China plans to launch space station

It would appear that China has official plans to launch its own space station by 2020.

The People's Republic of China is very ambitious about its space program, using it as a way to establish themselves as one of the world's leading scientific nations.

The space program began in 1956, mainly for military use. It's manned space program began 1968 and sent it's first human in space in 2003, making it the third country to do so.

According to The China Daily newspaper, China's planned space station would be "a small-scale, 20-ton space workshop," quoting Long Lehao, a leading designer of the Long March 3A rocket that carried the Chang'e 1, a lunar probe, into space. The recent lunar probe launch has sparked rivalry between China and Japan's space programs. India is also said to possibly join in on the space race with plans to launch it's own probe in April. Although Chinese officials claim that they would rather work with other countries rather than compete in a space race. They were willing to participate in the International Space Station but the U.S. were uneasy about allowing a communist dictatorship aboard.
















Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_program_of_China
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/WireStory?id=3830131&page=1

Wormholes - Science fiction or science?

You've probably heard of wormholes, shortcuts through spacetime, while watching an episode of Star Trek or some other sci-fi favorite. Well it turns out that wormholes are actually an accepted theory among many astronomers and physicist. The term wormhole was coined in 1957 by an the American physicist John Wheeler although the idea was conceived in 1921 by the German mathematician Hermann Weyl. Wormhole theories range from intra-universe, a passage that connects two points in the same universe, to inter-universe, a passage that connects two different universes. The two main types of wormholes are; Lorentzian wormholes and Euclidean wormholes. The Lorentzian wormholes, also know as Schwarzschild wormholes or Einstein-Rosen bridges, are the most studied because they work within general relativity. In most cases, for wormholes to function there would need to exist exotic matter, which is a theoretical matter which has negative energy density. However exotic matter has not been proven to exist yet. The Morris-Thorne wormhole was the proposed traversable wormhole, a wormhole which one could travel through. It was introduced in 1988 by Kip Thorne and Mike Morris. In this type of wormhole, the opening is held open by a spherical shell of exotic matter. There also have been theories that state that wormhole could be used as a method of time travel as it cuts through space and time.


Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

Etraterrestrial Life

Have you ever sat under the stars and wondered if there was something else out there? What would they look like? Would they look anything like us? Would they look like Mr. Spock, Yoda or something completely unrecognizable? If we can find so many differences amongst ourselves, what are we going to think if we ever met said aliens?

If you look at our evolution, starting from microscopic organisms to Homo Sapien Sapiens taking millions and millions of years of constant change. If our evolution had only taken a slightly different path that time, we would be completely different. If our evolution is the product of chance and trial and error, the chances that we find a humanoid being that fits our mold of "normal" are very slim. Unless, our evolution was directed by a higher being such as God, Allah, Mother Earth, etc. Maybe evolution was meant to take a certain path and that life on different planets follow similar patterns.

Will we be the first one to venture out in space and discover an unknown planet or will some other species that are just as curious as we are visit our planet? Hopefully one day we'll make first contact and find out.








































This may not have to do much with astronomy but my Blog reminded me a computer game that is coming out soon. The game is called Spore. In Spore you start out as a microorganism and end the game as space a explorers. During the game you experience evolution, the rise of civilization and eventually space travel. The game looks really interesting because during the evolution phase of the game, you are able to adjust your species attributes to make sure it survives, so it's basically like an evolution simulation.

Etraterrestrial Life

Have you ever sat under the stars and wondered if there was something else out there? What would they look like? Would they look anything like us? Would they look like Mr. Spock, Yoda or something completely unrecognizable? If we can find so many differences amongst ourselves, what are we going to think if we ever met said aliens?

If you look at our evolution, starting from microscopic organisms to Homo Sapien Sapiens taking millions and millions of years of constant change. If our evolution had only taken a slightly different path that time, we would be completely different. If our evolution is the product of chance and trial and error, the chances that we find a humanoid being that fits our mold of "normal" are very slim. Unless, our evolution was directed by a higher being such as God, Allah, Mother Earth, etc. Maybe evolution was meant to take a certain path and that life on different planets follow similar patterns.

Will we be the first one to venture out in space and discover an unknown planet or will some other species that are just as curious as we are visit our planet? Hopefully one day we'll make first contact and find out.





This may not have to do much with astronomy but my Blog reminded me a computer game that is coming out soon. The game is called Spore. In Spore you start out as a microorganism and end the game as space a explorers. During the game you experience evolution, the rise of civilization and eventually space travel. The game looks really interesting because during the evolution phase of the game, you are able to adjust your species attributes to make sure it survives, so it's basically like an evolution simulation.

Mars: Ice cap found on equator?

Planetary scientist have been scratching their head over weird deposits found Mars' equator because they seem to contain large amounts of water. Of course, Mars already has ice-water on its poles but this new discovery may indicate a possibility that the red planet has water elsewhere also.





















Kenneth Tanaka, an astrogeologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Flagstaff, Arizona, said "It would be like finding evidence of ice caps on Earth at the Equator, It's kind of very strange."

If Mars does have an icy equator, it could indicate a possibility for life on the red planet.

