Gliese 581 C: a New Earth?

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For some years now, astronomers have been racking up discoveries of extra-solar planets—that is, planets circling other stars. It’s been very exciting, but until now, they’ve mostly been giant planets, because those are the most easily detected. And they’ve all been way outside the presumed habitable range in terms of distance from their suns. That has now changed, according to study leader Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. Space.com reports:

An Earth-like planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support liquid water and harbor life, scientists announced today.

Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. The newfound planet is located at the “Goldilocks” distance—not too close and not too far from its star to keep water on its surface from freezing or vaporizing away.

And while astronomers are not yet able to look for signs of biology on the planet, the discovery is a milestone in planet detection and the search for extraterrestrial life.

This possible Earth-like planet is only 20 light-years away, circling the red dwarf star Gliese 581. Read the whole story on space.com.

As an aside, although we haven’t yet discovered weird life on other planets, we do have some pretty weird life on this one (outside of the federal government, I mean). Check out this short video of a bird of paradise performing a mating dance.

Saturn—Curiouser and Curiouser

So, I don’t pretend to really know what’s going on out there at Saturn, but the images coming back from Cassini really are telling a strange tale. On the one hand, we have Saturn’s north pole:

which is clearly a hex-wrench socket of alien design, though we don’t know its function with certainty (could be to open up the planet, could be to adjust its orbit, could be something even more fiendish).

And then we have Saturn’s south pole, which at first glance appears to be the place where you stick a Saturn-sized inflation needle to maintain internal pressure with, presumably, a giant bicycle pump:

But a closer look reveals that the south pole is…well, you decide:

Now you just tell me that’s not an eye. The window onto the soul of Saturn. And if it’s not related to a whale’s eye, I’ll eat my hat.

Who says the space program doesn’t pay its own way with dividends of new knowledge. Remember Senator Proxmire? If he’d had his way, we wouldn’t know any of this stuff.

By the way, these photos are all from JPL and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. I love those guys, don’t you?

By Saturn’s Hexagon!

At last—a new oath for space opera heroes! And a really cool feature on Saturn’s north pole—an enormous hexagonal feature, viewable in the infrared, that rotates along with the planet’s rotation. Check out the Saturn hexagon at JPL’s web site, including motion picture images from the Cassini spacecraft. (Thanks, Charlza, for the link.)

There are the usual typical scientific attempts by scientists to explain the phenomenon (atmospheric vortexes, dynamical patterns, blah-blah-blah). Nobody even mentions the most obvious explanation:

It’s a giant hex-wrench socket left by aliens! They’re storing the brains of abductees in the center of Saturn!

My God, what else might they be doing???

A Low Flyover of Mars

This link to a pair of NASA videos comes courtesy of my friend Victoria (not to be confused with the Victoria Crater on Mars dramatically displayed in the first video). Want to make a low flying pass over some of the terrain that the Opportunity and Spirit rovers have explored? Thanks to some incredible photography from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can! This appears on the New Scientist web site, but if it’s not on a lot of others, I’m sure it will be soon.

Jet-Man, and Daisy the Goose

Two interesting videos crossed my radar today, both involving flying. One is about a man who has found a way to become a jet bird, and the other is a goose who thinks she’s human.

Jet-Man is Yves Rossy, from Switzerland. When I first saw the email from my friend Keith, I thought it was going to be someone wearing the latest version of the Buck Rogers jet pack that’s good for hovering around a parking lot but not too much else. But no—this is a guy who straps himself into a set of jet-powered wings and pushes himself out of an airplane like a skydiver…and then spends five minutes zooming and soaring like Rodan, or maybe the Jetsons. Watch the video—it’s pretty amazing. He has a web site, but it’s all in French, so I wasn’t able to read any of the background info. (You can watch the video there, too, if you have trouble at the other link.)

And then…there’s Daisy, the Canada goose. Daisy imprinted on a guy named Dan Steffan, and she likes to go flying with him—he in his speedboat, and she flying alongside. When she gets tired of flying, she perches next to his beagle Sam and enjoys the ride. (That dog sure reminds me of our dear departed beagle Sam!)

Edit Oct 2013: Something made me revisit this story, and I learned to my sadness that both Daisy and Dan Steffan are gone from this world. You can view the whole story here.

