X1-class solar flare on March 29, 2014 as seen by NASA's IRIS (video screenshot) Some stars emit even stronger "superflares" similar to these, but much brighter. Credit: NASA/IRIS/SDO/Goddard Space Flight Center
Are giant dragons flying out of the Sun? No, this is much more awesome than that: it’s an image of an X-class flare that erupted from active region 2017 on March 29, as seen by NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft. It was not only IRIS’s first view of such a powerful flare, but with four other solar observatories in space and on the ground watching at the same time it was the best-observed solar flare ever.
(But it does kind of look like a dragon. Or maybe a phoenix. Ah, pareidolia!)
Check out a video from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center below:
In addition to IRIS, the March 29 flare was observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), NASA’s Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI), JAXA and NASA’s Hinode spacecraft, and the National Solar Observatory’s Dunn Solar Telescope in New Mexico.
With each telescope equipped with instruments specially designed to observe the Sun in specific wavelengths almost no detail of this particular flare went unnoticed, giving scientists comprehensive data on the complex behavior of a single solar eruption.
Also, for another look at this flare from SDO and a coronal dimming event apparently associated with it, check out Dean Pesnell’s entry on the SDO is GO! blog here.
Construction on the new observatory on the summit of the Haleakala Crater on Maui, Hawaii this February. Credit: National Solar Observatory
Rising 10,000 feet above the sunburned faces of 2.2 million tourists a year, the largest solar telescope on the planet is under construction atop Haleakala Crater in Maui, Hawaii. Never mind all those admonitions about never staring at the sun. Astronomers can’t wait for the chance.
Named for the late Senator Daniel Inouye, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope or DKIST will be the world’s premier ground-based solar observatory in the world. With its 4-meter (157.5-inch) primary mirror, DKIST is capable of distinguishing features down to 0.03 arc seconds or just 20-70 km (12-44 miles) wide at the sun’s surface. To achieve such fantastic resolutions the telescope will employ the latest adaptive optics technology to cancel the blurring effects of the atmosphere using a computer-controlled deformable mirror.
Extreme closeup of a sunspot showing the dark, central umbra (top) feathery penumbra and individual granules or hot gas. DKIST will capture the evolution of sunspot fine structure and finally understand its physical origin. Credit: NSO Dunn Solar Telescope, courtesy of Thomas Rimmele
Consider that the smallest features visible in large amateur telescopes are solar granules, columns of hot gas rising up from the sun’s interior. Each spans about 930 miles (1,500 km) and together give the sun’s surface the texture of finely-etched glass. DKIST will resolve features more than 60 times smaller. The current largest sun-dedicated telescope is the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope , which has kept a steady eye on the home star with its 63-inch (1.6-meter) mirror since 1962 from Kitt Peak, Arizona.
Observatory cutaway showing light entering the top of the dome and gathered by the primary mirror, which is reflected to a secondary mirror and from there through a series of smaller mirrors to the science gallery below. Inset shows the light path in greater detail including the deformable mirror that will cancel the blurring effects of atmospheric turbulence. Notice that the secondary mirror is offset with no obstructions between it and the primary mirror that would otherwise lessen the telescope’s ability to resolve fine detail. Credit: L. Phelps with enhancements by the author
DKIST will focus on three key areas: What is the nature of solar magnetism; how does that magnetism control our star; and how can we model and predict its changing outputs that affect the Earth? Astronomers hope to clearly resolve solar flux tubes – magnetic field concentrations near the sun’s surface – thought to be the building blocks of magnetic structures in the atmosphere.
We still lack a complete understanding of how energy in the sun’s turbulent, churning interior is transferred to magnetic fields. Earth’s magnetic field is about 0.5 gauss at the surface. Fields within sunspots can range from 1,500 to 3,000 gauss – about the strength of a bar magnet but across a region several times larger than Earth.
A test of the DKIST Visible Broadband Imager interference filter in 2012 shows material flowing from a sunspot’s outer penumbra into the surrounding solar gases. Credit: NSO
A better understanding of small scale magnetic structures, too tiny to be resolved with current telescopes, will help make sense of broader phenomena like sunspot formation, the heating of the solar corona and why the sun’s energy output varies. The solar constant, the amount of radiation we receive from the sun, increases with an increase in solar activity like spots and flares. Since the smallest magnetic elements are the biggest contributors to this increase, DKIST will be the first telescope able to image and study these structures directly, helping astronomers understand how variations in the sun’s output can lead to climate changes.
