Ian O'Neill, Author at Universe Today

May 19, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

No Doomsday in 2012

Apparently, the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012. Yes, you read correctly, in some way, shape or form, the Earth (or at least a large portion of humans on the planet) will cease to exist. Stop planning your careers, don’t bother buying a house, and be sure to spend the last years of your life doing something you always wanted to do but never had the time. Now you have the time, four years of time, to enjoy yourselves before… the end.

So what is all this crazy talk? We’ve all heard these doomsday predictions before, we’re still here, and the planet is still here, why is 2012 so important? Well, the Mayan calendar stops at the end of the year 2012, churning up all sorts of religious, scientific, astrological and historic reasons why this calendar foretells the end of life as we know it. The Mayan Prophecy is gaining strength and appears to be worrying people in all areas of society. Forget Nostradamus, forget the Y2K bug, forget the credit crunch, this event is predicted to be huge and many wholeheartedly believe this is going to happen for real. Planet X could even be making a comeback.

Related 2012 articles:

For all those 2012 Mayan Prophecy believers out there, I have bad news. There is going to be no doomsday event in 2012, and here’s why…

The Mayan Calendar
So what is the Mayan Calendar? The calendar was constructed by an advanced civilization called the Mayans around 250-900 AD. Evidence for the Maya empire stretches around most parts of the southern states of Mexico and reaches down to the current geological locations of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and some of Honduras. The people living in Mayan society exhibited very advanced written skills and had an amazing ability when constructing cities and urban planning. The Mayans are probably most famous for their pyramids and other intricate and grand buildings. The people of Maya had a huge impact on Central American culture, not just within their civilization, but with other indigenous populations in the region. Significant numbers of Mayans still live today, continuing their age-old traditions.

The Mayans used many different calendars and viewed time as a meshing of spiritual cycles. While the calendars had practical uses, such as social, agricultural, commercial and administrative tasks, there was a very heavy religious element. Each day had a patron spirit, signifying that each day had specific use. This contrasts greatly with our modern Gregorian calendar which primarily sets the administrative, social and economic dates.

Most of the Mayan calendars were short. The Tzolk’in calendar lasted for 260 days and the Haab’ approximated the solar year of 365 days. The Mayans then combined both the Tzolk’in and the Haab’ to form the “Calendar Round”, a cycle lasting 52 Haab’s (around 52 years, or the approximate length of a generation). Within the Calendar Round were the trecena (13 day cycle) and the veintena (20 day cycle). Obviously, this system would only be of use when considering the 18,980 unique days over the course of 52 years. In addition to these systems, the Mayans also had the “Venus Cycle”. Being keen and highly accurate astronomers they formed a calendar based on the location of Venus in the night sky. It’s also possible they did the same with the other planets in the Solar System.

Using the Calendar Round is great if you simply wanted to remember the date of your birthday or significant religious periods, but what about recording history? There was no way to record a date older than 52 years.

The end of the Long Count = the end of the Earth?
The Mayans had a solution. Using an innovative method, they were able to expand on the 52 year Calendar Round. Up to this point, the Mayan Calendar may have sounded a little archaic – after all, it was possibly based on religious belief, the menstrual cycle, mathematical calculations using the numbers 13 and 20 as the base units and a heavy mix of astrological myth. The only principal correlation with the modern calendar is the Haab’ that recognised there were 365 days in one solar year (it’s not clear whether the Mayans accounted for leap years). The answer to a longer calendar could be found in the “Long Count”, a calendar lasting 5126 years.

I’m personally very impressed with this dating system. For starters, it is numerically predictable and it can accurately pinpoint historical dates. However, it depends on a base unit of 20 (where modern calendars use a base unit of 10). So how does this work?

