A Daily Blog (est. 10/2012) dedicated to quality writing, original content and a healthy dose of entertainment from "A Vagabond in God's Big Pond" Don't forget Wild Card Saturdays AND PUNS FOR INTELLIGENT PEOPLE will tickle your fancy. +++Plus +++ read my book Read about The Space Family McKinney at your own pace = THE RETURN TRIP concluding Mid-winter 2021 and The NULL Solution to follow in 2021. Episode Catalogs for all books in the "links" section: Constance Caraway ~ Forever Mastadon and Alpha Omega M.D. ***** If you have not viewed this blog on a PC, Laptop or Tablet, you don't know what you're missing.
…“I wanted to drag the spiteful twerp from the car and kick his butt all the way home, but my father took me aside and told me to take the high road…
Take the High Road | by nixter
Candidate Crippen launches into a spontaneous analogy.
“I had/haven’t seen my cousin Harold for a while, a nasty spoiled city boy who came to visit my family’s house one summer. Now I had a large collection of plastic handmade models, the kind with a thousand little pieces that you glue together. There were nuclear carriers, supersonic jets, and yes, even an old Space Shuttle docking with the ISS (International Space Station) and this shirttail relative wanted to take some home with him. Well I had worked way too hard on this display to break up the collection, so I told him no.
“When it was time for him to leave, while I loaded his suitcases into my dad’s car to take him to the airport, it turns out he loaded programmable firecrackers into many of them and they were blown to bits after he was safely locked inside the car.
“I wanted to drag the spiteful twerp from the car and kick his ass all the way home, but my father took me aside and told me to take the high road. He knew the boy’s parents and how they would never believe that their dear little blankety-blank would never do such a thing.
“That very same cousin called me not long ago to apologize, telling me that he appreciated the way we handled the situation and he never did another mean thing the rest of his life.”
“That’s an interesting analogy Mr. Crippen,” the young woman compliments. But did she make the intellectual connection between Harold Ivey and the United Korean Peninsula?
“Thank you and,” Roy stares directly into the biggest camera in the lot,“if you are watching Harold Ivey, you and your family are welcomed to visit me in the White House!”
The captivated sidewalk audience goes wild. Once again his down home style comes in handy, making Freelove’s clichéd rhetoric appear petty and small. He shakes hundreds of hands on the 20 foot walk into Chicago’s first and only gambling establishment.
Francine, who 20 years ago could have been that overly aggressive reporter, could not resist asking, “Was that story for real?”
“Every word,” he shoots back.
All she can do is shake her head, “I love you Roy Crippen.”
Roy Crippen halts his advance when he is close enough to catch a glimpse of poor Philip Jansky’s former display. It is not for him to know what is or what is not supposed to be up there, but icons & etchings depicting the precise location and path of every piece of galactic wanderer {larger than a baseball} in the Mars parsec, is the responsibility of this man.
“How are things… Mister Gurk__,” he extends his hand. “Director Roy here.”
Dhangotma stands to respond, but could use a step ladder in order to complete the exchange of palms. His English is fractured, like many World Space Consortium techs, but this one makes little effort to excel. His answers to questions are choppy and incomplete, but Roy manages to get a thumbs-up, with a couple of references to his involvement in the Russian Spaceflight program at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the former Kazakhstan.
Astronaut Crippen had spent some time at the former Soviet Union’s Cosmodrome in the past, as did every traveler to the International Space Station. Did he mention the shortsighted senseless budget cuts imposed by the “myopically socialist President of the USA from 2008-2015 that put in that fix”? No. Those are Roy’s words uttered freely, in a free society, free of oppression, clear of any retribution…probably, though he encrypts all outgoing and incoming communications with his phone.
Back to the Soyuz experience where Roy seems to recall that fluent English was an uncompromising requirement for program participation. Then why does this Katmandu Tomcat speak the requisite tongue as if he just crawled out of his Himalayan Hut?
Too many questions and so little time. His inspection tour is snipped by Braden King background chatter, which by now is nearly nonstop. It seems things are actually ahead of schedule, a welcome change from recent events. The Tycho driver is metaphorically honking his horn anxious to get going.
Sam McKinney looks like a drag racer; his pride-and-joy muscle car poised and seated next to him, his best girl. Together they are ready to go down and press som
“Are you guys ready to go,” asks Roy Crippen?
“Turn us loose,” the McKinneys answer as one voice.
