schneiderism

Catching up on the deluge that is my RSS reader lately, I came across this image from APOD of the Caloris basin (also called Caloris Planitia) on Mercury recently snapped by the Mercury Messenger robotic explorer. It’s huge, and one of the largest impact basins from an asteroid-sized object in our solar system. The basin measures over 1,500 km across. The image above is a false color image in order to enhance details not visible in a true color image. The yellowish object dominating the image is obviously the impact crater of the Caloris basin, but the orange spots above denote volcanic activity on Mercury, which is new evidence provided by Messenger that the smooth plains of Mercury are actually lava flows.

I had previously written about Mercury and NASA’s Messenger mission here and here.

The image above is via the Galileo explorer and depicts the volcanic moon Io previously discussed, with its neighboring moon Amalthea. Amalthea is small, and has been misshapen by the incredible volatility of existing in close proximity to Io and Jupiter. It’s a tough neighborhood. As Io is swept by Jupiter’s electromagnetic field huge amounts of material are scoured off of Io and spiraled towards Jupiter. At times Amalthea orbit takes it directly into the path of this material, and the total intensity of the power generated, and it is thought that this has created its intense reddish color and elongated shape.

via wanderingspace 

I came across this composite image last evening and it stopped me in my tracks. Click on it to view larger, it’s worth it. Here is an enormous, active chain of volcanic calderas, named Tvashtar Catena, on Jupiter’s moon Io and we get to see it in amazing detail and color. This is a color intensified composite made up of images taken by Galileo back in 2000 and composited by Ricardo Nunes.

Back in 1999 the Galileo Orbiter snapped some pictures of an active fissure eruption in this caldera. The eruption let loose lava flows that were 30km long and 1.5km high. Here’s a composited image from those pictures:

Io is the most volcanic body in our solar system with its surface literally covered in lava lakes, giant calderas, and active lava flows. The color of Io is mostly due to the huge amounts of sulfur that blanket its surface from all of this activity, which has remained continuous as long as we have been able to observe this moon. We have measured volcanic eruptions on this moon that have created sulfurous plumes 500km high. Because Io orbits closely to Jupiter it is subject to intense electromagnetic radiation. As Jupiter’s magnetosphere rotates it sweeps Io and strips away nearly 1 ton per second of volcanic gases and other materials. Io actually acts as an enormous electrical generator as it moves through Jupiter’s magnetic field developing 400,000 volts across its diameter and generating 3 million amperes that flow across the magnetic field and into Jupiter’s ionosphere.

Last Monday Stephen Hawking gave a speech at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of NASA. Hawking has long been a proponent of the value of humans exploring space, and again called for a determined effort by humans to colonize the moon and Mars. He put special emphasis on putting humans into space, and not relying solely on robotic explorers, which is largely driven by the survival of humans, longer term, and is an insurance policy against war, catastrophe, and disaster here on Earth. A great quote from the speech:

“Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don’t catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don’t spread the human race into space, which I’m arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

With regards to life on other planets, Hawking offered three possibilities: that life in the universe, of any type, is rare; that simple forms of life may be common, but intelligent forms of life rare; or that intelligent life typically destroys itself. He went on to say:

“Personally, I favor the second possibility – that primitive life is relatively common, but that intelligent life is very rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”

Stephen Hawking

You’ve no doubt already heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) due to the recent resurgence in mainstream media. This is partly because it is a really big deal, connecting us to the earliest moments of the formation of the universe, and partly because some people are worried that when scientists, physicists, and researchers fire it up that it will end reality… and as a result these people are pretty active. That’s not going to happen, the world will not be consumed by tiny black holes. Rest easy.

