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I don’t want to hear you complaining about your Cable Company any more. Maybe your signal is down for an hour or two in bad weather, but I’m sure it comes through soon enough. In the best of times, your live games are delayed by probably no more than a few mere seconds,  which is nothing compared to the Gamma Ray Scientists saw explode in April. You could, in fact, say that the Gamma Ray was slightly more than somewhat delayed, as it actually exploded 13 billion years ago, making it the oldest thing ever witnessed from earth.I can’t even imagine what the scientist, who has the ephonious name of Edo Berger, said when he realized what he was witnessing, but I’m guessing it had to be something along the lines of “Holy Fucking Shit.”The star which exploded was 30 to 100 times larger than our own sun, and when it died, it gave off “about million times the amount of energy the sun will release in its entire lifetime,” Berger told CNN by phone from Harvard University, where he is an assistant professor of astronomy.

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Gamma Ray Bursts for those of you like me who are new to the world of space, are believed to be flashes of Gamma Rays, which are basically Electromagnetic Radiation. The GRBs are in turn thought to form the always-enigmatic Black Holes. 

Last night on Sunday, March 29th at 9:45pm- a loud BOOM! in the sky along with streaking pale blue lights prompted a flood of 911 calls from Virginian residents. Aliens? Meteors? Supernatural weather? No. The remnants of a Russian rocket carrying crew and American billionaire Charles Simonyi- the world’s first two-time space tourist- to the International Space Station high above the rest of our dozing heads.

Is space tourism the next big thing? Of course it is… its the natural next step. We’ll all be taking trips to the moon in no time aboard a luxury liner spaceship. Aren’t they building hotels up there right now? Sea voyages aboard the QE2 will be so passe’ in 10 years. However, exploding space junk and rocket remnants raises a bit of a question for the rest of us on Earth. Atomic bomb-sized booms and meteorite-like lights in the sky, signaling trash slamming in to Earth from SPACE…. as if we didn’t make enough of our own down here…. poses a bit of a problem, don’t you think? Afterall, there is no telling where it will land. The rocket that took off Sunday was lifting off in Kazakhstan.

Though NASA and the U.S. Airforce have not made a statement on last night’s event, one wonders how the world governments will handle the new enterprise of space tourism and its subsequent space junk. Though the atmosphere, theoretically, should burn any trash re-entering our skies…. there is the phenomenon of “windows” to consider, which is why the rocket bits were seen, heard, and crashed to Earth somewhere off the coast of Virginia. A window occured in our atmosphere at approximately 8pm. And you thought your biggest headache was sorting the plastic from the glass….. silly earthlings! Rockets away!

Here’s a photo I found the space trash currently orbiting home sweet home, just for fun. Enjoy!

Feeding astronauts requires science, engineering, and a deft hand with spices. The difficulties of eating in micro gravity include problems of stray crumbs or drops of fluid floating around and lodging in equipment. That means, for instance, that salt and pepper have to be in liquid form. Physiological changes in low gravity include constantly blocked sinuses, which adversely affect human senses of taste and smell. The problems of cooking in very small spaces, with limited access to water, or refrigeration, or even power, and of disposing of packaging materials are also substantial. In space, everyone cleans their plates.

NASA and the International Space Station both take the nutritional needs of astronauts very very seriously, and not only in terms of the RDAs, but in terms of the culinary arts. Anyone who has lived on mass produced restricted menus for any length of time knows that what we eat affects our mood and general sense of well-being far more than our nutritional requirements might suggest. Think for a minute how much we sometimes craves specific tastes, or “comfort” foods. Or how very dispiriting it is to eat bland, flavorless food for any length of time.

In that light, as part of their overall plan to send a person into space by 2015, India’s Defence Food Research Laboratory, under the direction of A. S. Bawa is attempting to perfect a tasty, healthy, safe, and practical curry for consumption in space. It’s tricky; Indians tend to favor curry on the hot end of things, and there are some potential digestion problems with overly spicy food in space. Other Indian dishes that represent cultural “comfort food” include dosa, a sort of crispy rice breakfast pancake filled with a potato mixture, roughly similar to a burrito. Bhajis, also deep fried, present a particular difficulty in space cuisine. As space exploration and development become increasingly international, so too is astronaut cuisine, especially aboard the International Space Station, where astronauts from the U.S., Japan, Korea and Russia have gladly welcomed newcomers’ native foods as temporary additions to their diet in space. After all, it beats silk worms.

