In Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel Andromeda Strain (and subsequent film and recent TV mini-series) the premise is about an extra-terrestrial microorganism that threatens to wipe humanity off the planet through truly horrific blood clotting. It was an interesting take on the threat from outer space scenario.
So if we earthbound humans have to worry about space organisms turning our blood into dust, what do astronauts on long term space missions have to stress out about? According to a report in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (via PopSci): Earthborn bacteria mutating into killer diseases.
It turns out that bacteria that we’ve evolved pretty good defenses for could overwhelm our immune systems if we’re cooped up together on long term space voyages. So add that to the already growing list of space hazards including radiation, zero-g bone loss, space madness and your holodeck trying to kill you.
Despite its gusty reputation as a “gas giant,” Jupiter’s blood-red clouds hide a dense, rocky core that’s perhaps 20 times as massive as Earth. That core blocks any spacecraft’s passage through the center of the planet, but even a detour through the clouds would be a disaster.
Oh really Sally? Maybe you should try telling that to this man. He drove a car through a mountain. A mountain. Have you ever done that? Nope. Didn’t think so.
Of course Buckaroo Banzai also opened a gateway into the 8th Dimension and narrowly averted an invasion from the Lectoids of Planet X. But he fixed it! For someone that awesome, flying through Jupiter would be a cinch. We demand a retraction.
Ever wonder what it looks like to see a spacecraft land in the middle of a field? Wonder no more. NASA has posted a great Flickr set of photos showing the return to earth of Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté and Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt in their Soyuz craft.
The details of the event itself are sketchy and vague, though the meteorite reportedly left a scar on the boy’s hand before drilling a crater into the ground. We talked to Astronomer Phil Plait about the incident. He gives a great breakdown of the case on his website Bad Astronomy.
Us: So do you think it is at all likely that the kid was hit with a meteorite?
Phil: It’s possible, but there are too many holes in the story. I’m pretty suspicious of this for the obvious reasons — it’s pretty unlikely — but a lot of the story doesn’t add up. He was on his way to school on what’s obviously a suburban street, but no one else saw the flash, the bang, him getting hit? Plus, the Telegraph article misquotes the scientist, so it seems like this is less and less likely the more and more I look at it.”
The Bad astronomer alerted us to the existence of photographs of the boy, crater and meteorite on a German Newspaper’s website. He believes that the impact crater in the photo is probably a fake.
But if confirmed, this incident will be one of the only known direct meteorite strikes that has occurred since Ann Hodges was struck with a grapefruit size meteorite in 1954, the first known incident in human history. We aren’t holding our breaths just yet.
In November 1980, planetary scientists eagerly examined transmissions received from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it sped past Saturn. And with good reason! Amid those transmissions was the first image of Saturn’s North Pole – a region that’s virtually impossible to see from Earth, and, depending on the degree by which Saturn is tilted, can be cloaked in darkness for up to 15 years at a time (and you thought your last winter was never going to end).
What those scientists saw, and later missions confirmed, was a decidedly bizarre feature in the gas giant’s atmosphere directly above the North Pole: a 15,000-mile-wide hexagon.
A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…
In an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation called the “The Chase” a long running problem in Star Trek was finally solved – Why do all the aliens in Star Trek look humanoid. The answer was not “budget”. It was that a race that lived 4.5 billion years ago seeded the galaxy with its DNA. Humans, Vulcans, klingons etc., all got their imprint from them. We kind of look like each other because we all look like some alien race from 4.5 billion years ago. Problem solved. But is Intelligent Design really a satisfying answer?
If we find aliens that look like us, what other explanations could account for them?
Kidnapping
Having to deal with a slightly more sophisticated audience that grew up watching Star Trek, the producers of Stargate and the producers of the television series had to come up with a simple explanation for there being humans all over the galaxy in present day time. Their solution was a popular one in sci-fi literature: We were kidnapped. Over the last 100,000 years humans have been relocated to the distant corners of our universe. Once there, they go about their business. Building monuments to their gods (Star Trek and Stargate) or becoming thriving interstellar civilizations more advanced than us on earth (Iain Banks’s The Culture).
A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…
Time Travel stories generally suck. There are some noteworthy exceptions – specifically stories that deal with the problems of time travel and not just time travel as a plot device (Primer, Back to the Future, to name a few).
Star Trek has done some great and some very bad time travel stories. Story merits aside, there’s one big problem with most time travel stories; Transmitting people back in time (information) has no theoretical basis: It’s impossible. For every worm hole propped open with exotic matter or giant Tippler tube, someone always finds an equation to show how the universe corrects itself with quantum screams, bubbles or other annoyances that get in the way of us correcting that horrible thing that happened in 6th grade or saving the whales.
Assuming for a moment that the killjoys at MIT and Princeton who relish in pointing out that time travel as we understand it is impossible, then what? How can we tell scientifically literate time travel stories? (more…)
A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…
The transporters in Star Trek are an exciting concept. Recent developments in quantum physics have made the possibility of teleporting matter a theoretical possibility while warp drive still remains a fantasy concept. However, the amount of energy required to move a person and all the other problems that go with it (engineering and ethical) leave quantum teleportation a bit to be desired for practical use. Crazy things can happen, but in the event that quantum teleportation doesn’t scale up or people are upset by the idea of their atoms being destroyed so copies can take their place, here are some slightly (we think) more practical solutions for teleportation that use way less energy and preserve your atoms:
Calls poured in to 911 dispatchers in Virginia on Sunday describing an unexplained loud boom and a streak of light across the sky. A space.com article published Monday called a Russian rocket falling back to earth the culprit:
The mysterious boom and flash of light seen over parts of Virginia Sunday night was not a meteor, but actually exploding space junk from the second stage of a Russian Soyuz rocket falling back to Earth, according to an official with the U.S. Naval Observatory.
But according to a livescience.com article published today, the Virginia boom couldn’t have been the Russian Rocket:
U.S. Strategic Command has since reported that the rocket re-entered Earth’s atmosphere near Taiwan, on the other side of the world, several hours after the reports of the fireball. So both its timing and entry location rule out the rocket as the explanation for the fireball.
Astronomers now believe that it was a meteor, but with only eye-witness testimony to go on, who knows what it was?
Astronomers have identified two massive balls of ice, orbiting a dwarf planet on the fringe of our solar system. According to sciencenews.org:
You’d need a mighty tall glass to hold two space objects that researchers have now identified as ice cubes at the fringes of the solar system. The larger of the icy bodies is about the width of Ohio, the smaller about twice the length of Rhode Island. Both bodies are moons of the dwarf planet Haumea.
Now that’s a lot of ice. It’s nice to know that when we finally get around to colonizing the solar system that there will be no shortage of fresh water to be harvested from these two ice spheres and space objects like them.
In Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel Andromeda Strain (and subsequent film and recent TV mini-series) the premise is about an extra-terrestrial microorganism that threatens to wipe humanity off the planet through truly horrific blood clotting. It was an interesting take on the threat from outer space scenario.
So if we earthbound humans have to worry about space organisms turning our blood into dust, what do astronauts on long term space missions have to stress out about? According to a report in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (via PopSci): Earthborn bacteria mutating into killer diseases.