The base year for the Mayan Long Count starts at “0.0.0.0.0”. Each zero goes from 0-19 and each represent a tally of Mayan days. So, for example, the first day in the Long Count is denoted as 0.0.0.0.1. On the 19th day we’ll have 0.0.0.0.19, on the 20th day it goes up one level and we’ll have 0.0.0.1.0. This count continues until 0.0.1.0.0 (about one year), 0.1.0.0.0 (about 20 years) and 1.0.0.0.0 (about 400 years). Therefore, if I pick an arbitrary date of 2.10.12.7.1, this represents the Mayan date of approximately 1012 years, 7 months and 1 day.

This is all very interesting, but what has this got to do with the end of the world? The Mayan Prophecy is wholly based on the assumption that something bad is going to happen when the Mayan Long Count calendar runs out. Experts are divided as to when the Long Count ends, but as the Maya used the numbers of 13 and 20 at the root of their numerical systems, the last day could occur on 13.0.0.0.0. When does this happen? Well, 13.0.0.0.0 represents 5126 years and the Long Count started on 0.0.0.0.0, which corresponds to the modern date of August 11th 3114 BC. Have you seen the problem yet? The Mayan Long Count ends 5126 years later on December 21st, 2012.

Doomsday
When something ends (even something as innocent as an ancient calendar), people seem to think up the most extreme possibilities for the end of civilization as we know it. A brief scan of the internet will pull up the most popular to some very weird ways that we will, with little logical thought, be wiped off the face of the planet. Archaeologists and mythologists on the other hand believe that the Mayans predicted an age of enlightenment when 13.0.0.0.0 comes around; there isn’t actually much evidence to suggest doomsday will strike. If anything, the Mayans predict a religious miracle, not anything sinister.

Myths are abound and seem to be fuelling movie storylines. It looks like the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is even based around the Mayan myth that 13 crystal skulls can save humanity from certain doom. This myth says that if the 13 ancient skulls are not brought together at the right time, the Earth will be knocked off its axis. This might be a great plotline for blockbuster movies, but it also highlights the hype that can be stirred, lighting up religious, scientific and not-so-scientific ideas that the world is doomed.

Some of the most popular space-based threats to the Earth and mankind focus on Planet X wiping most life off the planet, meteorite impacts, black holes, killer solar flares, Gamma Ray Bursts from star systems, a rapid ice age and a polar (magnetic) shift. There is so much evidence against these things happening in 2012, it’s shocking just how much of a following they have generated. Each of the above “threats” needs their own devoted article as to why there is no hard evidence to support the hype.

But the fact remains, the Mayan Doomsday Prophecy is purely based on a calendar which we believe hasn’t been designed to calculate dates beyond 2012. Mayan archaeo-astronomers are even in debate as to whether the Long Count is designed to be reset to 0.0.0.0.0 after 13.0.0.0.0, or whether the calendar simply continues to 20.0.0.0.0 (approximately 8000 AD) and then reset. As Karl Kruszelnicki brilliantly writes:

“…when a calendar comes to the end of a cycle, it just rolls over into the next cycle. In our Western society, every year 31 December is followed, not by the End of the World, but by 1 January. So 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan calendar will be followed by 0.0.0.0.1 – or good-ol’ 22 December 2012, with only a few shopping days left to Christmas.” – Excerpt from Dr Karl’s “Great Moments in Science“.

Sources: Dr Karl’s Great Moments in Science, IHT, 2012 Wiki

Leading image credits: MIT (supernova simulation), WikiMedia (Mayan pyramid Chichen Itza). Effects and editing: myself.

May 9, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Space Hotel Prototype Makes 10,000th Orbit

A view from the Bigelow prototype (Bigelow Aerospace)

After 660 days in space and 10,000 orbits around Earth, the pioneering inflatable prototype is still going strong. Launched atop a converted intercontinental ballistic missile on July 12th, 2006, the Bigelow Aerospace vision for a space hotel is gradually being realized. The first test was to see whether the design could self-inflate and carry out basic operations automatically, but after nearly two years of travelling 270 million miles (435 million kliometers), the prototype has surpassed all expectations and provides an excellent foundation for the company’s first manned mission in 2011…

Bigelow Aerospace, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, has some huge aspirations. The company was founded in 1999 by hotelier Robert Bigelow in the aim to be the forerunner in the future of space commerce and space hotel designs. In a statement on their project website, the company states, “Bigelow Aerospace is dedicated to developing next-generation crewed space complexes to revolutionize space commerce and open up the final frontier to all of humanity“. Well, it seems the frontier has come a little bit closer after today’s announcement that Genesis I, an unmanned prototype of an inflatable space vessel, has just completed its 10,000th orbit around the Earth.

