I mean, is the spaghettification of John Cusack using awesome 2012 doomsday graphics too much to ask? Instead of an improbable alien spacecraft appearing over the White House, why not use a black hole, producing so much tidal shear that it rips the building apart brick-by brick? Oh, and then have all the matter being sucked into the black hole accelerate to relativistic velocities, creating an X-ray belching accretion disk, lighting up the solar system with our planet’s regurgitated mass-energy? Movie audiences will have a total doomgasm over that!
Or we could just use it as a nifty time travel device.
I’m not kidding, last week was a huge mess of a supernova doomsday circus. It was like whispering “there’s a bomb under your chair” to the person next to you in a crowded theater and then watching the resulting flood of people slam into the fire escape. It was internet chaos. And there was no stopping it.
I am of course talking about the first, great doomsday scare of 2010: T Pyxidis.
Luckily for me, the first headline I saw was in the UK’s Telegraph that read “Earth ‘to be wiped out’ by supernova explosion.” Uh oh, that title sounds rather definite. Immediately, the bullshit sensor in my brain was tripped so I stopped flicking through the embarrassing excuse for a UK newspaper and had a read.
According to the article, some star (that I can’t pronounce) was “set to self-destruct” (as a big hairy supernova), a little over 3,000 light years away. Global chaos will therefore ensue. The ozone layer will be stripped away… and the Earth will be “wiped out.” (I still can’t work out how the Earth will be “wiped out.”)
I’m only picking on the Telegraph.co.uk as my skepticism knives were already sharpened after a series of idiotic woo-fueled articles (here, here and here) the website has played host to in recent months, but they weren’t the only news outlet to go batshit crazy with the “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE” angle.
But who was really to blame for this mess? After all, the media was just the messenger, they must have gotten their lead from somewhere. Ah yes, the scientists… what did those guys really say?
You can find out how I got to the bottom of the science behind the hype in my Discovery News article “Will Earth ‘Be Wiped Out’ by a Supernova?” but cutting to the chase, it turns out that the scientists may have been a little hasty in their attempt to make international headlines.
Sure, some of the numbers didn’t add up (mistakes happen), but issuing a press release with a huge wad of inaccurate doom wrapped inside is pretty irresponsible. Have a read for yourself:
An interesting, if a bit scary, speculative sidelight is that if a Type Ia supernova explosion occurs within [that distance] of Earth, then the gamma radiation emitted by the supernova would fry the Earth, dumping as much gamma radiation (~100,000 erg/square centimeter) into our planet [sic], which is equivalent to the gamma ray input of 1000 solar flares simultaneously. –Excerpt from the Villanova press release, “THE LONG OVERDUE RECURRENT NOVA T PYXIDIS: SOON TO BE A TYPE Ia SUPERNOVA?”
“…fry the Earth”? Come on, that’s not even an accurate scientific term about what would happen if we were hit by a surge of gamma-rays. What’s wrong with saying “…the Earth would be at the receiving end of a Death Ray”? If you’re going to do the job of the tabloid press, hyping up your own research before the tabloid press has even read the release, you may as well be accurate.
And speaking of accuracy, my colleague Ray Villard was at the AAS and confirmed that Sion’s numbers were out by a factor of 10. “A supernova would have to be 10 times closer [to Earth] to do the damage described,” Ray said.
Although I was tough on the Telegraph in my Discovery News article (let’s face it, with an inaccurate and inflammatory title like that, they had it coming), in this case I think the main issue lies with Sion and co.
Why over-hype your research to get attention, when the research was interesting enough without declaring doomsday? By me even writing about the subject again, I think I just answered my own question.
But on a plus point, at least everyone knows what T Pyxidis is now…
…otherwise some Twilight fan site might win. And that would be bad.
