Ian O'Neill

Historic Asteroid 2008 TC3 Hits Earth as Predicted

Predicted region of atmospheric impact according to infrasound observations (Peter Brown, University of Western Ontario)

2008 TC3 wasn’t a particularly interesting asteroid. It wasn’t very big (only 1-5 metres wide) and it didn’t really stand out as being special (if it was special, we didn’t have any time to realise it anyway). If 2008 TC3 was in a crowd of other asteroids you wouldn’t have picked it out. In fact, it was that “normal” that it wasn’t named, it just kept its original asteroid designation number. 2008 TC3 was an ordinary piece of space rock in an extraordinary situation.

This was the first ever asteroid that astronomers were able to track and predict (with high precision) where and when it was going to hit Earth. Sure enough, astronomers using the Mt. Lemmon telescope in Arizona as part of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey for near-Earth objects discovered 2008 TC3 before it hit Earth, enabling us to be forewarned a whole six hours before impact. If the object was any larger, astronomers will have (for the first time) been able to warn people on the surface, thus saving lives.

In fact, asteroid 2008 TC3 is so special that I’m going to give it an unofficial name: Asteroid Brian*.
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No Naked Singularity After Black Hole Collision

Black holes cannot be naked... the event horizon will always be there to cover them up...

You can manipulate a black hole as much as you like but you’ll never get rid of its event horizon, a new study suggests. This may sound a little odd, the event horizon is what makes the black hole, well… black. However, in the centre of a black hole, hidden deep inside the event horizon, is a singularity. A singularity is a mathematical consequence, it is also a point in space where the laws of physics do not apply. Mathematics also predicts that singularities can exist without an associated event horizon, but this means that we’d be able to physically see a black hole’s singularity. This theoretical entity is known as a “naked singularity” and physicists are at a loss to explain what one would look like.

Like any good physics experiment, an international team from the US, Germany, Portugal and Mexico have decided to simulate the most extreme situation possible in the aim of stripping a pair of black holes of their event horizons. They did this by constructing an energetic collision between two black holes travelling close to the speed of light, crashing head-on. Here’s what they discovered…
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Writing for Los Angeles Family Magazine – New Science Column!

The October 2008 edition of LA Family Magazine, where my new space column features!

So what does Astroengine.com and Denise Richards have in common? Well, usually not a lot, but today my writing appears in the October 2008 edition of LA Family Magazine with Denise Richards featuring in the leading article. Admittedly, there’s 36 pages separating Denise from me, so the link is a little tenuous, but great nonetheless!

I was asked to become a regular columnist in this leading parenting magazine in an effort to communicate space science topics to parents and their kids. And what better way to begin than by writing about flying to the Moon!

After writing a very popular article about “How Long Does it Take to get to the Moon?” for the Universe Today, I thought this was a good place to start. The next article will tackle a bigger project, a trip to Mars…

Have a look at this month’s edition of Los Angeles Family Magazine and have a read of “Hey, Kids! Want to Go to the Moon?” (page 54)

Small Asteroid 2008 TC3 Will Hit Earth Tonight

Artist impression of a meteorite entering the Earth's atmosphere (©Leonard Wikberg III)

A newly discovered asteroid called 2008 TC3 will (with a 99.8-100% probability) hit the atmosphere over northern Sudan at 2:46 UTC (Oct 7th). The piece of rock will not threaten people or structures on the surface, it is likely to burn up during re-entry as a magnificent “air burst.” Estimates suggest that as 2008 TC3 burns up, it will detonate with an energy of a kiloton of TNT.

2008 TC3 is between 1-5 meters in diameter, so it’s not a threat by any means, but it should create a spectacular display. Usually the bright meteors we observe are generated by debris no bigger than a grain of sand, so this will be a huge astronomical event in comparison. The giant meteor will be visible from eastern Africa travelling very quickly from north-east to south-west and it is expected to create a very long trail as it will enter the atmosphere at a very shallow angle.
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2012 Doomsday Debunking Article Makes Slashdot

Just a quick bit of news: my “2012: No Geomagnetic Reversal” article over at the Universe Today was posted on Slashdot.org today! This is fantastic news, as on Saturday it became “popular” on Digg.com and hit the front page. Internet traffic has therefore been a little busy for Fraser’s server of late…

Thank you to everyone who is supporting my work, these 2012 doomsday scenarios are finally being exposed for what they really are. Although some may have a dash of scientific reasoning, most are born from scaremongering and greed, so it is very good to know that the scope of this article’s readership has expanded exponentially 🙂

I am working on my next couple of articles now, so expect the completed text soon…

Cheers!

New 2012 Article Published: No Geomagnetic Reversal

The 2012 doomsday scenario: geomagnetic reversal. Not in our lifetime...

