains than you'd imagine to avoid infecting bodies like Titan and Europa - which might host primitive life or building blocks thereof - from microbes which, believe it or not, might remain intact despite twenty years in the harsh vacuum of space. By crashing into Saturn, the immense gravity and atmospheric pressure will ensure safe disposal. As for the metals, fuel, etc., there's nothing to Cassini that Saturn doesn't already boast in profusion.
In its final week, Cassini will pass several milestones en route to its science-rich Saturn plunge. (times below are predicted and may change slightly; see https://go.nasa.gov/2wbaCBT for updated times.)
Sept. 9: Cassini will make the last of 22 passes between Saturn itself and its rings: closest approach is 1,044 miles (1,680 kilometers) above the clouds tops.
Sept. 11: Cassini will make a distant flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Even though the spacecraft will be at 73,974 miles (119,049 kilometers) away, the gravitational influence of the moon will slow down the spacecraft slightly as it speeds past. A few days later, instead of passing through the outermost fringes of Saturn's atmosphere, Cassini will dive in too deep to survive the friction and heating.
Sept. 14: Cassini's imaging cameras take their last look around the Saturn system, sending back pictures of moons Titan and Enceladus, the hexagon-shaped jet stream around the planet's north pole, and features in the rings.
Sept. 14 (5:45 p.m. EDT / 2:45 p.m. PDT): Cassini turns its antenna to point at Earth, begins a communications link that will continue until end of mission, and sends back its final images and other data collected along the way.
Sept. 15 (4:37 a.m. EDT / 1:37 a.m. PDT): The "final plunge" begins. The spacecraft starts a 5-minute roll to position INMS for optimal sampling of the atmosphere, transmitting data in near real time from now to end of mission.
Sept. 15 (7:53 a.m. EDT / 4:53 a.m. PDT): Cassini enters Saturn's atmosphere. Its thrusters fire at 10 percent of their capacity to maintain directional stability, enabling the spacecraft's high-gain antenna to remain pointed at Earth and allowing continued transmission of data.
Sept. 15 (7:54 a.m. EDT / 4:54 a.m. PDT): Cassini's thrusters are at 100 percent of capacity. Atmospheric forces overwhelm the thrusters' capacity to maintain control of the spacecraft's orientation, and the high-gain antenna loses its lock on Earth. At this moment, expected to occur about 940 miles (1,510 kilometers) above Saturn's cloud tops, communication from the spacecraft will cease, and Cassini's mission of exploration will have concluded. The spacecraft will break up like a meteor moments later.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Black...AND an Astrophysicist!
I caught Neil DeGrasse Tyson's latest big time TV appearance, on Colbert last night. I always enjoy seeing Dr. Tyson, because I'm an astronomy nerd (here's me ranting about the NY Times' recent piece on the Drake Equation, and here are previous Slog postings on astronomy), and he's eloquent and expert.
But the subtext of all his mass media appearances seems to be "Hey, this guy's an astronomer...and he's black!"
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that African-Americans are figuring eminently in science. But that's been happening for quite some time. And it's great that lots of people feel so great that African-Americans are figuring eminently in science. But that's also getting old, and the fact that this excitement's still a "thing" is striking me as bizarre and a little bit icky.
I certainly don't blame Tyson for allowing this to be played up, year after year. I'm certain he feels it's all just sugar* to help the science medicine go down, and it's worked out well; he's been a powerful force, ala Sagan (who also plied certain shtick), for generating popular interest in the topic.
* No, not sassy brown sugar....
But, really, he's been the director of the Hayden Planetarium for twenty years now, and has appeared regularly on TV ever since. We have a black president, and most black people I meet are better dressed and drive nicer cars than me. So when do we stop being surprised and delighted?
Anyone thrilled at the prospect of a woman being elected president is stuck in an earlier era. We may not have had a woman president yet, but it's been years since anyone but the fringe would have seriously objected on a gender basis. Who out there would be thrilled and amazed (or shocked and appalled) to learn that the president of Brazil is Dilma Rousseff...who's a woman? Yawn, no?
I don't think racial/gender/etc issues ever "resolve," they just get more and more boring. I might have been psyched at the prospect of a Jewish president a few decades ago. Now? Well, is the candidate any good?
But the subtext of all his mass media appearances seems to be "Hey, this guy's an astronomer...and he's black!"
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that African-Americans are figuring eminently in science. But that's been happening for quite some time. And it's great that lots of people feel so great that African-Americans are figuring eminently in science. But that's also getting old, and the fact that this excitement's still a "thing" is striking me as bizarre and a little bit icky.
