Misc. – Page 30 – astroengine.com

Carnival of Space Week 74 – Kentucky Space

The Kentucky Space logo

This week’s Carnival is being hosted by Wayne Hall at Kentucky Space (KySat), an organization with an aggressive orbital agenda and punchy space flight motto: “fly stuff.” To be honest, this should be the motto for NASA… flying stuff around space is something we should be doing, all the time. Just because we can. If a non-profit organization can do it on a shoestring budget, we should be seeing more commercial ventures like SpaceX popping up all over the world. Here’s to hoping!

In addition to Week 74 of the carnival, Kentucky Space are currently preparing for the sub-orbital launch of one of their payloads from the Mojave Desert tomorrow! So be sure to keep an eye on their site.

For my part, I am very thankful to Wayne for adding my article about naked singularities right at the top of the Carnival. Awesome CoS, be sure to check out all this week’s entries…

Listen to Tonight’s Paranormal Radio – The Chinese Spacewalk Conspiracy

Paranormal Radio with Captain Jack logo

In a follow-up to our October 3rd discussion, Captain Jack and myself will be discussing my recent Astroengine article “Bubbles, Reflections and Space Walks… Did China Really Fake It?” On first seeing the video I was intrigued by what I saw, and the mysterious moving objects in shot needed to be addressed. Although I do not believe the Chinese staged the event, it does pose some interesting questions…

Paranormal Radio has started now, so check out the website to listen in…

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.
Continue reading “Small Asteroid 2008 TC3 Will Hit Earth Tonight”

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…
Continue reading “The Final Full-Frontal: Virgin Galactic Declines $1 Million Space Sex Tape Offer”

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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Carnival of Space Week 72 – Twisted Physics (Discovery)

Twisted Physics Logo

It’s that time of the week, time for the rampaging hoard of space writers to voice their views across the blogosphere. This week, we are presented with a great variety from my fellow bloggers dotted over the planet by Jennifer Ouellette at Twisted Physics. She had the misfortune to be called for jury duty, but had the fortune to be selected as this weeks CoS host, so at least she had some entertaining reading to do whist in court! For Astroengine this week, I entered the exciting news that our Sun is alive! Well, it has shown off a Cycle 24 sunspot anyway…