This week in space: special post

in

Distant 'water-world' confirmed

This is just cool, so many exciting things about this.

Astronomers have claimed the existence of a new class of planet: a "water-world" with a thick, steamy atmosphere.

Read more HERE

"GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of," Berta said. "A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water."

The ground-based MEarth Project, led by CfA's David Charbonneau, discovered GJ 1214b in 2009. This super-Earth is about 2.7 times Earth's diameter and weighs almost seven times as much. It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 2 million kilometres, giving it an estimated temperature of 230 degrees Celsius.

In 2010, CfA scientist Jacob Bean and colleagues reported that they had measured the atmosphere of GJ 1214b, finding it likely that it was composed mainly of water. However, their observations could also be explained by the presence of a planet-enshrouding haze in GJ 1214b's atmosphere.

Also, read more HERE

 

 

Space roomba

 

The Swiss have a plan for cleaning up space junk currently in orbit, they have made an annoucement about a debris removal device which is hoped to be launched in in three to five years. The first objecting of the program will be to capture two Swiss owned sattelties.

There’s a space junk issue in orbit. In fact, NASA tracks a half-million pieces of orbital debris... more generally gets added with new launches, and there is always the possibility current debris could be fractured in to more from objects reentering orbit and hitting ones there. Cleaning that up does sound like a good thing. The plan is to detect the offending item, match its trajectory, grab it somehow (which includes halting any spinning that it’s doing), then encapsulating everything for an eventual re-entry. Looks like they plan on the whole robot burning up along with the junk during that final stage.

 

Swiss scientists said Wednesday they plan to launch a “janitor satellite” specially designed to get rid of orbiting debris known as space junk.

The 10-million-franc ($11-million) satellite called CleanSpace One — the prototype for a family of such satellites — is being built by the Swiss Space Center at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL.

EPFL said Wednesday its launch would come within three to five years and its first tasks are to grab two Swiss satellites launched in 2009 and 2010.

Read more HERE

Eisenhower and aliens

This isn't the first time such claims have been made in regards to Dwight D. Eisenhower and aliens.

Former American President Dwight D Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens from another planet, a former US government consultant has claimed.

The 34th President of the United States met the extra terrestrials at a remote air base in New Mexico in 1954, according to lecturer and author Timothy Good.

Eisenhower and other FBI officials are said to have organised the showdown with the space creatures by sending out 'telepathic messages'.

The two parties finally met up on three separate occasions at the Holloman Air Force base and there were 'many witnesses', it is claimed.

Conspiracy theorists have circulated increased rumours in recent months that the meeting between the Commander-in-Chief and people from another planet took place.

But the claims from Mr Good, a former U.S. Congress and Pentagon consultant, are the first to be made publicly by a prominent academic.

 

Read more HERE

Invisibility could protect from earthquakes

Anti-Earthquake Invisibility Cloak of the Day

Researchers at the University of Manchester’s School of Mathematics think the same technology used in light-bending “invisibility cloaks” could be used to protect buildings from earthquakes.

Invisibility cloaks, like the one recently created by University of Texas scientists, scatter waves of light away from an object using metamaterials. The earthquake-stopping technology would use specially-treated rubber to disperse seismic waves in the same way, scattering them away from a building.

The seismic waves would be converted into sound and heat energy, the researchers explained in a paper submitted last week.

“Five or six years ago scientists started with light waves, and in the last few years we have started to consider other wave-types, most importantly perhaps sound and elastic waves,”

said William Parnell in a press release.

“The real problem with the latter is that it is normally impossible to use naturally available materials as cloaks. We showed theoretically that pre-stressing a naturally available material – rubber – leads to a cloaking effect from a specific type of elastic wave.”

The next step for Parnell and his team is to put that theory into practice. The technology could eventually be used to protect sensitive buildings like nuclear power plants from earthquake damage.

 

 

That is just fun. Heh.

Wolfy

    On the sea, on the ocean, on the island, on Bujan,

    On the empty pasture gleams the moon, on an ashstock lying

    In a green wood, in a gloomy vale.

    Toward the stock wandereth a shaggy wolf.

    Horned cattle seeking for his sharp white fangs;

    But the wolf enters not the forest,

    But the wolf dives not into the shadowy vale,

    Moon, Moon, gold-horned moon,

    Check the flight of bullets, blunt hunter’s knives,

    Break the shepherd’s cudgels.

