For the past two months I have been scheming up an idea to explore the subsurface of Mars. I thought I was being clever, I thought "Haha! No one has done this yet"! But low and behold, I found a project called "Exomars". Exomars is a Mars mission set to launch in two parts. One in 2016 and the other in 2018. The 2016 launch will include a land rover and an orbiter. The orbiter is designed to search for gases that appear in small concentrations in the Mars atmosphere (less than 1%). The rover is designed to test entry methods to Mars and deliver a scientific package that will gather information for around 9 days.
You may be wondering "hey MrAstrowhat, what does this have to do with your revolutionary drill idea"? Well I'm so glad you asked!! The second launch in 2018 consists of a rover equipped with a drill module. The drill is built to drill two meters below the surface of Mars (which is much better than the half-meter depth of the Phoenix Lander) and bring up core samples to the surface so that they can be analyzed by the rover.
Now, I will say this is slightly different than my idea in which I had a drill that would dig down with heated drillheads and moisture sensors to detect liquid water. With this, no solid samples would be aquired, however, the vapours that developed would be analyzed by modules on the drill and, using an X-ray spectrometer, (which was an idea recommended to me) the drill would look for water (as opposed to other vapours that could arise, although we'd probably study those too).
I think this is a fantastic step in the search for life because it is the first time they will have explored the subsurface at a relatively deep level and if we actually found liquid water we might just find some extra terrestrial life! (it'd be about time....)
-MrAstrowhat
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
SPACE JUNK!!!
I couldn't really think of a clever title for this one so I just capitolized it to make it slightly more intense.
So we had a presentation in class last week about the construction of little cube satellites last week (which was awesome). These satillites are very cheap and can be brought into space exponentially cheaper than a normal satillite and in large numbers. However this brings up the question.... What if they break.... The answer was essentially they will probably be left there (that's what I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong). I then was browsing through space.com and I saw an article on recycling space junk to make new satellites! I then thought "oh my, tis a sign MrAstrowhat, we must do a blog on space junk"!!!!
The American Military Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on something called project Pheonix in which they want to create a robotic vehicle to retrieve the old antennas from old satellites and attach them on new ones so that they can be used once again. Actually, they specifically want to attach them to nanosatellites (which made me think of the in class presentation). I think this is a fantastic way to start recycling the dead material that is floating around our planet and just taking up space.
This will also continue to save money. The nanosatellites, as I said before, are very cheap to piggyback into space. Antenna are a whole different barrel of monkies, they are rather bulky and cost quite a bit of money so if we are able to use the working ones that are already in space..... Much money will be saved!!! Yay!!!!
There are some problems with this however. Satellites in Earths orbit were not made with the idea that they would be taken apart again so disassembling the satellite via robot could be difficult.
But yeah, I thought this was pretty awesome because we JUST had a presentation on nanosatellites. I wonder if they know anything about this?
-MrAstrowhat
So we had a presentation in class last week about the construction of little cube satellites last week (which was awesome). These satillites are very cheap and can be brought into space exponentially cheaper than a normal satillite and in large numbers. However this brings up the question.... What if they break.... The answer was essentially they will probably be left there (that's what I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong). I then was browsing through space.com and I saw an article on recycling space junk to make new satellites! I then thought "oh my, tis a sign MrAstrowhat, we must do a blog on space junk"!!!!
The American Military Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on something called project Pheonix in which they want to create a robotic vehicle to retrieve the old antennas from old satellites and attach them on new ones so that they can be used once again. Actually, they specifically want to attach them to nanosatellites (which made me think of the in class presentation). I think this is a fantastic way to start recycling the dead material that is floating around our planet and just taking up space.
This will also continue to save money. The nanosatellites, as I said before, are very cheap to piggyback into space. Antenna are a whole different barrel of monkies, they are rather bulky and cost quite a bit of money so if we are able to use the working ones that are already in space..... Much money will be saved!!! Yay!!!!
There are some problems with this however. Satellites in Earths orbit were not made with the idea that they would be taken apart again so disassembling the satellite via robot could be difficult.
But yeah, I thought this was pretty awesome because we JUST had a presentation on nanosatellites. I wonder if they know anything about this?
-MrAstrowhat
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Aquafina's got nothing on this.....
Scientists have recently discovered huge amounts of water in a planet forming disc surrounding the star TW Hydrae (which I am going to refer to as TWH for the duration of this blog). TWH is an orange dwarf star which is very similar to our own sun. It differs only in the fact that it is slightly less massive and luminous. It has always been thought that planet forming rings have held water but this is the first time it has been detected.