So, what is the LHC for? It has been constructed to recreate the conditions that occurred just after the Big Bang. In recreating these early moments of the universe we may be able to understand how the first particles were conceived, and thus help us better understand how the universe actually works. The LHC will do this in a very controlled environment, and be heavily measured, recorded and monitored. It will allow us to repeat this experiment with frequency, greatly increasing our ability to study and understand. In short, this is an enormous step towards enlightenment, understanding the nature of reality, and will fill in many of the theoretical blanks that physicists and cosmologists have struggled with for a long, long time. In the name of epistemology, this is a very, very good thing.

LHC Facts:

• It is made up of 2000 super conducting magnets
• It will utilize the most complex cameras ever made
• These cameras will be able to capture impossibly small time horizons
• The LHC is the culmination of over two decades of work
• Construction involved 7,000 physicists from 80 nations
• It is located 175 meters underground and is 27+ kilometers in diameter
• Once operational, protons will be accelerated close to the speed of light
• Every second there will be 800 million proton collisions
• Only a fraction of these matter, and will captured by cameras mentioned above
• Particles created will exist for a thousandth, of a thousandth, of a billionth of a second
• These collisions will generate heat 1 million times hotter than the core of the sun

To achieve this, the LHC team has had to build an incredibly complex machine of enormous scale. Just one of the superconducting solenoids contains more iron than the Eiffel Tower. There are many of these making up the LHC particle accelerator. The receptors and detectors are housed in giant rooms that are as big as cathedrals. The cost of this project was of such a magnitude (estimates range in the $6 billion and up range) that the United States halted its own Superconducting Super Collider back in 1993.

Excellent video of the LHC and the planned experiments (part 1 of 3):

Catching up on my feeds just now I was saddened to see that Arthur C. Clarke, physicist, author, innovator, futurist, and ardent believer in the potential of humanity, has died. He was 90, so the man had a very decent run. Perhaps his most recognized work was 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie for which just celebrated its 40th anniversary. He leaves behind an enormous legacy of invention, creativity, art, and inspiration having written over 100 books. Enormous. Few have been so profoundly influential to so many, and managed to do it with such consistent style, usually sporting a satin Nehru jacket and tanned from the beaches of his home in Sri Lanka. For me, Arthur C. Clarke is the Yin to Philip K. Dick’s Yang. A couple great quotes from Clarke in honor of his passing…

Reflecting on his life:

“Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered. I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer.”

A terrific quote on the value of the space program, from 1970:

“The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars… A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

Absolutely stunning imagery of the recent fly-by of Saturn’s moon Enceladus by Cassini presented in a photo animation. You will find little mention of this in the news, and that is mostly because the news does not care. Lost opportunity for the news. We’ve investigated the robotic Cassini probe here before, and it continues to be very, very busy. On March 12th Cassini flew within 30 miles of Enceladus, approaching from above Enceladus’ north pole and thus seeing the moon as a crescent. Some facts on this beautiful moon:

• Enceladus is very bright, reflecting nearly 100% of the light that strikes it
• This is because we believe it is almost entirely covered in water ice
• It’s surface is considered to be geologically young at less than 100 million years old
• There is evidence indicating that the interior of the moon may still be liquid
• It is about 500 km wide, or roughly the width of the state of Arizona
• Enceladus is known as the “geyser moon” because of enormous eruptions
• These are created by the release of energy caused by frictional geothermal heating

More on Enceladus and Cassini’s observations here, here, and here.

These images just blow me away.

The universe is inconceivably vast and empty and we are incredibly isolated here on our little blue speck of dust. This cold, hard reality is an abstraction to most of us because as far as we’re concerned, we’ve got it pretty good. This video is along the lines of the one I posted earlier in the week that contrasts Earth against some impossibly large celestial bodies elsewhere in the universe. More fuel for universal irrelevancy.

Video found via Western Paradigm, a smart and superbly generalist blog I recently discovered.

Pretty incredible, really, just how seemingly microscopic not only our lovely planet, but our entire solar system is when contrasted against the largest known star in the universe, VY Canis Majoris. This star is a hypergiant located about 5,000 light years from Earth. VY Canis Majoris is so enormous that a human walking on its surface at a normal pace of 3mph for 8 hours per day would take 650,000 years to circumnavigate. It would take 2 years 11 months to complete the same task here on Earth. The volume of VY Canis Majoris is nearly a billion times that of our own Sun.

