Science Today

Will an asteroid impact with Mars?

2008-01-06T22:38:00.000-06:00

Update:

The risk that an asteroid will hit Mars on 30 January has dropped to 1 in 10,000, essentially ruling out an impact, NASA researchers say.

The chance that 2007 WD5 could have hit Mars highlighted the risk that a similar space rock could one day slam into Earth.
NASA says that within a few years, it should find 90% of potentially dangerous asteroids larger than 1 kilometre across. But smaller space rocks such as 2007 WD5 may go undetected until shortly before a possible impact, meaning the only recourse would be to evacuate any populated areas that appeared to lie in its path.

I sure hope so.

This is very unscientific, but the way I look at it, if it crashes into Mars, it cannot hit the Earth. If it misses Mars, which is more probable at the moment, then it becomes or continues to be another near Earth object that can cause us trouble in the future.

Observations of the asteroid between Dec. 29 and Jan. 2 allowed astronomers to slightly lower the space rock's odds of striking Mars to about 3.6 percent (down from 3.9), giving the object a 1 in 28 chance of hitting the planet, according to Tuesday report from NASA's Near Earth-Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

More observations may further reduce the asteroid's impact chances to nil, NEO officials said. The space rock's refined course stems from observations by astronomers at New Mexico Tech's Magdalena Ridge Observatory.

But if WD5 does smack into Mars, some astronomers have a fair idea of what havoc it may spawn. The likely strike zone would be near the equator, but to the north of the current position of NASA's Opportunity rover at Victoria Crater, NASA officials have said.

Mark Boslough, a collision dynamics expert at New Mexico's Sandia National Laboratory, said the atmosphere at Mars' surface is similar to that of Earth at an altitude of 12 miles (20 km). Some space rocks that target Earth explode under the pressure created as they stream into our atmosphere. But they tend not to explode until much below the 12-mile mark.

"So this won't be an airburst," Boslough said. "It will either hit the ground intact and make a single crater, or break up and generate a cluster of craters."

NASA's Near Earth Object Program has ruled out the possibility of a collision between the Earth and asteroid 2004MN4 (Apophis) for April 13, 2029. Well if you look at the projected trajectory of this asteroid around that date, it looks a little close for comfort for me. It will certainly make for some exciting nighttime viewing as it streaks across the sky.

2007 WD5 (the rock hading for Mars) doesn't even show up on the list of Current Impact Risks. Of that list, only one asteroid is listed with a rating that "merits careful monitoring". 2007VK184 has an impact probability of 0.00038 and that isn't until sometime from 2048 - 2057.

Even with no impact probability, I do think it would be one of those really cool science things to see this asteroid crash into Mars and on less rock in the Solar System is probably a good thing anyway.

Needed: Private Businesses for Space Expansion

2007-05-27T08:03:00.000-06:00

NASA is looking for private companies to help us return to the moon.

It's about time!

I have felt for a very long time that the only legitimate way to grow the human presence in space is through privatization. Unfortunately, humans in general and Americans in particular seem to like to repeat the same mistakes several times before we learn from them.

In the 1970's the USA sent several expeditions to the moon. Much attention is placed on the six actual moon landings plus Apollo 13. In actuality, there were many missions to the moon to both land on its surface and to orbit it. The Soviet Luna program was the first to fly-by, orbit and soft-land on the moon. The US Pioneer program showed how difficult it was to actually get to the moon from a launch from Earth, and the Ranger program provided photographic reconnaissance while crashing at high speed as intended (source: Wikipedia). And several Apollo missions that orbited the moon set the stage for the landing of Apollo 11 and the first humans on the Moon.

After all the success of the Apollo it was suddenly dropped. The Space Shuttle and exploration of low Earth orbit was the way to go. Where NASA failed is that it completely shut down the Apollo program to pursue the Space Shuttle. The big claim is the cost but the NASA budget is such a small fraction of our GDP that I just really don't buy that.

Now we are once again abandoning the Shuttle to move forward. In business you always ensure that the next generation is on place before you scuttle the existing technology. To do otherwise is to quickly cease to exist. When we abandon the space shuttle we will also, by default give up much control of the space station.

Now to my point for this post.

NASA is in the market for commercial relationships and private capital as it gears up for its next manned missions to the moon.
"That would make our life a lot easier," said Neil Woodward, acting director of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

The U.S. space agency is hoping to return to the moon in 2019 or 2020 and has longer range plans to send humans to Mars after that.
"If somebody says 'I have this really great way to be able to extract water ice from lunar regolith (lunar rocks) that I've developed on my own dime' we would be interested," Woodward said.

"If we could be in a commercial relationship with somebody who has the capability that's fine because in many cases they can do it for less money than we can," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a space development conference in Dallas.

