Obama NASA Plans ‘Catastrophic’ say Moon Astronauts
From BBC News:
Former Nasa astronauts who went to the Moon have told the BBC of their dismay at President Barack Obama’s decision to push back further Moon missions.
Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said Mr Obama’s decision would have “catastrophic consequences” for US space exploration.
The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was “disappointing”.
Last month Mr Obama cancelled Nasa’s Constellation Moon landings programme, approved by ex-President George W Bush.
Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, but it is likely to take decades and some believe that it will never happen again.
Orange Dwarf Star Set to Smash into The Solar System
From Technology Review:
A new set of star velocity data indicates that Gliese 710 has an 86 percent chance of ploughing into the Solar System within the next 1.5 million years.
The Solar System is surrounded by thousands of stars, but until recently it wasn’t at all clear where they were all heading.
In 1997, however, astronomers published the Hipparcos Catalogue giving detailed position and velocity measurements of some 100,000 stars in our neighbourhood, all gathered by the European Space Agency’s Hipparcos spacecraft. It’s fair to say that the Hipparcos data has revolutionised our understanding of the ‘hood.
In particular, this data allowed astronomers to work out which stars we’d been closer to in the past and which we will meet in the future. It turns out that 156 stars fall into this category…
Water Found in Apollo Moon Rocks
From National Geographic:
Recently NASA crashed two spacecraft into the moon and orbiters scanned the lunar surface for telltale light signatures—all to confirm the rocky body isn’t bone dry after all.
But, it turns out, solid evidence for water on the moon was under our noses the whole time.
Tiny amounts of water have been found in some of the famous moon rocks brought back to Earth by the Apollo astronauts, scientists announced last Wednesday. (Related: “Apollo 11 at 40: Facts, Myths, Photos, and More.”)
The water levels detected in Apollo moon rocks and volcanic glasses are in the thousands of parts per million, at most—which explains why analyses of the samples in the late 1960s and early 1970s concluded that the moon was absolutely arid.
“Only in the last decade have instruments become sensitive…
A New Look at Newton’s Second Law Could Explain Away the Existence of Dark Matter
From PopSci:
And all it takes to measure is a simple spinning disk here on Earth. When reached for comment, Dark Matter says: “Come on, you almost found me!”
Dark matter’s status as a mysterious and invisible lurker in the universe has frustrated scientists for years. Now, one hopes to solve the puzzle a different way: using a modified version of Newton’s second law that would eliminate the need for dark matter altogether. Researchers in Brazil have devised an experiment that could put the modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) to the test, New Scientist reports.
Much indirect evidence for dark matter — supposedly 25 percent of the mass in the universe — comes from observing its invisible gravitational effect on visible galaxies and their stars. Deep underground experiments on Earth have attempted to directly detect the weakly interacting…
New Outer Space Policy – Rights for Martians and Astronauts?
Professor Andy Miah notes there’s already international government policies taking hold on outer space – and a need for new ethical guidelines. “For instance, what obligations do we owe to the various life forms we send there, or those we might discover? Can we develop a more considerate approach to colonizing outer space than we were able to achieve for various sectors of Earth?”
And what rights do astronauts have? “Could our inevitable public surveillance of their behavior become too much of an infringement on their personal privacy?”
But more importantly, professor Miah notes that “the goods of space exploration far exceed the symbolic value,” pointing out that “A vast amount of research and development derives from space exploration… For example, the United Kingdom’s 2007 Space Policy inquiry indicated that the creation of…
Outer Space Exploration Depends on Your Orgasms
Author Jason Louv asks: what happened to the Great Dream? And then he urges you to start thinking about outer space when you have an orgasm.
“Space is fundamentally about sex. And by eroticizing space, instead of militarizing it, we can do wonders for our limp interest.”
Humankind’s best hope for outer space exploration may be to…eroticize it. “If we could harness the sexual juice poured into the Internet every day and aim it toward the stars, just think what we could achieve.” And in fact, space has a very clear link to sexuality — the threat of world overpopulation! (”Sex makes human beings…And we’ll eventually need to get into space to find somewhere to put them!”)
“Don’t use sexuality to further pollute planet Earth. Use it as a spaceship. Forget Earth, with…
The U.S. and Soviet Union Considered Detonating Nuclear Bombs on the Moon
With all the hubub about NASA blowing up the Moon last October, I thought disinfo.com readers would like to know the U.S. (and the Commies!) had it in mind all along.
Here’s another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
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You’d be forgiven for thinking that this is an unused scene from Dr. Strangelove, but the United States and the Soviet Union have seriously considered exploding atomic bombs on the Moon.
