Monday, April 30, 2012

The Phases Of The Moon And Moon Facts

With regards to moon facts, lunar phases are incredibly crucial to us because they influence various things on the planet. It\'s a known fact that the Earth sun and moon are connected and that their activities impact one another. For example, the tides of the seas on Earth are influenced by the lunar phases, meaning that our lives are influenced by these phases too. The reason is the fact that in accordance with pics of Earth, an incredibly large section of the Earth is covered with water.

Among the first things that you need to understand about lunar phases is the fact that they happen on a monthly basis in the exact same order, which means that they are taking place repeatedly. Through these phases, the form of the moon changes, which means that after a cycle ends we commence seeing a small section of the moon, then more, then a quarter of the moon and so on until we see a full moon. Probably the most interesting moon facts is the fact that every cycle regarding these lunar phases is comparable to the previous one. 

Another one of fascinating moon facts is that for the duration of ancient time, people were taking the moon as a reference in order to know the finest fishing times along with the time. This means that besides the sun, people only had the moon to use as a time reference. The lunar phases had the role to display them what time of the month was and even what season, despite the fact that in those times they did not think at time as we do today - weeks, months and so forth. 

However, when it came to the lunar phases and what it meant to every tribe, this was strictly related to the religion and beliefs of each and every tribe. Even though the moon seems to change its shape depending on the phase, this is not actually true. In fact, we are able to see the moon rise because of the Earth\'s movement. The shape of the moon that we see during its phases depends on the quantity of light reflected by the sun.

Just about every lunar phase possesses its own meaning and its own importance to us. There are many fascinating moon facts that not many people are aware of, yet the moon is truly an exciting and special object that has a fantastic effect on our lives.



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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Can Black Holes Evaporate?


"Can Black Holes Evaporate?"," Since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, nothing (matter and/or energy) once inside a Black Hole can ever get out again - or so the seemingly ironclad logic went.
 A physicist by the name of Jacob Bekenstein came up with the idea of applying quantum physics to these objects (upon a suggestion by his mentor John Wheeler - who incidentally coined the phrase ""Black Hole""), and once that was done, well lo and behold, these objects apparently exhibited entropy, and therefore had a temperature and therefore must radiate and therefore can vomit out stuff.
 That stuff that a Black Hole can regurgitate now goes under the name of Hawking radiation, or to give credit where credit is due it is technically Bekenstein-Hawking radiation.


Of course if Black Holes have a temperature, then they must follow the same laws of thermodynamics as any other object with temperature.
 The temperature of a hot cup of coffee will stay hot longer the higher the temperature of the environment that surrounds that hot cup of coffee.
 So how does a Black Hole get temperature?

In retrospect, how this happens is obvious (as are all great ideas when applying hindsight).
 That could only be achieved at a temperature of absolute zero where and when everything is 100% frozen stiff.
 If something were at absolute zero, frozen stiff and standing still, you'd know both the momentum (which would be zero) and position (at a standstill) of that something with absolute precision.
 However, the particles come in matter-antimatter pairs, which usually immediately annihilate and return to their former pure energy state.


The vacuum energy, that which can generate particle-antiparticle pairs, exists everywhere where existence has any meaning.
 These cosmic objects all have an event horizon which surrounds them.
 I say its ""fuzzy"" since it's not razor sharp, albeit nearly so.
 Now, what if that vacuum energy generates a pair of virtual particles, one each popping into existence above the event horizon; one below the event horizon.
 One will stay within the Black Hole.
 And thus, slowly, ever so slowly, but ever so surely, these cosmic sinks loses mass, thus energy, and they evaporate.
 Black Holes can only radiate from the event horizon region which, in a very large cosmic sink is going to be very cold because it's not radiating very much, so initially only things like the mass-less photon escapes.
 When the cosmic sink is tiny, it's very warm, in a relative sense, and it can go out with a 'bang', maybe emitting an electron or positron which is way more massive.
 That's where the popular accounts end.
 The ultimate fate of Black Holes will be to evaporate via Hawking radiation, even if it does take trillions of years.
 Black Holes can acquire stuff, as well as radiate stuff.
 Now this is perhaps why Hawking radiation hasn't been observed.


Forget these universal sinks (and their massive gravity) for a moment and concentrate on Planet Earth.
 You see them because they are radiating photons - particles of electromagnetic energy of which visible light is a small part.
 Optical telescopes pick up a lot more of them, but they're still just as real.
 Though Earth's atmosphere shields us from some of these photons (ultraviolet photons are far greater in number at the top of our atmosphere than at the bottom), you still get impacted by multi-billions of them; Planet Earth many orders of magnitude more.
 Overall, there are roughly one billion photons for each and every fundamental particle with mass, like electrons and neutrinos.
 Even if you luck out, Planet Earth gets impacted by meteors and other outer space debris, sometimes debris large enough to not only hit the surface but do considerable damage.
 The trillions of neutrinos that hit us are so ghostly that nearly all pass right through you and the entire planet as well despite them having a tiny amount of mass, so as far as our planet is concerned, they are of little significance.
 If you were just outside the event horizon you'd 'see' photons (of all wavelengths) because you'd see stars and galaxies, etc.
 Neutrinos would still pass right through you on their way to their doom once passing through the event horizon.
 Black Holes will sweep up stuff just like Earth does, only more so since it has more gravity with which to grab hold of stuff with, and also because once caught there's no escape for the cosmic fish.
 Neutrinos that can pass through light-years worth of solid lead without even 'breathing hard' will be imprisoned when they try that trick in a Black Hole's inner sanctum.


But we can imagine an idealized cosmos where all Black Holes have swallowed up all existing radiated particles (photons), all the atoms, molecules, the dust and all the bigger stuff - all those stars and planets; asteroids and comets; even all that mysterious 'dark matter'.
 Of course there is one further logical extension.
 Black Holes can merge to form bigger Black Holes.


Okay, so the only scenario now possible is that this Mother of all Black Holes evaporates via Hawking radiation.
 Since matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, once the Mother of Black Holes has finally gone 'poof', the Universe is right back where it started from - full of stuff from photons to fundamental particles which them undergo chemistry to form atoms and molecules and stars and planets and perhaps life - and new Black Holes!

Perhaps this is a new and improved version of a cyclic/oscillating universe! - But then again, maybe not.
 That ""idealized cosmos"" was only a 'what if' thought experiment.
 Since the galaxies are getting farther and farther away from each other due to that expansion, the collection of Black Holes contained within each galaxy keep getting further and further apart from other clusters of Black Holes contained within other galaxies.


Now the collection of all Black Holes in any one galaxy could well coalesce into one super Black Hole galaxy.
 You have a pure Black Hole galaxy, or a galactic sized Black Hole.


But secondly, there's another fly in the ointment.
 All the radiating stars and stuff may have been gobbled up within each galaxy, but all of interplanetary space, all of interstellar space, and all of intergalactic space, isn't pure vacuum.


So what's this CMBR? If you have a massive hot explosion (like the Big Bang event is alleged to have been), and all that heat energy expands and expands, then you'd expect the temperature of the area occupied by that energy to drop, the temperature ever decreasing as the volume that finite amount of energy occupies increases.
 And that's just what we find on a universal scale.
 That's the diluted heat energy of the very hot Big Bang - well it has been a long time since the Big Bang event (13.
 That microwave ""hiss"", called the CMBR, was predicted way before it was discovered.


