Fraser Cain, Author at Universe Today

October 5, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

NASA is Building the Third Tallest Roller Coaster in the World, as an Escape System

Let’s hope that nothing ever goes wrong while astronauts are preparing to launch on their Ares 1 rocket – the new vehicle that will replace the space shuttle. But if there is a problem, and the astronauts need to escape right now, they’ll have a fun ride down – on the 3rd tallest roller coaster in the world. It’s called the Orion Emergency Egress System, but really, it’s a roller coaster, designed to get the astronauts away from the vehicle and into a protective bunker in moments.

Take a good look at the image that goes along with this story. See the bright yellow rails over on the right hand side of the image, dropping straight down from the gray platform. That’s the escape system. You’ll note it goes straight down.

The purpose of the Orion Emergency Egress System is to get astronauts and support personnel away from the Ares 1 vehicle, and into a safety bunker within 4 minutes. The solution that NASA has come up with should be perfect, carrying astronauts and workers down away from the rocket, right to the bunker’s door.

For previous launch vehicles, NASA had cables near the door to the launch vehicle. If there was a problem, people could enter a basket that slides down a cable to an area near the bunker. The problem was that it was very difficult to get incapacitated people into the basket and down to the safety of the bunker. With the new egress system, healthy workers can just put the wounded in seats and let them ride down to safety.

NASA called in the world’s roller coaster designers to help them create the system. In fact, from a height of 116 metres (380 feet), the Orion Emergency Egress System would be the third tallest roller coaster in the world, after the Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, and the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio.

Original Source: NASA News Release

October 4, 2007January 24, 2021 by Fraser Cain

Astrosphere for October 4th, 2007

Today’s photo, captured by Patrick Taschler, is absolutely spectacular. It’s an image of the volcano Tungurahua, located in Ecuador. You really need to click and see the larger version to see why I posted this on Universe Today. In the background, above the volcano is the Pleiades star cluster.

It’s time for the 22nd Carnival of Space. I finally got my act together, and I’ve got an entry there.

The 50th anniversary Sputnik stories are flying fast and furious, everywhere you look. Everyone, has a story about this. I didn’t write one for Universe Today, because I was too busy working on one for Wired. Check out Sputnik’s grandchildren.

A Mars Odyssey considers the future of creepy space exploration robots.

Were older supernovae brighter? It could mess up our ability to measure distance in the Universe. Pamela has the details.

The HiRISE team has a blog, detailing their trials and tribulations dealing with the big camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Check out this recent entry discussing why their instrument was put into safe mode.

Colony Worlds has this suggestion. Why send humans to colonize planets, when we could send pigs.

October 3, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

High Energy Gamma Rays Go Slower Than the Speed of Light?

The speed of light is the speed of light, and that’s that. Right? Well, maybe not. Try and figure this out. Astronomers studying radiation coming from a distant galaxy found that the high energy gamma rays arrived a few minutes after the lower-energy photons, even though they were emitted at the same time. If true, this result would overturn Einstein’s theory of relativity, which says that all photons should move at the speed of light. Uh oh Einstein.

The discovery was made using the new MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov) telescope, located on a mountain top on the Canary island of La Palma. Since gamma rays are blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere, astronomers have figured out a clever trick to see them from the ground. When the gamma rays strike the atmosphere, they release a cascade of particles and radiation. The Cherenkov technique detects this cascade, and then works backwards to calculate the direction and energy level of the gamma rays. With a 17-metre detector, MAGIC is the largest telescope of its type.

The international team of researchers pointed the telescope at Markarian 501, a galaxy 500 million light-years away that contains a blazar – a supermassive black hole that periodically releases bursts of gamma rays. More material is falling into the black hole than it can consume, and so it gets squeezed into jets that fire off from the poles of the black hole at close to the speed of light. What astronomers call a “blazar” is when the jets of a supermassive black hole are pointed directly at the Earth.

Researchers sorted high- and low-energy gamma ray photons coming from the blazar with each flareup. Since all the radiation was emitted at the same time, and the speed of light is the speed of light, you would expect the high-energy photons to arrive at the same time. But nope, the high-energy photons showed up around 4 minutes later.

So what’s happening? Nobody knows, and this could turn into an entirely new field of physics. The researchers are proposing that maybe the radiation is interacting with “quantum foam”. This is a theoretical property of space itself, and predicted by quantum gravity theory – a competitor to string theory.

Original Source: UC Davis News Release

October 3, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Video Game Developer Will Fly to Space

Space tourism company Space Adventures has announced their next orbit-bound customer. This time it’s going to be video game legend Richard Garriott. All you Ultima fans might know him as Lord British. If all goes well, Garriott will ride to the International Space Station in October 2008. And here’s the cool thing: his father, Owen Garriott was an astronaut for NASA, and spent time in orbit aboard Skylab and Spacelab-1. Like father, like son.

The news of this latest astro-tourist was announced on September 28, 2007 by Space Adventures. This is the Vienna, Virginia-based organization that has already arranged the passage of Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi to the space station. They’ve also got an office in Moscow.

