The Exoplanet Atlas

Wired recently put out THIS great graphic that illustrates in a layman-friendly way a lot of facts about the most interesting known exoplanets. Relatively sizes, distances, and temperatures, plus a quick primer on how exoplanets are discovered.

Exoplanets is one of the most exciting fields of astronomical study, and the one that may have the most long-range benefits. In terms of not only possibly finding other Earth-like worlds and alien life, but in more fully understanding the genesis and development of our own solar system. Plus of course there's the possibility, many centuries from now, our descendants may be visiting or perhaps even living on or around these far-off planets.

Anyway, check out the graphic!

Asteroid Discovery Animation

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've had a very Wile E. Coyote summer, with three separate injuries since June (a fractured foot, a sprained ankle, and bursitis in my elbow.) Along with all the various heat waves its kept me from a lot of various creative work.

Anyway, to get back into the groove of things, I thought readers might be interested in THIS ANIMATION found on youtube, showing the sum of asteroid discoveries from 1980 through 2010. The text with the video explains the color codes and other features. Its fascinating to watch, both from an intellectual/science wonk perspective, but also beautiful in its way, almost a work of art.

Betelgeuse Will Kill Us All!!!!

There's some wild rumors going on around the internet that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, some 640 light years away, may be getting ready to go supernova. (Or, to put it more accurately, the star may have already blown over half a millennium ago and the light from the event may be about to reach us.)

The claim is inspired by some wild speculation going around on some blogs, taking note of the fact that Betelgeuse has seemed to shrink about 15% since 1993, Also, the star might have taken on asymmetrical characteristics, ie, its no longer round to Earth observers; a massive plume may have blown off of its surface, or the contraction may be speedier in some areas than other, or one of its giant convection cells may have collapsed, or some such.

But its enough for some people to cry supernova, and for even more people who can't quite comprehend how immensely far away 640 light years is to start the doomsday talk. Now, granted, if Betelgeuse did blow, it wouldn't just be a once-in-a-lifetime event--it would be a once-in-human-history event. We would have one hell of a spectacular light show in the night sky for many months. The supernova would shine more brightly than a full moon for many weeks, and slowly fade into a small, but slowly expanding, visible nebula.

There's a lot we don't know. We really don't have too much insight into the details of how red supergiant stars work up close; for all we know the contraction may be part of a natural centuries-long cycle. Its a HUGE star, its circumference is greater than the orbit of Jupiter. But that means its outer photosphere is very cool and tenuous, and could be easily perturbed by forces within or without of the star. heck, for all we know, one of Betelgeuse's surviving outer planets may just be plowing through the outer edges of the star, causing the asymmetrical plume like a water wake.

Like most stars, Betelgeuse is very active, and we simply don't know what may be going on. Just because we it do something new doesn't mean a nova is imminent (or was imminent 640 years ago--aw, you know what I mean.)

But even so, we're so far away that the radiation pulse from the initial explosion won't harm anything, though it could conceivable cause some interference in satellite signals. A gamma ray burst could happen if it went supernova, but those happen along the axis of its rotational poles, and we're in the wrong position for those to touch us. And any physical shockwave would be long since dissipated in the hundreds of thousands of years it would take to get here.

No, I think on the very off-chance that Betelgeuse may detonate, the real danger to us would be new brand of crazy it would spark among many people whose sanity was already questionable. You know the type, the people who see any minor event in the world as a sign of the end times, or that the prophet is about to return, or some such. All they'd need is an actual 'sign' in the heavens to trigger all sorts of new delusions.

But anyway, don't give too much credit to the rumors that Betelgeuse may go supernova soon--unless it beats the odds and actually happens, of course. And certainly don't believe any doomsday predictions associated with it.

Its Coming Right For Us!

It turns out that a small red-orange star called Gliese 710, currently some 69 light years away, is on a collision course with the Solar System. But before anyone panics, it won't actually collide with the Sun or any major planets, and will in fact just clip the outer edge of the Sun's Oort Cloud. And all this won't happen for another 1.5 million years or so. Check out the the full article form NEW SCIENTIST.

