Time Lapsed: BBC Creatures of the Deep

I saw video a few months ago. The first thing that caught my attention was that it doesn't look like it was shot underwater all - everything is so clear and colorful. It made me thinking that we, living in land is not much different from them under deep. Like these underwater creatures, we are also living in an ocean of air- our atmosphere.  It make sense now to me now that the same as water pressure increase as we go deeper same as atmospheric pressure decreases as we go to higher altitudes. All because of gravity.

One more thought coming to mind while I watching the full BBC Life episode is about alien life. It seems that alien life from other planets might be more probable to look like these creatures in the deep (if you have seen the movie The Abyss great movie btw) rather than what we normally see in most sci-fi movies- a humanoid.

Just recently Cassini captured pictures of what appears to look like water vapor erupting from the surface of Enceladus. This supports more to the claims that liquid are under the water under the icy sheets of some solar system moons including Europa of  Jupiter. And when there is liquid water, there is life- or at least that how it is on earth.

If you want to continue watching the full BBC documentary, see it from youtube links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ET-I3mJhM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjF7KvaUFSU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjrX8R3RGcA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asoU8QFR8Sw

Total Lunar Eclipse: December 10-11, 2011

The second lunar eclipse of 2011 will be again visible in its entirety from the Philippines. I enjoyed the last one last July.  I was working at night shift then so I went out several times to see it and took more than my allowed break time.  

This eclipse is quite a short one, with totality lasting 51 minutes.Total eclipse is early at 10:31PM so many will still be awake to witness it.  Here is the timeline of this event.

You can also watch the countdown and full broadcast of live coverage online from  SLOOH.com

The Book That Got Me Into This

I stumbled upon this picture of a  front cover of a book today.

I bought a paperback, pocketbook copy of this  9 years ago. It was from a second hand bookstore in Baguio being sold for about 50 pesos. I was just looking for pass time reading and not particularly about astronomy back then but the moment I started with first page, I was caught to it until the end.

Its is mainly about stellar evolution as well as the general theory of relativity, Einstein-Rosen bridge, and wormholes in spacetime explained in non technical terms. Its also has lots of  illustrations which I appreciated so much.

I picked up a lot from it and this propelled me back to my early wonder on astronomy

This book is a classic. Shame that I was not able to preserve it well. I still have it somewhere, but the last time I saw it, some pages were taken out by termites.

Blooper Today: Uranus

FYI : The answer is Uranus - after the ancient Greek deity of the sky. And many astronomers today (prefer to) pronounce it as "youruh-nus" instead of "your-anus"

Read more Uranus jokes here. 

Time Lapse: Ocean Sky

According to Einstein's relativity we all experience time differently. Time lapsed videos may help us imagine it how time is from a different pace. I wonder if this is how a snails sees the universe.

Here is one taken from Southern Ocean Coast,  Australia. View in full screen to enjoy.

Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.

Neutrinos: Is Time Travel Now Possible?

Still lots of internet news about this lately. Back in September,some CERN experiments got a lot of attention when it released an improbable news that neutrinos travel about 60 nanoseconds faster than light. The experiment was repeated lots of times and they released same results last week.

Neutrinos are electrically neutral elementary subatomic particles. And because its has no charge it is not affected by the electromagnetic forces that act on charged particles such as electrons and protons with this; its is able to pass through ordinary matter almost unaffected. You can imagine it passing through you body right now.

Going back to why this is causing quiet a stir to the science world today. Einstein's relativilty explains that nothing could travel faster than light. As an object moves more quickly the more it also gains more mass. Accelerating an object up to over the speed of light would require infinite energy because it gets harder and harder to push the faster it goes. This is a fundamental law of our physics today.
If this is true, neutrinos violates the core of Einstein's theory and fundamental laws of physics. Physics as we know it would need to be rewritten. An exciting implication everybody is now thinking is that it means that time travel to the past is possible. Remember Back to the Future 1? And here we go again with time travel paradoxes.

I borrowed and edited this from a Barok comic strip

Many of our bright scientists are still skeptical that breaking light speed is possible, so other labs around the world including US and Japan are now redoing the same experiments to prove/disprove CENR results. All are expected to publish their results in the coming months as we wait and relax till we hear from it again.