I certainly don't blame Tyson for allowing this to be played up, year after year. I'm certain he feels it's all just sugar* to help the science medicine go down, and it's worked out well; he's been a powerful force, ala Sagan (who also plied certain shtick), for generating popular interest in the topic.
* No, not sassy brown sugar....
But, really, he's been the director of the Hayden Planetarium for twenty years now, and has appeared regularly on TV ever since. We have a black president, and most black people I meet are better dressed and drive nicer cars than me. So when do we stop being surprised and delighted?
Anyone thrilled at the prospect of a woman being elected president is stuck in an earlier era. We may not have had a woman president yet, but it's been years since anyone but the fringe would have seriously objected on a gender basis. Who out there would be thrilled and amazed (or shocked and appalled) to learn that the president of Brazil is Dilma Rousseff...who's a woman? Yawn, no?
I don't think racial/gender/etc issues ever "resolve," they just get more and more boring. I might have been psyched at the prospect of a Jewish president a few decades ago. Now? Well, is the candidate any good?
Monday, May 26, 2014
Astro Agony/Ecstacy
Yesterday's much-hyped Camelopardalids meteor shower was a bust. Frickin' Camelopardalids! We've had so many post-hype disappointments with comets and meteors lately.
But astronomy buffs will be cheered up immeasurably when the Europeans land a spaceship called Rosetta on a speeding comet this November! The approaching spacecraft has already imaged the comet's sprouting coma (precursor to its tail), something I believe we've never seen before.
To land on a comet is an almost impossible task because the thing's speeding at 83,000 mph, and the landing must be gentle, so we need to creep up on it at the exact right speed and trajectory (the lander will immediately drive harpoons into the snowy dustball to keep from bouncing back off). The only way to accomplish this is via an insane trick shot wherein Rosetta's been bounced not once, not twice, but three separate times off of Earth's gravity field, and then careened past Mars for the finishing touch. Having launched way back in 2004, it's been a ten year ordeal for a rendezvous that will ultimately take place closer to Earth than Jupiter (for comparison, New Horizons took just over a year to reach Jupiter).
Check out this visualization to see the insanely complex and indirect route Rosetta's been taking. It makes the Curiosity landing seem simple by comparison!
Rosetta will ride the comet as it circles around the sun and shoots back out of the solar system. Dr. Strangelove comes to life!
Speaking of meteors and spaceships, I love this time lapse meteor photo from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site (shot by Xiang Zhan of Beijing Planetarium). It's hard to imagine a more visceral real-life indication that we're living on a rock that's hurtling through space!
But astronomy buffs will be cheered up immeasurably when the Europeans land a spaceship called Rosetta on a speeding comet this November! The approaching spacecraft has already imaged the comet's sprouting coma (precursor to its tail), something I believe we've never seen before.
To land on a comet is an almost impossible task because the thing's speeding at 83,000 mph, and the landing must be gentle, so we need to creep up on it at the exact right speed and trajectory (the lander will immediately drive harpoons into the snowy dustball to keep from bouncing back off). The only way to accomplish this is via an insane trick shot wherein Rosetta's been bounced not once, not twice, but three separate times off of Earth's gravity field, and then careened past Mars for the finishing touch. Having launched way back in 2004, it's been a ten year ordeal for a rendezvous that will ultimately take place closer to Earth than Jupiter (for comparison, New Horizons took just over a year to reach Jupiter).
Check out this visualization to see the insanely complex and indirect route Rosetta's been taking. It makes the Curiosity landing seem simple by comparison!
Rosetta will ride the comet as it circles around the sun and shoots back out of the solar system. Dr. Strangelove comes to life!
Speaking of meteors and spaceships, I love this time lapse meteor photo from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site (shot by Xiang Zhan of Beijing Planetarium). It's hard to imagine a more visceral real-life indication that we're living on a rock that's hurtling through space!
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Wave at Saturn
Set a reminder for tomorrow afternoon, from 5:27 to 5:42 p.m. EDT, to go outside and wave at the sky. We're going to be doing a group photo.
The Cassini orbiter, currently orbiting Saturn, will be in position to do a spectacularly rare thing: shoot a photo of Earth. There have only been two prior shots of Earth from the outer solar system, because, first, the Earth is incredibly far away from Saturn - ten times the distance of the Earth to the Sun (so far that the Earth will only register as just a few pixels - so don't worry too much about what you're wearing), and, second, the Earth, from that vantage point, is right next to the Sun (sort of like Mercury is for us), so it's hard to get a decent shot.
