tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69296815762053192732023-11-15T10:30:13.210-08:00Bones AstronomyA discussion on the more esoteric / recondite aspects of astronomy. Plus common public misconceptions about astronomy and it's history will also be discussed.Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-73609614798350145272020-10-05T03:44:00.001-07:002020-10-05T03:56:44.575-07:002020: Most Full Moons In A Year?<p>Even though the COVID 19 pandemic has reduced amateur
astronomy into a much lonelier endeavor, will this year’s surfeit of full moons
be a consolation - and a special time - to amateur astronomers?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By: Ringo Bones </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The global astronomical community announced back in January
that 2020 will be a very interesting year for amateur astronomers and
stargazers the world over because it will have 13 full moons instead of the
regular 12. And October 2020 will be special because it is when two full moons
will occur in the same month, not to mention another rare astronomical event is
set to happen this month – a 100-percent full moon falling on Halloween night. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">October 2020 will prove to be of interest to amateur
astronomers and stargazers around the word because it will be a “full moon
event” – i.e. two full moons occurring on the same month. For more than half a
century, if two full moons fall on the same month, it is dubbed as a blue moon.
Ideally, a blue moon event happens once every two and a half to three years. The
October 1<sup>st</sup> full moon of 2020 was dubbed as a “Harvest Moon” as such
events have been called since antiquity, and the Halloween Full Moon of 2020
that will occur on October 31<sup>st</sup> will be dubbed as a “Hunter’s Moon” –
i.e. the full moon that occurs after a Harvest Moon. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even though artistic depictions of Halloween night – more often
than not – had always shown a full moon high in the sky with kids in various Halloween
costumes trick or treating the night away, a full moon occurring on a Halloween
night is actually a relatively rare event. The last time that Halloween night
was illuminated by a 100-percent full moon was back in 1944. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ideally, a 100-percent full moon on Halloween is supposed to
happen once every 19 years, but given that the 31<sup>st</sup> of October falls
on a different day of the week year after year, a full moon on Halloween is a
very rare event indeed. According to astronomers, the next time a 100-percent
full moon will be shining on a Halloween evening after 2020 will occur in the
year 2039, then in 2058, then in 2077 and the last one for the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century will occur in 2096. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The good news is that even if a scheduled 100-percent full
moon event will fall a day or two before or after the October 31<sup>st</sup> Halloween
night, it can still serve as a spooky Halloween night backdrop because since
most people, and most general-purpose hand-held cameras, can’t tell the
difference between a 100-percent full moon and a “mere” 98-percent full moon.
Because of this, October 31, 2031 Halloween night will seem to appear just as
spooky to future Halloween revelers as this coming October 31, 2020 Halloween Night.</p>Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-89015128790814734332020-09-15T03:50:00.000-07:002020-09-15T03:50:02.013-07:00Phosphine: Proof Of Life On Planet Venus?<p>Found in the droppings of badgers and penguins and used as an ad
hoc chemical weapon on the TV series Breaking Bad, is phosphine the definitive
proof that extraterrestrial life exists on the Planet Venus?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By: Ringo Bones</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The planet Venus, despite of earning the moniker as “planet
Earth’s twin” has since been dismissed as hostile to familiar forms of life
because its surface temperature averages 800 degrees Fahrenheit and on its
surface, the atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of planet Earth – akin to
going 3,000 feet underwater. Not to mention the clouds of sulfuric acid found
on its upper atmosphere. But recently, hopes had been raised that there’s
definitive proof that extraterrestrial life exists on Venus because astronomers
had detected a chemical that can only be produced as a metabolic byproduct of
anaerobic microorganisms here on planet Earth – and that very chemical is
called phosphine. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here on planet Earth, phosphine can be found in our
intestines as a metabolic byproduct of anaerobic microorganisms living there,
in the feces of badgers and penguins and in some deep-sea worms, as well as
other biological environments associated with anaerobic organisms. It can be
very poisonous in large enough concentrations. Militaries have employed it for
chemical warfare and it is widely used as a fumigant in commercial farms
because it is less corrosive than ammonia. On the TV show Breaking Bad, the
main character Walter White used it as an ad hoc chemical weapon to kill two of
his rivals. Sadly, scientists have yet to provide a definitive explanation on
how Earth’s anaerobic microorganisms produce it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Phosphine has been detected by the Cassini spacecraft on the
atmospheres’ of the planets Jupiter and Saturn due to the immense pressures
exerted by these gas giant planets’ atmospheres. But at atmospheric pressures
closer to planet Earth’s it seems that phosphine can only be produced with the
association of the metabolic processes of anaerobic microorganisms and
associated environments. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Back in June 2017, Dr. Jane Greaves, an astronomer at
Cardiff University of Wales set out to test the hypothesis first proposed by
astronomers Carl Sagan and Harold Morowitz back in 1966 that the cloud layer
just 31 miles below the upper atmosphere of the planet Venus might harbor life
because the average temperature there is only 83 degrees Fahrenheit and the
atmospheric pressure is about the same as that found here on Earth at sea
level. Using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii to look for signs of
various molecules on the Venusian atmosphere, Dr. Grieves chose to zero in
phosphine because, according to her, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>phosphorous <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>might be a sort of go-no-go for life. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">According to Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, using phosphine gas a s a sign of
extraterrestrial life on planet Venus is an “out of the blue finding” after the
interests raised over the publishing of the papers she co-authored in Nature
Astronomy and the journal Astrobiology. Harvard University astrophysicist Clara
Sousa-Silva whose research paper she co-authored with Seager focusing on
phosphine has now raised further interest in exploring the planet Venus further
for definitive proof for signs of extraterrestrial life. Sadly only one
spacecraft – Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft – is currently performing a lonely
vigil of orbiting planet Venus since 2016. Maybe NASA should send a balloon-borne
probe to explore Venus’ upper atmosphere to find signs of extremophiles living
on the sulfuric acid droplet clouds.</p>Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-40546440434428521092020-07-24T03:36:00.000-07:002020-07-24T03:36:33.606-07:00Johann Daniel Titius: Original Author Of Bode’s Law?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even though he’s not a well known household name like
Newton, did the astronomer and mathematician Johann Daniel Titius the original
author of Bode’s Law?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It has since been rechristened as the Titius-Bode Law and in
his honor, an asteroid – 1998 Titius - and a crater on the Moon was named after
him, the 18<sup>th</sup> Century German mathematician and astronomer Johann
Daniel Titius never became a well-known household name like the Englishman Isaac
Newton. But nonetheless, Titius did make some important contributions to
mathematics, physics, astronomy and biology during his lifetime. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Johann Daniel Titius (1729 – 1796) was born on January 2,
1729 in Konitz Royal Prussia – a fiefdom of the Crown of Poland – to Jakob
Tietz, a merchant and council member from Konitz, and Maria Dorothea, n<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">é</span>e Hanow. His original name was
Johann Tietz, but as was customary in the 18<sup>th</sup> Century, when he
became a university professor, he Latinized his surname to Titius. Teitz
attended school in Danzig (Gdansk) and studied at the University of Leipzig
(1749-1752). He died in Wittenberg, Electorate of Saxony on December 16, 1796. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Titius proposed his law of planetary distances in an
unsigned interpolation in his German translation of the Swiss philosopher
Charles Bonnet’s Contemplation de la nature (“Contemplation of Nature”). Titius
fixed the scale by assigning 100 to the distance of the planet Saturn from the
Sun. On this scale, planet Mercury’s distance from the Sun is approximately 4.
