4 Multiverses You Might Be Living In

Could parallel universes exist? If so, what would they look like and how would they form? 

Many physicists believe there is a strong connection between the inflationary multiverse and an important feature of string theory; for more see: WGBH

Although there is not yet evidence favoring the quantum multiverse over several other interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is still consistent with the results of every quantum experiment ever conducted.

CREDITS

Produced, animated, and edited by Greg Kestin

Editorial help from Kate Becker, Anna Rothschild, and Lauren Aguirre

A special thanks to Andrew Friedman

Original Footage
© WGBH Educational Foundation 2014

MEDIA RIGHTS

Music:
Night Music, Air Prelude, Not as it Seems, and Comfortable Mystery 3 by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) CC By 3.0

Images:
Bicep2: Courtesy of National Science Foundation
Big Bang, Galaxies, and Cosmic Web: Courtesy of NASA

How Long Is A Spoonful Of Water?

I can't quite remember how the teaspoon question arose except to recall that it came up in conversation with my son, a physics student.

First let me clarify the question. To state it more precisely: if you took all the molecules in a teaspoon of water and laid them end to end, how far would that thin aqueous line stretch? 

The first step is to figure out how many water molecules we have. 

A typical teaspoon holds about 5 millilitres (mL), which weights 5 grams. To find out how many water molecules there are in 5 grams you need to know that the molecular weight of water is 18 — the sum of the weights of one oxygen atom (16) and two hydrogen atoms (1 a piece) in H2O. What that means is 18 grams of water contains one mole of water molecules. Students of chemistry also know the mole to be a defined number of atoms or molecules (which relates the arbitrarily set scale of atomic weights — hydrogen = 1, helium = 2, and so on — to the actual weights of atoms in grams). It's rather big: one mole is 6.022 x 1023 in scientific notation. That's

602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000

So in 5 grams of water there would be 5/18ths of this number which is:

167,300,000,000,000,000,000,000

In other words: a lot.

But water molecules are very small; each one is only about 0.3 nanometers wide. That's 0.0003 micrometres, or 0.0000003 millimetres or 0.0000000003 metres. These are bizarre numbers — we have no real experience of them so it's hard to get much sense of scale. But let's plough on anyway.

If we lay down 167,300,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules end to end, the total length of the line is:

167,300,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules x 0.0000000003 metres per molecule.

Which is 50,190,000,000,000 metres.

Or 50,190,000,000 km (that's 31,368,750,000 miles for older readers).

Which is 50 billion km. (How good was your guess?)

That's over 10 times the width of the solar system. From a teaspoon. 

Just think how far you could go with a bucket of water. 

Stephen Curry is a Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College.

The Godzilla Of Earths

The "Godzilla of Earths!" is in the foreground. Behind it is the smaller 'lava world'. Their sun, in the back, appears to have been created only 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

Based on what we know about how solar systems form, researchers thought that a giant rocky planet could not exist. But they just found one that's 17 times Earth's mass. They're calling it the Mega-Earth.

Scientists say the new planet may have "profound implications for the possibility of life" on extra-solar planets, according to a press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They announced the finding in a talk at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston.

Researchers have always thought Mega-Earths were impossible since any planets that big would attract hydrogen gas, forming a gas planet like Jupiter.

Meet The Mega-Earth

Mega-Earth, also known as Kepler-10c, is 18,000 miles in diameter and 2.3 times as large as Earth. It appears to be as solid as the planet beneath our feet.

Kepler-10c was previously known to astronomers, but they had not yet measured its mass. Due to its size — 2.3 times that of Earth — it was assumed to be a "mini-Neptune," a planet encased in thick gas. But the new observations have confirmed that it is rocky, not gassy.

It orbits an 11 billion-year-old star named Kepler-10 located 560 light years away from Earth. Its year lasts only 45 days.

Interestingly, this solar system is more than twice as old as our own — it was born less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

A Mysterious System

Researchers had previously thought that this kind of planet impossible.

Not only did they think something that big would be a gas giant, but they didn't even think the elements that make up a rocky planet existed in our universe when this solar system was born: The early universe had only the lighter elements of hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements were forged from these lighter ones in stars over billions of years.