Here are the only two previous shots of Earth from out there: the famous "pale blue dot" shot by Voyager in 1990 from 3.7 billion miles away, and a previous Cassini shot from 2006. The difference this time is that we'll be doing our first intentional portrait. The previous two photos were serendipitous candids, where the Earth essentially photobombed the shots.
So this time, the plan is for everyone to go outside and wave.
The Cassini orbiter, currently orbiting Saturn, will be in position to do a spectacularly rare thing: shoot a photo of Earth. There have only been two prior shots of Earth from the outer solar system, because, first, the Earth is incredibly far away from Saturn - ten times the distance of the Earth to the Sun (so far that the Earth will only register as just a few pixels - so don't worry too much about what you're wearing), and, second, the Earth, from that vantage point, is right next to the Sun (sort of like Mercury is for us), so it's hard to get a decent shot.
Here are the only two previous shots of Earth from out there: the famous "pale blue dot" shot by Voyager in 1990 from 3.7 billion miles away, and a previous Cassini shot from 2006. The difference this time is that we'll be doing our first intentional portrait. The previous two photos were serendipitous candids, where the Earth essentially photobombed the shots.
So this time, the plan is for everyone to go outside and wave.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Remembering Professor Sharpless
I'm a big fan of the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" site (and the forum where each photo's discussed - accessible via the "discuss" link beneath each picture). Today's picture contained the latest references to astronomy legend Stewart Sharpless (who created the renowned Sharpless Catalog of emission nebulae), and this time I finally got around to writing a remembrance...because I actually knew Professor Sharpless.
I posted it here, but I'll reprint it below.
I posted it here, but I'll reprint it below.
I attended U of Rochester in the early 1980's, and while I had a life-long interest in astronomy, I was dismayed to discover that serious astrophysics courses required hardcore math skills I lacked. So I studied other topics, including, in my senior year, "The Physics of Music", taught by Professor Sharpless, who had a lifelong love of music and considered this seminar (which was very hands-on with equipment like acoustic spectrum analyzers) his labor of love. He was an incredibly kind-hearted, down-to-earth, personable fellow, and if there was an Internet back then, I'd have have quickly looked him up and found out who he actually was. But this was Rochester, not, like, Yale, so one didn't expect one's professors to be celebs.
So I never found out, but really enjoyed my time with him. There was something personal and heartfelt about that class that was far from the norm. I couldn't attribute it to anything, being just a kid at the time, but I now understand it was the palpable patina of the oh-so-rare combination of stature and earnestness. Eminence without arrogance, pomposity, condescension or cynicism. Prof Sharpless obviously retained his child-like earnest eagerness about science, and he treated everyone like a colleague. He was a low-gravitas individual (LGI?).
I went on to degrees in things like philosophy, music, and politics, but never lost interest in astronomy, though I still lack math skills to this day. I'm a faithful APOD viewer, where every reference to Prof. Sharpless and his famous catalog gives me a sad smile. It was great to be in his class, but, oh, man, how I wish I'd milked more astronomy stories from him, lobbied for an invitation to the observatory, etc (he mentioned something about taking the class there some Saturday, but it never came together). I just didn't realize who he was - though, on a deeper level, "who he was" did quietly inspire me.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Good Counter Arguments Against Defunding Space Exploration
These are the best arguments I've seen in favor of space exploration even in tough economic times. Quoting again (as I did last week) from the "Starship Asterisk" forum (the discussion site for the much loved Astronomy Picture of the Day), someone said:
The replies were:
"The money should be instead used for disease research, such as a cure for cancer."...and someone else added:
"I would rather have a (much needed) subway line in my area than another rover on Mars."
The replies were:
"No planetary mission has been mounted that didn't return a wealth of new information- much of it applicable to our understanding of the Earth as well. And of course, the money invested in these programs isn't thrown away, but is spent developing new technology, and helps the economy both directly and indirectly.
"It's a mistake to think that you can't invest in space exploration without also investing in other areas of research. And realistically, if we were not spending this money on Mars, I doubt very much we'd be spending it on disease research. That's not really how scientific budgeting, or budgeting in general, works in this country."and...
"Are we really going to argue about the relatively insignificant amount of money that NASA's amazing projects take again? If $2.5 billion dollars could cure any disease it would have been done a long time ago.
"For that matter, why don't you take that $2.5 billion from the $21 billion Harry Potter franchise? Or the $5.6 billion NCAA budget? Why should we have movies, books, or basketball when someone out there has cancer or needs a subway line?"and...