Titius therefore proposed that the sequence of planetary distances (starting
from Mercury and moving outward) has the form:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>4,4 + 3,4 + 6,4 + 12,4 + 24,4 + 48,4 + 96,… </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was an empty place at distance 28, or 4 + 24 (between
the planets Mars and Jupiter), which Bode asserted, the Founder of the Universe
surely has not left unoccupied. Titius’ sequence stopped with the planet
Saturn, the most distant planet then known. His law was reprinted, without his
credit, by Johann Elert Bode in the second edition of his Deutliche Anleitung
zur Kenntniss des gestirnten Himmels (Clear Guide to Knowledge of the Starry
Heaven) in 1772. In later editions, Bode did credit Titius, but this mostly
escaped notice and during the 19<sup>th</sup> Century the law was usually
associated with Bode’s name. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Titius published a number of works on other areas in
physics, such as a set of conditions and rules for performing experiments and
he was particularly focused in thermometry. In 1765, he presented a survey of
thermometry up to that date. He wrote about the metallic thermometer
constructed by Hans Loeser. In his treatises on both theoretical and
experimental physics, he incorporated the findings of other scientists, such as
the descriptions of experiments written by Georg Wolfgang Kraft in 1738. </div>
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<br /></div>
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As a confirmed polymath, Titius was also active in biology,
particularly in classification of organisms and minerals. His biological work
was influenced by Carolus Linnaeus. Lehrbegriff der Naturgeschichte Zum ersten
Unterrichte, his most extensive publication in biology, was on the systematic
classification of plants, animals and minerals, as well as the elemental
substances: ether, fire, air, water and earth. The standard author abbreviation
Titius is used to indicate Johann Daniel Titius as the author when citing a
botanical name.</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-41324372846204209542020-07-22T02:05:00.000-07:002020-07-22T02:05:20.201-07:00The Mysterious Bode’s Law: The Most Puzzling Law Of Science?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Often cited as the most productive – and most puzzling –
scientific law at the same time, are there any mysteries behind Bode’s Law?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This rather “curious” scientific law was named after an 18<sup>th</sup>
Century German astronomer and mathematician named Johann Elert Bode, but
contrary to popular belief, it was actually discovered by Johann Daniel Titius –
a German mathematician – back in 1766. However, the empirical relation that
gives the approximate distances of the planets from the Sun did not attract
attention to the 18<sup>th</sup> Century astronomical community until it was
publicized by Johann Elert Bode – whose name has since then associated with it –
back in 1772. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To the uninitiated, Johann Elert Bode (1747-1826) was an
Eighteenth Century era German astronomer who popularized an empirical law that
was later named after him, which gives the approximate distances of the planets
from the Sun. Bode was also famous for naming the planet Uranus that ended the
confusion in the astronomical community at the start of the 19<sup>th</sup> Century
when the British astronomer William Herschel desired to name the then newly
discovered planet as Georgium Sidius after King George III of England. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After examining the work of fellow German mathematician, Johann
Daniel Titius, Bode noted that the distances of the various planets from the
Sun fell into a curious mathematical sequence. Bode then published a paper which
arbitrarily assigned numbers to the planets: 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, and 192.
Thus the planet Mercury was numbered 0, planet Venus 3, planet Earth 6, planet
Mars 12, and so on, each number being double the last one. When 4 was added to
each of these numbers and the result is divided by 10, figures emerged which
almost exactly equaled the planets’ distances from the Sun, measured in
astronomical units. By the way, an astronomical unit is a unit of distance
between the planet Earth and the Sun – which is around 93-million miles or
150-million kilometers. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The only trouble with the law was that back in the time when
Bode published it in 1772, there were no planets found at positions 24 or 192. But
astronomers searching in position 24 located the asteroids – around the start
of the Nineteenth Century – i.e. the discovery of asteroid Ceres in 1801. The
planet Uranus, which was discovered back in 1781, occurs at position 192 and
conforms almost exactly to Bode’s calculations. Only the outermost planets –
Neptune and the dwarf planet Pluto – failed to obey Bode’s Law. Although many
attempts have been made to derive a physical explanation for the law, none has
completely succeeded. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, many
astronomers dismiss Bode’s Law as a coincidence and that Bode’s Law is not a
rule governing planetary systems. Yet it remains one of the most mysterious
statements of natural law formulated by man.</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-13748382802036699932020-07-22T00:40:00.000-07:002020-07-22T00:40:33.524-07:00Can We Build A Cosmic Telescope With Gravitational Lenses?<br />
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Using the principles behind Einstein’s General Relativity,
is it possible to create a space based telescope with virtually no Raleigh
Criterion limits?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve first heard of the working principle of a cosmic
telescope was in an episode of Cosmos: Possible Worlds where Prof. Neil
DeGrasse Tyson explains how a space-based telescope using existing – i.e. late
20<sup>th</sup> century to early 21<sup>st</sup> Century technology - could
take advantage of the Sun’s gravitational lensing effect in order to create a
telescope capable of seeing the surfaces of extrasolar planets better than the
ones we currently use like the Kepler Space Telescope. But first, here’s a
brief primer on the principles of gravitational lensing. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Gravitational lensing effect is a consequence of
Einstein’s General Relativity. Often referred by astronomers as a “natural
telescope”, gravitational lensing occurs when a huge amount of matter – such as
clusters of galaxies – creates a gravitational field that distorts and
magnifies the light from distant galaxies that are behind it, but in the same
line of sight. The effect allows astronomers to study the details of early
galaxies too far away to be seen with current technology and telescope. The
gravitational lensing cause by our Sun’s gravitational field can also be used
in a similar fashion. You can also spot distant extra-solar planets when a star
itself is the interloper if it carries any planets in orbit around it, they
will change - ever so slightly – the momentary brightness during the
microlensing event. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are already plans for a “viable” cosmic telescope that
could – in theory – make the Raleigh Criterion limitations of the telescopes we
currently use, space based or earthbound, completely irrelevant. The Fast
Outgoing Cyclopean Astronomical Lens – or FOCAL – is a proposed space telescope
that would use our Sun as a gravity lens. The concept of a space-based
telescope that takes advantage of the Sun’s gravitational lensing effect was
first suggested by Prof. Von Eshleman and analyzed further by Italian
astronomer Claudio Maccone and others. In order to use the Sun as a
gravitational lens, it would be necessary to position our space telescope to a
point in space of at least 550 astronomical units away from the Sun. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The proposed FOCAL telescope can actually use current
technology that’s already in use on operational space-based telescopes for
astronomical use, however, there are difficulties. The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2
probes are currently at distances within 147 astronomical units and 122
astronomical units. It took them over 40 years to reach those distances using
rocket technology we currently have – by the way, both Voyager spacecraft were
launched back in 1977. It looks like we won’t be sending space telescopes with
comparable technology to the James Webb Space Telescope to a point in space 550
astronomical units – or 51 billion miles or 82.5 billion kilometers– away from
our Sun. By way of comparison, the dwarf planet Pluto is “only” 3.7 billion
miles or 5.97 billion kilometers away from the Sun.</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-22393797235017745212020-06-26T04:09:00.001-07:002020-06-26T04:17:43.529-07:00SpaceX’s Starlink Satellites: Light Pollution Problem For Astronomers?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Intended to improve internet connectivity in far-fringe
areas, could the fleet of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites be a source of light
pollution problem for astronomers?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
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<br /></div>
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Near the end of 2019, the world’s astronomical community –
including a growing number of amateur astronomers – has voiced their concerns
that SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s upcoming fleet of satellites intended to
provide and improve internet coverage and reception in far-fringe areas -
called Starlink - could eventually become a source of light pollution that
could eventually interfere with astronomy. But are the concerns of the
astronomers valid? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As of May 7, 2020, SpaceX had unveiled plans to make their
Starlink satellites “invisible” in order to make them not a source of light
pollution that could interfere with astronomical observations. A software
upgrade and a new design for the satellites are intended to reduce the
interference for astronomers.<br />
<br />
Near the end of 2019, the company’s billionaire
founder Elon musk had denied claims that the eventual 12,000-strong fleet of
satellites could ruin the night sky for astronomers. Bowing to growing pressure
from the global astronomical community, SpaceX eventually made plans to make
its satellites “generally invisible to the naked eye within a week of launch”
following complaints about light pollution and actual photos taken by scores of
amateur astronomers of the first batch of the Starlink satellites as a visual proof
that it became an unnecessary source of light pollution on various social media
sites.</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-25356862179251590712019-12-28T08:42:00.001-08:002019-12-28T08:42:57.013-08:00Is The Universe Getting Younger?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though the new figure might yet be “too old” to satisfy
America’s staunchest far-right Creationists, is our universe much, much younger
than it really is?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
America’s staunchest far-right Creationist may be buying
their time, just waiting for a scientific consensus proving that the entire
universe began in 9 o’clock in the morning Greenwich Mean Time on the 23<sup>rd</sup>
of October 4004 BC. Even the Creationist US Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo was
probably elated to hear that the universe could be 2 billion years younger than
it actually is. Will it be a matter of time that the universe is proven to be
only 6,000 years old to the delight of America’s far-right Creationists and
white nationalists? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Scientists estimate the age of the universe by using the
movement of stars to measure how fast it is expanding. If the universe is
expanding faster, that means it got to its current size more quickly and
therefore must be relatively younger. The expansion rate called the Hubble
Constant makes for a fast moving – and younger – universe. The generally
accepted age of the universe is 13.7 billion years based on a Hubble Constant
of 70. But lately a team of astronomers from the Max Plank Institute led by Inh
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jee came up with a Hubble Constant of
82.4, which would put the age of the universe at around 11.4 billion years. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is somewhat disconcerting that while our understanding of
our universe has vastly increased during the past 50 years while that same
understanding told us that the universe was much younger than what we knew
before. Remember the time when the scientific consensus was that the whole
universe is a little over 18 billion years old? Then by the latter half of the
1990s, when the prior discovery and / or conjecture of the concept of dark
matter and dark energy a few years before has slashed the age of the universe
to 13.8 billion years. And now it is only a little over 11 billion years old. Could
the 6,000 year old age of the universe embraced by America’s far-right Creationists,
white nationalists and Trump supporters be proven during Mike Pompeo’s
lifetime?</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-29220503226814084572019-04-11T04:05:00.002-07:002019-04-11T04:05:41.243-07:00First True Picture Of A Black Hole Captured: Astronomical Breakthrough?<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite of the astronomical community’s over 200 year
fascination of the concept, does the recent true picture ever captured of a
black hole truly an astronomical breakthrough?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe we should be thanking first Katie Bouman, a former computer
science student at MIT, now at Cal Tech, who developed the sophisticated
computer algorithm that made possible the first ever interferometer-based
photograph of a black hole. Although it was entirely a team effort, the
astronomical community’s fascination of these enigmatic astronomical objects
that are commonly referred to as black holes dates back over 200 years. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now largely forgotten many credit the English clergyman and polymath
John Michell for theorizing the existence of black holes, which he then referred
to as dark stars and he does it using only Newtonian Physics. During 1783,
geologist John Michell wrote a letter to Henry Cavendish outlining the expected
properties of dark stars that got published by The Royal Society in their 1784
volume. Michell calculated that that when the escape velocity at the surface of
a star was equal to or greater than the speed of light, the generated light would
be gravitationally trapped so that the star would not be visible to a distant
astronomer. The Sun’s escape velocity = 1/500<sup>th</sup> that of the speed of
light, would a star with more than 500 times more massive than our Sun has an
escape velocity greater than that of the speed of light and would therefore be
invisible to nearby astronomers? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was when Albert Einstein published his General Relativity
when our modern understanding of black holes gained widespread popularity.