Since the CMBR is just photons with very long wavelengths, Black Holes could suck up the CMBR photons as easily as light photons.
 Combining the two effects and the Universe is a chilly place indeed and will get even colder.
 What happens when the temperature of Black Holes equals the temperature of the Universe at large - the CMBR? The answer is thermal equilibrium like when your hot cup of coffee cools off to room temperature.
 For every photon emitted via Hawking radiation, a CMBR photon gets sucked in.


What about very tiny (micro) Black Holes that are relatively 'hot'? Might they go 'poof' before thermal equilibrium is achieved? Will the contents of the Black Hole evaporate into the surrounding cosmos before they can equate to the surrounding temperature? The analogy might be like a hot drop of water could evaporate into the cold atmosphere before the liquid water drop can attain the temperature of its surrounding environment.


Of course if you could take a Black Hole, isolate and shield it from the rest of the cosmos and all that it contains, so all you have is the Black Hole and its internal energy (including the all pervading vacuum energy therein).
 If that's the case then outgoing would exceed incoming since there could be no incoming, and therefore that Black Hole would then radiate and slowly evaporate and eventually go 'poof'.
 So, Professor Hawking is quite correct - in theory.


*If it helps to conceive of the concept of the vacuum energy, here's an analogy.
 Part of that atmosphere consists of invisible water vapour.
 You get mist/fog (clouds), rain drops, snow, sleet, hail, etc.
 And so you have the invisible vacuum energy that generates particle-antiparticle pairs which annihilate back into the vacuum energy.





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Monday, April 23, 2012

A Parallel Analogy Between Supernovae And Cosmology



"A Parallel Analogy Between Supernovae And Cosmology"," Stellar objects and events, like nova and supernovae are in the cosmic scheme of things almost insignificant in comparison.
 Still, there might be a lot to be gleamed from comparing the life and death of our Universe to the life and death of the stars within that Universe.
 is a far more philosophically satisfying universe than a one-off born, live, and fade-away universe, which is what our Universe appears to be.
 Okay, maybe you don't.
 But the broader human species continues to recycle - birth, death, birth, death, etc.
 Actually all of your stuff will recycle too.
 So we go from Once Upon A Time/In the Beginning through to Cosmic Evolution through to The End.
 What if there were many universes, and they could interact? Then there might not be an overall Once Upon A Time/In the Beginning and ultimately The End.


THE STORY OF THE SUPERNOVAE: We've all heard of supernovae, and while quite rare, there has been one visible to the naked eye recently that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud (SN 1987A), a nearby companion mini-galaxy to our own visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
 It was the first visible naked eye supernovae event since 1604 - rare indeed.
 Stars form out of interstellar gas, dust and perhaps larger debris.
 The intense pressures heat up the interior, and if the embryo star is indeed massive enough, the heat and pressure will be enough to cause the gas, etc.


Now interstellar gas and dust clouds are not all uniform in size.
 These are sort-of like Goldilocks stars; stars like our Sun.


How massive newborn stars are will determine their lifespan and their fate.
 Very skinny stars are very frugal with their fuel.
 When their fuel finally runs out, they just slowly, ever so slowly, fade away into a white dwarf then finally as a dark and cold black dwarf cinder.
 Average stars will go through a more complex evolution, but ultimately they too will settle down to a long retirement, cooling, ever cooling when the fuel is exhausted.


However, some stars are born just plain fat! Some stars can also put on weight after-the-fact by stealing mass from a nearby companion star via their stronger gravity and close proximity.
 Really massive stars live life in the fast lane; they live fast; they die young.
 That really does spew their stellar guts back into the interstellar winds.
 The important bit is that stuff gets spewed back into space and eventually recycled.


Gas and dust from one star's 'burp' intersect with gas and dust from another star's 'hick-up' and maybe intermingle with the 'spewing vomit' from a supernovae, all ultimately contracting again under mutual gravity to form a second, even third generation star and stellar planetary system.
 If it weren't for supernovae, we wouldn't be here.


So the basic cosmic cycle is stars form from interstellar gas and dust; stars live; some stars spew their guts of gas and dust back out into interstellar space, providing the raw materials for the next generation of stars.


THE PARALLEL COSMOLOGY ANALOGY: So what the hell does the above have to do with cosmology? There's lots of stars; only one Universe - or is that really the case?

One set of assumptions has to be made from the get-go.
 This assumption is more philosophical than scientific.
 Unfortunate, the standard model of cosmology postulates a beginning, and a fade-away ending and a finite amount of stuff and space to stuff it into.
 Well, already we have a parallel analogy - supernovae are mini big bang events.
 There's lots of observational evidence for the Big Bang and the expansion.
7 billion years ago.
 That violates my philosophical ideals of not only no boundary in time, but no bounds in space for our Universe to strut its stuff in.
 Well, that's a parallel analogy with the spewing out of gas and dust via stars going nova and supernovae.
 In other words, the expected fate of our Universe was to be born from a Big Bang, live and evolve, and die in a Big Crunch.
 Mother Nature's a real Hall-of-Fame bitch.
 So runs the standard spiel.
 Let's climb the cosmic mountain for the grander picture.


And so, while from our limited point of view there is our Universe, and thus we assume the one-and-only-Universe, in fact there is more - much, much more.


Thus, a lot of expanding regions of individual universes will intersect, eventually.
 That region will slowly, but surely, start to contract.
 It seems something cyclic has happened.
 Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions B, C, and D in one direction, say left.
 Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions H, I, J and K in the up direction; Big Bang A's expansion might intersect with the L, and M Big Bangs in the downward direction, and so on and so forth.


And so the endlessly cycling of stellar nova/supernova (expansion) to intersecting clouds of interstellar gas/dust (contractions) thus forming new stellar objects, some of which will in turn vomit up their quota of interstellar gas/dust has a parallel though many orders of magnitude on up the line.
 And so we have an overall cyclic cosmos or Multiverse (because there is more than one universe).


In fact, if you think about it, the idea that there are many expanding and contracting universes is but the next logical step in what was already proven to be a natural progression.
 Now we know better.
 Now we know better because there are lots of suns and planets that have eliminated our uniqueness.
 Today we know better.
 So, I suggest that our Universe is now not the centre of the universe (or cosmos to avoid confusion).


Now it could already be the case that part of our expanding Universe has recently (even as in multi-millions of years ago) intersected part of another expanding universe.


There is at least one interesting consequence inherent in this cyclic Multiverse.
 The upshot of that is that anything and everything that can happen, everything that is not forbidden by the laws, principles and relationships inherent in nature, has happened an infinite number of times and will happen again an infinite number of times.
 Although the 'you' that is reading this in the 'now' will fade away (that sounds nicer than kicking-the-bucket), take comfort in that another 'you', somewhere and somewhen else, will carry on carrying on the 'you' tradition.
 The Big Bang event was a one-off; it was unique; a one-of-a-kind; a fluke; just one of those interesting things that happen for no apparent reason at all.


But - and you'll read that non-observation (since there was no one around including any lady cosmologists to observe at the Big Bang's ground zero) in any standard book on the subject - it's nonsense, a scientific fabrication if you really stop and think about it.
 That applies to the creation of our Universe as much as it applies to creating widgets in a factory! To claim otherwise is to suggest all of ultimate creation was kick-started in no space at all! How absurd is that! Consider the reverse: how can you cram everything into nothing?