Some experts have suggested that it could volcanic ash porous enough to look like ice. Tanaka argues saying that "The problem was we couldn't find any volcanoes" nearby, he said. "There's a lack of smoking guns."

This new find reinforces the idea that Mars was once like Earth and had its own bodies of water.


source:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/071101-mars-ice.html


For more articles on life on Mars: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070803-phoenix-mars.html

Hubble Telescope is a Star!

Roll out the red carpet, Hubble is making it to the big screen. Warner Bros. Pictures has announced the production of an upcoming 3D film for IMAX. The movie will use footage taken by the STS-125 crew. It is set to release in early 2010.

I'll take this opportunity to talk a bit about the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Telescope is a telescope that orbits Earth, that launched in 1990. The telescope is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble. Though only launched in 1990, the idea of a space telescope had been around since 1946. The Hubble Space Telescope is a Ritchey-Chretien telescope, also known as an RCT. The diameter of the telescope is 2.4m and its focal length is 57.6m. The telescope has had a very big impact on astronomy.


















http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/news/hst_imax.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Impact_on_astronomy

Interstellar travel

Anyone with a slightly geeky or nerdy side has at least watched Star Trek or Star Wars once or twice. For about 50 years or so people have been fantasizing about space travel. Science fiction novels has us hurtling at light speed through the universe in the far off future. 2001: A Space Odyssey had us traveling to Jupiter by the year 2001.

Interplanetary travel might no be too far off but what is the possibility of Interstellar or intergalactic travel?

Using propulsion methods of our current methods would result in extremely long voyages, it would take hundreds or thousands of years to reach a destination. It would take several generations of crew members to complete the mission. We would need a ship that would be self-sustaining and would hold hundreds of people, a sort of biosphere. Another possibility would be suspended animation, assuming that have perfected it by this time.

Using nuclear, fusion or light sail powered space craft we could reach on the average a speed of 10% of light speed. It would take about 40 years to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star. There is also the possibility of antimatter rockets which could theoretically reach a speed near that of light.

Light-speed travel is the most appealing form of travel for obvious reasons. One theory is interstellar travel through transmission, in other words teleportation. If you could transmit matter as information and the reconstruct it at its destination, light-speed would be possible.
According to Einstein's General Relativity, spacetime is curved. One could use the warpdrive concept, as seen in Star Trek, to use curvature in space to take a shortcut from point A to point B. The use of worm holes to move from a point to another has been speculated but it is not know whether possible in practice or not. Generally as far as physically traveling faster than light has been considered impossible according to physics.


One can only hope that humanity will once reach the point of interstellar travel. If we would told people 200 years ago that one day we would were going to walk on the moon they would have laughed us out of the room.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_travel

Incoming Impact!

Today our astronomy professor gave us a bit of a scare, the class topic was the affects of an asteroid or comet impact on Earth.

A few years ago I remember watching this special on the discovery channel entitled Ten Ways the World Will End. It listed ten different doomsday scenarios which could end all life on earth.

The Earth will spin off its axis

Super-intelligent killer mutants

A monster plague

The war to end all wars

Invasion of the Grey goo (molecular nanotechnology)

The big freeze

Alien invasion

A super volcano

Robots will inherit the Earth

The Doomsday asteroid

Some of them may seem a little ridiculous but others could be very real possibilities like the asteroid one, even though the odds are that it is unlikely in our lifetime.

It never hurts to prepare ourselves in case something ever happened, we don't want to end up like the dinosaurs.


Here are some more extraterrestrial dangers from wikipedia.

• It would seem that our galaxy, the milky way, is in a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy. This will only happen in 3 billion years however.
• In 5 billion years our sun will become a red star and in will become 10 more luminous.
• Our universe may come to an end, some scientist call this the Big Crunch. This will not happen for a considerable amount of time
  
• Massive objects such as a planet, a star or a black hole could be catastrophic if there was a close encounter with our solar system.
• Gamma Ray burst

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_civilization


Here is some interesting images I found on asteroid impacts.













http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/art-75278/Artists-concept-of-a-catastrophic-asteroid-impact-with-early-Earth



http://www.bertsgeschiedenissite.nl/geschiedenis%20aarde/komeetinslag.html



http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/P/potentially_hazardous_asteroid.html

Earth?

Why is our planet named Earth? I always thought that the name of our planet was uninteresting especially compared to the other planets.

All the other planets from our solar system are named after gods... GODS! Jupiter is named after the roman king of gods (the roman equivalent of Zeus), Mars is the god of war, Jupiter is the god of water, etc.

Our planet is named after the ancient Greek element of dirt and soil. Why not call it Water? Our planet's surface is about 75% water. Wouldn't that make more sense? Maybe planet Vegetation? Many planets have dirt but not every planet has water or vegetation.

What are the extraterrestrial lifeforms going to think when we tell them our planet is named Earth?


Earth is a pretty special planet. Don't you think we might aswell give it a pretty special name?






















image taken from wikipedia.

Zodiac

The zodiac are the 12 constellation that travel along the ecliptic. The zodiac constellations include Aries, Taurus (which i have discussed in my previous post), Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces.