Left – Solar photosphere showing bright structures between granules associated with magnetic fields bubbling up from below. Right – Computer model of a magnetic flux tube rising from the convective zone into the photosphere. Flux tubes are believed to be an important conduit for energy flowing from the solar interior to the hot outer atmosphere but are below the limit of resolution in current telescopes. Credit: Paxman, Seldin, Keller / O. Steiner
DKIST will do its work on rapid times scales, taking images once every 3 seconds. For comparison, NASA’s orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory takes pictures in 8 different wavelengths every 10 seconds, STEREO one image every 3 minutes and SOHO (Solar Heliospheric Observatory) once every 12 minutes. The speedy shooting ability will help DKIST resolve rapidly evolving structures on the sun’s surface and lower atmosphere in a multitude of wavelengths of light from near-ultraviolet to deep infrared thanks to the the extraordinarily clean and dry air afforded by its high altitude digs.
DKIST is under construction in the observatory complex on Haleakala Crater in Maui, Hawaii. The Maui Space Surveillance Complex is the large structure right of center. Photo take Oct. 2013. Credit: Bob King
The new solar telescope will be in excellent company not far from the current Mees Solar Observatory and a stone’s throw from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) telescope, the 79-inch (2-meter) Faulkes Telescope North and Maui Space Surveillance Complexwhich keeps an eye on man-made orbital debris. Tourists to Mt. Haleakala, a popular destination for tourists, can watch it take shape in the next few years while enjoying a hike in the cool air for which Haleakala is famous.
On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material erupted out into space as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveling at over 900 miles per second. By probing solar gases at high resolution and rapid time scales using DKIST’s high power optics and spectrographs, astronomers hope to better understand the first stirrings of these huge outbursts of solar energy. Credit: NASA
I first heard about the DKIST telescope from a burly stranger with fierce-looking tattoos. My wife and I vacationed in Maui last fall. One afternoon, while watching surfers ride the waves near the beach town of Paia, this big guy overheard us mention Duluth (Minn.), our hometown. He said he’d lived in Duluth for a time before moving to Hawaii and offered us a beer. We got to talking and learned he worked safety inspection at at the “biggest solar telescope in the world”, making the hour-long drive up the mountain 5 days a week. I checked it out and he was absolutely right.
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (formerly the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope) is being developed by a consortium led by the National Solar Observatory and comprising the University of Chicago, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, University of Hawaii, the High Altitude Observatory, NASA, the U.S. Air Force and others. For more details on the project, click HERE.
There’s poetry in building a large solar observatory on an island known for its sunny, warm climate. While vacationers flop out on Kaanapali Beach to vanquish the mid-winter chills, astronomers 50 miles away and 10,000 feet up will be at work coaxing secrets from the fiery ball of light that illuminates surf and scope alike.
Composite photo mosaic shows deployment of NASA Curiosity rovers robotic arm and two holes after drilling into ‘Windjana’ sandstone rock on May 5, 2014, Sol 621, at Mount Remarkable as missions third drill target for sample analysis by rover’s chemistry labs. The navcam raw images were stitched together from several Martian days up to Sol 621, May 5, 2014 and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Composite photo mosaic shows deployment of NASA Curiosity rovers robotic arm and two holes after drilling into ‘Windjana’ sandstone rock on May 5, 2014, Sol 621, at Mount Remarkable as missions third drill target for sample analysis by rover’s chemistry labs. The navcam raw images were stitched together from several Martian days up to Sol 621, May 5, 2014 and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
See additional Curiosity mosaics below-See our APOD featured on May 7, 2014[/caption]
After a rather satisfying test bore into a sandstone slab at “Kimberley” just last week, NASA’s rover Curiosity decided to go all the way for a deep drill excursion into the Red Planet rock target called “Windjana” and successfully collected powdery samples from the interior on Monday evening, May 5, Sol 621, that the rover will soon consume inside her belly for high tech compositional analysis with her state-of-the-art science instruments.