Now if the Big Bang event did not, could not, create space way back then, then space is not undergoing continuous creation today contrary to the standard spiel.
 Expanding space either means that space is getting thinner and thinner (less dense) like an expanding balloon skin stretching (and that's nonsense - how can space decrease in density?), or new space is being created out of nothing to fill the void as space expands.
 That's a violation of all the basic conservation laws that are the bedrock of physics.
 Now fortunately for me, and unfortunately for those cosmology professors, there's no actual observational test or experiment that can be done to distinguish between the two possibilities and settle the matter.
 But it's not there.
 The unwritten sentence is ""just take my word for it"" because I can't back it up with any evidence, far less proof.
 That something could equally be Big Bang stuff spewing out into pre-existing space like an exploding firecracker will spew its contents outward bound and ever expanding.
7 billion years ago.
 Besides, all those extra dimensions predicted by the purely mathematical and hypothetical string theory (if string theory is to work) are compactified; curled up into super-ultra microscopic foetal positions; they are tiny.
 So it's back to the drawing board for our standard lady (and gentlemen) cosmologists.
 The Big Bang was an event.
 If causality has any meaning at all, and it's one of the foundations upon which all of science rests on, then an effect has a cause.
 Therefore, whatever caused the Big Bang event (or effect), must of necessity have happened before (preceded) the Big Bang event.
 Since there was a before the Big Bang, since cause always precedes effect, then again time could not have been created - time has always been, is, and always will be.
 So the standard 'create time and space' model is pure extrapolation (running the film backwards from today's data) and ultimately a best guess.
7 billion years ago that kick-started our Universe off on its evolutional path, when it comes to some of the nitty-gritty details, like that 'create time and space' detail, well I just think that is plain wrong - pure and simple.
 Science, like the church and other formal institutions does not approve of mavericks that go against the grain.
, a job, research funding, a career with promotions, publications, etc.
 Science, and that includes cosmology, for all its self-correcting ways and means and methods and ideals is still, ultimately, a human endeavour.


Now there are a few bold cosmologists who do acknowledge that the Big Bang event still has some kinks to be ironed out and that there was a ""before the Big Bang"".
 They probably wouldn't in a pink fit!

Heading back on track, even if my supernovae analogy is wrong, there still had to have been an existence both of time and space prior to the creation of our Universe via the Big Bang event, and that alone suggests that all things are still cyclic or re-cyclic in the cosmos.



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"The Speed of Light - Not As Fast As You Thought!"


"The Speed of Light - Not As Fast As You Thought!","something we don't consider much in our daily lives.
there it is.
 After all, years of calculations and data have been accumulated that specifically relies on this ""speed"" to be CONSTANT.
 It wasn't until fifty years later, after much heated debate and discussion that Bradley's independent paper in 1729 confirmed that this speed was finite, astronomically fast, but finite.
 Primitive calculations and methods you say, but one person's calculations were performed with the same equipment at a later period and the result was diminished.


Arguments and debate ensued until October 1983 when it was DECLARED that the speed of light was a universal constant of 299,792.
 This conclusion was determined so as to qualify science's explanations of how the universe worked.
 If the speed of light is slowing then our atomic clocks are slowing.
 None of his literature and curriculum studies even suggested such a dilemma.
 Several years later, working with Trevor Norman of Flinders University, Adelaide and after Stanford University had sniffed out the work they were conducting they published a paper ""Atomic Constants, Light and Time"".


""Under attack by both evolutionists and creationists for their work, Norman and Setterfield found themselves writing long articles of defense, which appeared in a number of issues of creation journals.
 Their defense of the paper and the statistical use of the data was then published in a scientific journal [Galilean Electrodynamics, Vol.
 5, pp.
, 1993] and Montgomery went on to present a public defense at the 1994 International Creation Conference.
 Interestingly enough, later in 1987, after the Norman-Setterfield paper was published, another paper on light speed appeared, written by a Russian, V.
 Troitskii [""Physical Constants and the Evolution of the Universe"", Astrophysics and Space Science Vol.
 Troitskii not only postulated that the speed of light had not been constant, but that light speed had originally been about 1010 times faster than now.


If then, light was 1010 TIMES faster than now, consider the so called billions of years of time calculated for the age of the earth and indeed the universe.



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LIGHT THE ELUSIVE PARTICLE



Have you ever wondered why the sky is lit up and outer space is always black. Its because you can only see light after it interacts on another object. The atmosphere is considered a object and therefore when the light particle if indeed that's what it is strikes the earth atmosphere it becomes visible. My conclusion is that light is mostly dark matter and only becomes light when interacting with other matter. This dark matter is everywhere in the universe, produced by stars and it travels at light speed until it strikes a object such as a moon or planet another star just sucks it up which leads to the conclusion that a black hole was a star at one time and got so massive that nothing can escape its gravitational pull, not even the elusive light particle.

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Which Planets Are Visible From the Night Sky?

Which Planets Are Visible From the Night Sky?These planets comprise of Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars the Red Planet, along with Saturn. At the furthest point, the gradient amongst the Sun and Venus is approximately 45 degrees when Venus can rise or set longer than 3 hours ahead of, or following, the Sun. Considering that Mercury's trajectory is more noticeably elliptic than that of any of the additional planets which can be viewed with the naked eye, its largest extension can radiate beginning with as brief as 15 degrees to the largest of around 27 degrees. Consequently, the planets intermittently apprehends and passes, each of them. This position which the planets find themselves is referred to as 'opposition'. From then on, as planet Earth manoeuvres in advance of the planet, the planet looks to drift closer to the Sun in the sky, setting in the west increasingly earlier up to the time it is lost in the brightness of the setting Sun. . WHAT'S UP  

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A Final Touchdown

"A Final Touchdown"," Is this the end of our nation's aeronautics leadership - and should we care? Let's not over-dramatize. In military applications, our hardware and crew capabilities run circles around everyone else, as the Pakistanis can attest after the stealth raid that killed Osama bin Laden. We even lead in Hollywood's version of the skies. Not yet, at least. China's space program is ambitious, apparently well-funded, and mostly secret. They intend to move into their new home in space in 2020, which is the year the ISS is scheduled to close. China is also on the move in commercial aviation. The first step was the development of the Comac (for Commercial Aircraft Corp. Six prototypes have been built for testing, and commercial flights may begin late this year. (Not coincidentally, GE engines power the ARJ21. Ireland-based Ryanair signed an agreement last month to help Comac develop and launch its C919 narrow-body jet, which boasts a capacity of up to 200 passengers, by 2018. Ryanair currently flies 272 of Boeing's 737 jets, configured to carry 189 passengers each. For roughly the first two-thirds of the  we made all sorts of efforts to fly faster, farther, longer and higher than anyone else dared. So we set ourselves on a mission to get to the moon. It was expensive. Then as now (and always), there were conflicting priorities and demands for government money. President Richard Nixon authorized the shuttle program in 1971. Today, essentially the same craft that was designed in the 20th century in the early 1970s finished its final mission, still the largest and most capable human-carrying vehicle in the skies. I have watched about a half-dozen shuttles soar into the sky, mostly from a beach near our Florida home, 80 miles away. I was disappointed when clouds obscured our view of the final launch earlier this month. The current Delta, Atlas/Centaur and Titan rockets, however, are considerably smaller than the shuttle - which was considerably smaller than the Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo missions to the moon. We rested on our laurels in civil aviation, too. It was the largest passenger plane in the skies for 37 years, before the Airbus A380 eclipsed it. Boeing's 737, 757 and 767 are also dated designs, and the 757 was discontinued in 2004. Boeing's wide-body 777 is a worthy competitor to the Airbus A340, of similar 1990s vintage. "" The company hopes to put the first one in commercial service later this year. Which gets us back to the question of whether it matters. Even after a century of flight, aviation still has room to get better: safer, faster, cheaper, quieter, more comfortable, or more fuel-efficient. We invented powered flight. The shuttle's missions are over, but I think flying - in the atmosphere or beyond it - can still take us places. TRY SOMETHING NEW JUST CLICK HERE
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Planet Earth to Outer Space - We Were Only Kidding About the Invitation


"Planet Earth to Outer Space - We Were Only Kidding About the Invitation"," He is my intellectual superior by the same margin that I am smarter than a houseplant.
 He thinks that it exists and he has math on his side.


