October 29th, 2010
by Jed Laderman
Particle Interaction, Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
Our universe is awash in neutrinos. The sun sends 60 billion of them each second through every square centimeter of your outstretched hand. Supernovae release unimaginable numbers of them. Yet there’s even more to the story: At this very moment, the space your body occupies is shared by 10,000,000 relic neutrinos from the Big Bang itself. Because they haven’t interacted with anything since they “decoupled” from the rest of creation a mere second after time began, these cosmic neutrinos could give us a new window on the first moments of our universe—if we could find a way to “see” them!
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June 11th, 2010
(by Reinhard Kargl)
The new NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden showed a passionate side in his radio interview with Patt Morrison today.
He gets teary-eyes about the retirement of the Space Shuttle but then turns his eyes toward the future. Bolden, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major general, is a former astronaut who flew on 4 shuttle missions. But despite his feelings, Bolden seems content with the notion that it is time to retire the shuttle and move on by limiting NASA’s role in Earth-orbit launch operations. Which must happen by default anyway, since NASA has no shuttle successor anywhere near the launchpad at this time.
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June 7th, 2010
by Reinhard Kargl
This article first appeared on my personal blog. You can also follow me on Twitter (English), Twitter (Deutsch) and Facebook.
Hawthorne / Los Angeles County based SpaceX is celebrating a monumental breakthrough today after a successful first launch of its Falcon 9 rocket.
I followed the launch via video feed from Cape Canaveral this morning on June 4. At first I was disappointed when the initial launch attempt resulted in a lock-down just at the moment of ignition. I thought for sure it was a scrub. But the launch window was still open. After the countdown clock was reset, everything worked well on the second try. About 10 minutes later, the upper stage with a mock-up of the proposed Dragon crew capsule entered into a low Earth orbit.
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February 10th, 2010
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January 29th, 2010
Galileo Galilei by Justus Sustermans, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0045; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 026]
“Sempre il novo che e grande appar menzogna
. . . al vulgar debile ingegno;
Ma imperturbato il regno
De’ saggi dietro all’utile s’ostina.
Minaccia ne vergogna
No ‘l frena, no ‘l rimove;
Prove accumula a prove !
Del popolare error l’ idol rovina,
E la salute ai posteri destina.”
– Parini: “L’Innesto del Vaiuolo.”
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January 28th, 2010
(by Reinhard Kargl)
The recent announcements by the White House and the NASA administration were no surprise to insiders. The Ares/Constellation program is dead!
Size comparison between Saturn V, Space Shuttle and Ares I and V
Privately, I’ve been contending this for many months: the solid fuel design based on Space Shuttle booster technology is rife with engineering problems, which is why the program was running late. NASA has been tight lipped about the scale of these problems, which is understandable. But enough has been leaked to call the technical and financial feasibility into question.
The other Ares-problems were weight issues, cost overruns, uncertain long-term funding and perhaps most importantly — given the allocated funds, everything was taking way too long.
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January 18th, 2010
(by Reinhard Kargl)
After a delay due to an early breakdown, the Large Hedron Collider is now online. It looks promising. Within the first few weeks of operation, there have already been delivered some very interesting data, and the machine has been performing flawlessly.
On Jan. 13, a small group of us visited Caltech to attended the lecture of Prof. Harvey Newman, who is one of the lead scientists in the LHC program. The lecture is posted here:
http://www.hep.caltech.edu/~newman/LHC/
Robert Lozano, Reinhard Kargl and Jed Laderman at Caltech
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January 14th, 2010
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0042; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 025]
Worth noting:
Galileo believed that institutional dogma, which now endangers science greater than at his time, has no place. Regarding consensus he stated that “… in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.” He compared the consensus of opinion to bird droppings: “Perhaps Sarsi believes that all the host of good philosophers may be enclosed within four walls. I believe that they fly, and that the fly alone, like eagles, and not in flocks like starlings. It is true that because eagles are rare birds they are little seen and less heard, while birds that fly like starlings fill the sky with shrieks and cries, and wherever they settle befoul the earth beneath them.” [As noted in DiCanzio (1996), p.147, using a Drake reference.] Galileo’s obstinacy would result in damage to him inflicted by the Vatican Inquisition, a group who had then recently burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600 for sustaining Sun-centeredness.
A further StarBlog entry regarding the quadricentennial of 1610 January 07 will appear soon.