The hanger-bay doors of Space Colony 1 slowly widen, exposing a view shared by both Tycho and its distant earthbound counterparts; wide eyes, motivated spirits, and hopeful hearts.
Humanity likes nothing more than building insanely large and complicated structures, except maybe reading about large and complicated structures built by other people. Today, we’re going to do the latter. While the ancient people had some amazing engineering achievements, we’ve all seen an article or six about the pyramids and the Great Wall of China. As such, let’s focus on the amazing achievements of relatively modern engineering, such as…
10. Three Gorges Dam
China’s Three Gorges Dam is both one of the most impressive engineering feats of our time and one of the most controversial ones, thanks to the project’s environmental and human cost. When its construction began in 1994, it was the giant country’s largest engineering project, and at the time it was completed in 2006 it was the world’s largest dam structure (These days, it doesn’t even crack the Top 20, in terms of the dam’s physical size). A massive concrete gravity structure that’s 7,660 feet long and up to 607 feet tall, it contains 463,000 metric tons of steel and 37 million cubic yards of concrete. Despite being dwarfed by several other superdams, the Three Gorges Dam is still easily the most productive hydroelectric plant in the world, with its 32 turbine generators and two additional generators able to churn out a massive 22,500 megawatts of electricity.
To put some perspective to the dam’s scale: When it was first put in use, the workers had to use 200 tons of explosives just to level the temporary cofferdam structure that had been preventing the river from reaching the dam. Oh, and when the massive reservoir behind the dam was filled, it actually affected the earth’s rotation.
9. Offshore gas pipelines
The Langeled pipeline is a 724-mile underwater gas pipeline that was constructed between 2003 and 2007 to transport natural gas from Nyhamna at Norway’s west coast to a receiving terminal in Easington, at the east coast of the United Kingdom. This monster of a delivery system is up to 44 inches in diameter, and the sheer massive size of its components required an upgrade to existing pipe-laying barges. The constructors also had to navigate some pretty insane obstacles, such as constructing a crossing in the depths of 980 feet and performing difficult underwater weldings to existing systems. The welding process alone took roughly 6,000 man hours.
Still, despite its impressive size, the Langeled line is not the world’s largest offshore pipeline. That honor goes to the 760-mile Nord Stream pipeline and its upcoming parallel sister line Nord Stream 2, running from Russia to Germany. Nord Stream has received its share of criticism due to fears that Europe will become over-reliant on Russian gas, but regardless of your opinion about that particular subject, it’s hard to deny the impressive engineering achievements of a project of that size … as long as you’re not stuck with the bill, which is estimated at $9.76 billion for the original Nord Stream alone.
8. The Millau Viaduct
The Millau Viaduct is not only the world’s tallest bridge, it’s also one of the most impressive ones. At 1,125 feet, it is higher than the Eiffel Tower, and its length of 1.53 miles guarantees that the measurements match. What’s more, the viaduct is designed to look like a huge, yet very slender yacht; It touches the Tam Valley below it in just nine places; the stays in both ends, and seven impressively thin pillars.
The Millau Viaduct was designed by Lord Norman Foster from the idea of French engineer Michel Virlogeux, and it is specifically made to fit the impressive natural beauty of the area with the “delicacy of a butterfly,” as the architect put it. Although the bridge came with an understandably hefty price tag of $524 million, the building company that also constructed the Eiffel Tower happily financed the project in exchange of toll rights for 75 years.
7. FAST
China makes an appearance on the list again, this time with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), which is a solid contestant in the Most Contrived Acronyms Olympics, and also the biggest radio telescope in the world. The massive, 1,650-foot-wide satellite dish and the accompanying research facilities cost $180 million and consists of 4,450 individual panels. To put the structure’s massive size in perspective, it’s roughly as big as 30 football fields.
FAST was finished in 2016 and is currently at early-research stages, but once it has been thoroughly tested and debugged, China has announced plans to open it to researchers around the world. Because it’s not only more big and powerful than all the other telescopes but also located in a very radio-quiet region 1,240 miles southwest of Beijing, researchers anticipate that it has up to ten times the potential to discover signals produced by distant, alien civilizations — or even locate an alien homeworld. Apart from the obligatory extraterrestrial life hunting, the telescope will also become handy in a number of different ways, from detecting low-frequency gravitational ways to discovering brand new information about the universe and its beginnings. That is, if they can find enough people to operate it: In 2017, China was struggling to find qualified people to run the facility.