Many experts think that the origin of dividing the ecliptic into zodiacal signs may have begun in Babylon as early as 1000 BCE. But the precise origin of the 12 zodiac constellations we have today are unknown. Many of them are named after animals which they bare little or no resemblance to. It is believed that shape of the constellation may have not been the main factor for naming the zodiacs. It was probably due to a more mythical aspects such as heavenly creatures or something similar.


Aquarius (The Water-bearer) - January 20 to February 18
Pisces (The Fishes) - February 20 to March 20
Aries (The Ram) - March 21 to April 20
Taurus (The Bull) - April 21 to May 20
Gemini (The Twins) - May 21 to June 20
Cancer (The Crab) - June 21 to July 20
Leo (The Lion) - July 21 to August 21
Virgo (The Virgin) - August 22 to September 22
Libra (The Scale) - September 23 to October 22
Scorpio (The Scorpions) - October 23 to November 22
Sagittarius (The Archers) - November 23to December 20
Capricorn (The Sea-goat) - December 21 to January 19







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac#Western_zodiac
http://www.gemwrap.com/zodiac.html

Taurus

Being born in the month of may, I fall under the astrological sign of Taurus.

Calm, patient, reliable, fair, loyal, affectionate, easygoing, sensuous, ambitious, determined and stubborn are among the many things said about individuals born under the Taurus.

In Chinese astrology the equivalent of the Taurus is the snake, which is convenient because I was born in the year of the Snake. Therefore it probably makes me extra stubborn.
















Enough with the astrology, I will now speak of the constellation of Taurus.

It is one of the 12 zodiac constellation, therefore it situated along the ecliptic. It is located between Aries to the west and Gemini to the east. Taurus is made up of seven main stars. The nearest star, 10 Tauri is about 45 light years away from earth.



































http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_(constellation)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_%28astrology%29#Characteristics
http://ottawa.rasc.ca/astronotes/2000/an0011i2.jpg

A short history lesson on Astronomy part 2

While the Greeks made some important contribution in western astronomy, medieval Europe fell into the dark ages and intellectual progress was quite slow at the time.

It was at this time that the Arabic world flourished. Under Islam, the Arab world became highly cultured and translated many of the Greek works were translated into Arabic. They were able to calculate that a year was 365.24219858156 days long, which is accurate to the 6th decimal place.

It was during the renaissance that Europe became interested in astronomy again. It was Nicolaus Copernicus which proposed that Sun did not revolve around the Earth but the other way around, in his Heliocentric system. Galileo was among the first to observe the sky with a telescope. He also greatly improved the telescope at the time


Why is it that we look at stars? I think that looking at the heavens gives us a sense of existence and worth. We can't help feel the overwhelming awe of the mystical characteristics of the universe. There will be always something that we don't know about the universe, in such a way that it keeps it's mysterious appeal.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astronomy#Middle_Ages_and_Islamic_astronomy

A short history lesson on Astronomy part 1.

What were prehistoric people thinking when they first looked up to the sky? It must have been quite the impressive show. Even today, in our so called age of science you can't help but smile when you look up to the stars.

Almost any civilization has had their share of constellation in relation to their cultural folk tales and myths.

The Greeks have Hercules and Perseus protecting their skies from the horrifying Hydra.
While in China, Hydra was seen as a Willow (柳 - Liǔ).



The very first true astronomers were from Mesopotamia, while simple in their intentions, they had an important influence on the sophisticated astronomy.

In ancient India they used sidereal calculation.
"The sidereal astronomy is based upon the stars and the sidereal period is the time that it takes the object to make one full orbit around the Sun, relative to the stars." - wikipedia

All of east Asia's astronomy originated from China. China's astronomy has a long history and is probably, along side with Greek astrology, the most the most influential. Much of early astronomy from China was done with the purpose of timekeeping.

Most of the constellations and stars we know today still retain the name that they were given by the astronomers of ancient Greece. Astronomy was very important to the them and was treated as a branch of mathematics.

The Mesoamerican civilizations, especially the Mayans, used astronomy to created very accurate calenders. Some propose that the Mayans calculated a solar year with somewhat more accuracy than the Gregorian calender that we use today.


to be continued...




Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_constellation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astronomy#Early_history

The universe and God

I'd like to start off my blog with a little philosophical reflection.

Does God have a place in a universe where it was apparently created by some cosmic accident?

According to modern theories the universe was created by The Big Bang. It proposes that the universe was once extremely compact, dense, and hot. By some chance the universe exploded(The Big Bang) and has ever since been expanding and cooling.

It was Einstein who said 'God does not play dice with the universe.' I too agree with his statement. I would have hard time believing that universe is nothing more than a game of dice.

Einstein believed in a sort of pantheistic God. His God was similar to Spinoza's God.
He wrote, 'I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts.'

Although I do not agree with everything Einstein said, I share many of his beliefs. I believe the universe is a like a clock and that God the is the clockmaker and the laws of physics are the gears.


How could this be 'a game of dice'?















Reference: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i1/einstein.asp