The burning question is what are the aliens and what do they want from us? In most cases, the answer would be nothing.
 Sure they could take somebody like Paris Hilton in a best of five checkers showdown, but they would be no threat to earthlings because they haven't even invented the wheel, let alone interplanetary travel.
 In fact, they may be a lot smarter.
 Exceptions might include that giant lizard guy who took a serious a**-kicking from Kirk, and every space hottie who ever fell for his cheap come-ons.
 For Kirk it may only be an intergalactic paternity suit.


It would be a much bigger disaster than those high school parties I attended when the parents were away and the rule book got tossed out the window.
 I suspect that an alien invasion of earth would be much the same, according to Hawking.
 That wasn't the case for three quarters of the high school party guests.
 If ET and his buddies are smart enough to get here, then they are more than smart enough to run the show upon arrival.


.


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Intergalactic Construction Project"



"Intergalactic Construction Project","

From Earthly Beginnings.
 This latter company was set up by aerospace engineer Burt Rutan and created the technology for the world's first fleet of commercial spaceships and launch aircraft.
5-hour flight will set you back $200,000).
 Once the passenger carrying side of the business is established, the plan is to progress to running sub-orbital science missions and to provide launch services for small satellites.


Passenger flights will be on board SpaceShipTwo, which is able to carry six passengers and two pilots.
 The carrier will fly the two of them up to an altitude of 50,000 feet.


The spacecraft then climbs to about sixty miles above the earth's surface, on the edge of space where the passengers will see the curvature of the earth and experience weightlessness for around six minutes.
 SpaceShipTwo wil fold its wings in as it re-enters the earth's atmosphere and then extends them fully again for the unpowered descent back to the runway.


The takeoff and landing site is Spaceport America, the world's first commercial spaceport.
 It features a two-mile long runway and a futuristic building that incorporates all hangar, terminal and office facilities.
 The shape of the building is intended to suggest the drama and mystery of space flight while its sweeping lines blend into the environment with minimal impact.
 Entrance to the building is through a channel cut into the landscape.
 A galleried level continues to the hangar that houses the spacecraft and then on to the terminal.
 It is set deep into the landscape so that it exploits the thermal mass and is positioned to take advantage of the westerly wind for ventilation.


The new production facility that is getting started on construction is located at Mojave Air and Space Port in the Mojave Desert, California.
wallacesmith.
php"">Wallace & Smith General Contractors</a>, based in Bakersfield (USA), is handling the turnkey design and construction management services.
 It will be used mainly for final assembly, integration and testing of the company's craft before they go into service.
 The facility has an initial order from Virgin Galactic to build three of the carriers and five passenger craft.


Rumours that Master Yoda is soon to be appointed as project director are as yet unsubstantiated.


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UFOs: Sorry, Interstellar Space Travel Is Bunk!


"UFOs: Sorry, Interstellar Space Travel Is Bunk!"," No exploration; no migration; no colonization.


That's probably true if contemplating intergalactic (between galaxies) space where distances to your nearest galactic neighbour are measured in millions of light years; that's certainly not true for interplanetary (between planets) space where distances to your nearest neighbour are measured in light minutes to light hours; now that's leaving a question mark over the middle ground - interstellar (between stars) where distances to your neighbour are measured in several light years.
 We can't expect any interplanetary visitors, those locals within our solar system, with itchy tentacles desiring to explore the local neighbourhood of which we're a part of, to come calling.


Visitors from other galaxies are out of the running as well because as noted above the distances needed to be crossed are many orders of magnitude greater relative to short-hop interplanetary trips.


With no existing intelligent non-terrestrials of the local kind that can visit us, and extraterrestrials from other galaxies confined to those galaxies, well that still leaves several billion of stars in our own galaxy which E.T
 might phone if away from home.
 Towards the inner regions of our galaxy (like the inner regions, the CBD, of our cities), stars aren't as far apart as where we (humans) are out in the suburbs, even perhaps out in the boondocks.


Regardless, whether you are in our galactic CBD or out in the suburbs or even in the boondocks, I maintain it doesn't take all that long to get from one (say the CBD) to the other (the boondocks).
 Galactic CBD to galactic boondocks; well it's all obviously way too far and takes way too long to get from there (wherever that is, say the galactic CBD) to here (Planet Earth; location: galactic suburbs if not the boondocks).
 If you don't want to think about it for yourself, then see below!

Unfortunately for the sceptics, fact number one is that E. T
 doesn't need any wormhole or theoretical 'warp drive' or other 'Star Trek' type superluminal velocity techno-babble to explore the galaxy and boldly go where no alien has gone before.
 There's lots of time available to explore and colonize starting a few light years outward at a time.
 Repeat as often as required.

 Such velocities, while pretty fast by our current abilities, shouldn't be beyond the means of a technologically advanced race.
 Our galaxy is ten billion years old.


Regardless of that bit of mathematics, UFO sceptics would still have you believe that interstellar space travel is at best highly improbable, and at worst impossible.


Hogwash! I can not believe this old and totally outdated chestnut is still bandied about since there's terrestrial equivalents and even a human parallel.
 Planet Earth was really BIG to human society too many centuries ago, but that didn't stop our planet being explored from pole to pole, even if individual journeys took many years.


While it's proved relatively easy for humans to colonize Planet Earth, humans cannot travel to the stars because we can't travel fast enough within our short life-spans to make the journey from start to finish, and I assume here that if you start the journey you want to be around to finish the journey.
 If you recall from mythology, the cosmic and sky 'gods' were (at least from a human perspective) as close to immortal as makes no odds.


Aliens could have a very long natural lifespan relative to us carbon-based terrestrial bipeds.


What if you have an alien race with life-spans way, way surpassing ours? The idiotic assumption by the anti-UFO boldly going skeptics is, in a very anthropological way, that E. T
 of necessity must have a lifespan equal to that of humans, or is confined to technologies equivalent to our own 21st Century technologies.

5 billion years old before Planet Earth (plus Sun and associated solar system) even formed out of interstellar gas, dust and associated debris.
 There's a possible likely alternative to a naturally longer life span relative to humans: what of a bit of the old fashion genetic engineering to increase life expectancy? Or there's the likelihood of enhanced bioengineering (part flesh; part machine) to accomplish the same goal.


Genetic or other forms of bioengineering could artificially extend life-spans by many orders of magnitude.
 Given advances in artificial body parts for humans, albeit it hip replacements or dentures or even mundane tooth fillings, that's certainly a valid possibility if one extrapolates ahead from today to mere decades to centuries ahead.
 One obviously thinks of Data from ""Star Trek: The Next Generation"", or something akin to the original TV's ""Battlestar Galactica"" Cylons.
 We've made a start already down this path.
 It's just that a Cylon is a lot more sophisticated.
 Since AI is nearly immortal (relative to flesh-and-blood), that takes care of travel time arguments, and the possible environments fit for relative easy exploration (colonization?) are expanded greatly.


