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28 May 2010
Solar System Tour: The Sun
Everyone knows about the sun, it’s that really bright thing that rises every morning and sets every evening. Not everyone knows much about it though. For example, did you know the sun is actually a star? Ok, so maybe you knew that. But if you’re so smart, what’s it made of? The sun is almost entirely hydrogen, with a bit of helium mixed in and a tiny amount of all …
29 April 2010
MarsSed 2010 Field Trip Day 2: Stromatolites, Gypsum and Layers
We started off Day 2 of the field trip by driving up onto the eroded rocks of what used to be the tidal flats of the ancient reef, between the shore and the continental shelf. The closest modern-day analog to the rocks that we visited is the Persian Gulf, where you have an arid climate and deposition on the shelf and down into the deeper ocean basin. In the tidal …
18 March 2010
Book Review: The Next 100 Years
You would think that since I’m working at Johnson Space Center right now, I would have exciting tales from inside NASA to share with you, but I’m afraid it has been pretty uneventful. I have however managed to read a couple of books, one of which was The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, by George Friedman. This was a really fascinating book about using history and …
15 February 2010
Lasers Shooting Stuff
I posted about lasers last week and mentioned in passing that the US military was working on a giant plane-mounted laser to shoot down missiles. As if on cue, this video was released, showing infrared views of that very laser doing that very thing! And on a related note: good news for mosquito haters out there. The very same technology used to take down missiles is being used on a …
6 January 2010
Pulsar "Clocks" Will Help Find Gravity Waves
How do you detect a ripple in space-time itself? Go check out my article at Universe Today for the answer*. *Yes, technically the answer is also in the title of this post, but you should check out the Universe Today article for a little more detail.
20 December 2009
AGU 2009 – Day 3: Venus and the Moon
I’m splitting day 3 into two posts because there were so many interesting sessions. Stay tuned for the second post about astrobiology and society. But for now, Venus and the moon! I started the day off at the Venus session. One of the first talks I heard was by Cedric Gillman about the history of water on Venus. He suggested a very thick primordial H2O atmosphere with a surface pressure …
30 November 2009
Rings around the Earth – Implications
Last week I posted a video that speculates what it would look like if the Earth had rings like Saturn. Well, over at Quantum Rocketry, Joe Shoer has two excellent follow-up posts. First he calculated what the rings would really look like with gaps caused by Earth’s moons rather than just copying and pasting Saturn’s rings. Here’s a simulated image, but you should check out the full post for more …
23 November 2009
If Earth had Rings
There’s a great video making the rounds showing what it would look like if Earth had a ring system like Saturn’s, including some gorgeous views from the ground. Of course, rings probably wouldn’t be stable with our moon, or at least would look very different, but that doesn’t take away from the coolness of this video. Enjoy!
22 November 2009
Flying over Enceladus
Check out this awesome animation from the November 21 flyby of Enceladus (via the Planetary Society Blog). Remember, these are actual pictures, taken by an actual spacecraft! I’m constantly amazed at how close the Cassini team can get to Enceladus. This is the sort of cool fly-through I’d expect to see in the opening sequence of a Star Trek episode or something. To see it in real life is just …
21 November 2009
New Enceladus pictures!
The Cassini spacecraft just did a very close flyby of Enceladus, the icy moon of Saturn that has become famous for the plumes of water vapor billowing from its south pole, and the pictures coming back are so spectacular that they are taking seasoned planet-watchers by surprise. Here’s a teaser: a panorama assembled from the raw Cassini images by Stuart Atkinson at Cumbrian Sky. Check out his post for lots …