Animation via toomanytribbles via my lovely wife.

I have posted previously about the planet Mercury, so I was excited to learn that the robotic Mercury research spacecraft Messenger had sent back it’s first image of the planet, the first since Mariner 10 visited Mercury 30 years ago. Messenger stands for the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemsitry, and Ranging mission. The image above was was taken on January 11 as Messenger approached Mercury (at just over 1 million miles from the planet). Scheduled for Monday is a pass at about 125 miles over Mercury’s surface. The plan is for Messenger to make two more close passes (in October 2008 and September 2009) before settling into orbit in March of 2011 and initiating its mission of mapping the surface of Mercury in detail. And in color.

Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system, and the maneuvering that Messenger will have to do (see graphic below from the Messenger website) to comfortably settle into an observational orbit is complex. It involves the three flybys mentioned to help the craft build up enough speed to match Mercury as it settles into orbit, called “Mercury Orbit Insertion,” or MOI. Messenger will also use a series of trajectory corrections and deep space maneuvers achieved by the controlled firing of its thrusters.

Over the course of his life, Stephen Hawking has made a number of sharp and pointed comments with regards to humanity. One of the most memorable for me would be:

“It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.”

Stephen Hawking

Today he celebrates his 66th birthday. The man is beyond remarkable, and ranks up there with Carl Sagan as an inspiring astrophysicist who has made his life’s work making cosmology understandable and of value to the rest of us. From his limited physical state, the man has tirelessly worked to broaden our understanding of the universe we live in, and the physics of that reality, in ways that are beautiful and poetic while eschewing complex technical descriptions. He also has a terrificly dry sense of humor which he wields at every opportunity. His approach to life is probably as simple as stated in this statement, one we could take the time to consider:

“When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have”

Stephen Hawking

More about my favorite living cosmologist here, here, and from YouTube, Stephen Hawking lectures on the origins of the universe.

This story started back in 1979 when the robotic space explorer Pioneer 11 did a fly-by of Saturn. This was followed a year later by Voyager I, and again in 1981 by Voyager II. These craft sent back primitive but compelling images, obviously far beyond anything we had yet seen from Earth, that created more questions than answers and compelled a generation to learn more. Now, Pioneer and the Voyager twins only captured images as they slingshot through the solar system on their way out as emissaries of humanity, so to speak. It would not be until 2004 that we would again visit Saturn, and this was when the robotic probe Cassini settled into Saturn’s orbit, the first craft to do so. Officially named the Cassini-Huygens, it is an international collaboration between three space agencies (NASA, ESA, and the Italian Space Agency) with 17 nations contributing to the building of the craft. There is an army of 250 scientists throughout the world studying the telemetry being beamed back to Earth. One of them is Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and leader of the Cassini mission who gave an excited, emotional, and amazing presentation at TED earlier this year. Definitely watch it. She showed some amazing images of Saturn, like the one here:

This Image was taken by Cassini as Saturn eclipses and is backlit by the sun. Stunning. Her focus, though, quickly moved to the moons surrounding Saturn and what Cassini-Huygens had discovered. The moon Titan stole the show, as Cassini dropped the Huygens probe to the surface to end decades of speculation of what that surface might be like. It has been a successful mission, and Huygens has sent back incredible imagery of an environment not that much unlike Mars, but with characteristics also quite Earth-like. Carolyn’s excitement by the implications of the imagery was readily apparent. The image below is one of my favorites taken by Cassini and is Saturn’s moon Tethys. That large crater that dominates the image is called Odysseus and it is about 400km across, roughly 1/25th of Tethys’ surface. On exactly the other side of Tethys is a series of large trenches cut into the moon’s surface and these were most likely the result of the impact that created the Odysseus crater. That’s cosmological drama.