Because of this, many scientists hadn't been looking for rocky planets in these very old solar systems.

The mega-Earth isn't the only weird planet in its solar system. There's also a 'lava-world' 1.5 times Earth's size whose year lasts only 20 hours.

By David A. Aguilar

Google To Dominate Space With 180 Satellites

... Google is planning to launch a fleet of 180 satellites to provide web access for the 4.8 billion people not yet online, according to sources close to the company.

The California-based giant will spend more than $1 billion (£600 million) on the technology, which will rival Facebook’s efforts to connect remote regions of the world.

Details remain vague, but the Wall Street Journal reports that the satellites will be small and high-capacity, and will orbit the Earth at ‘lower altitudes than traditional satellites.’

Google's venture is being led by Greg Wyler, founder of satellite-communications start-up O3b Networks, and depending on the network's final design, the group may double the number of proposed satellites.

A separate project by Google, dubbed Project Loon, is designing high-altitude balloons to provide broadband service to remote parts of the world.

The helium-filled balloons inflate to 49ft (15m) in diameter and carry transmitters that could beam 3G-speed internet to remote regions.

Project Loon was developed in the company's X Lab by the same team behind Google Glasses and the driverless car.

It is hoped that it could save developing countries the high cost of laying fibre cables to get online and lead to a dramatic increase in internet access for the likes of Africa and south-east Asia.

In April, the company also acquired Titan Aerospace, which is building solar-powered drones to provide similar connectivity.

Facebook, meanwhile, has its own drone plans.  

In March, Mark Zuckerberg revealed solar-powered drones, satellites and lasers are all being developed in the firm's labs to deliver the internet to underdeveloped countries.

He has pledged to work on technology to deliver the internet to 'the next 3 billion people' - and revealed the firm has hired experts in solar power that can keep drones flying for months at a time.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology's deputy president, Professor William Webb, said: 'The idea of using aerial platforms to deliver connectivity is one that is many decades old, from low-orbital satellites to balloons and more recently unmanned aerial vehicles.'

'The difficulty has always been one of keeping the aerial platform in the right place in the sky for weeks or months at a low enough cost. As technologies mature we get ever closer to achieving this and Facebook's intervention in this space is a welcome boost to the area.'

Facebook and Google also need to overcome regulatory hurdles, including coordinating with operators so their fleet doesn't interfere with other satellites.

'Top of the list is the need to make the drones cost-effective, reliable and demonstrate to the regulators that they can operate safely in our airspace,’ he added.

'Many other issues associated with access to radio spectrum, national telecoms regulations and more will also need to be addressed.’

By ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD

B612 Asteroid Impact Video

By Spine Films

Between 2000 and 2013, a network of sensors that monitors Earth around the clock listening for the infrasound signature of nuclear detonations detected 26 explosions on Earth ranging in energy from 1 to 600 kilotons – all caused not by nuclear explosions, but rather by asteroid impacts. These findings were recently released from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which operates the network.

To put this data in perspective, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945 exploded with an energy impact of 15 kilotons. While most of these asteroids exploded too high in the atmosphere to do serious damage on the ground, the evidence is important in estimating the frequency of a potential “city-killer-size” asteroid.

A list of the impacts shown in the video can be found here.
b612foundation.org/list-of-impacts-from-impact-video/

For more information on this data, please check out our Impact Video FAQ.
b612foundation.org/impact-video-faq/

You can read or download the press release about today’s event here.
b612foundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/B612_PR_042214.pdf

Waterton Lake Eclipse

Explanation: Recorded on April 15th, this total lunar eclipse sequence looks south down icy Waterton Lake from the Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, planet Earth. The most distant horizon includes peaks in Glacier National Park, USA. An exposure every 10 minutes captured the Moon’s position and eclipse phase, as it arced, left to right, above the rugged skyline and Waterton town lights. In fact, the sequence effectively measures the roughly 80 minute duration of the total phase of the eclipse. Around 270 BC, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus also measured the duration of lunar eclipses – though probably without the benefit of digital clocks and cameras. Still, using geometry, he devised a simple and impressively accurate way to calculate the Moon’s distance, in terms of the radius of planet Earth, from the eclipse duration. This modern eclipse sequence also tracks the successive positions of Mars, above and right of the Moon, bright star Spica next to the reddened lunar disk, and Saturn to the left and below.

