Fly Me To The Moon…


“Fly me to the Moon and let me play among the stars… Let me see what life is like on…” Oh, hi there! I’ll just bet you know what’s up with the double image, don’t you? That’s right. A little “stereo magic” by Jukka Metsavainio. But this time you’re in for something really different. Step inside for a magic carpet ride you’ll never forget…

This time our visualization moves! That’s right. You’re going to take a virtual 3D journey along the lunar surface… Just like you were flying along in your own personal lunar lander. While Jukka has instructed that this video was prepared in parallel vision only, I had no trouble slightly crossing my eyes and getting it to work for me that way. I hope you’ll find this as exciting as I did! (And I hope you’re able to see it. Remember, not everyone can…)

As you watch the scenery unfold, see how many craters you can identify as we tour from the lunar south to north. I see Maurolycus and Stofler drift by… Then you can see the huge central peak in Arzachel sticking up out of the shadows! Next thing you know, there’s Albategnius with its vacant looking floor and central peak. Ptolmaeus, Hipparchus, Mare Vaporum… Then look out! Vrrrrrrrrooooooom…. Here come the Apennine Mountains with the deep wells of Aristillus and Autolycus on one side and the smooth plains of Mare Serenitatis on the other. Next thing you know? We’re flying over the Caucasus Mountains and you can see the Alpine Valley like the lunar Grand Canyon… and over there! Over there is Atlas and Hercules! And all the way up at the top? Ah… Goldschmidt! Now, if you’ll pardon me. I’ve got a carpet to catch.

Again!

Many thanks to Northern Galactic member, Jukka Metsavainio for sharing his incredible visions with us. We understand how many hours upon hours it takes to do this, and we cannot thank you enough.

Mercury and Jupiter

Solar System montage

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Let’s compare and contrast the two most different planets in the Solar System, Mercury and Jupiter. Of course, you probably know that Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System while Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System.

First, let’s just take a look at the physical measurements of Jupiter and Mercury. The diameter of Mercury is 4,879.4 km, while the diameter of Jupiter is 142,984 km. In other words, Jupiter is 29.3 times bigger across than Mercury. In terms of volume, you could fit 24,462 Mercurys inside Jupiter. Jupiter even has 5,750 times more mass than Mercury.

Now let’s take a look at their composition. Mercury is a rocky terrestrial planet, with a high density. In fact, the liquid iron core of Mercury accounts for 42% of the planet, and this is surrounded by a mantle and crust of silica. Jupiter in comparison is a relatively less dense gas giant planet; it’s made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with a few other trace elements.

Mercury orbits very close to the Sun, with an average orbital distance of 57.9 million kilometers. Because it orbits so close, Mercury completes an orbit around the Sun every 88 days. Jupiter, on the other hand, is located 778.5 million km from the Sun and takes 11.86 years to complete a single year.

Mercury has no moons or rings, while Jupiter has a faint set of rings and 63 named natural satellites so far.

It sounds like Jupiter and Mercury are different in every way, but there’s one big similarity. You can see them both with your own eyes. Jupiter is very bright and often very high in the sky. In fact, if you see a really bright star in the sky in the middle of the night, you’re probably seeing Jupiter, and not a star at all. Mercury is also possible to see with your own eyes. But since Mercury orbits so close to the Sun, you’ll only see it shortly after sunset or before sunrise until the Sun washes out the night sky.

We have written many stories about Mercury here on Universe Today. Here’s an article about a the discovery that Mercury’s core is liquid. And how Mercury is actually less like the Moon than previously believed.

If you’d like more information on Mercury, check out NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide, and here’s a link to NASA’s MESSENGER Misson Page.

We have also recorded a whole episode of Astronomy Cast that’s just about planet Mercury. Listen to it here, Episode 49: Mercury.

Mercurio y Júpiter

Reference:
NASA

Water on Mercury

Radar image of Mercury that shows water deposits.