Curiosity About Martian Life is Rising

NASA's most advanced mobile robotic laboratory, the Mars Science Laboratory carrying the Curiosity rover, is set to launch atop an Atlas V rocket on tomorrow Nov. 26  on a mission to examine Gale Crater on Mars that shows geologic evidence of minerals that formed in flowing liquid water.

From: NASAtelevision  | Nov 22, 2011  

Apophis: Possible Asteroid Impact

Apophis is a name later given to an asteriod provisionally named 2004 MN4. It was renamed in 2005 taking the Greek name of the Egyptian god Apep- The Uncreator.  Now, why scare people by giving that name? Why not name it like other asteriods ( Polly, Barney)?

Well, turns out there was a reason to scare. Upon its discovery in 2004, it was briefly estimated to have a 2.7% chance of impacting the Earth in 2029. Later calculations showed that that there are no impact risks and instead it will pass Earth below the orbits of our communication satellites on April 13, 2029,  However it will return for another close Earth approach in  April 13, 2036. During which it will have a small risk of hitting our planet.

To date, scientists are still trying to get better data to predict the precise orbit after 2029. Russian and American astronomers already had and still have disagreements on whether it will hit Earth in 2036 or not. But whichever it is, the danger that asteroids like Apophis hitting our planet very is real (real than those other doomsday scares like the Mayan calendar and 2012). And until we get better data later this year, next year or on 2029, to project impact or not, we will have to prepare for the bad case scenario.

Can we stop it? 


The good news is we definitely have better chances than the poor dinosaurs had. We have enough knowledge and technology today to give us a fighting chance to stop an asteroid collision.

The 1998 film Armageddon always comes first to my mind. - Using a nuclear weapon to alter it's course. Although lots of scienctists today would agree it is not really a viable solution. The problem of one body hitting Earth might only be multiplied if the body breaks up into many objects aiming for the planet.

Another popular thought is to use gravity. The theory is that if we are able to place a craft at a certain distance from an asteroid, and use the craft’s thrusters to "tug" the asteroid, it would alter the course enough to steer the body away from earth.

Another of the more popular theories is using the Yarkovsky Effect.  An accelerated beam of solar energy would heat the asteriod enough that when it cools off, it would alter the course.

There are lots of other thoughts on how prevent asteroid hitting earth some are not in the mainstream but thanks to scientists(and other geeks and geniuses) who comes up with the ideas.

Here are some related video clips:






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Portrait of a Lonely Universe

I didn't feel like posting anything the pass couple of days despite lots of new stuffs out there.  But today I'm thinking, blogs are not just about what we feel writing about but it can be about how we feel. Today I am lonely and  I think the universe feels the same.

 Sad Moon, with Venus, and Jupiter

Distance
Universe is vast, and mostly empty space.The immense distances of space are almost impossible for a human to grasp. The size of the solar system alone is incomprehensible (read from a previous log). Unlike measurements and descriptions we are used to. You can easily imagine 15 long boring hours sitting in an airplane, but try to imagine 214 lonely days in the isolation of space  if you are going to our next planet, Mars. Even the fastest spacecraft today would take more than 1,820 years to get to Proxima Centauri the next nearest star.

Long distance is getting longer.
This years winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded last October to a trio of astronomers for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae. This means that not only universe is mostly void but is also
continiously expanding the because of dark energy and evolving more and more toward loneliness. There will be a point in the future when we will not see anything in the sky and everything will end in frozen nothingness.

There is no one else out there to find.
While I believe that there are other forms of life aside from here on Earth. To think otherwise, goes againts the odds of probability- but still there is the lesser probability that life on Earth maybe just a freaky one time event in the universe. SETI have been scouring the skies for signals for decades now and still no indication of life anywhere. What if we really are alone in all this vastness? Isn't that a lonely universe to be in?

Scientists have been discovering new things out there like places they call Heart of darkness, and Lonely Galaxy (ESO 461-36),  more and more contributing to the case in point.

Like we refer to the Earth as the lonely planet the whole universe is a lonely universe too.

Leonid Meteor Shower Tomorrow

Hoping we get clearer skies tomorrow because Leonid meteors will start to peak (November 17 - 19, 2011).