Richard is best known for his work in the video game industry. He developed the original Ultima series, founded Origin Systems, and eventually created Ultima-online; the predecessor to popular massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. Let’s just say I’ve spent a lot of time with his video games.

Here’s a really cool coincidence of the whole story. If he does make it to space, Garriott will be the first second-generation US astronaut. At the same time, second-generation Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov will be aboard the International Space Station. And the two will return to Earth together.

Garriott won’t just be spending his time in space gazing out the porthole (although I’m sure that’ll take up a lot of his day), he’s going to have some work to do. Space Adventures has announced that this flight will have plenty of commercial partners, looking to have science experiments and educational outreach done in the microgravity of orbit. ExtremoZyme Inc, a biotechnology company co-founded by Owen Garriott has already signed up to perform crystallization experiments in orbit.

Since he’s a pretty Internet savvy guy, Richard Garriott has even got a website detailing his upcoming flight, with a countdown clock ticking away the days until he reaches orbit. Only 408 days to go…

Original Source: Space Adventures News Release

October 3, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Hubble and Chandra View the Orion Nebula Together

It’s not a huge story, just some cool science and a pretty picture. Here’s a newly released image of the Orion Nebula, captured by two of the great observatories: the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright blue and orange points are young stars, blazing out the X-rays visible to Chandra, while the diffuse glow is the surrounding gas and dust revealed by Hubble.

The Orion Nebula is located 1,500 light years away, and it’s one of the closest star forming regions to the Earth. Amateur astronomers often direct their telescopes towards this nebula, since it’s so close, large and bright.

This image was made by combining photographs captured by both Hubble and Chandra. The Chandra data was built up from almost 13 days of continuous observations, and they allowed astronomers to watch the activity of newborn stars, just 1-10 million years old. During the observation period, the stars flared in their X-ray output. Unlike our own Sun, which is pretty boring as stars go, these young stars are violent and chaotic; demonstrated by the fluctuations of radiation pouring off of them. You wouldn’t want to be living on a planet orbiting one of these monsters.

The wispy clouds of gas and dust (seen in pink and purple) are visible light images captured by Hubble. Right now they’re wispy filaments, but their gravitational interaction is bringing together new stars. One day these too will ignite in the warm glow of newly formed stars.

Original Source: Chandra News Release

October 3, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

2007 Ozone Hole is Smaller than Average

Good news everyone; the ozone hole above Antarctica has shrunk 30% since the same last year. According to ESA’s Envisat satellite, the ozone layer only lost a mere 27.7 million tonnes. Down from last year’s record loss of 40 million tonnes. But don’t jump to conclusions; it doesn’t necessarily mean that the ozone layer is recovering… yet.

As you probably know, the ozone layer is a region of the Earth’s atmosphere that contains a high volume of ozone – the combination of three oxygen molecules. This ozone acts like a shield, protecting us from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Over the last decade, the ozone layer has thinned by about 0.3% per year across the entire planet, increasing everyone’s chances for skin cancer, cataracts, and causing damage to marine life. We now know that industrial chemicals like refrigerants are largely to blame for destroying this atmospheric ozone, and there has been a worldwide effort to reduce their use.

And then in 1985, a hole opened up above Antarctica, where there was almost no ozone in the atmosphere, and UV radiation from the Sun could stream right in unblocked.

Scientists measure ozone loss by calculating the area of the hole above Antarctica. This year, that size was 24.7 million sq km, roughly the size of North America. But the 30% smaller hole is probably a coincidence due to natural temperature and atmospheric dynamics.

Here’s what scientists think is happening. During last year’s season, the ozone hole wasn’t situated directly over the south pole, instead it was off to one side. This allowed it to mix with warmer air. And the warm air is the key: ozone is depleted when atmospheric temperatures go below -78 degrees Celsius. Since there was warmer air mixed in the area, it slowed down the process of ozone depletion.

Next year, you could just as easily have the opposite situation, with ozone being destroyed at greater rates. Instead, we need to look at the long term trends, and those don’t show that the ozone layer is on the road to recovery yet.

Original Source: ESA News Release

October 3, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Solar Storm Tears Off a Comet’s Tail

Comets are known as dirty snowballs. As they approach the Sun, the constant solar wind picks away at their snowy exterior, creating the beautiful tail we see trailing behind. But sometimes the solar wind is replaced with a solar hurricane, and in the case of Comet Encke, its graceful tail was completely torn off.

The series of images was captured by NASA’s STEREO spacecraft, which are normally gazing at the Sun from two positions in the Earth’s orbit. This allows them to see objects with 3-d vision.

Scientists have long suspected that the Sun’s solar wind can be a fickle thing. Usually it’s blowing steadily from the Sun, but in the case of a coronal mass ejection, it can become a fierce solar hurricane. When scientists detected a coronal mass ejection on the Sun, they refocused the space observatories on Comet Encke, which was unfortunate enough to be inside the orbit of Mercury, just to see what would happen.