= = =
Reference:
(1.) DiCanzio, Albert G. (1996), Galileo: His Science and His Significance for the Future of Man, ADASI Publishing Company, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, U.S.A.,
ISBN 0-9641295-6-6.
* * *
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December 31st, 2009
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0041; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 024]
400 year anniversary of Galileo’s first observation of Jupiter with its moons which would lead to the release in March of 1610 his Sidereus Nuncius changing the view of the world!
A further StarBlog entry will appear in a few days.
= = =
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December 31st, 2009
(by Reinhard Kargl)
There’s a rare confluence of phenomena and events tonight:
Of course, we all know it’s the last day of the year of 2009 AD. But tonight also coincides with a full moon. And it’s a Blue Moon! And — now get this! There will also be a lunar eclipse tonight!
According to NASA’s Five Millennium Catalogue of Lunar Eclipses, this happens only about 11 times in 1,000 years. In other words, tonight is a “once in a lifetime” occurrence. The next time when a lunar eclipse and Blue Moon will fall on the last day of the year would be in 91 years.
So enjoy tonight, and Happy New Year to all of you.
PS: A “Blue Moon” isn’t really blue in color. It’s just a term applied if a second full moon appears in the same month. (In December 2009, the first Full Moon occurred on December 2).
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December 17th, 2009
(by Reinhard Kargl)
I have spent a few hours working on our club’s blog.
The basic look is almost unchanged. But there are many improvements under the surface. Most importantly, I’ve installed and configured the latest WordPress software on the server. This will give us better stability, better indexing and many additional features for authors and readers.
For readers: You will now see a little button at the end of each blog post. Clicking it allows you to print or e-mail the blog post or share it on most social media sites. For instance, one click allows you to post a link to the the blog article on your Facebook profile or in your Twitter feeds.
You will also note improved categories and links to other web sites and popular Twitter feeds in the sidebar. (We will gradually add more material here).
For authors: You will have improved options to post text and pictures, categorize your posts and invite (or disallow) comments. I have installed an automated plug-in which creates site maps, which should improve indexing of your blog posts in the search engines. I have also installed tracking functionality, which should give us statistics about our readers (for instance, how many times a post was read or re-posted somewhere else).
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December 15th, 2009
At the club meeting of December 11, 2009, the following officers were elected or re-elected:
President: Thor Dockweiler
Vice President: Robert Lozano
Treasurer: Reinhard Kargl
Secretary: Jim Bartlett
Program Director: Jed Laderman
Publicity Chairman: Reinhard Kargl
Community Outreach Officer: Mimi Anaya
After serving the club for many years, Lynne and Donald Berry have retired from their long held positions as Secretary and Treasurer.
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October 29th, 2009
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0037; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 023]
Rogue waves have been known historically by surviving witnesses for over a thousand years since at least the Medieval Age. These very large waves are legendary and have assumed a mythical reputation as unbelievable by those hearing such occurrences as the waves themselves were uncommon. Hardy seagoing peoples (like the Vikings) through modern sailors could go through a lifetime and not encounter a single one of these waves which can exceed over 100 feet in height (trough to crest). They have been notorious for making lighthouses disappear off various coasts both continentally and on islands around the world. They are undoubtedly responsible for many of the disappearing vessels in the ocean areas known as the Bermuda Triangle and the lesser known Dragon’s Triangle. They are possibly responsible for the elimination of low flying aircraft just above sea level usually involved in search and rescue operations.
It is only in very recent history that such waves have been confirmed with ocean level scientific instruments in two incidents and with Earth satellite technology. The first of those events occurred on the Norwegian oil platform Draupner in the North Sea (upper northeastern portion of the Atlantic Ocean) on January 01, 1995. The Draupner platform had scientific measuring instruments on it including a laser beam pointing to the ocean. The wave that hit that platform measured 84 feet (25.6 meters) causing some damage. The second event involved a scientifically instrumented research vessel from the United Kingdom in February 2000. The ship was hit with a wave which measured 95 feet (29.1 meters).
Such a wave can literally come from out of nowhere day or night in the middle of a large ocean with either totally calm or stormy conditions. Rogue waves occur in large bodies of water such as oceans but can occur in large lakes like the Great Lakes in the United States (most notably Lake Michigan) and inland seas like both the Caspian Sea and Lake Baikal in Russia. They are usually a single wave, occasionally with a corresponding sea hole [not to be confused with a maelstrom] where a ship falls into a deep trough before the wave wall of water of the rogue wave towers over and collapses upon the vessel with up to 200 pounds force per square inch. They can be in a series of a few successive large waves.