6. The MOSE project
Venice is famous for its channels, architecture, hordes of tourists and outrageous dinner prices. Unfortunately, these days it’s even more famous for the fact that it’s slowly sinking. The MOSE project is the solution the city is banking on to stop its seemingly inevitable march into the sea. “Mose” means Moses in Italian, and the good people of the MOSE project intends to do the same as the big man from Old Testament: they’re trying to part the sea. MOSE stands for “Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico,” or Experimental Electromechanical Module, and consists of a complex system of retractable gates that are positioned in the “harbor mouths” that connect the Lagoon of Venice into the Adriatic Sea. When high floods threaten the city, closing the gate system will temporarily be able to isolate the lagoon from the sea, leaving Venice safe from at least the most catastrophic floods.
Unfortunately, ambitious projects tend to come with a lot of teething issues, and MOSE would probably be a few places higher on this list if it wasn’t for the fact that its was originally supposed to be operational in 2011 (later revised to 2014), but the project has been marred with difficulties and corruption. Its existing structures have been heavily damaged by mold, mussels, salt air and technical issues, and the project’s original price tag (an estimated $1,8 billion) has blown up to $6,18 billion. While MOSE is still in the works, the system is expected to be functional no earlier than 2022 … that is, if all goes well.
5. Langkawi Sky Bridge
Sometimes, small is beautiful. Though by no means a tiny structure, the Langkawi Sky Bridgein Malaysia dwarfs in comparison to some of the other items on this list, but it’s by no means less of an engineering marvel. The pedestrian Sky Bridge won the Swiss Steel Design Award in 2005 for its exceptional, innovative design. The bridge is an impossibly flimsy-looking construction 328 feet above ground … and since said ground is the top of the Machinchang mountain, the views are nothing short of majestic. The curved, free-span bridge — the longest of its king at over 400 feet — is suspended from just a single pylon, and despite its seeming lightness can support up to 250 people at the same time.
The structure abruptly closed down in 2012, which some took to mean that it was too rickety to use and would never open again. However, the bridge was actually just shut down due to lack of maintenance funding, and after securing the money and making some improvements, the officials reopened it for visitors in 2015.
4. Palm Jumeirah
Dubai is noted for ambitious construction projects, and possibly the biggest of them all is Palm Jumeirah, the world’s largest artificial island that also happens to be shaped like a palm tree. The tree island is more than just a decorative feature for passing planes and helicopters to gawk from above. Its ornate shape adds a neat 50 miles of coastline to the city and, as such, the whole island is absolutely packed with luxury hotels, expensive villas and mansions. The construction of the island started in 2001, and according to Business Insider it took 3,257,212,970.389 cubic feet of sand straight from the Persian Gulf, lovingly sprayed into place using GPS satellites to make sure that the intended palm tree shape would be achieved.
Unfortunately, such a massive undertaking has had a significant, negative impact on the area’s marine life and coastal erosion. Greenpeace has gone as far as called Palm Jumeirah a “visual scar” due to its construction process and very presence muddying the once-clear waters with silt that buries entire coral reefs. Oh, and the island is also sinking at a rate of 0.20 inches per year, which is probably going to royally frustrate a good few hotel owners somewhere down the line.
Still, if the whole “artificial, sinking, environmentally disastrous palm island” thing doesn’t seem quite ridiculous enough yet, don’t worry — as always, Dubai is prepared to go above and beyond. Palm Jumeirah is actually just the first of the three super-ornate artificial islands they’re planning to build.
3. The International Space Station
The International Space Station earns its place on the list simply by being the largest structure humanity has ever put into space. 15 nations have contributed to its construction, which was technically completed between 1998 and 2011. However, the station keeps evolving based on the needs of new experiments and missions. The ISS is 357 feet from end to end, which makes it roughly the same size as an American football field, end zones included. The station has been occupied since November 2, 2000, and by early 2018, no less than 230 people from 18 different countries have visited it. The ISS is constantly staffed by a six-person crew of various nationalities, who get to experience 16 sunrises and sunsets every day as the station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes. There, they live and work in a pressurized facility roughly the size of a six-bedroom house, complete with six sleeping quarters, a massive 340-degree view bay window and a gym (which the occupants have to use at least two hours every day to prevent muscle atrophy).
The ISS may seem like it’s far away, but a spaceship can actually reach it in just six hours after leaving the earth. Thanks to the acre of solar panels affixed to it, you can even spot the station from land in certain conditions. NASA even has a website that helps you with sighting opportunities.
