Discovering the previously impossible...

ANTI-MATTER! (read more)

It's finally been contained! We all know that CERN has been working super hard with their LHC recently in order to discover many things... one of which was trying to create the moment of "creation'' in a lab setting, hoping to discover the secrets of anti-matter: one of the great, infuriating mysteries of current science. What is it? Are it's properties different than the matter we know of? Do different laws of physics apply to it? Can it tell us about the origin of the universe? Might it shed light on M Theory, or ideas of parallel universes? Multiverses?

Who knows, for the moment. The good news, then?

Scientists at CERN have successfully created and captured 38 stable atoms of antihydrogen which persisted for 1/5 of a second each. That may not sound like a lot, but in the world of particle mechanics and quantum physics... that is an extremely successful length of time!

Congrats CERN! I feel like most of you folks working there would like to scream at the rest of the world "See?! No black hole. We told you."

Dearest Titan; do you live?

Titan has long-since been toted as one of the favorite spots for astrobiologists and astronomers alike who are searching for extraterrestrial life forms.

Although it is much, much too cold to harbor the kind of life we have on Earth, recent developments have indicated that life may be possible. Titan is covered in hydrocarbon lakes, and one biologist thinks she has deciphered a way in which life may be flourishing on the surface of the questionable satellite.

Heather Smith of Strasbourg, France, has hypothesized that extraterrestrial biota could live on Titan by ingesting acetylene and breathing in hydrogen gas, giving off the product of methane.

More good news: although it may not be proof of life on Titan, there is a lack of Hydrogen on the surface... indicating that something (or someone! haha) may very well be consuming it.

Hmmm... thoughts, anyone?

Whyyyy astronomy?!

Yesterday, one of my friends told me they didn't understand the point of my taking Astro.

Naturally, I was irate, and I responded "How can you look at the night sky, and just feel comfortable not knowing as much as you can about it? From down here, it looks like a ceiling with pretty little specks scattered across it... but it's truly 14 billion light years of depth that you can't even begin to understand until you study it a little. I thought I knew stuff, but clearly... I didn't know enough."

In an ideal world, everyone would know a little astronomy. After all, what could be more humbling?

And uhhh, just in case anyone needed more proof, or just a moment to feel good... let's not forget the classic. ;)

The Katrina of Space

In 2013, the next solar cycle is expected by NASA to peak [read more]. There has been some debate over the past few years as to whether or not this storm will be critically intense, or lackluster (much to our luck!).

Solar storms have the capacity to cripple power grids, destroy electrons, and shatter the intricate system of cross-planet communication we have set up, via the use of satellites. It is for this reason that astronomers and their governments across the world believe it is imperative to obtain a level of general cohesion between countries and have formed an international committee to monitor solar weather conditions.

(Diagram courtesy of NASA, depicting solar material circulation patterns) 

At this point in our technological advances, a large and severe solar storm would yield particularly catastrophic effects on the human species. Having built our entire habitat and niche from electronic technology, we have placed ourselves in an extremely vulnerable position. Medical care, in particular, is at risk.

The question is: when is the appropriate time to prepare? Who should lead this effort?
The answer, in my mind, is a question itself: if not now, then when?  If not us, then who? This is not the appropriate time for us to sit and ponder who is responsible.
We're all human. We're all affected. We need to get the ball rolling much faster than it is...

Twinkle, twinkle, ancient star... how we wonder when you came...

According to Science Daily [here], astronomers are just now utilizing the power of the Spitzer telescope to uncover some fascinating facts about the universe.

Using the telescope and removing light from common, and close objects ... astronomers believe they have peered to the very brinks of the universe, seeing 13.7 years away... or into the past. They light that they are seeing at the edges of our universe is believed to originate from the very earliest objects in the universe: early stars, planets, and the subsequent events that eventually follow, such as impact and super novas.

These objects are the first objects that shed light into the darkened, hot, universe following the Big Bang, which are believed to have arisen several hundred  million years after the origin of the universe, 13.7 billion years ago.

Wow! To see so far into the history of our makings... the ancients would be so jealous!

"Einstein's equation... is only one inch long."

Consistently, at university, I find myself up against an awkward wall. I am an arts student, majoring in Psychology and minoring (for now, anyways) in Biology. Throughout the course of my career at MTA so far,  I have dabbled in English, history, chemistry, biology, religious studies, sociology, astronomy, and much more.

The awkward wall I find myself up against is the (artificial) sharp divide between the arts and sciences. The sharp divide between the atheistic and the spiritual. The sharp divide between belief among those who can, and then... scientists. So many of my science student colleagues leave no time to consider spirituality, and so many of my arts colleagues leave no time to consider science.

My question then, of course, as the awkward middle-man, is "Why do you have to do that? Why do you have to be that way?!" When one looks out at the sky, and studies the stars and the planets... why do you have to be so cold? In my experience, I spent my entire life as a starkly atheistic person: there was no room for even a single moment of spiritual discussion. Religious studies classes made me hate the idea more, and I turned it off completely.

Astronomy, however, created the feeling of comfort I would expect a Christian feels, as they walk into church. Sitting in an observatory, eyes trained on the moons of Jupiter, is, for me... reading the Bible. To run my eye across the sky and view the specs of star stuff that glisten on what we see as a void... is to understand the code of creation. To imagine that things in our universe turned out so elegantly, when they could've turned out so preposterous and messy... to know that the Big Bang created laws of physics that make things possible and wonderful (as oppose to sloppy and lifeless), is where I go for solace.

I feel bad for the people who simply don't get that science is not a limiting agent in our appreciation of the world. It is an exponential curve of understanding the finer details of what science-phobes consider to be "just what is". To look at everything around me in the universe... to see the stars, the planets... and to take them for granted? To not understand?

