Koppernigk

Ancient skywatcher's hangouts

"Two historic hubs of scientific inquiry, the 18th-century Jantar Mantar Observatory in India and the 13th-century DengFeng Observatory in China, have been added to the list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

The announcement of the additions came last week, during the U.N. body's annual meeting. Several natural sites also became newly named World Heritage Sites, and some were added or removed from another list that notes sites that are potentially endangered.

The Jantar Mantar complex in Jaipur, begun in the 1720s by a powerful Indian prince, resembles a giant's spilled box of Tinker Toys. The buildings themselves are astronomical instruments, and several of them are among the largest of their kind in the world. Two enormous bowl-shaped sundials — items that would look at home in a modern-day skate park — were designed so astronomers could climb inside to take measurements. The observatory's 19 buildings were completed in 1738.

Near DengFeng City in China's Henan province, the DengFeng Observatory complex includes 13 different monuments. The Yuan Dynasty observatory, built in 1279 near an ancient capital on Mount Songshang, is the most remarkable astronomical feature of the sprawling site. The brick tower, more than 30 feet (9.5 meters) tall and with sweeping stone staircases that wing out on both sides, was used to track the sun's noonday shadow over the course of the year, a key tool for calendar-making.

The selection of these sites by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee coincided with the publication of a joint study conducted by the International Astronomical Union and the International Council on Monuments and Sites, an advising body to the United Nations. ..." (SPACE.com)

We're still here, and maybe later out there

"Podcast host Steve Mirsky talks with human evolution expert Kate Wong about the small group of humans who survived tough times beginning about 195,000 years ago and gave rise to all of us, a story told in the cover article of the August issue of Scientific American, our 165th anniversary edition. And Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina talks about the rest of the contents of the issue, including our coverage of the search for rocky exoplanets. Plus, we test your knowledge about some recent science in the news. Web sites related to content of this podcast include http://snipurl.com/10louu" (SciAm)

Venus recreated

"Scientists are able to learn about the atmospheres and surfaces of planets by studying their spectra - the different wavelengths of light which they reflect or absorb. However, when researchers study spectra of Venus, the hottest planet in the Solar System, they run into a problem. Its high temperatures and pressures seriously affect the data.

Venus and Earth are often described as sister worlds. However, the second planet from the Sun has obviously evolved in a very different manner from our Earth. The surface of Venus is very hot, with temperatures reaching 480 degrees Celsius, and its surface pressure is 90 times greater than on Earth. These extreme conditions cause great difficulties for scientists who are attempting to unveil the mysteries of the Venusian lower atmosphere and surface.

"Remote observation of the surface and atmosphere, particularly at infrared wavelengths, enables us to probe the deepest regions of the atmosphere and surface of Venus," explained Håkan Svedhem, Venus Express Project Scientist.

"On Earth, we understand the spectral absorption lines in the atmosphere, so we can calculate their effects. However, the high temperatures and pressures on Venus make observations much more complex. We don't know precisely how they modify the spectra, so it is impossible to interpret the data accurately."

In an effort to overcome this problem of interpretation, teams of scientists in several countries are attempting to reproduce the extreme environment of Venus and discover how it affects the data sent back by instruments such as the Visible InfraRed Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on board ESA's Venus Express orbiter. ... " (ESA)

It won't and can't, but what if it could and would?

It won't happen, and it can't even happen, but what would if it could happen?

The day the Earth stood still. If it would happen a computer program can help you out what would happen:

"The following is not a futuristic scenario. It is not science fiction. It is a demonstration of the capabilities of GIS to model the results of an extremely unlikely, yet intellectually fascinating query: What would happen if the earth stopped spinning? ArcGIS was used to perform complex raster analysis and volumetric computations and generate maps that visualize these results. ..." (ESRI)

And my feet would be very wet. 

Build a Moonbase in five minutes

If you're an astronomy buff, an engineer and a gamer you might enjoy Moonbase Alpha, a "American Army" style game released by NASA, based on the Steam platform. You can read more by following the link, with download pointers.

Now I'm off to get drunk because we're in the finals of the Soccer World Championships. Go, Oranje!

Seriously, I should buy enough beer to get drunk. And not go to bed like I plan to now. Sheesh.

(NASA)

What birds can and we can't

"In the 1950s, the Sauer research team locked some birds in Olbers planetarium and started messing with them. First they projected a northern hemisphere autumn sky and the birds flew 'south' – away from Polaris and keeping Betelgeuse to the left ('east'). Then they projected a spring night sky and the birds flew 'north' towards Polaris with Betelgeuse again to their left, albeit this time in the 'west'. The position of Betelgeuse appeared to be significant, perhaps because it's one of the brighter stars in the northern hemisphere and just to the north of the celestial equator.