2. Large Hadron Collider
Ah, the Large Hardron Collider! CERN’s massive particle accelerator was greeted with terror as several sensationalist media outlets thought that when it would be switched on in 2008, the machine would create a black hole and destroy the world. As NASA rather sarcastically notes, the LHC completely failed to create an apocalypse. Instead, it has provided humanity with a whole host of stunning discoveries, and even earned several researchers a Nobel prize when it proved their theory of the existence of the Higgs boson by, well, discovering the particle for real.
The world’s largest and most powerful particle collider and the largest machine in the world, t was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.
From a purely physical standpoint, the LCH is a massive, magnificent structure that consists of a 16,78 -mile ring made of superconducting magnets and accelerating structures that boost the energy of the particles. Inside the ring, two high-energy beams travel in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light, in separate, isolated beam pipes that are kept at ultra-high vacuum. The thousands of magnets that direct the beams along the ring structure have to be kept at -456,34 Fahrenheit, which is colder than the temperature of outer space. Even with all this hardware, the LHC’s main function (making particles collide, naturally) is far from an easy task. CERN compares it to firing two needles 6.2 miles apart with so much accuracy that they meet halfway.
1. The Mars Exploration Rovers and Sky Crane
After visiting the Moon and building an actual space station, the next big thing on humanity’s space exploration bucket list was Mars. In 2004, the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on the Red Planet. The two rovers were only expected to be operational for 90 days, but both of them far outlasted their planned missions. Spirit explored the planet until 2009, when it became hopelessly embedded in soft soil. NASA was forced to abandon it after many months of futile attempts to save it, and Spirit’s mission finally ended on May 25, 2011. Opportunity fared even better, and the solar-powered rover was still tenaciously exploring away in the summer of 2018, when a bad, planet-wide dust storm destroyed its systems. While the two rovers failed to find any conclusive evidence of current or past life on Mars, Spirit did discover that Mars had been a significantly wetter planet in the past, and Opportunity provided evidence that the planet may at one point have been suitable for sustaining microbial life.
In 2012, the dream took a further step forward when a much larger rover called Curiosity landed on the planet’s surface. Its delivery system was a feat of engineering all in itself: Because the rover was too large and heavy for standard airbags, the engineers devised a fantastic technique known as the Sky Crane. This method for “soft landing” is essentially a futuristic platform equipped with steerable engines, which enables it to act as a combination of parachute and jetpack. When the crane neared the ground and slowed to a near-zero velocity, the crane released the rover from its descent stage and gently lowered it to the ground with cables. This way, Curiosity arrived to its destination literally ready to roll. As a downside, the maneuver was extremely risky, and NASA less than lovingly dubbed the process “seven minutes of terror.” Curiosity made the landing, and is still exploring Mars to collect information the planet’s future human visitors will need.
As we’ve mentioned a few times before, the fact that we are alive here is astonishing. In order to demonstrate exactly how amazing it is, we’ve rounded up a collection of videos that show our remarkable journey from the Big Bang, to the creation of the solar system, to the formation of the Earth, and finally the rise of humanity.
10. The History of the Universe
According to estimates from astrophysicists, the universe is 13.7 billion years oldand started with the Big Bang. In the first moments after the Big Bang, the universe was almost impossibly tiny. In a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, there was a period known as inflation and the universe grew to the size of an orange. Then three to 20 seconds after the Big Bang, the universe started to cool and expand, and hydrogen and helium, the simplest chemical elements, were born.
380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe became transparent. After 400 million years of darkness, the first stars started lighting up. Then 300 million years later, when the solar system was only 700 million years old, galaxies began to form. Our solar system didn’t form until 9 billion years after the Big Bang. That means that our solar system is actually quite young in the universe, and just for some perspective of how young, please check out the simulation of the creation of the universe posted above.
9. The Known Universe
The video for this entry, from the American Natural History Museum, was created using their Digital Universe Atlas. The atlas is an ongoing project where researchers are mapping out the observable universe, and all the planets and stars are correct to scale. The simulation starts off in the Himalayan mountains and after a short time, Earth disappears into the distance as the simulation pushes us out billions of light years away from Earth.
What is perhaps more amazing than the size of the known universe is that by estimates, we only see four percent of the universe. The rest of the universe is full of mysterious substances called Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Yet, that four percent we do see is unfathomably big, even when we see a simulation of it.
