Showing all posts tagged: science
A patch for computer software one light-day away on Voyager 1
25 March 2024
One of the computers on NASA’s deep space probe Voyager 1 is experiencing some sort of malfunction, with recent signals from the probe containing no usable data. Mission engineers are apparently confident the problem can be resolved, even though Voyager 1 is almost a light-day distant, meaning it’ll take time to apply a fix:
Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s response to reach antennas on the ground. So the team received the results of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers began working to decode the data, and on March 10, they determined that it contains a memory readout.
Although Voyager 1, and deep space counterpart Voyager 2, have left the solar system and are in interstellar space, it is estimated it will take Voyager 1 another three hundred years to reach the Oort cloud. The vastly scattered debris, rocky remnants of the formation of the solar system, that constitutes the Oort cloud, may extend more than two light years from the Sun. That’s about half way to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.
So to be truly beyond the solar system, I imagine the Voyager probes will need to clear the Oort cloud first. We might be waiting sometime for that to happen. It’s incredible the way mission controllers can keep tabs on deep space missions though, and trouble shoot, and perhaps remedy problems, despite their distance from the Sun.
About twenty years ago, scientists were puzzled by changes in the trajectories of deep space probes Pioneers 10 and 11. Somehow both craft, then located in the Kuiper belt, which is situated beyond the orbit of Neptune, appeared to have slowed down slightly. All sorts of theories were advanced to account for the anomaly, including the idea that gravity may be behaving in ways not seen before.
After analysing gargantuan quantities of data, mission engineers determined that heat loss was having a subtle influence on the movements of the probes, in that it was acting a little like a brake. Contact with both vessels had been lost by that stage, so even if a fix could have been devised, it unfortunately could not have been applied.
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astronomy, science, technology
To go where no one has gone before, the limit of the universe
22 March 2024
German animation and design studio Kurzgesagt have been producing excellent informative and educational videos for what seems like half the lifespan of the universe. Let’s hope Peak-Kurzgesagt is a situation that never comes to pass.
Their latest video, the Paradox of an Infinite Universe, covers some heady ground; the concept of a physical edge, or boundary, to the universe. If we could somehow reach such a region, could we press our hand against it, as we can a garden wall? Hmm…
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The time may be now for you, but not someone else
31 January 2024
Well, here we are, the first month of 2024 is at an end. Time is certainly passing by. Or is it? Does time even really exist? In their latest video, Kurzgesagt takes a closer at the idea of time. Spoiler: time may not quite be what you think…
When you move through space, you are also moving through the block. This means time passes differently for different people, depending on how they move through space relative to each other. And this also means that what someone perceives as “now” is a certain cut along the block — a cut that will depend on how fast they are moving. So what you think is “now” is really only your now — there are many different “nows” in the universe and all of them are equally real. This also means there is no universal past or future.
This is heavy…
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Noctalgia: when you miss seeing the light polluted night sky
25 September 2023
Noctalgia is the recently minted neologism for the phenomenon of missing dark skies at night. Noctalgia is something astronomers could tell you about. Dark, light pollution free, skies are essential for their work, but they’re not so commonplace anymore. And here we have a dilemma.
The source of this light pollution is the night lighting that keeps us safe and secure. But light pollution does not only originate from the surface of the planet. The growing number of satellites in Earth orbit, of which we likewise greatly depend, is also adding to the problem for astronomers:
More recently, the explosive growth in satellite communication “constellations,” like SpaceX’s Starlink system, has put orders of magnitude more satellites into orbit than even a decade ago, with even more on the way. Those satellites don’t just spoil deep-space astronomical observations when they cross a telescope’s field of view; they also scatter and reflect sunlight from their solar arrays. The abundance of satellites is causing the overall brightness of the sky to increase all around the globe.
Maybe noctalgia can be added to the list of contender words when dictionaries next update their lexicons, if that hasn’t already happened.
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The solar system has another planet, but where is it hiding?
20 September 2023
Astronomers are convinced the solar system hosts another planet, often dubbed Planet Nine, or Planet X, but are unable to agree on its size and mass, nor its location.
A few years ago speculation was rife a Neptune size body was orbiting the Sun well beyond Pluto, taking between ten to twenty thousand years to make a circuit. While mathematical evidence suggested the existence of the planet, observations turned up nothing.