The UV rays from TWH caused water molecules to break free from the ice allowing the researches to capture the light signature of the water.
Fantastic..... So there is a big ol' ring of water in space.... Why is that so special?? WELL I'M GLAD YOU ASKED!!!!!!!!!!
See, life tends to be created when water is present under the proper conditions so we can make an assumption that if(water == true AND isHabitableZone == true){
life.create
}
else
{
planet == noLife
}
In other words, if a planet has water under the right conditions, chances are there will be the developement of some life. But where does this water come from? This is where these big ol' rings of water vapour come in (I'm sorry, I just felt the need to throw some java into the mix).
The planet forming ring has rather frigid outer edge which would cause the water to freeze around dust particles forming pieces of ice. These ice pieces could do one of two things. They could be used like a planetary adhesive and help planet formation by assisting in the sticking-together of dust particles or they could just chill in space (that's right, I made a space pun.... if you didn't get it, space is cold, chill is a verb that implies making something cold with a dual meaning found in american slang in which it is used to describe relaxing or hanging out.... chill....cold..... haha......) and be comets like the ones that pass through our solar system and chill in the kuiper belt (there I go with the puns again, my sense of humour is endless).
Ice sticking planets together creates the planet on which life can form is pretty important but its the free roaming comets that are of interes to us now.
After a planet is formed chances are it will have no water because it was probably vapourized during accretion (assuming it was created through accretion). So it is up to these ice bearing comets to supply our happy little planet with water! Due to the high volumes of ice in the planet forming ring, chances are there will be a lot of comets and these comets will most likely end up ramming into the planet and bring a bunch of elements and compounds with it!
If the environment allows it, the water can settle and form oceans and then, within these oceans, life has a chance of forming!
I get weekly emails from http://www.space.com (which I recommend checking out) and one of them was about an icy dwarf planet in the kuiper belt with a decaying atmosphere of methane. I was going to write about that.... But then I saw this, so I wrote about this. What a thrilling anecdote from MrAstrowhat.
What's green and has wheels????
Grass... I lied about the wheels.
-MrAstrowhat
The UV rays from TWH caused water molecules to break free from the ice allowing the researches to capture the light signature of the water.
Fantastic..... So there is a big ol' ring of water in space.... Why is that so special?? WELL I'M GLAD YOU ASKED!!!!!!!!!!
See, life tends to be created when water is present under the proper conditions so we can make an assumption that if(water == true AND isHabitableZone == true){
life.create
}
else
{
planet == noLife
}
In other words, if a planet has water under the right conditions, chances are there will be the developement of some life. But where does this water come from? This is where these big ol' rings of water vapour come in (I'm sorry, I just felt the need to throw some java into the mix).
The planet forming ring has rather frigid outer edge which would cause the water to freeze around dust particles forming pieces of ice. These ice pieces could do one of two things. They could be used like a planetary adhesive and help planet formation by assisting in the sticking-together of dust particles or they could just chill in space (that's right, I made a space pun.... if you didn't get it, space is cold, chill is a verb that implies making something cold with a dual meaning found in american slang in which it is used to describe relaxing or hanging out.... chill....cold..... haha......) and be comets like the ones that pass through our solar system and chill in the kuiper belt (there I go with the puns again, my sense of humour is endless).
Ice sticking planets together creates the planet on which life can form is pretty important but its the free roaming comets that are of interes to us now.
After a planet is formed chances are it will have no water because it was probably vapourized during accretion (assuming it was created through accretion). So it is up to these ice bearing comets to supply our happy little planet with water! Due to the high volumes of ice in the planet forming ring, chances are there will be a lot of comets and these comets will most likely end up ramming into the planet and bring a bunch of elements and compounds with it!
If the environment allows it, the water can settle and form oceans and then, within these oceans, life has a chance of forming!
I get weekly emails from http://www.space.com (which I recommend checking out) and one of them was about an icy dwarf planet in the kuiper belt with a decaying atmosphere of methane. I was going to write about that.... But then I saw this, so I wrote about this. What a thrilling anecdote from MrAstrowhat.
What's green and has wheels????
Grass... I lied about the wheels.
-MrAstrowhat
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Humans vs Aliens
Hello all!
When we think Alien, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For most of us it is little green humanoids with enlarged heads and giant black eyes that come from Mars that abduct people in the southern states and probe them to learn more about us. For those of us who spend a lot of time watching the space network the first thing that might come to mind are spider like creatures that attach themselves to your face and forcefully plant a baby alien into your chest cavity so it can later break out and wreak havoc apon which ever planet or spaceship it happens to be on.
