Ian O'Neill

Phoenix Discovery Could be Proof that Life Cannot Thrive on Mars

The Phoenix lander may have disproven the possibility for life on Mars (NASA/JPL/UA)

Oh dear. It’s the possible result that 23% of Astroengine readers (who voted that they wanted Phoenix to find “A strong indicator for the presence of organic compounds” as of August 5th, 3am) did not want to see. According to Phoenix mission control, recent analysis by the MECA instrument on board the lander appears to have discovered something bad hiding in the Martian soil. Perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance appears to have been detected just under the icy top-layer of the surface, possibly hindering the development of life (certainly the possibility of current life, perhaps past life too). Over the weekend the Internet exploded with reports that we were on the verge of a major discovery, leading to some reports indicating Phoenix had discovered life on the planet (nah, couldn’t happen). However, there were more grounded theories that further evidence for organic compounds may have been found or there was something more compelling than the discovery of water. But no, it looks like the forthcoming press conference (Tuesday, 11am) might have some bad news for us. A chemical that would actually halt the development of life may have been unearthed, possibly hindering the future of manned exploration of the Red Planet…
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Astroengine Goes to Hollywood: “Fly Me to the Moon” Premier

Legendary astronaut and second man on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin. A really nice chap (© Ian O'Neill & Astroengine.com)

In a very fortunate chain of events, I was asked by Fraser to go to the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Blvd. (LA) for the “Fly Me to the Moon” movie premier. I can’t review the film as yet (we have to wait until the film opens on August 15th for that), but I can give a run-down of who was at the premier and what the new animated feature is all about. Personally, I had a great day, fulfilling my dream of meeting legendary ex-astronaut Buzz Aldrin and legendary British actor Tim Curry…
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Twitter: Phoenix Mars Lander Refutes White House Report

A Twitter statement from Phoenix (Twitter screenshot) — Right from the robot's mouth - Phoenix disagrees with reports (Twitter screenshot)

So the plot thickens… Ever since the primary source for the “Phoenix Affair” hit the blogosphere, it spread like a rampaging virus (with the help of the Universe Today and Astroengine.com, ehem). In the early hours of this morning, it was Aviation Week who broke the news that they had been in contact with an unnamed source, leading to the implication that Phoenix had discovered something and the NASA team had set off to Washington for an audience with the President’s Science Advisor. Having waited the whole day for a Phoenix/NASA response to this news, I’ve been frustrated with the lack of weekend activity at Mars HQ. That is until now. Right from the robot’s mouth, Phoenix has disputed the White House claims. On the Phoenix Twitter feed, the perky little robot exclaimed: “Reports claiming there was a White House briefing are also untrue and incorrect,” (from MarsPhoenix).
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SpaceX Falcon 1 Suffers “Anomaly” During Ascent, Assumed Lost

Sad news. In a surprise announcement today, SpaceX revealed they had opened a window for their Falcon 1 to launch. Unfortunately, 140 seconds into the ascent, Falcon 1 suffered an undisclosed anomaly and the live video feed was cut. According to one comment left on the article I was updating over at the Universe Today to cover this historic event, the rocket suffered a “roll oscillation” (thank you Steve) shortly before contact was lost. Due to a poor video stream in my location, I did not witness this. Immediately after the screen went blank; the SpaceX commentators (Max Vozoff and Emily Shanklin, obviously upset) reported that Falcon 1 had suffered an “anomaly.” Looking at the most recent launch update, the rocket had reached 35 km in altitude and had attained an ascent velocity of 1050 m/s. The video feed was cut soon after T+140 seconds and after the short message by Max, the feed was pulled off-air and the credits rolled. A sad day for SpaceX and commercial spaceflight…
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Phoenix, Government Intrigue, Possibility for Organics on Mars, Astroengine Falls into a Digg-Induced Singularity

The Phoenix Mars lander has thoughts too (NASA/JPL/UA)