8. The Size of Earth Compared to Other Stars and Suns
For millennia, the Earth was too big to consider traversing even small parts of it. Even with modern air travel, it still takes two days and 19 hours to circumvent it in a plane. But in cosmic terms, the Earth is actually rather small and there are four other planets in our solar system that are much bigger. As seen in the video above from BuzzFeed Blue, five Earths could fit into the ring of Saturn and compared to Jupiter, Earth looks like a marble because Jupiter is 11.2 times the size of Earth. When compared to the sun, the Earth is a barely visible dot because the sun is 109 times larger. But our sun is an insignificant speck compared to an Alpha Scorpii A. star, which is 700 times the diameter of the sun, and that isn’t even the biggest known star. That title belongs to the VY Canis Majoris, which is 1,540 times the size of the sun. If VY Canis Majoris was in the place of our sun, it would extend out past the orbit of Saturn.
What’s even more mind blowing is that stars are tiny compared to galaxies. For example, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 light years in diameter, meaning it is about 678 trillion times the size of the sun. And again, that is small in comparison; the IC 1011 galaxy is 6 million light years wide, or 60 times the size of the Milky Way.
7.The Solar System and the Formation of the Earth
Our solar system has at least eight planets and five recognized dwarf planets that orbit a yellow dwarf star. Before our solar system existed, there was a cloud of helium, hydrogen, dust, and then over 4.5 billion years ago, a nearby star exploded in what is called a supernova, which caused the cloud to collapse. Over the course of 100,000 years, the cloud was flattened into a disc.
In the center of the disc, where the molecules are packed tightest, a proto-star developed and it got so hot that it underwent fusion, giving birth to our sun. The heat from the sun turned the dust into rocks and a number of these rocksclumped together, starting the formation of Earth.
6. How Deep is the Ocean
Around 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth first formed under heat and pressure and was bombarded with asteroids, meteors, and comets. It had an atmosphere that was poisonous and too hot for water to remain on the surface. A second atmosphere was made because of constant volcanic eruptions, and gases like methane and carbon dioxide were pumped into the atmosphere.
Then about 4.1 billion years ago, the Earth’s surface started to cool and the surface became rocky, which allowed rainwater to fill the oceans. The oceans are an amazing part of Earth and it is a requirement for life. Have you ever thought about how deep the ocean actually is? The video from BuzzFeed Blue gives an interesting cartoon to give some perspective on just how far down it goes.
5. How Tall is Mount Everest
On the other end of the spectrum from the deepest part of the ocean is the highest land point, which is the peak of Mount Everest, located in the Himalayas. Its creation started over 250 million years ago when the Earth had one continent called Pangaea. At the time, what is now India was in the Southern Hemisphere, attached to what are today Australia, South America, and Africa. After the super continent broke up, India spent millions of years moving towards its present day home in EuroAsia. When India hit the continent, it acted like a bulldozer and it pushed up the mountain range about 60 million years ago.
Mount Everest is 29,035 feet tall, more than 10 times higher than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. To get an even better idea as to how tall it is, check out the video above. Also, in case you’re wondering what the distance from the lowest depth to the highest mountain peak, it is 65,236 feet, or 12.35 miles.
4. The Migration of Humans
Homo sapiens first appeared about 200,000 years ago and they most likely came from a single point in Africa. Around 130,000 years later, the weather changed because the Earth was in an ice age, and it is believed that the number of humans dwindled to just under 10,000. Luckily for us, the weather got better and human numbers went up.
60,000 years ago, the first group of humans left Africa. They migrated along the North Indian Ocean, through what is now the Middle East, Pakistan, India, and Southeast Asia. 10,000 years after leaving, they reached Australia. A second group left Africa around 50,000 years ago, crossed the Red Sea and then over the next 15,000 years became the populations of the Middle East and Central Asia.
About 40,000 years later, humans migrated to Europe from the Southeast. Then about 20,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum, a group of Asian hunters were able to cross a land bridge connecting Asia with North America because ice sheets in the North and South Poles had sucked up water, decreasing sea levels by more than 300 feet. 15,000 years ago, the Asian hunters reached the land surface of North America, and then within 1,000 years they made it all the way to the southern part of South America.
When agriculture was discovered 10,000 years ago, it became a cornerstone of human civilization and the first civilization is believed to have started about 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, which is modern day Iraq.