I don’t really get the whole smoldering vampire craze that’s going on at the moment, but the movies New Moon and Twilight certainly have fans going nutty about fangs and moody teenagers. I actually saw Twilight the other day, and it was the first film I’ve ever seen acted through… awkward glances. I felt embarrassed watching it. Not because it was bad; it’s that you really feel the teenage angst ooze from the DVD. For that reason alone it was certainly well acted. Will I watch the sequel New Moon? Probably, if I tripped, fell and found myself in a theater with a jumbo bag of popcorn. Of course not! (Might do.)
As none of the mainstream news heavyweights appear to be in contention for the #news title, Team Discovery News has decided to dominate this category, aiming to at least catch up with the teeny vampire fan club. But it’s not going to be easy, they have 450 votes. We have… 16. But from small acorns, a Discovery News Shorty Award may grow! Plus we only started campaigning today, so anything could happen.
So, if you’re a fan of the sci-tech news we produce at Discovery News, and you’ve been following our informative, witty, awesome tweets, please consider voting for us by tweeting:
I nominate @Discovery_News for a Shorty Award in #news because [insert reason here]
For example: “I nominate @Discovery_News for a Shorty Award in #news because their science news rocks my cosmos,” or “I nominate @Discovery_News for a Shorty Award in #news because vampires suck cheese.” You get the picture.
As always you can also follow my awesome tweeting action on @Discovery_Space and @astroengine. My pet rabbit has also taken to microblogging, so you might want to get the inside scoop from him too: @Barney_Bunny.
Thanks to our Discovery News sustainable tech writer Alyssa Danigelis for the tip-off!
Released in December 2009, Kate McAlpine (a.k.a. AlpineKat) put together the rather fun “Black Hole Rap” in an effort to trivialize the disinformation being peddled about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). You might remember AlpineKat from the hugely popular (and deliciously geeky) “LHC Rap” that has generated over 5 million hits on the YouTube video. Here’s the newest music video filmed in the depths of the French-Swiss border:
I just saw this stunning image on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy and I assumed it was a fancy bit of art… or a computer generated view of glacial Britain… or UK-shaped frosted cake. Nope, it’s the UK as it looks from space, right now.
The UK is experiencing record low temperatures and I just got off the phone to my mum to hear that Bristol (my hometown, somewhere in the south-west of England) hit a bone shattering -15°C low last night. Yikes! And here I am looking out of my office window feeling the heat of the Sun of a 24°C California day. Truth be told, I’m a little jealous, I haven’t felt sub zero cold for years. In fact, the last time I saw negative temperatures in double figures was when I lived in the Arctic in 2002.
For now, I’ll just have to enjoy the view from space and hope this cold spell doesn’t cause too much hassle for my family and friends. My advice: Stay indoors, only go outside if you have a warm local pub within walking distance.
Forget building gravitational wave detectors costing hundreds of millions of dollars (I’m looking at you, LIGO), make use of the most accurate cosmic timekeepers instead and save a bundle.
The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) is a proposal that involves closely monitoring the regular flashes of spinning neutron stars (or pulsars) to detect very slight “shimmers” in their signal. Although the physics is crazy-complex, by tracking these shimmers over a suitably distributed number of pulsars could reveal the passage of gravitational waves.
The problem is that you need to closely monitor rapidly-spinning millisecond pulsars, which are (a) tough to find (only 150 have been found over nearly three decades since pulsars were first discovered), and (b) not very plentiful in the part of the night sky of interest to scientists (northern hemisphere). They tend to clump together in globular star clusters, which makes them useless for detecting gravitational waves.
However, according to results announced by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) at this week’s American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Washington D.C., they’ve discovered 17 new pulsars with the help of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope.
In addition to recent Fermi telescope pulsar discoveries, it would appear that the number of potential targets for NANOGrav are increasing, making a stronger case for the 10 year, $65 million project…
The strange objects orbiting the two stars could be mangled white dwarfs... but the jury is still out (NASA)
The first results from NASA’s Kepler exoplanet hunter are in and a perplexing early result has been announced. Yes, the space telescope is working fine, and no, it hasn’t spotted an alien homeworld (yet), but the Kepler team have uncovered something pretty cool.