NASA reported the great news today, Tuesday, May 6, soon after receiving confirmation of the successful acquisition effort by the hammering drill, located at the terminus of the 1 ton robots 7-foot-long (2 meter) arm.
At long last its “Drill, Baby, Drill” time on Mars.
The “Kimberley Waypoint” drill campaign into “Windjana” at the Mount Remarkable butte thus marks only the third Martian rock bored for sampling analysis by the SUV sized rover. This also counts as a new type of Mars rock – identified as sandstone, compared to the pair of mudstone rocks bored into last year.
This May 5, 2014, image (Sol 621) from the Navigation Camera on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows two holes at top center drilled into a sandstone target called “Windjana.” The farther hole was created by the rover’s drill while it collected rock-powder sample material from the interior of the rock that will be fed to the rovers chemistry labs for analysis. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The fresh hole in “Windjana” created on Monday night was clearly visible in images received this afternoon and showed it was 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 2.6 inches (6.5 centimeters) deep.
The operation went exactly as planned and left behind a residual pile of drill tailings much darker in color compared to the ubiquitous red color seen covering most of Mars surface.
The new full-depth hole is very close in proximity to the shallower “Mini-drill” test hole operation carried out on April 29 at Windjama to determine if this site met the science requirements for sampling analysis and delivery to the two onboard, miniaturized chemistry labs – SAM and CheMin.
“Windjana” is named after a gorge in Western Australia.
Curiosity’s Panoramic view of Mount Remarkable at ‘The Kimberley Waypoint’ where rover will conduct 3rd drilling campaign inside Gale Crater on Mars. The navcam raw images were taken on Sol 603, April 17, 2014, stitched and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Featured on APOD – Astronomy Picture of the Day on May 7, 2014
“The drill tailings from this rock are darker-toned and less red than we saw at the two previous drill sites,” said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity’s Mast Camera (Mastcam).
“This suggests that the detailed chemical and mineral analysis that will be coming from Curiosity’s other instruments could reveal different materials than we’ve seen before. We can’t wait to find out!”
In coming days, the sample will be pulverized and sieved prior to delivery to the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (SAM) for chemical and compositional analysis.
Windjana is an outcrop of sandstone located at the base of a Martian butte named Mount Remarkable at “The “Kimberley Waypoint” – a science stopping point reached by the rover in early April 2014 halfway along its epic trek to towering Mount Sharp, the primary destination of the mission.
See herein our illustrative photo mosaics of the Kimberly Waypoint region assembled by the image processing team of Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer.
Multisol composite photo mosaic shows deployment of Curiosity’s rovers robotic arm and APXS X-ray spectrometer onto the ‘Winjana’ rock target at Mount Remarkable for evaluation as missions third drill target inside Gale Crater on Mars. The colorized navcam raw images were stitched together from several Martian days up to Sol 612, April 26, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
The first two drill campaigns conducted during 2013 at ‘John Klein’ and ‘Cumberland’ inside Yellowknife Bay were on mudstone rock outcrops.
The science team chose Windjana for drilling “to analyze the cementing material that holds together sand-size grains in this sandstone,” says NASA.
“The Kimberley Waypoint was selected because it has interesting, complex stratigraphy,” Curiosity Principal Investigator John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, told me.
Curiosity snaps selfie at Kimberley waypoint with towering Mount Sharp backdrop on April 27, 2014 (Sol 613). Inset shows MAHLI camera image of rovers mini-drill test operation on April 29, 2014 (Sol 615) into “Windjana” rock target at Mount Remarkable butte. MAHLI color photo mosaic assembled from raw images snapped on Sol 613, April 27, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
Curiosity departed the ancient lakebed at the Yellowknife Bay region in July 2013 where she discovered a habitable zone with the key chemical elements and a chemical energy source that could have supported microbial life billions of years ago – and thereby accomplished the primary goal of the mission.
Windjama is about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) southwest of Yellowknife Bay.
Curiosity still has about another 4 kilometers to go to reach the base of Mount Sharp sometime later this year.