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There’s water on Earth, obviously. And large quantities of water ice on Mars and in the outer Solar System. But astronomers have wondered, is there water on Mercury? There obviously aren’t any lakes and oceans of water on Mercury. We would have detected them from Earth, and definitely would have seen them when the various missions to Mercury skimmed past the planet, taking close up photographs. But does Mercury have water in any form?

The conditions on Mercury sure rule it out. As Mercury slowly rotates, the side facing the Sun experiences extremely high temperatures. At noon on the equator, the temperature rises to 700 Kelvin. And then dips down to just 100 Kelvin at night, since there’s no atmosphere to hold in the temperature. Any water on the surface of Mercury would boil away quickly and escape into space because of Mercury’s low gravity, and the constantly blowing solar wind.

But you might be surprised to know that astronomers have discovered water on Mercury. Not liquid water, but deposits of water ice at the planet’s poles. This is because there are craters at the north and south poles of Mercury which are eternally in shadow. The ice in these craters is never warmed by the Sun, and so it always remains frozen at the bottom of these craters.

When NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft flew past Mercury in 2008, it also discovered the presence of water vapor in the thin atmosphere that surrounds Mercury. This atmosphere, or more precisely “exosphere”, is created when particles from the Sun’s solar wind bombard Mercury and kick up atoms into its atmosphere. It’s possible that the solar wind is kicking up water from the ice deposits at Mercury’s poles, or maybe it’s coming from cometary fragments. Or maybe the solar wind is depositing the oxygen and hydrogen atoms on Mercury’s surface in the first place.

So there is water on Mercury, just not very much.

We have written many stories about Mercury here on Universe Today. Here’s an article about a the discovery that Mercury’s core is liquid. And how Mercury is actually less like the Moon than previously believed.

If you’d like more information on Mercury, check out NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide, and here’s a link to NASA’s MESSENGER Misson Page.

We have also recorded a whole episode of Astronomy Cast that’s just about planet Mercury. Listen to it here, Episode 49: Mercury.

De agua sobre el mercurio

References:
NASA: Ice on Mercury
NASA Space Math: Is there Ice on Mercury?

Interior of Mercury

Interior of Mercury
Interior of Mercury

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The interior of Mercury is remarkably similar to the interior of our own planet Earth. Like Earth, Mercury has a crust, mantle and core. But there are many differences between our two planets as well.

But when you look at Mercury, it appears very similar to our own Moon. It has the same rugged terrain and numerous impact craters. But Mercury has a very different interior from the Moon. When NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft made its flyby of Mercury in 1974, it helped astronomers calculate that Mercury is the second densest planet in the Solar System after Earth. In fact, if Mercury were the size of Earth and had our mass and gravity, it would be even more dense.

At the heart of Mercury is it’s core. This is a ball of liquid iron and other metals that measures approximately 3,600 km across. Considering the fact that Mercury itself is only 4,879.4 km across, the planet’s core accounts for 42% of its volume. Compare this to the Earth’s core, which only accounts for 17% of our planet’s volume.

Astronomers only learned recently that Mercury’s core is liquid, and not solid as originally theorized. They did this by studying how radio signals bounce off the surface of Mercury. They found that wobbles in the planet’s rotation matched predictions only if Mercury’s core was liquid.

Surrounding the core of Mercury is the mantle. Similar to Earth, this mantle consists of silicates, but it only measures 500-700 km thick. Compared this to the Earth’s mantle, which accounts for most of the volume of the planet.

And surrounding Mercury’s mantle is its crust. A region of the planet the measures between 100-300 km thick. Unlike the Earth’s crust, Mercury’s crust has no plate tectonics, so it doesn’t have plates that float above the interior of Mercury. Without these plate tectonics, even impact craters billions of years old are preserved on the planet’s surface.

We have written many stories about Mercury here on Universe Today. Here’s an article about a the discovery that Mercury’s core is liquid. And how Mercury is actually less like the Moon than previously believed.

If you’d like more information on Mercury, check out NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide, and here’s a link to NASA’s MESSENGER Misson Page.

We’ve also recorded an entire episode of Astronomy Cast all about Mercury. Listen here, Episode 49: Mercury.

