The Tunguska Event

June 30 in 1908, something exploded over in Tunguska which is now called Krasnoyarsk Krai, in Russia. It is now estimated to have been nearly 1000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. That explosion called the Tunguska Event has been the subject of intense curiosity and diverse theories and which up to this day make it  unique and mysterious.

It wasn't until in 1921, when a Russian mineralogist, Leonid Kulik became intrigue to travel to the area and interview some witnesses. He returned in 1927, then with people to take him to the impact site. What he saw shocked him.

So what could have caused the Tunguska explosion?

There are lots of  interesting theories - from exploding UFO's, Black Holes, Antimatter, natural H-bomb, Nikola Tesla, and we would find more of it if you keep searching the internet, but the generally agreed upon theory is that a large space rock entered the atmosphere of Siberia and then detonated in the sky.

The Space Elevator

Mankind has been building high structures since the Pyramids in Egypt. Since then taller and higher structures has been built surpassing that height. In 2010, the new record for the tallest building was set by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai(829.84 m). As I can remember, the record for the highest structures has been set and reset many times just in the past few years. This makes me wonder - How far up can we go?

Well, a quick check with Google(and Youtube) surprised my curiousity. As it turns out,  it is posible to build structures that can go up to space!

The only limitation of builiding one today is an abundant material available strong enough to support such weight.

The idea of space elevator was popularized in the late 1970's in the book The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clark. But the main idea of building an elevator to space can go further back to Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky since the start of the Eiffel Tower or perhaps even further back to the tales of Jack climbing the beanstalk or Rapunzel letting down her hair, the building of Tower of Babel, or as early as the first man who dreamed of climbing to the skies.

In the 1960's to the 70's, this was realized when we rocketed astronauts to the moon, but since then conventional space launch using rocket fuel was just too costly to further realize.

The recent discovery of carbon nanotubes makes the dream of building the space elevator  now one step closer to reality and away from the science fiction. As soon as this dream is realized, It will propel space programs back to new heights after being stagnant.

In February 2012, a Japanese construction firm Obayashi Corporation announced that in 38 years it could build a space elevator using carbon nanotube technology. According to Obayashi, a 30-seaters space elevator will be made of carbon nanotube, The whole length of the elevator cable is expected to be 96,000 kilometers. At a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, passenger will be able to reach the terminal satellite which is 36,000 kilometers up high after a 7.5 days trip

As of today, there are many groups both privately funded and government owned project continuing research that would contribute soon in the building of this elevator.

Transit of Venus

This coming Wednesday, Venus will be posting between the Sun and the Earth for astronomers and enthusiasts to watch and photograph a once-in-a-lifetime event. The alignment of venus is an event that will not happen again for another 105 years, that's in 2117.

During this event, Venus will pass directly in front of the sun as we will see it from earth, appearing as a small moving black dot like this:

To the most of us who does not have the luxury of big telescopes, we can use a pair of binoculars, meduim range telescopes, or  telephoto lenses(400mm and above). Again be careful not to stare directly at the sun without a proper solar filter(welders glass or eclipse shades) due to risk of blindness or painful, permanent eye damage. Or a safer option is watching it on a number of websites who will broadcast it live including http://events.slooh.com/.

So, here are the schedules for Manila viewers all hoping for clear skies.

Lunar Eclipse Tomorrow

A partial lunar eclipse will be visible in Manila skies June 4, Monday.

According to PAGASA, the umbral eclipse will start at 4:46 p.m. and will end at 9:19 p.m. with the greatest eclipse occurring at 7:03 p.m.

While this is not as spectacular as last year's event, it will set a stage on a more rare celestial event this same week - the transit of Venus.