Popular enough that many science fiction writers often used it in their
action-adventure scenes. The black hole’s popularity to the general public
gained more impetus back in 1964 during the discovery of Cygnus X-1, a strong
X-ray source in the constellation Cygnus. His work on stars and how they could
become black holes got Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar the 1983 Nobel Physics Prize. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The recent Event Horizon Telescope breakthrough image shows
a halo of dust and gas, tracing the outline of a colossal black hole at the
heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, which is 55-million light years from Earth and
about 6-billion times the mass of our Sun. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is
composed of a network of eight radio telescopes spanning locations from
Antarctica to Spain and Chile – was made possible by the involvement of more
than 200 scientists. The Event Horizon Telescope achieved the necessary
resolution by combining data from the eight of the world’s leading radio
observatories, including the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) in Chile and
the South Pole Telescope, creating a virtual telescope akin to the size of
planet Earth. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite of the renewed fascination of anyone interested in
astronomy and theoretical physics, a number of science fiction writers and Hollywood
visual special effects artists were a bit “underwhelmed” because the recently
published “true pictures” of the super-massive black hole at the heart of the
M 87 galaxy only confirms that their visual representation or artist’s rendering
of black holes were right all along. Nonetheless, the resulting astrophysical
data obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope may prove to be more useful than
the iconic M 87 galaxy super-massive black hole image.</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-79259697053527602312019-03-14T17:24:00.001-07:002019-03-14T17:24:56.352-07:00 Is Asteroid Cruithne Earth’s Second Moon?<div class="MsoNormal">
Although now dismissed as just one of the Earth’s 18,000
so-called mini-moons, is asteroid 3753 Cruithne just one of the most popular
candidates for Earth’s “second moon”?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some astronomers claim that asteroid 2016 HO₃
that was discovered back in April 27, 2016 is the best candidate for Earth’s
so-called “second moon” because it is possibly the most stable quasi-satellite
of Earth, asteroid 3753 Cruithne still remained very popular of the other
18,000 candidate asteroids that qualified to be Earth’s second moon. Even
though all of them never truly orbit around the Earth like the Moon, it seems though
that at the moment, asteroid 3753 Cruithne is the most popular candidate for
Earth’s second moon. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The name Cruithne is from Old Irish reference to the early
Picts, the asteroid was discovered back in October 10, 1986 by Duncan Waldron
on a photographic plate taken with the UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring
Observatory, Coonabarabran, Australia. Although an earlier discovery of the
asteroid back in 1983, when it was still designated as 1983 UH, is credited to
Giovanni de Sanctis and Richard M. West of the European Southern Observatory in
Chile. It was not until 1997 that asteroid 3753 Cruithne’s unusual orbit was
determined by Paul Wiegert and Kimmo Innanen working at York University in
Toronto and Seppo Mikkola working at the University of Turku in Finland. </div>
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As a Q-type Aten asteroid, 3753 Cruithne got the dubious
designation of “Earth’s Second Moon” despite there are other 18,000 asteroids
that are viable candidates for this category because it orbits around the Sun
in 1:1 orbital resonance with Earth, making it a co-orbital object. Seen from
the Earth’s surface, 3753 Cruithne seem to orbit around the Sun in a
bean-shaped orbit that effectively describes a horseshoe that can change into a
quasi-satellite orbit. Cruithne does not orbit Earth and at times it is on the
other side of the Sun, placing Cruithne well outside of Earth’s Hill sphere.
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Mars. Cruithne orbits the Sun in about 1 year but it takes 770 years for the
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At about 5-kilometers, or 3-miles, in diameter, asteroid
3753 Cruithne is far too small in size to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium to
achieve a spherical shape. Its closest approach to Earth is 12-million
kilometers, or 7 and a half million miles, approximately three times the
separation between Earth and the Moon. From 1994 through 2015, Cruithne made
its annual approach to Earth every November but it is far too small to be seen
on the Earth’s surface at night via the naked eye. While the Moon’s surface
gravity is about one-sixth that of Earth, on the surface of asteroid 3753
Cruithne, the surface gravity is probably one-one hundred thousandth that of
Earth akin to what the Philae spacecraft experienced when it landed on the
Comet 67P / Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko back in 2014.</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-56467282435725529672018-03-30T12:20:00.000-07:002018-03-30T12:20:40.651-07:00Ghostly Galaxy NGC 1052-DF2: A Dark Matter Free Galaxy?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Located 6.5 billion light years from our own Milky Way
galaxy, is the ghostly looking NGC 1052-DF2 the first dark matter free galaxy
ever discovered? </div>
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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Back in 2015, a Harvard University astronomer named Pieter
van Dokkum used the Dragonfly Telephoto Array in order to investigate faint
astronomical objects, and these include ultra diffuse galaxies that look quite
ghostly in comparison to our own Milky Way galaxy. Then as recently as March
28, 2018, Dokkum and his team of astronomers published their findings on why
the galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 looks so diffuse and ghostly in comparison to a typical
galaxy like our Milky Way – that is the ghostly looking galaxy is devoid of
dark matter. </div>
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Even though Earth-based detectors / traps containing liquid
xenon, ultrapure germanium and gallium has yet to confirm the existence of this
elusive substance, cosmologists and theoretical physicists had reached a
consensus for about two decades now that dark matter is essential in the
formation of galaxies. Since the 1950s, astronomers noticed that the amount of
visible matter in a typical galaxy is not enough to hold all of the stars,
gases and dust in place and from flying up given its rate of rotation – even the
subsequent discovery of super-massive black holes in the centers of galaxies is
not enough to hold all of it together; which makes 85-percent of the bulk of
the Universe hitherto unseen hence the concept of dark matter.</div>
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Unusually ghostly and transparent, NGC 1052-DF2 (the NGC
stands for New General Catalog as a new designation for the classification of
nebulae, stars and galaxies – as opposed to the older M or Messier catalogue
system) is about the size of our Milky Way galaxy and yet it contains 200 times
fewer stars and 400 times less dark matter than our own galaxy and also lies
6.5 billion light years away from us. If this turns out to be true, NGC 1052-DF2
may be the first galaxy of its kind that is made up only of ordinary matter. Current
astrophysical laws as we know then dictates that dark matter is thought to be
very essential to the fabric of the Universe as we understand it. </div>
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The study of this ghostly galaxy has recently been published
in the science journal Nature. The authors of the study weren’t initially on
the hunt for dark-matter-free galaxies instead they had set out to take a
closer look at ultra-diffuse galaxies. These are similar in size to the spiral
galaxies we’re more familiar with but have a fraction of the number of stars.