We need to look at all space exploration commercially. One of the outcomes and justifications of the space program have been products that can only be produced or can be have better quality by being produced in the microgravity of space. Pharmaceuticals, specialty electronics, etc can be produced in space potentially better than on the planet. Let's open up the Space station for commercial scientific activity along with academic science. Right now space costs are astronomical - pun intended - with a private trip to the space station costing right at $20 million which has to be paid to the Russians.

What is wrong with space tourism? What is wrong with high tech industry on the space station? Why shouldn't we find private ways to make money to support space travel. Grow near Earth space travel in the private sector and leave NASA to expand the outer reaches of the universe and concentrate on pure space research.

It seems NASA is becoming more open to this idea. NASA actively supported Space Ship 1 and its continued development to Virgin Galactic's Space ship 2. Other private launch companies are exploring the idea to provide private trips to the edges of the atmosphere. Other private ventures include contests and funding for the development of the Space Elevator, development of a new glove for increased dexterity in space and water and oxygen from Moon Regolith (moon rocks).

These challenges can provide from $250,000 up to $2,000,000 to the successful applicant. And the challenges are open to all of us. Any company or individual with a technology that can meet the requirements of the challenge can submit their proposal and be eligible for the prize.

We need to grow space exploration and space activity because humanity can benefit through real business opportunities that create jobs, new medical solutions, new technologies, and expand the reach and presence of the human race.

And we cannot forget that it is really cool.

HomeWORLD Defense

2007-05-01T20:33:00.000-06:00

In my primary blog, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, I mentioned the previous post on this blog and poked fun towards the illegal alien protests that took place in Houston and other US cities today with the following:

Face it, with all our open mindedness and scientific wonder, the first thing we would do if we were ever visited from space is to get into a war against the new people. Either that or welcome them in with open arms and let them take over. (It's always one extreme or the other). After all , the aliens are only looking for good jobs for their families and a chance to survive.

I was surprised to see that a group of engineers actually wrote An Introduction to Planetary Defense: A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion, a manual of how to defend the planet against extra-terrestrials who come here to cause trouble. ( Hat Tip: Junk Science.com)

I think it would be really neat and exciting to discover intelligent life existed elsewhere in the universe. Such a discovery would not even make me question the tenants of my faith (as was implied that the movie and book Contact by Carl Sagan). There is no question in my mind or my heart that God created all life through a process that is far to complicated for us mortals to understand. We can come close to hypothesizing the mechanism (evolution, intelligent design) and understanding the fossil record but we will never truly understand how life came to exist.

Likewise I have no illusion that life only formed on this planet and life that did form on another planet has the same potential to grow and develop with the guiding hand of the Almighty just as we have here.

What I am certain of is that in the vastness of space, those planets that contain life are likely so far apart that it is either physically impossible for the peoples of these different planets to ever meet each other OR that they are far enough apart that by the time we meet we will be free of our uncontrollable desire to fear the unknown and kill anything or anyone that we do not understand.

We are not alone?

2007-04-24T19:08:00.000-06:00

Potentially habitable planet found: For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."
The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.
There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.
"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

OK...So might be potentially habitable unless it is deemed inhospitable to life. Talk about wiggle room.

Maybe, if there is life on the planet, that life could be intelligent. You know the requirements, of course, for intelligence - able to reason , assess and rationalize the data, not suggest that a single square of TP could have the potential to save the environment even if it contributes to epidemic proportions of diaper rash. {Sorry folks, I had to get my diggs in.}

In all seriousness, this is a major discovery. Now we know that there is a planet that has similar climates as Earth does and has the possibility to be able to support life. While it is all speculation, there is the possibility that it could support life. At 20 light years away the planet is too far away to explore with current technology.

However, the theory of relativity allows that an object could travel at a substantial fraction of the speed of light if the technology could be developed. At a speed of 1/4th c, Planet 581C could be reached in 80 - 100 years. This is within a human lifetime overall.

A colony that chooses to leave the Earth to travel to 581C that consisted of people with a range of ages from children to the elderly could conceivably arrive where the teenagers and young adults are grandparents and the children are now parents themselves. Of course this would be a permanent move. One way. With very little ability to communicate with the homeworld (unless we discover/invent a way to transmit information on light waves) this colony would be on its own. This has not happened since Columbus sailing in the wrong direction for the East Indies and found the new world.

Someday the stuff of science fiction novels can become a reality. Not because we can image it so but because it may actually exist.

