Cosmos
gregladen | September 11, 2009Well, not really, but it is an excellent refresher on Genesis. Well, not really it's .... well just watch it:
gregladen | August 17, 2009Well, not really, but it is interesting.
The mystery of why temperatures in the solar corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, soar to several million degrees Kelvin (K) --much hotter than temperatures nearer the sun's surface--has puzzled scientists for decades. New observations made with instruments aboard Japan's Hinode satellite reveal the culprit to be nanoflares.
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gregladen | August 13, 2009
Look closely at this picture of Victoria Crater on Mars. Clicking on the picture will give you a really big file, but a much better look. There are a number of things you can see in this view of Victoria that you could not see on earlier version because this is a somewhat oblique view. The details are in the press release I reproduce below the fold. But the other thing you can see that is REALLY FREAKIN' COOL is the mars rover tracks running along one side of the crater! Go ahead, see if you can find them!
Mars Orbiter Shows Angled View of Martian Crater
TUCSON, Ariz. -- The high-…
gregladen | August 10, 2009
The wreckage of the collision between two planets has been observed in outer space.
An animation of the event can be downloaded here.
NASA has spotted an interplantery collision. Two planets, both rocky, one about the size of our moon and the other about the size of mercuery, smashed into each other several thousand years ago flinging all kinds of crap into outer space. This happened in another solar system.
"This is not supposed to happen!" claimed a NASA executive. "These planets are supposed to watch where they are going"
Well, OK, no one from NASA actually said that, but they did…
gregladen | July 23, 2009Unfortunately, NASA is calling it a "wild creature of the dark" with an "eye-like object at its center." Actually, it is a galaxy, which is plenty cool so they could do without the fancy-talk. Here's the picture:
This is Galaxy NGC 1097, and it is about 50 million light years away/ago. The bright Eye Of Sauron thing in the middle is a black hole surrounded by stars. If you look close, you'll see a blue are where the black hole is. That is the invisible part of the black hole (enhanced, obviously) and the white zone are the stars crowded up to it.
Stuff gets pulled in towards the black…
gregladen | July 20, 2009It would appear so. We see it in a ...
Preliminary image showing a black mark in Jupiters South Polar Region (SPR) which is almost certainly the result of a large impact - either an asteroid or comet - similar to the Shoemaker-Ley impacts in 1994.
This is on Anthony Wesley's web site, and what appears to be the outcome of an impact event has been photographed by him.
A bit of his post reads:
I started this imaging session on Jupiter at approximately 11pm local time (1300UTC). The weather prediction was not promising, clear skies but a strong jetstream overhead according to the Bureau of…
gregladen | July 17, 2009This week we celebrate the anniversary of the first time human beings walked around on the moon, and as part of that celebration we find NASA releasing improved versions of the original scratchy black and white low resolution images of the first steps taken on the moon by Neil Armstrong. I'm worried that the youngsters out there do not understand the momentous nature of this event. So stand still for a minute while I force some wisdom on you.
Back in those days I was hanging around a lot with Bob Miller, a classmate who wanted to grow up and be an oceanographer. Bob had a pool in his…
gregladen | July 16, 2009Or at least that's how I heard it, 40 years ago, when Astronaut Neil Armstrong jumped off the pad of the Lunar Modula of Apollo 11 and started kicking around moon dust.
Happy 40th Anniversary, Landing On the Moon.
(details here)
gregladen | July 15, 2009... Maybe .... Sorta....
We've been burned by this one before. As you will recall, the claim was made that the visuals we all saw of the first steps on the moon by humans were a black and white compressed image sent from Australia, shown on a TV at Mission Control (or someplace) and then shot with an old fashioned TV camera (they only had the "old fashioned" ones back in those days, of course).
But, we were told, high quality color videos were taken at the same time but then lost right away. Then, we were told, they were found.
Then we were told by other people who seemed to know what…
gregladen | July 1, 2009A press release from NASA: Ulysses, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission, officially ceased operations today, after receiving commands from ground controllers to do so. The spacecraft, which operated for more than 18 years, charted the unexplored regions of space above the poles of the sun.
As planned via commands beamed to the spacecraft earlier in the day, Ulysses switched to its low- gain antenna at 1:09 p.m. PDT (4:09 p.m. EDT, or 2009 UTC). As a result, ground controllers were no longer able to pick up a signal from Ulysses, which had also been commanded to switch off…
gregladen | June 26, 2009PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's long-lived Mars Odyssey spacecraft has completed an eight-month adjustment of its orbit, positioning itself to look down at the day side of the planet in mid-afternoon instead of late afternoon.