Some intersting facts about Cassini-Huygens and Saturn to drop into conversation this week:

• - The total cost of the Cassini mission will be about $3.27 billion ($2.6 billion from the U.S.)
• - More than 5000 people worldwide have worked on or contributed to the Cassini mission
• - Saturn averages about 890 million miles distance from Earth
• - Cassini traveled nearly 2.2 billion miles to get to Saturn slingshotting off other planets
• - Traveling at the speed of light you could make it to Saturn in 84 minutes
• - Cassini took six years and eight months to reach Saturn
• - On the way it flew by and took images of Earth, Venus, and Jupiter
• - The atmosphere of Saturn is primarily hydrogen and helium
• - Saturn is a gas giant (made up mostly of gas) and is less dense than water
• - That means that in a large enough swimming pool, Saturn would float
• - Saturn has a core made up mostly of rock and ice with a radius of about 3700 miles
• - At its poles Saturn exhibits auroras similar to those on Earth

More about Cassini-Huygens and Saturn:

Cassini mission images

Cassini overview

It was 1980. I was 11. PBS aired the Carl Sagan documentary “Cosmos” which would go on to be viewed by over 600 million people worldwide, becoming the most viewed PBS documentary of all time. For many of us, this was our introduction to the history of the universe, to astrophysics, and to planetary science. I remember being totally riveted. I remember thinking that Carl Sagan was cool.

I still think he is cool, but I had not thought much about him over the years. I was sad when I learned that he had died in 1996 at the age of 62, but beyond that had not really thought much more about how important an influence he was on me when I was younger. I believe that my love of the planets and my passion for learning about the universe started with watching Carl Sagan on television while laying on the family room floor when I was 11.

In a strange but happy coincidence, a friend loaned me a copy of Sagan’s first book “Contact” which I had not yet read, and somebody sent my wife a Carl Sagan clip from Youtube. This was within a 24 hour period. For me, it signaled the beginning of a Carl Sagan rediscovery, which I have been happily conducting for the last couple of days. Here is a choice Sagan quote that I came across:

“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”

Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Youtube has several segments of both “Cosmos” and another popular Sagan documentary, “Origins.”

Thanks Nick!

It’s the weekend and that means I have set aside the hammer and the bullhorn, if only for now, and seek the distraction of cosmology and astrophysics. Good times. This is not so much an update as more the sharing of sun facts recently found in the latest issue of Good magazine. If you don’t read Good, you should. Good is really, really good. One of the things that Good does in each issue is provide informational graphics on a number of interesting topics. In the latest issue they offered up some detail on our very own sun, which I add to my post on the sun of some weeks ago:

• - In 1 second the sun produces energy to meet the needs of our planet for 500,000 years
• - It takes eight minutes for light from the sun to reach the Earth
• - Solar energy hitting the Earth every second is equivalent to 4 trillion 100 watt light bulbs
• - Solar energy hitting one square mile each year is equivalent to 4 million barrels of oil
• - Only 1% of the electricity generated in the United States is from solar power… 1%!

These facts are nothing new, and yet we still struggle to create momentum behind solar energy in this country. Old habits die hard.

I picked up that phrase in conversation the other day and it made me curious. I assumed that “retrograde” has its roots in the observable physical behavior of a planet or star as seen from Earth. Beyond that assumption, I did not really know what that meant. Doing a little research, it turns out that the planet Mercury will be entering retrograde on October 11th/12th (depending on your source). The word retrograde applies, in astrology, to the apparent backward motion through the zodiac of a planet. This is an observable phenomenon from Earth, and dates back to the third millennium BCE when the Sumerians made astrological observations of celestial bodies appearing to move backwards. In reality, they were moving more slowly due to the relationship in their rotational axis to that of the Earth and the other observable celestial bodies, but appeared to be moving backwards. The result of these visual relationships is retrograde motion. The 1947 “Encyclopedia of Astrology” by Nicolas DeVore describes this retrograde motion as:

“like the effect of a slow-moving train as viewed from another train traveling parallel to it but at a more rapid rate, wherein the slower train appears to be moving backwards. However, in the case of the celestial bodies it is not a matter of their actual speed of travel, but of the rate at which they change their angular relationship.”