As you have no doubt heard, the NASA online poll to name a new space station module has gone in a landslide to the write-in name candidate, “Colbert.” NASA never promised to name the space station after the poll results, but simply swore to take the poll results “into consideration.”

The big news here isn’t that “Colbert” won. After all, Colbert issued several calls to his viewing audience to stuff the ballot box, and provided a link to the poll on his website. No, the big news in this story is that “Colbert” beat out the write-in candidate “Xenu.”

I know several people who voted for “Colbert” not because they were particularly fond of the man, or of doing his bidding. But because they simply refused to allow the name “Xenu” to win.

Xenu is the pivotal figure in Scientology’s founding combination of creation myth and Original Sin. According to Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard, Xenu was the “dictator of the Galactic Confederacy” who brought billions of people to Earth 75 million years ago. He then nuked them, but not into oblivion. Their spirits remained, and “form around people in modern times, causing them harm.”

The second biggest bit of news is that “Colbert” bumped out NASA’s own option, “Serenity.” Given the solidarity and drive of the Browncoats, I’m mildly surprised that they didn’t push “Serenity” into first place.

The NASA poll was a race with three horses: Colbert fans, Scientologists, and Browncoats. It was Colbert to win, Browncoats to show, and Scientologists to place. Strange times, indeed!

Astronomers first spotted—and drew pictures of—Jupiter’s “Great Red Spot” some 300 years ago. It’s that “eye of Sauron” spot on the Southern Hemisphere. In reality, it’s a very large, very ancient storm, and as the weather on Jupiter changes, so does the Spot. The Spot really is properly called “Great”; it is so far the largest known storm in our Solar System, with a diameter of 15,400 miles. In other words, just the area covered by the storm on Jupiter is almost twice the size of Earth. We’ve been watching the spot long enough now that we can see it is definitely shrinking. What’s more, as currents and weather patterns shift, we’ve witnessed, albeit at a very great distance, new storms and smaller spots appearing in Jupiter’s images.

In May, astronomers reported that not only is the Little Red Spot, as it was named when astronomers initially noticed it in 2006, competing in terms of speed with its older sibling, there are other new spots. And the Little Red Spot is already matching the maximum wind speed of its larger sibling, at 384 mph. That’s more than the winds stirred up by a Category 5 hurricane on Earth, which doesn’t seem quite so startling when you realize that the Little Red Spot is almost as big as Earth. In fact, new infrared data suggests that it’s actually part of a larger storm system, only parts of which are visible by optical telescopes.

You might remember that when the Little Red Spot was first noticed in 2005, it was white; it merged with three smaller storms and shortly thereafter, in late 2005, it too was the deep red we associate with the Great Red Spot. The new spot also began as a white oval shaped storm. This suggests that scientists are correct in hypothesizing that the more powerful storms are actually scooping up material from below Jupiter’s cloud level, exposing it to ultraviolet radiation, which changes the color of the material. If you look at the first image above, you’ll notice younger, smaller storms below the two larger deep red spots, storms that are still white.

Now, with ten years of velocity data about the storms on Jupiter, collected from 1991 to 20006, researchers Xylar Asay-Davis, Phil Marcus, Mike Wong and Imke de Pader at the University of California at Berkeley, have determined that the Great Red Spot’s underlying storm is shrinking, but it’s not at all slowing down. It’s still managing to spawn wind storms that average over 300 mph. Scientists suspect that the extremely violent storms from 2005 to 2007 may have signaled an extreme climate change on Jupiter.

The image above, taken by Cassini in 2000, gives an idea of just how turbulent weather patterns on Jupiter are, and how much they affect the cloud In this collage of Hubble images taken between 1992 and 1999 you can see the changesin the Great Spot, and in the weather systems near it. Galileo observed the Spot in 1610. Later, English astronomer Robert Hooke, observed the Spot in 1664. Giovanni Cassini observed it again in 1615. Voyager imaged the Great Red Spot on February 25, 1979; and in the image embedded above from the Cassini flyby in 2000, you can see signs of just how very turbulent the storms can be.

NASA has launched a streaming video channel which feeds from a webcam on the International Space Station. The good news: that’s really neat! The bad news: watching the feed from the International Space Station is… rather boring, actually.

I watched for some time this morning, when the web cam was pointed in the direction of several astronauts who were making repairs to the exterior of the space station. The audio featured communications between a woman with a Russian accent and several unidentified men.