The company is exploiting an old NASA concept, to keep launch mass and size low, but optimize volume in space. The expandable module concept has a structure that uses a flexible outer shell that allows the module to be “unpacked” or inflated once inserted into orbit. Having an inflatable module may conjure up thoughts of flimsiness or weakness – this is obviously not the case as the prototype pushes on after two years of tests. The inflatable design also allows for a larger volume for astronauts to work and live it, with obvious applications for space tourism and orbital hotels. At first, the expandable module was proposed and designed by NASA for the “Transhab Program”, but it was cancelled, allowing Bigelow Aerospace to take over the project and become sole producer of NASA’s expandable module technologies.

Genesis I was followed by the launch of Genesis II in June 2007. Genesis II is also functioning as designed, but today belongs to the older vehicle. The Genesis prototypes measure 14 feet (4.4 meters) in length and 8 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter; they are one-third scale versions of the company’s future BA-330 modules to be used for manned missions.

In addition to this landmark 10,000th orbit, Genesis 1 has taken over 14,000 images and its highly efficient solar panels have provided continuous power to the ship for 15,840 hours.

Around 2011, Bigelow Aerospace hopes to establish its first crewed space station with its Sundancer module (pictured).

Sources: Bigalow Aerospace, Space.com

May 9, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

After the Shuttle, Should Astronauts be Launched on Satellite Rockets?

The Atlas V rocket - a workhorse for getting satellites into orbit (NASA)

When the Shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, what other mode of transport could be used to take NASA astronauts into space? After all, we routinely launch satellites into orbit, why can’t the same technology be adapted and used for human spaceflight? Well, the US Senate committee on space and aeronautics was told by a retired US Air Force general on Wednesday that this option should be considered. Rather than injecting billions to accelerate development of the Orion space vehicle or becoming dependent on the Russian Soyuz, the reliable workhorses of satellite launches, the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, could be “human rated”…

Concern is growing for the gap in the US ability to get astronauts into space between 2010 (when the Shuttle fleet is retired) and 2015 (the scheduled completion of Orion spacecraft and Ares rocket). As voiced on Tuesday by record breaking astronaut John Glenn, to depend on the Russian Soyuz system could prove problematic. This concern has been echoed by former US Air Force general Robert S. Dickman and has outlined a possible solution to the five-year gap. For a modest $500 million to $1 billion, the Atlas V and Delta IV launch systems (more accustomed to blasting communication satellites and military payloads into orbit) could be adapted to carry astronauts into space, and supplying the International Space Station. The only other way to reduce the gap would be to accelerate the Constellation Program, or (as voiced by Glenn on Tuesday) extend the Shuttle program. Unfortunately, both of these options would be disproportionately expensive.

So, converting satellite rockets might be a nice compromise; reduce the dependence on other space agencies, keep costs low and keep space open to manned space flight for NASA. Sounds like the perfect solution…

However, a top NASA official who worked on the Gemini and Apollo programs had a sobering reply for this possibility. Eugene Kranz told the US Senate committee that human rating existing rockets is no easy task. Kranz was involved in converting Titan and early Atlas rockets so they could be used for the manned Mercury an Apollo missions. Unfortunately, although this option looks attractive on paper, in reality, much more investment is required – often larger, unforeseen modifications are needed.

In the case of the Titan and Atlas modifications, the human rating took several years to complete. Unfortunately, 2010 is only two years away, modifying existing rockets sufficiently simply will not be completed on time.