The brushing of the Oort Cloud is actually pretty significant. For those who may not be up on such things, the Oort Cloud is an extremely disperse 'cloud' of cometary material left over from the formation of the Solar System. It extends roughly from the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt (where we find planet-sized iceballs such as Pluto, Sedna, and Eris) at some 50 AUs out to up to two light years away from the Sun.

Such a massive object passing so close to the cloud would disturb the orbits of a great many of the comets drifting out that way, inevitably send some veering toward the inner Solar System--and Earth. So its very possible that Gliese 710 could precipitate one or more extinction events during its cosmic flyby.

But an interesting possibility no one has mentioned yet is that even while Gliese 710 mucks up the Sun's Oort cloud, the Sun will also muck up Gliese 710's Oort Cloud in turn (assuming it has one, of course. From what we understand of star/solar system formation, it should have one, but we don't know for sure). In fact, chances are the Sun, being more massive and with a more powerful gravitational influence, would likely end up drawing off more comets from Gliese's Cloud than vice-versa.

This raises an interesting possibility. Other such near-misses must have happened in the past, and each time the Sun would have drawn off comets form other stars' Oort clouds. We tend to think of all the debris like asteroids and comets in our Solar System as left over junk from the formation of the sun and planets, but what if a significant percentage of it has actually been 'stolen' from other stars during near misses? It might give a boost to panspermia theories, which theorize that life on Earth originated from space and was seeded by ancient comet impacts.

Of course we can't know for sure until there's an extensive survey of the chemical composition of various comets, and that's at least decades away. But its something to think about.

Liquid Diamond Seas on Neptune and Uranus

Scientists theorize that seas of liquid diamond--yes, you read that right, liquid diamond--may exist far beneath the clouds of gas giant planets like Uranus and Neptune. For the full story, check out THIS article from physorg.com.

As I've gotten older, I'm always afraid I'm going to become bitter and jaded. But then I read about something fantastic like this, and I once again feel the stirring of that all-important sense of wonder about the world and universe that we live in. Liquid diamond oceans? Cool!

Extrasolar 'Water World' May Have Been Found

For more details, follow THIS link to the original article on MSNBC's Cosmicblog.

Basically, astronomers have spotted a so-called 'super-earth' in orbit about a G-class star 40 light years away that may have an abundant amount of water.

But don't get too excited about finding exotic alien mermaids on it just yet. The planet wouldn't be a fun place for a human to go traipsing about on without an armored space suit on. Its 2 to 10 times the mass of Earth, meaning it would likely have unpleasantly high gravity as well as potentially crushing atmospheric pressure, depending on its composition. Its also unpleasantly close to its primary, with an estimated surface temperature of 400 degrees F.

But still, because of its estimated density, experts are fairly certain it may hold significant amounts of water, even if it would be in the form of water vapor. Plus, depending on its atmospheric composition, the high atmospheric pressure might be enough to keep surface water liquid even at its estimated temperatures.

Discovery of the presence of water on an extrasolar terrestrial world would be a major find, and a good indication that other worlds like Earth, with abundant liquid water and a thriving biosphere, may actually be out there among the wilds of the Milky Way. Just something to keep an eye on in the coming months as astronomers turn other instruments toward that very distant world and see if they can discover anything more.

400+ Exoplanets and counting

According to THIS article, 32 newly confirmed exoplanets have been added to the ever-growing list, thanks to the efforts of astronomers at the European South Observatory. Most significant here is the fairly large percentage of 'super-earths' discovered, planets that are much more massive than Earth, but are not big enough to be gas giants. If these are fairly common, than that means that smaller terrestial planets like the kind we are familiar with must be a standard feature in most star systems.

I would put a cautionary asterix next to the statement in the article by astronomer Alan Boss that, "The universe must indeed be crowded with habitable worlds." While I think most of us would indeed hope that's the case, there's still no real evidence for that. The universe seems to be a very hostile place, and even a plentitude of terrestrial planets does not automatically guarantee a plentitude of life. A lot can still go wrong in the billions of years that are needd for life to evolve, even if it does arise on any world. I'm not saying that life-bearing worlds aren't out there, I'm just saying we need more evidence before we can say that the universe is crowded or not with them

Our Near Space Future

(Image courtesy NASA)

Many people today will be pontificating about the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, as is only right. But I'd like to take the opportunity not to talk about the last forty years of space travel, but the forty years that's immediately ahead of us.