Kepler may have discovered a new class of celestial object (possibly).
But before we start scratching our heads in confusion or popping the champagne corks in celebration, let’s try to work out what Kepler has observed.
Kepler is currently monitoring 100,000 stars in an effort to seek out extra-solar planets (or “exoplanets”) orbiting these stars. Although Kepler was only launched in March 2009 and early doubts about the observatory’s capabilities caused some low-level concern, Kepler appears to be functioning well and mission controllers are already reporting early results.
In sifting through the Kepler data taken so far, postdoctoral student Jason Rowe found a very curious light signature. When an object passed behind its central star, the light from the system dropped significantly. This means the object — called KOI 74b — must be glowing fiercely with its own light that was blocked out when the object was eclipsed.
Hold up, the light dimmed when the exoplanet passed behind its parent star? Something’s not right here. Kepler detects exoplanets when the worlds pass in front of their parent stars, thereby dimming the starlight, not vice versa!
Actually, this is exactly what’s happened. The “exoplanets” orbiting two otherwise ordinary stars appear to be brighter — and hotter — than their host stars. It’s as if the roles of the stars and the exoplanets have been reversed; the stars are dimming the exoplanetary light as the exoplanet passes behind the star.
Needless to say, there is currently no stellar model that predicts this kind of behavior from extra-solar planetary systems.
This means the object — called KOI 74b — must be glowing fiercely with its own light that was blocked out when the object was eclipsed […] It is seething at 70,000 degrees Fahrenheit while the parent star is 17,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The strange object can’t be a star because the transit data show that it is no bigger than Jupiter. —Ray Villard, Discovery News.
One theory is that KOI 74b (and the other strange object, KOI 81b) could be a white dwarf star that migrated close to its stellar partner. Through binary interactions, the white dwarf was stripped of some of its mass, causing it to puff up and appear like a gas giant exoplanet. That would certainly go to some way of explaining why these two “exoplanets” are so hot.
Of course, the other option is that Kepler has made a groundbreaking discovery and identified a whole new class of celestial object… but I suspect there are other, more mundane reasons for these observations.
I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see until followup observations are made…
If you know me, you’ll probably know that my passion for communicating space exploration is matched by one thing and one thing only: trance music. Interestingly the crossovers between space and music are many and trance is often the choice backing music of many space-based videos.
So here’s one of my favorite trace groups who were asked by Virgin Galactic to perform their kick-ass tune “Buzz” at the official unveiling of SpaceShipTwo in the Mojave Desert last month. I actually saw Above & Beyond live at Global Gathering in 2006, and I can confirm that they are as awesome as they sound.
When Virgin Galactic were looking for some atmospheric music to herald the launch of their ground-breaking ‘SpaceShipTwo,’ they turned to Above & Beyond. At an event hosted by Richard Branson in the Mojave Desert, the track chosen to accompany the official unveiling of SpaceShipTwo was Above & Beyond’s club anthem ‘Buzz’, which was inspired by the Apollo 11 moon-landing. After the unveiling of the world’s first space tourism spacecraft, Above & Beyond performed an exclusive DJ set in front of an audience of 800 dignitaries, celebrities and soon-to-be astronauts, plus the assembled global media.
Apophis is a 300 meter wide asteroid that caused a stir back in 2004. When NASA discovered the near-Earth asteroid (or NEO), it appeared to be tumbling in our direction Armageddon-style and the initial odds for a 2029 impact were 1-in-37. Understandably, people got scared, the media went nuts and astrophysicists were suddenly very interested in space rock deflection techniques.
It’s important to note that NASA didn’t just pull these numbers out of a hat; the space agency has been tracking Apophis intently since its discovery, plotted its position and projected its location to a very high degree of precision. The more we watch Apophis, the more the world’s scientists are convinced that the asteroid poses a very tiny risk to life on Earth. In fact, giving anything a 1-in-250,000 chance of happening is more of a courtesy than a ‘risk.’ Granted, we’re talking about a global catastrophe should Apophis hit, but would you ever bet on those kinds of odds?