When Prof. Pieter von Dokkum, lead author of the study, first spotted NGC
1052-DF2 said: “I stared a lot at that image and just marveled at it... its
like a ghostly glow in the sky…” </div>
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<br /></div>
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Galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 has very few stars but many of them are
grouped together in unusually bright clusters. When the team studied the
behavior of these clusters, they found that the stars seemed to account for all
of the galaxy’s mass, leaving no room for dark matter. In a typical spiral
galaxy like our Milky Way, there’s about five times more dark matter than
regular matter. And as you go further out from the galaxy, you’ll find fewer
stars and more dark matter. The dark matter halo is much more extended than the
stars are in a typical spiral galaxy. </div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-31725048221954960932017-08-20T20:20:00.000-07:002017-08-20T20:20:34.016-07:00The Great American Total Solar Eclipse: The Astronomical Event Of 2017?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->Hailed by many as the so-called Astronomical Event of 2017,
will the August 21, 2017 Great American Eclipse be able to enlighten a
science-starved America under the Trump/Pence regime?<br />
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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The hype behind the upcoming Great American Total Solar
Eclipse of 2017 make it seems as if the current occupants of The White House
are not anti-science climate change deniers and yet the event could
reinvigorate - and even enlighten - the current science starved Trump
administration. Nonetheless, there are a lot of things to be grateful about the
upcoming celestial event given that the last one – where the path of totally is
right smack inside the continental United States – last happened back in 1918,
almost a hundred years ago. </div>
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The August 21 Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2017
will have a path of totality of 70-miles or 113-kilometers wide and stretches
diagonally across the continental United States from the state of Oregon to the
state of South Carolina below the Mason-Dixon Line. Even the so-called “sleepy
town” of Depoe Bay, Oregon – more famed for whale watching than witnessing rare
celestial events - had been preparing for the great astronomical event of 2017
since last week. And if you are lucky enough to be in the path of totality by
Monday, August 21, all you need to observe The Great American Total Solar
Eclipse of 2017 is an eclipse shield to protect your naked eyes. Some serious eclipse
buffs will nonetheless be preparing their solar eclipse photo gear and a
filtered astronomical telescope. The next solar total eclipse whose path of totality falls in the continental United States will occur in 2024. </div>
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Many also hoped that The Great American Total Solar Eclipse of
2017 could rekindle some of America’s lack of interest in science and the
scientific method given that a sizable majority of them had elected a climate
change denier into The White House who also believes that the NASA Apollo Moon
Landings are faked by an elaborate US Government conspiracy back in the 1960s. Well,
at least those in the know might be laughing if the Christian Right U.S. Department
of Education secretary Betsy DeVos issues a “faith-based warning” about the
heath risk faced by pregnant women on having their fetuses acquiring defects when observing a total solar eclipse – which is for all intents and purposes a
faith-based superstition - when they observe The Great American Total Solar
Eclipse of 2017. </div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-4120718266090705832017-03-20T01:24:00.000-07:002017-03-20T01:24:22.340-07:00Traveling Telescopes: A Great Way To Spread Astronomy Awareness? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->Given that a lot of young people are still clueless about
astronomy, are travelling telescopes a good way to spread the knowledge about
astronomy?<br />
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<br /></div>
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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Astronomer Susan Murabana did not have an easy time
following her passion for celestial bodies while growing up in Nairobi, Kenya. Even
until this day, the country has no planetarium, only a handful of astronomers
and access to even an entry-level astronomical telescope in the 200-US dollar
price range is nigh on impossible, it seems that spreading knowledge and
awareness on astronomy in Kenya is akin to the proverbial “fool’s errand”. But
now with her Travelling Telescope Initiative, she now has the means to inspire
a new generation of Kenyans to the joys and fascinations to the science of
astronomy. </div>
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Together with her husband, Kenyan astronomer Susan Murabana
started her Travelling Telescope Initiative back in 2013 as an astronomy
outreach program by visiting primary and secondary schools across Kenya with an
8-inch astronomical telescope – about the minimum size to allow the viewer to
resolve the structure of the Andromeda Galaxy, our Milky Way’s nearest galactic
neighbor. Given that hands on astronomy is still largely an esoteric endeavor
to children in the developing world, even seeing the moon through an
astronomical telescope capable of a distortion-free 30-times magnification is
enough to fascinate the uninitiated. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Given the worldwide popularity of big-budget Hollywood space-based
science fiction movies, the science of astronomy is still largely an unknown or
at most a very esoteric scientific endeavor to most children in primary and
secondary schools of developing nations across the world. While internet
connected desktop personal computers in schools had been a boon to science
education in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century in developing nations, it seems that
an overwhelming majority of children in developing countries can’t even point
to the planet Mars in the sky as nighttime arrives in their local time zone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-17199227432423690582017-02-24T08:53:00.000-08:002017-02-24T08:53:32.318-08:00TRAPPIST-1 Has Seven Earth Like Planets? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->Even since its discovery a year ago, the red dwarf / brown
dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 is now believed to not contain one but seven Earth-like
planets, does this make it more likely that this star system harbors Earth-like
life?<br />
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<br /></div>
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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<br /></div>
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The most promising spot to look for Earth-like extraterrestrial
life in our Milky Way galaxy just got more promising after it was found out
that it not just contain three Earth-like planets but seven. The star is named
after the team or astronomers manning the European Southern Observatory’s Transiting
Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, or TRAPPIST, who discovered a small
dim red dwarf star about 39 light-years away last year. After other “more
capable” astronomical telescopes were trained into the TRAPPIST star system,
like the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s (fortunately
Fake President Trump hasn’t yet made an Executive Order to disestablish NASA
despite The White House is now currently overrun by the U.S. Republican Party
Jesus Cult) Spitzer Space Telescope had uncovered new features of the star
system that the team of astronomers led by Micha<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">ë</span>l Gillon of the STAR Institute
at the University of Li<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">è</span>ge in Belgium published their findings in the science
journal Nature a few days ago confirming that the TRAPPIST-1 star system has
not three but seven Earth-sized planets, six of which are likely rocky, and all
seven could possibly support liquid water. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Basing on the very recent discovered data, the TRAPPIST-1
star system looks very different from our own Solar System. The planets pass
very close to each other as they orbit that according to NASA astronomers: “If
a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and
potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring words, which would
sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.” From this description
alone, standing of one of TRAPPIST-1’s planets would be reminiscent of going to
those “comic book” and “movie” planets as portrayed by their illustrators and
set makers in those classic Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon movies and comics. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Even though TRAPPIST-1 is a “mere” 39 light-years away which
would put it right next door in cosmic terms – the planets might just have been
on the other side of the cosmos from our perspective because using our current
rocket technology, a spacecraft launched from Earth could only reach TRAPPIST-1
star system after 700,000 years. Given how far it is, a 595 mile-per-hour passenger
jet airliner takes about 44-million years to reach it – if it could escape the
Earth’s and our Solar System’s gravity. And the radio wave telemetry sent by a
space-probe on one of TRAPPIST-1’s planets – travelling at the speed of light -
would take 39 years to reach to NASA’s Mission Control Center. </div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-47209992813662652512016-05-04T02:26:00.000-07:002016-05-04T02:59:46.322-07:00Nearby Brown Dwarf Stars: The Most Promising Home of Extraterrestrial Life?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Based on recent findings announced by astronomers back in May
2, 2016 prove that nearby brown dwarf stars are the most likely places to
discover extraterrestrial life? </div>
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By: Ringo Bones <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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A few days ago, astronomers have discovered not one, not
two, but three new Earth-like planets that may be the most promising places yet
to look for signs of alien or extraterrestrial life. What’s more, they don’t
circle a sun-like star and often referred to as “bizarre planets”. Instead,
these planets are all tightly orbiting what’s called a brown dwarf star in our
galactic backyard – just 40 light-years away. And these planets’ relatively
close proximity just lies within what our current astronomical instruments are
capable of chemically detecting via spectroscopic means when it comes to
detecting signs of extraterrestrial life. </div>
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As announced by astrophysicist and co-discoverer <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Planetesimals Small Telescope or TRAPPIST in La Silla, Chile. The planets orbit
a brown dwarf star previously known as 2MASS J230629228-0502285 that has since been dubbed TRAPPIST-1 as of May 2, 2016 named after the telescope that discovered it which is
under the administration of the European Southern Observatory, The star TRAPPIST-1
is roughly the size of the planet Jupiter and considerably smaller than our
sun. The star isn’t bright white like the sun. It is called a brown dwarf star
because it emits a lot of infrared light, which falls slightly outside the
range of what the human eye can see. And according to data collected by
astronomical instruments, TRAPPIST-1 isn’t quite technically a star – rather it’s
a big hot ball of gas that never got around to fusing hydrogen like most “normal
stars” do.</div>
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Standing on one of the planets surfaces and looking up would
be quite dramatic. “If we were there, we would see it as red and quite big in
the sky,” Gillon said. The “alien” sun would appear larger because the planets
are so much closer to their star than we are to ours, the red sun would also
appear much larger in the sky. It takes our Earth around 365 ¼ days to complete
its orbit our sun, for example, but the innermost of the newly discovered planets
of TRAPPIST-1 completes its orbit in just one and a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>half Earth days and the next closest in 2.6
Earth-days. Since the dwarf star is several thousand degrees Kelvin cooler than
our own sun, it is safe to assume that the star’s “Goldilocks Zone” is much
closer in comparison to our solar system. </div>
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The brown dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 is relatively pretty close
at 40 light-years away from the Earth and can be seen in the night sky in the
constellation of Aquarius. And as soon as the James Webb Space Telescope
becomes operational by 2018, the brown dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 will be one of the
top priority targets in order to find out if it certainly shows signs of extraterrestrial
biological activity. </div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-91904387023332871752016-01-31T15:29:00.000-08:002016-01-31T15:29:09.110-08:00TYC9486-927-1 Star System: Largest Solar System Ever Discovered? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Labeled as a “rogue planet” when it was discovered eight
years ago, does the exoplanet 2MASSJ2126-8140 and its parent star TYC9486-927-1
make up the largest solar system discovered so far? </div>
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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<br /></div>
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When it was first discovered and observed by astronomers
eight years ago, the exoplanet 2MASSJ2126-8140 was first thought of as a “rogue
planet” – i.e. a planet ejected away from its parent star and destined to
wander forever across the universe because it doesn’t seem to orbit any star.