What ever representation we look at, there seems to be, like with humans, good aliens and bad aliens (or two groups of bad aliens fighting however one sees that humans are no threat so they ignore us completely or use us as fodder for the other bad aliens). So why are we trying to find them? There is a large chance that if we ever make contact with an alien civilization we can make two implications. One, they live in a technologically advanced society because they have the ability to recieve and translate our signals. Whether or not their society is more advanced would have to be left to furthur investigation. Then there is two, if their society is more advanced, their is a very high likelyhood that they will try to either exterminate Earth for their own use or enslave the population.
We could also live in peace and harmony but where is the fun in that?
I suppose what I am trying to say is that should we really be trying to find life out in space?
Even if the life is just some single celled organisms, who's to say they do not have parasitic properties or have the ability to divide at alarming rates and grow into something rediculous. Quite honestly I'd rather have a fist fight with a Predator (from the movie series Predator) then have to deal with some microbial life that infects and kills everything forever.
But then again everything has risks and finding other life could be very benificial. If we were to encounter a peaceful, more advanced society, there could be the mutual sharing of technology and resources and not to mention a new ally if a galactic war ever broke out. If we were to encounter a peaceful, less advanced society then we probably wouldn't have to worry because our only source of communication would be radio waves and neither us or them would be able to travel that far.
Now that I have listed my pros and cons of finding life, time to take a side....
Personally, I am in support of finding life. If they come and enslave us or kill us all then I suppose that would just suck.... A lot..... HOWEVER! If they were peaceful and advanced there is a possibility we could all eventually be walking around with lightsabers and jetpacks a lot sooner then expected. This would be awesome. (don't take this last paragraph to seriously, I am in a mood to reference space movies today)
To celebrate this post I made my own alien. His name is Monty.
-MrAstrowhat
When we think Alien, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For most of us it is little green humanoids with enlarged heads and giant black eyes that come from Mars that abduct people in the southern states and probe them to learn more about us. For those of us who spend a lot of time watching the space network the first thing that might come to mind are spider like creatures that attach themselves to your face and forcefully plant a baby alien into your chest cavity so it can later break out and wreak havoc apon which ever planet or spaceship it happens to be on.
What ever representation we look at, there seems to be, like with humans, good aliens and bad aliens (or two groups of bad aliens fighting however one sees that humans are no threat so they ignore us completely or use us as fodder for the other bad aliens). So why are we trying to find them? There is a large chance that if we ever make contact with an alien civilization we can make two implications. One, they live in a technologically advanced society because they have the ability to recieve and translate our signals. Whether or not their society is more advanced would have to be left to furthur investigation. Then there is two, if their society is more advanced, their is a very high likelyhood that they will try to either exterminate Earth for their own use or enslave the population.
We could also live in peace and harmony but where is the fun in that?
I suppose what I am trying to say is that should we really be trying to find life out in space?
Even if the life is just some single celled organisms, who's to say they do not have parasitic properties or have the ability to divide at alarming rates and grow into something rediculous. Quite honestly I'd rather have a fist fight with a Predator (from the movie series Predator) then have to deal with some microbial life that infects and kills everything forever.
But then again everything has risks and finding other life could be very benificial. If we were to encounter a peaceful, more advanced society, there could be the mutual sharing of technology and resources and not to mention a new ally if a galactic war ever broke out. If we were to encounter a peaceful, less advanced society then we probably wouldn't have to worry because our only source of communication would be radio waves and neither us or them would be able to travel that far.
Now that I have listed my pros and cons of finding life, time to take a side....
Personally, I am in support of finding life. If they come and enslave us or kill us all then I suppose that would just suck.... A lot..... HOWEVER! If they were peaceful and advanced there is a possibility we could all eventually be walking around with lightsabers and jetpacks a lot sooner then expected. This would be awesome. (don't take this last paragraph to seriously, I am in a mood to reference space movies today)
To celebrate this post I made my own alien. His name is Monty.
-MrAstrowhat
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Big Computers do Cool Things
So, for post number two, I have found something quite interesting to talk about! Yesterday I recieved an email from space.com about a supercomputer simulation of the early universe so I have decided that shall be the topic of this blog.
The simulation was done using NASA's supercomputer named "Pleiades" which is the seventh most powerful computer in the world (12 terrabytes of RAM and 75TB Harddrive)! This amazing computer, combined with the Bolshoi Simulation Code, created the most accurate simulation of the universe ever done.
