Universe Today » Ian O’Neill

UFOs, a Green Venus and Sun Gobbling? Isn't That Going a Little Far, Mrs Hatoyama?

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:41:04 +0000

Venus? Green? Awesome!

"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus."

This might sound like a quote taken from the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist or the chant from someone who spent an hour too many at an Amsterdam coffee shop, but it wasn't.

Actually, these are the words of the wife of the Japanese premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama.

Mrs Miyuki Hatoyama might be married to a man Japan nicknames "The Alien," but it looks like it's not him who has dreams of an extraterrestrial nature…
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NASA is Running Out of Plutonium

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:57:38 +0000

Cassini, fueled by plutonium (NASA)

Decommissioning nuclear weapons is a good thing. But when our boldest space missions depend on surplus nuclear isotopes derived from weapons built at the height of the Cold War, there is an obvious problem.

If we're not manufacturing any more nuclear bombs, and we are slowly decommissioning the ones we do have, where will NASA's supply of plutonium-238 come from? Unfortunately, the answer isn't easy to arrive at; to start producing this isotope, we need to restart plutonium production.

And buying plutonium-238 from Russia isn't an option, NASA has already been doing that and they're running out too…
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Did a Russian Home Get Hit by Progress Space Debris?

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:24:55 +0000

The offender: Progress 33 (Roscosmos/NASA TV)

The Russian supply ship for the International Space Station successfully launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:37 pm EDT (10:37 pm Moscow time) on Thursday to carry 2.5 tonnes of supplies to the orbiting crew. Progress 33 will take over from Progress 32 that was filled with rubbish and unwanted instrumentation and de-orbited on May 6th, sent on its way to burn up over the Pacific Ocean on May 18th.

It seems the spaceship exchange went according to plan. Progress 33 launched, Progress 32 de-orbited and the space station is stocked until the next delivery.

However, a small village in South Siberia didn't have such a harmonious evening; a chunk of the Progress rocket booster fell onto a house.

Or did it…?
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Panspermia Flower Power

Ian O'Neill — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:24:13 +0000

Panspermia is a hypothesis that suggests life isn't an Earth-only affair. The seeds of life may have spread throughout the Solar System and beyond via chunks of rock or comets, encountering planetary bodies, transporting spores or bacteria to other worlds. In short, we could be living in a cosmic ecosystem linked through simple interplanetary vagabond bacteria.

However, panspermia remains in the realms of speculation as we haven't found any examples of extraterrestrial life (so far), let alone the possibility that life may be roaming freely through the vacuum of space. But panspermia as a life-spreading mechanism remains a possibility.

Now, famous physicist and futurist Freeman Dyson has come forward with an idea about what we should be looking for during the search for extraterrestrial life. Dyson believes the search for ET is flawed, as we are looking for what we deem to be probable lifeforms; perhaps we should be looking for detectable lifeforms.

And what's one of the most detectable forms of life we know of? Flowers. What's more, these flowers may have spread as far afield as the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud…
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2009 HC82: A Burnt-Out, Eccentric and Backward Near-Earth Asteroid

Ian O'Neill — Sun, 03 May 2009 23:23:25 +0000

The Solar System often throws up surprises for astronomers, but the recent discovery of a 2- to 3-km wide asteroid called 2009 HC82 has sent observers in a spin. A retrograde spin to be precise.

This particular near-Earth asteroid (NEO) should have already been spotted as it has such a strange orbit. It is highly inclined, making it orbit the Sun backwards (when compared with the rest of the Solar System's planetary bodies) every 3.39 years. What's more, it ventures uncomfortably close (3.5 million km) to the Earth, making this NEO a potentially deadly lump of rock…
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Were the Dinosaurs Really Wiped Out by an Asteroid? Possibly Not (Update)

Ian O'Neill — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:30:59 +0000

In 1979, the huge Chicxulub crater, measuring about 180 km (112 miles) in diameter, was discovered on the northern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Scientists made the obvious conclusion that something rather large had hit the Earth in this location, probably causing all kinds of global devastation 65 million years ago. At around the same time, 65% of all life on the face of the planet was snuffed out of existence. The dinosaurs that roamed the planet up to that point were no more.

The timing of asteroid impact and the time of the mass extinction was too much of a coincidence to be ignored. When particles from the asteroid impact were discovered just below the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary, there was a strong causal link: the effects of the asteroid impact had driven the dinosaurs to extinction.

However, a problem with this theory has come to light. It turns out the Chicxulub impact may pre-date the K-T boundary by 300,000 years…
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Did Dark Matter Annihilate Our Early Universe?

Ian O'Neill — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:46:50 +0000

A billion years after the big bang, hydrogen atoms were mysteriously torn apart into a soup of ions.