Strange Golf Toy, and the God Particle

posted in: quirky, science, technology 0

I don’t play golf. But I got a phone call yesterday from a software developer I once worked with, a voice-recognition wiz who created a very compact little program called Voice Lookup for Pocket PCs. (When I say I worked with him, I mean that I wrote the user’s guide for him, not that I had anything to do with developing the software.) He’s been working on this software for years, making about as much money as the average beginning fiction writer (of for that matter, the average veteran fiction writer, which is to say, not much). But a new product is about to appear, featuring his “talk to the chip” software—a golf cap that contains embedded GPS equipment, microphone, speakers, and voice-recognition capability.

A golf cap with GPS, you say? Yes, and its purpose isn’t to keep you from getting lost on the links; it’s to put a little advisor in your ear, which can tell you exactly how far you are from the hole, or from the water hazard! I’m not making this up! You can read about it at http://www.skykapllc.com. (Click Products to get the low-down.)

Meanwhile, in other news, scientists may at last be on the trail of the “God particle”—also known as the Higgs boson. You can read about that at the New Scientist.

Errant Astronauts, Friendly Fire, and Other Civics Lessons

Today’s news was awash in stories that made me reflect on the vagaries of human nature, especially in the crazy world we live in. I’m going to assume you’re familiar with the stories, but if you’re not, just click the links for more information. The tales run from bizarre to tragic to uplifting, with a side trip to controversy.

The first one that hit me today was the story of the NASA astronaut, Lisa Nowak, accused of driving from Texas to Florida with the intention of murdering a romantic rival. I don’t follow astronaut personalities the way I did when there were just seven of them, but I remembered Lisa Nowak from the coverage of the shuttle mission last summer: she was bright, competent, strikingly pretty, and by all accounts a great role model for girls and young women. What in the world happened, that she could do such a bizarre thing? Does she suffer from a psychological disorder that was hidden until now? Did she simply crack from the stress of being simultaneously an astronaut and a mother? I feel a mixture of sympathy, pity, puzzlement, and a bit of fear. Could any one of us crack this way? Does this dark side lurk in all of us? It makes me shiver a little, and vow to get more sleep.

Next came the furor over released cockpit video from two U.S. A-10 pilots who, in the early days of the Iraq war, mistakenly strafed friendly trucks, killing a British soldier. The incident was declared an innocent mistake and the pilots cleared of wrongdoing, back in 2003, but only recently was the cockpit video (containing the radio conversations) provided to the British government and subsequently leaked to the public. I watched the video—it’s about 15 minutes long—and the first thing I noticed was how businesslike and calm it all seemed until the mistake was discovered, not at all the image of combat one gets from the movies. The guys saw orange panels on the roofs of the trucks—the sign of friendly forces—but because they were assured by their ground controller that no friendly forces were in the area, they concluded that they were looking at orange rocket launchers. And they opened fire. In hindsight, it’s pretty easy to conclude that they made a dumb call—especially given how hard it is to see things on the ground from a cockpit. But it would also be a cheap shot, since I wasn’t there.

What I really noticed was how different I felt about it after watching the video, versus reading the stories. The news reports said the pilots cursed, wept, and were distraught after learning that they’d just shot a friendly. But the selected quotes also made it sound as if they were mainly concerned about how much trouble they were in. Watch the video, and you get a different picture. They were beside themselves. Yes, they obviously knew they were in trouble, but they were also kicking themselves around the block for the error. The news reports one pilot saying to the other, Is your tape still running?—after which the recording stopped. What the pilot actually said was, My tape ran out; is yours still running?—and this when they were well on their way back to base. What comes across in the news story is, Can we cover our asses? Watch it, and you get something quite different. So…I guess this story made me think less about the possible culpability of the pilots than it did about just how easily the truth gets distorted. And how we have to form opinions and make decisions all the time, based on this kind of incomplete—or misleading—information.

On the flip side of the war, you have the court martial of Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to go with his unit to Iraq, because he believed the war was illegal and immoral. From the San Jose Mercury News:

“…He took to heart a superior’s advice to make exhaustive preparations for missions. What he found — in reading international law, the history of war and the history of Iraq, and articles by governmental and independent agencies, journalists and scholars about the situation in Iraq — changed his mind.

As he told the Army Times, he was in turmoil. “I found out this administration had gone to great lengths to deceive Congress and the people of this country to go to this war.”

With complete respect for those who are in Iraq right now, including one of our wrestling coaches, my hat’s off to Lt. Watada for being willing to take a stand on principle, knowing he could be court-martialed, but believing that these things had to be said.