Martian landscape with rows of curved rock outcrops at ‘Kimberly’ in the foreground and spectacular Mount Sharp on the horizon. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover pulled into Kimberly waypoint dominated by layered rock outcrops as likely drilling site. This colorized navcam camera photomosaic was assembled from imagery taken on Sol 576 (Mar. 20, 2014). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com
The sedimentary foothills of Mount Sharp, which reaches 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky, is the 1 ton robots ultimate destination inside Gale Crater because it holds caches of water altered minerals. Such minerals could possibly indicate locations that sustained potential Martian life forms, past or present, if they ever existed.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Curiosity, Opportunity, Chang’e-3, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, LADEE, MAVEN, MOM, Mars and more planetary and human spaceflight news.
Curiosity scans scientifically intriguing rock outcrops of gorgeous Martian terrain at ‘The Kimberley’ waypoint in search of next drilling location beside Mount Remarkable butte, at right. Mastcam color photo mosaic assembled from raw images snapped on Sol 590, April 4, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
Screenshot from Uwingu's crater naming project on Mars. Click to access the special Mother's Day campaign.
There’s a great book (and a not as great movie) called “Mars Needs Moms” . It’s a heartwarming (dare I say tear-jerking) story that provides a Martian’s-eye view of how important Moms are, and that they’ll love us “to the ends of the universe.”
With Mother’s Day coming up — and if you’re looking for another great combination of Moms and Mars — Uwingu is celebrating with a campaign called Mothers on Mars (MoM), which provides the first-ever opportunity to honor Moms on Mother’s Day by naming a feature for her on Uwingu’s new Mars map.
Until Mother’s Day, May 11, Uwingu is offering a gift pack which includes a special Mother’s Day certificate.
Although the crater names likely won’t officially be approved by the IAU, the names will be used on maps used by the Mars One team, the commercial company that is looking to create a human settlement on Mars by 2023.
Planetary scientist and Uwingu’s CEO Dr. Alan Stern said the named craters will be similar to the names given to features on Mars by the mission science teams (such as Mt. Sharp on Mars –the IAU-approved name is Aeolis Mons) or even like Pike’s Peak, a mountain in Colorado which was named by the public — in a way — as early settlers started calling it that, and it soon became the only name people recognized.
Uwingu’s Mars Map Crater Naming Project allows anyone to help name the approximately 590,000 unnamed, scientifically cataloged craters on Mars, starting at $5 each.
Uwingu is hoping to raise $10 million for The Uwingu Fund, which provides grants to further space exploration, research and education.
With almost 10,000 craters named so far, true to their promise, Uwingu has already funded grants to projects and organizations including the Astronomers Without Borders, Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, Mars One mission, the Galileo Teacher Training Program, Explore Mars and the Allen Telescope Array at SETI.
“Our mission is to raise funds for space research while growing a successful company that gets people excited about space exploration and education”, said Stern, the former director of planetary science at NASA.
Backdropped against a cloudy portion of Earth, Canada’s Dextre robotic "handyman" and Canadarm2 dig out the trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo vessel docked to the ISS after completing a task 225 miles above the home planet. Credit: NASA
To close out their final week aboard the International Space Station, three of the six Expedition 39 crew members are completing their unloading tasks inside the docked commercial SpaceXDragon cargo freighter and other duties while teams at Mission Control in Houston conduct delicate robotics work outside with dazzling maneuvers of the Dextre robot to remove the last external experiment from the vessels storage truck.
See a dazzling gallery of photos of Dextre dangling outside the docked Dragon depot – above and below.
On Monday, May 5, the robotics team at NASA Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston carefully guided Canada’s Dextre robotic “handyman” attached to the end of the 57-foot long Canadarm2 to basically dig out the final payload item housed in the unpressurized trunk section at the rear of the SpaceX Dragon cargo vessel docked to the ISS.
Dextre stands for “Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator” and was contributed to the station by the Canadian Space Agency. It measures 12 feet tall and is outfitted with a pair of arms and an array of finely detailed tools to carry out intricate and complex tasks that would otherwise require spacewalking astronauts.
The Canadarm2 with Dextre in its grasp conducts external cargo transfers from the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Credit: NASA TV
The massive orbiting outpost was soaring some 225 miles above the home planet as Dextre’s work was in progress to remove the Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science, or OPALS, from the Dragon’s truck.
