The Aurora Borealis!

Fought hard to get through the traffic and city lights and all the traffic up in the foothills east of town, but we did get to see us some Northern Lights.

BLACK HOLE!

Two things:

Science has, for the first time, photographed a black hole.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity still looks to be accurate.

And I guess technically what we’ve got a photo of is the “environment at a black hole’s event horizon,” which is probably the closest we can actually get a getting a photo of a black hole.
The photo itself, given what other wonders we’ve see in the universe, is underwhelming. But not really. It’s actually pretty cool.

Both Space.com and Ars Technica have good reports on the discovery.

Wired does a nifty job explaining why it’s such a big deal that this photo exists – getting one is extremely difficult.

On to Einstein. This is what Space.com reports:

If the observed silhouette matches the theory-informed simulations, "then Einstein was 100% right," [Dimitrios] Psaltis [an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona] said. "If the answer is no, then we have to tweak his theory in order to make it work with experiments. This is how science goes."

And we learned today that no tweaks are needed, at least at the moment: EHT's M87 observations are consistent with general relativity, team members said. Namely, the event horizon is nearly circular and is the "right" size for a black hole of that immense mass.

"I have to admit, I was a little stunned that it matched so closely the predictions that we had made," EHT team member Avery Broderick, of the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, said during today's news conference.

And Einstein didn’t have an array of telescopes as large as the Earth. He had his mind and a motorcycle.

And I sure hope someone played this music as they viewed the pictures.

Buck Rogers is Boring to Me

Came to a somewhat shocking realization this morning as I was reading more news about the New Horizon spacecraft’s remarkable visit with Ultima Thule on New Year’s Day:

The current state of manned space exploration is really boring.

And maybe that’s a crap attitude, similar to the “milk run,” or “making landing on the moon about as exciting as flying to Pittsburg” attitude the Apollo astronauts and associated hangers-on had to deal with in the early 1970s.

But it’s my attitude.

And I’m sure whomever is currently in orbit around the Earth right now – I assume there are people in orbit; it’s become de rigeur to have someone in orbit these days – are doing interesting things. Highly valuable things that will someday contribute to the great whatever.

Or maybe not.

I have little interest in finding out.

Clearly, there are others who are interested. There’s even a website and app – of course there’s an app – that’ll tell you, to the man or woman, how many people there are currently in space.

It’s three. As of 0731 today.

What are they doing in space?

This particular site doesn’t seem to care either. Maybe the app is different. But right now, it’ll tell you the number of people in space, their names, countries of origin, and just how long, to the day, they’ve been in space. Click on a name and you’ll get sent to that astronaut’s Wikipedia page.

Which don’t seem to care what, exactly, these people are doing in space either.

But I have read article after article about New Horizons and Ultima Thule. I’ve pored over what few photos have been released of this primitive little planetismal and can’t wait to see more. (Although the New Year’s Eve party they had at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory? Looked pretty boring to me. Of course, there were people involved. Boo.)

But Ultima Thule. Forget the dumb Nazi connection to the name. What would it be like to stand at the junction of those two lobes? Would each tower above you as if you were at the bottom of a narrow canyon? Or are they large enough the view would appear as if you were merely at the bottom of a wide valley? As I’ve never stood on a small object like either Ultima or Thule, I have no frame of reference, aside from the canyon/valley idea. But I would love to stand there. That’s when manned space exploration gets exciting to me – much more than merely orbiting weightless. Even if they’re doing really neato science as they bob about.

I should fix my attitude. Because they probably are doing interesting things at the International Space Station. Besides, continued public support for manned space exploration just might get us out of orbit and onto something much more interesting than a tin can floating above the earth.

But when it’s the probes and rovers that get to go to the interesting places like Ultima Thule, the far side of the Moon, and Mars, that’s where my main interest will remain.

Making Prime Work Part IV

NOTE: This is the start of a very intermittent series on this blog, wherein I review anything I may have watched, read, or otherwise gained from our Amazon Prime membership. This is partly to continue justifying the cost of Amazon Prime as it takes yet another leap, and to remind me what a wonderful cornucopia of media there is out there that I have yet to witness, or re-witness as the case may be.