In my last blog entry, I talked about how people have trouble intuitively grasping just how vast the scale of space is. Which is partly why I think that for the next few generations, despite the current push outward for exploration to the Moon and Mars, I think the aspect of space travel that will have the most impact on normal people will be the opening up and exploitation of so-called 'Near Space.' Near Space extends from the upper reaches of the atmosphere up to about 500 miles altitude, or the inner edge of the Van Allen radiation belts. That's a scale well within most peoples' understanding, and still is on the shore of this exciting new frontier.

We're already seeing a number of exciting developments along these lines recently. The successful SpaceX launch, the construction of the Virgin Galactic "spaceport", the US Military's tentative plan for a near space 'stratostation' that could permanently occupy suborbital space. Combined with the enlarging community of space-capable nations (particularly China) and renewed interest by private companies just chomping at the bit to market space, it seems that we're poised for a renewed flowering of space travel and exploration. But this time, instead of just being limited to two competing nations, it seems the whole of the industrialized world will take part.

After the world more fully recovers from the recent economic chaos--which admittedly might not be for a full decade yet--I think space tourism will begin to fully take off, with Virgin Galactic and its inevitable competitors offering first suborbital flights, then full orbital excursions. Bigelow Aerospace is already hard at work designing and constructing the first 'space hotels', which would be no more than small, modular, inflatable space stations in which tourists and small crews could stay for up to a few days. And in their footsteps will follow other companies eager to cash in.

Even now, many countries see the ability to at least launch their own satellites as a matter of pride, and a number of them are beginning to launch their own space exploration probes as well, as exemplified by the recent lunar probes launched by India and Japan. How long before they begin launching their own manned space craft, and building their own space stations?

So by 2050 or so, I'm hazarding an educated guess about what we'll see: many different nations and probably at least half a dozen private companies involved heavily in human space exploitation. Those that don't already have a manned presence there will be planning on it. There will be at least a dozen space hotels, most small, but perhaps a few as large as the old Mir station. Companies will start ofering point-to-point suborbital flights. Russia, always a major proponent of space stations, may have an ISS-like large station, and will probably have plans for something even larger, like a ring station. China may still be playing-catch up, hoping to industrialize Near Earth Orbit, and close on its heels will be alliances and nations like the ESA, Japan, India, Brazil, and others.

But where will the US space program fit into all of this?

For some reason, the slow but deliberate process of constructing orbital infrastructure does not seem to sit well with the American public. This seems to go beyond just its high price tag and the old manned vs robotic exploration debate. I think it goes back to why the Apollo program is such a jewel in the eye of the American public, and why space efforts since, despite their on-paper practicality, haven't been as popular.

I think there's a very deep need in the American psyche to explore. Most of the population in the US is descended from people who left their homelands and set off toward someplace unknown in the hopes of something better, and I think that tendency is pretty much embedded in our national DNA. We love building things and making money, but even more fundamental than all that is that we, as a people, want to go.

Apollo spoke to that very deeply. Man landing on the Moon was an amazing technical achievement, but I think to many around the world, especially Americans, it felt right. Like it was what we were destined to do all along.

But many at NASA, in that era and since, realized that sending humans beyond the Moon would need an extensive orbital infrastructure to be practical. You need someplace to construct the giant vehicles necessary, you need workhorse vehicles to haul all the material to orbit, as well as a place to test out long-term habitation and industrial techniques. Thus the need for a shuttle and the space station, and the other plans NASA had its old 'grand architecture.' This goes back to what I talked about last time--just how vast the scale of space is. We're microbes trying to cross an ocean on specks of dust. With our current level of technology, there really is no other way to go about sending humans out into the solar system without this infrastructure.

In the coming era, I think space agencies and companies may begin to specialize--instead of being a catch-all for all space efforts the way many agencies have been, they may begin specializing according to what they do best. For example, the private companies will be all about tourism, the fledgling countries will want to compete for launch services, Russia I'm sure would love to be at the forefront of space stations and colonies in orbit, Japan seems determined to create solar power satellites, and so on.