3. Time Lapse From the International Space Station
The discovery of agriculture was a pivotal moment in human history because one farmer could grow food for a group of people, so not everyone was needed for food collection like it was during hunter and gatherer days. This led to a division of labor, which, in turn, led to people being able to do different jobs. Having different jobs led to commerce and since people have never had a history of being fair with each other, this led to the court system and government, which in turn led to religion, and writing. All of this lay the foundation for societies that we live in today.
While humans were an endangered species 130,000 years ago, humans have recovered remarkably. By 1804, there were 1 billion people living on Earth. That population doubled 123 years later in 1927. In 1960, the population reached 3 billion and just 14 years later there were 4 billion people residing on Earth. Then, Earth reached the 5 billion mark in 1987, and surpassed 6 billion in 1999.
When the video above was posted in 2011, the population of the world reached 7 billion people. The video is a time lapse video from the International Space Station that shows both the beauty of the natural Earth, like the Aurora Borealis, and how much of an impact seven billion humans have on the planet.
2. Modern Human Life
One of the amazing things about human life is that we are all individuals with our own thoughts and feelings, yet we all came from the same place. We, and all our ancestors that came before us, were created through the fertilization of an egg from one of billions of sperm. We survived nine months in the womb and were born. We survived infancy and have survived every day until we have gotten to this very point in time.
For a lot of us, and this is especially true the older you get, sometimes it seems that time just flies by. Nothing perhaps represents that more than this video by Frans Hofmeester, who recorded his daughter, Lotte, for 15 seconds every day and then created this video in 2015, when Lotte was 16. It is a perfect metaphor for how quickly our life goes by, even if our lives are short in the cosmic sense.
1. The Future of Humanity
The universe has come a long way in 13.8 billion years. It started off as a tiny speck, then grew to the size of an orange and then expanded to encompass everything we know as existence. It is full of billions of galaxies, and one of those galaxies had a planet with rocky mountains and deep oceans, that was the perfect distance away from a perfect sized star and life developed on it. From that single cell of life, life forms evolved over millions of years, eventually becoming apes, who became homo sapiens and they migrated all over the world. About 10,000 years ago, we started the transition from hunters and gatherers to civilizations and our population has grown steadily since. There are currently 7.4 billion free thinking, emotional beings living on Earth and we all started from the same place. We’ve come so far and yet, there are so many places we have yet to go.
This video features famed silent film star Charlie Chaplin from his first film with sound, The Great Dictator. In it, Chaplin explains the stark beauty of humanity and what we can do when we work together. Because while we’re all individuals, we all come from the same place and all that can be traced back to the microscopic speck at the start of the Big Bang.
William Shatner hit the nail on the head when he uttered the famous phrase, “Space, the final frontier.” Why? Well, contrary to what some scientists will have you believe, space remains mankind’s final and rather obscure frontier. After all there is so much we have yet to understand about space, and much that we thought we knew is starting to look ‘shaky’.
For example, if you were to approach a couple of astrophysicists and ask them about their views on ‘black holes’ you will, more often than not, open up a cosmic size Pandora’s box of never-ending debate. While it is feasible that many of you might enjoy such a conversation, it is equally likely that you will walk away from the whole episode with a tangible sense that as much as science likes to think it knows a lot about space… it really doesn’t.
However hope is not lost! For amongst all the dull theoretical extrapolations and mind numbing confusion, there remain a number of facts that will challenge some of the ‘cast iron’ perceptions you have about the universe. As a starting point read on and discover 10 of the most mind boggling facts about space!
10. Water Pools In Space
In 2011 astronomers discovered a gigantic vapour cloud caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole deep within the universe, making it the largest discovery of water anywhere. According toUniverse Today, the cloud, known as a ‘reservoir’ in astronomical circles, is believed to be capable of holding all of the Earth’s oceans 140 trillion times over!
While the discovery of water in space is not headline news, it is the sheer volume of water discovered and the fact that the reservoir seems to be slightly younger than the big bang itself that has caught the attention of scientists. Matt Bradford from NASA has stated that, “[The discovery] is another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times.”
So if the Earth ever runs out of water, at least we know where we can find ourselves an intergalactic water pump. The only problem is how we would get there, as it currently resides 10 billion light years from Earth.
9. It Would Take 225 Million Years To Walk A Light Year
It would take 225 million years to walk a light year. Don’t believe me? Well as all great mathematicians suggest, let us show our workings!
One light year (the distance light travels in a year) is about 5.9 trillion miles.