Interior de Mercurio

Device Makes Radio Waves Travel Faster Than Light

Polarization Synchrotron. Credit: Singleton, et al., via Current.com

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A scientist has created a gadget that can make radio waves travel faster than light. Einstein predicted that particles and information can’t travel faster than the speed of light, but phenomena like radio waves are a different story, said John Singleton, who works at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The polarization synchrotron combines the waves with a rapidly spinning magnetic field, and the result could explain why pulsars — which are super-dense spinning stars that are a subclass of neutron stars — emit such powerful signals, a phenomenon that has baffled many scientists.

Singleton said the polarization synchrotron basically abuses radio waves so severely that they finally give in and travel faster than light. This may be what happens in pulsars, as well.

“Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit radio waves in pulses, but what we don’t know is why these pulses are so bright or why they travel such long distances,” Singleton said. “What we think is these are transmitting the same way our machine does.”

The device consists of a 2 meter-long gently curving arc of alumina (a dielectric material), with a series of electrodes fitted at regular intervals along its length. Applying a sinusoidal voltage across each electrode and displacing the phase of the voltage very slightly from one electrode to the next generates a sinusoidally-varying polarization pattern that moves along the device. By carefully adjusting the frequency of the voltage and the phase displacement the researchers say they can make the wave travel at greater than the speed of light. However no physical quantity of charge travels faster than light speed.

And beyond explaining what has been a bit of a mystery to the astronomical community, Singleton’s discovery could have wide-ranging technological impacts in areas such as medicine and communications, he said.

“Because nobody’s really thought about things that travel faster than light before, this is a wide-open technological field,” Singleton said.

One possible use for faster than light radio waves — which are packed into a very powerful wave the size of a pencil point — could be the creation of a new generation of cell phones that communicate directly to satellites, rather than transmitting through relay towers as they now do.

Those phones would have more reliable service and would also be more difficult for hackers to intercept, Singleton said.

Speedy radio waves could also revolutionize the computing industry. Data could be transferred more quickly, and if used in semiconductors, it would mean faster caches and the ability to communicate across separate pieces of silicon nearly instantly.

In the health field, faster than light radio waves could be in extremely targeted chemotherapy, where a patient takes the drugs, and the radio waves are used to activate them very specifically in the area around a tumor, Singleton said.

Read the paper on the Polarization Synchrotron.

Sources: Current, Geek.com, Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends

NASA, Japan Release Most Complete Topographic Map of Earth

In this perspective view, the new topographic maps show the LA Basin. Credit: NASA, MET

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Topographic maps are some of the most used and valuable maps for both government and the general public. Now, NASA and Japan have released a new digital topographic map of Earth Monday that covers more of our planet than ever before and was created from nearly 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, on board NASA’s Terra spacecraft. It is available online to users everywhere at no cost.

“This is the most complete, consistent global digital elevation data yet made available to the world,” said Woody Turner, ASTER program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This unique global set of data will serve users and researchers from a wide array of disciplines that need elevation and terrain information.”
ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched on Terra in December 1999. ASTER acquires images from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, with spatial resolutions ranging from about 50 to 300 feet.

According to Mike Abrams, ASTER science team leader at JPL the new topographic information will be of value throughout the Earth sciences and has many practical applications. “ASTER’s accurate topographic data will be used for engineering, energy exploration, conserving natural resources, environmental management, public works design, firefighting, recreation, geology and city planning, to name just a few areas,” Abrams said.

Click here for visualizations of the new ASTER topographic data.

Click here to download the ASTER global digital elevation model.

NASA and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, known as METI, developed the data set.

Global map from ASTER. Credit: NASA, METI
Global map from ASTER. Credit: NASA, METI

Previously, the most complete topographic set of data publicly available was from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. That mission mapped 80 percent of Earth’s landmass, between 60 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south. The new ASTER data expands coverage to 99 percent, from 83 degrees north latitude and 83 degrees south. Each elevation measurement point in the new data is 98 feet apart.