Where NASA may not convert the rockets, private space corporations might. The company SpaceDev is looking into converting the Atlas V rocket, incorporating its Dreamchaser capsule as part of the plan to offer commercial ferrying of NASA astronauts to the ISS. Bigalow Aerospace and Lockheed Martin are hot on their tails, proposing human rating the Atlas V for trips to future Bigalow space hotels.

Source: New Scientist Blog

May 8, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Stars Orbiting Close to Black Holes Flattened like Hot Pancakes

Playing with black holes is a risky business, especially for a star that is unlucky enough to be orbiting one. Assuming an unfortunate star hasn’t already had all of its hydrogen fuel and other component elements stripped from its surface, the powerful tidal forces will have some fun with the doomed stellar body. First the star will be stretched out of shape and then it will be flattened like a pancake. This action will compress the star generating violent internal nuclear explosions, and shockwaves will ripple throughout the tormented stellar plasma. This gives rise to a new type of X-ray burst, revealing the sheer power a black hole’s tidal radius has on the smaller binary sibling. Sounds painful…

It is intriguing to try to understand the dynamics near a supermassive black hole, especially when a star strays too close. Recent observations of a distant galaxy suggests the material pulled from a star near the center of a galactic nucleus caused a powerful X-ray flare which echoed from the surrounding molecular torus. The infalling stellar gas was sucked into the black hole’s accretion disk, generating a huge quantity of energy as a flare. Whether or not the star stayed intact for the duration of its death-spiral into the supermassive black hole it is unknown, but scientists have been working on a new model of a star orbiting a black hole weighing in at a few million solar masses (assuming the star can hold it together for that long).

Matthieu Brassart and Jean-Pierre Luminet of the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, France, are studying the effects of the tidal radius on a star orbiting close to a supermassive black hole. The tidal radius of a supermassive black hole is the distance at which gravity will have a far greater pull on the leading edge of the star than the following edge. This massive gravitational gradient causes the star to be stretched beyond recognition. What happens next is a little strange. In a matter of hours, the star will swing around the black hole, through the tidal radius, and out the other end. But according to the French scientists, the star that comes out isn’t the same as the star that went in. The star deformation is described in the accompanying diagram and detailed below:

(a)-(d): Tidal forces are weak and the star remains practically spherical.
(e)-(g): Star falls into the tidal radius. This is the point at which it is destined to be destroyed. It undergoes changes in its shape, first “cigar shaped”, then it gets squeezed as the tidal forces flatten the star in its orbital plane to the shape of a pancake. Detailed hydrodynamical simulations of shock wave dynamics have been carried out during this “crushing phase”.
(h): After swinging around the point of closest approach in its orbit (perihelion), the star rebounds, leaving the tidal radius and begins to expand. Leaving the black hole far behind, the star breaks up into clouds of gas.

As the star is dragged around the black hole in the “crushing phase” it is believed that the pressures will be so great on the deformed star that intense nuclear reactions will occur throughout, heating it up in the process. This research also suggests powerful shock waves will travel through the hot plasma. The shock waves would be powerful enough to produce a short (<0.1 second) blast of heat (>10⁹ Kelvin) propagating from the star’s core to its deformed surface, possibly emitting a powerful X-ray flare or gamma-ray burst. Due to this intense heating, it seems possible that most of the stellar material will escape the black holes gravitational pull, but the star will never be the same again. It will be transformed into vast clouds of turbulent gas.

This situation wouldn’t be too hard to imagine when considering the dense stellar volume in galactic nuclei. In fact, Brassart and Luminet have estimated that there may be 0.00001 event per galaxy, and although this may seem low, future observatories such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) may detect these explosions, possibly several per year as the Universe is transparent to hard X-ray and gamma-ray emissions.