The next step is to install OPALS on the Express Logistics Carrier-1 (ELC-1) depot at the end of the station’s port truss on Wednesday.
Monday’s attempt was the second try at grappling OPALS. The initial attempt last Thursday “was unsuccessful due to a problem gripping the payload’s grapple fixture with the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or Dextre,” NASA reported.
A software patch solved the problem.
Canada’s Dextre manipulator attached to Canadarm2 conducts external cargo transfers from the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Credit: NASA TV
This unmanned Dragon delivered about 4600 pounds of cargo to the ISS including over 150 science experiments, a pair of hi tech legs for Robonaut 2, a high definition Earth observing imaging camera suite (HDEV), the laser optical communications experiment (OPALS), the VEGGIE lettuce growing experiment as well as essential gear, spare parts, crew provisions, food, clothing and supplies to the six person crews living and working aboard in low Earth orbit, under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.
OPALS uses laser light instead of radio waves to beam back precisely guided data packages to ground stations. The use of lasers should greatly increase the amount of information transmitted over the same period of time, says NASA.
The science experiments carried aboard Dragon are intended for research to be conducted by the crews of ISS Expeditions 39 and 40.
Robotics teams had already pulled out the other payload item from the truck, namely the HDEV imaging suite. It is already transmitting back breathtaking real time video views of Earth from a quartet of video cameras pointing in different directions mounted on the stations exterior.
The SpaceX CRS-3 mission marks the company’s third resupply mission to the ISS under a $1.6 Billion contract with NASA to deliver 20,000 kg (44,000 pounds) of cargo to the ISS during a dozen Dragon cargo spacecraft flights through 2016.
After spending six months in space, Station Commander Koichi Wakata from Japan as well as NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin will be departing the station in a week aboard their Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft on May 13 at 6:33 p.m. EDT.
They are scheduled to land some 3.5 hours later in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 9:57 p.m. (7:57 a.m. Kazakh time on May 14). The events will be carried live on NASA TV.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon resupply ship launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on April 18, 2014. Credit: Jeff Seibert/Wired4SpaceTo prepare for the journey home, the trio also completed fit checks on their Russian Sokol launch and entry suits on Monday.
Meanwhile Dragon is also set to depart the station soon on May 18 for a parachute assisted splashdown and recovery by boats in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California.
Dragon has been docked to the station since arriving on Easter Sunday morning, April 20.
It was grappled using Canadarm 2 and berthed at the Earth facing port of the Harmony module by Commander Wakata and flight engineer Mastracchio while working at the robotics work station inside the seven windowed domed Cupola module.
For the return trip, the Expedition 39 crew is also loading Dragon with precious science samples collected over many months from the crews research activities as well as trash and no longer needed items.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, Orion, Chang’e-3, LADEE, Curiosity, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more planetary and human spaceflight news.
Artist's impression of a gamma-ray burst, showing the two intense beams of relativistic matter emitted by the black hole. To be visible from Earth, the beams must be pointing directly towards us. Credit : NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith and John Jones
Roughly once a day the sky is lit up by a mysterious torrent of energy. These events — known as gamma-ray bursts — represent the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, sending out as much energy in a fraction of a second as our Sun will give off during its entire lifespan.
Yet no one has ever witnessed a gamma-ray burst directly. Instead astronomers are left to study their fading light.
New research from an international team of astronomers has discovered a puzzling feature within one Gamma-ray burst, suggesting that these objects may behave differently than previously thought.
These powerful explosions are thought to be triggered when dying stars collapse into jet-spewing black holes. While this stage only lasts a few minutes, its afterglow — slowly fading emission that can be seen at all wavelengths (including visible light) — will last for a few days to weeks. It is from this afterglow that astronomers meticulously try to understand these enigmatic explosions.
The afterglow emission is formed when the jets collide with the material surrounding the dying star. They cause a shockwave, moving at high velocities, in which electrons are being accelerated to tremendous energies. However, this acceleration process is still poorly understood. The key is in detecting the afterglow’s polarization — the fraction of light waves that move with a preferred plane of vibration.
