Interview with Dr. Stephen Hawking

For some light entertainment, you may want to view John Oliver's interview with Dr. Stephen Hawking as the discuss time travel, artificial intelligence, and parallel universes.  Dr. Hawking proves he has a sense of humor though all of it.  The HBO show is called Last Week Tonight, and the series is called Great Minds: People Who Think Good. 

Dr. Hawking has spoken on artificial intelligence in other more serious forums and provides us with a pretty dire warning.  In The Independent, Dr. Hawking wrote:

One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.

Something to ponder as we rush headlong into the future.

Questions About NASA's Budget Plans

Phil Plait had a good article in Slate earlier this week that questions NASA's reliance on the planned Space Launch System (SLS), noting it may be a drag on entire space program, enrich large contractors over smaller, more nimble competitors (e.g., SpaceX), and keep us on a path that relies on the Russians for entry into space.  Not a very good series of events.  He notes, 

Bottom line: [Senator] Shelby’s addition makes it easier for SLS to get built, and harder for commercial companies to build their own vehicles to send humans into space (and, importantly, can do it far, far cheaper than SLS can). That means we’ll have to rely on the Russians more for the time being. That’s something we really, really need to stop doing. They’re gouging us for rides to space, and their political situation isn’t exactly the most conducive for us right now...And worst of all, we still don’t have a clear and sustained purpose for SLS. Our government wants to spend billions upon billions of dollars on a rocket for no defined reason. It’s maddening. 

This is what you get when you run a space program via a committee of 535 politicians who are more interested in the jobs for their districts than the overall benefits for mankind.  Maybe the silver lining concerning tensions with Russia is that we start to think of competing in space again.  That seemed to get us to the moon, and it may be necessary to get us to Mars.

Image Credit:  NASA - http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/623766main_8143_Singer-AD_industry_day-021312_FINAL3.pdf

The Returning Ghost Ship

If you recall the first Star Trek movie in 1979, a returning spacecraft caused quite a bit of carnage on its way back to Earth.  In that case it was V'GER, but we are now faced with a real returning spacecraft from many years ago called ISEE.  It sound as mysterious, if not all-knowing, but we have this one figured out from the start.

The International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) was launched back in 1978, one year before the Star

Trek movie, to study solar winds.  It was later re-purposed as the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) to study the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner on September 11, 1985.  The spacecraft was decommissioned in May 1997 and NASA lost the ability to communicate with the spacecraft in 1999.  But now it is back, and the rest of the story involves space piracy, a McDonald's restaurant, and a company called Skycorp that sounds a lot like a company from the movie Terminator (and we know how that ended for everyone). 


ISEE-3/ICE is approaching the Earth and a few private scientists have asked NASA for permission to communicate with the spacecraft one last time using funds obtained through crowd-funding.  The scientists hope to reorient the spacecraft so it can conduct more solar wind work.  The whole story and cast of characters was well-told in a New York Times article last Sunday.  It's quite a tale and we can only hope ISEE-3/ICE is a little less confused than V-GER as it approaches Earth. 

Update:  The attempt to restart the spacecraft failed earlier this month.  The team stated, "...we think there is a chance that the Nitrogen used as a pressuring for the monopropellant Hydrazine propulsion system may have been depleted."  However, the team is not giving up.  They believe they can heat up the fuel tank to free up the required Nitrogen.  Stay tuned. 

Beware the City-Busters from On High

Don Yeomans from the Near Earth Object Program Office in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been in the news discussing the risk of asteroid strikes here on Earth.  Back on June 9th he was the featured scientist in Time magazine's "The Man Who Guards The Planet," and more recently he has interviewed on 60 Minutes by Anderson Cooper in an episode titled Cosmic Roulette.  The story accompanying the 60 Minutes piece notes:

Though scientists are keeping an eye on most of the large asteroids and comets capable of causing global destruction by colliding with Earth, they have been able to track only one percent of the smaller ones that are capable of destroying an entire city, Anderson Cooper reports this Sunday on 60 Minutes. Cooper's story also reveals that NASA scientists first learned about the asteroid that exploded in Russia in February from Twitter and YouTube. There was no advance warning.