It was the late 1950s, and the Cold War was extremely chilly. Someone in the US government got the bright idea of nuking the Moon, and in 1958 the Air Force Special Weapons Center spearheaded the project (labeled A119, “A Study of…
NASA Shows First WISE Telescope Images
From CBC News:
NASA released the first pictures from the WISE infrared space telescope Wednesday, including a new view of our closest galactic neighbour.
The new images include a shot of the Andromeda galaxy and its smaller satellite galaxies, a glowing comet, a distant galaxy cluster, and cloud of dust and gas teeming with newly born stars.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, launched in December, is on a mission to survey the entire sky in the infrared part of the light spectrum.
Since it began its scan of the heavens Jan. 14, it has sent more than 250,000 raw images back to Earth, and NASA has processed some of them for the public to see, assigning false colours to the different wavelengths of infrared light.
“These first images are proving the spacecraft’s secondary mission of…
Beware the ‘Flying Toblerones’: Reports of Scottish UFOs Released
The BBC reports:
Reports of “flying Toblerones” and objects travelling at 1,100 mph across the Scottish sky have been released by the Ministry of Defence. The files detail how unidentified objects have been witnessed flying over a range of locations across Scotland.Among them were one from a senior air traffic controller at Prestwick Airport who reported seeing a fast-moving UFO on the airport radar.
While four fishermen spotted a flat, shiny object hovering off the coast. The Scottish accounts are among the thousands of reports made of close encounters with UFOs across the UK which have been released in a joint project between the MoD and the National Archives.
For five years the people both you and I represent have witnessed a phenomenon in the area that has been left unexplained The Prestwick airport…
The Space Shuttle Challenger and Climate Change
From The Huffington Post:
On January 27, 1986, the night before the Space Shuttle Challenger was to be launched, a phone conference took place between NASA managers and Morton Thiokol, the manufacturer of the shuttle’s solid rocket motors. Engineers from the rocket company told NASA that it would be too cold (26ºF) to launch since the previous coldest launch (53ºF) showed burn-through problems with the O-ring seals and therefore there was no data to show that it was safe to launch. The NASA managers asked if they could prove that the rockets would fail at low temperatures and, of course, it could not be proved. NASA then held a private call with the rocket company’s managers, with the engineers excluded, and got them to agree to say it was OK to…
Lunargate! Alex Burns Examines the Weird World of Moon Landing Conspiracies
The recent cuts to NASA’s budget, including the axing of the upcoming lunar missions, the Ares Rocket System, and the Orion Spacecraft, have left many of us quite scared for the future of the U.S. space program. This classic article from Alex Burns examines those that question whether or not NASA even got to the moon in the first place. Are we afraid to go back, or to go there at all?
Lunargate by Alex Burns
In a now infamous 1961 speech, US President John F. Kennedy pledged that America’s space program would “place a man on the moon before the decade’s close.” At the heart of cold war battles for geopolitical supremacy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs also became the vehicle for inculcating domestic populations with American values and belief systems.
NASA’s growing power, its protection by the Kennedy administration, and the rise of the Right Stuff astronaut as celebrity hid the steady growth of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower had warned about.
These anxieties — of monolithic social institutions controlling information, and the decline of US global empires — are the core of conspiracy theories claiming the historic Apollo moon landings were elaborately faked. The world was hoaxed.
A Meteorite, Older Than the Sun, Contains ‘Millions of Organic Compounds’
Definitely adding to the ideas for an exogenesis-related explanation for life on Earth. (I won’t go so far to embrace panspermia, although the co-discover of DNA, Francis Crick, did later in life.)
Interesting nonetheless. Doreen Walton writes on BBC News:
Scientists say they have confirmed that a meteorite that crashed into earth 40 years ago contains millions of different organic compounds. It is thought the Murchison meteorite could be even older than the Sun.”Having this information means you can tell what was happening during the birth of the Solar System,” said lead researcher Dr Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin. The results of the meteorite study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We are really excited. When I first studied it and saw the complexity I was so amazed,” said Dr Schmitt-Kopplin, who works at the Institute for Ecological Chemistry in Neuherberg, Germany. Meteorites are like some kind of fossil. When you try to understand them you are looking back in time,” he explained.
The researchers says the identification of many different chemicals shows the primordial Solar System probably had a higher molecular diversity than Earth.