380,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe cooled from being a hot soup of plasma, to a temperature where protons and electrons could combine to form atoms. This calm period of neutral hydrogen in universal history didn't last for long however. The neutral hydrogen atoms were ripped apart once more, by a mechanism that would go on to reionize the entire Universe, a process that eventually ended a billion years after the Big Bang.

It is thought the first stars that formed prior to the reionisation epoch probably pumped out some fierce ultraviolet radiation, ionizing the neutral hydrogen, but a new (controversial) theory has been put forward. Did dark matter have a role to play in the reionisation the Universe?
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Mars Rover Spirit is Rolling Again After Memory Problems

Ian O'Neill — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:48:21 +0000

Image taken by Spirit of a possible location for further scientific study (NASA)

It's been a worrying month for the health of Mars Expedition Rover Spirit. Two weeks ago, the embattled robot failed to wake up after three successive communication sessions, and then over the Easter weekend (April 12th and 13th), mission HQ noticed the rover had rebooted its systems at least twice during use of the high-gain antenna. The same thing happened on April 18th. In addition to this, Spirit has been suffering bouts of what seems to be an 'electronic amnesia', where the onboard computers have failed to record data onto their flash memory.

Today however, it would appear Spirit is still operational after over two weeks of remaining planted in the same position. It managed to enact commands sent from NASA to start driving once more, trundling 1.7 metres over the Martian regolith. She hasn't given up the good fight quite yet…
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Hubble Discovers a Strange Collection of White Dwarf… Dwarfs

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:30:17 +0000

Small helium white dwarfs can be caused by a binary partner (NASA)

A collection of very odd white dwarfs have been discovered in a local globular cluster. Twenty-four white dwarfs (18 of them are new discoveries) have been spotted. Although these degenerate stars aren't exactly an uncommon (they are the small sparkling remnants left over after star death), this particular set are unique; they are made from helium, rather than the "standard" carbon and oxygen. And they are small, even smaller than the smallest dwarfs.

How did this dense cluster of old stars evolve? It turns out their stellar material is being stolen, stifling their development…
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The Blurry Summit of Mars' Pavonis Mons

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:54:48 +0000

…and yes, the picture is in focus.

Blurry Pavonis Mons (HiRISE/NASA)

This strange image was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on April 11th. At first it looked like a classic example of my early camera days without a tripod; most of the photos I took were blurry or out of focus (due to my less-than-perfect eyesight). So when I first saw this picture of the summit of one of the huge Martian ex-shield volcanoes, Pavonis Mons, I assumed it was a mistake; HiRISE either had the shakes or it had developed myopia.

Actually, this image is in focus, HiRISE is working perfectly. It's the Martian surface that's blurry…
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Could Orion be Downgraded from a Six to Four Astronaut Vehicle?

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:10:31 +0000

To save on weight, NASA engineers are considering the option to remove two seats from the Orion crew exploration vehicle. According to the manager of the Constellation Program, a possible redesign option has been discussed with the International Space Station (ISS) partners despite the fact that the initial operational capability (IOC) to deliver crew to the ISS calls for a six-seat version. Although the space station crew will have expanded to six by the end of next month, NASA is confident the loss of two seats on Orion won't cause any operational problems… at least we'll still have Soyuz.
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Young Asteroids Age Fast with a Solar Wind Tan

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:11:41 +0000

If you stay out in the Sun too long, you'll eventually get a suntan (or sunburn); your skin will also get damaged and it will show signs of ageing faster. This might sound like a sunblock ad, but the same principal holds true for the small chunks of rock floating around in the Solar System. Yes, a young asteroid's surface will age prematurely, but it's not caused by the Sun's ultraviolet rays, it's caused by the solar wind…
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Brown Dwarfs Could Be More Common Than We Thought

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:27:39 +0000

In 2007, something strange happened to a distant star near the centre of our galaxy; it underwent what is known as a 'microlensing' event. This transient brightening didn't have anything to do with the star itself, it had something to do with what passed in front of it. 1,700 light years away between us and the distant star, a brown dwarf crossed our line of sight with the starlight. Although one would think that the star would have been blocked by the brown dwarf, its light was actually amplified, generating a flash. This flash was created via a space-time phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

Although lensing isn't rare in itself (although this particular event is considered the "most extreme" ever observed), the fact that astronomers had the opportunity to witness a brown dwarf causing it means that either they were very lucky, or we have to think about re-writing the stellar physics textbooks…
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Despite Global Warming, Wildfire Frequency Does Not Increase

Ian O'Neill — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:16:21 +0000

An Alaskan wildfire engulfs woodland (John McColgan/BLM Alaska Fire Service)

As global average temperatures rise, it is widely believed the frequency of wildfires will increase. However, this may not be the case. According to analysis of sediment from lake beds in Northern Alaska, the frequency of wildfires didn't relate to changes in temperature variation over the last few thousand years. This is strange, surely a warmer climate will dry out vegetation faster, creating more fuel for fires to ignite and spread? Apparently not, there appears to be a far more potent controlling factor at play…
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Should We Really Tell ET Our Problems?