The issue is getting attention, but it is getting funding?  Barely, at about $40 million in 2013.  We are not too good about self-preservation unless the danger is clear and present, which is unlikely on the cosmic scale we need to deal with here.  And few nations have the luxury of peering into the heavens while man is so capable of creating a hell here on Earth, the latest being Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq.  With the U.S. carrying about 98 percent of the burden, it would be nice to have a few more nations on board. 

You can visit the NEO website if you want to learn more about the asteroid detection process and even learn about the next near approaches by the monitored asteroids.  As you can see from the table below, two were scheduled to make near passes today (2014 HN178 and 2007 FY20). 

I'm glad someone is tracking these items, though I am not so sure we will have the necessary 20-30 years warning to properly prepare. 

Crater Image and Table Credit:  http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/meteorcrater.html

Don Yeomans Image Credit:  Time magazine

Looking for that Next Earth

A lot of attention is being paid to the newly discovered Kepler 10c, a planet twice as large as Earth and 17 times heavier.  About 560 light years from Earth, this planet takes 45 days to orbit its sun.  In the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics press release announcing the finding, researcher Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiatives, stated "This is the Godzilla of Earths!" But unlike the movie monster, Kepler-10c has positive implications for life."

What I find even more interesting is the age of  the solar system hosting Kepler-10.  It is about 11 billion years old, having formed less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang.  So in addition to a planet more than twice the size of Earth, it is also more than twice as old.  What does this rocky world tell us about the available elements for planet building.  And what has been happening on that planet all this time? 

Estimates on the number of Earth-like planets and the likelihood of life continue to abound.  One recent paper, Assessing the Possibility of Biological Complexity on Other Worlds, with an Estimate of the Occurrence of Complex Life in the Milky Way Galaxy, put the estimated number of Earth-like planets about about 100 million in the Milky Way alone.  The paper concludes, "It supports the view that the evolution of complex life on other worlds is rare in frequency but large in absolute number." That provides ample ammunition for many more stories about new worlds. 

Great Image: Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Last week NASA released an amazing image of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope that took 9 years to create. It is a beautiful composite of of more than 10,000 colorful galaxies stretching back to the beginning of the universe.  Here is the official explanation from NASA: 

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have assembled a comprehensive picture of the evolving universe – among the most colorful deep space images ever captured by the 24-year-old telescope.

Researchers say the image, in new study called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, provides the missing link in star formation. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014 image is a composite of separate exposures taken in 2003 to 2012 with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3.

Astronomers previously studied the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) in visible and near-infrared light in a series of images captured from 2003 to 2009. The HUDF shows a small section of space in the southern-hemisphere constellation Fornax. Now, using ultraviolet light, astronomers have combined the full range of colors available to Hubble, stretching all the way from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. The resulting image -- made from 841 orbits of telescope viewing time -- contains approximately 10,000 galaxies, extending back in time to within a few hundred million years of the big bang.

Image Credit:  http://hubblesite.org/news/2014/27

One Step Closer to US Flights to the ISS

With the unveiling of SpaceX's Dragon V2 last week, the United States is that much closer to flying its own astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) as it once did under the US space shuttle program.  After multiple successful Dragon V1 resupply missions to the ISS, SpaceX is taking the next step to carry humans.  Elon Musk walked an audience through the features of the spacecraft at the unveiling. 

What will be unique about this reusable spacecraft is that it will return to Earth and land like a helicopter, unlike the sea-splashing capsules or even the plane-like landing of the shuttles.  The Dragon V2 will still have a parachute for emergency backup during landing.  And the new spacecraft can carry up to seven astronauts, though they will sit in two tiers while being transported to the ISS.  The Dragon V2 is a capsule and not a working platform similar to the shuttle where the astronauts can move around and conduct their work.  However, SpaceX has also created the unmanned DragonLab that serves as a stand-alone platform for research.

In partnership with NASA, SpaceX is moving us in the right direction and away from dependence on the Russians.

Upcoming International Space Station Conference

The 3rd International Space Station Research and Development Conference takes place in Chicago next month.  From June 17-19, 2014, participants will meet at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place in Chicago to discuss a variety of topics such as:

- Life Sciences in Microgravity;
- ISS: Pathways to Mars; and
- Entrepreneurship on the ISS- Case Studies.
 

There is still time to register.  

It is good to see the science and planning continues while NASA and its Russian counterparts still argue about the future of the space station.  Ultimately we want to ensure we continue to obtain solid achievements from our $100 billion investment, whether we do it in unison with or without the Russians.

