Showing all posts about science
Add new Australian volcanic activity to the list of worries…
6 September 2024
As if climate change, and the increasingly unstable weather it will bring, isn’t enough to worry about, parts of Australia may see an increase in volcanic activity. Not in the immediate future, thankfully, but at some point nonetheless:
It is much less likely that a volcano that has already erupted will start again. It is a lot more likely a new volcano will form somewhere else. That is almost a given. It is going to happen. The follow-up question is when is this going to happen? It may be in 100 years, or 5,000 years. We don’t know. We need to have more information to answer that question.
I’m unsettled by this lack of certainty here… one-hundred years isn’t really much. Nor, for that matter, is five-thousand years, speaking in geological terms. Let’s hope these new volcanoes appear later rather than sooner, or ideally, not at all.
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Vacuum decay, one more existential threat to lose sleep over
22 August 2024
Tooth decay. Entropy. Heat death of the universe. These are things to worry about, and we’ve known about them for a long time. But recently scientists have identified something else to lose sleep over: vacuum decay:
Vacuum decay, a process that could end the universe as we know it, may happen 10,000 times sooner than expected. Fortunately, it still won’t happen for a very, very long time.
There’s a lot of theoretical physics (I think) involved, which is way over my head, so there’s not more I can say about vacuum decay. The good news however: vacuum decay will not bring about the end of the universe anytime soon.
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The physics of running and keeping fit on the Moon
8 July 2024
Rhett Allain, writing for Wired, looks at the physics of this important question.
If humanity is ever to establish bases on the Moon, ways of keeping occupants fit in the low lunar gravity need to be worked out. A wall of death sort of gizmo, that’s a little like a stationary hamster-wheel, but turned on its side, that emulates Earth-like levels of gravity, may be a solution. But there might be more effective alternatives.
But check out the article’s artist impression of a suited up astronaut “jogging” on the surface of the Moon. Straight up running in this way is a fanciful keep fit option unfortunately, as simple as the idea may at first seem. It’s too bad though, because what a sight it would be to behold: Earth floating in the lunar sky, as you ran.
I doubt Earth would be quite as big as depicted in Nzoka John’s image, but it still be quite the spectacle. And on the subject of what Earth might look like from the surface of the Moon, a gallery of images by American illustrator and writer Ron Miller, depicting how other planets in the solar system would appear from Earth, if they were as close as the Moon.
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art, astronomy, illustration, physics, science
Potentially habitable Earth size planet forty light years away
4 July 2024
That’s the good news. Tory Shepherd, writing for The Guardian, says the recently discovered exoplanet, dubbed Gliese 12b, might be able to host liquid water. We all know what that means. If there’s water, there may be life. Gliese 12b is so named because it orbits a star called Gliese. Now for the bad news. Gliese is a red dwarf.
I personally don’t have a problem with red dwarf, or M-type, stars. They’re actually kind of cool. And common. Up to seventy-five percent of stars in the cosmos are thought to be red dwarfs. The star nearest to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is a red dwarf. And while most stars in the universe have relatively short lifespans — for instance the Sun, which is about half way through its ten billion year life — red dwarfs live for trillions of years.
The last stars — as we currently understand them, at least — shining in the universe, will be red dwarfs. Go the red dwarfs. But, the problem is any planets orbiting in a red dwarf’s habitable-zone, will be tidally locked. That is, only one side of the planet will face its host star. That half of the planet therefore, in this case Gliese 12b, will be overly warm, while the other, dark side, will be rather cold.
This may not be particularly conducive to life. But some scientists have suggested life on planets orbiting red dwarfs in the habitable-zone, may take hold near the day-night terminator. This is where it will be neither too hot, nor too cold. But this would be an extremely narrow corridor, somewhat limiting the chances of life, especially intelligent life, developing.
Then there’s the red dwarfs themselves. They’re prone to regularly emitting intense radiation flares, which could have the effect of sterilising the surface of nearby planets. This points to the likelihood of Gliese 12b not being all that habitable at all. I think we need to reserve our excitement for the discovery of habitable Earth size planets, for maybe when they’re found orbiting other types of stars.
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Did the universe exist before the Big Bang? Maybe…
27 June 2024
What happened, or was there, before the Big Bang that is said to have brought the universe into being? Was there nothing, to which something came? It is the question of the ages.
In his recent documentary series, Universe, British physicist Brian Cox posits that the universe existed before the Big Bang. How long this pre Big Bang entity had been there, or its origins, remain unknown however. How fascinating these before-the-beginning sort of questions are.
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astronomy, philosophy, physics, science
The search for the distant Planet Nine continues
27 May 2024
Weird stuff is happening out on the remote boundary of the solar system. Beyond the orbit of Pluto. You name it, it’s going on out there. Irregularities. Anomalies. Clustering of apsidal lines. Perihelia. And — saving the best for last — a surprising prevalence of retrograde Centaurs.
These anomalies include the apparent clustering of apsidal lines of long-period trans-Neptunian object (TNO) orbits, the alignment of their orbital planes, the existence of objects with perihelia extending far beyond Neptune’s gravitational influence, the highly extended distribution of TNO inclinations, and the surprising prevalence of retrograde Centaurs. Collectively, these irregularities hint at the existence of a yet-undiscovered massive planet, tentatively named Planet Nine (P9), whose gravitational influence sculpts the outer reaches of trans-Neptunian space (Batygin et al., 2019).
But this is nothing new. Astronomers have been aware of this activity for some time.