Part One: A Film Set in America Yet Featuring Comically Impossible Italian Cars

I’m not a big fan of the zombie/vampire film genre. There’s only so much you can do with a story about hiding out from the baddies. Particularly when the baddies are of the slow, mumbling, gonna get you when I actually get around to it variety.

And I’ll admit when I saw "The Last Man on Earth" was based on the book “I Am Legend” as the opening credits spooled, I was surprised the book was that old (given its recent treatment in the Will Smith vehicle of the same name).

And eh. I could live without this film.

Though it was fun to see all these comical Italian vehicles in a film that’s supposed to be set in the United States, or so I assume when “his excellency the governor” appears on TV to say his state too has been declared a disaster area.



Vincent Price seemed ill-fitted to the role. His character needed the cocky assurance of Charlton Heston a la The Omega Man, another film based on this book. Yet Price’s vulnerability, brought about by the inevitable laughter over memories begetting tears over the same memories, is undeniable.

And where did the organized group of vampire-killers get their matching outfits?

Part Two: These Days, Anyone Can Make A Documentary

First of all, I was right. That is Elliot Gould narrating "The Soyuz Conspiracy".

That’s been the only thing I’ve liked about it.

Well, there was the background used for one of the experts interviewed for the film: a touristy book on Russia, some nesting dolls, and a big map clearly labeled, Batmanesque, “Former Soviet Union” tacked to the wall behind him.

While the story told is compelling, everything else about this film feels amateurish, from the schlocky graphics to the “put more Russian stuff in the background” set dressing.

There’s little about this film that feels new – maybe it was in 2000. Looking at it now, it’s hard to tell what the “new footage” the documentary touts is, as most of what we’re seeing is film of Soviet parades.

And in describing the death of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, bada boom, it feels like Gould goes off-script. Or maybe he stayed on a terribly-written script.

In any shape or form, this documentary feels slipshod, just like an early Soyuz.

"Godspeed, John Glenn."

If any headline writer out there didn't use "Godspeed, John Glenn" to mark the Mercury 7 astronaut's passing, they failed their readers.

So Sorry, Schiaparelli

Europe appears to have lost another Mars lander.

There’s no glee in that statement. It’s disappointing to see space exploration arrive at failure. But after the probe’s parachute jettisoned early and its retro rockets fired for only three or four seconds rather than the programmed 30 seconds, the European Space Agency likely has lost its Schiaparelli lander on 19 October 2016.

This comes after the loss of Beagle 2 in 2003; that lander was recently discovered on the surface of Mars with its solar panels only partially deployed.

NASA's had its own bad luck on Mars, of course. In 1888, the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into the planet rather than orbiting it because imperial measurements were used in its thruster controls rather than metric. Oopsie.

Also in 1999, the Mars Polar Lander crashed into the planet when its braking engine shut down too soon.

ESA’s approach to landing Schiaparelli was simple compared to that used by NASA’s Curiosity rover. If any landing were to fail, you’d expect it to be the ridiculously complex Curiosity landing. But that one succeeded.

It is interesting that Schiaparelli’s mission appears primarily to prove that Europe can land a craft on Mars, while the orbiter it was attached to looks for trace gases in the Martian atmosphere. It doesn’t appear their test was successful.

Martians must NOT want Santa Claus back.

Skyscrapers on Saturn's Rings

New images from the Cassini probe exploring the Saturn system, show something pretty amazing:

Look at those structures. Miles high, probably. What could cause them? Probably some perturbation from one of Saturn's moons, But how? We've seen scallops in rings (see below) but what in the world is this?

We live in an astounding universe, and understand so little about our own solar system.

Has it Finally Happened?

For the last few years, we’ve heard report after report that Voyager 1, launched from Earth in 1977 to explore the Solar System, had left the heliosphere, the invisible magnetic and charged particle bubble in space dominated by the Sun, and had encountered the heliopause, the point in space where the Sun’s influence ends and interstellar space begins.

That may have finally actually happened, thanks to data recorded by the probe in 2012 and 2013:

Per the folks at Space.com:

The density of the particles around Voyager 1 was 40 times higher than scientists had previously observed when the space probe was still in the outer layers of the heliosphere, the giant bubble of charged particles and magnetic fields that surrounds the sun and the planets in our solar system. Voyager 1 team members concluded that the spacecraft had exited the heliosphere and entered a new cosmic realm. After researchers went back and looked at old data, they concluded that Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space on August 25, 2012.

