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