Later experiments with Indigo Buntings demonstrated that birds raised with no experience of the night sky didn’t have a clue what to do when released into a planetarium. However, birds that were raised with the night sky visible would fly ‘south’ away from the sky’s axis of rotation, whether that was Polaris or an artificial arbitrary axis created within the planetarium. ..." (Universe Today)

Antimatter under our feet

"Exotic antimatter particles have been detected deep within the Earth's interior, scientists report.

Studying these particles, which are thought to result from radioactive decay within Earth, could help scientists better understand how the flow of heat inside our planet affects surface events like volcanoes and earthquakes.

The particles, called geoneutrinos, are made of a strange type of matter called antimatter, which has properties opposite those of regular matter. When a regular particle, like an electron, meets with its antimatter partner, called a positron, the two annihilate each other in an energetic explosion.

Geoneutrinos are the antimatter partners of neutrinos, which are very lightweight, neutrally charged particles that are created within the sun and when a cosmic ray strikes a normal atom. An earlier project called KamLAND in Japan found the first signs of possible geoneutrinos in 2005. ..." (LiveScience)

ISS in bright sight

"The International Space Station will be extra visible to observers on Earth this weekend – sometimes up to five times a night – thanks to some favorable sun angles that will light up the orbiting space lab.

The space station flies about 220 miles (354 km) overhead, circling the globe once every 90 minutes. Usually, the station is invisible to skywatchers on Earth during some of those orbits because the sun isn't shining on it.

However, over the next few days, the station's path will align with Earth's day-night terminator, keeping the spacecraft in nearly constant sunlight, according to the website Spaceweather.com, which monitors spacecraft sightings and space weather.

That means that every time it flies overhead, skywatchers graced with clear skies should be able to spot the space station as a moving star that can sometimes appear as bright as Venus. The rare solar line-up ends on Monday. ..." (SPACE.com)

ocean deep, mountain high

"How high is the sky? Scientists have a pretty good handle on that one, what with their knowledge of the troposphere, stratosphere an the other “o-spheres.” Now, thanks to new work headed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), they are closing in on the other half of that age-old query: How deep is the ocean?

They’re also tackling an even more intriguing—if less romantic—question: What is the volume of the Earth’s oceans? It’s hard to imagine Irving Berlin putting those words into the mouth of a serenading lover—as he did in his classic song, “How Deep is the Ocean?”—let alone the answer: 1.332 billion cubic kilometers.

But that figure is pure music to the ears of Matthew Charette, an associate scientist in WHOI’s Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry who is part of a research effort to audit all the water on the planet. “A lot of water values are taken for granted,” he says. “If you want to know the water volume on the planet, you Google it and you get five different numbers, most of them 30- or 40-year-old values.”

Until now.

Using satellite measurements, Charette and co-investigator Walter H.F. Smith, a geophysicist at the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have come with up the new ocean volume figure. Their work, funded in part by the EarthWater Institute, is published in the current issue of the journal Oceanography. ... " (WHOI)

All very old

If you're looking for a nice picture combining mysteries, rocks and stars, now is the time to visit today's APOD for a bigger version than the below - already fascinating - one.

Sleep well - ESA wakes for you: the SSA

"A new section in the ESA web site highlights the Agency's growing activity related to the Space Situational Awareness programme. The full SSA system will protect Europe's citizens and satellite-based services by detecting space hazards.

(...)

The objective of the SSA programme is to support Europe's independent use of, and access to, space through the provision of timely and accurate information, data and services regarding the space environment, and particularly regarding hazards to infrastructure in orbit and on the ground.

Europe's SSA system will deliver services in three main areas: surveillance and tracking of objects in orbit, monitoring of space weather, and detection of near-Earth objects. SSA will provide rapid and precise information to satellite operators and to a wide range of civil, industrial and government users...." (ESA)

Don't sit under that apple tree...

"A piece of the apple tree that helped British scientist Sir Isaac Newton explain the tug of Earth's gravity and laws of motion in the 17th century is about to escape that gravitational pull when it launches into space this week.

NASA astronaut Piers Sellers, who was born in England, is carrying the historic piece of wood into space for The Royal Society in the United Kingdom. It is packed with the rest of his space luggage for Friday's planned launch of the shuttle Atlantis toward the International Space Station.

"I am flying a chip of wood from Isaac Newton's apple tree. How about that?" Sellers told SPACE.com in an interview last week. "It's even got a little 17th century scrawl on it that says, 'I. Newton.' I don't know if he wrote it or someone else wrote it, but anyway, it's a very old piece of apple tree." ..." (SPACE.com)

Fly me to the.... deep sea

Koppernigk is an astronomy blog. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at other achievements in science, especially when they seem so related to space exploration. You've seen many pictures and movies from probes scouting the surface of Mars or looking at Jupiter, Saturn and their moons and what more there is in outer space.
It's cold out there and pretty without air. A hostile and dangerous environment.

But space doesn't have the single rights to that. How about a environment where you must counter 1100 Bar, reducing your probe to a small ball of debris if you don't make it sturdy enough? We're not talking Venus with its 90 Bar surface pressure. We're talking the ocean floor, more specific Challengers Deep at 10,900 meters below sea level.