And Americans I think will work very hard, as they have historically, to be humanity's great explorers of space, to always push the envelope of where humanity goes and what we go out in the Great Dark. The next great age of American manned exploration may not start until the other countries catch up and build the infrastructure that the US needs to explore but still seems very reluctant to participate in. I'm sure that there will be American stations and moonbases and what not, but the US will not fully wake from its current ennui about space until we once again can finally start taking great leaps for all mankind.

The Public vs the Scale of the Universe

Most people have trouble intuitively grasping the scale of the universe.

Its not that we have problems with the numbers. Most people can bandy the facts and figures around pretty easily. Approximately 238,000 miles to the Moon, 93 million miles to the Sun, 4.3 light years to Proxima Centauri, and so on. Not too much difficulty there.

But visualizing those distances accurately is not instinctive at all. In a way, we're built against that--we have only these analog animal brains of ours, after all. Our minds are hardwired by evolution to deal with things on a human scale, and as a result we tend to mentally shrink everything down to that scale so we can more easily handle it, no matter how inaccurate that view may be.

You can see this popping up a lot in science fiction. The popularity of Space Opera science fiction, for example, can at least partially be credited to how it shrinks travel to other solar systems down to a human scale, with interstellar travel taking days or weeks at the most and entire planets usually represented by over-simplified sets of cities and environments. Space-borne disaster movies such as Armageddon or the more recent Moonfall suffer from this as well, portraying human nuclear weapons as being able to do more than imperceptibly nudge massive celestial objects like the Moon or a moon-sized asteroid. Trying to move the Moon with nuclear weapons would be like trying to propel an aircraft carrier out to sea by hitting it in the stern with a handful of firecrackers.

But I think this lack of understanding scale also colors how the public perceives a lot of scientific endeavors, and usually not for the better. For example, there recently have been a rash of blogs and opinions online complaining about how NASA has waited so long to return to the Moon or to mount an expedition to Mars...almost as if the Moon were right next door and Mars was just a jaunt down the street.

But the failure here is really in understanding just how far away even the Moon is, and how difficult it currently is to send people there. A round trip would cover a distance of roughly 20 times the circumference of Earth. When was the last time any one of us circumnavigated the globe even once? Even with modern commercial jets, how much would 20 such trips cost you in terms of time (both in preparation and in actual flight), resources, and money? And that would just be a taste of the raw distance involved. A trip to the Moon, performed entirely in hard vacuum and microgravity, would be far more difficult and expensive than that.

It was done before during the Apollo program, of course, with great difficulty and risk. But the problem is, we found nothing on the Moon that made it worth the expense for astronauts to return. Its not that the Moon doesn't have valuable resources we can use, its just that with our current level of technology we can't build up the infrastructure there to profitably exploit them. Why? Because the Moon is just too damn far away, and sending things there has proven just too expensive so far as a result.

And Mars is much, much worse. At its closest approach, Mars is about 36 million miles from Earth, or about 1440 times the circumference of Earth. How long and how expensive would 1440 trips around the world on commercial airlines be to you? Now imagine doing it twice, as you'd probably want a return trip back to Earth as well. Now imagine how difficult and expensive a flight that distance through a hostile, deadly void would be in a spacecraft using current technology.

Like the Moon, its not as if Mars isn't ripe with valuable resources and potential scientific discoveries. But we just don't have the technology yet to reach all that distance and set up all the infrastructure that would be needed to make it worth the expense.

In the future, of course I think things will turn around, with the development of faster, better propulsion ssystems and more long-enduring and reliable life support systems. But as much as we may want that to happen in the near future, its much more likely that it will not happen for decades yet.

If people, especially those controlling the purse strings in Congress, understood just how vast the distances were out in space, I think they'd understand the need for more long-term planning and execution in the space program. We have to break out of the short-sighted cycle of trying to restart the space program every 4 or 8 years whenever we have a new president.

And I think the public in general would be more supportive of space efforts, knowing how daunting the task faced by NASA and other space agencies are. I think educating people on the true scale of things should begin in the science classroom, and science writers--and even science fiction creators--should be mindful of trying to convey that when it comes up.