“Different theories for electron acceleration and light emission within the afterglow all predict different levels of linear polarization, but theories all agreed that there should be no circular polarization in visible light,” said lead author Klaas Wiersema in a press release.
“This is where we came in: we decided to test this by carefully measuring both the linear and circular polarization of one afterglow, of GRB 121024A, detected by the Swift satellite.”
Gamma-ray burst 121024A, as seen on the day of the burst by ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Only a week later the source had faded completely. Image Credit: Dr Klaas Wiersema, University of Leicester, UK and Dr Peter Curran, ICRAR.
And to their surprise, the team detected circular polarization, meaning that the light waves are moving together in a uniform, spiral motion as they travel. The gamma-ray burst was 1000 times more polarized than expected. “It is a very nice example of observations ruling out most of the existing theoretical predictions,” said Wiersema.
The detection shows that current theories need to be re-examined. Scientists expected any circular polarization to be washed out. The radiation of so many electrons travelings billions of light-years would erase any signal. But the new discovery suggests that there could be some sort of order in the way these electrons travel.
Of course the possibility remains that this particular afterglow was simply an oddball and not all afterglows behave like this.
Nonetheless “extreme shocks like the ones in GRB afterglows are great natural laboratories to push our understanding of physics beyond the ranges that can be explored in laboratories,” said Wiersema.
A common criticism of science is its quick decision to experiment, without thinking about whether or not it should. While many argue that philosophical implications do not belong within the realm of science, others argue that scientists should absolutely consider the broader implications of their results.
Now, neuro-psychologist Gabriel G. de la Torre from the University of Cádiz is questioning whether or not astronomers, who have previously only looked for signs of extraterrestrial life, should actively send messages from Earth.
The idea that we might not be alone in the universe has been around since at least the fifth century B.C., when the Greek philosopher Democritus posited innumerable worlds, none of which were devoid of life.
With the founding of NASA and other space agencies in the 20th century, human beings began to explore the solar system and actively search for alien life. The most ambitious search began in 1960, when astronomer Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at two stars similar to our Sun and listened for a signature of intelligence.
Drake’s work inspired the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, an initiative that began in the 70s with funding from NASA, but has now evolved toward the collaboration of millions of Internet users for the processing of data from the Arecibo Observatory.
But then there is “Active SETI — also known as METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) — which is the attempt to send messages to potential ETs via radio signals. Some astrophysicists, such as Stephen Hawking, have already warned against the risk this implies for humanity. It would favor the arrival of beings with more advanced technology and unknown intentions.
So “can such a decision be taken on behalf of the whole planet?” asked De la Torre. “What would happen if it was successful and ‘someone’ received our signal? Are we prepared for this type of contact?”
To answer these questions, De la Torre surveyed 116 American, Italian and Spanish university students. The questionnaire assessed their knowledge of astronomy, their religious beliefs, and their beliefs on the likelihood of contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life.
The results indicate that as a species, humanity is still not ready to actively contact a supposed extraterrestrial civilization. The students lacked awareness on many astronomical aspects, despite the enormous progress of science and technology. It also revealed that they lack preparation and would instead rely on political and religious figures.
De la Torre encourages SETI researchers to look for alternative strategies until society can better prepare itself. “This pilot study demonstrates that the knowledge of the general public of a certain education level about the cosmos and our place within it is still poor,” said De la Torre. “Therefore, a cosmic awareness must be further promoted – where our mind is increasingly conscious of the global reality that surrounds us – using the best tool available to us: education.”
The paper has been published in the journal Acta Astronautica.
The 'Block Island' meteorite reproduced in plastic at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Captain Picard orders tea
“Tea, Earl Grey, hot.” Who doesn’t remember that famous command by Captain Picard’s of TV’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation”? While no one’s yet invented a replicator that can brew a cup of tea out of thin air, scientists have taken in step in that direction by creating an amazing replica of a Martian meteorite using a 3D printer.
Without the fuss and expense of a sample retrieving mission to Mars, NASA scientists now have a realistic, true to life facsimile of the ‘Block Island’ meteorite discovered by the Opportunity Rover in 2009. Block Island, an iron-nickel meteorite similar to those found at Meteor Crater in Arizona, is the largest meteorite found on the Red Planet.