Ian O'Neill — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:18:20 +0000

The design etched to the Pioneer probes. The first interstellar pornography? (NASA)

So, you have a radio transmitter and you've been tasked to send a message into space to try to communicate with a hypothetical alien civilization. Where do you begin? Probably high on your list is to seek out the best candidate stars to send a signal to. As we only have experience of life on Earth, it's a pretty good idea to look for Sun-like stars, as for all you know, that is the only place where Life As We Know It™ could exist.

So now you have found the potential location of an alien civilization, what message should you send? Firstly you'd probably want to make a good impression; perhaps sending directions to Earth, a universal map with an arrow pointing at the Solar System. Secondly you might want to identify what/who you are (insert some human physiology here). And third? Perhaps you'd consider sending information about our culture, civilization, history, science; all the good stuff that makes us human.

Would it cross your mind to mention there are 23 bloody conflicts going on right now amongst our own kind? Would you think about telling our potential alien neighbours about what you just had for dinner? Would it be a good idea to tell them about the political corruption in your country, the vast poverty worldwide or the ecological damage we are doing to our own home?

In a recent article written by the director of interstellar message composition at the SETI Institute, the question about communicating honestly with ET, without sanitizing the truth, is asked. Should we really tell an alien civilization about our problems?
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Where is the Most Remote Location on Earth?

Ian O'Neill — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:27:38 +0000

A heat map of travel-times to nearest city

According to a new study, less than 10% of the world's land is more than 48 hours of travel from the nearest city. This doesn't include air travel, it is ground-travel only (i.e. on foot, train, car, boat, bike, horse, donkey). So no matter where you are in the world, there's a good chance you can get to somewhere substantially populated within two days. At face-value, this might not seem very important, but when you look at the maps, you see many wilderness locations aren't quite as remote as we once thought they were. The Amazon Rainforest for example is surprisingly well connected (rivers are quite useful in that respect), and the remote deserts of Africa have a pretty efficient road network.

So, where is the most remote location on Earth? How long would it take to get there?
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Constraining the Orbits of Planet X and Nemesis

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:58:19 +0000

If Planet X was out there, where would it be? This question posed by an Italian researcher turns out to be a lot more involved than you'd think. As opposed to all the 2012 ~~idiocy~~ hype flying around on the internet, this research is actually based on a little thing called science. By analysing the orbital precession of all the inner-Solar System planets, the researcher has been able to constrain the minimum distance a hypothetical object, from the mass of Mars to the mass of the Sun, could be located in the Solar System. As most of the astronomical community already knows, the two purveyors of doom (Planet X and the Sun's evil twin, Nemesis) exist only in the over-active imaginations of a few misinformed individuals, not in reality…
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Kepler Will Be Used to Measure the Size of the Universe

Ian O'Neill — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:30:59 +0000

Artist's rendering of the Kepler Mission (NASA)

On April 7th, commands were sent to NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler telescope to eject the 1.3×1.7 metre lens cap so the unprecedented mission could begin its hunt for Earth-like alien worlds orbiting distant stars. However, one UK astronomer won't be using the Kepler data to detect the faint transits of rocky exoplanets in front of their host stars. He'll be using it to monitor the light from a special class of variable star, and through the extreme precision of Kepler's optics he will be joining an international team of collaborators to redefine the size of the Universe…
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NASA Worried: Spirit Reboots Rover Computer, Twice

Ian O'Neill — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:36:11 +0000

A panorama by Sprit, taken last month (NASA)

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is acting a little strange. Over the Easter weekend, it would appear that the tenacious little Mars explorer rebooted its computer not once, but at least two times. Mission scientists were alerted to the problem as some of the communication sessions from Spirit-to-Earth were irregular, prompting mission control to investigate the problem…
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Fires Rage Through Central America

Ian O'Neill — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:29:12 +0000

Hundreds of fires rage in southern Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula, and in northern Guatemala and northern Honduras. Image by NASAs Aqua satellite (see the super-high resolution version)

Having just read about the deadly wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma, I was interested to see whether one of NASA's Earth-monitoring satellites have been tracking the situation from orbit. Whether it is too early for observations to come in, or whether one of the satellites have yet to make a pass directly above the states it is unclear, but along the way I noticed a rather striking image of the Yucatan Peninsula, Central America. In the picture retrieved by NASA's Aqua satellite are countless wildfires dotted over Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. It looks like a combination of arson, agricultural activity and accidental blazes are gripping the region, fuelled by dry vegetation…
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North Korea Rocket Launch "Partial Success"

Ian O'Neill — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:13:43 +0000

The first-generation Taepoding-1 missile (Reuters)

On Sunday, North Korea carried out its promise of launching a rocket carrying a satellite, as part of their peaceful space program. Naturally, this move has drawn massive international condemnation, prompting US President Barack Obama make a statement in Prague during his European tour. Japan has also reacted angrily, tightening sanctions against the state.