Robotic probe Nereus dived last year to the bottom as one of the few to reach the ocean floor. And again it saw a place teeming with life. Clicking on the link above you see the unlucky fate of a sea anemone. Just waving gently in the stream and next your locked and loaded heading for the surface.

The deep sea is a mysterious place for us. How little we know. In 1997 scientist heard sounds coming from the deep which some claim to be the burps of a giant, unknown sea creature, dubbed the bloop. Most likely it's geological activity, but the fact that scientists come up with such stories shows how uncertain we are about the depths that surrounds us - and cover 70% of our problem. There's a universe to explore down there.

Reason to be careful with it. The sea giveth, the sea taketh. And what we give doesn't show a very healthy relationship between humans and their waters.

Another day, another incident

Today, May 4th in the Netherlands we commemorate all dead countrymen lost during World War II, all conflicts and peace missions ever since. The central commemorative celebration is in Amsterdam, at the National Monument.

Tonight the ceremony was disturbed by a man shouting out loud during the two minute silence, leading to panic, a rush and tens of people hurt - no one seriously, thank goodness. Amongst them a lot of children, and that's the bad part.

Looking live at the event I reacted with a shocked "now what, this time!". How fragile we are at these ceremonies. How often do disturbed or less disturbed people feel the urge to act up in public. It's becoming a public disease. We can't be part of a group anymore, we have to be individuals with only respect for our own urges. What example do we give our children by this kind of behavior? As grown-ups we want them to attend these cermonies, yet some grown-ups don't even have the decency to respect anything we stand for. It's a sad development.

What's even sadder is that - about two-and-a-half hour after the ceremony, I've seen and heard the incident about a hundred times already. We feed outselves with these incidents way too eagerly. Every little detail is squeezed out of it.

Kudos to the people, the police and the military for returning to normal so fast. Within a few minutes all returned to their places and wounded were being treated fast, yet in silence. And in any case they got the chance to see the queen close up, as she visited the wounded immediately after the ceremony. She didn't run away. Let's all not run away from these events. Let's just behave. Like we're normal human beings.

A Valentine for all people wounded.

Let's suck Earth in

I love these thought experiments, especially when quantum physics are involved. And it would even be nicer if we could jot down the chance that the Earth would turn into a black LHC hole. Would there be enough space in this universe to write all the zeros after the dot? No doubt, the universe is big.

And how big would that Schrödinger cat really be?

More fun here. (Discovery)

Apollo 13 manual for sale

It seems we should head to New York for an auction of Apollo 13 manual pages. The real pages, that is:

"On April 13, 1970—321,860 kilometers into its Moon trip—an oxygen tank exploded in the Odyssey's Service Module. James Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise had a really big problem. These pages saved their lives. ..." (Gizmodo)

Why dogs should wear safety belts

Want to be an astronaut? Start training in zero G and float around. That's not very difficult: just let your airplane coast in free fall and experience weightlessness with it. Like these two guys. It's fun for the dog as well.... I think.

Thanks, Discovery.

LHC creates black hole, sucks Earth in, Moon follows

No. At CERN, they didn't create a black hole. It didn't suck in the Earth and everything around it (including the Moon). But they did achieve some important first results:

"... "We did it! The first high-energy collisions were achieved at 13.06 today at all four points of the LHC ring. Collisions occurred after a few attempts at injecting and ramping beams in the morning.

Before the collisions, there was a mixture of excitement, expectation, fear and apprehension in the CERN Control Centre. Nobody had ever attempted to make two proton beams collide at 3.5 TeV before. Only Nature produces collisions like this routinely, in the processes that yield cosmic radiation, but in a way that makes it very difficult to extract meaningful data. ..." (CERN)

Daylight Saving Time

Did you know that DST - what we call "summer time" over here - was first proposed in the 19th century by a man named George Vernon Hudson? Neither did I. You can read more about this idiotic invention here. As you can see, not all things made up by astronomers are a valuable addition to life.

By now you've guessed right that tonight at 2 a.m. the clock will jump to 3 a.m. and that I'm no fan of it.

But if you are, please feel free to enjoy it...

One big conveyor belt

This is like the biggest conveyor belt in existence on this planet. It keeps me warm up here in the Netherlands, and quite a few others up north. I have no idea about its total size, but let's say between 60- and 80,000 kilometers.

NASA Scientists have found out the speed of the conveyor belt isn't slowing down. A part of the press release you can find at the aforemetioned link:

"New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.

The findings are the result of a new monitoring technique, developed by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats. The findings are reported in the March 25 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The Atlantic overturning circulation is a system of currents, including the Gulf Stream, that bring warm surface waters from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic. There, in the seas surrounding Greenland, the water cools, sinks to great depths and changes direction. What was once warm surface water heading north turns into cold deep water going south. This overturning is one part of the vast conveyor belt of ocean currents that move heat around the globe. ..."