But after a few years of careful observation, it was then found out that this
exoplanet is part of the largest solar system discovered so far. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Exoplanet 2MASSJ2126-8140, a gas giant type planet, was recently
found out to lie one million kilometers away from its parent star TYC9486-927-1
which makes its orbit 140 times wider than Pluto’s orbital path around our Sun.
Only a handful of extremely wide pairs of this kind have been found in recent
years. Details were published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society back in January 27, 2016. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Exoplanet 2MASSJ2126-8140 has an observed
mass between 12 to 15 times that of the planet Jupiter. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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Exoplanet 2MASSJ2126-8140’s distance from its parent star is
around 7,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun and about 140 times
the distance between Pluto and the Sun. This makes it the widest of any planet
around a star discovered so far by a significant margin – about three times the
width of the previously widest pair discovered. If it orbited around our Sun,
exoplanet 2MASSJ2126-8140 would lie far beyond Pluto – like approximately in
the midst of our Solar System’s Oort Cloud. </div>
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<br /></div>
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That huge gap – which equals to 6,900 Astronomical Units
(AU) – means it would take exoplanet 2MASSJ2126-8140 about 900,000 years to
complete a single orbit around its parent star TYC9486-927-1. By estimating the
parent star’s age using its lithium signature, the researchers say
TYC9486-927-1 is somewhere between 10 million and 45 million years old. This
would mean that exoplanet 2MASSJ2126-8140 has completed less than 50 orbits
around its parent star since coalescing from the primordial gas and dust from
which it first came. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-43075922125464322782016-01-29T03:11:00.000-08:002016-01-29T03:11:32.318-08:00Planet Nine: The New Pluto? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Given that it has a mass of 10 times that of planet Earth,
could “Planet Nine” be the “new Pluto”?</div>
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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Back in January 20, 2016 researchers led by resident
astronomers of the California Institute of Technology – Mike Brown and
Konstantin Batygin – unveiled the evidence of the existence of a newly
discovered planet which was shown to be up to 10 times more massive than our
own planet Earth. Currently tentatively named “Planet Nine”, the Caltech astronomers
Brown and Batygin used mathematical modeling and computer simulations to
describe the newly discovered planet’s mass and probable location in our Solar
System even though the newly discovered Planet Nine is yet to be observed
directly. </div>
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The researchers claim that a huge planet 10 times the mass
of Earth probably exists in the frozen Kuiper Belt region of our Solar System. The
planet has not yet been located or photographed directly but its presence could
explain the high eccentricity of the orbits of Trans Neptunian Objects / Kuiper
Belt Objects in which the now dwarf planet Pluto is a member since 2006. At its
inferred location, the tentatively named “Planet Nine” could probably take
between 10,000 to 20,000 years to complete one orbit around the Sun. By way of
comparison, planet Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and takes 164.8 years
to complete one orbit around the Sun while the planet Uranus is 14.5 times the
mass of Earth and takes 84 years to complete one orbit around the Sun. </div>
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The evidence for the claim that “Planet Nine” exists is that
six of the most distant Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have orbits that line up in
a way that would only happen if the gravity of a massive unknown planet were
pulling on them. The researchers predicted that Planet Nine’s gravity would
cause another Kuiper Belt Objects to be forced into orbits perpendicular to
Planet Nine’s orbit. Some astronomers upon hearing of the discovery even
suggested that Planet Nine could be responsible for sending comets originating
in the Kuiper Belt to be flung towards the inner Solar System that might have
triggered cometary impact mass extinction events during the planet Earth’s distant
past. But at present, there’s still insufficient data to make Planet Nine a
bona fide planet that could truly replace Pluto as our Solar System’s ninth
planet. </div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-33027703496400408822016-01-10T01:53:00.000-08:002016-01-10T01:53:24.231-08:00Ancient Globular Star Clusters: Most Likely Home of Advanced Extraterrestrial Life?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Given that they’ve been around when our universe was still a
few billion years old, are ancient globular star clusters the most likely part
of our Milky Way galaxy to harbor advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
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<br /></div>
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Even though the hypothesis has probably been worked out by a
few science fiction authors during the last two centuries, it was in a recent
press conference during the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society
back in January 6, 2016 that Dr. Rosanne DiStefano of the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics presented her team’s latest research findings
indicating that we may one day find intelligent space-faring civilizations
occupying star clusters at the edges of our own Milky Way galaxy. According to
DiStefano, lead author of the study published from a joint collaboration
between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College
Observatory states that: “A globular cluster might be the first place in which
intelligent life is identified in our galaxy.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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These ancient globular star clusters are spherical in shape
and can contain anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of individual
stars. In fact, the oldest stars in the Milky Way galaxy can be found in these
areas with a ripe old age of about 10-billion years old. By way of comparison,
current data shows that the age of our universe is about 13.8-billion years and
scientists believe that some stars in these ancient globular star clusters may
have been already around since the birth of our galaxy. The data that
determined the age of these ancient globular star clusters have previously
played an essential role in helping astronomers pinpoint the center of the
Milky Way and aid in determining the exact age of the universe. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The main factor that determines the possibility of carbon-based
Earth-like life-forms occurring in a typical star system is its Goldilocks or
habitable zone. This refers to a “just right” distance between a planet and its
parent star which directly affects the average temperature and the planet’s
ability to allow water in its liquid state to exist. Brighter more energetically
burning stars produce a larger potential habitable zone than their smaller,
fainter counterparts but brighter, larger, more energetically burning stars
have a much shorter lifespan and the largest of them seldom last for more than
150-million years. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Habitable planets that could exist in these ancient globular
star clusters would have to be huddled near dim red dwarf stars and this is
critical because smaller orbits help protect these planets from the violent
forces found in such a crowded galactic neighborhood – forces that could
eventually push a small world out into cold interstellar space. DiStefano
claims that once these planets do form, they can survive for long periods of
time, even longer than the current age of the universe. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of these globular star clusters are packed to the brim
and astronomers have estimated that some contain up to a million stars that span
a combined distance of up to 100 light-years. To give you an idea of how dense
that is, our Sun’s nearest neighboring star is close to 4 light-years away. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The main idea drawn by this research includes the high
probability of the formation of potentially habitable worlds in a globular
cluster due to the sheer volume of stars and that these worlds could survive
for billions of years. This is important because complex life takes time to
evolve and to develop the kind of intelligence needed to build and maintain a
civilization – especially a space-faring one. </div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-16592281151036443202015-12-26T16:14:00.000-08:002015-12-26T16:14:04.403-08:00Wolf 1061c: The Closest Exoplanet To Earth To Harbor Life? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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At around 14 light-years from our planet, will the exoplanet
– as in a planet outside of our Solar System - that can harbor life similar to
one found here on Earth? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
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<br /></div>
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Star Trek fans may be wondering if the planet is related to
Wolf 359 – that Federation colonized planet that was invaded by the Borg – but when
the discovery was announced back in December 17, 2015 following a study based
on 10 years of archival spectrum taken of the star Wolf 1061 using the HARPS
Spectrograph attached to the ESO 3.6 meter telescope at the European Southern
Observatory at La Silla, Chile. The discovery was made by a team of astronomers
from the University of New South Wales of Australia. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Wolf 1061c or WL1061c is an exoplanet – that is a planet
that lies outside of our Solar System – orbiting the red dwarf star Wolf 1061
in the Ophiuchus constellation about 13.8 light years from Earth. Wolf 1061c is
the second planet in order from its parent star in a triple planetary system