Source: Science Daily

May 8, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Shuttle Launch Controllers Prepared to Press “Self Destruct” Button

Shuttle launch and flight termination panel (NASA)

This is something I can stomach when considering the launch of an unmanned robotic mission into space. It seems obvious that there should be a “flight termination” switch, especially when considering the damage a malfunctioning rocket could do to populated areas. If mission controllers see the rocket veer off course, they can make a quick and decisive action to blow the launch vehicle, and everything on it, out of the sky. But what about Space Shuttle launches? Surely they don’t have a flight termination option too, do they? Well, yes, they do actually. Welcome to the worst job in NASA: launch safety officer.

Every time the Shuttle launches from Cape Canaveral, there is an Air Force officer overseeing events and will probably be the most nervous person in mission control for the first two minutes of the mission. So who is this officer and what does he/she do? The launch safety officer has very big responsibility, not only to the people in mission control, but to the astronauts on board the launching Shuttle and (most critically) the people on the ground in towns and cities under the flight path. Should the Shuttle spin off course, it could crash, killing hundreds or even thousands of civilians. This is why the Shuttle’s two solid rocket boosters are armed with explosives, linked to the controls at the Air Force officer’s fingertips (pictured top). Flipping one switch would arm the explosives; another switch would detonate the spaceship, killing everyone on board.

I’m sure the safety officer will breathe a long sigh of relief as the Shuttle passes the two minute mark without any problems. At this point, the rocket boosters are jettisoned, taking the explosive charges with them. However, this isn’t the end of the worry for the astronauts.

Should something go wrong after booster separation, they will have limited options to prevent crash landing in a populated area. They can either steer the Shuttle into an orbital path (if it is high enough) and fly over the Earth to line themselves up for an emergency landing at California’s Edwards Air Force Base, or they would have to ditch in the Atlantic Ocean. But that’s not the scary part. Before ditching, the astronauts would have to “bail out” at around 20,000 ft (6,000 meters) without the help of ejection seats. They would need to do it the old fashioned way. “After Challenger, we installed parachutes, survival suits and individual rafts, as well as an extendable pole used to clear the escapees from the wing when they exit the hatch [while in flight],” says Bryan O’Connor, a former shuttle commander and NASAâ€™s chief of safety and mission assurance.

You’ll be glad to hear, the upcoming Orion space vehicle will be kitted out with a special rocket-powered escape pod should the worst happen during launch emergencies.

I’m still shocked that the astronauts need an “extendable pole” to clear themselves from the shuttle as they bail out!

Source: Popular Mechanics

May 8, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Legendary Astronaut John Glenn Speaks Out On Shuttle Decommissioning

John Glenn watches the NASA archive footage (Larry Downing, Reuters)

On Tuesday, to help out with the 50-year anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, clips from 100 hours of restored archive footage of NASA missions were made public. At the screening, John Glenn, America’s first astronaut to orbit the Earth, watched the clips and had time to reminisce over the administration’s “Glory Years”. He also had a very strong message for the policy makers: Extend the Shuttle program and re-commit to a long-term investment in the International Space Station. As a former Marine, Mercury astronaut, pilot and US senator, that’s a hard message to ignore…

In 1962 John Glenn made history. He became NASA’s first astronaut to orbit the Earth, and third US astronaut to travel into space. Starting out as part of the pioneering Mercury Program, Glenn served NASA until 1964 and then entered politics. In 1974 he became a US Senator where he continued till 1999. Add these accolades to his career as a US Marine pilot through World War II and the Korean War in the 1950’s, Glenn has seen more his fair share of action in the air and in space. Not wanting to end his space-faring experiences, at age 77, Glenn was launched on board Space Shuttle Discovery and became the oldest ever person in space in 1998.

On Tuesday, John Glenn attended NASA’s 50th anniversary celebrations on Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. and watched archival footage of the historic achievements of NASA. This included a 1965 clip of astronaut Ed White, taking the first American space walk outside the Gemini IV module. In the clip, White loses a space glove and it is seen floating off into space.

However, under the pride and excitement of the proceeds, there was an air of concern for NASA’s future. Glenn took this opportunity to share his views on the current funding climate for US space missions. In 2015, NASA plans to reduce its commitment to the $100 billion International Space Station, Glenn views this as a lost opportunity.