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuichi Takasaka

The Anthropocentric Orrery

For man to be convinced he is the at centre of the universe, is a profoundly shallow view of the part we all play in the grand scheme of things. The living and breathing universe is as much part of us as we are of it.

Sat against the backdrop of the constellation of Orion (left), the Pleiades star cluster (centre) and the Andromeda galaxy (right), I triggered the camera to capture myself pondering the impact of human activity on the landscape that we are so very fond of.

The light pollution and passing ships on the horizon that, together with less than ideal weather conditions, make it very difficult to capture the night sky like this.

Let’s keep the lights off at night, so that we together can enjoy the night sky again.

Please share this image if you like it! This helps me out a lot. Thanks!

By SurrealExposure
Location: Den Helder, Netherlands

Arepo Simulation Of Galaxy Formation

This computer animation, created using new software called Arepo, simulates 9 billion years of cosmic history. 

Arepo can accurately follow the birth and evolution of thousands of galaxies over billions of years. 

Arepo generates the full variety of galaxies seen locally, including majestic spirals like the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Credit: CfA/UCSD/HITS/M. Vogelsberger (CfA) & V. Springel (HITS)

Jupiter's Gravity

Image via: MySpace.com

Jupiter is the most massive planet in our Solar System and; therefore, the gravity of Jupiter is the most intense in the Solar System. The gravity of Jupiter is 2.5 times what it is here on Earth.

In the 1990s Jupiter’s gravity tore apart Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 and pulled the broken pieces into the to planet. This marked the first time that humans had direct observation of two extraterrestrial Solar System bodies colliding. Jupiter had actually captured the asteroid between 20 and 30 years prior to impact and it had been orbiting the planet since. In 1992, the asteroid entered Jupiter’s Roche limit and was broken apart by the planet’s tidal forces. The asteroid resembled a string of pearls until its fragments impacted the surface July 16-22 of 1994. The fragments were as large as 2 km each and hit the surface at 60 km/s. The impacts allowed astronomers to make several new discoveries about Jupiter.

Some scientists, including Jacques Laskar of the Paris Observatory, as well as Konstantin Batygin and Gregory Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz believe that Jupiter’s gravity may lead to the destruction of Mercury. 

After running some simulations the group found that Jupiter is perturbing Mercury’s already eccentric orbit. They arrived at four possible end results: 

Mercury will crash into the Sun, Mercury will be ejected from the solar system altogether, Mercury will crash into Venus, or Mercury will crash into Earth. None is pleasant for Mercury and the last would be even less pleasant for humans. Not to fear though, none of these possible outcomes will happen in the next 5-7 billion years anyway.

The gravity of Jupiter affects every planet to one degree or another. It is strong enough to tear asteroids apart and capture 64 moons at least. Some scientist think that Jupiter destroyed many celestial objects in the ancient past as well as prevented other planets from forming. How’s that for a powerful neighbor?

Here’s an article from Universe Today about how Jupiter’s gravity might actually wreck the Solar System, and here’s an article about how big planets like Jupiter could get.

Use this site to calculate your weight on other worlds, and here’s more information about Comet P/Shoemaker Levy 9.

We’ve also recorded an entire show just on Jupiter for Astronomy Cast. Listen to it here, Episode 56: Jupiter, and Episode 57: Jupiter’s Moons.

Via: "Universe Today"

Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010

Video Created by Scott Manley, this is a view of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones. 

The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system. 

Earth Crossers are Red

Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow

All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths. 

The scale of the video at 1080P resolution is roughly 1million kilometers per pixel, and each second of video corresponds to 60 days.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects, scientific estimates suggest that there are about a billion asteroids larger than 100metres (about the size of a football field) .

Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.htm­l

Music is 'Transgenic' by Trifonic:http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Trifo... - they're awesome guys, give them some love.

Check out todays asteroid map athttp://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/neo_map....
Quite a few journalists, bloggers and tweeters are attributing this to NASA or Arecibo Observatory - while they do fine work they had nothing to do with this. If you write a story you can credit it to Scott Manley. 

If you are needing a higher quality video or images for a specific purposes - education, news or just eye candy I can supply them on a case by case basis.

ChillOut In Space

I recommend that you watch this video in full screen, the images will blow you away!

01. Aquascape - Sunrise
02. Cafe Del Mar (Lounge Remake) - Calar Del Sole
03. Sunless - Summer Dreams
04. Super 8 & Tab Ft. Alyna
05. Solaris Navis - Blissful Memories - Cafe Del Mar
06. Solaris Navis - When the Sun Goes Down
07. Apple & Stone - Graceful Spring
08. Y Mor (Glide & Swerve)
09. Jane Maximova - Rain In My Heart (Pianochocolate remix)
10. Pianochocolate - Lost Zone

Navigating The Cosmos With Space GPS

Image via: DiscoveryMagazine.com

Spacecraft could one day navigate through the cosmos using a particular type of dead star as a kind of GPS.

German scientists are developing a technique that allows for very precise positioning anywhere in space by picking up X-ray signals from pulsars.

These dense, burnt-out stars rotate rapidly, sweeping their emission across the cosmos at rates that are so stable they rival atomic clock performance.

This timing property is perfect for interstellar navigation, says the team.

If a spacecraft carried the means to detect the pulses, it could compare their arrival times with those predicted at a reference location. This would enable the craft to determine its position to an accuracy of just five kilometres anywhere in the galaxy.

"The principle is so simple that it will definitely have applications," said Prof Werner Becker from the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching.

"These pulsars are everywhere in the Universe and their flashing is so predictable that it makes such an approach really straightforward," he told BBC News.

The proposed technique is very similar to that employed in the popular Global Positioning System, which broadcasts timing signals to the user from a constellation of satellites in orbit.

Currently, mission controllers wanting to work out the position of their spacecraft deep in the Solar System will study the differences in time radio communications take to travel to and from the satellite. It is a complex process and requires several antennas dotted across the Earth.

It is also a technique that is far from precise, and the errors increase the further away the probe moves.

For the most distant spacecraft still in operation - Nasa's Voyager probes, which are now approaching the very edge of the Solar System, some 18 billion km away - the errors associated with their positions are on the order of several hundred km.

Even for a probe at the reasonably short separation of Mars, the positioning uncertainty can be about 10km.

"It becomes possible with the development of lightweight X-ray mirrors," said Prof Becker.

"These are on the way for the next generation of X-ray telescopes. Current mirrors have a 100 times more weight and would be completely unusable.

"In 15-20 years, the new mirrors will be standard and our device will be ready to be built."

The scientist believes his navigation solution will certainly find use on Solar System probes, providing autonomous navigation for interplanetary missions and perhaps for future manned ventures to Mars where high performance systems will be an absolute requirement for safety reasons.

Via: "The BBC"

NASA's Dawn Mission

A Voyage To The Origins Of The Solar System

Narrated by Leonard Nimoy

In 1996, science writer John Horgan published a book called The End of Science in which he claimed that we had learned all we could know about the natural world. And in 2008, Wired magazine devoted an issue to, you guessed it, “The End of Science.” Snappy, grandiose titles may sell copy, but it’s also the case that each time someone or other declares the end of something massive—science, history, war, and periodically, the world–we can look back and be astonished at the hubris. It now seems that there are frontiers we are just beginning to explore, and they are the frontiers of our evolutionary beginnings. While biophysicists like Peter Hoffmann chart the boundaries between life and nonlife at the molecular level, NASA scientists explore the outer reaches to discover what Leonard Nimoy, narrator of the video above, calls “the very beginning of us.”