    Cast wild fear upon all cattle,

    Oh men, on all creepings things,

    That they may not catch the grey wolf,

    That they may not rend his warm skin!

    My word is binding, more binding than sleep,

    More binding than the promise of a hero!

 

Spirit of the Wolf,
You who wanders the wild lands,
You who stalks in silent shadows,
You who runs and leaps
between the moss-covered trees,
lend me your primal strength,
and the wisdom of your glowing eyes.
Teach me to relentlessly track my desires.
And to stand in defense of those I love.
Show me the hidden paths and the moonlit fields.
Fierce Spirit,
Walk with me in my solitude
Howl with me in my joy
and
Guard me as I move through this world.

My plan for Venus

Culture a ton of that, load it onto a rocket with a dispersal system and disperse it into the atmosphere.
 
Better yet, set up a moon base for manufacturing rockets and helium 3 (in the soil, great rocket fuel) and send one ever 1-2 months for a decade or two, then go out to the asteroid belt and mine a ton more raw materials and get an automated production facility pumping out rockets full of that extremophile and just keep hurling them at venus... it'll eat up all the co2, and generate absurd amounts of bio-fuel... just collecting on the surface until the co2 is considerably reduced and you can just land.
 
Better yet, find/engineer one that eats up the carbon and just releases oxygen.... It'd be a super oxygen rich environment after a while (you'd have to do it way past the 20% that Earth has because you'd need to reduce the pressure and subsequent temperature the CO2 is making but meh)... Venus is 96.5% co2 and only 3.5% where Earth is 78% nitrogen 20.95% oxygen and CO2 is only .03% so you probably could go colonize it BUT if you could reduce the pressure and heat I'm sure there are depoits of all the ores you'd find on earth you'd need for construction. Also deuterium and hydrogen in the atmosphere in greater quantities than here.
 
Generate the oxygen, combine with hydrogen... water. Set up work colonies, mine, refine, fabricate metals and parts you could launch into orbit using oxygen rockets or even biofuel. Lots of sulfuric acid so you can make fertilizers for the work colonies also use it in production of explosives for the mining operations.
 
It'd give us excellent skill with working on a foreign planet, not to mention give us materials (while of course we are mining the asteroid belt too, more material out there than 100, hell 1000 earth's)... then I'm sure you find something in the soil you could convert to nitrogen and turn it into Earth 2 (if in fact Earth isn't Venus 2)... Mars will never be an option as the atmosphere is just gone.
 
As we continue to mine stuff in the asteroid field and work towards FTL propulsion or at least near speed of light (which we can already due with nukes, look at Project Orion)... we'd have materials to build massive ships, probes, sattelites etc to start spreading around our solar system and sending out of it. Not to mention we could jsut produce giant ships in orbit near Earth and the Moon, near Venus and Mars that could be life boats, as well as look like a giant navy in the event hostile ET's show up and see these massive ships parked around the planets that might make them think twice about attacking us (we could also load them with massive projectiles made from mined asteroids as massive impact weapons to use against invading enemies like in the Lost Fleet Series)...

Senator Lugar responds to PIPA and SOPA

Contacted him saying to stop them dead in their tracks... here is his reply.

 

 

Dear Mr. Mercer:

 

Thank you for sharing with me your opposition to proposals such as S. 968, the Protect IP Act of 2011, and H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act.  I share many of the concerns that were raised about this legislation.

 

As you may know, Majority Leader Reid indefinitely postponed Senate consideration of the Protect IP Act.

 

The widespread use of digital media is still a relatively new phenomenon, and the law has not caught up with all the capabilities available to anyone with a computer and Internet access.  This has prompted a vigorous debate on how digital copyrights should be protected, particularly with respect to the ongoing conflict between the rights of artists and producers to protect their intellectual property versus the recognized right of consumers to make recordings for personal use.

 

While I believe that we must ensure the continuing integrity of our important copyright laws both domestically and abroad, I agree that enforcement must take place in a manner that protects the rights of all parties involved.  I will continue to closely follow this issue.  Again, thank you for contacting me.

 


                              
                              Sincerely,


                                                            Richard G. Lugar
                                                            United States Senator