Many postulate this weirdness points to the existence of an — as yet — undiscovered, large-ish planet, out beyond the known planets of the solar system. Some incredible distance out beyond the known planets. Planet Nine, if it exists, is thought to be orbiting the Sun at an approximate distance of twenty times that of Neptune to the Sun.
The gravitational influence of Planet Nine, combined with its extreme distance from the Sun, is enough to interfere with what would otherwise be predictable orbits of the numerous TNO objects, of which Pluto is one.
Planet Nine sort of comes along and displaces — sweeps aside, perhaps — these TNOs. While the presence of a larger planet therefore appears to be the logical explanation for the various irregularities and anomalies witnessed in the outer solar system, scientists are yet to clap eyes the elusive body. Or even calculate its position mathematically, for that matter.
If Planet Nine is found, here’s hoping one of Earth’s space agencies dispatches a probe pronto to go and take a good look at it.
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Build bases on the Moon, instead of going for a week
24 May 2024
NASA is dead set keen to return to the Moon. But their current plan, called Artemis, is dead set crazy, writes Polish-American entrepreneur and writer, Maciej Cegłowski:
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to wonder what’s going on here. If we can put a man on the moon, then why can’t we just go do it again? The moon hasn’t changed since the 1960’s, while every technology we used to get there has seen staggering advances. It took NASA eight years to go from nothing to a moon landing at the dawn of the Space Age. But today, twenty years and $93 billion after the space agency announced our return to the moon, the goal seems as far out of reach as ever.
I only know what I know about NASA’s proposed Artemis crewed flights to the Moon, from the occasional glance at headlines on the subject. Needless to say, that knowledge isn’t much to write home about. That’s because the prospect doesn’t really excite me. Artemis seems like little more than a re-run of the Apollo flights of over fifty years ago.
If we’re to return to the Moon again, I’ve always thought it should be more permanently, and on a grander scale. As in bases on (or under) the lunar surface. Sending a couple of flights back there for a week’s stay, seems pointless. On top of that, the cost of doing so today has ballooned. But why? Is no one stopping to think about this?
If humanity is ever to progress, yeah, hmm, we need to set ourselves some pretty ambitious goals. But we need to think a bit bigger. Re-hashing the Apollo missions isn’t thinking big. Combatting climate, disease, and poverty, for instance, make for better goals. After that, what about reaching for stars, literally. Not just the nearest celestial body to Earth.
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Everything good and bad, but mostly very bad, about smoking
10 May 2024
A Screen cap of Kurzgesagt’s Smoking is Awesome YouTube video.
This month Kurzgesagt takes on smoking. If you’re a non-smoker, this may help you understand why people like to have a puff:
Smoking helps you focus at work and is an excuse to take regular breaks, which is good for you mentally. It’s a tool against boredom, it suppresses your appetite, it makes bad moments feel less bad and good moments better. It’s social, fun together and a good way to make friends as smokers always group up. Your lips are one of the most sensitive parts of your body and putting something between them is deeply satisfying.
But smoking is a double-edged sword; the longer you partake, the greater your risk of suffering from heart disease, cancers, and all sorts of other maladies.
This should be a classroom educational resource.
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education, health, science, video
Extraterrestrials may arrive in 500 years, but not in flying saucers
30 April 2024
In the late 1960’s, former United States President Jimmy Carter, reported seeing an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO). Today unexplained objects, or phenomena, seen in the skies, are referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (UAP). Carter, however, was not expecting to participate in any historic close encounter of the third kind:
While puzzled by the object and its origins, Carter himself later said that, while he had considered the object to be a UFO — on the grounds it was unexplained — his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft.
Some people may be unhappy that Carter allowed physics to get in the way of a good story. Because wouldn’t it be great if we could whiz about the galaxy in a vessel the size of the average suburban house, which every other intelligence in the galactic neighbourhood seems capable of, except us.
House-size flying saucers defy the laws of physics, because, you know, their builders seemingly are able to defy the laws of physics. It would however be awesome to zap back and forth to say the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in a house-size vessel that could travel (presumably/somehow) faster than the speed of light. At least I’m not breaking the laws of dreaming there.
But if close-to-light-speed interstellar travel, together with the possibly of extraterrestrials visiting Earth (from the far side of the Milky Way, no less) intrigues you, read this Twitter/X post, by American physicist Casey Handmer. Visitors from civilisations, from maybe fifty thousand light years across the galaxy, may be mere centuries away from reaching our solar system:
Let’s say that any civilization that can figure out interstellar travel can develop from slow to 99% of the speed of light in 500 years, and they’re coming from the other side of the galaxy — 50,000 years ago. By the time the light of their first (presumably highly energetic, fireworksy) relativistic travel reaches us, they’re already 99% of the way here – just 500 years to roll out the welcome mat.
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The maybe immortal photon, the key to everlasting life?
25 April 2024
Light may have an infinite lifetime. Who’d have thought? Even after the eventual, possible, heat death of the universe, photons may live on as beacons of light in an impossibly dark cosmos… maybe:
One such candidate for a truly stable entity is the photon: the quantum of light. All of the electromagnetic radiation that exists in the Universe is made up of photons, and photons, as far as we can tell, have an infinite lifetime. Does that mean that light will truly live forever?
Sounds like life everlasting to me. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? If we could, somehow, infuse our consciousness, our living essence, into photons, could we — to lift a line from the Space Odyssey novels written by Arthur C. Clarke — preserve our “thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light?”
If so, we could then dispense with the botox regimens, followed by cryonics. This is an idea totally worth looking into.
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