NASA Cannot Do it Alone

Maybe we need Hollywood to help us to dream.  Whether it is the hopeful future portrayed by Star Trek, the encounter with a alien race in the movie Contact, or the horrible space accident in the most recent move Gravity, it always helps to have the imaginative powers of Hollywood on your side.  The same is true with the upcoming Christopher Nolan move Interstellar.  If this trailer does not get you excited about what may be out there and what we may yet do as a space-faring people, I am not sure what will. 

Great Image: Moon and Saturn Occultation

 

The composite image above shows the Moon Saturn Occultation from May 14th.  Created by amateur astronomer Paul Steward (see more of his work here), it was highlighted by Phil Plait in his Slate magazine column:

While these two tracks cross each other, it’s relatively rare for the Moon and Saturn to be at the same place at the same time. But it does happen, and it’s called an occultation. The Moon slowly covers Saturn, blocking it for some time, then once again moves out of the way to reveal the ringed planet. In this case, the timing of the May 14 occultation made it visible only for observers in the southern hemisphere, specifically Australia and New Zealand.

Image Credit:  Paul Steward, New Zeland

...and the End of the Universe

PBS has created a short video to discuss the life expectancy of the Earth and the universe itself.  The 5 and a half minute video is called The Far Future of the Universe and is part of PBS digitalstudios' It's okay to Be Smart series.  In the video, host Joe Hanson provides a number of useful mileposts for the future, including:

• In 100,000 years not a single constellation we know today will be recognizable;
• In 600 million years photosynthesis will end for 99 percent of the Earth's plants;
• In 1 billion years the sun will boil away the Earth's oceans and only bacteria will remain (see image above - the Earth looks like Mars);
• In 4 billion years the Milky Way galaxy will collide with the Adromena galaxy;
• In 7.9 billion years our Sun will expand to swallow Mercury and Venus; and
• In 110 trillion years all stars throughout the universe will flicker out.

But wait, there's more.  The Earth still may still exist after all of that.  Go to the video to learn more.  It is a fascinating tale.   

The Beginning of the Universe...

If you want to see how the universe expanded into what we see today, or at least see a computer simulation of this process, you should visit the Illustris project.  Here is how the site defiines the project:

The Illustris project is a set of large-scale cosmological simulations, including the most ambitious simulation of galaxy formation yet performed. The calculation tracks the expansion of the universe, the gravitational pull of matter onto itself, the motion or "hydrodynamics" of cosmic gas, as well as the formation of stars and black holes. These physical components and processes are all modeled starting from initial conditions resembling the very young universe 300,000 years after the Big Bang and until the present day, spanning over 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. The simulated volume contains tens of thousands of galaxies captured in high-detail, covering a wide range of masses, rates of star formation, shapes, sizes, and with properties that agree well with the galaxy population observed in the real universe. We are currently working to make detailed comparisons of our simulation box to these observed galaxy populations, and some exciting promising results have already been published.

In an MIT press release, we learn about how this simulation is the first successful attempt to account for our current universe:

“For the past two decades, cosmologists have been unable to produce galaxies like the Milky Way in their simulations,” says David Spergel, a professor of astronomy at Princeton University. “We have long debated whether this failure was due to complex dark matter physics, unknown stellar feedbacks, or the difficulties in simulating the highly non-linear multi-scale process of galaxy formation … With their simulations, [the researchers] finally produce galaxies that look like our own.”

And this is quite a project in terms of the scientists, computer resources, and sources of funding.  The MIT press release noted that the paper, “Properties of galaxies reproduced by a hydrodynamic simulation,” was co-written by 10 authors at several institutions: the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA); the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies in Germany; the University of Heidelberg; the Kavli Institute for Cosmology and the Institute of Astronomy, both in Cambridge, England; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

The computing centers used to run the simulation were the Harvard Odyssey and CfA/ITC cluster; the Ranger and Stampede supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center; the CURIE supercomputer at CEA/France; and the SuperMUC computer at the Leibniz Computing Centre in Germany.

Support for the research came from the German Research Foundation, the European Research Council, NASA, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany.

Image Credit:  Illustris project

ISS Crew and Dragon Return to Earth

Last week we saw the return of three of the crew from the International Space Station (ISS) after 188 days in space. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft successfully landed in Kazakhstan with the Expedition 39 crew, including Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA. Mastracchio was busy during this last mission with three spacewalks to repair both a cooling pump and a computer backup.  NASA stated the next crew is not expected to launch to the ISS until May 28th.  