Spectacular Hubble Image Of Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672

2007-04-05T19:37:00.000-06:00

Plastic bag ban is a bad idea

2007-03-28T20:24:00.000-06:00

San Francisco has been threatening to ban plastic grocery bags for quite some time. Last year the city entertained the idea of a $0.16 per bag tax on plastic grocery bags. Fortunately this was defeated in council. Now it appears that they may have finally succeeded in their attack on plastic. Today the city leaders passed an ordinance that bans plastic grocery bags, requiring stores to provide either paper bags, compostable bags or cloth bags.

San Francisco supervisors and supporters said that by banning the petroleum-based sacks, blamed for littering streets and choking marine life, the measure would go a long way toward helping the city earn its green stripes.
"Hopefully, other cities and states will follow suit," said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who crafted the ban after trying to get a 15-cent per bag tax passed in 2005.

The mayor is expected to sign the bill into law.

This is a bad idea for the following reasons:

Litter is a behavioral problem. Switching to paper bags will not reduce litter. Paper bags thrown on the ground do not magically disappear.
Paper bags do not degrade in a land-fill. Nothing degrades in a landfill. One of the arguments against plastic bags is that they do not degrade and we are disposing of tons of waste every day. In the late 1980's and early 90's, Dr. William Rathje, a "garbologist from the University of Arizona, found that buried waste degrades so slowly that old food and newspapers were recognizable after 10 years in a landfill.
Plastic bags are recyclable. The San Francisco supervisors would have better spent their efforts establishing and promoting the collection and market for recycled plastic products.
Paper bags actually create more pollution during their manufacture than plastic bags do. The Kraft paper manufacturing process is a dirty process that relies on some rather noxious chemicals. Ask anyone who lives downwind of a paper mill about the constant putrid smell. Plastic bags are made from polyethylene. Polyethylene, by contrast, is produced with a clean process in which ethylene gas is reacted in a pressurized reactor. The ethylene reaction requires very pure reaction components. So the reactors are sealed very tightly thereby eliminating practically all emissions. The polymer, once produced is fabricated into a film in a process that again emits essentially no emissions.
Plastic products is one of the few industries where the US maintains a trade surplus. A Houston radio host discussing this issue tonight had a caller who claimed that the plastic bags are produced with low wage labor in China and tariffs should be applied. The fact is that plastic products are produced in the USA. Tooling and machinery are finding their way to China but we still have the lead with finished plastic goods.
Paper bags cost around 0.8 cents per bag while plastic bags cost less than 0.2 cpb. This ban will automatically cause prices to rise.
The current compostable products, primarily made from PLA (poly lactic acid), are very new and are promising. These products, though are very expensive with a cost per bag as high as 8 cents per bag for large size garbage bags. As this technology is scaled up and expanded, a new, cost effective solution will develop. This must be the result of normal market forces NOT legislation.

Laws such as this will succeed only in stifling growth and doing more damage to the environment.

Today is the Vernal Equinox

2007-03-20T16:25:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year!

No I'm not off by a few months. I've always thought that ancient humans missed the boat when they designated the first day of the year to be in the middle of winter.

Of course the idea was that the Winter Solstice marks the time of the year when the sunlight returns in the Northern Hemisphere, quite literally north of the Arctic Circle. From that day onward, the days get longer and longer.

But today is the Vernal Equinox. The day when day and night are equal. The symbolic return of life. Spring brings the buds of trees and flowers, the green grass, the warm days and cool nights. I always thought that the Vernal Equinox, the symbolic return of life was a more fitting day to mark the start of a new year.

For many cultures throughout history, people got ready to start tilling the fields. Ancient peoples may not have understood orbital mechanics, but they were tireless observers of the Sun, stars and planets and noted with enviable precision how the position of the sunrise shifted on the horizon throughout the year. By tracking solar motions, they kept track of time and could estimate with some security when the last frost had passed and it was safe to plant crops.
“It seems wonderfully appropriate that you would anchor the timing of your planting season directly to the source of it,” said Dr. Paul Doherty, a physicist and senior staff scientist at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco.

Many cultures throughout ancient times made close and very accurate observations of the movement of the Sun and stars.

Archaeological evidence abounds that astronomy is among the oldest of professions, and that people attended with particular zeal to the equinoxes and the solstices. The Great Sphinx of Egypt, for example, built some 4,500 years ago, is positioned to face toward the rising sun on the vernal equinox.

In the 1,500-year-old Mayan city of Chichén Itzá, in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, the magnificent Kukulcán Pyramid practically slithers to life each spring equinox evening, as the waning sun casts a shadow along its steps of seven perfectly symmetrical isosceles triangles, a pattern suggesting the diamondback skin of a snake.

In the West, the equinox is intimately fastened to the holiest of Christian holidays: Easter is timed to occur the first Sunday after the first full moon that follows the vernal equinox. “One of the main motivations for having astronomers working at the Vatican,” Dr. Hawkins said, “is that they wanted to know the precise date for Easter each year.”