There's the standard sci-fi scenarios of the multi-generation starship or hibernation that passes the time away without much additional aging.

 Put your spaceship on autopilot and sleep the long journey away.


There's another sci-fi staple that could get E. T
 from there to here.
 While I feel that's an unlikely concept, especially for exploration, it might not be quite so far out if the objective is interstellar colonization.
 Maybe, just maybe, a sort of warp drive, faster-than-light spaceship is possible.
 I wouldn't want to wager any money on it, but I'd be less than open-minded not to admit the possibility, however remote.
 Maybe, just maybe, an advanced alien civilization has the ways and means to manipulate such objects and forces to facilitate easy travel in space (and time travel too maybe).


But one doesn't need such extreme possibilities.
 It's like migrating from New York City to Sydney, Australia.
 So once here, our quasi-immortal, technologically advanced E. T
 (yesteryear the 'gods' of mythology; today UFOs) sets up shop, say some sort of artificial space colony out in the asteroid belt, maybe even a lunar outpost.
 So in a roundabout way, one interstellar journey by E. T
 from somewhere else in our galaxy, morphs into just short-hop interplanetary journeys from that point on.


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Our Exploration And Colonization Of Space: By Human Or By Machine?


"Our Exploration And Colonization Of Space: By Human Or By Machine?"," Therefore, UFOs cannot represent the technology of a space-faring race of extraterrestrials.
 Sure, space is really BIG! Planet Earth was really BIG to human society many centuries ago, but that didn't stop the planet being explored from pole to pole, even if individual journeys took many years.
 Terrestrial analogies aside, what if you have an alien race with life spans way, way surpassing ours? Then there's a possible likely alternative, a bit of the old genetic engineering to increase life expectancy? Or there's the likelihood of enhanced bioengineering (part flesh; part machine) to accomplish the same goal.
 There's lots of time available to explore and colonize starting a few light years outward at a time.
 Repeat as often as required.
 Such velocities, while pretty fast by our current abilities, shouldn't be beyond the means of a technologically advanced race.


And once here (within easy reach of, or in our solar system), having a nearby base of operations as it were, one can easily have a whole plethora of UFOs visiting Earth on a regular or routine basis.
 If you want to explore the South Pole over the long term, you don't make a daily commute from Sydney or New York - you set up a long-term base camp near or at the South Pole!

If there are no advanced extraterrestrial races out there, and that's a possibility that has to be considered, then eventually we'll reach that hypothetical level of technology that we current assume aliens might have.
 And 1000 years (give or take) is but a nanosecond in terms of cosmic and galactic time frames.
 What will another 1000 years bring?

[Note that intergalactic space travel (one galaxy to another galaxy) is quite another can of worms.
 Even Star Trek stayed within our own galaxy, and they had warp drive!]

When viewing what exploration of space we've achieved to date, we note that the first pioneers weren't the right stuff, flesh-and-blood human beings, but devices composed of hardier stuff, like metals and plastics.
 The unmanned lunar surveyors preceded Project Apollo.
 And so that will probably be true as well as humanity extends its reach beyond our solar system.
 Then came the industrial revolution and labour got easier and machines took on more and more of the burden.
 We don't have to read anymore as we have radio, TV, talking books and DVDs.
 We don't need to spell as our PCs come equipped with spell checkers.
 And while human muscles and the human brain haven't increased much in strength or potential intellectual capacity over the past multi-thousands of years, our technological muscles and brains have.
 And how many of us could beat a computer at chess, or checkers? Silicon chips are becoming 'intelligent' at a vastly faster rate than the brain stuff we are made out of - CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen & Nitrogen).
 We've all seen a sci-fi robot, android, whatever.
 How much longer before science fiction becomes science fact and silicon software replaces carbon wetware?

The question has been posed whether or not artificial intelligence is the next logical evolutionary step.
 So, the question arises, why send CHON flesh-and-blood into space when silicon chips and software will do, and do better? It's been argued that artificial intelligence can make the trip to the stars on our behalf.
 They can exist on a minimal energy source, nuclear most likely.
 'reproduce' themselves from internal programming given before the fact, and thus spread throughout the galaxy.
 Meantime, while they do all the dangerous dirty work, we humans just continue to inhabit Terra and live the good life.
 Firstly, it's going to take a lot to extinguish the human spirit of exploration.


Secondly, I find it difficult to visualize a space probe, however artificially intelligent, that can somehow reproduce itself from scratch using the raw resources of another planet.
 Just visualize the various technological processes that would require.
 I won't say it can't happen, but I somehow doubt it will happen.
 Again, for the purposes of explaining the Fermi Paradox, there exists no extraterrestrial CHON, only terrestrial CHON, so that explains the 'where is everybody?' question.
 For quite some considerable time now, we've augmented our flesh-and-blood with artificial materials and devices, cosmetic and life enhancing - plastic heart valves, hearing aids, artificial joints, wigs, dentures, etc.


So, sooner or later, humanity's flesh-and-blood, assuming we're still flesh-and-blood and not composed mainly of sturdier materials (CHON plus iron and silicon and plastics and ceramics, etc.
 That's true even if we have evolved into something more akin to a hybrid of the biological and the artificial, and/or evolved ourselves into a race of quasi-supermen (and women).
 Might there be something even stronger forcing us to 'boldly go'?

So what's that other more seriously driving incentive to 'boldly go.
 Wanting to vacation on some idyllic planet around another star system is fine, but extra-solar tourism is a luxury, not a necessity.
 No star lasts forever.
 In fact, sooner or later, our sun will be the death of us all.
 Finding a suitable one is going to call for us to be 'boldly going.
; Interstellar Travel: Past, Present, and Future; Stein and Day, New York; 1977:

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Sunday, April 22, 2012

September Stargazing - The Archer the Scorpion the Serpent Bearer


"September Stargazing - The Archer the Scorpion the Serpent Bearer"," Wait till the skies are clear and moonless and you can seek out the same delights of the night sky.
 Once you have picked it out in the night sky you will see the familiar teapot shape easily and certainly much easier than you will see an Archer ! This constellation and the adjacent constellations of of Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer) and Scorpius (the Scorpion) are rich in deep sky delights, especially globular clusters. 


What's A Messier Catalog? -

Well it goes like this: Well known Comet hunter Charles Messier of 18th Century France, needed to catalog objects that could be confused with comets in the small telescopes of the day.
 So the upshot for us in the 21st century is that  we now have a simple list of Galaxies, Nebulas, Star Clusters and more, that are quite delightful when viewed thought Amateur Telescopes using optics that good old Charles could only dream of in the 1700's.


So how do you find & see these these amazing deep space delights?

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Saturn - Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Skies


"Saturn - Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Skies"," For anyone new to telescopic observing, Saturn is usually an early and easy target.
 It yearns for greater magnification.
 Indeed, at present it is very easy to find, even by the naked eye, being the brightest object visible between those constellations at apparent magnitude 0.
 Saturn's rings are now opening, but will soon temporarily start to close again from our perspective.


When I first saw Saturn through by 200mm f4.
 Through a 26mm Plossl eyepiece, the planet is small, very bright, with clearly visible rings, and at least one of its family of moons is visible (Titan, of course).
 Saturn has a family of nearly sixty moons in tow, and to really enjoy this ""mini solar system"" a 9mm eyepiece gives a great view, the Cassini Division and the A and B rings coming clearly into view.
 There are a few cloud bandings visible on the planet's disc - these bands however, are much less pronounced than those of Jupiter.
3 billion kilometers away - indeed the light reaching your eyes from Saturn has taken over an hour and a half to reach Earth.
 This enigmatic tiny little world appears to have a definite brownish hue through the telescope using the Barlow and my 9mm orthoscopic eyepiece, due to its bizarre hydrocarbon atmosphere.
 Titan has weather too -- it rains liquid ethane and methane on Titan -- yes it's that cold!