SpaceX's Dragon was also released earlier today for its return to the Pacific Ocean (see picture above).  The Dragon first arrived on April 20th with about 2.5 tons of crew supplies, cargo, and science gear.  This is SpaceX's third successful delivery to the ISS. Hopefully, sooner rather than later we can get crew members onto the ISS with the help of SpaceX and other U.S. parties. 

Image Credit:  NASA

Why Are We Using Russian Rockets?

I can understand that we are dependent on the Russians for a lift to the International Space Station (ISS) while we rebuild our spacefaring capacity after the loss of the shuttle program.  However, we are also dependent on Russian rockets in other parts of our space program, such as the Atlas rockets.  I was reading about how a federal judge recently lifted a temporary injunction against the United Launch Alliance's (ULA) procurement of Russian rocket engines.  Per the Red Orbit article, SpaceX had complained that ULA was violating the U.S. sanctions against Russia.  While the U.S Government determined this was not the case, I still wonder whether this is wise regardless of the sanctions.  The U.S. should be building more of it space program at home, so I agree with SpaceX even if its argument is a little self-serving. 

And what is ULA, which attacked SpaceX's concerns, stating "SpaceX’s actions are self-serving, irresponsible and have threatened the U.S.’s involvement with the International Space Station and other companies and projects working with Russian State entities"?  Per its webpage, ULA is a joint venture between Lockheed-Martin and Boeing running the Atlas V, Delta II, and Delta IV rocket programs.  Its customers include NASA, the Pentagon, and our spy agencies.  And is it a monopoly, as claimed by SpaceX?  Yes, albeit a regulated monopoly as is much of the space and defense industry where a few firms control most of the contracts.  This has been an a sad reality for a long time, which may explain some of the decline in America's space ventures (that, and a short-sighted Congress).  Luckily, we have many new space adventurists with new ideas, with SpaceX being one of many up-and-coming companies willing to offer new approaches to the help America to the stars, or at least low-Earth orbit. 

But the real issue on the table is whether this American monopoly should use Russian rockets.  And I would rather we develop what we need at home but keep some other options on the shelf, which could include a few Russian products.  While some may argue foreign parts are cheaper, we may need to dig deeper into Elon Musk's arguments in his testimony before the Senate in March, when he stated:

 In FY13 the Air Force paid on average in excess of $380 million for each national security launch, while subsidizing ULA’s fixed costs to the tune of more than $1 billion per year, even if the company never launches a rocket.  By contrast, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 price for an EELV mission is well under $100M—at least a $280 million per launch difference, which in many cases could pay for the satellite and launch combined – and SpaceX seeks no subsidies to maintain our business. To put this into perspective, had SpaceX been awarded the missions ULA received under its recent non-competed 36 core block buy, we would have saved the taxpayer $11.6 billion.

And leaving costs and the embargo to one side, we really need to rethink our space program procurement.  We need a little more common sense in the program.  Elon Musk made this as his last point in the March testimony:

Our Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles are truly made in America.  We design and manufacture the rockets in California and Texas, with key suppliers throughout the country, and launch them from either Vandenberg AFB or Cape Canaveral AFS.  This stands in stark contrast to the United Launch Alliance’s most frequently flown vehicle, the Atlas V, which uses a Russian main engine and where approximately half the airframe is manufactured overseas.  In light of Russia’s de facto annexation of the Ukraine’s Crimea region and the formal severing of military ties, the Atlas V cannot possibly be described as providing “assured access to space” for our nation when supply of the main engine depends on President Putin’s permission. 

The part about "President Putin's permission" does not sound that far fetched after the comments a few weeks back by Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space program, who said "I suggest the US deliver its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline."

Time to wake up, America.  If you build your house on a pile of sand, do not be surprised when it is all washed away. 

Bing Brings you Saturn

Today's homepage image on Bing was an image of Saturn taken by the Cassini probe.  I cannot remember the last time Bing highlighted an astronomy issue like this (though I am sure it happens and I just missed it).  Here is the story that goes along with today's image:

The sixth planet in our solar system, Saturn, with its distinctive rings, is probably the most recognizable planet after Earth—at least to us Earthlings. A NASA spacecraft called Cassini-Huygens took this photo. The craft’s sole mission was to fly directly to Saturn and then explore the planet as well as its rings and moons.