and has an orbital period of 17.9 days. Wolf 1061c is classified as a
super-Earth type exoplanet as its mass is 4.3 times that of Earth and an
estimated surface gravity of 1.6 times that found on the surface of the Earth. In
astronomical terms, the Wolf 1061 system is relatively close to planet Earth’s
Solar System at 13.8 light years away. This makes it the closest known potentially
habitable planet to Earth, yielding interests from astronomers the world over. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Wolf 1061c’s orbital distance of 0.084 AU (astronomical
units) – assuming mild eccentricity – lies at the inner edge of its parent star’s
habitable zone, which extends from approximately 0.073 to 0.190 AU. For
comparison, the habitable zone of our Sun is approximately at 0.5 to 3.0 AU if
you account for our Sun’s greater energy emission. Because it is so close to
its parent star, planet Wolf 1061c is likely to be tidally locked – meaning one
side of the planet permanently faces its parent star and the other side
permanently faces away. Although this scenario could result in extreme
temperature differences on the planet, the terminator line that separates the
illuminated side and the dark side could potentially be habitable for life-forms
similar to that that exists here on Earth, as the temperature there could be
suitable for liquid water to exist. Additionally, a much larger portion of the
planet could also be habitable if Wolf 1061c has a thick enough atmosphere to
facilitate heat transfer away from the side permanently facing its parent star.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-18060147944796716342015-11-25T15:59:00.000-08:002015-11-25T15:59:33.679-08:002015 – 100th Anniversary of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->With UNESCO marking 2015 as the International Year of Light
and Light-Based Technologies, will the centenary of Einstein’s presentation of
General Relativity inspire advances of current physics and cosmology?<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Back in November 1915, Albert Einstein presented to the
world his “Theory of General Relativity” as a way to resolve another
contradiction of physics not covered by his “Theory of Special Relativity” ten
years before. According to Isaac Newton, gravity travelled instantly through the
universe. But according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, nothing can
go faster than light (but there’s an intriguingly convincing work by Thomas Van
Flandern of the US Naval Observatory back in the mid 1970s proving otherwise
that you can also check out). To overcome these incompatible views, Einstein
introduced another, even grander theory in which space and time are not empty
but are instead like a fabric that can be curved and stretched. This new
picture – in which gravity originates from the bending of sheets of space-time –
revolutionized cosmology and gave us the most compelling theory of creation,
the Big Bang. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Einstein’s Special Relativity was incomplete because it made
no mention of acceleration or gravity. Einstein then made the next key
observation: Motion under gravity and motion in an accelerated frame are
indistinguishable. Since a light beam will bend in a rocket that is accelerating,
a light beam must also bend under gravity. </div>
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<br /></div>
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To show this, Einstein introduced the concept of curved
space. In this interpretation, planets move around the sun not because of a gravitational
pull but because the sun has warped the space around it, and the curvature of space
itself due to the sun pushes the planets. Gravity does not pull you into a
chair; space pushes on you, creating the feeling of weight. Space-time has been
replaced by a fabric that can stretch and bend. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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General relativity can describe the extreme warping of space
caused by the gravity of a massive dead star – a black hole. When we apply
General Relativity to the universe as a whole, one solution naturally describes
an expanding cosmos that originated in a fiery “Big Bang”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the simplest demonstrations using everyday objects to
explain Einstein’s General Relativity that even the youngest school-kids can
grasp is the bowling ball, marble and bedsheet set-up. Put a bowling ball on a
bedsheet and shoot a marble past it. The marble will move in a curved line. A
Newtonian physicist would say that the bowling ball exerts a “force” that “pulls”
on the marble, making it move in a curved line. A Relativist would say that the
ball curves the bedsheet and that the bedsheet “pushes” against the marble. This
“simple” demonstration of Einstein’s General Relativity on how gravity shapes
the cosmic space-time also explains why the 1919 solar eclipse observation that
shows the sun’s gravitational well curving the path of starlight and the
advancing perihelion of the planet Mercury that Newtonian physics is at a loss
to explain why. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Einstein’s General Relativity also shows that gravitational
fields affect the flow of time – making them slow down which was only
demonstrated unequivocably just recently – back in the mid 1990s - when atomic
clocks were accurate enough to show the difference. Without correcting the
effects of General Relativity, the Global Positioning System or GPS signals
from the satellites to your receiving unit would have errors of several parts
per billion – which is enough to make them useless. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Recently, one of the most grandiose experiments to test the
limits of Einstein’s General Relativity was the hunt for gravitational waves.
Physicists can’t yet put the entire universe on a lab bench, but experimental
tests of Einstein’s theories can now be carried out with subatomic precision.
Perhaps the most elusive phenomena predicted by General Relativity – but has
yet to be observed – are gravitational waves. In theory, a cataclysmic event
such as a spiraling merger of two black holes should produce wavelike ripples
in space-time that could still be detectible by the time they reach planet Earth.
Two Earth-based observatories, Advanced LIGO and Advanced VIRGO at the
University of Pisa in Italy, will look for disturbances as small as a
hundred-millionth the diameter of a hydrogen atom.</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-58766668144718428992015-10-11T10:49:00.000-07:002015-10-11T10:49:13.512-07:00Will There Be An Increase In Annular Solar Eclipses? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->Though currently relatively rare, will there be an increase
of occurrences of annular solar eclipses in the future?<br />
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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When it comes to total solar eclipses, annular solar
eclipses offer little, if any, importance to earthbound astronomers despite of
its relative rarity in occurrence. I mean when was the last time an annular
solar eclipse made headline news or was used to verify an astrophysical
hypothesis? And the only well-photographed annular solar eclipsed was the one
that occurred over the North African desert back in December 1955. But believe
it or not, annular solar eclipses could occur more frequently in the future
because the Earth’s Moon is moving farther away from us. </div>
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Ever since its formation and held in orbit, our Moon had
been moving farther away from us because the tidal friction it caused is
slowing down planet earth’s rotation for several billion years. Currently, the
Moon is orbiting 240,000 miles or 384,400 away from us and when it was newly
formed, it was actually 10 times closer and a day on Earth only lasted 2 to 3
hours. But back then, the Earth was rotating faster and the tides were more
than a thousand feet high according to unearthed geological evidences. But over
time, tidal friction caused by the Moon orbiting the Earth slowed the planet’s
rotation to what it is today – 24 hours. </div>
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Ever since the Apollo 11 astronauts installed that quartz
retro-reflector on the Moon back in July 20, 1969 that allowed precise laser
measurements of the Earth-Moon distance down to the nearest fractions of an
inch or millimeter, we have known for sometime now that the Moon is moving away
from us at a rate of 2 to 3 centimeters per year. And it is only a matter of
time that when a total solar eclipse occurs, the Moon is now too far away from
the Earth’s surface to fully cover the Sun – thus the increased frequency of
annular solar eclipses. </div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-40352958528332968242015-08-23T00:45:00.000-07:002015-08-23T00:45:59.846-07:00Faster Than Light Astronomy: The Future Of Astronomy? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->Even though research on the subject is still on the fringes
of mainstream science but will natural phenomena that carries information
faster than the speed of light be the future of astronomy?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many a scientist who criticize SETI – the Search for
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence – using radio waves as a “dead end” because the
186,000 miles-per-second is just too slow for practical interstellar, never
mind intergalactic, communications seems to be currently ignored by the
mainstream global scientific community. And so are those who are currently
investigating into superluminar phenomena in nature that allows data and information
propagation across free space faster than the 186,000 miles-per-second /
400,000 kilometers-per-second speed limit of the speed of light. But if a
naturally occurring phenomena – or an intelligently cleaver coaxing of it –
that allows data transfer and communication faster-than-the-speed-of light not
just represent the future of SETI but also of all branches of astronomy as well? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hints of a faster-than-light data communications that might
occur naturally has not only been speculated but also inferred in scientific
investigations ever since physicist began exploring the limits of Albert
Einstein’s General Relativity when it was published back in 1916.