Now astronomers think a planet similar in size to Earth may be lurking in the far reaches of the solar system, though nowhere as far out as the supposed Neptune size body:
According to planetary scientists Patryk Sofia Lykawka of Kindai University in Japan and Takashi Ito of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, this world, frozen and dark so far from the Sun, would be no greater than 3 times the mass of Earth, and no farther than 500 astronomical units from the Sun.
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Reality is an illusion, we are the dream of a dead universe
14 September 2023
The latest Kurzgesagt video may — like a number of their recent offerings — still have an end of days theme, but at least the subject matter is a little more fanciful. Even if we’re talking about the eventual heat death of the universe, or as Kurzgesagt posits, the already happened heat death of the universe.
Bizarre right? But our (apparent) existence may in fact be a random manifestation of a dark, cold, universe. The night sky, the awesome images of the James Webb Space Telescope, and everything else that we seem to perceive and experience, is but a figment of our imagination. Life, the universe, and everything. It might as well be the name of science fiction book.
I guess then it was a waste of time booking a table at the restaurant at the end of the universe, being the title of late British author Douglas Adams’ 1980 novel. It would seem that event’s been and gone.
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How a nuclear war will start according to Kurzgesagt
26 August 2023
It’s alarming how close the world has come to nuclear conflict in the past, and on several occasions leaders with nuclear arsenals at their disposal have had their finger poised on the proverbial button. In just about every instance though, the threat of a nuclear exchange has been the result of a misunderstanding or miscommunication between nuclear armed nations.
But if one nuclear armed nation — for whatever reason — launches a strike on another, the target country has mere minutes to respond, as Kurzgesagt eloquently illustrates, in their latest video, How A Nuclear War Will Start. Doom and gloom sells I know, but Kurzgesagt have been on quite the gloomy doom-roll for a while now.
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You and the Universe, a new book by Stephen Hawking for children
8 August 2023
A children’s book titled You and the Universe, written by late British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, will be published in March 2024:
The new book is based upon a 2018 partnership Hawking’s family had with the European Space Agency, along with the Greek composer Vangelis (“Blade Runner”, “Chariots of Fire”, “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage”.) The message used words adapted from Hawking’s book for adults, “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” (Bantam, 2018), set to music by Vangelis.
The book is co-written by Hawking’s daughter, Lucy, and illustrated by Li Xin. You and the Universe asks readers to imagine themselves as time travellers heading towards the future, and to work together to ensure the future will be a place free of the ravages of climate change.
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books, climate change, science, Stephen Hawking
The workings of the universe are my spirit animal
29 July 2023
The best way to understand the universe — to whatever extent that is possible — may be to see the cosmos as an animal. A fascinating, yet somewhat unpredictable animal, says Andrew Pontzen, a professor of cosmology at University College London, writing for The Guardian:
It once seemed that, for all its immensity, the cosmos could be understood through the application of a small number of rigid physical laws. Newton encapsulated this idea, showing how apples falling from trees and planetary orbits around our sun arise from the same force, gravity.
J. B. S. Haldane, a Scottish mathematical biologist, said it best, in an essay he wrote almost one-hundred years ago, in 1927, titled Possible Worlds: “Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” Words of wisdom, them.
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Albert Einstein, special relativity, and an afterlife: this is heavy
22 July 2023
Image courtesy of Lumina Obscura.
Is your dead grandmother… still alive? The answer is…
… yes…
… in a sense.
That’s if information in the cosmos is never destroyed, but rather… rearranged. In this case the information I refer to are the atoms, sub-atomic particles, and who knows what else, that make up everything in the universe, including us, and our predeceased family members.
Interaction with this information, which over eons diffuses into the cosmos after our deaths, may then be possible if cosmic consciousnesses, being ours — somehow — come into being one day, and are able to envelope the universe, and eventually encounter your late grandmother’s information.
This is the understanding I took away from this Big Think video featuring German theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, which I saw on Open Culture. Best you watch for yourself though, and see what you make of it, as matters of maths and physics are not my thing. Otherwise, some fodder for a little contemplative thinking this weekend, perhaps?
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