Great Images: The Ant Nebula

The image at right, titled the Ant Nebula, was first captured in 1997 by the Hubble Space Telescope and is available on Hubblesite.org.  The accompanying description of what we are seeing may say something about our own future as well:

From ground-based telescopes, the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz 3) resembles the head and thorax of a garden-variety ant. This dramatic NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, showing 10 times more detail, reveals the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying, Sun-like star.

The Hubble images directly challenge old ideas about the last stages in the lives of stars. By observing Sun-like stars as they approach their deaths, the Hubble Heritage image of Mz 3 — along with pictures of other planetary nebulae — shows that our Sun's fate probably will be more interesting, complex, and striking than astronomers imagined just a few years ago. 

Though approaching the violence of an explosion, the ejection of gas from the dying star at the center of Mz 3 has intriguing symmetrical patterns unlike the chaotic patterns expected from an ordinary explosion. Scientists using Hubble would like to understand how a spherical star can produce such prominent, non-spherical symmetries in the gas that it ejects. 

One possibility is that the central star of Mz 3 has a closely orbiting companion that exerts strong gravitational tidal forces, which shape the outflowing gas. For this to work, the orbiting companion star would have to be close to the dying star, about the distance of the Earth from the Sun. At that distance the orbiting companion star wouldn't be far outside the hugely bloated hulk of the dying star. It's even possible that the dying star has consumed its companion, which now orbits inside of it, much like the duck in the wolf's belly in the story "Peter and the Wolf." 

A second possibility is that, as the dying star spins, its strong magnetic fields are wound up into complex shapes like spaghetti in an eggbeater. Charged winds moving at speeds up to 1000 kilometers per second from the star, much like those in our Sun's solar wind but millions of times denser, are able to follow the twisted field lines on their way out into space. These dense winds can be rendered visible by ultraviolet light from the hot central star or from highly supersonic collisions with the ambient gas that excites the material into florescence.

Space Quotes: President Kennedy

We have learned more about President Kennedy now that we have greater access to his secret tapings from the Oval Office.  One quote in particular recently noted in a New York Times article caught my eye:

In a meeting in November 1962, the president bluntly told James Webb, the NASA administrator, that putting a man on the moon was his top priority. Mr. Webb said it was more important to understand the environment of space, prompting Mr. Kennedy to say, “If we get second to the Moon, it’s nice, but it’s like being second anytime.” 

Mr. Webb continued to push back, prompting the president to spell it out: “I’m not that interested in space,” he said, only in beating the Russians. 

As I have noted here earlier, the arms race was the controlling issue in the 1960s.  This only confirms it further.  Maybe we need to start considering how we can beat the Chinese or at least ensure they do not eventually beat us at our own game. 

New Moons Around Pluto

While Pluto might no longer be considered a planet, NASA still plans to visit the dwarf planet via New Horizons in July 2015.  Launched in 20016, the New Horizons space craft is already half-way to Pluto after passing Uranus. 

In preparation for the flight, the Hubble space telescope has been monitoring Pluto's neighborhood to make sure the New Horizons spacecraft does not smack into any unknown objects.  This turned out to be a pretty good idea since Hubble has already discovered two new moons over the course of about a year. 

In July 2011, NASA announced the discovery of a fourth moon, labeled P4.  This new moon has a diameter of only 8 to 21 miles, making it small enough to escape detection all of these years but large enough to cause problems for a NASA mission.  And this past July, Hubble located Pluto's fifth moon, P5 (yes, this naming is quite creative).  P5 is even smaller than P4.  Oddly, NASA's New Horizons website has yet to announce this discovery.  The graphic below provides some size comparisons.

Remember, Hubble located the second and third moon, Nix and Hydra, back in 2005.  The largest moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978 by the U.S. Naval Observatory.  Pluto and its moons reside inside the Kuiper Belt about 3 billion miles from the Sun.

If you are looking for more on why Pluto is no longer a "real" planet, you can always read Mike Brown's book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.  Mike Brown is the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology,  As he explains, not everyone was happy with his discovery of 10th planet, Eris:

My daughter Lilah, now five years old, is mad at me for killing Pluto. When I began a project 13 years ago to chart the slowly-moving objects of the distant outer solar system, my goal was never to pull Pluto off of its cherished planetary pedestal. I wanted to be a planet discoverer, like William Herschel or Clyde Tombaugh before me. I had a strong feeling that somewhere out there something bigger than Pluto was lurking, and I knew that whoever found it would get to claim the mantle as the only living planet discoverer. 

I was right. Something bigger than Pluto was out there (or at least something more massive than Pluto; sizes are a little harder to pin down precisely) and one January morning in 2005, my small team of astronomers and I found it. We announced the discovery of the 10th planet to an unsuspecting world late on the afternoon of Lilah’s 22nd day of life. A little after her first birthday, though, the doors to the planetary club were locked and Pluto and my own discovery were kicked out on the curb. The solar system was down to only eight planets.

Is ARC Still Active?