Although a rocket was launched, it was far from being a success, but it wasn't a failure either. If the world were to listen to the official line coming out of Pyongyang, one would think Kim Jong-il has his first communications satellite in orbit, but the reality is a little more pedestrian. The Taepoding-2 rocket didn't make it into space at all, and rather than orbiting the Earth, the communications satellite now rests at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. However, this is a worrying development, the missile had a successful first-staging, propelling the rocket over Japanese airspace, a technical success in itself…
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North Korea Threatens War if Rocket is Shot Down

Ian O'Neill — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:48:38 +0000

The possible path of the N. Korean launch, passing over Japan. First stage will drop into the Sea of Japan (Video still courtesy of Analytical Graphics, Inc. www.agi.com)

Some time between April 4th-8th, North Korea will launch a communications satellite into orbit. Unsurprisingly there is huge scepticism being voiced by Japan, South Korea and the United States that the secretive military nation is in fact carrying out a test-launch of the Taepodong-2 ballistic missile system, mounting a "peaceful" satellite to disguise its real intention. If the world's suspicions are correct, if successful, North Korea will have a means to deliver a possible nuclear strike as far as Hawaii or Alaska. Now the North Korean army has warned that if the launch is interfered with, they will attack "major targets" in Japan.

Oh dear, it sounds like it's going to be a rough few days in the west Pacific…
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Warp Drives Probably Impossible After All

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:11:58 +0000

No warp speed ahead

Just when I was getting excited about the possibility of travelling to distant worlds, scientists have uncovered a deep flaw with faster-than-light-speed travel. There appears to be a quantum limit on how fast an object can travel through space-time, regardless of whether we are able to create a bubble in space-time or not…
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NASA Could be "Criminally Negligent" Over Brian the Bat Death

Ian O'Neill — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:26:15 +0000

The injured long-tailed bat clings onto Discovery's external fuel tank (NASA)

NOTE: This was the Universe Today's contribution to April Fools Day, just in case you were wondering. However, it isn't a joke that a bat died during a shuttle launch. Brian will forever be remembered by the Brian Bat Foundation…

On Sunday, March 15th, Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Cape Canaveral, beginning the highly successful STS-119 mission to "power up" the International Space Station (ISS). Unfortunately, a tiny stowaway was discovered clutching onto the external tank of the shuttle and refused to budge. For the whole of Sunday, NASA waited for the free-tailed bat (unofficially named "Brian" by yours truly) to fly away. Alas, Brian held on to Discovery all the way up to launch. NASA even took a photo of the shuttle as it cleared the launch tower, Brian still attached. He wasn't frozen to the external tank (infrared images showed the bat was warm), a wildlife expert studied the last pictures of Brian, informing the space agency that Brian had in fact suffered a broken wing and was unable to fly away, even as the rockets ignited.

Although NASA was not thought to be responsible for the death of the little animal at first (calling the whole incident "sad but unavoidable"), a Florida state official is pursuing legal action against the ground staff at the Cape. According to state animal protection law, NASA may be charged with negligence, after making little effort to prevent "animal interaction" with the launchpad and apparent unwillingness to remove Brian by hand before launch. However, as investigated by the local press, there are far more animal deaths during shuttle launches than we realise…
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Was the Tunguska Fireball a Comet Chemical Bomb?

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:23:34 +0000

Over a century ago, on June 30th, 1908 a huge explosion detonated over an unpopulated region of Russia called Tunguska. It is probably one of the most enduring mysteries of this planet. What could cause such a huge explosion in the atmosphere, with the energy of a thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs, flattening a forest the area of Luxembourg and yet leaving no crater? It is little wonder that the Tunguska event has become great material for science fiction writers; how could such a huge blast, that shook the Earth's magnetic field and lit up the Northern Hemisphere skies for three days leave no crater and just a bunch of flattened, scorched trees?

Although there are many theories as to how the Tunguska event may have unfolded, scientists are still divided over what kind of object could have hit the Earth from space. Now a Russian scientist believes he has uncovered the best answer yet. The Earth was glanced by a large comet, that skipped off the upper atmosphere, dropping a chunk of comet material as it did so. As the comet chunk heated up as it dropped through the atmosphere, the material, packed with volatile chemicals, exploded as the biggest chemical explosion mankind had ever seen…
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