Blasphemy.

Of course, Michio Kaku says it better. :) HERE

Michio Kaku: The "intellectual crush" of many...

Michio Kaku is the reason I first became interested in science on the astronomical level. On the particle level. In the solar system. In physics. In quantum theory.

He is a genius, and much like his colleague, Stephen Hawking, Kaku has made astrophysics and quantum physics massively available to the general populace. He speaks in a simple and straight-forward way: in his career, he is interested in finding "The Theory Of Everything" ... picking up where Einstein left off, trying to flesh out his largest dream --- the God Equation. As a pioneer of String Theory, he has more than already done his part to push the brinks of this field of study, providing explanations for things that the Theory of Relativity doesn't, or finding new ways of looking at them.

"When I was a child of 8, my elementary school teacher came in the room and announced that a great scientist had just died. And on the evening news that night, everyone was flashing pictures of his desk ... with the unfinished manuscript of his greatest work. I wanted to know: what was in that manuscript? Years later, I found out that it was the attempt of Albert Einstein to create a theory of everything. A theory of the universe... and I wanted to be part of that quest." - M. Kaku

 In her personal life, however, Kaku has made his goal to expand the sciences of the quantum, physical, and astronomical words to the general public. Through books that explain things simply and directly, T.V shows that make sense to even the most unscientific among us, and even youtube interviews... Michio Kaku has never devalued the importance of expanding general knowledge of the world around us.

I found it important to pay tribute to his hard work here, and thank him for the inspiration he continually provides to everyone who reads or watches his work.

Although we do not cover massive theories such as String Theory, etc., in Solar System Astronomy... sometimes it is important to remind ourselves that even studying something as large and expansive of the Solar System is still infinitely small compared to the larger worlds we are trying to understand on a daily basis. 

Thanks, Dr. Kaku. :)

Milky Way; great real-estate now, but our neighbours were rowdy, 6 billion years ago!

Our local group is dominated by two galaxies, the Milky Way (our own) and the Andromeda Galaxy. Outside Andromeda are the smaller galaxies, the Large Magellanic Clouds and the Smaller Magellanic Clouds. Astronomers have long since pondered how these smaller galaxies came to neighbor Andromeda, and nearly always theorized that these three galaxies came from the collision of two larger galaxies.

Exciting news is coming out of Paris, however, as Francois Hamme and his team have been able to (for the first time!) model the creation of these bodies successfully. They were able to account for nearly all of the stranger features of Andromeda that make it unique, suggesting that their model isn't a generic one, and it fits the bill for this situation perfectly.


The implications of this discovery are vast. This collision would have been the most important event in the history of our local group: the information we can glean from these finding are immense. It is is possible now to calculate the direction of baryonic matter (gas, etc) that would have escaped the collision. We see Andromeda at inclination 77* ... which suggests that we see it nearly directly side-on, also suggesting that much of that matter would have made its way in the general direction of the Milky Way!

See the article [here]

Just to get an idea of how fascinating our beautiful neighbour is, also, check out this video on youtube that shows her off in just 3 minutes.

Eyes like a HAWK-I

In Chile, The European Southern Observatory's VLT (Very Large Telescope) has recently benefited from the fitting of a new camera, HAWK-I. This new camera will make the observable universe that much easier for astronomers trying to get a clear view of the night sky.

Specifically, HAWK-I's camera is an infrared camera that is now replacing the ISAAC camera, which was ESO's go-to for infrared imaging. Comparatively, HAWK-I has 16 times (!!) the megapixels of ISAAC, and utilizes newer technologies that allow it to filter out dust and gas much more efficiently. As any astronomer knows, dust and gas can obscure much of what they wish to see, and so a hypersensitive camera is great news for the community.

One application of ESO's new camera currently being explored is the improved observation of distant spiral galaxies. The arms of spiral galaxies contain vast amounts of dust and gas, and thus, the ability to filter out these obstructions with HAWK-I allows us to view stars (without noise and interference) more clearly and thereby conduct better research into the makings of these galaxies and what drives the creation of their perfect, spiral arms.

Read more [here], and make sure to check out the beautiful images below of spiral galaxies that were captured by Preben Grosbol et. al., using HAWK-I's fantastic new technology. Oh, and click to enlarge them! Small size just really doesn't do them much justice. 

Until next time,

Shawn

A morning filled with 400 billion suns...

"The sky calls to us: if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars. A still more glorious dawn awaits - not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise; a morning filled with 400 billion suns... the rising of the milky way." - Carl Sagan

The purpose of this blog is to meet the requirements of my Astronomy course at MTA... however, I can't help but feel that I'm going to enjoy this assignment more than just simply feeling compelled to blindly do work I don't like. The stars and their homes are a fascinating subject: every atom in our bodies was baked inside a star... how can that not be something worth studying and getting excited about? Astronomy and all of its coinciding fields are the next frontier: this is the science that stands the test of time. Continually, the more we learn about space, time and all of its intertwining factors... the closer we are to understanding ourselves better - aesthetically, philosophically, evolutionarily... you name it. 

As a beginning post, I'd like to start off with drawing attention to this article I read in www.sciencedaily.com, as seen [here]. The article talks about images snapped by the Hubble in 2005, and 2010. The images were meshed together to produce a composite view of the Carina Nebula. 

Stars inside and around the the nebula are shaping the huge clouds of frozen hydrogen and dust (pictured above), stretching their structures into massive columns and swathes. These pillars of dust are over a lightyear in height. As the columns are stretched and pushed into more dense portions, astronomers suspect that new stars may be beginning to form in their midst.

More universe updates soon! :)