This change gains sensitivity for infrared mapping of Martian minerals by the orbiter's Thermal Emission Imaging System camera. Orbit design for Odyssey's first seven years of observing Mars used a compromise between what worked best for the infrared mapping and for another onboard instrument.
"The orbiter is now overhead at about 3:45 in the afternoon instead of 5 p.m…
gregladen | June 25, 2009I have friend who has been trapped in a mostly underground research facility at the South Pole since early winter. She recently broke her foot, which is just tough luck because nobody gets out of there until spring, which is, I think, in October.
This will remind you of the stroy of Dr. Jerri Nielsen, who was at an Antarctic research station and diagnosed herself of having breast cancer, and was rescued rather dramatically back in 1999. Nielsen died, by the way, Tuesday. (Of breast cancer.)
Well, my friend at the South Pole is not going to die of a broken foot. (Though perhaps other…
gregladen | June 15, 2009This is one of those science stories that is on one hand fairly simple, and on the other hand fairly complex, where the interface between simplicity and complexity causes little balls of misunderstanding to come flying out of the mix like pieces of raw pizza dough if the guy making the pizza was the Tasmanian Devil from the cartoons.
What is true: A scientist named Ryskin proposes that decadal or century scale minor wiggling in the measured Earth's magnetic field is influenced by changes in ocean currents. Plausible. Interesting. Could explain some things. Not earthshaking.
What is…
gregladen | June 14, 2009This just in from NASA:
PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers have at last uncovered newborn stars at the frenzied center of our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery was made using the infrared vision of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
The heart of our spiral galaxy is cluttered with stars, dust and gas, and at its very center, a supermassive black hole. Conditions there are harsh, with fierce stellar winds, powerful shock waves and other factors that make it difficult for stars to form. Astronomers have known that stars can form in this chaotic place, but they're baffled as to how this occurs.…
gregladen | June 10, 2009The Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has been all snapped together and stuff and is ready to be launched into outer space from Vandenberg in November. This will be a major eye in the sky for cosmology, since it will be able to see things that heretofore only space insects could see....
Details in the following NASA press release:
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has been assembled and is undergoing final preparations for a planned Nov. 1 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
The mission will survey the entire sky at infrared…
gregladen | June 10, 2009Some time ago there began an effort to build a state of the art Planetarium and Space Discovery Center in Minnesota, most likely in Minneapolis. These plans have been set back by the usual forces, but are nonetheless moving ahead. (It certainly is a good thing John McCain did not win the election, or all Planetaria would be DOOMED!)
Well, now, the movers and shakers behind the planetarium have arranged an event intended to raise awareness of their project. Here are the details, and I hope to see you there!
Summer Solstice CelebrationMonday, June 22
4:00pm - 8:00 pm
Minneapolis Central…
gregladen | May 22, 2009The Mars rover Opportunity has explored Victoria crater, a ~750-meter eroded impact crater formed in sulfate-rich sedimentary rocks. Impact-related stratigraphy is preserved in the crater walls, and meteoritic debris is present near the crater rim. The size of hematite-rich concretions decreases up-section, documenting variation in the intensity of groundwater processes. Layering in the crater walls preserves evidence of ancient wind-blown dunes. Compositional variations with depth mimic those ~6 kilometers to the north and demonstrate that water-induced alteration at Meridiani Planum was…
gregladen | May 15, 2009 Pierre Curie (photo from wikipedia) ... husband of Madam Dr. Maria Sklodowska-Curie, and famous scientist in his own right. Curie was an early explorer of the method of crystallography, and studied electromagnetic energy including "radioactivity."
gregladen | May 14, 2009This is very funny (as you might expect). Chad Orzel posted it because of the references to CERN's super duper collider. (Go see Chad's commentary.)
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gregladen | April 30, 2009It is theoretically impossible to observe all of the different aspects of state of matter at the subatomic "quantum" level. This means that at the tiniest level of spacetime, bits and pieces of stuff and action can only be vaguely known, and therefore, if you wanted to build a quantum computer you would have some interesting challenges.
A solution to this problem would be a key step in quantum engineerig. According to Anthony Lang, of Bristol Universtiy, "Apart from providing insight into the fundamentals of quantum physics, [such] work may be crucial for future quantum technologies. How…