“The investment we have up there and the potential for learning new things are tremendous at a time when we’re coming under additional global competition.” The International Space Station is “the greatest, most complex laboratory ever put together.” – John Glenn

He was also critical of the decision to retire the Shuttle fleet in 2010, forcing the US to rely more on the Russian space program to supply the station. “The shuttles may be old, but they’re still the most complex vehicle ever put together by people, and they’re still working very well,” he added. Glenn says the benefits of supporting an extension to the Shuttle program will far outweigh the negatives, there is simply no way of knowing where the US will stand politically with Russia in the future, depending on another nation for the lifeline into space could be problematic.

“When we are completely dependent on them for our transportation back and forth, it means we are also subject to the whims they may have politically, as different things happen in the world that have nothing to do with the space program.” – Glenn

Sometimes it takes a NASA legend to highlight the issues facing the future of space flight, let’s just hope someone takes John Glenn’s words on board…

Source: USA Today

May 7, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Lightning Storm Generated by Chilean Volcano (Images)

The Chaiten volcano erupting during storms in the middle of the night (Daily Mail - UK Newspaper)

It could be the scene from a movie: huge plumes of ash and gas rising during a ferocious volcanic eruption, sparking off a dazzling lightning storm; lightning bolts thundering to life inside and out of the hot cloud. However, this is the reality down on the ground for the people living near the Chaiten Volcano, southern Chile, who have been evacuated since the volcano erupted on Friday. Activity continues to increase, producing these terrifying, yet mesmerizing scenes…

Lightning can happen as a result of a volcanic eruption. As the hot ash rises through the cooler atmosphere, transfer of charge occurs. This excess of electrons within the cloud makes it act like a capacitor, and should the conditions be correct, huge electrical discharges may be observed as bolts of lightning during volcanic eruptions. It seems that the Chaiten volcano’s recent activity has created the perfect conditions for such a show, allowing photographers in the region to capture some stunning images.

I actually saw the picture shown at the top of this article in a double page spread in today’s edition of the UK’s Daily Mail. At first I couldn’t work out what I was seeing but on reading the caption I soon realized it was connected with the recent eruption in Chile. Fortunately the Daily Mail also posted the article on their website, giving me the opportunity to share these incredible images on the Universe Today.

This region of South America has some very active plate tectonics and has been dubbed “Andean Arc” region of Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia containing around 200 to 300 volcanoes. Volcanologists are highly concerned as many of these volcanoes are located in densely populated areas, so they are studying the Chaiten eruption very carefully. The small town of Chaiten is being threatened by this particular eruption, but fortunately the surrounding area is otherwise unpopulated.

Sources: Physorg.com, Daily Mail

May 6, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

NASA Considers Manned Asteroid Mission

Low gravity on an asteroid would be a big issue (NASA)

What would happen if we spot a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEO) heading straight for us? Assuming we had enough time, we might be able to pull together a group of brave astronauts (or oil drillers) and send them to the asteroid just in the nick of time to destroy it… oh hold on, that sounds like the storyline for a Hollywood blockbuster. Actually, NASA is planning a mission to an NEO, but not because it’s aimed at us. An asteroid named 2000SG344 (which threatened the Earth in the year 2000) is being considered as the destination for the first manned asteroid mission. The asteroid astronauts will travel there, chasing the 28,000 mi/hr (45,000 km/hr) speeding body and then carry out experiments, living on it for up to two weeks. Why? To briefly establish a manned outpost, advancing science and technology toward the ultimate goal: Mars.

The 1.1 million tonne asteroid was once thought to be a serious threat Earth. Back in 2000, there was a significant chance that asteroid 2000SG344 may have been on a collision course for Earth (with an explosive power of approximately 1 megatonne). Obviously it wasn’t, but it is expected to make an astronomically close flyby in 2030. Before then, NASA hopes to use this 40 meter-wide asteroid as the destination of a three to six month manned mission.