Today, two of my Phoenix Mars Lander articles hit the front page of Digg knocking Astroengine.com offline intermittently. The reason for the popularity? It would seem that after Aviation Week reported an undisclosed Phoenix team source’s views that an “even bigger” discovery (than the scientific proof of water) was to be announced this month, only after consulting with the US President’s science advisor. Naturally many readers of the articles are suspicious of this move, after all, why consult with government officials after two months of public transparent scientific study? Surely any discovery that supports the Phoenix mission objective to understand whether the Martian landscape could support past, present or future life forms should be discussed after a clear public statement? It would appear that both the TEGA and MECA instruments have been used to derive this new data, so what has Phoenix uncovered? Let’s hope it’s not a storm in a teacup…

Before reading on, join the fun on Digg:

Phoenix has Found Something More Compelling than Water (to Digg my Astroengine.com article)
Phoenix About to Announce “Potential For Life” on Mars (to Digg my Universe Today article)

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Phoenix has Found Something More Compelling than Water: President Bush Informed

The Mars vista as seen by Phoenix (NASA/JPL/UA)

On Thursday, NASA held a press conference to announce that the recent TEGA experiment on board Phoenix had confirmed the presence of water in the Martian soil. Whist exciting, Phoenix scientists were expecting that result. However, behind the scenes, something else was being discussed and it had little to do with melting water…
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Channel 4 Report About LHC Safety (ft. Walter Wagner!)

The LHC is set to go online in around two months time and the scientific world waits in anticipation for the first results. However, there are a few who are more concerned than excited for the LHC experiments. On Tuesday night, I was kindly asked to join the LHC debate with the prominent LHC critic, Walter Wagner on Captain Jack’s show Paranormal Radio. To be honest, I really enjoyed the open platform provided for me to ask Walter some questions about his forthcoming lawsuit against the US partners funding CERN. Mr Wagner is far from being a fantasist or “crank” (as I’ve seen unkindly written in some of the media), but his views are more in the realms of speculation, rather than being based on the actual physics predicted to come out of the LHC.

Today, science reporter David Fuller with the UK news channel ITN contacted me to say that he had covered Walter’s story in a news item for Channel 4. He put together a very balanced report that should allay any fears that micro black holes or strangelets could be produced by this awesome experiment in the search for the Higgs boson…
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LHC Detector ATLAS Captures High Energy Atmospheric Particles

Reconstruction of a muon passing through ATLAS (CERN/LHC)

Hold on! ATLAS has already started detecting particles? Yes, indeed it has. Particle collisions don’t only happen inside particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC); they happen all the time in the Earth’s atmosphere. High energy protons (or larger ions) generated by the Sun or other cosmic phenomenon (such as a supernova) bathe local space, passing through matter and colliding with atoms and molecules. Should a natural collision event occur in our atmosphere, billions of particles cascade from the point of collision, creating an “air shower.” Muons are one product of this air shower (in fact, the only natural muon production processes known are cosmic ray collisions) and some have been captured, making a fast-dash across the sensors in the recently completed A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS (ATLAS for short) detector at the LHC. It’s unexpected observations like these that really excite me, especially when we are a (possible) few weeks away from the first injection of particles into the LHC…
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Carnival of Space Week 65 – 21st Century Waves

Another week and the space bloggers have been busy! For the 65th instalment of the great Carnival of Space, Dr. Bruce Cordell is our host over at the superb blog 21st Century Waves. Once again, there’s a cosmically rich mix of stellar goodness on show. From Astroengine.com, I submitted the popular “New Exotic Particle May Explain Milky Way Gamma-Ray Phenomenon.”

So get to 21st Century Waves to read the full spectrum of CoS #65…

International Space Station Solar Transit

The International Space Station Transits the Sun (© Martin Wagner)

Sometimes the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is just too hard to pass up. Yesterday’s APOD features our sunspot-less Sun with a strange shape in the lower left-hand side of the image. On closer inspection suddenly it becomes clear as to what we are looking at. It’s the International Space Station transiting the solar disk. Stunning…
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