One of the most important questions our species has tackled is the origin of life on Earth. If we can figure out the conditions and catalyst for the beginning of life, we can look elsewhere in the universe for those same conditions, and zero in on the potential for finding extraterrestrial life. We know the universe is old enough for the painstakingly slow evolutionary process, but what started it? In the famous 1952 Miller-Urey experiment, a flask containing the basic natural elements water (H20), methane (CH4), Ammonia (NH4), and Hydrogen (H2), all present on the early Earth, was subjected to...
Have you seen a gorgeous red sky in the evening, just after sunset? If it’s cloudy, the effect becomes even more spectacular. The Sunlight reflects off the clouds and back down to the ground, creating the calm of twilight. Clouds only go so high, so as the Earth continues to turn and we go deeper into nighttime, the glow disappears. But sometimes it sticks around a bit longer. During a rocket launch at dusk, the exhaust trail from the rocket climbs into the upper atmosphere, far above cloud layers. It can reflect sunlight, with the shape of the particles refracting...
The Transit of Mercury is happening right now here on May 9th, 2016. If you want to watch live, check out the NASA feeds from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. For the small size of Mercury, it makes a pretty stark contrast against the bright Sun, and is easy to see, even in a small telescope. Of course, you need a solar filter. Don’t look directly at the Sun without proper eye protection, you won’t see Mercury and you’ll damage your vision. I managed to snag a photo on my phone through a small telescope. Please excuse the lack of quality...
Modern rocketry is a pinnacle of engineering. It requires the right balance of multiple systems, and a deep knowledge of scientific principles such as fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, and chemistry. But a huge part of the brute force science done in rocketry has been ‘try and fail.’ Countless rockets have exploded in tests dating back to the cold war, and even though they are much less frequent today, there is still value in learning from explosive and expensive mistakes. Here is a compilation of rocket failures and testing from the last 70 years. ….because sometimes you have a day where you...
The fact that we have found gravitational waves tells us that we have come a long way in terms of science and technology. We detected a perturbation in the fabric of space-time that was one one-thousandth the diameter of a proton. It’s insane to think about that level of precision. And yet we still can’t find Dark Matter, the stuff that is literally everywhere in the universe. Is it our problem? Or is dark matter just on a whole different level? By now, we know that dark matter isn’t some clump of stuff sitting out there in space. But that...
Mice are a common laboratory animal for pre-human testing. Everything from drugs to medical treatments to surgeries have been tested on mice, and the effects of spaceflight are no exception. Animals such as Laika the dog and Rhesus monkey Albert 1 have had their own test flights, but mice offer an easy alternative when there’s not much extra room on a spacecraft. In a recent study, mice flown on the space shuttle Atlantis were shown to have developed early signs of liver disease. Could humans in space exhibit the same symptoms? “Prior to this study we really didn’t have much information...
I just released a post about the Kepler Space Telescope and its observation of the shock breakout of an exploding star, the exact moment when it’s considered a supernova. Further to this I wanted to show some of the great visualizations of the event, and to show you just how energetic and luminous a supernova really is, compared to our Sun. The video shows the shock breakout, the bright flash lasting an hour, before the star rapidly increases in brightness to it’s maximum. Not shown is the gradual fading of the supernova, which can take days or even weeks....
I talk a lot about SpaceX. I write about their exploits, their goals, and their successes and failures. But they are not the only major player in commercial space flight, not by a long shot. They have been the most well-known company due to their 1.6 Billion dollar contract for supply missions to the International Space Station, but there is great work being done by others. The one company that is starting to move into the spotlight is Blue Origin. Another company run by an internet billionaire, in this case Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Blue Origin has similar goals to Elon...
As the results from Pluto and its system of moons continues to pour in, we are seeing a lot of scientists keeping busy in excitement as they interpret the data and work to understand the complexities of the recently illuminated dwarf planet. The fascinating images that have returned have also been interpreted and manipulated in ways that show fascinating features and unexpected views. A recent rendering shows a complete rotation of Pluto and Charon from images taken by New Horizons. Since it takes Pluto 6 days, 9 hours, and 36 minutes to rotate, New Horizons couldn’t take high resolution images...
Space is incredibly dangerous, in case you didn’t know. Harmful radiation, bitter cold, low pressure, no air, and no gravity make for a very difficult environment to survive in. Even though a space capsule is pressurized with breathable air, protected with radiation shields, and warmed to a comfortable temperature, the effects of microgravity are still damaging to the human body. We know that astronauts lose bone mass rapidly, have to exercise to keep their muscles active, but what other effects does microgravity have on the body? For one, without gravity to clear your sinuses, they get a bit clogged in...