"I'd rather have another rover on Mars than a subway in your area! (Seriously, there's no chance that money which doesn't go to NASA would ever be used to build a subway line.)"Not all the logic is airtight. NASA is, of course, funded from public coffers, unlike Harry Potter or basketball. But if we're talking, generally, about where humanity ought to spend its resources, then, yeah, space exploration is at least as important as that stuff. Perhaps we should be spending every last dollar to heal our sick and feed our hungry (in fact, strike that "perhaps"). But we don't. And as long as we're going to be selfish and frivolous, space exploration, like all science, deserves its tiny slice of the pie.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Holy Crap We're Gonna See Real-Time Footage of a Black Hole!!
Scientists are planning to network together a number of giant radio telescopes, which should result in real-time imaging of the enormous black hole at the center of the galaxy! (Black Hole Cam?)
Well, of course we won't see the black hole itself. But we'll see its event horizon - the trippy place where physics begins to get screwy and matter and energy edge toward the black hole's death grip.
Ok. I believe we're really in the future now!
Note to those who'd quibble at the term "real time" to describe photography of light that's traveled for 29,000 years: this is actually scientifically defensible. I learned about this earlier this year, and I started a thread on an astronomy forum so I could bone up and defend it here. But, what the hell, go check it out yourself. The first reply is interesting, though not very pertinent. The second, by Chris Peterson, is excellent, and the thread he links to is better still.
Well, of course we won't see the black hole itself. But we'll see its event horizon - the trippy place where physics begins to get screwy and matter and energy edge toward the black hole's death grip.
Ok. I believe we're really in the future now!
Note to those who'd quibble at the term "real time" to describe photography of light that's traveled for 29,000 years: this is actually scientifically defensible. I learned about this earlier this year, and I started a thread on an astronomy forum so I could bone up and defend it here. But, what the hell, go check it out yourself. The first reply is interesting, though not very pertinent. The second, by Chris Peterson, is excellent, and the thread he links to is better still.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Mind-Boggling Distance
If you think you can come anywhere near to grasping the immensity of cosmic distances: no. You really can't.
Consider: the Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has been travelling really really fast. Hurtling away from the sun at 38,200 mph, it's expected to cross over into interstellar space shortly (here's the latest update from NASA). It's now just over 11 billion miles away - so distant that light takes 16 hours to travel from Earth.
A light year, as you know, is the distance light travels in a year. And traveling 38,200 mph for 35 years brings you just these puny 16 light hours. So now just try to imagine a light year (Voyager will go that far in 14,000 years). And remember that the nearest star (aside from the Sun) is over four light years away.
But the mind blower is that there are galaxies billions of light years away (here's one 13 billion light years away).
Here, FWIW, is a particularly pretty one a "mere" 10 million light years away, courtesy of the wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day site.
Previous astronomy posts:
Good Galactic News (when galaxies collide, stars don't actually crash into each other)
The Andromeda Galaxy and You (The Andromeda Galaxy occupies much more sky real estate than the moon)
Tap Dancing on Saturn (hear the sound of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft passing through Saturn's ring dust)
The Photopic Sky Survey (sort of like Google Maps for the Milky Way)
Consider: the Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has been travelling really really fast. Hurtling away from the sun at 38,200 mph, it's expected to cross over into interstellar space shortly (here's the latest update from NASA). It's now just over 11 billion miles away - so distant that light takes 16 hours to travel from Earth.
A light year, as you know, is the distance light travels in a year. And traveling 38,200 mph for 35 years brings you just these puny 16 light hours. So now just try to imagine a light year (Voyager will go that far in 14,000 years). And remember that the nearest star (aside from the Sun) is over four light years away.
But the mind blower is that there are galaxies billions of light years away (here's one 13 billion light years away).
Here, FWIW, is a particularly pretty one a "mere" 10 million light years away, courtesy of the wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day site.
Previous astronomy posts:
Good Galactic News (when galaxies collide, stars don't actually crash into each other)
The Andromeda Galaxy and You (The Andromeda Galaxy occupies much more sky real estate than the moon)
Tap Dancing on Saturn (hear the sound of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft passing through Saturn's ring dust)
The Photopic Sky Survey (sort of like Google Maps for the Milky Way)
Friday, May 20, 2011
The Photopic Sky Survey
If you're at all interested in astronomy, don't miss the Photopic Sky Survey. It's a magnum opus - tons of photos of the Milky Way shot from all over the planet stitched together. The result is magnificent. But then you check out the interactive version, and zoom in...a lot! It's speechless-making (and, amazingly, shows only hundredth of one percent of our galaxy's stars).
It's sort of like Google Galaxy.
It's sort of like Google Galaxy.
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