If you briskly walked 5.9 trillion miles at 20 minutes per mile constantly without any breaks, you would complete your light year stroll in 225 million years.
In other words if you started your walk just before the emergence of the dinosaurs you would be about to finish walking now!
On an interesting side note, according to Jessica Cheng in the September 2008 edition of ‘Popular Science’ magazine, the long trip would come with a unique set of problems. She estimates that in order to complete the journey you would need about 11.8 billion pairs of shoes! Not to mention the fact that you would be burning 80 calories per mile and would therefore need an average of 2 trillion power bars to fuel your body for the trip!
Cheng also goes on to suggest that after such a journey, you wouldn’t have got very far. In an astronomical sense 1 light year is the equivalent of you just about reaching the end of Earth’s garden path. The nearest star from Earth, Proxima Centauri, is a staggering 4.22 light years away.
8. Eros Asteroid Of Riches
In 1998 the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft passed close to the asteroid Eros and relayed back to Earth its findings. It discovered that Eros was a floating treasure chest of unprecedented riches. Due to its size, NASA has suggested that if Eros consists of 3% metal, like so many meteorites that fall to Earth, then it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Eros might indeed contain 1.8 billion metric tons of gold and other precious metals such as platinum.
According to Dr. David Whitehouse, then Science Editor for the BBC, in an article entitled, ‘Gold rush in space’, Eros is indeed a large but by no means the largest of asteroids. That being said he believes that since Eros is speculated to contain a multitude of rare elements, the asteroid has a total monetary worth of close to $20,000 bn. Of course it goes without saying that if Eros ever impacted the Earth, its priceless metal content and indeed monetary value will be of little consolation (or, for that matter, use) for what would most certainly be an extinct mankind.
7. There Are 1,397 Known Asteroids That Could End Mankind
In an attempt to prevent the dramatic scenes of movies such asArmageddon, NASA has its eyes fixed on the 1,397 asteroids in and around our solar system that could, upon impact with the Earth, bring about the end of the human race. You can rest assured that should anything larger than 350 feet in diameter come within 4.6 million miles of the Earth, NASA will be on critical alert.
The extent to which NASA is aware of potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) is both impressive and frightening. Rather ominously NASA has released an orbit plan for each of the 1,397 known PHAs. Aside from looking like somebody’s overzealous attempt at getting to grips with Spirograph, the image does not fail to impress the severity of PHAs and the real and continual threat that they pose to mankind. As Dan Nosowitz suggests in the August 5th 2013 edition of the ‘Popular Science’ magazine, it is hard to believe that we have yet to be impacted by one of these ‘destruction max’ asteroids.
6. The International Space Station Travels At Five Miles A Second
According to CoolCosmos, a NASA education and outreach website, the International Space Station orbits the Earth at a speed of (roughly) 17,150 miles per hour! This equates to the station travelling five miles every second with its crew witnessing a sunrise every 92 minutes. To see the International Space Station in action you can log onto the following website and watch its orbit of the Earth live and in real time here.
5. There Are More Stars Than Words Spoken
According to Scientific American, there are more stars in the universe than words have been spoken by every human who has ever lived. As much as this sounds a gross exaggeration of fact, the true number of stars in the universe is probably a number so vast that it is beyond the comprehension of the human brain. For example, Nicola Willett of The Mars Society estimates that there are at least 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (70 sextillion x10 to the power of 22) stars in the universe. She goes on to suggest that the universe itself probably contains more than 100 billion galaxies, each likely to contain billions of stars. Don’t worry if this confuses you, as these are the sort of numbers that we will never truly begin to understand.
Our only certainty in the process of comprehending the total amount of stars in the universe is that we are likely to never know the true answer, as star counting is a process of hypothesising with a large, and a very large at that, margin of error. In other words, nobody has known, knows presently and will never likely know the true figure of the sum of all the stars in the universe.
4. The Moon Suffers From Moonquakes
When Clive. R. Neal, associate professor of civil engineering and geological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, and a team of 15 planetary scientists re-examined Apollo data from the 1970s, he concluded that ‘The moon is seismically active.’
Seismometers placed at the landing sites of the Apollo missionsbetween 1969 and 1972 radioed data back to Earth until they were taken offline in 1977. The results were surprising, suggesting that there are at least four types of moonquakes:
Deep moonquakes that occur on average around 700km below the moon’s surface and are probably triggered by the Earth’s tidal forces.