Observing Titan, you envisage those boulders and rocks of solid ice from the Huygens photographs, and you think about Cassini's scans of this tiny world.
 Averted vision shows them to be even brighter -- they are more of Sa family of moons, including Rhea and Tethys again, and Dione and possibly even Enceladus! I think of venting Saturan's ter and ice inhaled by Cassini, and I wonder how liquid water possibly exists within such a deep freeze as the Saturnian system.
 And I think how the Lord of the Rings has wonders aplenty to keep mankind fascinated for decades and centuries to come.


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Space Debris: The Sky is Falling

"Space Debris: The Sky is Falling"," The object continues to get bigger as it approaches overhead. You look around only to find a light piece of charred metal, about the size of your hand. The metal mesh-like fragment which hit him came from a rocket that had been used to put a satellite into orbit for the U. S Air Force in 1996. The fragment which hit Williams on the shoulder came from that particular fuel tank. An average of one space object reenters the Earth's atmosphere every day and this number is likely to increase. By 1966, the number of objects tracked had risen to over 1,300. Of these objects, approximately 23% are inactive satellites, 10% are burned out rocket stages, 62% are fragments, and only 5% are active satellites. Granted, some of today's newer satellites have propulsion systems designed to keep them in proper orbit or at least direct them to a safer reentry point if needed. Most of these objects will burn up on reentry and completely disintegrate. High-altitude samples later indicated a worldwide release of radiation. On July 11, 1979, the 77-ton Skylab space station, despite efforts by NASA, left orbit and re-entered over a large footprint encompassing parts of Australia and the Indian Ocean. Nobody was injured. It was the largest man-made object to ever reenter Earth's atmosphere. The debris footprint of over 300,000 square miles was well removed from all shipping lanes and populated areas. On February 7, 1991, the 40-ton Soviet Salyut 7 space station deteriorated over South America, creating an impressive light show for Argentina. At approximately 1:00 a. m local time the sky was lit up with hundreds of incandescent chunks and pieces traveling from Southwest to Northeast. Fortunately, there was no loss of life or property damage. On January 24, 1978, Cosmos 954, a nuclear powered Soviet satellite used for maritime observation, reentered over northern Canada. Over 60 radioactive sites were identified. The debris was scattered over a 2,500 mile ellipse which extended from the southeastern tip of Hawaii to the northwestern coast of South America. In November of 1964, over 40 fragments from a U. S Augean-Atlas rocket fell onto Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Peru. reentry news. In any event, keep an eye out above. . catch it here  

Sky Photography


"Sky Photography"," Well guess what? Mother Nature has a treasure trove of eye catching possibilities up, overhead if you only take the time to have a look and know what to look for.
 Obviously, a beautiful clear, deep blue sky makes for a good backdrop for many subjects but can be rather dull by itself, as can a completely gray overcast sky.


Take fair weather cirrus and stratus clouds for instance.
 Even at mid-day the sky can be gorgeous.
 It is like a mountain-canyon vista in the sky, and is easily captured compared to other faster moving, unpredictable subject matter.
 Also some clear skies around the storm can add to its magnificence and enhance your image.
 Some cameras may not do this as well as others, so manually adjusting the ISO setting may be required for best results.
 Of course those objects can work great in their own compositions, but at the moment we are concentrating on that big empty space overhead.
 Sure, clear sunrises and sunsets are nice, but by far the best is when you have high, wispy, cirrus clouds, and mid level stratus to reflect the suns beautiful and ever changing colors as it rises or sets.
 All this is most easily captured over water or a flat landscape with no obstructions.


I have found that the deepest reds and purples are from about 15-20 minutes before sunrise and after sunset, with the oranges and yellows occurring shortly before rise and set.
 I have seen large cumulus and stratus clouds light the area up like you were in a giant red, pink, or orange room, then fade away as the suns rays leaves them and hit the higher clouds.
 If not, try manually adjusting the setting to increase the cameras light sensitivity.
 This is when the sky still looks natural, not too bright or glowing, and not too dark or fuzzy.
 Low light conditions can be tricky so take your time, being careful not to overexpose.


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Messier Object


"Messier Object"," In the 18th Century Charles Messier, a comet hunter, compiled a list of all non-comet objects so that during his search he could ignore these ""boring"" objects and focus on his comet hunting.


The messier object list ranges from nebulae, to clusters, to galaxies.


The current list, added to by several astronomers after Messier stopped his work, totals 110 messier object ranging from M1 to M110.


The most appealing thing about the messier list is that almost the entire list of visible in binoculars or small telescopes under good conditions.
 A messier marathon is available once a year in Spring, when it is possible for an experienced observer in good conditions to view all 110 messier object in one evening.


One limitation of the messier list is that it only lists objects in the Northern Hemisphere, so you will need to look elsewhere for Southern Hemisphere lists.
 And though it is not for the initial purpose that Charles Messier intended, it is providing countless astronomers with the awe and wonder of our universe.


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How to Take Deep-Sky Astrophotographs


"How to Take Deep-Sky Astrophotographs"," However, this does require the acquisition of extra equipment and skills.
 Added to this, an eyepiece with cross hairs will be needed for guiding the telescope.
 Also, any tiny errors in polar alignment will need to be counteracted in the north-to-south direction.
 When piggybacking with a medium-power telephoto lens attached to the camera, precision guidance is not essential - just keep the guide star somewhere close to the cross hairs.
 Guiding corrections are best delayed rather than for them to be made suddenly or irregularly.
 But how is the telescope guided when it is being used to take a photograph through?

One method is to employ a separate guide scope that has a high enough magnification up to x 500, which is really far too high for proper observing.
 This is because the mirror in catadioptric telescopes tends to move slowly as the telescope tilts while following a Deep-Sky star.


One way to get around this problem is to use an off-axis guider.
 The difficulty with using an off-axis guider is locating a suitable guide star - more often than not there is no nearby star brighter than magnitude 12 in the appropriate place.


Because guiding is a tedious chore, most CCD cameras can actually do it for you.
 Auto guiders replace the cross hair eyepiece.
 Or even by putting a single CCD to double use: to track and record at the same time.
 Then the two images are combined, and so on over and over again.


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Superb Northern Summer Deep Sky Objects Move in From the East!

"Superb Northern Summer Deep Sky Objects Move in From the East!"," In the Northern Hemisphere, summer's deep sky objects start to make an appearance in the late evenings -- favourite bright stars such as Vega in Lyra and Arcturus in Boötes make a return from the east, and with them some stunning Messier deep sky objects. Much lower down, I should have been able to see M3 in the constellation Canes Venatici, and M57 (the Ring Nebula) in the constellation of Lyra, but pretty bad light pollution from local industry towards my eastern horizon severely restricts observing low down deep sky objects with low surface brightness, such as planetary nebulae, galaxies and star clusters. Sometimes, as in the case of M81 (Bodes Nebula) and M82 (the Cigar Galaxy) in Ursa Major, the smaller eyepiece and wider angular field of view allows for some attractive flamings of deep sky objects together. In my location, with moderate light pollution and no filter, most deep sky objects, being so faint, really don't bear greater magnification with a 200mm aperture reflector, except of course, bright star clusters and objects such as M42, the Orion Nebula. M92 alternatively known as NGC 6341 was discovered in 1777 by Johann Ebert Bode, and has an apparent magnitude of +6. Charles Messier independently rediscovered it and catalogued it on March 18, 1781. M92 is visible to the naked eye under very good conditions and a showpiece through either a telescope or binoculars. 8, and has an angular size of 20 arc minutes. M13 contains several 100,000 stars, and in 1974 was a target for one of the first radio messages addressed to possible extra-terrestrial intelligent races, sent by the large radio telescope at Arecibo. 