The asteroid mission would act as a “stepping stone” for future planetary missions to Mars and beyond. This three-month trek would provide vital technological, psychological and practical clues to what a manned deep space mission would face. Landing on an asteroid will be very difficult (due to the tiny influence of gravity on such a low-mass body), but it would provide an opportunity for astronauts to mine for water ice, use it for consumption and convert it into its component hydrogen and oxygen (for fuel and breathing). These tests would be essential before sending man on a long-term mission to Mars.

Under the current US administration, NASA has been instructed to send man back to the Moon by 2020. It is hoped that a more permanent base will be established soon after. Once the Moon base has been established, missions to Mars will become much easier to carry out. However, manned trips to near-Earth asteroids allow us to learn more about this potentially catastrophic hazard as well as developing deep space technology for the human presence on Mars.

In a study to be published in June, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston and Ames Research Centre in California will provide a rundown of their plans to use the future Orion spacecraft for this task, with a stop over of one- or two-weeks. I’m looking forward to seeing their recommendations for this ambitious development…

Source: The Guardian (UK)

May 6, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Will Mars Astronauts be put in Suspended Animation for the Journey?

Sigourney Weaver in the film Alien (Brandywine Productions Ltd.)

Could you handle six months in space with a tiny handful of crew? Keep in mind you’d be doing everything with them, eating, sleeping, chatting, working, waiting, more sleeping, the occasional emergency, more chatting… If you look around your office now, could you really see yourself spending 24/7 with any of those guys for 24 weeks? Even the happiest, close-knit family would find it hard, especially at the close quarters they are likely to endure. Even if you had to spend that time with your partner, someone you love dearly, there would be stresses… after all you can’t exactly storm out of the spaceship and float home. You’re in it for the long-term.

The solution? Put the astronauts on their way to Mars into a suspended animation state. This not only saves the astronauts from potentially dangerous arguments, it would also save on food, air and water. So how can this be done? Hydrogen sulfide, the gas produced by rotten eggs, may be able to help…

Peggy Whitson, NASA astronaut, spent a record breaking six months on board the International Space Station (she returned on April 19th with a bit of a bump) and it appears she was able to make it through the days on board the ISS with her crew. However, the ISS had a very busy few months, plus it’s had several changes of crew and various new modules have been added. The ISS is a very different environment to work in than on board future missions to Mars. For starters, the main mission is to get to the Red Planet; the transit from Earth will be seen as the “run-up”. Although valuable science will undoubtedly be done, the accommodations are likely to be cramped and Mars astronauts will see the same faces day in and day out. Confrontations could become a serious problem. Supplying the ship with enough food and water for the trip will also be a difficult task. How can all these issues be faced? Put the astronauts in suspended animation.

Probably more familiar in science fiction movies (like the 1979 classic Alien, pictured top), suspended animation has some serious problems. Cooling the human body was thought to be the key to slowing the metabolism down sufficiently so space-bound crews could slip into hibernation for the duration of the long trip, but it seems this interferes with the rhythm of the heart. Now scientists at Harvard believe they have a solution.

Dr Warren Zapol, the head of anaesthesiology at Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital, has been working on the effects that hydrogen sulfide has on the human body. More commonly known for the pungent smell produced by rotten eggs, hydrogen sulphide has been used on mice and the results have been very interesting. When breathed in, the gas slows mouse metabolism, but does not reduce the flow of blood to the brain and doesn’t interfere with the heart.

“The mice aren’t asleep. If you pinch their tails they respond. I don’t know what it’s like. Probably some slow-motion world.” – Dr Warren Zapol.

After about ten minutes of inhaling the gas, the mice slipped into a hibernation state. A reduction in oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production was measured. This reduction continued for as long as hydrogen sulfide was administered and the test subjects recovered fully after normal air flow was supplied for 30 minutes. What’s more, oxygen levels in the blood did not vary, signifying that the major organs were not at risk of being oxygen starved. Mouse heart rate also dropped by 50%.