As the giant cloud of magnetized gas struck the comet traveling thousands of kilometres a second, it brightened the tail briefly. And then the tail was ripped right off.

Astronomers think that the comet had a mini magnetic reconnection event, similar to what happens here on Earth when we’re struck by a coronal mass ejection. Oppositely directed magnetic fields around the comet “bumped into each other” by the magnetic fields in the CME. That released a burst of energy, and tore off the tail.

The researchers have stitched together several images into a movie, that shows the whole process happening. Just a warning, the video is 7 MB.

Original source: NASA News Release

October 3, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Earthlike Planet Forming Around a Distant Star

Astronomers believe the Earth formed out of a ring of gas and dust surrounding the Sun. Over the course of several million years, dust particles stuck together, and then collided with larger and larger chunks until all the material in the ring formed up into a single planet. The heavier elements separated from the lighter elements, and sunk down into the centre of the Earth. And if astronomers are right, it’s happening all over again, in a star system 424 light-years away; another Earth is under construction.

The discovery was announced today by physicists from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Using data gathered by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the researchers have uncovered a dust belt around a star called HD 113766. And if the theories of planetary formation are correct, this dust belt will eventually turn into a planet with roughly the mass of the Earth.

To make things even more interesting, this dust belt is located in the star’s habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on any rocky planet that forms in the region.

And the timing is right too. Here’s one of the researchers, Dr. Carey Lisse, “If the system was too young, its planet-forming disk would be full of gas, and it would be making gas-giant planets like Jupiter instead. If the system was too old, then dust aggregation or clumping would have already occurred and all the system’s rocky planets would have already formed.”

The astronomers can even tell how “processed” this material is. If it were totally unprocessed, it would be like the comets, icy remnants largely unchanged since the early Solar System. And if it was heavily processed, it would be like the asteroids, where the heavy elements have almost completely separated from the lighter elements. Instead, it’s all mixed up.

The rocky planets haven’t formed yet.

The paper will be published in an upcoming edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

Original Source: APL News Release

October 3, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Astrosphere for October 3rd, 2007

Today’s photo, captured by Chris Schurs, is amazing and difficult. It’s an image of the night sky, focused on Polaris (the North Star). Chris kept his exposure open for a full 6 hours, with the stars making the bright trails that you see. You can see more of Chris’ pictures at schursastrophotography.com

Cumbrian Sky celebrates the 50th anniversary of Sputnik on a sad note, regretting the future that we could have had if we just kept going.

Clear Skies on Demand has a cool picture of a sundog. It’s a cool little rainbow that can appear off to the side of the Sun when conditions are just right.

Larry Klaes writes for Centauri Dreams about a new propulsion system that uses magnetic fields.

Want to buy a Sputnik to celebrate that special 50th anniversary? collectSPACE has a list of the top 10 Sputniks.

A Mars Odyssey has an article about the recent failure of a space tether experiment.

And a big congratulations to George “Mr. Sulu” Takei on the asteroid named after him.

Do you have a space-related blog? Email me your URL, and I’ll start watching you. Write something interesting, and I’ll link to it.

October 2, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Earth Had Oxygen Earlier Than Believed

Take a nice deep breath, fill your lungs with oxygen. You can thank the plants for that. Scientists had originally found that oxygen showed up in the Earth’s atmosphere around 2.3-2.4 billion years ago; in a period called the “Great Oxidation Event”. But there’s new evidence, dug out of a rock in Australia, that puts that first date even earlier by 50-100 million years.

Researchers gathered samples from a region of Western Australia called Hamersley Basin. In one part of the kilometre-long rock sample, they found an ancient rock that shows how the atmosphere was switching over to the oxygen-rich air we enjoy today. Their research appeared in the September 28th issue of the journal Science.

According to one of the researchers, Ariel Anbar, from Arizona State University, “we seem to have captured a piece of time before the Great Oxidation Event during which the amount of oxygen was actually changing â€“ caught in the act, as it were.”

During the summer of 2004, researchers bored a 1 km long sample of rock out of Hamersley Basin in Western Australia, a region famous for keeping a geologic history of the Earth. Because the sample was so deep underground, it had been untouched for billions of years. The researchers sliced the sample and kept half in Australia, and took the other half back to the US.

They began to analyze ancient portions of the sample, looking for the trace metals molybdenum, rhenium and uranium. The amount of these metals found in ocean deposits depends on the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. They found a region of time, ahead of the Great Oxidizing Event by about 100 million years, where oxygen was forming in the atmosphere.

It’s thought that life started learning how to produce oxygen then, but everything that made was soaked up by geologic processes. It took 100 million years for the life to overcome those effects and start seeding the atmosphere with oxygen.

Of course, this discovery will help astronomers search for life on other planets in the galaxy. They will eventually be able to measure the oxygen content precisely, and identify what stage of evolution life on the distant planet could be at. If none have undergone a similar Great Oxidation Event, it tells us how rare life might be in the Universe.

Original Source: ASU News Release