So ... Welcome to Spring 2007. We've traveled a long distance in one year. A full trip around the Sun at ~67,000 MPH as we ride off into the sunset once again.

Science Fair Innovation

2007-03-17T20:34:00.000-06:00

Seventeen year-old Science Marvel

Mary Masterman developed a new inexpensive Raman system and spectrograph. Spectrographs can cost as much as $100,000 yet Mary built her's for around $300 from household parts and has proven the concept. Besides science achievements, she is talented in music and is studying several different languages.

We always hear the negatives about our teenagers and how American youths score lower than their counterparts around the world. Well this young lady is certainly a cut above.

The pleasure of finding things out - RP Feynman

2007-03-16T21:07:00.001-06:00


Excellent short 40 min documentary interview with Dr. RP Feynman- one of the greatest physicist of our times and a Nobel Laureate. Specially uploaded for students of NSIT.

Quick trip around Mars on Sunday

2007-02-24T20:09:00.000-06:00

The European comet chaser Rosetta will do a fly-by around Mars Sunday to get a gravity boost on its way to the comet Churyumov Gerasimenko. The 10 year trip includes a total of three gravity boosts from Earth and one from Mars before the craft catches up to and matches orbit with the comet. Then in 2014 it will release a lander in the first attempted controlled landing on a comet.

UPDATE: Space probe performs Mars fly-by

A Rosetta camera views dust or clouds in Mars' atmosphere
Courtesy BBC News

It's Deja Vu All over again

2007-02-19T06:35:00.000-06:00

OK, Here is the scenario:

A group of scientists get together and reach a consensus
There is an impending threat to the Earth
Although the chances are small (slim) should this occur all life on Earth will be destroyed
The planet and its environment would be ruined.
They are asking to United Nations to take charge and lead the effort to save us.

Global Warming?? Not quite.

Asteroid Impact! There is a 1 in 45,000 chance that the asteroid Apophis may impact the Earth in 2036 so a group of scientists and engineers are calling for the UN to take charge and lead the effort to draft a plan to make sure that this does not happen. Based on what we have seen with Oil for Food, Raping of children in Africa and IPCC political summaries that do not match the science behind them, it seems to me that the UN cannot lead itself out of a paper bag.

There are only 4 entities that have mastered space travel: The US, Russia, The European Space Agency and China. These 4 countries alone should draft a plan to assess the danger, develop an action plan to counter it and act upon it. All the UN will do is tax us to pay for some lofty ideal that never materializes.

Pravda reports:

Asteroid MN4 otherwise known as Apophis has been designated the most dangerous heavenly body of the century

We basically have two options, destroy the object or nudge it to the side. The big concern with blowing it up is that some of the debris would still head down towards us and, if it is large enough, cause substantial destruction on Earth. Small pieces would burn up in the atmosphere but larger pieces would impact the planet. If any of those pieces should hit in an urban area significant damage and deaths could result.

But we have to keep in mind that the chances of an impact are 1 in 45,000. We should, however, have a hell of a light show. Apophis crosses the Earth's orbit twice every year. In 2036, it may pass close enough to knock out a few communication satellites. That is within the orbit of the moon. We should all get a great view as the asteroid hopefully then continues on never to be heard from again.

StikNstein is also discussing this one

Take 2

2007-02-18T10:46:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the new, improved edition of Science Today. This is my second attempt to launch this site. I wanted to get the format right. Now I can concentrate on content. There will be one more roll out once I add Haloscan to allow trackbacks and get this blog onto open trackbacking to increase membership. I am hoping that we get my half dozen closest blog friends to give it a look-see now and then expand it out.

Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker will continue to serve as my primary outlet for severe weather, climate issues and of course tracking North Atlantic tropical systems. This blog is intended to fill the gap on other science issues such as space exploration, chemistry advances, and stem cell research among other science news. As I find other science topic news feeds, I'll add them to the sidebars to provide even more up-to-date news on science topics.

Since I first came up with the idea for this blog, much has happened:

Global Warming on Mars
China's space launch
China's destruction of a satellite in space
Successful research with stem cells from umbilical cord blood

And many others. Please check back frequently for further updates.

Trackbacked to: Woman Honor Thyself (I tried to manually add more trackbacks but the standalone pinger wouldn't work)

Welcome to Science Today

2007-01-07T10:19:00.000-06:00

This is a new blog to address some of the issues in the news related to science and engineering. While researching stories on severe weather and global warming for Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, it became very apparent that other science based issues need to be addressed as well. This site strives to be the comprehensive source for current science activities. Additionally, it is my plan to show the engineering efforts required to turn the science into tangible reality.