Of course many tests will be needed before hydrogen sulfide is administered to humans, let alone astronauts, but the preliminary results are encouraging. It looks like mice are joining the monkeys in mankind’s future on Mars…

Source:
ABC Science

May 5, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Digging for Dark Matter: The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) Detector

The Hubble Space Telescope distribution of dark matter - indirect observations (HST)

How do you catch a WIMP? No, I’m not talking about bullying the weakest kid in class, I’m talking about Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (those WIMPs). Well, it isn’t easy. Although they are “massive” by definition, they do not interact with the electromagnetic force (via photons) so they cannot be “seen” and they do not interact with the strong nuclear force, so they cannot be “felt” by atomic nuclei. If we cannot detect WIMPs via these two forces, how can we possibly ever hope to detect them? After all, WIMPs are theorized to be flying through the Earth without hitting anything, they are that weakly interacting. But sometimes, they might collide with atomic nuclei but only if they collide head-on. This is a very rare occurrence, but the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) detector will be buried 4,800 feet (1,463 meters, or nearly a mile) underground in an old South Dakota goldmine and scientists are hopeful that when an unlucky WIMP bumps into a xenon atom, a flash of light will be captured, signifying the first ever experimental evidence of dark matter…

Galaxies observed from Earth have some strange qualities. The biggest problem for cosmologists has been to explain why galaxies (including the Milky Way) appear to have more mass than can be observed by counting stars and accounting for interstellar dust alone. In fact, 96% of the Universe’s mass cannot be observed. 22% of this missing mass is thought to be held in “dark matter” (74% is held as “dark energy”). Dark matter is theorized to take on many forms. Massive Astronomical Compact Halo Objects (astronomical bodies containing ordinary baryonic material that cannot be observed; like neutron stars or orphaned planets), neutrinos and WIMPS all are thought to contribute toward this missing mass. Many experiments are in progress to detect each contributor. Black holes can be indirectly detected by observing the interactions in the centre of galaxies (or gravitational lensing effects), neutrinos can be detected in huge tanks of fluid buried deep underground, but how can WIMPs be detected? It seems a WIMP detector needs to take a leaf out of the neutrino detector’s books – it needs to start digging.

To avoid interference from radiation such as cosmic rays, low energy detectors such as neutrino “telescopes” are buried well below the Earth’s surface. Old mine shafts make ideal candidates as the hole is already there for the instrumentation to be set up. Neutrino detectors are huge containers of water (or some other agent) with highly sensitive detectors positioned around the outside. One such example is the Super Kamiokande neutrino detector in Japan which contains a vast amount of ultra-purified water, weighing in at 50,000 tons (pictured left). As a weakly interacting neutrino hits a water molecule in the tank, a flash of Cherenkov radiation is emitted and a neutrino is detected. This is the basic principal behind the new Large Underground Xenon (LUX) detector that will use 600 pounds (272 kg) of liquid xenon suspended in a 25 foot high tank of pure water. If WIMPs exist beyond the realms of theory, it is hoped that these weakly interacting massive particles will collide head-on with a xenon atom, and like their light-weight cousins, emit a flash of light.

Robert Svoboda and Mani Tripathi, UC Davis professors, have secured $1.2 million in National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. Department of Energy funding for the project (this is 50% of the total required). When compared with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) costing billions of Euros to build, LUX is a highly economic project considering the scope of what it might discover. Should there be experimental evidence of a WIMP interaction, the consequences will be enormous. We will be able to begin to understand the origins of WIMPs and their distribution as the Earth sweeps through the possible dark matter halo that is indirectly observed to exist in the Milky Way.

Detecting dark matter “would be the biggest deal since finding antimatter in the 1930s.” – Professor Mani Tripathi, LUX co-investigator, UC Davis.

The gold mine in South Dakota was closed in 2000 and in 2004 work began to develop the site into an underground laboratory. LUX will be the first large experiment to be housed there. It is hoped that the installation will start late summer, after water has been pumped out of the mine.

Original source: UC Davis News