I have no clue how I didn’t notice this film was in the works, but it would appear I’m not quite as well plugged into the sci-fi pulse as I used to be. Announced last year, “Moon” is set on the lunar surface where a lone contractor is manning the Helium-3 mining operation. Acted by Sam Rockwell, the setting looks like a visual treat, bound to get any science fiction enthusiast’s taste buds excited. However, yesterday the trailer was released ahead of its June 12th release… and it looks good… Continue reading ““Moon” Movie Trailer Now Online”
Every few months, I think it’s healthy to reassess the design of Astroengine and develop it where necessary. In response to recent user feedback, I’m finding that the biggest weak spots of the site are firstly its speed and secondly its cross-browser compatibility.
Unfortunately visitors to the site that run Internet Explorer 6 see a mashed-up, messed-up Astroengine. It turns out that many of IE6 users are not using this out-of-date browser out of choice, it appears to be the staple of office computers the world over (system administrators really should think about updating their software once and a while).
In fact, I even had the chance to see Astroengine through IE6’s eyes a week ago, and I felt a little light-headed – It. Was. Nasty! Although I will always test sites that I build with a variety of browsers, I can’t test my site on old browsers (and therein lies the problem). The number of IE6 users are quite small, the numbers are significant according to my stats, so I’ve decided to act…
Good news for Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, a windy day on the Martian surface has cleared a layer of dust off its solar panels.
Opportunity is currently trundling across the undulating dunes of Meridiani Planum on its way to Endeavour crater, a destination it wont reach for another two years. It needs all the energy it can muster. So, like the fortuitous gust of wind that gave Spirit a 3% boost in energy in February, Opportunity has received what may appear to be a small hurricane in comparison. This gust of wind shifted so much dust caked on the rover’s solar panels, the robot has had an energy increase of 40%.
As of Sol 1850 (April 7, 2009), Opportunity’s solar array energy production has increased to 515 watt-hours. Atmospheric opacity (tau) remains elevated at around 0.95. The dust factor has improved to 0.642, meaning that 64.2 percent of sunlight hitting the solar array penetrates the layer of accumulated dust on the array. The rover is in good health with a rested actuator and extra energy. — NASA Opportunity updates
Since Opportunity arrived on Mars five years ago until April 7th, the tenacious rover has travelled 15,114 meters (9.39 miles). For a mission that was only slated to last three months, that’s not a bad distance its clocked up.
I’m sure it’s more expensive than bailing me out of my student loan too…
The top stage of the Ares V carries the Altair Lunar Lander on its way to the Moon (NASA)
In an article written by a columnist in the Orlando Sentinel, NASA’s Constellation Program is compared with the government bail out of AIG. Where’s the correlation? No, I don’t see it either. NASA has its problems (some of the problems are very big problems), but when you begin comparing the woes of a space agency with an ailing financial corporation, you’re not only off target, you’re not quite understanding the true value of space exploration… Continue reading “Getting to the Moon More Expensive than Bailing Out AIG?”
I can’t emphasise enough how much I love this short film. It may only be 13 minutes long, but it is as small as it is mighty, much like the dwarf planet itself.
“Naming Pluto” documents the adventure of how Pluto got its name. Inevitably with most astronomical studies, there can be some controversy surrounding the naming of celestial objects, often depending on traditional naming protocol and who made the discovery first. The naming of Pluto on the other hand appears to take on a more natural tact, starting with a conversation in 1930 involving a little girl named Venetia Phair and her grandfather, over breakfast in Oxfordshire.
Father Films have just released a trailer for their magnificent film, giving you a taster as to what to expect. I had the pleasure of watching and reviewing a copy late last year, and I was blown away by the accuracy, wonder and history that can be packed into 13 minutes (note that the DVD has extras included, extending the content to 40 minutes). I fell in love with Pluto all over again – suddenly the fact that the IAU had demoted the planet to a dwarf planet (and then to a plutoid) didn’t matter any more. Written, directed and produced by Ginita Jimenez, Naming Pluto is in the true spirit of the International Year of Astronomy, capturing the excitement surrounding a tiny member of the Solar System with excellence. I wholeheartedly recommend this short film, it needs to be in your DVD collection! Patrick Moore is also at his best, giving the proceeds his unique style. And don’t just take it from me, Astronomy Now has also given the film a highly enthusiastic review.