Astrophysicists during the early 1970s had uncovered – based on data suggested
by the Standard Model quantum mechanics particle accelerator results at that
time – that during the few seconds after the Big Bang, the universe might have
expanded many times faster-than-light, perhaps even sever billion times faster,
but most of them point to a faster-than-light hyperinflation expansion space of
the early universe several seconds old despite current particle accelerators are
still not powerful enough to replicate such conditions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mainstream astronomy’s most exotic – I.e. weirdest
telescopes / astronomical instruments have hinted superluminar /
faster-than-light phenomena since their operation. Various neutrino detectors
that are buried a couple of miles beneath the surface of our planet has since
shown that supernova neutrinos often arrive before the light of the star
undergoing supernova explosion. Case in point is the Supernova 1987A that was
seen back in 1987 whose neutrinos from the supernova’s Large Magellanic Cloud
location arrived to Earth 3 hours before optical telescopes saw the supernova
back in February 23, 1987 because shockwaves from stars going supernova travel
10,000 times slower than the neutrinos before the shockwave blows the entire
star despite neutrinos still travelling at 186,000 miles per second. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Speaking of other exotic / weird astronomical instruments
that suggest the existence of superluminar / faster-than-light propagation of
information in free space, the LIGO – which stands for Laser Interferometer
Gravity-Wave Observatory, the National Science Foundation’s current most
ambitious – and NSF’s current most expensive science experiment at 367-million
US dollars (2002 dollars) has since been upgraded after it failed to detect any
gravitational waves during its operation from 2002 to 2010. The upgraded super-LIGO
is slated to detect concrete evidence of gravitational waves produced by very
energetic astronomical phenomena – like the ones produced via the collision between
two neutron stars or the collision of two black holes – as predicted by Albert
Einstein’s General Relativity when it was published back in 1916. But does LIGO’s
failure to detect gravity waves borne of mainstream astrophysics’ assumption
that the force of gravity propagates across the cosmos at 186,000 miles per
second – i.e. the speed of light? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During the early 1970s, a US Naval Observatory associate
professor Thomas Van Flandern performed a calculation which he later published
in “Physics Letters A” titled “The Speed of Gravity – What Experiments Say” which
demonstrated that the force of gravity propagated at least 20-billion times
faster than the speed of light and may propagate instantaneously across the
universe. Given that Prof. Stephen Hawking had noted in his A Brief History of
Time that the force of gravity propagates at the speed of light across the
universe, does the discrepancy between the two warrants a more thorough investigation
of naturally occurring superluminar / faster-than-light phenomena? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is mainstream science
in general – at present – extremely skeptical when it comes to conducting
experiments / research / reexaminations of empirical evidences of natural
phenomena suggesting the existence of faster-than-light information and signal
propagation across free space? Well, currenly accepted ones suggesting the
existence of faster-than-light information / data propagation, like Albert
Einstein’s Quantum Entanglement in which he nicknamed as the “spooky action at
a distance”, Quantum Tunnelling, the EPR Experiment Paradox – i.e. the Albert
Einstein Boris Podolsky Nathan Rosen Experiment Paradox – all date back from
the 1930s and more recent experiments suggesting the existence of superluminar
phenomena that warrant further investigation seems to be quickly swept under
the rug by mainstream science. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If proven to be true, superluminar phenomena /
faster-than-light phenomena which could form the basis for Superluminar
Astronomy / Faster-Than-Light Astronomy could well revolutionize the science of
astronomy as we know it. Not just by changing our overall picture of the
universe but also having the ability to control robotic spacecraft on distant
planets as if they were just a few miles away using a data transfer / signal
transfer method faster than the speed of light. Imagine being able to control
those robotic rovers on Mars without the 20-minute delay due to the 186,000
miles-per-second speed limit of the speed of light which takes radio waves as
much as 20 minutes to reach the surface of the planet Mars; Or being able to
finally join the “Cosmic Internet” that allowed the free sharing ideas of
intelligent beings across the universe using signals that allow the transfer of
information and signals several billion times faster than the speed of light
across the vast emptiness of interstellar space. </div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><br />
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-77374636023874476992015-07-19T13:13:00.000-07:002015-07-19T13:13:10.407-07:00The New Horizons Spacecraft: One Giant Leap For Robotic Space Exploration? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--> Despite their limitations in comparison to human space
explorers, is the New Horizon spacecraft demonstrates the best of our current robotic
spacecraft ability?<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite of the post Cold War austere fiscal environment at
NASA, the recent successes demonstrated by the New Horizons spacecraft
currently taking our clearest snapshots of Pluto so far can be quite inspiring
to anyone interested in astronomy and space exploration as a whole. Given the
spacecraft’s recent accomplishment despite being built on a “relatively” shoestring
budget of 700 million US dollars is no mean feat indeed. </div>
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<br /></div>
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When NASA’s task-masters at Capitol Hill green lit the New
Horizons program back in 2001 and the four year timetable on the construction
of the craft for its scheduled launched at the beginning of 2006 are just one
of the miracles successfully pulled off by the New Horizons spacecraft. If the
funding and launch timetable was delayed to several weeks after the
International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto is no longer a planet, the
“princes” at Capitol Hill would probably had scrapped the funding of the New
Horizons program. In honor of Pluto’s discoverer, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh,
Tombaugh’s ashes was taken onboard as payload on the New Horizons spacecraft so
that he can achieve the closest physically possible of actually visiting Pluto
first hand. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Due to its distance and small size, the world’s astronomical
community have virtually little interest on the planet Pluto that between the
cataloguing of the planet via “old school” astronomical photographic plates by
Clyde Tombaugh in the 1930s and astronomer Carl Lampland in the 1950s, the
actual location of Pluto’s orbit could be in error by as much as 62,000 miles.
It was only after 1990 that the global astronomical community’s orbital data accuracy
on Pluto became on par of that of the planets Uranus and Neptune. It is only
understandably so due to Pluto’s remoteness at over 3 billion miles away from
planet Earth and since Clyde Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto in 1930, astronomers
here on Earth had only “witnessed” about 1/3 of its almost 250-year orbit
around our Sun. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The recent New Horizons spacecraft’s successful 8,000 mile “close
flyby” would not have happened without the due diligence of one of the New
Horizons program’s co investigator Dr. Marc Buie due to a lack of usefully
accurate data on Pluto’s orbit and actual distance from the Sun. By 2012, the
New Horizon’s team was concerned on the lack of accurate orbital data on the
planet Pluto that Dr. Buie actually did his own legwork at the Lowell
Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona in order to reexamine around 1,000 of astronomical
photographic plates of Pluto taken by Clyde Tombaugh and Carl Lampland during
1930 to 1950. The new computational data acquired by Dr. Buie became very
indispensible in programming the New Horizon’s spacecraft’s trajectory so that
when it encounters Pluto by July 2015, it will be within 8,000 miles – as opposed
to 62,000 miles away. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Due to its destination’s remoteness from the Sun where the
ambient strength of sunlight is only 1/1000<sup>th</sup> found here on Earth, the
use of solar panels is out of the question in the New Horizons spacecraft.
