More space news!

[Cancer]

"Luck is the residue of design."

[Old Man]

[DShomshak]

Of course this month's Scientific American has an article about the coming solar eclipse.

 

It also has an article about an alternate theory for the origins of life on Earth that the authors point out has relevance for searching for life elsewhere. Their theory is that life began on land, in geyser fields and episodic hot springs. They argue that the cycle of wetting and drying helps assemble amino acids, nuclaeic acids and basic lipids into macromolecules and proto-cell membranes. There's a bit more to it that you'll have to read for yourself.

 

Scrupulously fair, they do summarize the arguments for undersea alkaline hydrothermal vents, too. But if they're right, then forget about life on Europa or Enceladus. The drying phase of the cycle is necessary for the process they propose.

 

It occurs to me, though, that due to the difficulties of finding evidence from 4 billion years in the past, we may actually need to search Europa for life in order to figure out which theory is more likely to be correct.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Christopher]

Of course this month's Scientific American has an article about the coming solar eclipse.

 

It also has an article about an alternate theory for the origins of life on Earth that the authors point out has relevance for searching for life elsewhere. Their theory is that life began on land, in geyser fields and episodic hot springs. They argue that the cycle of wetting and drying helps assemble amino acids, nuclaeic acids and basic lipids into macromolecules and proto-cell membranes. There's a bit more to it that you'll have to read for yourself.

 

Scrupulously fair, they do summarize the arguments for undersea alkaline hydrothermal vents, too. But if they're right, then forget about life on Europa or Enceladus. The drying phase of the cycle is necessary for the process they propose.

 

It occurs to me, though, that due to the difficulties of finding evidence from 4 billion years in the past, we may actually need to search Europa for life in order to figure out which theory is more likely to be correct.

 

Dean Shomshak

You might be talking about Chemical Evolution. It is something I only recently learned about myself, from this video in particular:

 

Wich in turn leads to the "RNA World Hypothesis":

 

Basically it ask the question "where did the first cell come from"?

[Cancer]

The problem is getting nucleic acids and proteins formed in the same place at the same time and getting each to listen to the other, and then encapsulating the ensemble so it has something like continuity of heritage. That RNA can self-catalyze is probably a huge step, but protein catalysis is much more efficient.

[Spence]

Actually by the parameters Niven established any and all intelligent races would have insanely high luck to have been able to evolve to intelligence. Apparently this was another "captain obvious" level issue Niven couldn't see. Kind of like how he said pickpocketing was widespread on future earth due to overcrowding. I guess his awesome intellect couldn't figure out that some folks might put a chain on their wallets. Like the people who make chain wallets did.

Or just use the front pocket.

[tkdguy]

SpaceX Launches NASA Cargo to ISS, Sticks Landing

 

I watched the launch on TV before heading to work.

[DShomshak]

In 2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke speculated that Jupiter had a diamond-plated core. The August 26 - September 1 issue of The Economist has an article about an experiment to test this idea -- though the suggestion is of diamond cores for "ice giants" such as Uranus and Neptune rather than gas giants like Jupiter. Ice giants have higher proportions of carbon in proportion to hydrogen and helium, so it's easier for the carbon atoms to find each other.

 

The carbon in ice giants is believed to be all in the form of hydrocarbons, though, so the question is: Under sufficient heat and pressure, will the hydrocarbons decompose and the carbon crystallize into diamond? Dr. Dominik Kraus has tested this using the giant x-ray laser at the National Accelerator Laboratory, near Stanford University, California, to heat and squeeze polystyrene. Kraus' finding? Yup, it happens.

 

Kraus' paper is published in Nature Astronomy. (The Economist article suggests diamonds raining from the sky on ice giants, but really the process is happening deep in a mantle of super-compressed and super-heated methane etcetera, so it's not exactly "rain" or "sky.")

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

The Sep. 9 issue of The Economist has a nice little retrospective on the Cassini mission.

 

Dean Shomshak

[L. Marcus]

That was will be a good mission.

[DShomshak]

The Sep 16, 2017 issue of The Economist has an update on the New Horizons spacecraft. Next stop: Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, on New Year's Day, 2019!

 

Dean Shomshak

[L. Marcus]

MU, eh?

[DShomshak]

The Sep. 23 issue of The Economist has an article about a novel means of space propulsion (well, I'd never heard of it before): "Sailing" on the solar wind using a charged tether. (Different from solar sailing using light pressure.) The fellow who devised it suggests it could be a good way to send a fleet of small, relatively low-cost probes to investigate hundreds of asteroids in a single mission.

 

Dean Shomshak

[L. Marcus]

Sounds like a cheaper version of the plasma sail. Wasn't that in the 5E Star Hero?

[Cancer]

Another black hole merger event was detected by gravity-wave observatories last month, including VIRGO, in Europe, recently come on-line. The preliminary detection was announced a day or two ago. Three observatories allows for much better localization in space, as seen by this item in APOD.

[L. Marcus]

SpaceX and Boeing presents their revised Mars strategies today.

[DShomshak]

The October issue of Scientific American has an informative and very pretty retrospective on the Cassini mission. Also brief articles on planned tests for solar sails, legal questions around asteroid mining, and the possibility of finding bits of the very early Earth preserved on the Moon.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Christopher]

The October issue of Scientific American has an informative and very pretty retrospective on the Cassini mission. Also brief articles on planned tests for solar sails, legal questions around asteroid mining, and the possibility of finding bits of the very early Earth preserved on the Moon.

 

Dean Shomshak

So, if in fiction there is a war between Earth and the Moon and the earthguys say "you want a piece of me, boy?" the moonguys can say "we already have"?

[DShomshak]

Just heard on All Things Considered: The 2017 Nobel Prize for physics went to three scientists who we4re crucial for building LIGO and detection of gravity waves. It's quick recognition by Nobel standards, but well deserved!

 

Dean Shomshak

[Cancer]

The three recipients are all old enough that probably their prize needed to be awarded promptly lest they not receive one at all.

[Cancer]

Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea occulted an undistinguished star, but the observations allowed a tracing of parts of the object's elongated shape, and detected a ring system.

 

The results are behind the subscriber wall (here). Preliminary comments from that are already in the Wikipedia article for Haumea, but I expect more extensive comments will appear.

[DShomshak]

The BBC and All Things Considered reported today on the observation of two colliding neutron stars. The LIGO observatories registered the gravity waves; at the same time, a NASA satellite saw a flash of gamma rays in deep space. Astronomers quickly turned their telescopes to that part of the sky to study the exploding debris of the collision, more than 100 million light-years away. The NPR story has pictures.

 

EDIT: Here's the link: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/16/557557544/astronomers-strike-gravitational-gold-in-dolliding-neutron-stars.

 

Wow.

 

Dean Shomshak

[L. Marcus]

... And professor C. is having conniptions all over the boards.

[Cancer]

Yeah, see a couple of posts in NGD-land starting at http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/88780-in-other-news/?p=2617480

[Christopher]

The BBC and All Things Considered reported today on the observation of two colliding neutron stars. The LIGO observatories registered the gravity waves; at the same time, a NASA satellite saw a flash of light in deep space. Astronomers quickly turned their telescopes to that part of the sky to study the exploding debris of the collision, more than 100 million light-years away. The NPR story has pictures.

 

Wow.

 

Dean Shomshak

Wait, something here is not right:

Gravity waves are supposedly travelling instantly, not adhering to the light speed limit.

The event was 100 million lightyears away

So the time between us noticing the event via Gravity Observation and seeing anything with all our optical telescopes, should be literally 100 million years (+/- expansion of the universe).