I have been linking my site to the Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC) for some time now but the site has been inactive for years.  For example, the last news clipping was from August 2006.  It is really unclear if this group is kaput or has merged into something else.  The mission of ARC was to

... protect the human species and its civilization from destruction that could result from a global catastrophic event, including nuclear war, acts of terrorism, plague and asteroid collisions. To fulfill its mission, ARC is dedicated to creating continuously staffed facilities on the Moon and other locations away from Earth. These facilities will preserve backups of scientific and cultural achievements, and of the species important to our civilization. In the event of a global catastrophe, the ARC facilities will be prepared to reintroduce lost technology, art, history, crops, livestock and,if necessary, even human beings to the Earth.

We certainly still need something like ARC to deal with potential problems here on Earth, though it appears the ARC team has moved on to other (more important?) matters.

The genesis of ARC goes back to William E. Burrow's 2006 book The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth.  In the summary to the book, we read:

We are living through one of the most dangerous times in human history. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons technology are proliferating, and missile technology is falling into more and more hands. Extreme natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, fires, and earthquakes, are becoming increasingly costly - not only in dollars, but in lives - as population expands. Environmental crises threaten to provoke massive famines and widespread social collapse. Asteroids the size of battleships streak within striking distance of the earth every year.

Not much has changed over the past few years, so the idea of a project to preserve some of what we have and know is a fine idea.  Unfortunately, it does not appear to be on NASA's radar, so more will need to be done by other public and private groups.

Some government efforts are already underway.  For example, the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in the UK has been storing seeds with its partners in 50 countries to ensure we do not  lose them to extinction (see the Wakehurst Seed Bank area to the right).  The Partnership already has stored more than 10 percent of the world's seeds and aims for 25 percent by 2020.

Norway's government established the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitsbergen island deep inside a mountain (see below).  This is often called the Doomsday Vault.  The Vault stores duplicates, or back ups, of seed samples from around the world. Given its location, deep within thick rock, the Vault can keep its seeds in a frozen state for thousands of years even if the location were to lose power. Of course, with global warming and even disasters that can readily change the Earth's atmosphere may change that equation. 

Both of these seed banks are a good start, though of course these seeds are being stored Earth-side, which is what ARC was trying to correct by putting this history (and future) into space as well.

Another group with a broader mission is the Lifeboat Foundation. From its mission statement, you might get the impression that the Foundation is more concerned about a human-initiated disaster than a stray asteroid:

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.

Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.

At first, I thought the Foundation has some ideas that are closer to what ARC envisioned.  For instance, the Foundation's Ark I is a project is to build a space colony of 1,000 hearty individuals to survive a disaster on Earth.  What is strange is that the initial selling point for the space colony is to escape from a world that continually invades your privacy.  In fact, ARK I is defined as the "ultimate gated community":

On Earth it is essential that diverse groups learn to live in close proximity. It’s hard to live with six or seven billion homo sapiens, and some people can’t seem to do it gracefully. Space settlements offer an alternative to changing human nature or endless conflict — the ability to live in fairly homogeneous groups, as has been the norm throughout hundreds of thousands of years of human existence. Those who can’t get along can be separated by millions of miles of hard vacuum, which in some cases seems necessary. All entry into a space settlement must be through an airlock, so controlling immigration should be trivial.

Hence, the first thought is to run away from a meddling Earth rather than to save its civilization.  This libertarian thread is often more pronounced than any scientific thread.  And why would you want a "homogeneous group" if you are trying to preserve what makes the Earth unique?  What races are you leaving to fend for themselves on Earth?  This is not an ark but rather a luxury cruise ship.

Other ongoing and planned projects include AsteroidShield, LifeShield Bunkers, SeedPreserver, and SunShield (yes, pretty long-term if we are waiting for the sun's red giant phase).  Such projects seem very reasonable in terms of future planning, though I am concerned that this organization might have a preference for who and what survives.

So do we have a solely scientific endeavor to maintain civilization off-planet?  I am still looking but I have not found anything yet.  And I would not mind a couple of competing endeavors so that we do not put all of our eggs in one savior basket.  Maybe the Chinese are working on something.  I will check back later.

A New Black Hole in our Galaxy?

NASA reported last week that the Swift satellite has detected X-rays from a new black hole close to the center of our Milky Way galaxy.  According to a NASA press release: 

"The pattern we're seeing is observed in X-ray novae where the central object is a black hole. Once the X-rays fade away, we hope to measure its mass and confirm its black hole status," said Boris Sbarufatti, an astrophysicist at Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy, who currently is working with other Swift team members at Penn State in University Park, Pa. 

The black hole must be a member of a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) system, which includes a normal, sun-like star. A stream of gas flows from the normal star and enters into a storage disk around the black hole. In most LMXBs, the gas in the disk spirals inward, heats up as it heads toward the black hole, and produces a steady stream of X-rays.  

The Milky way may have quite a few black holes.  A February 2012 Mail news story noted:

If the roughly 200 globular clusters in the Milky Way have indeed spawned intermediate-sized black holes, this means that hundreds of them are probably wandering invisibly around the Milky Way, waiting to engulf the nebulae, stars and planets that are unfortunate enough to cross their paths. 