Cool stuff.

Also, consider this: The data coming back to us from Voyager 1 is recorded on old-fashioned magnetic tape, then relayed to Earth. Magnetic tape, capable of recording up to 64 megabytes of data. How robust must that little probe be? Damn robust. The recorder is set to shut down in 2015, leaving only direct communication with Earth possible – until the probe’s plutonium power source dies out in about 2025.

It’s part of a small club of man-made objects that have either left the Solar System or will within my lifetime.

Is Philae A Phailure?

I had high hopes for Philae – and I’m certainly not alone.

The first to land on a comet. The first to poke at a comet’s crust and innards to see if comets are a potential source of life on Earth (meaning the water and the organic chemicals necessary for life). Optimists had hoped Philae would be alive and actively probing the comet’s secrets for up to five months.

But failures in the lander’s harpoons – meant to anchor it to the comet once it touched down – and in a thruster meant to assist the harpoons in anchoring – meant the comet bounced twice off the comet before coming to a landing, on its side, with its solar panels in obscurity for all but 1 ½ hours during each of the comet’s 12-hour days – far less than what was needed to keep the lander’s batteries charged. A mission optimistically meant to last months lasted only 60 hours, though hope remains that as the comet gets closer to the sun, reorientation of the comet itself will place the solar panels in enough sunlight to revive the lander.

So I have to ask: Is Philae a failure?

No one is saying that – the cheering going on all last week as the lander sent back its data drowned out any other voices, except those complaining about the sexy shirt and off-kilter comments by British Physicist Matt Taylor, a Rosetta scientist. But I think it’s a fair question. Yes, the lander hit its intended landing target with pinpoint accuracy, making Philae the first scientific instrument to make a soft landing on a comet. Yes, the lander was able to send back some data that will likely answer many questions about comet composition. But doesn’t the fact that the thing bounced twice, ended up on its side and drained of electricity after less than 60 hours of operation make anyone else think the mission was less than a smashing success?

The European Space Agency is rightly touting Philae’s success. But how much of this is PR bunko? Seeing the results of the tests will be more telling to judge Philae’s success.

And you may ask, what are my bonafides? I can answer that clearly: None whatsoever. I’m just a longtime sky-gazer just a tad underwhelmed by what Philae has thusfar provided. I still wonder at the idea of using solar power to recharge batteries in an environment where a Voyager-style plutoniumsystem would have eliminated many questions as far as electricity goes. Having multihundred watt radioisotope thermoelectric generators is what is helping both Voyagers survive the conditions of interstellar space, while still sending information back decades after they were launched, after all. Voyager’s primary missions ended in 1989 – fully twenty-five(!) years ago. Yet because of their construction, they’re still sending information back to us. They should still have enough electricity to operate until 2025. And the electrical system they carry weighs only 38 kilos. Certainly a smaller version could have been fitted on Philae, which itself weighs 100 kilos. But that’s just the armchair engineer speaking.

To answer my own question: Is Philae a failure? In my opinion, the jury Is still out. I’ll wait to see what data it was able to cllect, and whether it will be in a state to be revived in the future, before I decide. But right now, the signal to noise ratio seems a bit low to call the mission a success.

I have a friend at work who is much more optimistic about the lander’s performance – it was such a shoestring, he says, to get a lander onto a surface where the gravity is so weak. He’s very excited to see additional information on the mission. Listening to him helps me feel more optimistic. Time will tell.

Rosetta Continues to Astound

So familiar, yet so alien.

Those striations on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko could be erosion lines in a sand dune or arroyo on Earth – yet there they are, millions of miles from the sun on a chunk of ice and rock floating alone in the void.

What would it be like to walk in that valley – it would appear to be a valley to someone walking there – on that eerie world? What would the curve of the valley floor look like, as you walked to the horizon? And how long would it take until you found yourself following your own footprints?

That soil and ice in the bottom of the valley has got to be loose. I can’t imagine what underlying connection there could be between the comet’s two lobes. And the lobes, though joined, look so different, though perhaps the difference is an illusion of perception – the side of the valley we can’t see might be marked just as the other side is – and the “tops” of the lobes appear indistinguishable.