…and early German movies, from Lileks.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Ain’t it the truth? Dispatches from Venus, and Mars.
Category Archives: Space Science
A Hypernova?
Eta Carinae could kill us all next year. I hate when that happens:
Mario Livio, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland warns that Eta Carinae could be “seen to explode at any time.” [BBC News]
Esteemed NASA scientist Stefan Immler at the Goddard Space Flight Center thinks Eta Carinae could very well explode in our lifetime, or even in the next few years.
Well, maybe Earth has a little more time, right? Well, maybe not.
Some astrophysicists at the European Space Agency have suggested it’s quite possible, based on observational analysis, that the killer star has already gone hypernova thousands of years ago and the speeding death rays could inundate Earth in as little as a year.
How exciting. Of course, that something is “possible” is not to say that it is likely. The problem with this kind of event is that getting off the planet is no protection, per se, though if we were spacefaring, we could at least have shelters ready, and put out pickets in the outer solar system to give us some warning, since there’s some evidence that gamma rays are subluminal.
Putting the SLS On Hold
…is not “putting human spaceflight on hold.”
The SLS is in fact the antipathy, the nemesis of human spaceflight for NASA.
Frankly, I would cancel both Webb and SLS, and rethink how to do Webb with a bigger launcher, such as Falcon Heavy.
The Telescope That Ate Space Science
I have some thoughts on Webb over at Pajamas Media this morning.
How Would Other Planets Look?
…if they were the same distance from earth as the moon?
Jupiter is pretty scary. Of course, in the case of the gas giants, to first order, we’d be orbiting them, not them orbiting us.
Space Political Action Alerts
As a result of the disastrous initial markup of the House appropriation for NASA last week, the Space Access Society, the Space Frontier Foundation, and Tea Party in Space have all put out alerts for everyone to call your Congressman (extra points if your congressman is one of the chairs of the appropriations committee or subcommittee, Hal Rogers or Frank Wolf).
Briefly, to summarize, the top line of the NASA budget has been cut back to pre-2008 levels (no shock, except to those living in denial), but the real problem is where the cuts are, and aren’t. The Webb Telescope was canceled, which was probably necessary given how out of control it was, but Commercial Crew and space technologies were severely chopped back as well, putting off further the day that we will no longer be reliant on the Russians for ISS, and that we can start moving humans beyond LEO. Instead, the Senate Launch System and Orion-by-another-name earmarks were actually increased, though there is still insufficient funds to build them in any timely manner, and no missions described or funded for them. Go follow one or more of the links, where there are useful instructions as to who to call and what to say. And as always in these matters, be firm, but polite. You have until tomorrow to make a difference.
[Update a few minutes later]
One other disastrous cut, though it’s small, is the CRuSR program. It’s only fifteen million, but it could really help jump start the suborbital industry. Given the trivial amount, it can’t really be about the money. I would guess that it’s pressure from the traditional sounding rocket people, who stand to be put out of business by low-cost reusables.
About That Coronal Mass Ejection
I was curious as to the effect that yesterday’s event will have on the space weather, so I asked my space weathergirl buddy, solar physicist Dr. Barbara J. Thompson at Goddard. She wrote:
There are three major effects from solar “events” – light from flares, magnetic field & mass from eruptions, and energetic particles (ions and electrons) that can be caused by both flares and eruptions (also called coronal mass ejections or CMEs). These three broad classes are monitored because of the effects they have – see the table at the bottom of this page.
The above image shows the alerts that resulted from the eruption/flare – taken from this page at NOAA’s web site.
In general, flares cause radio interference, CMEs cause geomagnetic storms, and energetic particles cause radiation hazards. However, it’s a complicated system and there are always exceptions to any generalization!
The three different types of phenomena have different ways that they reach Earth. There’s a great explanation here and they have the following diagram:
In the diagram above, the flare is occurring on the Sun at a location where it can be seen from Earth, and the light from the flare takes 8 minutes to reach Earth. The flare yesterday was an M-class flare, which is large but not as large as an X-flare (which is ten times larger), but it had enough strength to have some impact.
The CME (eruption of magnetic field & mass) takes 1-5 days to reach Earth’s orbit, depending on how fast it’s going (1 day is *extremely* unusual). In the figure, the CME isn’t heading towards Earth. However, the forecasts are difficult if the CME isn’t going straight towards Earth. It you look at the diagram above, the CME isn’t hitting Earth. However, what if the CME expanded just a couple of degrees wider than the forecast? The Earth could get a glancing blow from the CME – it could either be hit by the CME itself or by the compressed or shocked fields lines near the CME (shown at the large pink region). Glancing blows are really hard to forecast. Yesterday’s event was opposite of the diagram – the CME was to the right of the Earth instead of the left, but it still was far enough away that anything more than a glancing blow is unlikely. Yesterday’s forecast model is here.
So, the flare’s already finished, and the CME is unlikely to hit us. That leaves energetic particles, which can reach Earth in as little as half an hour after a flare, but can happen for days an eruption. The diagram shows the two sources of the energetic particles — flares and the shock from a CME (note: CMEs don’t always have shocks, it depends on their interaction with the solar wind). The energetic particles move (primarily) along magnetic field lines, and the solar wind makes a spiral shape. Where the Earth crosses the spiral determines whether particles will reach Earth. In the diagram, none of the field lines from the CME’s shock are connected to Earth, but the flare’s SEP might (the red line with the two blue lines around it show the estimated location of the solar wind magnetic field lines. Since yesterday’s CME happened to the right of Earth’s orbit (instead of to the left, as in the diagram), the solar wind field lines were very closely connected to Earth.
The alerts timeline shown above does indicate that there’s an elevated chance of energetic particles continuing through tomorrow.
So, bottom line, probably no biggie for us, though someone in transit to another planet might have to hit the storm shelter. There’s more info over at Space Weather, where they’re predicting a greater-than-25% chance of geomagnetic storms tomorrow.
[Update a little while later]
Barbara has a lot more here, including a cleaned-up version of this explanation (which was an email), though I don’t see much of anything wrong with it.
It’s Dead, Jim
Spirit has finally given up the ghost (so to speak). It had a pretty good run, considering that it was originally only supposed to last a few months.
Emily Lakdawalla
An interview. I strongly agree with this advice:
…cultivate your ability to write, to express yourself with brevity and clarity. Writing is important not only for explaining your research, but also for applying for grants and jobs. People who write well, with an engaging voice and correct spelling and grammar, make a positive first impression, giving them a leg up over their competition. My advisor at Brown made all his students submit abstracts to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The struggle to write those abstracts helped us identify holes in our knowledge or in the completeness of our work; presenting our work in posters or talks gave us poise and confidence in intimidating situations. So keep a journal, or start a blog. Just write.
I also find that writing forces you to think about what you’re saying much more than just talking about it.
Thoughts On The Solar System
…and involuntary ant flights.