Rogue waves are not tsunamis which are generated by large earthquakes or underwater mountain subsidence slides. They are not tidal waves which are gravitationally generated by our Moon and Sun causing bulging of the Earth as the Earth rotates with corresponding high and low tides near coastal shores. They are not sneaker waves which are caused by shoaling of waters near coastal zones that are larger than the standard shore waves. They are not ocean gyres which are the circular flows around the edges of the boundaries of oceans, although it is possible that the flow in such a gyre cannot be ruled out as an occasional producer for a small number of these monster waves.
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July 24th, 2009
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0036; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 022]
Macroastronomy, the study of the celestial heavens on a large scale (locally and cosmologically), composes many subfields including the study of the molecular cloud subset ice clouds. Recent decades have provided the knowledge that the universe is filled with unilluminated matter of various kinds. Molecular clouds with hydrogen densities 10-1,000 atoms per cubic centimeter [now greater than 1,000,000] were determined to very common in the 1980’s. Many clouds are currently known to have various types of ices like carbon dioxide and water. Water ice is especially becoming more common than previously known.
Cold clouds appear to be the most numerous in the universe just like other dark objects, all of which significantly outnumber the “lighted” or hotter objects. They are in our own Milky Way Galaxy and beyond in the interstellar medium.
Molecular ices, both monolayered and multilayered, concrete and aggregate around carbon grains of cosmic dust like raindrops of water develop on Earth around dust or soil particles. The creation and change of molecules occurs from interaction with stellar photons, cosmic rays, and the occasional energy transfer and reaction caused by stellar and supernovae shockwaves. They can be further affected by energy provided by magnetic fields. This all can occur on the cosmic scale of interstellar space down to localized interplanetary dust clouds or planetary systems.
Respectively, hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and carbon are the most abundant elements in the universe. The elements as raw materials in turn form vast cold and hot molecular cloud networks in intergalactic and galactic space, along with nebulae of stellar nurseries. The ongoing analysis of this forms a component of astrochemistry, and further cosmochemistry within our own planetary neighborhood (through updating of the “cosmochemical periodic table of the elements in the Solar System”). The formation of molecular hydrogen and later compounds are some of the most important chemical processes that occurs in space.
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July 9th, 2009
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0035; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 021]
The potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) 2001 FE90, discovered by Brian Skiff, turns out to have an incredibly fast rotation rate, at around 28.66 minutes! Observations are currently being done on this near Earth asteroid. Help is requested right now through August from those in the Southern Hemisphere who can observe the object at visual magnitude 19 and near declination -40 degrees.
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June 24th, 2009
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0034; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 020]
Despite the need for a future article [and a moment of sadness for me on another matter], and having waited a long time for this embargoed news keeping my pen and mouth still despite my knowledge of it, it finally has been publicly announced today that, broadly speaking, the rings of Saturn have salt! Imagine that! Again, broadly speaking in another way, wow!! The details can be aquired from the British journal Nature.
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May 20th, 2009
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0033; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 019]
Just when you think you are worried by terroristic arsonists, along comes Mother Nature to do a slightly unique version of setting a blaze via the Cosmic Heavens. A large fire began after 10 p.m. local time this past Sunday night (2009 May 17) following an observed white-trailing meteor by several witnesses not far from Carlisle, Cumbria, United Kingdom. The significant blaze burned through the night and was still being dealt with Monday morning involving fire crews from Carlisle, Wigton, and Silloth in this scenic region of extreme northwestern Great Britain, south of the country of Scotland. Cumbria is noted for its mountains, lakes, and peat bogs. Weather conditions were within a normal range and not adverse. The meteorite appears to have been absorbed by a local peat bog, an environment conducive to forming a perfect incendiary event, following its impact. The little natural arsonistic geological specimen has not been recovered. Local winds are common in this region at this time of year during the night. Fortunately, there were no winds that night – - to the tremendous relief of residents!