The real Block Island, the largest meteorite yet found on Mars, photographed by Opportunity’s panoramic camera.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
Measuring about two feet (60 cm) across, it’s about the size of picnic cooler and weighs an estimated 1,000 pounds. The replica’s made of plastic – you could tote it around like a … picnic cooler.
Analysis of Block Island’s composition using the rover’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer confirmed that it’s rich in iron and nickel. Scientists based the design of the plastic meteorite on detailed measurements and stereo images taken by Opportunity’s panoramic camera.
Get out your red-blue plastic glasses to get a look at Block Island in stereo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The rover made a 360-degree study of the meteorite five years ago taking measurements and many stereo images. But because Opportunity couldn’t see every square inch of the rock, the missing data created holes in the computer model, making it a poor candidate for 3D printing.
Last summer, scientists got around that problem by filling in the missing data and building small scale models of Block Island. To build the life-sized rock, they created depth meshes of the meteorite’s surface from six positions, then combined them into a three-dimensional digital model, according to researcher Kris Capraro of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Researcher Kris Capraro (second from left) adds the finishing touches of realistic color to a model of the “Block Island” meteorite.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The printer built the meteorite from ABS plastic, the same material used in Lego bricks, with cord the width of the plastic line in your weed-whacker. One small problem remained before the replica could be executed – it was too big to fit in the printer’s building space. So researchers broke up the computer model of the meteorite into 11 sections. Printing took 305 hours and 36 minutes.
Researchers created each of 11 pieces in the 3D printer and glued them together to build the true-size model. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The sections were assembled and then painted to match the real rock. Said Capraro: “it’s the next best thing to bringing back real Martian rock samples back to Earth.”
Scientists hope someday to use 3D printing to not only replicate more Mars rocks but terrains across the solar system.
Screenshot from the video showing the variations in the amount of CO2 in Earth atmosphere for the last 800,000 years.
I’m always amazed by the power of data visualization. In this case a video shrinks the rising levels of carbon dioxide over the course of 800,000 years to just under two minutes.
The motivation is simple: April set a carbon dioxide milestone by averaging 400 parts per million for the entire month. That’s uncharted territory over the course of human history.
The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are monitored from a site atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano, where they have been measured continuously since 1958. Previous to this date scientists measure ice cores, which contain air bubbles and therefore snapshots of carbon dioxide levels.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution CO2 levels stayed roughly around 280 ppm. But then with the kickstart of carbon emissions, levels were driven exponentially higher. They soared past 350 ppm — the level scientist James Hansen said was the safe upper limit of CO2 — in October 1989.
The first measurement in excess of 400 ppm was made on May 9, 2013. This year, the level rose above that mark two months earlier, and has remained above 400 ppm steadily since the beginning of April. Levels will peak in May and then drop back down throughout the summer months as trees and plants soak up some CO2.
Once the northern hemisphere spins into fall, the instrument on Mauna Loa will again read higher CO2 levels. Next year will probably see an even earlier onset of levels above 400 ppm. It likely won’t be long before levels never drop lower than 400 ppm, even throughout the summer months.
Also, today the U.S. Global Change Research Program released a report that has been five years in the making, providing an overview of observed and projected climate change. It’s a lengthy document, but you can see an overview here. In sum, the report shows how the world is already experiencing the effects of climate change and the impacts are playing out before our eyes.
“We’ve seen a lot in the last five years,” said Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the lead authors on the report’s oceans chapter, in a press release from The Daily Climate. “So what we’ve tried to do is be quite comprehensive on what our observations have been, as opposed to just modeling projections.”
“Five years ago, ocean acidification and species movement was already happening, but the observational record wasn’t as clear,” Rosenberg said. “Now it really is quite clear. It’s not theory-based or model-based.”
Global temperatures measured by decades since the 1880’s. The period from 2001-2012 was the warmest on record globally. Every year was warmer than the 1990s average. Credit: U.S. Global Change Research Program.
This report is unique in that it not only includes data from scientists, but also has input from local groups and industries facing climate impacts. Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all experiencing climate-related issues. So, too, are coastal planners in Florida, water managers in the Southwest, and Native Peoples on tribal lands from Louisiana to Alaska.
Human beings are already being impacted by climate change.