The ASTER data fill in many of the voids in the shuttle mission’s data, such as in very steep terrains and in some deserts,” said Michael Kobrick, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “NASA is working to combine the ASTER data with that of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and other sources to produce an even better global topographic map.”

Source: NASA

How Old is Mercury?

Interior of Mercury
Interior of Mercury

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Just how old is Mercury? Is it the oldest planet, or the youngest? Actually, you might be surprised to know that there is no oldest or youngest planet. Mercury is exactly the same age as all the rest of the planets in the Solar System: approximately 4.6 billion years old.

Astronomers think that our entire Solar System started out as a giant cloud of cold molecular hydrogen gas, left over from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Some event, like a nearby supernova explosion disturbed the cloud and caused it to begin collapsing. As it collapsed, various pieces broke off, each of which would eventually form a star like our own Sun.

Because of conservation of momentum from all the particles of hydrogen, the cloud began to spin as it collapsed, becoming a flattened disk. The newly forming Sun was at the center of this disk, with dust surrounding it. These dust particles collided together, forming larger and larger chunks of dust, rocks, boulders, asteroids, planetesimals, and eventually the planets we see today. All of the planets formed together at the same time.

How do we know how old Mercury is? Astronomers have found meteorites on Earth, that fell from space at some point in the past. They use a technique called radiocarbon dating to determine how old the meteorites are. No matter where the meteorites come from; the Moon, Mars, or the asteroid belt, they’re always the same age: 4.6 billion years.

And so, how old is Mercury? The same as everything in the Solar System: 4.6 billion years old.

We have written many stories about Mercury here on Universe Today. Here’s an article about a the discovery that Mercury’s core is liquid. And how Mercury is actually less like the Moon than previously believed. How old is the Universe?

If you’d like more information on Mercury, check out NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide, and here’s a link to NASA’s MESSENGER Misson Page.

We have also recorded a whole episode of Astronomy Cast that’s just about planet Mercury. Listen to it here, Episode 49: Mercury.

Cuántos años tiene Mercurio

Book Review: Cold War Tech War

Cold War Tech War

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When is the best answer not the right answer? Assuredly many historical events epitomize this dilemma. Randall Whitcomb digs into Canada’s Avro Arrow story and delivers up such an event in his book, “Cold War Tech War – The Politics of America’s Air Defense“. In it, he shows how a plane, successfully designed and built for winning tomorrow’s war, ended up not being chosen as the perfect answer.

The Avro Arrow jet fighter resulted from post war collaboration between Canadian and British scientists and engineers. This futuristic fighter, with broad delta wings and an innovative power plant, should have been able to compete favourably in air to air combat. Though design and preproduction builds occurred in the late 1950’s, some people believe that it would have been able to match or better today’s F-22 Raptor. But, the Canadian government abruptly and completely ceased support of the program and demanded that its existence be stricken. Hence, in one day, the Arrow program ended and a company was laid waste.

Given the Arrow program’s abrupt and politically charged ending, much has been written about it. Whitcomb’s book aims to reconsider this event and add new light by looking at ‘the larger geo-political and economic issues’. To do so, the book looks at the company, A.V. Roe Canada Ltd, as the principle character. Providing its history and the actions of some of its employees and products allows the reader to accept the claim that the company was a global leader in the aerospace world. Describing the design of the Avro Jetliner, the Avro Supersonic Transport and the Avro Space Threshold Vehicle shows the reader just how innovative and advanced were the company’s designers. And, with all this, the book also shows what went wrong.

Whitcomb’s claim is that international machinations were to blame. Here, the book bears more resemblance to a John le Carre novel than a work of non-fiction. However, the references and reprinted (declassified secret) documents indicate otherwise. In looking at the broader global picture, the book expands its scope to include the Bilderberg Group, banana republics and the Panama canal. Its main theme is that international conglomerates used their power and influence to ensure a maximum return over the short-term future. Thus with A.V. Roe being a Canadian company and most conglomerates being from the United States, the Arrow was considered expendable and even threatening. Hence it became a victim of its own success, at least according to the book.