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April 13th, 2009
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0032; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 018]
20 years from now (today: 2009 April 13) a significant future event will be witnessed by Earthlings of the very close passing of asteroid 99942 Apophis on 2029 April 13 (Friday the 13th!). Apophis is expected to come within and less than the distance of Earth orbiting geosynchronous satellites. The Earth’s gravitational affect will alter Apophis’ orbit from an Aten asteroid to an Apollo asteroid. Apophis will traverse the sky from roughly east to west in the 3rd visual magnitude range over a time of about 4 ½ hours. Weather permitting, Apophis will be visible visually [except in the brightest light polluted cities - use binoculars] from the Northern Hemisphere from Eurasia, Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean regions. It will go through or near many of the zodiacal constellations, including constellation areas such as Corvus, Hydra, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Auriga, Pisces, and Triangulum.
Further astrometric work refining Apophis’ orbit is expected to occur in 2011 and 2013. 2029 post Earth-passage work will be most important (in fact, critical) for clarifying further April 13 weekend encounters in 2036 (potentially being the most dangerous), 2037, and 2069. The possibility for Earth impact was real at the time of its discovery in 2004. Then 13 year old Nico Marquardt of Germany caused a stir in early 2008 with mathematical work done which upped the odds of impact. This caused further orbit analysis. His work was incorrectly pooh-poohed as amateur by many. This attitude in science is improper. One should note that age does not define science; it has no bearing therein. The scientific method is what counts. Mathematical work itself at this level is not amateur in nature; it is calculative and direct. It is either correct or wrong pending future work and knowledge. Even Galileo Galilei had no formal degree when he made several of his discoveries.
Science is performed by those who actually perform scientific work, not just those who have collegiate degrees. Science is especially not done by those who propose false discoveries who hide behind their titles and did not actually do real work, or take credit for work done by others [many professors have historically taken credit for work done by their students, including in astronomy], or do not credit work by someone who actually did the work, or by deleting credit to someone who participated in actual work whether or not the attempt was successful or a failure. Congratulations are due master Marquardt from those in science for actually doing some science.
Two decades remain. Enjoy the view!
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March 25th, 2009
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0031; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 017]
Earth has been vulnerable to impact events by other celestial bodies over the course of its geological history. The first recorded pre-known event was that of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994 multi-impacting Jupiter. The Jupiter event caused political shockwaves across our world, not to mention great excitement amongst astronomers and geologists. The belief of massive bombardment of our Moon by celestial objects in the ancient past was proved quite possible with this particular comet hitting our Solar System’s largest planet. It quickly fostered the creation of a threat assessment color-coded number index (Torino Scale). That scale was politically re-adapted in recent years for potential terrorist attack alert levels.
Not counting various annual meteor showers, Earth has had no pre-known event until now. Following on the heels not long after the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska Impact Event of June, 1908, this first pre-known impact event occurred in Sudan on 2008 October 07. The asteroidal object, 2008 TC3, was only discovered the day before by Richard A. Kowalski while asteroid searching as part of the Catalina Sky Survey with the 60-Inch Telescope at the Mount Lemmon Observatory northeast of Tucson, Arizona. The meteoroid has been estimated to have been about 2-5 meters in size (about the size of a small Volkswagen “Bug” vehicle).
After an initial analysis indicating imminent impact, and in the first real test of the worldwide network “Spaceguard” (a term created by Arthur C. Clarke in his book Rendezvous with Rama), over 1,000 astrometric and photometric observations were conducted by 27 people plus support staff spanning almost 19 hours resulting in a significant set of 25 issued Minor Planet Circulars with further refined orbit information. The object lit the pre-dawn sky and left a significant vapor trail. It approached from the west at a grazing angle of 19 degrees from the horizon. In under 20 hours from discovery the object travelled over and burst above the desert in an unpopulated area in far northern Sudan at 5:46 a.m. local time (0246 UTC). Entry was observed distantly by a German airline crew and by various infrared detecting civilian and military satellites.
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December 10th, 2008
By: Thor Dockweiler
[StarBlog Entry 0030; Dockweiler StarBlog Listing 016]
Astronomy took significant steps and advances when the Mount Wilson Observatory 60-Inch telescope became available a century ago. The 60-Inch would be the world’s largest telescope for many years. First light for this telescope occurred December 08, 1908; the first photographic plate taken occurred December 20, 1908. Congratulations are in order to George Ellery Hale, and all the subsequent involved peoples and scientists, for their valient efforts, achievements, and findings. Such discoveries would eventually allow for the exploration of space with the Sputnik probe in 1958 and the various U.S. space missions thereafter, particularly Apollo.
Happy Birthday to Mount Wilson!
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