Tag Archives: Outer Space

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Dusty Old Dust

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The latest Ken Burns documentary project is about the Dust Bowl in the central plains in the 1930’s.

The four hour series debuted last night and will conclude tonight on PBS stations. Here in the Twin Cities the first two hours debuted at 7 last night and were repeated at 9pm, and on Monday at 1am and 3am. Like the dust storms themselves, the series fills the air and just keeps coming – it completely engulfs you.

I’ve recorded it and plan to watch when there’s sufficient time – probably sometime in 2013. But My understanding is that one of the major points of the series is that the Dust Bowl was an environmental disaster that was largely man-made.

For this project, Burns was fortunate to find dust bowl survivors who could tell their stories in front of the camera. He couldn’t do that with the long-dead eyewitnesses of The Civil War. And for the Dust Bowl he had the advantage of great archival photos and movies from the time, along with a sound track by none other than Woody Guthrie.

Here’s more on the series.

Meanwhile, the Mars Curiosity rover reports “feeling” dust devils pass by as it sits in Gale Crater. Maybe the Martian terrain is an example of what might have happened to Oklahoma if the government hadn’t intervened and the drought hadn’t ended.

Will Curiosity’s next shovel load of soil uncover some Martian troubadour’s ode to the Okies of Gale Crater?

What’s the most severe environmental calamity you’ve witnessed?
(Natural or Man-Made)

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Lonely Planet

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Astronomers have apparently found a planet that is unaligned.

It’s not orbiting a star, and does not have a specified path or a romantic name. It doesn’t need one! There is no one to impress when one is a totally free agent.

But still, it would be nice if someone would write you a silly little poem.

Oh CFBDSIR2149,
A planet apart who’ll turn out to be fine.
While the rest, all be-clumped, blindly follow a star,
You quite independently stay who you are.
While they spin in circles, repeatedly seen
You’re prowling the spaces located between.
Untethered you float. Far from starlight so golden
You’re iconoclastic and much less beholden
than Venus are Mercury are to the Sun.
They are bound to a system. But you … are just one.
All alone in the cosmos – no rules, no agenda.
No massive, controlling companion to friend ya.
Keep yourself to your self. Don’t let others absorb it.
And never get pulled into some silly orbit.

When have you blazed your own trail?

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Where is Superman?

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We all hope the damage to people and property from Hurricane Sandy will be less catastrophic than the advance billing. Daylight today will tell a large part of the story.

photo by Jonathan Wald via twitter

One of the most dramatic storm related developments late yesterday was the partial collapse of a construction crane atop a high rise building just south of Central Park. Footage showed the crane hanging precariously as winds picked up. Authorities evacuated the surrounding area as a precaution, afraid the crane might fall.

This is all we can do. Conditions are too severe to attempt to secure the massive structure. Safely lowering it to the ground in the midst of a hurricane is impossible. Danger is imminent. We are helpless to do anything but watch.

This is exactly the scenario I read about time and again in the comic books of my youth. And always in the next panel, one of the streetbound gawkers would say … “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane …”

Yes, this situation is classic Superman-bait. I daresay if he were real, Clark Kent would not be able to resist this one. The only thing that would make it more attractive to him would be if Lois Lane had climbed up there to take a picture of the calamity, and had somehow managed to get tangled up in a free-swinging cable whipping in the 80 mph wind.

And while we’re looking up for help, how about that Kentucky UFO? Or the very similar-looking cylindrical UFO that supposedly flew into an active volcano?

Could we be having a monster hurricane, Halloween, a global alien invasion AND an election all at once? Not likely in the real world perhaps. But in the comic books this is just an ordinary day.

Why hasn’t Superman appeared?

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Found Objects

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No need to get overly excited, but the Mars Science Laboratory has uncovered something shiny and bright in the red Martian sand.

No doubt we’ll get many guesses and lots of speculation on this. Public interest will be whipped to a frenzy and Geraldo Rivera may be calling Space-X right now to see how soon they can get him on an outbound rocket. This find presents a marketable mystery on the same scale as Al Capone’s Vaults.

What IS that thing? NASA has determined the object is of Martian origin and not something that just fell off the rover. But … what?