I do not subscribe to astrology, but I do believe that most of what drives astrological definition is based on the actual physical observations of the relationship between celestial bodies in the sky. All of that to say, the physics of the stars and planets could not initially be explained by humans in scientific terms, so we were left to describe this phenomena in ways that we could understand.

It turns out that all of the planets exhibit retrograde motion as seen from Earth. The Sun and the Moon do not, but this is due to the rotational relationship of each to the Earth (the Earth revolving around the Sun and the Moon around the Earth). This motion be distinctly different from what is normally observed, it has been ascribed dramatic significance as it relates to our existence on Earth. Mercury has been of particular astrological significance when entering a retrograde period, as the mythology assigns the messenger of the gods influence over our terrestrial communications and commerce. Entering this retrograde period, Mercury has the potential to wreak havoc on our Earthly interactions with each other. Those who believe in astrology portend chaos for us during these periods.

Now, more about Mercury. As mentioned above, Mercury has been observed in the sky as long ago as the third millennium BCE. It came to represent the messenger of the gods due to the speed with which it moves across the sky. Mercury has only been visited once by spacecraft when, in 1974 and 1975, NASA’s Mariner 10 did three flybys allowing the mapping of about 40-45% of its surface. We do not know a tremendous amount about the planet closest to the sun, but here is a brief survey of what we do know:

• - It is one of four terrestrial planets in our solar system, meaning it has a rocky surface
• - Mercury has a higher iron content than any other planet in the solar system
• - There is an unstable atmosphere made from helium, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, potassium and calcium
• - The surface has the greatest temperature difference in the solar system, due to its proximity to the Sun
• - That difference varies at its extremes by as much as 600° Kelvin
• - Mercury takes 88 days to orbit the Sun, and has the most extreme orbit of the planets
• - In its orbit, it will get as close as 46,000,000km and as far as 70,000,000km from the Sun
• - A rotation of Mercury takes about 58 days
• - Mercury is the second densest planet, after Earth, but would be first if not for gravitational compression on Earth
• - It has a large iron core that generates a magnetic field roughly 1.1% the strength of Earth’s
• - Sunlight on its surface is about 6.5 times that on Earth
• - Despite the high surface temperatures, there is believed to be ice on Mercury
• - It is believed this ice is in the deep craters and at the poles, as these are not exposed to direct sunlight.

I spent Sunday morning enjoying a great cup of coffee, The Clash, the attention of my wife and baby daughter, and thinking about why we do not have a permanent research base on the moon. As a self-appointed critic of the United States space program, I feel compelled to investigate. Given my recent post on the hard realities of a manned mission to Mars, and knowing that several nations are directing their space programs to the moon, you would think that the moon would have been on NASA’s shortlist these last thirty years. I mean… WE’VE ALREADY BEEN THERE. A few times. The reality is, the moon has not been on the list at all, at least not in a meaningful and substantive way, and our last manned visit to the moon was December 7, 1972. That was the mission of Apollo 17, the last of the six manned Apollo missions (beginning with Apollo 11 in 1969) and the end of a nearly 10 year concerted effort to put American astronauts on the moon. We put American astronauts on the moon. In 1969.