Universe Today: 2012: No Geomagnetic Reversal

After a long four-month break, I’ve finally written my next in the “No Doomsday in 2012” series of articles. This time we tackle the prediction that the world will end on December 21st, 2012 after being subject to a massive internal disturbance, effectively weakening the Earth’s magnetic field and flipping the magnetic dipole on its head (i.e. the north magnetic pole will be shifted to the geographical South Pole and vice versa). While this makes for a cool plot for a disaster movie, the doomsayers theory is only half-baked. Yes, geomagnetic reversal has happened in the past, and it will happen again. However, any geomagnetic shift in the future will not happen in four years, it probably won’t happen for a few thousand years. It appears to be a rather chaotic system, and all the (scientific) indications suggest our strong magnetic field wont be doing anything dramatic any time soon…

The series so far:

2012: No Geomagnetic Reversal Now Available in Spanish

With a special thanks, once again, to Manuel Herman, my most recent 2012 article has been translated into Spanish. Thank you Manuel for all your hard work!

Here’s the series (so far) in Spanish:

No habrá juicio final en 2012 (No Doomsday in 2012)
No, tampoco habrá Planeta X en 2012 (2012: No Planet X)
2012: El Planeta X no es Nibiru (2012: Planet X is not Nibiru)
2012: No habrá llamarada solar asesina (2012: No Killer Solar Flare)
2012: No habrá inversión geomagnética (2012: No Geomagnetic Shift)

The Final Full-Frontal: Virgin Galactic Declines $1 Million Space Sex Tape Offer

It had to happen some time - the first zero-G space sex tape may appear in the near future (Misha Gravenor)

Soon, space tourism companies such as Virgin Galactic will be flying several flights per day on sub-orbital joyrides. It is expected that this will be quickly followed by orbital “space hotels” where high-paying space sightseers can spend long periods looking down on the Earth (a venture being quickly developed by Las Vegas entrepreneur Robert Bigelow; there’s an unmanned space hotel prototype currently in orbit). It’s only a matter of time before space tourism becomes commonplace, opening a massive host of scientific and recreational possibilities.

Wherever humans go, sex quickly follows, and although we don’t fully comprehend the implications of sexual pursuits in zero-G, there’s certainly a lot of people on Earth who will want to experience the 100-mile high club for themselves. Although space agencies have flirted with space sex research, the act is generally frowned upon (although the Russian study into “human docking procedures” sounded interesting). Although we are limited in our space sex understanding, the porn industry is quickly catching on, wanting to create the world’s first space porn video, making a huge offer to Virgin Galactic ahead of their first flight at the end of 2009…
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Nancy Writes for Wired: “Giants of Earth and Space”

Gran Telescopio Canarias located on La Palma, Spain - one of the giant observatories looking at the stars (GTC)

My Universe Today colleague and superb science writer Nancy Atkinson has written her first article for Wired.com! This is obviously a huge step as her writing has instantly accessed potentially millions of readers. So, CONGRATULATIONS NANCY!

Nancy was approached by Wired to put together an article about some of the biggest and boldest observatories on Earth. Her writing is accompanied by some stunning photography of these giant structures that include the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) on Mount Fowlkes, Texas (sporting 91 separate one-meter hexagonal mirrors); the W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano (with two 10-meter mirrors composed of 36 hexagonal segments); and my personal favourite, the Very Large Telescope Interferometer on the Andes mountaintop of Cerro Paranal, Chile (four 8.2-meter diameter telescopes working in tandem). There is a huge amount of information in Nancy’s excellent article, making it more than worthy of being included in this hugely popular science & technology magazine website.

Be sure to check out “Giants of Earth and Space,” by Nancy Atkinson over at Wired.com.

Carnival of Space Week 73 – Alice’s Astro Info

This week’s marvellous Carnival of Space is being hosted by Seattle-based astronomer Alice Enevoldsen at Alice’s Astro Info. To celebrate 50 years of NASA, Alice has written a rather creative CoS, using the letters from HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU DEAR NASA! to form an acrostic for each submission from the space blogosphere. I love it!

From Astroengine, I decided to submit my article about the experimental evidence that radioactive decay rates do not vary with distance from the Sun, according to the power output from Cassini’s RTGs as the craft travelled from Earth to the orbit of Mars. Kinda puts a dampener on the previous terrestrial findings that decay rates may vary with distance from the Sun. Perhaps there’s another, more obvious reason for the correlated decay rate variations. I have my theory, but I’ll leave that for another day…

Particle Zoo: The Higgs Boson For Sale

Collect them all! The Standard Model of plushie particles (© Particle Zoo & Julie Peasley)

Astroengine exclusive interview with Particle Zoo founder, Julie Peasley

The hunt for the Higgs particle may have come to grinding halt until 2009, but that doesn’t mean you can’t discover the elusive particle for yourself. In fact, it’s not just the Higgs boson that awaits discovery in the zoo of Standard Model particles. And what a zoo it is! We have protons, neutrons, the quarks that make up said hadrons; plus all the force carriers, neutrinos, photons, electrons and anti-particles. There is a delicious and varied array of subatomic particles out there, but they are too small for us to see. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what these quanta actually look like?

It seems that Particle Zookeeper Julie Peasley has an intimate connection with the tiny “beings” that make up all known matter in the Universe. She has single-handedly set up her own business putting faces to the complex particles, giving us a unique view into the quantum world we would otherwise forget in the soup of theoretical physics equations. The Particle Zoo is a Los Angeles company, where Julie brings particles to life in her “sweatshop of one,” sewing beautifully-made plushie toys of all the Standard Model particles so we can collect them all…
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