It’s a little wonky at times, but the short film above is nonetheless a fascinating overview of NASA’s Dawn mission, a spacecraft designed to collect data from the asteroid belt. The ship itself is a marvel. Outfitted with massive solar panel wings that can power it for years, Dawn converts xenon gas into plasma, which it propels from its engine at speeds up to 78,000 miles per hour (or 21 miles per second) for maximum acceleration. In fact, Dawn is the fastest ship NASA has ever launched. Even at top speeds, Dawn required four years to reach its first stop, the asteroid Vesta, the brightest asteroid in the solar system and the only one visible to the naked eye. Departing Earth in 2007, the ship reached Vesta in July of 2011 and departed last September for the asteroid Ceres, which it will reach in February of 2015.

These two asteroids are part of what is called the “protoplanetary disk,” a once-chaotic ring of dust and gas that began to coalesce into our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. One NASA scientist above describes the asteroid belt as the “boneyard” of deep space—remains from the earliest epochs of time. Dawn’s mission isn’t just a foray to uncharted space; it’s also a journey billions years into the past, into the origins of our solar system.

Via: "Open Culture"

How We Will Terraform Mars

Image via: NationalGeographic.com

NASA's latest Mars rover, Curiosity, is currently its way to Mars, on a mission to explore whether life could exist there. If we're going to colonize Mars — and some scientists say we must — it's likely that we'll start by terraforming. Terraforming, or planetary engineering, is the process of altering the climate of a planet to be more hospitable to life and human exploration. Of all the bodies in the solar system, Mars is by far the best candidate. Here's how that would work.

Mars' geological history is divided into three ages, which are from oldest to youngest theNoachian, the Hesperian and theAmazonian. The Noachian epoch, ranging from about 4.1 to about 3.7 billion years ago, is characterized by heavy asteroid bombardment and abundant surface water. This is the so-called "warm, wet" period. TheHesperian, ranging from 3.7 to somewhere between 1.7 and 3.0 billion years ago, is characterized by heavy volcanic activity and massive water flow. The Hesperian was an intermediate age between the warm wetNoachian and the the cold, dry Amazonian, which is the Mars we know today as being not the kind of place to raise a kid.

The Building Blocks Of A New Environment
So the good news is that much of the material we need to give Mars a thicker, warmer atmosphere are still present on its surface and buried in its regolith. Despite these promising circumstances, however, it's clear that one does not simply walk into terraforming Mars. In his definitive text,Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments, Martyn Fogg laid out five critical challenges:

1. The surface temperature must be raised
2. The atmospheric pressure must be increased
3. The chemical composition of the atmosphere must be changed
4. The surface must be made wet
5. The surface flux of UV radiation must be reduced

Fogg suggests that the engineering of the Martian environment will proceed through ecopoisis, a term coined by Robert Haynes for the process of making a planet more hospitable for primitive microbial life, to something approaching full terraforming, in which the climate of Mars will more closely resemble that of Earth's.

The most promising approach to dealing with the first two items is to reverse the runaway freezeout of the Martian atmosphere by initiating a runaway greenhouse effect. Current atmospheric pressure on Mars is between 6 and 7 millibars at low elevations. That's less than 1% of Earth's pressure at sea level. The inventory of frozen carbon dioxide remaining on the Martian surface is estimated to be between one hundred and one thousand millibars, with a good deal of it existing frozen on the surface at the poles and the rest underground in the regolithic permafrost. Increasing atmospheric pressure and temperature is a matter of warming the poles to the point where they sublimate into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, being a greenhouse gas, will retain more of the sun's heat and promote the melting of yet more carbon dioxide out of the planetary regolith, which will retain more heat and promote further degassing. This concept of creating a runaway greenhouse effect to release Mars' reserves of frozen carbon dioxide has become known as "the standard paradigm" of Martian ecopoiesis.