My guess? Donald Trump’s cufflink.
Not of Martian origin? Think again!

Before they ruin our fun with science, identify the strange shiny object in the Martian dust!

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Black Hole NASCAR

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Yesterday we considered Felix Baumgartner and his strange, dysfunctional relationship with gravity, constantly challenging it to mess him up and regularly escaping from its clutches without injury.

Baumgartner’s latest attempt to give himself over to gravity and live to tell the tale is expected to happen this morning.

Meanwhile, in other gravitational news, we discover that the center of our Milky Way galaxy is dominated by a supermassive black hole which is pulling everything inward. The thing is so incredibly dense, when stars get too close even their light can’t escape.

Talk about dysfunction! Who could survive a relationship so completely confining?

That there is a Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way is an idea that has been supported by the research of UCLA scientist Andrea Ghez, who just last week identified a new star racing around the center at a breakneck pace.

This star, called SO-102, goes around the black hole once every 11 years. By comparison, our own sun also orbits the black hole – every 200 million years. Clearly this newly discovered star is a speedster, leaving us in the dust and going considerably faster than the next quickest orbiter, a star called SO-2 which makes the trip once every 16 years.

By watching these two stars, Ghez will be able to learn quite a bit about the characteristics about that massive invisible thing in the center of our galaxy – kind of like going to a NASCAR race and deducing everything about what’s happening in the infield by the speed and trajectory of the cars barreling by.

But ultimately, all this racing around in space ends the same way things wound up in Talladega two days ago.

Are you a good driver?

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Colorful Neighbors

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The sudden drop in temperature and uptick in wind speed around the Twin Cities area means this golden colored maple tree right outside our living room window is about to lose all its festive autumn plumage. Too bad, that. On recent gray afternoons, it has kept some cheerful brightness going – very nearly a compact, backyard version of the Sun with it’s ability to bring some welcome energy into the house.

I’m guessing within a few days we’ll have nothing but bare sticks outside the window.

Still, there’s some compensation for the emptiness of the winter months in all the raucous color we’re getting today. In much in the same way, the Real Sun will someday (5 billion years) burn up all its hydrogen and turn into a colorful dying thing very much like the creepy cat-like space eyeball photographed this week by NASA. This image represents what remains of a star very much like our own, after the thrill is gone. It’s a troubling cosmic routine with a brilliant conclusion. Too bad we won’t be able to appreciate it fully.

Cheerful thoughts, eh? Sounds like somebody’s been feeling the weight of years on his birthday! But all of this full-of-life to bleak-landscape change is entirely predictable and impossible to stop, so why not quit moping and enjoy the show while it’s still going on?

Where do you go to enjoy fall color?

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Down By The Old Mars Stream

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Mars is turning out to be warmer than expected, and we are finding even more evidence that water once flowed there.

What a lovely spot for a picnic!
Image NASA

But clearly things have changed since those good old days on the red planet. While at least one of our famous Earthly waterways is showing a positive trend, quality-wise, the Martian brook that Curiosity rolled over this week has clearly seen better days. The question of whether there was life there at one time remains unanswered for now, though I think we all can see where this is headed. We may never have the chance to waste an afternoon lounging in a peaceful dew-freshened glade alongside a Martian brook.

But I still feel a little nostalgic.

My darling I am dreaming of a distant sky,
A place where we were sweethearts that has since gone dry;
The ground is red and rocky now, the air is thinner too.
But still I will remember, where I first met you.

Down by the old Mars stream where the microbes grew,
There was algae too, in that watery stew.
What a different hue, was our Martian goo.
We made a scene. It was pea green! Down by the old Mars stream.

What is your favorite, most romantic waterway?

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Cover Girl

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey Mr. C.,

What do you know about Saturn?

I have to do a report on it. It’s, like, my most favorite planet, but that doesn’t mean I know anything about it. It’s just, y’know. Beautiful.

Kinda like Angie, who is a volleyball star here at Wilkie and who makes me think of a giraffe, but pretty. I’m kinda sure I love her even though I don’t actually know if she’s nice or not. I’ve never had the chance (courage) to talk to her directly. Her friends say she’s really down-to-earth but they’re her friends, what do you expect? It would be worth telling a lie to stay close to Angie. Although why would they would think they had to lie to me about her being nice in order to stay friends with her? Maybe Angie does like me after all if she’s telling her peeps to lie to impress me!