Periodically a man would break in and provide a high-level overview. When I listened, he read off a list of the repairs that had just been made, including “the pivoting and rotation of one of the cassette containers that also contains material samples…” Oh man. Wake me when it’s over.

NASA has promised that when it’s not focused on an active job, the webcam will be pointing towards the Earth. I kept hoping that the camera would pan down and show us some planetary goodness, but it was not to be. At first, the camera showed guys in space suits climbing over a bunch of gantries and doing heaven knows what. Halfway through, it switched to what seems to be a graphic of Earth, with the ISS’s current trajectory.

The sad truth about the International Space Station is that although it is important, both as an incredible milestone in human history, as a boon for science, really really dull. Great for science: bad for viewers at home. Alas!

At 02:56 UTC on July 21, 1969, Astronaut Neil Armstrong began his descent to the moon’s surface, and spoke his now famous line: “One small step for man, one giant leap for all mankind.” We’ve all seen the video:

Recently, the video from the special 16 mm Data Acquisition Camera mounted in the lunar module has been widely available. The camera could be set to normal speed, or to one frame per second, to save film. For the moon walk, the camera was set to normal speed.

This video offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of the set-up before the historic video. For one thing, you hear Armstrong discussing the proper set-up. You hear him announce that he’s opening the Modular Equipment Storage Assembly, where the camera that was used for the “public” footage was stored. You can see Armstrong making a test hop, and checking the dust of the lunar soil with a boot. You can find the alternate camera footage here, but what’s really really cool is that the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal has a QuickTime clip with both the MESA and DAC cameras footage synchronized.

I can remember seeing the network footage, live, of the moon walk on my parents tiny 12” black and white TV, the day before my seventh birthday.

And it’s still awesome.

Comet Lulin, a beautiful green comet with a double tail is fast approaching Earth. Tonight, and the wee hours of Tuesday morning, right around 1 AM, are you best bets for a view. You’ll be able to spot Lulin, with the naked eye, barely, in rural areas without light pollution, but a decent pair of binoculars or a backyard telescope will work just fine for a great view. You’ll want to look in the southwestern sky about 40 degrees above the horizon near Saturn, which should be fairly bright and easy to spot. The diagram here has a circled X to show the relative position of Lulin at about ten pm in North America on the Monday night, February 23, tonight. Here’s a diagram showing Lulin and the nearby constellations. You should be able to see the bright, slightly greenish, center of the comet, and its two tails, one a dimmer gassy cloud, and the other a more distinct, brighter tail of dust. The two tails appear to be almost directly opposite each other.

The greenish glow is the visual sign of ionized gases Lulin sheds in its passage and the sun warms the comet enough to thaw some of its ice, so that it changes from a solid to a gas. The water is shed, at about 800 gallons of water per second as it moves closer to the sun, according to NASA. As Lulin’s outer layer thaws, and the water dissipates, the comet releases the gasses trapped in its ice since Lulin formed. Two gasses in particular dominate Lulin’s composition, diatomic carbon and cyanogen, a poisonous gas. They give the comet its fuzzy gas halo, and green coloration when they are illuminated by the sun. That’s a picture of Lulin above, taken by astronomer Jack Newton. There’s a gallery of Lulin images here.

Because the comet’s orbit is in almost the same plane as Earth’s orbit, it seems to be moving very rapidly. Lulin is actually moving “backwards,” that is, Lulin’s orbit is in the opposite direction from the planets. That means that from Earth, it looks as if Lulin is shifting position, relative to the stars in the background, in minutes instead of the more usual hours. Technically, the second, gassy tail, is an optical effect. Lulin is headed back in an orbit to its birthplace in the in the Oort Cloud, a collection of frozen leftovers from when our solar system was formed 4.6 billion years ago. The Oort cloud is roughly 18 trillion miles past our sun, with billions of frozen objects similar to Lulin.

Lulin, originally known as C/2007/N3, was spotted in July, 2007 by nineteen year old astronomer Quanzhi Ye, a student at China’s Sun Yat-sen University. Quanzhi Ye was studying images taken by a fellow student Taiwanese astronomer Chi Sheng Lin. The comet has been moving steadily closer to Earth, and will be at it’s closest in the early morning of Tuesday, February 24th. Lulin has grown progressively brighter, and will still be visible in the early morning sky through February, but by late February Lulin will be most apparent in the evening sky. Lulin will still be visible in March, but much more difficult to spot. Astronomer Dr. Dello Russo, from Johns Hopkins University will be making observations of Lulin using one of the Keck Observatory’s two 10-meter telescopes on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. In fact, Lulin is giving Earth-based astronomers a unique opportunity; this will be the first time we’ve been able to see simultaneous ultraviolet and X-ray images of a comet, thanks to NASA’s Swift Gamma-ray Explorer satellite, which is monitoring Comet Lulin as it nears Earth.
It won’t be possible to see Lulin from Earth again for a very very long time, since the comet’s orbital path takes it around the sun once every million years.