Image by Dane Spangler

Jumpstarting A Greenhouse Effect

Okay, so how do we warm up the Martian poles? Several approaches have been suggested, from spreading dark material on the poles to lower their albedo, to industrial ice farming to good old fashioned thermonuclear detonations. In Technological Requirements For Terraforming Mars, Chris McKay and Robert Zubrin suggest a more elegant scheme: orbital mirrors. Constructed in high orbit above Mars, the mirrors would reflect sunlight back onto Martian surface. In McKay and Zubrin's model, the mirrors would not exactly orbit Mars. Rather, they would reside directly above Mars' night side, held in place by a balance of forces between Mars' gravity and the solar light pressure. The orbital mirror plan has the advantage of continually introducing extra heat into the Martian climate long after the poles have sublimated. Even in the later stages of terraforming, Mars' distance from the sun will make the increased insolation from the orbital mirrors desirable.

Another key to stabilizing Mars atmosphere is the activation of its hydrosphere. Water promotesecopoiesis not only by providing a vital element for life, but also stabilizing the climate. Water retains heat and reduces the drastic swings in temperature over the diurnal cycle and water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas which will help hold thermal energy in the atmosphere.

Current models suggest that there are large quantities of water stored in permafrost aquifers. Release of this water will require a good deal more energy than will be required for the release of carbon dioxide. Nuclear mining, even with high-yield devices, would produce far too much fallout. Another approach to releasing Martian water is controlled asteroid impact, simulating the hydrosphere-promoting bombardment of the Noachian epoch. This would require a great deal of energy, however, and would be very difficult to control with any precision. Zubrin and McKay suggest that the orbital mirrors used to melt the poles could be refocused on smaller areas of the permafrost. Water melted out of the southern highland permafrost would be directed into the northern lowlands and into the Hellas basin in the south to create shallow planetary seas.

Image by Stephan Martiniere

Making The Air Breathable

These alterations to the Martian climate would go a far way to making Mars more habitable for microbial life and more easily explorable by humans, but the remaining challenges of reducing UV flux and making the atmosphere breathable will require considerably more time and effort. Mars' thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide would block a good deal of the incoming UV radiation, but carbon dioxide does not significantly block UV radiation in the 190 nm to 300 nm range. Current UV flux on Mars is about 6 Watts per square meter, which would be enough to kill most organisms. The plan here would be to introduce highly UV resistant lifeforms, such as lichen, directly on the surface or to grow cyanobacteria in soil which would protect the organisms from UV, and in mats on the newly formed seas, with layers of dead cells protecting the living cells beneath. These organisms would release oxygen which would slowly build to breathable levels and would form ozone in the upper atmosphere, which would reduce the harmful 190-300 nm UV flux. These organisms would also provide nutrients to help build the Martian soil up to the point where it could support more complex plants.

The difficulty with this biogenic approach to ozone formation is that Mars simply doesn't have enough nitrogen to support large scale life. Atmospheric nitrogen is at trace levels. Contrast this with Earth where 78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen. Nitrogen is an essential element for life and its scarcity on Mars presents a serious challenge to ecopoiesis. Unlike carbon dioxide, which disappeared both into carbonates and frozen carbon dioxide ice, Mars' nitrogen is pretty much all stored in mineral form as nitrates in the regolith, which means that the energy required to free Mars' reserves of nitrogen will be massive. It may be possible to introduce significant atmospheric nitrogen from extraplanetary sources, such as ammonia rich asteroids. One especially fun idea would be to introduce large quantities of nitrous oxide (yup, WhipIt good!), which is a powerful greenhouse gas and would help warm the planet. Unfortunately, N2O photodisassociates rapidly in the presence of UV. But once we get that ozone up and running, it's party time on Mars!

Another problem with making the Martian atmosphere breathable is that even with adequate levels of oxygen, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide above 5% are lethal to humans. If the inventory of CO2 turns out to be on the low end of the estimated range, Fogg suggests a more modest approach to CO2 release than the standard paradigm coupled with the rapid introduction of nitrogen. This process would be slower in generating initial ecopoiesis but would leave Mars with an atmosphere that would be more conducive to full terraforming.

Finally, if we cannot restart Mars' volcanoes or otherwise promote geological demineralization of bound volatiles, a terraformed Mars will have to be maintained with constant re-introduction of volatile elements and restoration of the atmosphere lost to the solar wind. But since the loss of atmosphere to space and to mineralization would take place over centuries, we might have time for some more radical planetary engineering, such at the construction of deep moholes to release gas trapped in the Martian crust and even the construction of an artificial moon to provide tidal force to reactivate Mars' geological process.