Mistakes About Space Stealth and Revamping Lasers

In 2005 I wrote a fairly extensive article on space combat called "Hunters In The Great Dark," which was published in Strange Horizons. One of my main assertions was that stealth in space was a given; the sheer scale immense of the battle field seemed to assure that. Also, one of main rationales for that was how real-life astronomers have had a lot of difficulty finding even the majority of near-Earth asteroids, objects that can dwarf many proposed space battle ships. If there's such a problem finding flying mountains, why would it be any easier to find much smaller ships?

However, in the years since, people have pointed out the problems with that, and with a great deal of reading on my part for how sensors and such would work in space, I now have to admit I was wrong about that. The hunt for asteroids has taken place only in a limited spectrum (visible light) so far, and doesn't take into account multiple-spectrum IR detectors and more. Life support, various ship systems, and engines create waste heat that can at best be masked for only a short time, more than likely not long enough to mount any kind of successful attack.

Given "realistic" projections for future space technology (on the OV scale, that would be up through Tech Level 15), stealth for manned ships is not very likely and for unmanned attack craft difficult at best. Like most things about future technology, I don't want to say its flat-out impossible, because too many dismissals of 'impossible' things have been proven wrong. I still think its probably doable in certain specialized circumstances, and some unforeseen innovation (like metamaterials, which looks like it may lead to a real life 'invisibility' cloak) may throw a monkey wrench into it all.

But otherwise, I was wrong. Oh well. Sorry about that. At least I got paid $100 for the original article way back when, so I think my pride will survive.

So anyway, I'm taking down "Hunters In The Great Dark" from the Essay section for a possible major rewrite at some future time. I'm also going to take down the "Laser Firearms" article in the "Firearms" section. The article is still accurate as far as it goes, but it was one of the first articles I did in for OV back in 2003. There have been a number of developments and rethinking about laser weapons since then, and I should rewrite the article to reflect all that.

Visit EXOSOLAR.NET--An Interactive Flash Starchart

EXOSOLAR.NET

This is by far one of the neatest things I've found online in a long time.

EXOSOLAR.NET is a professionally done, interactive animated starchart showing the stellar neighborhood around our solar system. You can zoom in and out, rotate the view, toggle close-ups of known star systems with exoplanets or binaries, and more! An invaluable resource for anyone into astronomy, space exploration, or science fiction.

When I was young and imagined zooming around interstellar space in a starship, this is the kind of navigational aid I imagined starpilots would reference. Okay, it might not be quite as detailed as all that (its has excellent data on stars within about 30 light years, but it thins out significantly after that--though you can find the occasional far-off straggler on the charts like Betelgeuse at 427 ly and Deneb at 1600 ly) but it was still enough to get my sense of wonder going. Check t out.

The Kepler Probe Launch And Its Implications

KEPLER PROBE LAUNCH

Follow the link above for the full details of the Kepler planet-hunting probe, launched yesterday. Its designed to look for Earth-sized planets around other stars. It won't be able to tell if they're life supposrting, only if they're there, their approximate mass, and their orbit around their primary star.

I have little doubt that it will find earth-sized worlds, but the big question everyone is eager to find out is if it finds any in the lifezones around other stars. The lifezone is the distance from a star at which water can exist at liquid temperature.

Its a relatively thin range, even given the wide variety of factors that can affect planet temperature, so the chances of any one star having such a planet are very slim. But with the any thousands out there, who knows? the two most disturbing implications would be on the extreme of the spectrum--if kepler fins a whole lot of lifezone worlds, or if it finds none.

If it finds a large amount, that means that life-bearing worlds are probably abundant in the universe. good in many ways, true, but that also means the galaxy is probably full of potential rivals--rivals who might also have a profound head start on us technologically. If nothing else, the very possibility of that will make our expansion out into space more cautious.

The other extreme, if Kepler finds no lifezone worlds, it will mean almost certainly that life is extremely rare, and that for all practical purposes humankind is utterly alone. While that means a lack of potential rivals, that also means a lack of potential friends and partners. If we stumble, there will be no one else to catch us, or even remember that we were here.

I'm sure kepler will find a median between those two--and of course, even if a planet is found in a lifezone, there's no guarantee that it wil actually harbor life. But still, it makes one think...