A recent discovery on one of Saturn’s smaller moons, Enceladus, has scientists clamoring for more information. Data collected by Cassini-Huygens has revealed a body of water, probably about the size of Lake Superior, below the moon’s surface. The discovery of water has suddenly made Enceladus a prime target in the search for life beyond Earth, since water is the basis for all life as we know it.

That discovery may prompt scientists to launch an additional satellite to Saturn, but it would be years before data would reach Earth. Saturn’s far away. Really far away. About 745 million miles away when Earth and Saturn are at their closest. Okay, that doesn’t mean anything to us, either, but consider, for example, that Cassini-Huygens launched in 1997, but didn’t enter Saturn’s orbit until 2004. We could be waiting awhile before learning if we have neighbors in the solar system.

Image Credit per Bing: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Great Image: The Curiosity Rover From Above

In the image above from earlier this month, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is looking down on Mars' surface and caught a shot of the Curiosity Rover as it explored the surface of the planet.  Here is the story from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: 

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and tracks from its driving are visible in this view from orbit, acquired on April 11, 2014, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The rover is near the largest butte in the lower left quadrant of the image, at about a two o'clock position relative to the butte. It appears bright blue in the exaggerated color of this image.

The multi-layered location filling much of the left half of this image is called "the Kimberley." Curiosity's science team chose it, based on other HiRISE images, as a potential gold mine for the rover mission. Black gold, that is, as organic material that, if found at the Kimberley could be a biomarker (sign of past life) -- the holy grail of Mars exploration.

Curiosity entered the area included in this image on March 12, along the tracks visible near the upper left corner. The distance between parallel wheel tracks is about 9 feet (2.7 meters). The area included in the image is about 1,200 feet (about 365 meters) wide. This view is an enhanced-color product from HiRISE observation ESP_036128_1755, available at the HiRISE website at http://uahirise.org/releases/msl-kimberley.php. The exaggerated color, to make differences in Mars surface materials more apparent, makes Curiosity appear bluer than the rover really looks. A stereo view combining information from this observation with topography derived from earlier HiRISE observations, for a three-dimensional appearance, is at PIA18082.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Kepler-186f: Finding the Needle in a Haystack of Data

The recent announcement that Kepler located an Earth-like planet 500 light years away was the product of detailed research on a trove of data collected during Kepler's lifetime.  Kepler-186f is similar to the size of Earth and within its star's habitable zone. The planet's sun is a dwarf star located in the constellation Cygnus.  The star is smaller than our sun and provides only about 1/3 the heat of our sun. A year on Kepler-186f, which is about 1.1 times the radius of the Earth, is about 130 days.

The full story can be found in Science magazine in a report titled "An Earth-Sized Planet in the Habitable Zone of a Cool Star."  Pretty straight forward like those all blue paintings titled "Blue."  The report abstract is a little more detailed:

The quest for Earth-like planets is a major focus of current exoplanet research. Although planets that are Earth-sized and smaller have been detected, these planets reside in orbits that are too close to their host star to allow liquid water on their surfaces. We present the detection of Kepler-186f, a 1.11 ± 0.14 Earth-radius planet that is the outermost of five planets, all roughly Earth-sized, that transit a 0.47 ± 0.05 solar-radius star. The intensity and spectrum of the star’s radiation place Kepler-186f in the stellar habitable zone, implying that if Kepler-186f has an Earth-like atmosphere and water at its surface, then some of this water is likely to be in liquid form.

It is possible that more such exoplanets may emerge from Kepler's archived data as scientists sift through the information.  While Kepler's original mission may have ended last year, the scientific community has plenty of data to play with for years to come.  It reminds me of archaeology, where digging can be the easy part while cataloging the find an putting together the various pieces takes many more years as association with other artifacts takes place and theories are confirmed.  

In a press release, NASA noted that we are not necessarily looking at a twin Earth but more likely a distant cousin:

 "Being in the habitable zone does not mean we know this planet is habitable. The temperature on the planet is strongly dependent on what kind of atmosphere the planet has," said Thomas Barclay, research scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames, and co-author of the paper. "Kepler-186f can be thought of as an Earth-cousin rather than an Earth-twin. It has many properties that resemble Earth."