Apparently, the Russian space agency thinks it’s more of a game of Russian Roulette than NASA thinks.
“I don’t remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032,” said Anatoly Perminov, the head of Roscosmos, on December 30, 2009. “People’s lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people.”
Wait a minute. Does Perminov know something NASA doesn’t? Is he even referring to Apophis? You know, the same asteroid NASA has calculated that has a cat in hell’s chance of causing bother in 2036? And what’s this about the year 2032?
Just for the record, Perminov is indeed referring to Apophis, but he got the date wrong (Apophis does not make a flyby in 2032). Perminov also puts a price on saving hundreds of thousands of people… “several hundred million dollars” should do it, apparently.
On the one hand I’m impressed that Roscosmos is calling for some kind of anti-asteroid shield, but on the other, Perminov’s concern is terribly misplaced (and potentially damaging). His statement sounds as if he’s only just heard about Apophis and then thrown into a press conference unprepared, then asked what he’s going to do about this impending doom. Naturally, in that situation he would have blurted out the first thing that popped into his head: We need to save the world! However, this isn’t the first time he’d heard about Apophis.
Boris Shustov, the director of the Institute of Astronomy under the Russian Academy of Sciences, tried to repair the damage pointing out that Perminov was just using Apophis as a “symbolic example, there are many other dangerous objects we know little about.”
However, saving the world from a theoretical “dangerous object” that may or may not hit us for the next few hundred/thousand/million years is less likely to get funding that an imminent 2032… sorry, 2036 impact.
Although Perminov might sound reasonable in asking for asteroid deflection funding, using sensationalist means to try to leverage funding only serves to make the same funding hard to come by.
In the AGU 2009 meeting in San Fransisco last month, ex-Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart outlined his organization’s plans to deflect an asteroid should it pose a threat to Earth. The B612 Foundation points out that there is a ~2% chance of Earth being involved with an “unacceptable” collision in the next century (not by Apophis, but by another undiscovered asteroid), but Schweickart and his colleagues want to emphasize urgency, not panic.
An infrastructure needs to be put in place to deal with asteroid deflection, but this goal will only be hindered by unwarranted alarm by the likes of Perminov. Asteroid detection and deflection will be two critical skills mankind will need to develop for the long-term survival of life on Earth, but the head of Roscosmos is running the risk of making the issue sound more like a crazed rant than anything of substance.
Besides, when Perminov says, “Everything will be done according to the laws of physics,” perhaps he shouldn’t be in charge of messing around with the orbits of NEOs after all…
A space station in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey.' It's hard to believe that by 2015 we might not have any manned outpost in orbit (sci-fi writers never saw that coming).
I was only half joking when I tweeted, “Vote for your favorite NASA accomplishment in 2009: http://bit.ly/83xWlJ [x] Still existing.” I was referring to a vote that is being held over on iTWire, where they’ve listed an array of NASA endeavors and then asked their readers to pick their favorite mission/discovery.
To be honest, I wouldn’t have a clue about how to choose between a Mercury flyby, precision-bombing of the Moon or detection Martian methane; all endeavors have enormous merit and each have vastly improved our knowledge of the Universe. Each is as profound as the other. But it’s not the vote of a 3 page list of NASA achievements that I found myself most uneasy with, it’s the fact that none of these achievements can make the future of the world’s premier space agency any more secure, especially when we are talking about orbiting U.S. astronauts.
There’s a strange dichotomy of opinion: NASA is globally renowned and respected for carrying out outstanding science, and yet it is constantly lambasted (often unfairly) for its spaceflight ineptitude.
Shuttle Out. Space Station Out?
The catalyst to NASA’s human spaceflight problems is of course the retirement of the shuttle next year. We’ve seen it coming for a long time and yet the “5-year gap” hasn’t budged, in fact, it’s become a lot bigger. This gap is the number of years between the shuttle being retired and the proposed completion of NASA’s next launch system, Constellation. To fill this gap, the U.S. must use the Russian Soyuz vehicle at a premium rate. One can only imagine the diplomatic fun NASA has in store for the next few years.