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Sunday, April 8, 2012

Time Travel: It's Been Done Before!

"Time Travel: It's Been Done Before!"," We all have the ability to leap forward through time, even if we don't realize it. We want to be able to go back and redo those silly mistakes we made many years ago. Or perhaps you'd rather travel 500 years into the future and see those flying cars we were promised by the year 2000. In fact there is no law in physics that prevents time travel. But as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. For example, what if I travelled back in time and prevented World War II? Sounds like a brilliant idea right? Countless lives would be saved, I'd be hailed as a hero! Not necessarily. What about all the techonolgy that we rely on today that was developed during the war, such as jet engines and nuclear power. We could actually be worse off than simply leaving history as it was. My parents couldn't have met and thus, I would never have been born. So we can see that time travel could be a bad idea, but let's say we really want to go back in time, how would we do it? Well first we need to understand how time works. Isaac Newton thought that time was constant and never deviated, which would of course make time travel impossible. Einstein theorized that space and time are inexplicably linked in what he refers to as ""space-time"". While this appears to be true and scientists continue to explore its possibilities, the real possibility for time travel, seems to be in his other theory; Relativity. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, no object with mass may travel faster than the speed of light, which is an astonishing 299,792,458 metres per second in a vacuum (that's no air). 99% the speed of light. I'll leave the equations out of this, but that would mean that my speed plus the speed of the plane would mean that I'm travelling at 1,080 million and ten kilometres an hour, which is 10km/h faster than light, right? Wrong. Sounds weird doesn't it. In fact you would need more than an infinite supply of fuel to travel faster than light, which is obviously impossible. However to me in the car, they too would travel past me at 50km/h. Hard to believe? It's the same thing that makes it look the car driving beside you on the highway sometimes seems to be floating just outside your window. If you're travelling in the same direction as the object you're observing, in this case the other car, you subtract your speed from theirs. so they would appear to be stationary. So 50km/h plus another 50km/h is equal to 100km/h. So how does all this work, and more importantly, how did they actually manage to travel through time? Well as it turns out, the faster we travel, the slower time will pass. Before launch the clock was perfectly synced with another atomic clock here on earth, and once the shuttle had returned to earth they put the two clocks together. meaning time had past slower for the clock on the shuttle than the clock that remained on Earth. Sergei Krikalev, the current record holder for the longest time spent in space (about 804 days or 2. furthermore, scientists have actually calculated that if we could orbit the Earth at 99% of light speeed. This effect is known as Time Dilation. The only problem is inventing a machine or vehicle capable of travelling that fast. We would actually need the power of a whole star to get to that speed. Such travel to the past, as stated above would lead to paradoxes that could result in the collapse of an entire universe, or a completely new one to be formed. There are other theories to travel both forward and backwards in time such as black holes and wormholes, but I'll discuss those in the future. So we'll just have to settle for travelling forwards in time at the same rate we always have, and just to wait to see what the future holds. TRY SOMETHING NEW JUST CLICK HERE


Thursday, April 5, 2012

Our Exploration And Colonization Of Space: By Human Or By Machine?


Our Exploration And Colonization Of Space: By Human Or By Machine?"," Therefore, UFOs cannot represent the technology of a space-faring race of extraterrestrials. Sure, space is really BIG! Planet Earth was really BIG to human society many centuries ago, but that didn't stop the planet being explored from pole to pole, even if individual journeys took many years. Terrestrial analogies aside, what if you have an alien race with life spans way, way surpassing ours? Then there's a possible likely alternative, a bit of the old genetic engineering to increase life expectancy? Or there's the likelihood of enhanced bioengineering (part flesh; part machine) to accomplish the same goal. There's lots of time available to explore and colonize starting a few light years outward at a time. Repeat as often as required. Such velocities, while pretty fast by our current abilities, shouldn't be beyond the means of a technologically advanced race. And once here (within easy reach of, or in our solar system), having a nearby base of operations as it were, one can easily have a whole plethora of UFOs visiting Earth on a regular or routine basis. If you want to explore the South Pole over the long term, you don't make a daily commute from Sydney or New York - you set up a long-term base camp near or at the South Pole! If there are no advanced extraterrestrial races out there, and that's a possibility that has to be considered, then eventually we'll reach that hypothetical level of technology that we current assume aliens might have. And 1000 years (give or take) is but a nanosecond in terms of cosmic and galactic time frames. What will another 1000 years bring? [Note that intergalactic space travel (one galaxy to another galaxy) is quite another can of worms. Even Star Trek stayed within our own galaxy, and they had warp drive!] When viewing what exploration of space we've achieved to date, we note that the first pioneers weren't the right stuff, flesh-and-blood human beings, but devices composed of hardier stuff, like metals and plastics. The unmanned lunar surveyors preceded Project Apollo. And so that will probably be true as well as humanity extends its reach beyond our solar system. Then came the industrial revolution and labour got easier and machines took on more and more of the burden. We don't have to read anymore as we have radio, TV, talking books and DVDs. We don't need to spell as our PCs come equipped with spell checkers. And while human muscles and the human brain haven't increased much in strength or potential intellectual capacity over the past multi-thousands of years, our technological muscles and brains have. And how many of us could beat a computer at chess, or checkers? Silicon chips are becoming 'intelligent' at a vastly faster rate than the brain stuff we are made out of - CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen & Nitrogen). We've all seen a sci-fi robot, android, whatever. How much longer before science fiction becomes science fact and silicon software replaces carbon wetware? The question has been posed whether or not artificial intelligence is the next logical evolutionary step. So, the question arises, why send CHON flesh-and-blood into space when silicon chips and software will do, and do better? It's been argued that artificial intelligence can make the trip to the stars on our behalf. They can exist on a minimal energy source, nuclear most likely. 'reproduce' themselves from internal programming given before the fact, and thus spread throughout the galaxy. Meantime, while they do all the dangerous dirty work, we humans just continue to inhabit Terra and live the good life. Firstly, it's going to take a lot to extinguish the human spirit of exploration. Secondly, I find it difficult to visualize a space probe, however artificially intelligent, that can somehow reproduce itself from scratch using the raw resources of another planet. Just visualize the various technological processes that would require. I won't say it can't happen, but I somehow doubt it will happen. Again, for the purposes of explaining the Fermi Paradox, there exists no extraterrestrial CHON, only terrestrial CHON, so that explains the 'where is everybody?' question. For quite some considerable time now, we've augmented our flesh-and-blood with artificial materials and devices, cosmetic and life enhancing - plastic heart valves, hearing aids, artificial joints, wigs, dentures, etc. So, sooner or later, humanity's flesh-and-blood, assuming we're still flesh-and-blood and not composed mainly of sturdier materials (CHON plus iron and silicon and plastics and ceramics, etc. That's true even if we have evolved into something more akin to a hybrid of the biological and the artificial, and/or evolved ourselves into a race of quasi-supermen (and women). Might there be something even stronger forcing us to 'boldly go'? So what's that other more seriously driving incentive to 'boldly go. Wanting to vacation on some idyllic planet around another star system is fine, but extra-solar tourism is a luxury, not a necessity. No star lasts forever. In fact, sooner or later, our sun will be the death of us all. Finding a suitable one is going to call for us to be 'boldly going. . WHAT'S UP 