There is movement to reactivate the moon program as, back in 2004, President Bush committed us to a lunar landing no later than 2020. There is also talk at NASA regarding the creation of a permanent moon base. Money for initiating the moon program was cut out of NASA’s budget in 2006, but there is still a drive. The fact that Russia, India and China all have active moon programs, and that Japan just recently launched its first moon probe successfully is re-motivating Washington to put the moon back on the docket. China is committed to having a moon presence by 2024, less than 17 years from now. History has a way of repeating itself, and this is no more true than in the U.S. space program. The working model for the potential American moon program (when it gets re-funded), and for the creation of the base, is our very own 1960’s moon program. The thinking, I suppose, is that if it worked back then it should work for us again. The only problem is that most of the scientists and researchers that made that moon program possible are dead. There is concern that we no longer have the knowledge and expertise necessary to get to the moon successfully and that technology alone cannot make up this deficiency. There is also concern that recreating that knowledge and research will be too expensive. The question begs asking… having already been to the moon several times, and being the first to get there, how do we find ourselves again in a race to the moon? This time the technological playing field is much more flat. That, and there is more than one economic superpower in the race.

During my investigation into the moon program I took the time to actually look at Google moon. They have the equivalent for Mars. There is something amazing about being able to explore the surface of the moon and Mars from the comfort of your living room. I cannot help but feel that tools like these will inspire a whole new generation of scientists, researchers and astronauts. After a thirty year hiatus from not really doing anything beyond repetitive low Earth orbital visits via the Space Shuttle, we need a whole new generation to kick our space program into gear.

Some moon facts to jog your memories of sixth grade solar system studies:

• - The moon is an average of 238,855 miles from Earth
• - A day on the moon lasts 27.3 Earth days
• - A lunar year also lasts 27.3 Earth days
• - That is because the orbital period is equal to the rotation period
• - Surface temperatures range from -387° F to 253° F, from the dark side to the light side

NASA’s plans for the next twenty years is to play out something like this:

• - 2008/9 complete the Orion next generation spacecraft
• - 2008/9 initiate robotic spacecraft missions to explore the moon
• - 2010 the International Space Station is completed
• - 2010 the Space Shuttle is finally retired, it will have been in service nearly 30 years
• - 2014 first manned moon mission by NASA since 1972 (42 years)

Science fiction, and the planet Mars as a preferred antagonist, maps directly to our ability over the second half of the 20th century to improve our understanding of the neighboring red planet. Things really began to click in 1964. It was then that Mariner 4, sent from Earth to Mars, did a close proximity fly-by of the planet and snapped some photos. Like this one:

Really, at the time scientists were not exactly sure what they were going to see. Despite the fact that Mars had been massively researched via telescope from the comfort of Earth, scientists still harbored science fiction induced anxiety about what Mariner might reveal. Old, abandoned and decayed cities? Signs of water? Signs of great alien civilizations? What they saw is pretty much like the image above, and though without the excitement of alien civilization, nonetheless exciting for the Mariner 4 mission team. Granted, space agencies (NASA and ESA) are working overtime to establish that Mars did, in fact, once support life and to find some sort of fossil evidence of this Martian life form. The Chinese and Japanese are getting into the Mars game, with rumors that India and its fledgling space program are as well. Russia wants to get back into Mars exploration after its success in the 1970’s. This is not what I am talking about, though. We will continue to send a proliferation of unmanned probes to explore Mars, but we are at an important jumping off point in regards to our neighboring red planet. Since 1964 there have been 16 successful unmanned missions (and 23 failed missions) to Mars. NASA has a manned mission to Mars in the offing and scheduled for sometime in the range of 2015-2020… budgets permitting. We are closing in on commercial space flight with the advent of the X Prize and Richard Branson’s partnership with Burt Rutan for Virgin Galactic. There is going to be a space hotel for the families of the astronauts on the International Space Station to stay at when they are in town, just kidding… but there is talk of a space hotel. All of this activity, and while it may not have much directly to do with Mars, it is critical. This is because we are increasing our presence and access to orbit around Earth. Easy access to orbit means that the development of an orbital launch position for Mars voyages could come together relatively quickly. Orbital launch positions greatly ease the launch requirements for getting to Mars. Taking off from Earth’s surface is essentially cost prohibitive for such a mission. Launching from orbit is like sending off a cruise ship, so to speak.