Usual vibrations and minor moonquakes as a result of meteorite impact.
Thermal moonquakes caused by the Sun when illuminating and expanding the frigid crust on the moon’s surface following a two week deep-freeze lunar night.
Shallow moonquakes that occur frequently at a depth of 20-30km below the moon’s surface.
In truth nobody is really certain what exactly causes moonquakes.Speculation is rife among scientists. All that is known is that unlike earthquakes, moonquakes last longer. This is because, unlike the earth, the moon’s crust is hard and uncompressible. Therefore a moonquake tends to vibrate the moon like a tuning fork, whereas the Earth has elements of compression (like water and minerals) that act like a sponge during an earthquake and disperse the tremors within a matter of minutes. On the moon, a moonquake has been known to last 10 minutes!
3. Planet HD189733b
The Hubble Telescope has identified a deep azure blue planet in distant space. The planet, called HD189733b, is a huge gas giant orbiting very close to its star. Its atmosphere is a hellish environment of 4,000mph (7,000kmph) winds and molten glass that rains sideways! The estimated temperature of this deep space ‘beast’ is a scorching 1,000 degrees Celsius!
The planet might outwardly look serene and earth-like, but its bluish hue is a result of silicate particles scattering blue light rather than any reflection of a serene tropical ocean. If mankind were to ever find itself in a situation similar to the movie Interstellar, this planet would be one of the most hostile environments in the known universe. Not that we would be able to reach it, as it currently resides 63 light years from Earth!
2. The Earth Has More Than One Moon
If you thought the Earth has only one moon, it might surprise you to discover that this is actually false. While the moon is indeed the only celestial body to observe a strict orbit of the Earth, there are in fact a number of other ‘near-Earth’ asteroids which follow the Earth as it orbits the Sun. These are called ‘co-orbitals’ and there are at least 6 known ‘co-orbitals’ caught in the Earth’s gravitational pull. However don’t think you can gaze into the night sky to find them, as most can’t be seen with the naked eye.
Of course you might agree with many astronomers and suggest that these co-orbitals are not technically moons. However, what is clear is that while they might not be moons in the traditional sense, they are far from your average asteroid. Like the Earth they orbit the Sun in roughly a year and occasionally pass close enough to the Earth to exert a slight gravitational influence. In astronomical terms this means that the suggestion that they are in facts moons is all the more realistic.
Robert Jedicke, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, has suggested that, “At any one time there are one or two 1 meter diameter asteroids in orbit around the Earth.” Perhaps when we think of the moon we should consider the possibility that rather than the Earth having one solitary moon in Luna, the Earth has in fact a number of fluctuating moons that come and go throughout the year!
1. There Are Less Than Nine Planets In Our Solar System
Despite what you were taught in your science lessons, our solar system has less than 9 planets. Don’t be fooled, you would be right in thinking that there were 9 planets 10 years ago but in recent years the International Astronomical Union has decided it would be a good idea to apply its own criteria of what constitutes a planet to our solar system.
The criteria stipulate that in order for something to be defined as a planet it must:
Orbit the Sun
Have enough mass to be round in shape (but doesn’t have to be perfectly spherical)
Have cleared ‘their neighbourhood’ or immediate orbit.
The first planet to fail the criteria was Pluto in 2006 when it was demoted from a planet to a ‘dwarf planet.’ This is perhaps not surprising as there has been much debate since Pluto’s discovery about whether it is actually a planet. For years it was seen as an icy rock not too dissimilar to an oversized asteroid confined to the region of space at the very edge of the solar system. That makes 8 planets.
Candidate Crippen launches into a spontaneous analogy.
models, the kind with a thousand little pieces that you glue together. There were nuclear carriers, supersonic jets, and yes, even an old Space Shuttle docking with the ISS (International Space Station) and this shirttail relative wanted to take some home with him. Well I had worked way too hard on this display to break up the collection, so I told him no.
high road. He knew the boy’s parents and how they would never believe that their dear little blankety-blank would never do such a thing.
Dhangotma stands to respond, but could use a step ladder in order to complete the exchange of palms. His English is fractured, like many World Space Consortium techs, but this one makes little effort to excel. His answers to questions are choppy and incomplete, but Roy manages to get a thumbs-up, with a couple of references to his involvement in the Russian Spaceflight program at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the former Kazakhstan.
communications with his phone.
from recent events. The Tycho driver is metaphorically honking his horn anxious to get going.