Of course Kepler-186f is not the most interesting name.  Late night host Craig Ferguson had his own ideas recently, noting "I think we have to be more creative...This planet is big and old and surrounded by stars a fraction of its age.  Why don't we call it George Clooney."  Okay, maybe Mr. Ferguson can work on his astronomy and we can keep trying on the name.

Image Credit:  NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech

More Great Television on the Cosmos

So far I am enjoying the Fox/National Geographic update on Carl Sagan's Cosmos, though the commercials can be somewhat annoying when you are in the middle of an interesting discussion.  For instance, during the first episode, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson was telling the story about the Roman Catholic Church's persecution of Giordano Bruno when a commercial break pops up to sell the movie Noah.  That is not something you would see on PBS.  I think I would rather download the program and watch it without such interuptions.

That said, Dr. Tyson has done a good job updating the old Cosmos and paying respect to Carl Sagan in the first few episodes, even noting his meeting with Dr. Sagan and revisiting some of the same iconic locations made famous in the first series. 

What surprised me when I re-watched the first episode of the original Cosmos was how it was at the very edge of new discoveries in 1981.  Dr. Sagan discussed the Viking rovers on Mars in 1976, the discovery of rings surrounding Uranus in 1977, the discovery of Pluto's moon Charon in 1978, and the sighting of lightening on the dark side of Jupiter in 1979.  The solar system was just opening up to us when the show was first broadcast. 

And another part of the show was his concern for humanity's future that ran through the original Cosmos, which made sense then with the Cold War and could be mentioned again with the Russians acting up again.  Dr. Sagan also mourns the loss of the great library of Alexandria, noting the lost knowledge and thousands of years it took us to regain this knowledge.  Of course, I also saw some hopeful items that were not part of the first episode of the new series.  For instance, the program gives us a view of potential civilizations on other planets in the Milky Way, which as before we even discovered the existence of any planets around other suns.

And I would like to make a plug for another terrific series that covers the Cosmos - Wonders of the Universe with Dr. Brian Cox.  Similar to his earlier Wonders of the Solar System, Dr. Cox is a great story-teller that makes science come alive.  And he too discusses our place in this vast cosmos and notes in the first episode that we are at the very beginning of a universe that will last for trillions of years.  All of it is awe-inspiring.  And one interesting bit of information:  at the age of 12, Dr. Cox read Carl Sagan's book Cosmos and this inspired him to become a physicist.  I expect his own program will do the same for other young viewers. 

Away from the Politics II: Discoveries in the Solar System

The past few weeks have been full of announcements on discoveries within our solar system.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Subsurface Lake on Enceladus:  NASA's Cassini probe has identified a reservoir of water on Saturn's moon (shown above in comparison to our own Moon) that is 19 to 25 miles thick, or equivalent to the water in one of the Great Lakes (I have read comparisons to either Lake Erie or Lake Superior).  What does this mean?  NASA stated: "The subsurface ocean evidence supports the inclusion of Enceladus among the most likely places in our solar system to host microbial life."  Interesting indeed.

• An Asteroid with Rings:  Rings were found around an asteroid named Chariklo, which orbits in the outer solar system between Saturn and Uranus.  Chariklo is one of the larger objects in that region being about 155 miles across. This is the first non-planetary body in our solar system we have identified with its own rings.

• New Icy Object Beyond the Kuiper Belt:  Astronomers have spotted a new object now labeled 2012VP113 (not very dramatic) that orbits outside the Kuiper Belt, which contains Pluto.  We already know that dwarf planet Sedna is out in those reaches.  This raises some interesting questions.  The Sydney Morning Herald reports this could indicate something is pulling these ice objects out that far, such as undiscovered giant planet or maybe a passing star from long ago. 

Away from the Politics: More on the Big Bang

While the U.S. and Russia have been tussling on a variety of issues, some solid science has been going on unabated.  For instance, last month the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of gravitational waves formed when the universe was a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old.  While I cannot really wrap my head around the particulars, this discovery (if successfully duplicated by others) could further confirm the theory of cosmic inflation, or the idea of rapid expansion of the universe in the first 380,000 years of its existence.  I found a nice scientific cartoon (really) that walks us through these ideas at PhD Comics.  And here is the March 17th video from the Center with the scientific announcement.

The research itself involved scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of Minnesota, while the observations themselves were made at the BICEP2 telescope near the South Pole.