Like many laymen with a passing interest in the epic scales and strange phenomena outside our little planet’s atmosphere, there are things out there that I find both fascinating and frightening. Among them are those unusual events that do funny things with the electromagnetic spectrum. Since the invention of the telescope, people have been used to the idea of visually observing the cosmos. More recent inventions also allow us to detect energy emissions in the universe via audible signals as well. Some of them can be downright musical. Here are few to consider:

Dawn Chorus

If you downloaded from the above link, what you’re hearing is known as “Dawn Chorus”. It is phenomenon believed to be related to electrons as they pass through Earth’s Van Allen Belts. It gets its name from a behavior of common song birds to begin chirping in distinct tones when they are first exposed to sunlight in the morning. Generally this behavior is linked to territoriality and mate attraction.

The cosmic dawn chorus, while currently unexplained, has one predominant theory attached to it. As the Earth is bathed in solar radiation, high-energy electrons begin passing through the atmosphere. Some of them inevitably get caught in the magnetic fields of the planet’s protective Van Allen Belts. As the electrons tumble to Earth, they create strange radio waves that can be detected with certain kinds of radio equipment. Whether or not that theory has it right, there’s no doubt that the dawn chorus phenomenon is linked to solar radiation. A similar event occurs during periods of aurora and are more frequent during magnetic storms.

Pulsars

When a star goes supernova, it isn’t exactly a star “exploding” in the traditional sense of combustion-based explosions. Remember that stars are just giant balls of super-heated gas of various elements. A supernova is the immediate, violent sloughing of the majority of that gas. What stays behind is a solar core, an extremely dense orb of gas that emits very powerful waves of energy. These are neutron stars. Often times the density of these neutron stars causes them to rotate at incredible rates, as much as 600 rotations per second. That is roughly 1/7 the speed of light. Because of this extremely fast rotation, the energy the star emits is focused into two beams at the star’s poles. These aren’t exactly solid beams. Rather, they are “pulses” of energy that come at regular intervals. When observed from Earth, pulsars look like they’re blinking.

Because many pulsars emit energy at radio wavelength, some instruments can pick up their energy pulses in the form of sound. Notice in the linked sound clip how the intervals between pulses can actually be heard in the form of alternating tones and chops between tones.

Lessons like these are important for anyone who wants to truly understand cosmology and astrophysics. We humans tend to understand the world as if it exists in segments that just aren’t present. Sight and sound are our brains’ ways of interpreting related phenomena. Both light and sound exist on the same section of the EM spectrum. It’s all just radio waves.

A couple of UK based astronomers just suggested a rather chilling idea that seems to have found favour with the astronomical community. Bill Napier at Cardiff University and David Asher at the Armagh Observatory have claimed that there could be thousands of dark, dormant comets which we cannot see.

With scientific estimates placing the likely number of comets in our solar system at around the 3000 mark, and with only 25 accounted for, the theory seems to be a very real possibility. Various space agencies are engaged in a project to try and monitor potentially threatening comets and asteroids. The group effort is known collectively as Spaceguard and many of the leading figures have agreed there may well be a number of dark comets.

Dark comets reflect less light than the bright kind because they have no surface water and absorb sunlight. In fact another scientist, Clark Chapman, from a Research Institute in Colorado has suggested that they could possibly be detected because of the heat they emit. The fact we can’t currently detect these comets means that one could plough into the earth before we have had a chance to do anything about it.

It is still unclear exactly what we would do if we knew a comet or asteroid was going to hit earth. The asteroid ominously named Apophis was thought to be a threat as it will pass close by to earth in 2029. There were various discussions about whether a mission should be sent to investigate with the idea that they could initiate some kind of deflection but the threat was recalculated as extremely low and the panic passed.

If threats we know about can cause such a level of distress and worry it is pretty terrifying to consider we could be blindsided. The closest shave we’ve had was in 1983 but that comet was still over 5 million kilometres away.