The Computer Assisted Tomography (C.A.T.) technique has been used for many years now and is well known for use on people where certain health conditions need more thorough, detailed, and deeper scans into the human body and the need for three-dimensional (3D) reconstructed imaging. However, similar such scans can also be used on the solar wind to discover the shapes and sizes of structures near Earth and throughout the inner heliosphere in three dimensions. These scans have been carried out for some time, pioneered in the most part by those at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS), University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla, CA, U.S.A. in close-collaboration with the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory (STELab), Nagoya University, Toyokawa, Japan… Continue reading “C.A.T. Scans of the Solar Wind”
Oh what havoc faux-conservative pundit Stephen Colbert wrought on NASA and the ISS! To think that a little publicity stunt would actually put the U.S. space agency in a jam and incite grudging grumbles from Firefly fans who were sure that Node 3 would be called Serenity. Even a few Congressmen who found time away from dealing with a painful and deep recession that’s put the entire economy in turmoil, are now involved in sorting out this little mess.
But there’s actually an interesting question in this seeming non-story. Should NASA embrace the will of the masses and give nods to pop culture in how it officially names its spacecraft? There are stories of informal call signs for capsules and modules taken from the Peanuts comic strip, but there’s never been an official designation that reflects what’s popular here on Earth at the time of the mission. What would benefit NASA more? Giving in to the power of the fad or staying resolute with timeless names?
It’s interesting how astronomical harbingers of doom have the ability to pop up more than once on the ‘net. However, the doom isn’t quite as terrifying when you’ve sat through a conference presentation by a scientist who has exhaustively given every reason as to why this particular killer won’t hurt you.
Enter WR 104.
To be honest, if it wasn’t a Wolf-Rayet star, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it (as we all know, or you should know, Wolf-Rayets are my favourite stellar objects), but this little fact combined with the fact that I know the Earth is no longer on the WR 104 hit-list, I feel compelled to correct an article that has just popped up on the web referencing out-of-date source material.
This is probably one of the biggest questions that hang over science fiction story lines: Will extraterrestrials have any resemblance to Life As We Know It™? To be honest, to toy with the thought of anything other than carbon-based life is pure conjecture, just because there might be some other form of life (such as silicon-based creatures), doesn’t mean there is (doesn’t mean there isn’t, either). So, here we are with the only form of life we know and understand, carbon-based life that was somehow spawned via a crazy mix of amino acids and some astronomical or terrestrial event that sparked the formation of prokaryotes (a.k.a. the simplest single-celled speck of life) some 4 billion years ago.
So we have an understanding of what formed life on Earth, perhaps if we look for the traces of evidence that evolved into Life As We Know It™ we can gauge whether extraterrestrial life has-formed/is-forming/will-form elsewhere in the observable Universe. From simulations of Earth evolution, scientists have predicted that 10 types of amino acids should form with the planet. These 10 amino acids are found inside the proteins of all living things on Earth. The same 10 amino acids have been found inside meteorites. Therefore, we already have a connection with the amino acids we find here on Earth and amino acids found in chunks of rock from elsewhere in the Solar System.
Now, a group of Canadian researchers have found that the same 10 amino acids are readily available elsewhere in the cosmos. Does this mean the components for life are common, not only on Earth, in the Solar System, but also in the Milky Way (and beyond)? It looks like it… Continue reading “Could Extraterrestrial Genes Be Like Ours?”
A visualization of fairing separation after N. Korean rocket clears the atmosphere (Video still courtesy of Analytical Graphics, Inc. http://www.agi.com)
Apologies for the quietness on Astroengine these last few days, this Astroengineer has been taking a small break and as such it has meant a lack of computer access. Expect the site to be running at full capacity on Monday. But for now, I thought I’d give a brief run-down of my activities on the Universe Today.
North Korea Threatens War if Rocket is Shot Down Some time between April 4th-8th, North Korea will launch a communications satellite into orbit. Unsurprisingly there is huge scepticism being voiced by Japan, South Korea and the United States that the secretive military nation is in fact carrying out a test-launch of the Taepodong-2 ballistic missile system, mounting a “peaceful” satellite to disguise its real intention. If the world’s suspicions are correct, if successful, North Korea will have a means to deliver a possible nuclear strike as far as Hawaii or Alaska. Now the North Korean army has warned that if the launch is interfered with, they will attack “major targets” in Japan.
Warp Drives Probably Impossible After All Just when I was getting excited about the possibility of travelling to distant worlds, scientists have uncovered a deep flaw with faster-than-light-speed travel. There appears to be a quantum limit on how fast an object can travel through space-time, regardless of whether we are able to create a bubble in space-time or not…
astroengine.com 