NASA and Space – The Future vs. the Past
From SpaceRef.com:
In covering the uproar over the just-released NASA budget and its implications, the major media headlines have been trumpeting: “Lunar Program Can celled”. Yes, sadly the budget has canceled the current lunar program, based on the NASA designed Ares boosters and Orion capsule. However, as some other writers have pointed out, the Vision for Space Exploration program (VSE), which was conceived by a true government consensus after the Columbia disaster, was in effect hijacked in 2005 by the last person anyone of us would have ever suspected, the greatly respected aerospace engineer, Dr. Michael Griffin. That the VSE envisioned by the White House was hijacked is in little doubt, since the only representative of the space advocacy community specifically invited to attend the former President’s 2004 speech was Rick…
SETI Opens All Data and Coding to the Public
Ole Ole Olson writes on News Junkie Post:
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) just announced that it is releasing all information to the public. SETIQuest.org was launched on Wednesday to facilitate the release and help coordinate an ‘army of citizen scientists’ to help search for anomalies in interstellar microwave patterns.
The New Scientist reports, “SETIQuest is the product of astronomer Jill Tarter’s TED Prize wish. After being awarded the TED Prize last year, Tarter was given the opportunity to make a single wish before an auditorium full of the top names in technology and design. Tarter wished that they would “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.”
‘Object X’ Likely Related to Prehistoric Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid
David Perlman writes in the SF Chronicle:
A puzzling object that seemed to be a comet flying inside the solar system’s asteroid belt is no comet at all, but the remains of a violent collision between two fossil rocks that populate the belt, astronomers say.
Captured in images by the Hubble Space Telescope, the crash of the asteroids provides scientists with their first opportunity to see clear evidence of the violent activity that has constantly churned the asteroid belt since its formation, probably when the planets themselves were forming about 4.5 billion years ago.
The object was first sighted in early January by astronomers at the Air Force LINEAR project telescope in New Mexico, who reported it as a comet that must have flown into the asteroid belt from the solar system’s outer…
Let Doctor Who Explain This Supernova…
Choose your favorite doctor for this story … since David Tennant recently left the role (and did a fine job in my opinion) will pay dues in the graphic. Here’s to expressive scientists and thanks to Charlie Jane Anders for writing about this story on the must visit site io9.com:
Astronomers witnessed a supernova in progress, observing jets of material moving at relativistic speeds: up to half the speed of light. Scientist Megan Argo wanted to explain this exciting discovery to the public, so she wrote a Doctor Who story.
As the highly technical press release explains, scientists were able to detect “relativistic outflow” in a supernova for the first time, thanks to unprecedented cooperation between radio telescopes using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). They discovered that one narrow bipolar jet of material was moving at half the speed of light.
But Argo, who works at Curtin University, came up with a much cooler way to explain this discovery to the public, the story called “Doctor Who And The Silver Spiral.” David Tennant’s Doctor, accompanied by Martha, visit this supernova up close and personal, and get caught up in the very same shock wave that astronomers just discovered. Argo does a great job of capturing the Tennant Doctor’s verbal tics.
Hubble Detects Mysterious Spaceship-Shaped Object Traveling at 11,000 MPH
Jesus Diaz writes a very thought-provoking article on Gizmodo:
Hubble has discovered a mysterious X-shaped object traveling at 11,000mph. NASA says that P/2010-A2 may be a comet, product of the collision between two asteroids. Or a Klingon Bird of Prey. Either way, UCLA investigator David Jewitt is excited:
This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets. The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies.
OK, David, we will believe you until Jerry Bruckheimer finish his next movie, in which a “comet” suddenly stops, turns to Earth, and starts firing anti-matter rays…
Newly Discovered Amateur Video of Challenger Explosion
Grace Schneider writes in the Courier-Journal:
On a chilly January morning 24 years ago, Corydon optometrist Jack Moss raised his new video camera to the sky over central Florida and captured one of the darkest moments in American space exploration — the explosion of the shuttle Challenger.
In the videotape, a stream of white smoke behind the climbing shuttle shoots into view — but Moss, his wife and a neighbor noticed immediately that something was amiss when the channel separated into two streams.
“That’s trouble of some kind,” Moss can be heard saying. “That didn’t look right.”
Moments later, someone is heard telling Moss that the Challenger had blown up.
NASA Worried About Solar Threat To Earth?
One of the alarmist predictions for 2012 concerns the supposed cyclical climax of solar flare activity (see the Larry Joseph section in the disinformation documentary 2012: Science or Superstition). Although NASA felt moved to create a web page to deny this kind of story around the release date of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 disaster movie, apparently they are hedging their bets. Chris Hastings and Jonathan Leake report on a new NASA probe that could help scientists predict chaos-causing solar storms, in the Times:
NASA is to embark on one of its most ambitious missions in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the sun.
Following its launch in nine days’ time, the US space agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will spend five years in orbit trying to discover the causes of extreme solar activity,…