So about the time most of us are getting real serious about retirement, humanity will be getting real serious about really visiting Mars. Conservatively, by the time humans are walking on the surface of Mars some sixty years will have passed since Mariner 4 did the first fly by in Mars orbit. Sixty years. We’re talking somewhere around 2025, hopefully sooner… like the 2015-2020 prescribed by President Bush. The effort to send a manned flight to Mars will have spanned my entire life. I guess it already has. Here is some interesting information about that first manned flight to Mars:

- Scientists estimate a one-way transit time to be in the range of 190-225 days

- Planning is for a surface mission of 30-90 days, putting the round-trip at 410-610 days

- For a crew of five astronauts for this duration 6,150-9150 meals will be required

- Food may be sent ahead and pre-positioned on Mars for the return trip

- What if they cannot find it?

- Assuming 1 gallon of water/astronaut per day yields needs of 2050-3050 gallons of water

- Water sources will have to be supplemented by water purification and condensation capture

- There is concern about the dust on the surface of Mars damaging the landing craft

- To enhance communications, they may boost feeds via satellites around Mars and Earth

- As many as 7 supporting unmanned flights may be necessary in advance of the manned mission

- The astronauts will most likely not have the chance to visit any of the robotic rovers already there

- Rough cost estimates put the price of the manned mission around $10-15 billion

references:

NASA Mars Exploration Program

European Space Agency (ESA)

Something about Sunday evenings and being pleasantly distracted by cosmology and astrophysics. It relaxes me.

So, the image shown above was captured by the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii. It depicts supersonic trails of plasmic hydrogen forming in the wake of enormous high speed iron objects, “bullets” if you will. These bullets are being “shot” through the humongous clouds of molecular hydrogen that comprise the Orion Nebula (around 1400 light years from Earth). Astronomers estimate that these bullets are traveling at greater than 1000x the speed of sound. That’s fast, but it is nothing compared to the fact that these bullets, a cute analogy really, are sized beyond our comprehension. The typical diameter of one of the object tips (just the tip!) is roughly 10x the size of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun. Let me say that again. The mere tips of these objects are…

TEN TIMES THE SIZE OF PLUTO’S ORBIT

Pluto is no longer a planet, by the way.

Let’s recap and feel incredibly inconsequential in the process:

Objects made of iron, larger than our solar system, are moving 250 miles per second through even larger clouds of colored gas.

More on the Gemini Observatory and this story

This evening it was appropriate to be distracted by things of stellar proportions. So much of our daily reality is ultimately abstracted from the nature around us, we should avail ourselves of every opportunity to reconnect. Do you remember how cool it was to study the sun and the solar system back in grade school? Here is a refresher:

- The sun accounts for about 99.8% of the total mass of the solar system
- It is composed of hydrogen (about 74%), helium (about 25%), and other trace elements
- The surface temperature is approximately 5,315 degrees Celsius
- The sun is about 26,000 light years from the Milky Way’s galactic center, which it orbits
- It completes one orbit of the galactic center every 225-250 million years
- The sun’s orbital speed around the galactic center is approximately 135 miles per second
- At its surface, the sun is 1000 times more vacuous than a candle flame here on Earth
- The concentrated gases beneath the surface are 100 times thinner than our air
- The highly compressed gassy matter of the interior is 10 times more dense than steel
- Magnetic hurricanes 1000’s of miles in diameter constantly erupt on the sun’s surface
- Those magnetic hurricanes are what we see and call “sun spots”

And perhaps the coolest sun fact for today is that as its surface explodes in arching plumes (see image above) it releases glowing veils of gaseous calcium. In others words, the same elemental mineral used for your bones, your teeth, and pearls jets outward from the sun in astrophysical strings that create those incredibly beautiful magnetic horse shoe curves which have been clocked at speeds up to 400 miles a second.

I cannot wait until my daughter begins to study this stuff.