  


Tuesday, April 3, 2012

A Unified Theory of Time Travel

"A Unified Theory of Time Travel"," The actual technical practicality of actually carrying out such journeys need not concern us since this essay is in the realm of the thought experiment. I've come up with a unified theory of time travel into the past that incorporates Einstein's general theory of relativity; Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture, along with other assorted bits like parallel universes that are thrown into the mix. And, time travel is possible - in theory. Apart from that, if one travels at close to light speeds relative to your place of origin then you can travel to the distant future (with respect to that place of origin) without aging an equivalent number of years (the twin paradox). The problem there is that relativity theory predicts worm holes, if they exist at all, will exist for nanoseconds and be very tiny to boot, and thus not very useful in the foreseeable future for the purposes of time travel. Anyway, the fun bit about time travel is the various paradoxes that arise, the most famous one being the grandfather paradox. If you did that it means that you could never have been born, but if you were never born you couldn't go back in time to kill your ancestor. Say you have this edition of ""Hamlet"", and you want Shakespeare to autograph it. You knock on his door, but the housekeeper says he's out for the day but if you leave the book he'll autograph it and you can come by and collect it next morning. You come back the next morning, collect your now autographed edition of ""Hamlet"", and return to the present day with your now very valuable book. Another favorite is you meeting yourself. You get the brilliant idea to travel back in time and convince your younger self to invest in some stocks you know will pay off big time later on down the track. He does, but as they fly off on their honeymoon, the plane crashes with no survivors. Or if you can travel back in time, then of course others can to. And so you might have any number of people going back to particular historical focal points, each with their own particular agenda (most of which will be mutually exclusive), and ultimately causing havoc. In other words, history would never be fixed, rather always be fluid. Since we believe that history (or the past) is fixed, then that what's written on your history book page today will not alter overnight. (Don't we all really wish some past something, personal and trivial, or perhaps something of major significance could be changed and you'd be that instrument of change?) Its paradoxes and situations such as the above that prompted Stephen Hawking to postulate that there is as yet an undiscovered law or principle of physics which prohibits time travel to the past - he calls it his 'Chronology Projection Conjecture'. So, putting it all together, here's my theory of time travel: my unified theory of time travel, at least to the past. Relativity theory allows for time travel into the past, but, IMHO, only to parallel universes (otherwise known as alternative or mirror or shadow universes) where no paradoxes can happen. There are serious reasons behind the speculation that what's on the other side of a Black Hole and/or wormhole is another universe. The Black Hole or wormhole 'exit' isn't within our Universe. It's fate. Therefore, there are no unexpected ripple effects other than what was destined to happen. Therefore, there will be no paradoxes arising. Why can't you go back in time in your own universe? That would mean that at a specific time and place you both were not (originally) and were (as a result of going back) present. And if you were to travel back in time to a set of time and space coordinates you were actually originally at, then there would be two copies of you occupying the same space at the same time - also a paradox. If you go back in time and kill your grandfather, but your grandfather in a parallel universe, then you don't prevent your existence, just the eventual existence of yourself, your other self, in that parallel universe. In your original (our) Universe, Shakespeare is still the legitimate author. However, you could go from parallel universe B to parallel universe C, but, hence never return to either universe A or B - Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture again. If they then time travel to another parallel universe, then that might account for some missing persons' cases! In short, we can time travel to other parallel universes but not to our own; entities from other parallel universes can visit our Universe. Both Einstein (relativity) and Hawking (Chronology Protection Conjecture) are satisfied and happy campers. What's to prevent those from a parallel universe meddling and altering our time stream? It's not enough for them to have a Prime Directive against that - we all know Prime Directives are meant to be broken! So, it looks like Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture must apply to those visitors from parallel universes to our Universe as well. The Hawking Chronology Protection Conjecture not only prevents time travel paradoxes in general, but it also prevents parallel universe time travelers meddling and altering our timeline; ditto we humans time traveling to someone else's parallel universe. So, if we go to parallel universe B or those from parallel universe B visits us, we'll, or they'd be respectively out of phase with respect to the universe they are now in. I say for all practical purposes as now and again what's out of phase (high probability - the usual state of affairs) will sync into phase (that's rare). That's my rendering of the Hawking Chronology Protection Conjecture - he could well have other ways and means in mind. Now an obvious question is how do all the parallel universe ghost photons get into our physics labs where double slit experiments are carried out? I mean there are no local macro Black Hole or wormhole exits present - are there? Yes in fact there are! Not a macro wormhole, but a micro wormhole - actually wormholes. It's just that they are at quantum levels - incredible tiny; way subatomic in size. They are just part of the quantum foam** reality at super microscopic levels, a reality at the level where all things exhibit the quantum jitters or quantum fluctuations. Just put a photon detector in a totally dark and sealed room. Some photons can pass through 'solid' matter. If you look at a bright light, you'll still see light even if you close your eyes. The ghostly bits aside, parallel universe time travelers (or even ordinary time travelers from within our Universe assuming Hawking is wrong)) might explain the sometimes uncanny, often incredible look-a-likes that we all seem to have. There's still one more problem on the horizon. So, time travelers might also need more conventional transport - like Flying Saucers (okay, forget the saucers - like spaceships with fins and rocket motors). Could there be a Clayton's time travel? - Time travel without traveling in time? At the risk of making Einstein turn over in his grave; I'm going to propose a universal NOW across all universes. An observer in Martian orbit sees Mars' NOW somewhat before you on Planet Earth sees the same Mars' NOW because the speed of light is finite. But, I propose (a thought experiment remember) to instantaneously freeze-frame the entire collection of universes' NOW. Right! We now have a universal NOW that we can study at our leisure (the freeze doesn't apply to you and me - we're outside the space-time continuum). Now there's no reason to assume that all parallel Earths are identical in all aspects. Other Earths would differ in various ways, some minor, some major. There was no parallel asteroid impact 65 million years ago; thus no human beings around the traps 65 millions later. I say 'near' because you can only stretch the term 'Earth' or 'Earth-like' so far and no farther, before it's not Earth or Earth-like. If a parallel 'Earth' has Venus-like temperatures, it is not Earth-like. If it has no life on it, even though in all other respects it is a near carbon copy of our Earth, it is not Earth-like. There's no reason to assume that evolutionary development; that evolutionary development rates would proceed in each and every case in an identical fashion. In some parallel Earths, cavemen and saber tooth tigers rule. Others in our absolute NOW, on yet other parallel Earths, or parallel earthlings, might have just invented the wireless or landed on their Moon (if they have one). So, you could seemingly travel to the past and future while actually remaining in our NOW. **Quantum foam - the world may look pretty smooth from a distance, but as you keep magnifying the finer details, the micro world gets ever so slightly bumpier. It's like the sea that looks perfectly smooth and tranquil from Earth orbit, but at rowboat level, you're terrified as that 50 foot wave comes crashing down on you. Richard; Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time; Phoenix, London; 2002: Hawking, Stephen W. ; The Future of Spacetime; W. Norton and Company, N. ; 2002: Randles, Jenny; Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time Machine; Paraview Pocket Books, New York; 2005: Toomey, David; The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics; W. Norton & Company, New York; 2007: . TRY SOMETHING NEW JUST CLICK HERE