If she even knows who I am, which I’m pretty sure she doesn’t.

I”m kind of all over the place with my thinking right now.

Anyway, Saturn. What is there to say about it other than, “Wow, is that a gorgeous planet, or what?” I hear it’s kind of cold and gaseous, which wouldn’t be very nice qualities in a person. But get a load of this picture!

How can you not be impressed with that? Of course, that’s how Saturn looks from 1.3 million miles away. I’ll bet if you were kissable close it wouldn’t be nearly as nice. I’d like to try, though. But there are so many moons! Lots of competition, just getting into an orbit. You’d probably feel like a chump. Do you think those rings are real? I don’t see how anything could be so perfect.

Anyway, time for bed. Let me know if you’ve got any advice for my report on Angie.

Saturn, I mean.

Your friend,
Bubby

Who was your first crush?

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Space Sugar!

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Yes, another blog post that is sugar-centric!

On the heels of Beth-Ann’s Ice Cream conquest at the Minnesota State Fair, scientists now say they have found sugar in space. Another cold and sweet curiosity, just out of reach. Or to be more exact, 400 light years out of reach, in the gas surrounding a young star called IRAS 16293-2422. I’ll admit it didn’t top my list of potential destinations before today, but now humans have a good reason to go there.

Yes, of course we already have sugar here. Plenty of it.

But sugar from space! That’s special.

And anything that’s desirable AND special will draw a crowd with ready money – funds set aside by the wealthy for the purpose of distinguishing themselves from ordinary folks. That’s how we got Audis and Rolexes.

And being able to say you top your cereal with Space Sugar – that’s the sort of thing James J. Hill could build an empire on!

The one mystery that remains – where did the galactic sugar come from?

When have you gone out of your way for something sweet?

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Lost In Space

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It’s a shame that we lost Neil Armstrong over the weekend, but I’m grateful that he was the one chosen to be the first to set foot on the moon. Imagine if, instead of the quiet, private Armstrong, a shameless braggart like Donald Trump had been first off the LEM. There’d have been no tranquility at Tranquility Base. Or should I say Trump Crater?

But Trump wouldn’t have had the patience to do the necessary training, nor the calm judgement to properly command that mission – “Aldrin, you’re fired! I mean, help us blast off here and get back to Earth, but then … you’re fired!” And of course the famous first quote would have been quite different.

“That’s one small step for man, but one giant leap for me, Donald Trump! No one else can ever be the first man on the moon. I Win! I’ll buy and sell hotels and casinos and make and lose fortunes, but this, I will own forever, and you’ll never stop hearing me talk about it!”

Neil Armstrong’s self portrait on the Moon, 1969.
Image courtesy of NASA

But then the statement we heard from Neil Armstrong was not exactly what he meant to say. Of all the gloves, nuts and bolts and bits of debris and flotsam that Americans have left in space in the course of our efforts to reach the moon, the particular item that interests me most is Neil Armstrong’s dropped “a”. When he stepped off the LEM an on to the moon’s dusty surface, people all around the world heard him say “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Later, Armstrong would insist that he actually said “That’s one small step for A man, one giant leap for mankind.” He acknowledged when listening to recordings made of his first moments on the moon that he didn’t hear the “a”, but confirmed that he said it. Or at least that he intended to say it.

I believe him, because adding an “a” before “man” is the only way his historic statement can make sense. Without it, he and mankind are essentially the same. And it suits this humble fellow that he would want to make a point of it – he is simply A man taking a step. The lasting achievement belongs to everyone.

Analysts have suggested the technology of the time may not have been good enough to capture a sound (35 milliseconds!) as brief as that singular “a”, but I prefer to believe that Armstrong’s indefinite article bounced off Earth’s invisible humility filter, and it is still drifting in space.

On a clear night you can still see it up there, tumbling.

Vowel fly, vowel high,
first vowel stuck in the sky.

Armstrongs ‘A’- his noble try
to let us know he’s just a guy

When have you had a crucial part of an important message lost in transmission?