Leonid meteor taken last Nov 15, 2010

Well known for having bright meteors or fireballs, the Leonids is a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The name is from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo where the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky. The trails of meteoroids at this part of the year causes meteor showers and sometimes meteor storms.

Although it may be difficult for pinoy watchers tomorrow due to the following:

1. The whole country may experience mostly cloudy skies due to the current Low Preassure Area forecasted by PAGASA.

2. Quarter-phase moon which will also interfere the meteor watching due to its light. Also that moon will be close to Contelation Leo in Manila skies tommorow night.

I'm still hoping to see even just one streak of light. So set your alarm clock (3am would nice) and get a good view in the east direction.

Time Lapse: Earth from ISS

This footage was taken from aboard the International Space Station between August to October 2011.


Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

What an incredible view from the ISS.  Notice the beautiful aurora lights, flickering thunderstorms, and the tungsten city lights.Come to think of it - If there are intelligent beings somewhere near, observing us,  the first things they will probably notice are the night city lights and likewise If we will have our way to directly observe exoplanets during their night time, then its will be lights like these we should be looking for to indicate intelligent life elsewhere.

Right click, enter full screen, be amazed.

Credits to the astronauts who took the footage and to the editor of this video.

Symphony of Science

While reading about recent blogs and postings about the recent birthday of Carl Sagan(November 9, 2010), I rather came across this video upload the other day featuring famous scientists of today - Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, and Carolyn Porco. The voices and videos were taken, edited and put together from their tv programs (My Favorite Universe, BBC Wonders of the Solar System, Carolyn Porco TED talk, NatGeo "Guide to the Planets").  To me, who is new to this type of voice editing or that this is even possible, this is so amazing, real genius.

Apparently this is just the latest and of a series of Carl Sagan tribute music videos created from this website: http://symphonyofscience.com/. Please check them out, especially the one featuring  Morgan Freeman from Discovery Channels Through the Wormhole.

Thanks to the creator of these musical projects. It's a fascinating way to present the science of astronomy in a form which could inspire others and more to those who are already facinated like myself.

How Large is the Solar System

Its hard to imagine the how far and how large objects are in the solar system if we look at pictures in books (or like the wallpaper i use above).

That picture above is actually scaled to size but it is impossible to scale the distance in a single image. One way to picture the size of the solar system is to reduce all the sizes to something we can easily imagine. Below is a scale I made if we are going to reduce the Sun to the size of a basketball.

Solar System Model
Body	Body Diam (km)	Orbit radius (km)	Body Diam (in)	Scaled orbit radius (ft & in)	Scaled orbit radius (meters)
Sun	1391900	0	9.39	< Diameter of basketball
Mercury	4866	57950000	0.033	33	9.93
Venus	12106	108110000	0.082	61	18.52
Earth	12742	149570000	0.086	84	25.63
Mars	6760	227840000	0.046	128	39.04
Jupiter	142984	778140000	0.965	437	133.34
Saturn	116438	1427000000	0.786	802	244.52
Uranus	46940	2870300000	0.317	1614	491.83
Neptune	45432	4499900000	0.306	2530	771.07
Pluto	2274	5913000000	0.015	3324	1013.21
Kuiper belt (far edge)		7479893534.55		4205	1281.70
Ort cloud (far edge)		7.48E+011		420506	128170.09

You can also go to this website and make your own scale computations>http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/

I know, we are trying to avoid numbers, so here we go.

Look at the picture below and imagine for a moment that the sun is the size of a regular basketball and the earth is the size of peppercorn or like the yellow round pellet below.  

Zoom...

Take the yellow pellet and put it 25.6 meters away from the basketball. Roughly that's end to end of a basketball court(which is regularly 28 meters in length). This is the distance between Sun and Earth. Remember that you live in this tiny yellow pellet. Can you imagine how microscopic you are at this scale. Close your eyes and visualize that for a moment. Then imagine Mars the size half of that pellet and put it 39 meters from the ball. Jupiter, at 133 meter away and so on as the list above goes on

To put Pluto in our picture (about grain of sand in size at this scale), you have to travel 1 kilometer and  form our basketball. And this is not the edge - there is still the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.