And why should NASA maintain its human spaceflight program anyway? You remember the International Space Station (ISS), right? Well, it’s a good idea to have access to the biggest space station ever constructed in Earth-orbit after spending billions to build the thing. Unfortunately, the very foundations of the ISS are looking a little shaky.
Here we are with the world’s most expensive real estate zooming over our heads, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just told the White House that the U.S. taxpayer is getting a raw deal from International Space Station (ISS) science. This obviously doesn’t sound good for the ISS’ future beyond 2015. (That is, if you can still comprehend that the space station is still slated for decommissioning in five years time.)
Slight-Of-Hand Rocketry
I only have a general idea about what information the GAO has access to, but I know that the ISS is doing continuous science in microgravity to better our understanding about how we operate in space and use instrumentation that have a huge advantage over ground-based techniques. Unfortunately, NASA is a political entity and politicians are eying the space station with more than a little skepticism. As pointed out by Greg Fish over at Weird Things, wasn’t the ISS supposed to the stepping stone to the Moon… or even Mars by now? Not so long ago I remember intense excitement for how the ISS was going to change the world. Shockingly, now I sometimes hear people say: “we have a space station?!”
To make matters worse, the shuttle replacement is underfunded and behind schedule and the shadow of doubt over Constellation is becoming blacker than a moonless night. NASA triumphantly launched the Ares I-X, only for the celebrations to be quenched by critics (including ex-Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin calling it “slight-of-hand rocketry“) pointing out that the Ares test launch was a publicity stunt at best. At worst, the space agency was conning the American public into thinking progress was being made.
Whether NASA makes any kind of Constellation progress or continues to perform outstanding science on the ISS, it seems that there is a widening disconnect between NASA science and the perception of what NASA is trying to do. Many argue that NASA is just really bad at communicating science to a public audience, but I would say that the agency is doing more than ever to communicate their stuff. Also, NASA does an awful lot more than just getting astronauts into space — their robotic missions, observatories, space telescopes and research are breaking new ground every day. So why the huge question mark hanging over NASA’s human spaceflight plans?
Myopic Politics
Well, getting man into space is dangerous, it’s expensive and it’s long-term. All of which are not good for the political nature of NASA. In 2004, President Bush made the gargantuan promise that the US would make it back to the Moon by 2020 (and Mars soon after). This sounds great, but there was no money. Bush had made a political decision based on his term in office, he had also made it after the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy when seven astronauts lost their lives. Back then, NASA needed direction more than ever, especially as the shuttle fleet was grounded.
Although the shuttle missions recommenced and NASA got back to leading space station construction, by 2009 Bush’s “Vision” has become nothing more than a pipe dream. The money that was promised never materialized and it is now up to President Obama to get NASA’s human spaceflight plans back on its feet. But the damage has been done and the U.S. has an ailing economy and lumped with an overpriced Constellation Program. Changes need to be made.
Personally, I don’t see the Constellation Program getting off the starting blocks. But I don’t think this is due to any kind of technical or design issue, it will be purely political. Funds are tight, Constellation is too expensive. Sadly, adding insult to injury, the ISS is also in the firing line.
So now the responsibility for U.S. participation in the ISS falls on the shoulders of the burgeoning private spaceflight sector, which in itself could be a revolution in the making. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a real commercial answer to the human spaceflight problem? Using companies like SpaceX to ferry astronauts to-and-from the ISS makes a lot more sense than NASA doing the same job for way more money.
But again, I have that nagging feeling about a genuine disconnect between the public and the importance of spaceflight. Not only can human spaceflight advance human experience, it can boost our economy, education and technology. Last time I looked, those were very political sectors, it’s just unfortunate that politicians and many voters will never understand the correlation.
astroengine.com 
