An extra point to anyone who knows what’s wrong with this picture.
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Sci Friday – Phobos Grunt
NASA isn’t the only space agency with problems these days. Russia’s space agency just launched a fourth probe to study Mars and its moons, and just like the previous three this one has malfunctioned. There’s still a chance, though it’s increasingly unlikely, that the Phobos Grunt probe can be saved, and the Russians are trying their hardest to do so.
Today’s Sci Friday links focus on this mission.
- Russia Launching Probe to Sample Mars Moon Phobos Today from Space.com.
- Russian Probe Fails to Take Route for Mars from Mars Daily.
- Phobos LIFE Sending Millions of Passengers To Mars’ Moon Phobos from Mars Today.
As regular readers of this blog know, I’m rooting for the private sector to take over space exploration since government agencies seem to be having trouble. One private company is already making plans to go to Mars.
- SpaceX Dragon Capsule Could Go Drill For Ice on Mars from Popular Science.
Go, Go Power Rangers
Robots assembling themselves together to make bigger robots: it’s one of the most absurd concepts in science fiction. You might remember they did it on Power Rangers. But as absurd as it sounds, it’s actually becoming a reality.
According to an article from Popular Science (click here), soldiers in the US army have been cobbling together various robots they use on the battlefield to make better robots. For example, if one robot is really fast and another is really good at finding enemy combatants, they simply mount one on top of the other to make a new robot that’s really fast AND really good at finding enemy combatants.
No word yet if Megazord will be deployed to Afghanistan.
Defend Our Planet
Today’s post is for anyone who thinks the space program is a waste of money.
Just so you know, a large asteroid is flying by today. NASA has been tracking it for years, and they say they’re confident it will not hit the Earth, but it will come closer to us than the Moon. There are other asteroids whizzing by us all the time, most of them too small to matter, but this one is bigger than an aircraft carrier and could easily destroy a city.
One of NASA’s missions is to track large objects approaching Earth and find ways to deflect them away from our planet. This costs a lot of money, but it’s worth it, and even in the midst of the federal government’s budget problems, NASA’s funding for planetary defense has increased.
The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, and a large asteroid (roughly thirty times bigger than the one flying past us today) wiped them out. Whatever the cost, we don’t want to make their mistake.
This graphic provided by SPACE.com explains today’s near miss in greater detail. For more on how much money NASA spends to protect us from asteroids, click here.
Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration
How Star Trek Could Solve the Energy Crisis
In order to travel at warp speed, the starship Enterprise must generate enormous amounts of energy. It does this using antimatter fuel. When antimatter touches regular matter, the two explode, releasing 100% of their energy. By contrast, nuclear fission only releases about 1% of the energy stored in uranium atoms. To make things even better, antimatter leaves no gas fumes, no nuclear waste, nothing to hurt the environment.
Antimatter could not only propel starships through space, but it could solve our energy crisis. Unfortunately, any antimatter supplies that may have existed on earth touched some matter long, long ago and exploded. So we have to make it using particle accelerators, which is an extremely difficult and expensive process.
In recent years, however, scientists have found antimatter in some of the most unlikely places. Antiprotons, produced by cosmic rays outside our Solar System, are getting caught in Earth’s magnetic field. Scientists at NASA say they’ve also discovered that positrons, or antielectrons, are sometimes produced by thunderstorms. These positrons get caught in Earth’s magnetic field too. They’re just sitting up there, waiting for us to collect them.
Individual particles of antimatter won’t do much by themselves. When a positron collides with a satellite in orbit, for example, it destroys one electron in that satellite in a microscopic explosion. It doesn’t damage the satellite, and it doesn’t threaten the safety of astronauts. But imagine what we could do if we gathered all those particles together, stored them safely, and put them into a power plant.
For more on antiprotons in Earth orbit, click here. For more on positrons made by thunderstorms, click here.
Sci Friday – Heavenly Palace
Advancements in space tend to take a lot longer than planned, so China’s rapid progress building a new space station (known as the “Heavenly Palace”) is quite a surprise. About a month ago, they launched the first test segment; this week, they launched the second and connected them together. Seems they’re well on their way to having it finished on schedule by 2020. I can’t remember the last time NASA finished anything on schedule.
Anyway, here are this week’s sciency links, starting with China’s space station and NASA’s ongoing problems.
- Should America be Jealous of China’s “Space Kiss”? from Big Think.