Of course, I’m basing that opinion on news reports. See earlier paragraph.

Finally, I read of actor Richard Dreyfuss’s current passion—not acting in films, but teaching civic responsibility in schools. Among other things, he’s working with a school system in Massachusetts to help create a civics curriculum for elementary schools, hoping to find ways to make this exciting for kids. You go.

Funny, I was not always a huge fan of Dreyfuss in the movies, especially his earlier ones—but I thought he was great in the quietly forgotten TV series, The Education of Max Bickford.

Which, coincidentally, is where I first encountered the actress Katee Sackhoff. Starbuck.

Interesting Science News and Other Cool Stuff

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Meanwhile, I’ve been collecting stories and links, and I’ll share a few of the ones I’ve managed to not lose.

Allergy vaccine: If, like me, you’re subject to allergies, have hope: New Scientist reports major steps forward in the development of vaccines for allergies. One group has developed vaccines for dust mites, pollen, cat hair, and bee venom and tested them on cells from susceptible humans. Another study is in clinical trials. (Unfortunately for those of us in the U.S., these studies are in Europe; no word on how long it will take for treatments approved in Europe—assuming they reach that point—to make it to the U.S. But I’m ready to line up to be part of the trials.)

String theory: Can you explain it clearly in two minutes or less, on video? Discover Magazine has a contest underway, to see who can best convey the essence of string theory to a reasonably intelligent nonscientist. String theorist and popularizer Brian Greene will be the judge. Hurry—you’ve only got until March 16—two minutes!

Desert songs: Have you ever been a beach that made interesting squeaking or scrunching sounds as you walked on it? We have one in our area called Singing Beach, in Manchester-by-the-Sea, north of Boston. Well, there’s a guy named Stéphane Douady who has made it his mission to record the sounds of sand dunes. And it’s pretty cool. Put on your headphones or play these through a good stereo system. (I first tried to listen on my tinny laptop speakers, and I could barely hear anything. So don’t do that.)

Finally, 181 Things To Do On The Moon: you know, in case you find yourself there one day with nothing else on your agenda. NASA has released a list of 181 things worth doing on the moon. This page has highlights. (The full list is in a hard-to-read pdf file. Ah, we can go to the moon, but can we put the reasons into an easy-to-read format that won’t crash our browsers or ask for the 2-millionth update to Adobe Reader? Nah….)

Small Is Beautiful—Or Is It?

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Recent issues of Discover Magazine (Feb. 06*) and the New Yorker (I think it was last week’s, but now I can’t find it to check) both had articles about Amory Lovins, the wizard of small technology, or perhaps more accurately, appropriate use of technology in terms of energy efficiency and benign effect on the environment. His Rocky Mountain Institute carries on a lot of his work, and appears to be gaining the attention of numerous large companies, which are discovering that building energy efficiency and environmental awareness into new facilities can not only help the environment, but also save them money. Both articles are well worth a read. The one in Discover will tell you more about the science and technology, while the New Yorker focuses more on the man. It sounds like if you ever meet him, you can expect to have a thick stack of white papers pressed into your hands.

The leading edge of Small, of course, is nanotechnology—machines and structures engineered at the atomic and molecular level. Nanotech offers all kind of promise, but also possible hazards. One of the possible hazards is the potential biological effects of tiny fibers from products based for example on nanotubes as they degrade, or are disposed of. There is at least some risk that nano-fibers in the environment might prove to be the next asbestos. Well, according to the Washington Post technology section, some forward thinkers at a place called the ETC Group in Toronto have already observed that it would be useful to have a universal warning sign for nano-materials, and have started a competition to see who can come up with the best warning sign. Entries have poured in. You can view a large gallery of them at http://www.etcgroup.org/gallery2/v/nanohazard, and even cast a vote; or just view the finalists at http://www.etcgroup.org/gallery2/v/finalists/.

*Okay, it’s a year old. But I just finally picked it up and read it, so it’s recent to me.

Water on Mars and a Cool Historical Link

In case you’ve been living on the Moon and haven’t heard, they’ve found evidence of possible liquid water on Mars—water that flowed, not in the geologically recent past, but over the lifetime of one of our probes. If it proves out, that’s just plain cool. Maybe next we’ll find a Martian frog.

Also, a friend sent along this link, to a Flash display on the Maps of War web site showing all of the various empires that have controlled the Middle East over the last 5000 years (including a few I’d never heard of). It takes 90 seconds to play, and is well worth it.

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