Bolshoi Simulation as seen on
http://www.space.com/13151-universe-evolution-nasa-supercomputer-simulation.html
The simulation shows filaments of dark matter spread throughout the universe which is important in helping the formation and evolution of galaxy clusters after the big bang.
As for how it helps the formation I am not sure exactly but I feel it will be fun to put fourth a theory.
We know that gravity pulls things in and dark energy pushes things apart, it's the combination of these that result in the expansion of the universe. If we have strands close together, the exert an outward force, pushing whatever is between them together.
A theoretical "strand" of darkmatter to help
show what I mean. Yellow arrows show the
force emitted by the dark matter.
Yes, my dark matter strand is extremely rough (and visible for our own purposes), however it relays my point. DARK MATTER PUSHES CLUSTERS TOGETHER!!!!
So..... Back to that planet I made..... I tried to put a tree on it.....
(Please ignore the white outline. Something went wrong when I rendered it and I couldnt find the problem)
Due to high temperatures, the tree instantly caught on fire.... But! That means there might be oxygen........ Hmmmmmm.......
-MrAstrowhat
The simulation was done using NASA's supercomputer named "Pleiades" which is the seventh most powerful computer in the world (12 terrabytes of RAM and 75TB Harddrive)! This amazing computer, combined with the Bolshoi Simulation Code, created the most accurate simulation of the universe ever done.
http://www.space.com/13151-universe-evolution-nasa-supercomputer-simulation.html
The simulation shows filaments of dark matter spread throughout the universe which is important in helping the formation and evolution of galaxy clusters after the big bang.
As for how it helps the formation I am not sure exactly but I feel it will be fun to put fourth a theory.
We know that gravity pulls things in and dark energy pushes things apart, it's the combination of these that result in the expansion of the universe. If we have strands close together, the exert an outward force, pushing whatever is between them together.
show what I mean. Yellow arrows show the
force emitted by the dark matter.
Yes, my dark matter strand is extremely rough (and visible for our own purposes), however it relays my point. DARK MATTER PUSHES CLUSTERS TOGETHER!!!!
So..... Back to that planet I made..... I tried to put a tree on it.....
(Please ignore the white outline. Something went wrong when I rendered it and I couldnt find the problem)
Due to high temperatures, the tree instantly caught on fire.... But! That means there might be oxygen........ Hmmmmmm.......
-MrAstrowhat
Saturday, September 24, 2011
No amounts of cold lemonade will fix this.....
Alright so I've been trying to come up with some sort of theme for this next set of blogs and I think I have an idea..... What makes a good planet? It's a topic we have covered and will be covering in class quite extensivly I feel. "Woah, hold up mrAstrowhat, so you mean to tell me you're just going to take what you've done in class and copy it to this blog???!" But of course not my dear theoretical friend! I have a plan to make this topic a bit more.... Zazzy (in the words of the great Sheldon Cooper).
What on earth is that?!
Well first of all, that is not on earth, second of all, it is a 3-D render of a planetary environment (made by yours truely) to represent a planet that is much to close to it's sun to have ample temperatures to support life (or any sort of liquid) and has a rather unfortunate atmosphere similiar to that of venus (well Venus does not have red cloud cover, I just put in red coulds because it looked cool) in which the green house gases are of rather high levels.
Well on second thought, maybe I should do something that we won't cover in class so I dont feel as if I'm being a copycat (or lazy for that matter). I will ponder on this further but for now, I leave you with this semi long and rather uninformative post. Yay uncertainty!!!!
-MrAstrowhat
What on earth is that?!
Well first of all, that is not on earth, second of all, it is a 3-D render of a planetary environment (made by yours truely) to represent a planet that is much to close to it's sun to have ample temperatures to support life (or any sort of liquid) and has a rather unfortunate atmosphere similiar to that of venus (well Venus does not have red cloud cover, I just put in red coulds because it looked cool) in which the green house gases are of rather high levels.
Well on second thought, maybe I should do something that we won't cover in class so I dont feel as if I'm being a copycat (or lazy for that matter). I will ponder on this further but for now, I leave you with this semi long and rather uninformative post. Yay uncertainty!!!!
-MrAstrowhat
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
New Physics Course Means More Blogging!!!!
So I am very excited... Because..... I get to write more blog stuff!!!! I figured since I'm going to be writing a new blog I might as well just continue and old one sooooooo..... yeah. You can expect more posts to be written now!!!
P.S. If you want me to make a different blog for this assignment, please email or tell me.
P.S. If you want me to make a different blog for this assignment, please email or tell me.
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