- NASA Plan for Private Space Taxis Hasn’t Won Over Lawmakers from Space.com
- Moscow ‘Mars Mission’ Ends after 520 Days from Physorg.com.
- Enough of the Hubbub About Pluto, the Little Planet That’s Still a Little Planet from Motherboard.
- Periodic Table of Swearing from Drunk Liberal Scientist.
Surfing Gravity Waves
Science is full of long-shot experiments, like SETI’s search for extra-terrestrial life or CERN’s search for the Higg’s Boson (an experiment which should wrap up soon). There’s also the search for gravity waves, and research instillations all over the world are trying find them even though they’re supposed to be next to impossible to detect.
Albert Einstein first predicted gravity waves as part of his theory of relativity. If you drop a large stone into still water, the water ripples. In the same way, when something big happens in the universe, such as the collision of two black holes, it should cause space itself to ripple. Using sensitive equipment spread across the world, scientists hope to detect these ripples in space.
There are currently three gravity wave detectors in the United States and others scattered all over the world. Officials recently announced plans for a new one in India. The more detectors the better because while an earthquake might accidentally set off a few only a gravity wave would trigger them all.
If researchers do detect a gravity wave, it will give them an opportunity to study gravity in a whole new way. I have no idea what kinds of things they could learn, but as a science fiction writer I can always make stuff up. They might discover a way to create artificial gravity or maybe even antigravity. Or perhaps, if it’s possible to generate artificial gravity waves, we could ride them like surfers and travel all over the galaxy.
For more on gravity waves, click here. For more on the plans for the new gravity wave detector in India, click here.
Sci Friday – Our Future in Space
There is only one link for this week’s Sci Friday because it is really important. If you care about science, if you want the space program to succeed and maybe someday go into space yourself, you must watch this. Also, you can find out which country makes the best robotic arms.
Quantum Mechanics Gets Big
If you’re into science or science fiction, you need to see this video.
I am not a scientist and have never claimed to be. I’m just a science enthusiast, so I can’t explain why this works. It has something to do with quantum mechanics, the science of very small things, like atoms and mesons and other unbelievably tiny particles. The behavior of these particles has always been a bit weird, but that’s okay because this weirdness is on such a small scale.
Lately, however, scientists have found more and more examples of quantum weirdness on the scale of objects we can see and touch. They’ve built a quantum microphone which can vibrate and not vibrate at the same time, they’ve found quantum entanglement among the atoms of magnetic salts, and they’ve even found evidence of quantum physics at work in the human brain.
Click here for more on those stories.
Somehow liquid nitrogen, superconductors, and sponges have combined to create quantum levitation. I’m not sure if there’s any practical purpose to this yet, but it would surely explain those hovering mountains from Avatar.
If you’re willing to watch a slightly longer video, this one gives a more detailed explanation of how quantum levitation works.
Better Writing Through Chemistry
Publishing guru Noah Lukeman advises writers to be specific in their descriptions. In his book The First Five Pages, he says, “Instead of saying ‘bugs hit the windshield,’ name the bugs; instead of saying ‘birds flew overhead,’ name the birds.” For science fiction writers, there is no greater tool for being specific than the periodic table of the elements.
Every material thing in the universe is made from atoms. The periodic table lists these atoms, a.k.a. elements, so that all the elements in a column or row share similar chemical properties. Carbon and silicon, for example, are in the same column, which means silicon can serve some of the same functions as carbon (like maybe carbon’s function in the creation of life).
Titanium is an element. Rather than describe some futuristic gizmo made of metal, why not say it’s made of titanium? Being specific makes the gizmo tangible. Most people know what titanium is, have held products made from titanium in their hands, and recognize the term even if they don’t have degrees in chemistry. Elements like osmium or technetium are a little less recognizable, but they’re still better than plain, generic metal.
I’m not saying you need to memorize the periodic table, but it’s a good idea to learn what the various numbers and symbols mean and do research on some of the elements’ special properties. My own customized periodic table (still a work in progress) includes bullet point notes on what each element is commonly used for. I also included pictures—just for fun.
Here are some examples. Click on them for better resolution.
While creating my own periodic table, I learned a lot even about elements I thought I knew well. I had no idea uranium has so many uses besides nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors.
Even if you don’t write science fiction, the periodic table is a useful resource. We’re living in an increasingly scientific world, and readers are increasingly familiar with science. Whatever kind of fiction you write, it’s still set in a world made of atoms.
Planet Pailly 