Instead, it uses a plutonium-239 powered thermoelectric reactor similar to that
used in the Voyager spacecraft to power its systems. Due to Pluto’s remoteness,
it took nine and a half years for New Horizons to reach its Pluto flyby despite
travelling 1 million miles a day at 51,000 miles per hour. </div>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-63856424272056578312015-04-29T05:28:00.002-07:002017-08-20T20:29:20.587-07:00Hubble Space Telescope’s 25th Anniversary<div class="MsoNormal">
Even though it is slated to be retired in five years time,
is there still life left in the Hubble Space telescope?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By: Ringo Bones <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since its launch into low earth orbit by the Space Shuttle
Discovery back in April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has proven itself
to be the proverbial “little telescope that could”. Freed from the inherent
turbulence of the earth’s atmosphere by placing it in orbital space, the Hubble
Space Telescope has the potential to be far better than any earthbound
telescope that has come before. But for its entire 25-year lifespan is not
totally free from controversy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When it was found out that its primary mirror was misshapen –
as in light rays hitting the mirror’s edge is reflected differently in
comparison to the light rays hitting the center of the mirror by as much as
one-thirteenth the thickness of the human hair which significantly affected its
performance when looking at distant galaxies tens of millions of light-years
away. The mainstream press dubbed it the 2-billion dollar blunder upon hearing
the news and some folks – most of them your right-wing conservative types – are
the ones voicing the loudest criticisms of the fledgling space telescope. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For all intents and purposes, Reagan era “conservative”
America may have something to do on why the misshapen main mirror of the Hubble
Space Telescope was overlooked and was only found out after it was sent into
space. Perkin Elmer – the Hubble Space Telescope’s main mirror contractor –
wasn’t allowed to verify if they’ve ground the mirror accurate enough using the
test jig at the then Lockheed Aircraft Corporation (before they merged with the
famed cruise missile manufacturer Martin Marietta). Given that it was still the
height of the Cold War, Hubble’s main mirror never got the opportunity for troubleshooting
in an optical test jig at Lockheed where they test the main mirrors of NSA’s 1980s era Keyhole Reconnaissance Satellites for fears that the then Soviet Union might know the optical capabilities of the 1980s era U.S. spy satellites – thus the “blunder” that got overlooked. But
given that the main mirror was misshapen in such a precise manner, folks at
NASA managed to device a “contact lens” to correct the Hubble Space Telescope’s
misshapen main mirror – at a fraction of the total cost of the space telescope.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With a Space Shuttle flight to fix the Hubble back in
December 2, 1993, a team of NASA astronauts led by Story Musgrave managed to
install the “contact lens package” – as in the COSTAR corrective optics module
- to fix the Hubble. The mission was totally worth it when in July 16, 1994 the
Hubble Space Telescope managed to give humanity a “ringside seat” to the crash
of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 to the planet Jupiter. Then came the “Hubble Deep
Field” series of images and a host of other images that forever changed the
science of astronomy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the Hubble Space Telescope is truly the “space based telescope
that could”. As in the Hubble consumes as much power as a household electric
clothes drier and its “jitter spec” is of 0.007 arc-second accuracy – in layman’s
terms it is like pointing a hand-held laser pointer on the top of the
Washington Monument and keep it steady enough to aim at a dime on top of the Empire
State Building while keeping it steady enough to keep the laser point or spot
aimed squarely at Roosevelt’s profile on the said dime. Another "weird fact" is that the mechanical parts of the Hubble Space Telescope is lubricated by sperm whale oil given that during the mid 1980s - during the time period of the famed telescope's construction phase at Lockheed - it was the only lubricant available at the time that wouldn't seize up in the weightlessness and extreme temperature swings of outer space conditions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since the late 1990s, the Hubble Space Telescope has been
slated for replacement. The James Webb Space Telescope which will be placed
over a million miles away from earth. If its specs can be trusted, the James
Webb Space Telescope has the potential to detect any earth-like planet within
10,000 light-years. And despite its age and scores of upgrades later, it seems
that the Hubble Space Telescope’s “imminent” retirement 5 years from now is not
yet certain given that it was originally designed to last for only 15 years.</div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-4200931711027755852015-03-08T12:50:00.001-07:002015-03-08T12:50:51.916-07:00Will The Dawn Spacecraft Uncover Something New From Ceres? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Given it is still a virtually unexplored part of out Solar
System, will the Dawn spacecraft uncover something new from Ceres? </div>
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<br /></div>
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since its launch in
2007, there has been scant press coverage on the Dawn spacecraft and its
intended destination – a region in our Solar System that lie between the
planets Mars and Jupiter called the asteroid belt. Besides some Earth like
asteroids fictionalized in the first season of The Twilight Zone, it seems that
the asteroid belt is an out of sight out of mind part of our Solar System.
Fortunately, the recent pictures sent by the Dawn spacecraft has slightly
peaked everyone’s interest of these so-called “dwarf planets” – as they are now
called by the International Astronomical Union – that reside in the asteroid
belt. </div>
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<br /></div>
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As of Friday, March 6, 2015, the Dawn spacecraft entered the
orbit of Ceres. According to the mission’s chief engineer Marc Rayman at NASA’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the 473-million US dollar mission
says: “It went exactly the way we expected. Dawn gently, elegantly slid into
Ceres’ gravitational embrace.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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Ceres is the second and final stop for Dawn, a robotic spacecraft
that was launched in 2007 on a voyage to the main asteroid belt, a zone between
Mars and Jupiter that’s littered with rocky leftovers that dates back from the
formation of the Sun and the planets some 4.5 billion years ago. Dawn will
spend 16 months photographing the icy surface of Ceres. Dawn previously spent a
year at Vesta – the only “dwarf planet” of the asteroid belt that can occasionally
seen with the naked eye from the Earth’s surface, exploring the asteroid’s
surface and sending back stunning close-ups of its lumpy surface before
cruising onto the Texas-sized Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The 4.8 billion kilometer trip was made possible by Dawn’s
ion propulsion engines which provide a gentle yet constant acceleration and are
more efficient than chemical-based rocket thrusters. As Dawn approaches Ceres,
it beamed back the best pictures ever taken of the “dwarf planet”. Some
puzzling images revealed a pair of shiny patches inside a crater – signs of
possible ice or salt – which is something that can’t be seen by earthbound
telescopes. Marc Rayman says that the Dawn spacecraft is currently in Ceres’
shadows and won’t take new pictures until it emerges in April, he said. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Since its discovery in the evening of January 1, 1801 by the
Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, Ceres has intrigued generations of
astronomers. Ceres measures 965-kilometers (600 miles) in diameter and is named
after the Roman goddess of agriculture and harvest. It was initially called a
planet before it was demoted into an asteroid and more recently classified as a
“dwarf planet”. Like true blue planets, dwarf planets are spherical in shape
because their size or mass generates enough gravitation for it to attain
hydrostatic equilibrium and thus attaining a spherical shape unlike the smaller
oddly-shaped asteroids. </div>
Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6929681576205319273.post-89975097258838233812014-11-22T23:18:00.000-08:002014-11-22T23:18:44.024-08:00The Rosetta Probe: The Little Spacecraft That Could? <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Launched from earth over a decade ago to rendezvous with a
comet more than half a billion miles away from earth, is the Rosetta Probe the
little robotic spacecraft that could? </div>
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By: Ringo Bones </div>
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When it was launched off the Arianne spaceport in French
Guiana back in March 2, 2004, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Probe with a
mission to rendezvous with a comet more 10 years later could for all intents
and purposes pass muster as a mission to the unknown. The craft was placed in a
decade long hibernation once it escaped the bonds of earth’s gravity and was
reactivated earlier this year. It gained headline news status and attention of
the major news networks when it successfully caught up to and orbited around Comet
67P - also known as Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko - during the middle of November 2014. Although once it – more or less –
successfully landed the Philae Lander on the surface of Comet 67P back in
November 15, 2014 did the Rosetta Space Probe became the little spacecraft that
could. </div>
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The major unavoidable hazard of launching space-probes on
long-duration space missions is that when they arrive at their destinations, they
will inevitably be using what was the state-of-the-art technology at the time
of their launch date. The Rosetta Probe’s 4-megapixel Osiris camera – although very
state-of-the-art back when it was designed and built back in 2003 – is somewhat
quaint by comparison to the built in cameras used on entry level mobile smart-phone
cameras circa 2014, except the Rosetta Probe’s mere 4-megapixel camera – though
lacking in resolution in comparison to contemporary consumer counterparts – can
see portions of the electromagnetic spectrum that the latest i-Phone can’t with
quantum efficiencies better than Ronald Reagan era Keyhole reconnaissance satellites. </div>
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Although it was the Philae Lander that eventually became the
star of the show when it successfully landed on the surface of Comet 67P
despite a “shaky” bouncy landing due to the failure of deployment of the beryllium-copper
harpoons supposedly used to anchor the Lander on the surface of the comet
because the gravitational pull on the surface of Comet 67P is 100,000 times
less than that on the earth’s surface. The washing machine sized Philae Lander –
which weighs 100-kilograms on the earth’s surface – only weighs 1 gram on the
surface of Comet 67P thus the necessity of the beryllium-copper harpoons needed
to anchor the Lander firmly on the comet’s surface. </div>
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Even though Professor Derrick Pitts – chief astronomer of
the Franklin Institute – was concerned when the Philae Lander bounced off into
a dark part / shadowy cliff of the surface of the Comet 67P which it can’t use
its solar photovoltaic panels to power its instruments in analyzing the
composition of the comet, the Lander had enough juice in its on-board reserve
batteries to do a series of scientific analysis of the comet and sent the
valuable data back to earth before losing power and reverting to sleep mode.
Preliminary analysis of the data sent by the Philae Lander has shown that it
has detected a wealth of organic compounds on the comet’s surface near the
landing zone. And it is also worth mentioning that at the distance between Comet 67P / Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and earth, radio signals sent from the Philae Lander - even moving at 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometers per second - takes almost an hour to arrive to the satellite telemetry sites tuned in to the Lander here on earth. </div>
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Ringohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09506068154852505840noreply@blogger.com1