Though an intriguing and fascinating book in its own right, the prose has some problems. The root of these is possibly due to the author unfortunately passing away before finishing the manuscript. Perhaps in consequence, there are many short, sometimes disconnected chapters, including some that seem unrelated to the main theme. As well, the depth of detail for the aircraft (e.g. explaining airfoil shapes) don’t relate to the geo-political or economic issues. But, the enthusiasm, knowledge and ability of the author’s writing quickly put such trivialities aside.

So, why would today’s aerospace community be interested in this book? Well, there’s no plan to resurrect the Arrow, so engineers probably aren’t interested. But, international conglomerates remain today. Therefore, any reader who is interested in turning a grandiose dream into reality would benefit from the reality spread throughout this book. Those vast new telescopes on nearly inaccessible mountain tops or spaceships carrying humans to Mars all will rely upon the support of international conglomerates. Thus, as this book readily shows, champions need pick and choose their friends and allies carefully.

Politics makes for vociferous discussions as well as strange bedfellows. Mix in some state of the art technical theory and the recipient may never again be able to differ fact from fiction. In Randall Whitcomb’s book, “Cold War Tech War – The Politics of America’s Air Defense” it becomes only too clear that politics held greater sway than reason. And from it, as shown, the right answer was lost.

Carnival of Space #109

This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Jennifer Oullette at Discovery Space’s Twisted Physics.

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #109.

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.

Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.

Continental Crust

The crust is the top layer of the Earth’s Surface. Did you know that there are 2 types, though? One is called the Oceanic Crust, and the other, the Continental Crust. As its name suggests, the Oceanic Crust is the top layer of Earth that forms the ocean floor. The Continental Crust, however, will be our focus.

We walk on top of and dig down through the Continental Crust when we plant or drill. Even if there is an unstable surface at the very top, like sand, the deeper parts of the Crust are made of harder rocks. The large land masses, continents, have bases made from sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic rocks, as well as any combination thereof. This shield rock is the oldest known; it’s been tested, dated, and found to have been here for 3,960,000,000 years!

Geologists, scientists who study the Earth, believe that shield rock was created when hot molten iron, known as magma cooled. If their math’s correct, it happened around the time these rocks formed, almost 4 billion years ago, right? Some of those rocks were so big it took a long time for them to cool. So, even if the rocks were formed 3.9 billion years ago, they might not have cooled for quite some time. Many estimate that the Continental Crust wasn’t completely hard for another 60,000,000 to 160,000,000 years.

The top portion of this rock has another name, platform rock. The oldest-known platform rocks are approximately 600,000,000 years old, and can be found in central North America. The sedimentary rock ranges from 1,000 to 2,000 meters thick; that is equivalent to more than a half mile to 1.25 miles. When we put the top and bottom portions of the Continental Crust together, we get what scientists call, a craton. Most cratons are stable and haven’t been damaged by earthquakes or volcanoes for hundreds of millions of years.

Around the edges are the continental margins, mostly created by sedimentary rock originally found in the oceans. How is that possible, you ask? Well, it’s due to earthquake and volcanic activity. In this case, it’s mainly due to a phenomenon called, subduction. You see, the Earth fits together like a puzzle; and, if you try to place the wrong piece into a spot where it fits, but isn’t quite right, what happens? Another piece might pop out of place. Sometimes, a continental margin works its way under the oceanic crust. When that occurs, the oceanic layer ends up on top of the continental margin. This is subduction. The most well-known place for this is along The Ring of Fire, an area that covers the edges along the Pacific Ocean. This is why so many and such violent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis occur in that part of the world.

Universe Today has a wealth of information on this and other related topics. Here are just 2 of those available. The first is entitled,
Earth, Barely Habitable?.

The second is called, Interesting Facts About Planet Earth.

Universe Today also hosts Astronomy Cast, a science program that covers a variety of subjects. Episode 51: Earth, explains this subject in greater detail.

The Encyclopedia of Earth , by Michael Pidwirny has some excellent information, too.

Sources:
USGS
Science Daily