Kuiper belt

The Kuiper belt is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun (Earth is 1 AU from the Sun to give you an idea of the distances being considered). Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies, or remnants from the Solar System's formation. While the asteroid belt is composed primarily of rock, ices, and metal, the Kuiper objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia and water.

Pluto is the largest known member of the Kuiper belt, if the scattered disc is excluded. Originally considered a planet, Pluto's position as part of the Kuiper belt has caused it to be reclassified as a "dwarf planet"(please read from my other post here). It is compositionally similar to many other objects of the Kuiper belt, and its orbital period is identical to that of the KBOs known as "plutinos". In Pluto's honour, the four currently accepted dwarf planets beyond Neptune's orbit are called "plutoids".

The Kuiper belt should not be confused with the hypothesized Oort cloud, which is a thousand times more distant. The objects within the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc and any potential Hills cloud or Oort cloud objects, are collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).

The Oort cloud

The Oort cloud is thought to occupy a vast space from somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 AU  to as far as 50,000 AU (7.48E+011 km)  from the Sun. In our scale, if you put our basketball in Rizal's Monument in Luneta, you need to travel cross the South China Sea pass Hong Kong to Guangzhou China to get to the estimated outer regions of the Oort cloud. Can  you still imagine that you are in that now microscopic yellow pellet?

The Oort cloud is thought to comprise two separate regions: a spherical outer Oort cloud and a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud, or Hills cloud. Objects in the Oort cloud are largely composed of ices, such as water, ammonia, and methane. Astronomers believe that the matter composing the Oort cloud formed closer to the Sun and was scattered far out into space by the gravitational effects of the giant planets early in the Solar System's evolution. Some scientists estimates place the outer edge at between 100,000 and 200,000 AU.

So how far the can Solar System go?

The definition of size of the solar system is an ongoing debate among scientist today. There are mutliple theories and here are two most leading.

1. The solar system extends to the reach of the heliosphere, the region where the solar wind interacts with the interstellar medium and it stops the solar wind from our Sun and the solar winds of other stars holds sway. 

2. Another widely held theory is that the Solar System exists to the edge of the Sun’s gravitational influence. That is believed to be about 125,000AU or two light years. Beyond that all objects are more strongly influenced by other stars. The problems with this theory is that science is unable to detect objects at that distance and can not determine beyond a reasonable doubt how they are influenced or by what.

As humans who are used to these measurements from day to day experience, it is normal not being able to put our heads around the sizes, distances, and vastness of the solar system. (let alone the the Milky Way or the visible universe). In it's most literal sense they are truly astronomical.

Star Gazing from your Desktop

Like most kids I dreamt of becoming an astronaut when I was little. When I realized that it is far from becoming a reality (like in a country where PAGASA is the closest space program), I gave it up early but kept the respectful wonder to the skies above my head.

 If you're still eager like me, to explore the night sky and become an amateur astronomer, you'll need to overcome one of astronomy's biggest hurdles — learning to identify the stars and constellations. After all, you won't be able to locate the Orion Nebula if you can't find the constellation of Orion, which is, to most the easy to spot together with Ursa Major(The Big Dipper is not a constellation but rather of an asterism in Ursa Major  ).

Well here's what is probably the most helpful tool for beginners learning to read star maps.

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors.

You can set your coordinates(Manila Coordinates: 14°35′N 120°58′E) and local time to match the actual star positions above your head.

It also has a convenient search function which will lead you to planets, galaxies, nebuleas, and all other space objects.

Download this free software from: http://www.stellarium.org/

 More screenies:

Other features:

• default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
• extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
• asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
• constellations for twelve different cultures
• images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
• realistic Milky Way
• very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
• the planets and their satellites
• interface
• a powerful zoom
• time control
• multilingual interface
• fisheye projection for planetarium domes
• spheric mirror projection for your own low-cost dome
• all new graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
• telescope control
• visualisation
• equatorial and azimuthal grids
• star twinkling
• shooting stars
• eclipse simulation
• skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection
• customizability
• plugin system adding artifical satellites, ocular simulation, telescope configuration and more
• ability to add new solar system objects from online resources...
• add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...