It may, however, be ultimately impossible to fine tune Mars' climate to support human life as we know it today. In the centuries it takes for us to get to this point, it might just be easier to engineer humans to tolerate the conditions that we can produce on Mars. As Kim Stanley Robinson pointed out in his Mars Trilogy, humans do not just terraform Mars, Mars aeroforms us.

For more information on the exploration and terraforming of Mars, check out The Mars Society.

References:
[1] Fogg, Martyn J. (1995). Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments. SAE International, Warrendale, PA. ISBN 1560916095.

[2] Carr, Michael H. (1996). Water on Mars. Oxford University Press, Inc, New York, NY 10016 ISBN 0195099389

[3] Raeburn, Paul & Golombek, Matt (1998). Uncovering The Secrets of the Red Planet. The National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C. ISBN0792273737.

[4] Zubrin, Robert M. & McKay, Christopher P. (1997). Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 50, 83. Accessed 2009-06-09.

[5] Robinson, Stanley (1993). Red Mars. Bantam Books, New York, NY 10036 ISBN 0553560735

Via: "IO9"

How Stars Are Formed and Born

Courtesy Of "NatGeoTV"

TDRS: Communicating Critical Data

As a vital information pipeline for space-based research and exploration ambitions, the TDRS constellation fulfills NASA's broadest communication demands. 

Now into it's fourth operational decade, the TDRS legacy continues to be communications excellence. 

The addition of the third generation of spacecraft will replenish the constellation and ensure that the critical lifeline of space-to-ground communication support will be available for many years to come. 

The Drifting Planet

An artist’s rendering of CFBDSIR2149, as viewed through an infrared filter. Image via L. Calçada, P. Delorme, Nick Risinger, R. Saito, European Southern Observatory/VVV Consortium

The astronomy world is abuzz over the discovery of an exoplanet in a nearly unprecedented situation: It’s the first observed to be hurtling through space on its own, rather than orbiting a star. The find, reported by researchers from the University of Montreal in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, is roughly 100 light-years away and has been labelled CFBDSIR2149.

“Although theorists had established the existence of this type of very cold and young planet, one had never been observed until today,” Étienne Artigau, an astrophysicist at the University of Montreal, said in a statement. Over the past decade, astronomers have spotted several candidate objects that could potentially qualify as drifting planets, but the line between what is called a “planet” and what is called a “star” is fuzzy, especially when observing from a distance. Through a telescope, it’s hard to differentiate whether a small solitary object is a “homeless” planet (as the researchers have termed this one) or a brown dwarf, the smallest type of star. The researchers concluded that this is a planet, and one that is 50 to 120 million years old and about 400 degrees Celsius in temperature.

Because this object appears to be traveling through space along with a diffuse group of roughly 30 associated stars called the AB Doradus Moving Group (but does not orbit any of them), the astronomers were able to work out several more pieces of information about it, such as its age, mass and temperature, based on the assumption that the planet likely shares an origin with the rest of the stars in the group. Objects must be less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter to be considered a planet, rather than a brown dwarf, and this object appears to have a mass between four and seven times that of Jupiter, making it an unqualified, starless planet, the first of its kind.

Scientists have speculated that this type of object could result from a normal planet being flung out of its solar system, or could form alone in its present state. Theories of planet and star formation imply that there might be an extremely high number of such solitary planets—they might be as common as normal stars.

For astronomers, the problem is seeing them. Unlike stars, these objects don’t emit a large amount of light. This planet was detected using data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, located on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, with further details worked out using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile.

The researchers say that free-floating planets like this one are scientifically significant beyond their apparent uniqueness. “These objects are important, as they can either help us understand more about how planets may be ejected from planetary systems, or how very light objects can arise from the star formation process,” Delorme said. “If this little object is a planet that has been ejected from its native system, it conjures up the striking image of orphaned worlds, drifting in the emptiness of space.”

Via: "Smithsonian Mag"