Fortunately, the existence of a few rogue black holes in the neighbourhood does not present a major danger. 

‘These rogue black holes are extremely unlikely to do any damage to us in the lifetime of the universe,’ Holley-Bockelmann stressed. ‘Their danger zone, the Schwarzschild radius, is really tiny, only a few hundred kilometres. There are far more dangerous things in our neighbourhood!’ 

Black holes seem to be quite ubiquitous these days, though I never want to see one in our neighborhood.

SpaceX: Mixed Results

After a rough start, the SpaceX Dragon capsule has reached the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday morning with new supplies.  Unlike the test mission earlier this year, this was the first of hopefully many resupply runs that NASA has contracted for.  The capsule should remain attached to the ISS for about 18 days.

The mission was off to a shaky start on Sunday when one of the nine first-stage engines shut down shortly after the launch.  According to SpaceX:

Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night’s launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket’s nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued. We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines. Our review of flight data indicates that neither the rocket stage nor any of the other eight engines were negatively affected by this event.

What  SpaceX did not mention in its press release is that the engine failure probably doomed an Orbcomm satellite that was hitching a ride on the resupply run.  According to an Orbcomm press release:

The OG2 prototype satellite, flying as a secondary payload on this mission, was separated from the Falcon 9 launch vehicle at approximately 9:00 pm EST. However, due to an anomaly on one of the Falcon 9’s first stage engines, the rocket did not comply with a pre-planned International Space Station (ISS) safety gate to allow it to execute the second burn. For this reason, the OG2 prototype satellite was deployed into an orbit that was lower than intended. ORBCOMM and Sierra Nevada Corporation engineers have been in contact with the satellite and are working to determine if and the extent to which the orbit can be raised to an operational orbit using the satellite’s on-board propulsion system.

This was presumably the first of nine satellites that Orbcomm hopes to place into orbit via SpaceX.  If SpaceX wants a revenue stream beyond NASA, it will need to ensure the Falcon 9 rocket is error free in the future.  Nonetheless, the ISS mission is another big step for the company.

Update:  On October 28th, SpaceX's Dragon capsule safely landed in the Pacific Ocean with return cargo, including scientific samples.  This completes the first private sector resupply missions of the ISS.  

Science Friday: Mars Contamination

Last month NPR's Science Friday program had an interesting story on the Curiosity mission, noting how the craft may have been contaminated prior to its launch.  Specifically, the program noted that part of Curiosity's drill may have been exposed to microbes on Earth before the rover launched to Mars. 

During the broadcast, Catharine Conley, NASA’s planetary protection officer, walks the listener through NASA sterilization procedures, as well as the risk to the Mars mission.  The bottom line is that Ms. Conley is troubled by sloppy procedures but not too concerned about the mission since Gale Crater is not expected to have any water or ice, which would be subject to Earth contamination.

Another piece on the matter from The Christian Science Monitor notes:

“Water or ice near the surface in Gale Crater was not a significant probability,” said David Lavery, program executive for solar system exploration at NASA headquarters. “We weighed that against the risks of not having a bit mounted in the drill prior to launch, and the specter of not being able to drill any holes at all on Mars.”

“Of course, there is always a possibility that Mars will surprise us,” Lavery said.

Given the significant investment and hopes related to this mission, it would have been best to follow procedure and not jeopardize any aspect of the critical science.  Hopefully, NASA made the right decision.  The Monitor article goes on to state:

Conley’s predecessor at NASA, John D. Rummel, a professor of biology at East Carolina University, said, partly in jest: “It will be a sad day for NASA if they do detect ice or water. That’s because the Curiosity project will most likely be told, ‘Gee, that’s nice. Now turn around.'"

I recommend subscribing to the Science Friday podcast.  You will also be able to tap into other great Mars stories such as:

-- Martian Lab Made in Manhattan (Aug. 10, 2012):  

Curiosity carries one of the most "complicated instruments ever to land on the surface of another planet," according to NASA. The rover's  "Sample Analysis at Mars" -- which can take dirt and crushed rock from the Red Planet and analyze those samples for indicators of alien life -- was partly built in the Big Apple by Honeybee Robotics. Flora Lichtman got a tour of the facility.

-- Mars Excitement: Back to the Future (Aug. 08, 2012):

The excitement about the first pictures of Mars' surface coming back from the Curiosity mission to Mars is déjà vu all over again. I recall being at Jet Propulsion Laboratory during the Viking missions to Mars back in the mid 1970s and feeling the joy and exhilaration of seeing the first pictures ever sent back to Earth from another planet when Viking 1 touched down in July 1976. Think about it: The first pictures ever sent back from the surface of another planet! 

-- Carl Sagan's Welcome to Mars (Aug. 08, 2012):

Shortly before his death in 1996, astronomer and science broadcaster Carl Sagan recorded a message for future Mars explorers:

"Maybe we’re on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there — the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we’re on Mars because we have to be, because there’s a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process — we come, after all, from hunter-gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we’ve been wanderers. And the next place to wander to is Mars. But whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you."