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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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Gravitational Wave Theory Takes Another Kick in the Teeth

Northern leg of the LIGO facility on the Hanford Reservation (LIGO)

Six years and nearly 400 million dollars later, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) still hasn’t turned up the evidence for gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are predicted by fundamental Einstein general relativity theories, but we haven’t been able to detect them. Is it because the first generation laser interferometers are not sensitive enough? Is it because LIGO needs more time to see through the cosmic noise to root out the gravitational wave signature? This is a deeply worrying non-development for physicists as a null result means that something isn’t quite right. We are certain (in theory) that these waves should be rippling through space-time (after all, massive objects are colliding and exploding all the time throughout the Universe), but if we can’t detect the things in our own cosmic back yard, something must be awry. In a recent publication, LIGO scientists have discussed the lack of evidence for gravitational waves, but remain upbeat that they can still be found…
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Tonight: Walter Wagner Discusses His LHC Lawsuit (a.k.a. “The Doomsday Suit”) on Paranormal Radio – I Will Join the Debate!

I’ve been captivated by the commotion caused by this summer’s “switch on” of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. Much of the last few month have been focused around a lawsuit that Walter Wagner filed in Honolulu, Hawaii four months ago.

Tonight, Walter Wagner will be talking live with Captain Jack on Paranormal Radio (WPRT Radio) to discuss his concerns for the particle accelerator. Kudos to Wagner for appearing live to defend his views on the subject. In an added twist, I’ve been invited to join in with the debate. The live show begins at 9pm Eastern Time (Wagner will be on the show starting at 10pm EST), airing over Seattle and Chicago (I think!) and transmitted over the internet.
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Breaking News: The Sun is Still Doing Nothing (Much)

The disk of the Sun as viewed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO/MDI)

As you can see, the Sun is keeping quiet, devoid of sunspots. As the world awaits an increase in solar activity to celebrate the onset of a new solar cycle, our closest star keeps a blank face and keeps us guessing. This most recent image was taken today by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) instrument. MDI measures plasma velocity and magnetic field strength at the top of the convection zone, so it is an invaluable sunspot detector. Sunspots are a good indicator about how active the Sun is, as when the magnetic field becomes stressed and twisted, it is forced from the convection zone, through the photosphere, chromosphere and high into the corona. These protrusions then fill with plasma and glow as coronal loops. The more magnetic activity there is, more sunspots appear. But, it would seem, the Sun remains magnetically inactive seven months since the beginning of Solar Cycle 24…
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