We Are Now Facing the Biggest Sunspots

The biggest sunspots since 2005 are now visible from the Earth and slowly rotating to face the planet since last November 3, 2011. The largest of these sunspots, Sunspot AR 1339, is said to be 17 times the Earth’s width. The Solar Dynamics Observatory team even called Active Region 1339 a “Bad Boy” causing a solar flare reaching X1.9 at 20:27 UTC on the 3rd. This region is not facing Earth — yet. But observers are keeping are closely watching as it turns toward an Earth-facing direction.

This image above was taken by Vladimir Knyaz of Moscow, Russia on November 5, 2011

Sunspots are precursors to solar flares and can cause the sun to give off solar winds. Remember the movie "2012"? A massive solar flare caused the temperature of the Earth's core to increase resulting to those catastrophic earthquakes and megatsunamis. But that was science fiction. Thanks to the electromagnetic field protecting the earth, solar winds usually just bounce off.

The real threat - solar winds are like kame-hame waves aimed at our satellites and space stations. We could end up with no telecommunications, planet-wide radio blackouts (including no cell phones or internet), and long-lasting radiation storms. Can you imagine no cellphone and internet for years? It would most certainly affect Filipinos who prides to be the texting capital of the world and of course the 27 million filipino facebook users.

Asteroid Close Fly-By This Wednesday

A Near-Earth asteroid (NEA 2005 YU55) will be making a close fly-by to Earth at 07:28 PHT, Wednesday, 9 November 2011(November 8 at 23:28UT). This dark, nearly spherical chunk of primordial space rock is around 400 metres in diameter and is goin to pass closer than the moon(0.85 lunar distance from the Earth).

It will approach the Earth from the sunward direction, and it will be a daylight object until the time of closest approach. A few hours after its close Earth approach, it will reach a visual brightness of 11th magnitude although it will not be visible to observers in the Philippines it will be a visible but challenging target to observers with optical and near-IR telescopes in the northern and southern hemispheres.

It is classified as a potentially hazardous object, although it poses no threat of an Earth collision(well at least not over the next 100 year).

So what would happen if it would hit earth?

If it would hit a country like the Philippines, it could destroy a city as large as whole Metro Manila. At its current angle and speed it could leave an approximated 1.2 mile crater which pretty much the size of Taal Volcano main crater lake which is 1.18 miles. It will cause regional extinction up to Batangas city.

If it would hit the waters it will cause tsunamis which will cause destruction upto halfway around globe.

But no worries, JPL has projected it will miss us by a good cosmic mile.

Below is the animation of this coming event. Please check the T-minus countdown from: http://events.slooh.com

UPDATE: NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California has captured new radar images of Asteroid 2005 YU55 as it begins its close pass by Earth. 

This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained on Nov. 7, 2011. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech.

The image above was taken on Nov. 7 at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the asteroid was approximately 1.38 million kilometers (860,000 miles) or about 3.6 lunar distances away from Earth.

Lonely Planetoid

When I was a kid (not so long ago) I was taught that there where nine planets. We were all probably good in memorizing the names when we were in elementary schools. But not alot of us needed to keep remembering and updating after we got the names correct in our grade three science periodic exams. It's a surprise that, not so young pinoys when asked, many would still say that there are nine planets.

Over the past few years new science have completely changed previous the understanding of the outer Solar System leading to the discovery of  Kuiper belt objects (like Eris in 2005), further out than the orbit of Pluto.

Due to the discovery of these objects a debate came to a head in 2006 with an IAU resolution that created an official definition for the term "planet". According to this resolution, there are three main conditions for an object to be considered a 'planet':

1. It needs to be in orbit around the Sun – All original nine planets does this.

2. It needs to have enough gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape – All original nine planets passed this.

3. It needs to have “cleared the neighborhood” of its orbit – little Pluto failed this one.

In the end, astronomers voted for the controversial decision of demoting Pluto (and Eris) down to the newly created classification of “dwarf planet”.

Last July, Pluto again made news when NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took pictures of four moons orbiting the distant icy dwarf planet Pluto.

We all love Pluto and even more to some, like the man who created this Pluto song.